I played through a few turns of Phase Shift Games’ new-ish cooperative game, Aetherspire. It was a nice mix of luck and luck management as players try to build a tower before enemy elementals knock down the tower core. Enemy pieces both attack and are used as currency for special powers. A large selection of player powers and element adversaries give the game quite a bit of variety. I then walked down the aisle and got the lowdown on two of Paizo Publishing’s boardgames. (They’re mostly a role-playing company but we’ll hit that up in a later article.) I was given a brief tour of the fantasy campaign game, Pathfinder Quest. Players take four heroes on a trip through nine adventures to complete the saga. The upcoming Pathfinder: Dice Gods was also shown which looks a bit like a more complex roll & write. Here you choose which “god” die you want to roll, and you can get “better” at rolling a specific god die over time.

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As always, the Restoration Games booth is a dangerous land of nostalgia, likely to drain your pocketbook if you’re not watching carefully. What I find interesting, is that I never played many of their “restored” games but I feel like I would have wanted to, giving me a sort of funny nostalgia of things I never played. Would that be ghost nostalgia or perhaps nostalgia deja-vu, the feeling that you’re nostalgic for something you’re just now playing? Regardless, the Restoration booth was firing on all cylinders showing off games heavy on “fun” and light on “serious.” The strategy level varies but many lean towards smashing things together (with rules of course) and seeing what happens. On the light end of the spectrum was the new stand alone release, Thunder Road Ignition, with slightly lighterweight rules than the base Thunder Road game. More Unmatched titles were on hand, with Unmatched: Stars and Stripes selling out and other releases being announced. The display with the most presence (possibly of the show) was the upcoming The Lord of the Rings: The Kings Gambit.

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If I had to pick one adjective for Devi’s booth, it would be colorful. From the rainbow pie pieces in the party game, One Round? To the wildly colorful Gaudi (not gaudy, though!) and its rondel, to the clay craftspeople (worker placement) of Nijar, and the over-the-top centerpiece of Orloj: The Prague Astronomical Clock. Each provides a riot of color (of which I’m not complaining, I’m a big fan of color…) Sure, the Rock Hard 1977 expansion Ear Candy isn’t exactly a rainbow. The goofy potion art of Risky Mixes has some color, but the moody, dark dice-battler 7th Seal isn’t going to show up on the color-o-meter. Overall, I felt like I was in a boardgame world of stained glass. But while the colors are nice, what about the games?

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