So each year after Essen, I host Basement con, which is a con that takes place in my basement.  Yes, I know that I should get bonus points for such an original name… Usually it takes place over a long weekend (Veteran’s Day usually helps out in that regard), and it gives me a chance to play a lot of SPIEL games and spend a weekend with good friends.  In recent years, it’s expanded to also play a lot of games that haven’t been played from Japan, Korea, and now Argentina and other less common places.

Fraser, this is a shelf filled with games. mostly from spiel 2023

Fraser, this is a shelf filled with games. mostly from spiel 2023. many of these are not yet available in Australia

The con is intentionally small, never more than 5 people, as it keeps all the gaming to a single table.  Also, with everyone’s varying schedules, we end up with the full spectrum of player counts, from 2p to 5p, over the course of the weekend.  Part of the fun for me is trying to figure out which games need to be played in which player count portion of each day.  I have learned that I specifically need to set up areas in the Kallax room for 5+ player games and also 2 player only games.  These are the player counts that I want to make sure that I have saved games for.

this is a top down view of two boxes filled with little games from Spiel 2023 and other places.

Now, of course, the definition of “SPIEL Games” is pretty fluid given the new patterns of game releases.  A number of the games that I’m counting as “SPIEL Games” actually came out at GenCon, or maybe even before.  But if they made WEM’s big list on BGG, they’re counted here.  And, for many of the European attendees, Spiel would have been the first chance for them to see the game.  At the conclusion of Basement con, I’ve now played 118 different “Spiel titles” but again, that is a very loose term….

Here is the list of games played this year:

Monumental, viewed from about 6 feet up. Mark Jackson’s forearm at the top.

Wednesday (5)

1. Dogfight 
2. Boomerang usa 
3. Monumental 
4. Terraforming mars the dice game
5. Pocket farm 

We were allowed to look at the box in Perspectives – but never more than 2 sides from where we were sitting. James Nathan was trying to bend his neck in such a way to get a gander at a third side, but alas, his verterbral column prevented such shenanigans

Thursday (20)

1. Robot Quest Arena 
2. Ancient knowledge 
3. Mycelia 
4. Zero hero 
5. Monster hide and seek 
6. Sea salt and paper + extra salt 
7. Path of civilization 
8. Bubble king 
9. Perspectives 
10. Horse racing mafia (grimpeur) 
11. Kinmo 
12. Maudit mot dit
13. 5 towers 
14. Prey another day 
15. Nanatoridori 
16. Ito 
17. Footprints 
18. Yaburo quest 
19. Waterfall park 
20. Secret number 

A nicely drawn Day Spa. Mark’s looked much better than mine, thus you get to see his. Mine had a toilet off in space and two hammocks in places that didn’t make sense.

Friday (18)

1. Verplant and zugestellt 
2. Similo boardgame 2023 
3. Age of rome 
4. Imperial Miners 
5. Jumbo grand prix 
6. Wilmot’s Warehouse
7. Color gangsters
8. The academy 
9. Ku ka Konig 
10. Rebel princess 
11. At the office 
12. Knarr 
13. Faraway 
14. Faraway 
15. Urbify 
16. Spellbook 
17. Tucana builders 
18. Town 77 

Fraser, this is the board to evacuation. You can barely see in the upper left one of the player boards. Interestingly, not a single OG forearm to be had in this picture, but trust me, I still took it on my trusty phone.

Saturday (17)

1. Brass empire  
2. OH my orchids 
3. Time collectors 
4. Flamme rouge BMX 
5. Sunrise lane 
6. Havalandi 
7. Evacuation (race mode) 
8. Kutna hora 
9. Unmatched tales to amaze 
10. Carry me plz 
11. Cabanga 
12. Christmas tree 
13. Lunar laser frogs
14. Buffet boss 
15. Lucky first incense 
16. Sensu 
17. Sufosaurus max

Sunday (3)

1. Forest shuffle 
2. Planta nubo 
3. Faraway 

In case you’re thinking that that is a lot of games to have played – I’m blessed to have friends who like to read rulebooks ahead of time.  I’d guesstimate no more than 5 games were played from a cold reading of the rules, and all of those were in the small filler category.  For everything else, we either had an experienced teacher – between the five of us, many of the games had been played by at least someone prior to basement con –  or multiple people (if not all) who had read the rules before sitting down to play.

As far as thoughts on the games themselves, many of the games have been reviewed or will be reviewed in the coming weeks, so I’ll not make mention of individual games here.  Additionally, we have had two “First Take” articles in the past weeks where you can get some of those snippets/opinions.

Part 1 – https://opinionatedgamers.com/2023/10/22/opinionated-gamers-first-takes-on-spiel-2023-games-part-1/

Part 2 – https://opinionatedgamers.com/2023/11/13/opinionated-gamers-first-takes-on-spiel-2023-games-part-2/

But, some 30,000 foot view thoughts.  First, I am surprised by how many small box games I brought back from Essen this year. I have 2 and a half crates filled with them.  Conversely, I’m surprised at how few bigbox games I brought back.  Not sure how much of this is in response to the fact that the ginormous box for Ticket to Ride Legacy ate up nearly half of a suitcase (and it couldn’t be opened, and thus, I couldn’t even try to nest stuff in the coffin sized box!).  One of the ways I normally measure the “Essen Haul” is to see how much I overflow the 12 Kallax cubes I have set aside for the Essen games.  This year, the big boxes fit very comfortably, only needed 10 Kallax cubes.  Last year, I filled all 12 and then had games stacked on top of the bookcases as well.

Second, there are a lot of logic games floating around now, and I’ve struggling to find one that I love.  For me, the whole logic puzzle thing is something I like to do as a solo activity, and I’ve not really found one that translates well into a tabletop game.   In the old days, my complaint was that these logic puzzle games were fragile.  Let’s call it “Black Vienna syndrome”, where the entire game relies upon everyone giving impeccable answers or else the game breaks.

Fraser, this is the neat doohickey in Archeologic. the card goes in the middle of it and answers are revealed in the little holes.

The recent trend is to automate the system, either by using an app (Search for planet X) or with a cool eye-catching widget (Turing Machine, Archeologic, Tiwanaku). I’ve been attracted to all of the games because of said eye-catching widget, then I play the game, and I’m back to thinking that this is a solo activity I’d prefer to just do on my own.  I feel like I’m in the minority here as many people I play the games with really like them – but I think I’m learning about a genre of games that just isn’t for me.  But, give me a game with a new widget, and I bet I want to try it out because what if this is the widget to end all widgets?!

Cooperative games are generally not for me.  That remains true.  Despite that, I had a fun time playing Tales to Amaze – which apparently took a PVP fighting game and made a pretty decent cooperative game out of it (I haven’t played the original version myself).  I definitely would never choose a cooperative game, and I think for me, it’s all about the group I’m playing with.  I can definitely still have fun with games that I’d rate “not for me”.

Another thing which I’m now leaning against are limited communication games.  In part because I don’t like the inevitable debate about what I can say and what I can’t say.  Or, the logical part of my brain just doesn’t like the idea that I can tell you everything about something I’m looking at , but I can’t show it to you.  I’ll admit to being pleasantly surprised at The A.R.T. Project – which uses this exact system – and I enjoyed that game; but my brain still bristles at this type of rule.

We’re playing Path to Civilization here. Mark is so disgusted at his play that he’s wretching in the upper right. In the meantime, James Nathan is drawing one of the level 4 cards, which means he’s doing really well this turn.

Things I was pleasantly surprised with: complicated games that turned out to be not overly complicated.  Examples this year include Monumental, Evacuation, Path to Civilization, and others.  These all have fairly thick rulebooks that I read through with some trepidation.  In many cases though, once you get into the meat of the game, the actual options are fairly simple to navigate.  I thought we were going to have a bunch of games to slog our way through, and I think we ended up only having 2 that proved to be troublesome, not 5 to 6 like I expected.

This year has proven to be quite illustrative at how important a rulebook is for me personally.  I don’t watch rules videos, and I’m often in a place where I don’t have 30-45 minutes to watch a tutorial video.  For me, everything needed to learn the game should be in the rules and communicated in a way that makes it as easy as possible. This year, there were many complicated games that had great rulebooks and made it a breeze to learn.  There were a couple rulebooks that I felt actually hindered my learning of the game.  I also have noticed there is a trend against including piece manifests in the rulebooks; and in many cases this is fine – but please don’t do this is a game with 40 different types of pieces and only refer to things by name without a single picture or illustration to help me decide which of the 40 things you’re talking about…

Fraser, this is a winning board from Boomerang USA.

I also found that maybe this year has rekindled my like of Roll and Writes a bit (it’s no longer a love of RAWs but merely a like).  I have been trending downward on them since the middle of Covid – and some of this might be that I played a LOT of RAWs while isolated – but the ones from this year all were really enjoyable.  Some of them don’t really do anything new (At the Office, Boomerang USA, House of Cats).  Some offer a pretty cool theme – Verplant & Zugestellt has you being an architect/interior decorator – and that was a nice breath of fresh air.   I haven’t played High Season Roll and Write yet, but I’m pretty jazzed at the prospect now given my overall success with the genre this year.

Memory games have never been my favorite, but I’ve played a few this year that add a twist and make a game both interesting and replayable.  There is a prototype which I really like, and then Monster Hide and Seek was a really cute game that used double sided cards to really confuse all of the adult brains at the table.  I currently don’t have any true memory games in my permanent collection, but that might change in the future.

Fraser., this is the setup of Cabanga. I hope this makes it to Australia. It’s a blast.

I found a lot of little games (fillers, etc) that really hit my sweet spot.  Cabanga was a hoot, and I foresee us playing that one a lot.  Faraway remains my hit of the show.  I can play that ten minute filler just about any time.  Pocket Farm was another game that had way more depth than I had thought; from the art I was expecting a cute little kids game, but there is a pretty thinky tile-laying game hidden within.  Finally, Flamme Rouge BMX comes in a bigger box but there is a great little 10 minute, one lap racing game in there that really works well.

The weekend also confirmed that I love playing new games.  Whether they are good or not-so-good, the experience of playing a new game still brings me happiness.  My average rating seems to be a little lower this year than in years past, but weekends like this are what keep me going – i’m looking forward to my regular game night to get more games to the table!  But until then, time to hunker down at my computer and start writing more reviews!

Until your next appointment

The Gaming Doctor