To double your posting value, I’ll be combining publishers as I write up the convention. Today, it’s SlugWright or GameFest – I’m going with SlugWright…

Gamewright 

Sushi GO! 10th Anniversary Edition

A special 10th Anniversary edition of the popular drafting card game was available in the booth. It features the original game with premium components all packaged up in what looks like a Bento box. There’s a squishy strawberry pudding that is given to to the player who currently has the most puddings. A sushi boat is given to the leader of the last round, and player points are tracked in a little bowl using wasabi cubes in 1 and 5 point denominations. The game includes four new dessert card packs that can be opened up to add to the game. No spoilers here, but there are some pastel 12-sided dice that have no obvious purpose when the game is first opened up.

Hold Your Ground

Published by Buffalo Games but being demoed at the Gamewright booth, Hold Your Ground has players playing cards and using a little plastic launcher to each other off a central game box. The game board is a grid of tiles, filled with little figures belonging to the players. All players begin with identical decks, always drawing back up to 4 cards before playing two of them. Cards can make the little people move around, force conflict in an area, add people to the board, or even call for a battle royal. Normal conflict occurs when a space becomes overcrowded – all players remove one pice from that location. A battle royal eliminates one figure from the majority color in each space on the board. After playing cards, a die is rolled. The result may call for another battle royale, move the blaster, or fire the blaster. To use the blaster, a player takes the little launching button and smacks it, launching the target tile (and any figures on it) into space. Figures that manage to stay on the board somewhere are great, while all the figures that fall are removed. The end goal of the game is to have the most pieces on the center square at the end of the game.

A Midsummer Night’s Fayre

The heart of A Midsummer Night’s Fayre is a set of 12 minigames involving dice, only 10 of which are used in any given game. Three minigame cards are revealed and a set of orange dice are rolled to determine the goal numbers for each card. Players have their own set of dice and two fairy mischief cards that can somehow mess with the gameplay (like flip a die, grant a reroll, etc…) Players then take turns rolling dice and placing them on the goal cards. The orange dice can even be manipulated, so sometimes an early placement is no longer useful for a card. For example, one goal is to simply match the orange die – if it is flipped any previously placed dice don’t count towards the goal – although they will be used as tiebreakers. Other goals might simply be to have the highest total, closest to a set total, or match the most orange dice. When a goal card is filled, it is examined to see who takes first, second, and third place. Second and third place score a few points but the winner gets to roll again on the prize table. The prize table is simply the inside of the box cover. It is filled with lots of die faces. The winner rolls the special wooden prize dice. They score points equal to the value of the die and the value of any die it touches. The die has a goblin face, though and if the goblin is rolled no points are gained. 

Wrath of Fire Mountain

Wrath of Fire Mountain is a quick-paced (30 minutes?) game of dice-rolling area control. The game area is set up with a 4×4 grid of various terrain types and one volcano figurine. Players roll 5 dice (with 2 rerolls) and use the symbols to spawn their people onto the board, move their people around, buy a special dinosaur (or start saving up for an expensive one), or mess with the volcano. If you have the majority at the volcano you can slide the volcano tile one space, pushing the other tiles along (hanging ones wrap around to the other side.) Each game uses four out of eight possible special dinosaur types and only 2 of each type is available in a game. When purchased, players attach a special colored ring to the dino to show ownership. Each dinosaur changes the game in some way. Things like using the water spaces, eating opponent pieces, messing with the volcano, etc… When the volcano tile is filled, an eruption occurs and a scoring round is triggered. Various areas are scored, granting points to the majority player. All pieces that score are removed and the game continues until a set number of victory points is claimed. 

Slugfest Games

Tales of the Red Dragon Inn

I have to confess that the main reason I stopped by the Slugfest booth was to check on one of my favorite games of the year, Tales of the Red Dragon Inn. It’s a lighthearted dungeon crawl that doesn’t take itself too seriously and always sacrifices complexity or realism in favor of just plain fun. Let me tell you why I like it so much, but first I have to disappoint you by revealing that the next reprint is not expected to ship until April. Back to the game. Tales is a co-op dungeon crawl for 1-4 players but features something like 6 or 7 possible characters. Played in a linear campaign, characters slowly grow in power through special abilities (you gain new ones but often have to replace old ones) and items (you get to pick from any that you’ve discovered so far.) Characters move and activate abilities that are put onto a timer – so the more powerful abilities have a longer cooldown. You can shorten this, of course, by doing fewer things on your turn just to lower the cooldowns further. The narrative is fun (players of The Red Dragon Inn will recognize all the characters) and the combat is fun too. I like how all the sacred cows are examined and changed to make things more fun. Why roll to hit? Doing nothing on a turn is no fun. So, don’t worry about missing anything, just roll damage every attack. Doing no damage is also like doing nothing on a turn, so the damage dice don’t have any blank faces. This isn’t rocket science, a decent game designer can adjust all the numbers to make the combat balance work out just fine.. As for range, line of sight, and all those other fiddly bits, throw them out. Just count the squares between you and the target. Going around a corner? Just fine. Don’t worry about it. These are magic spells and magic arrows and magic whatevers – they can go around corners no problem. I highly recommend the game for a fun dungeon crawl that eliminates fiddly bits but maintains some good strategy and planning. Unfortunately, you probably have an 8 month wait. (Note, it is a campaign, not a Legacy game so you could just borrow a friend’s copy if you can find one.)

The Red Dragon Inn

Slugfest’s arguably core game is their lightweight take-that card game of tavern brawling. Gen Con saw an expansion for the game containing two new character decks. Melvyn has a rune deck full of cards they can discard to activate powers while Mariah is a big meanie who forces people to draw negative cards that take up space in their hand until played for an unhappy effect. Mariah also comes with a boss deck to use if the players want to play a boss battle.

Positano

Coming in 2025, Positano is a city-building game where 2-4 players are competing to construct buildings with the best Mediterranean views. Buildings are scored by how fancy they are, but anything without a good view is worth zero. Players blind bid to determine the draft order to get cards that claim lots (places to build), blocks (supplies), and build actions (which determines the building type and possibly other actions..)