I have to appreciate how The OP has bucked the trend on titles and has handily shortened their name from the past, although traces of it still appear hidden in their demo area. In my booth visit to The OP, I was given a tour of four of their newest titles. The A.R.T. Project has players cooperatively trying to recover lost art. Express Route is another co-op but this one has a pickup and delivery theme. The Perfect Wave is a tableau builder about surfing and What the Cup!? is vaguely like Liar’s Dice but with a single 12 sided die per person (bear with me here…)

The Lord of the Rings: Adventure to Mount Doom

• Designer: Michael Rieneck
• Publisher: Kosmos
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 30-45 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Thames&Kosmos

The quick pitch: In The Lord of the Rings: Adventure to Mount Doom, players follow the story of Frodo’s perilous journey to destroy the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom. He is accompanied by his familiar fellowship, who are charged with protecting him from the dangers he will face along the way. The players control the fortunes of this company together by moving the individual figures across the game board on a journey through many well-known places from the beloved Lord of the Rings novels. It is important to beware of the Nazgul while at the same time making sure that Frodo does not lose his confidence and freeze in despair. When Frodo reaches Mount Doom, the players have all won together.

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As always, HABA was in full force displaying those kids titles that the powers that be decided to bring over to the US. In addition to a very cool mega-sized Animal Upon Animal setup there was an unusual breadth of games. There were the almost-a-game Wiggle Waggle Geese and The Duck Game and the more advanced puzzle-guessing Key series. What you may not have expected was Capt’N Pepe: Treasure Ahoy!, a legacy game aimed at ages 6+.

“What’s old is now new” seems to be the slogan of the Renegade booth. They’ve acquired the rights to several older games and are rereleasing them, hoping to attract a new audience. Acquire, Diplomacy, Robo Rally, and the line of Axis & Allies games have all been polished up for new release.

Point City

• Designers: Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, Shawn Stankewich
• Publisher: AEG
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 15-30 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by AEG at GenCon 2023

Point City  is a card-drafting, engine-building game with more than 150 unique building cards, giving you the opportunity to create a completely different city each time you play!

The rules are simple: Take two adjacent cards from the dynamic city grid and add them to your expanding city. Use your resource cards and bonuses to construct building cards that require specific combinations. Build special civic structures to multiply your city’s points and be the top urban planner!  Point City takes the same simple concept of drafting cards and building the best combinations, then adds new layers of resource management and engine building to the mix — making the game easy to learn, but challenging for everyone!

—description from publisher

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There was a surprising number of games at the convention based around the Invincible comic, a son-of-Superman type comic set in the slightly darker/more graphic Image Comics (not DC and not Marvel) universe. Mantic Games was showing off the push-your-luck Invincible: The Dice Game.