I’m an 8 AM con person in general. For BGG.CON day one, that means a lot of wandering around, as things don’t quite open until 10.

This year, the con introduced a “premium” badge, which, amongst other things, including a system for setting aside a library game for a few hours. I was delightfully surprised to see some non-new release titles being requested.

See Joe’s previous list for thoughts on The King of Frontier.

Some things I played today. Raja of the Ganges:

Mostly known for its odd scoring/game end- you have a money track, and you have a points track. They are the same track, but in opposite directions. Game end trigger is one player’s markers meet, and winner is whomevers overlapped the most.

That’s cute, but wouldn’t work for me if the rest of the game didn’t hold up, but I think it does. Very much so. It’s an interesting combination of worker placement and dice placement. (and one of my favorite mechanics, sacrificing victory points, in this case money, to move further ahead.)

Panic Mansion. I passed on this at Essen, as I had not enjoyed Nitroglyxerol.

However, I found this to be quite enjoyable. The shapes getting caught on the doors, and the varying weights and coefficients of friction really make the game. (The rules are fairly self-evident- flip a card, real time shake the box to get those items only in the room color indicated on the deck back.). Will definitely be checking this out later. Hopefully 2 copies so we can play up to 8 player.

Reworld. My regular group is K&K fans, so here we are.

I’m not sure this was for me, but it was interesting. In my mind, some of Kramer’s board games are clever card games masquerading as clever board games. The flip flop of the planning was interesting, but not enough.

@OpinionatedEaters break. Meat U Anywhere.

I love Meat U Anywhere the way Dale loves the spiral potato. The current plan includes three trips. Yes, it opens at 6 AM. For breakfast tacos. That are $3. You can also get them for dinner. There’s also a secret dessert menu, you just have to ask.

I like baking, and I love baking for other people. The days leading up to bggcon have never worked out with my grand plans to bring treats for strangers, but if I was ranking cons based upon the baking generosity of strangers, bggcon takes the crown.

Don’t judge the bggcon library by what it contains Wednesday morning, as publishers donate titles throughout the week as they or titles arrive. Today’s example, Pandemic: Rising Tide.

You’ve got dikes and other water control structures to prevent flooding in the Netherlands. “Adding cubes” first removes dikes, and then adds water. Also the water flows every turn. You can also build pumps to auto-cure one cube each turn, and because water is a liquid, you can pull through a chain of water logged territories.

I really enjoyed Iberia last year, but am currently lukewarm on this one. It boils down to difficulty with the map, rule clarifications, and implementation of the rules. The water flow rules could have been clearer, but this was exacerbated by the borders in the Netherlands not being amenable to the abstract graph theory of a Pandemic board. I think the dike and water flow rules make an interesting puzzle, but it’s tough to enjoy.

I’m glad to say I saw multiple people checking out POK today.

Listen, I’m not saying POK is the best, but hooray for the little titles that don’t get wide coverage, still bringing joy.

POK is from Kasper Lapp, of the Magic Maze. Roll three dice. Put some tiles in your hand. Everyone reveal. If collectively you exactly show the symbols on each dice, those players rid rid of their pieces. Otherwise, the players without the matching symbols get rid of theirs.

We had a lot of fun. Is it a great game? Probably not. Fun? Yes.

Tonight it’s bedtime though as I couldn’t remember the names of colors during Burgundy Dice.

Tomorrow though, we get a real 8 AM start.