Here’s the new hotel! It’s the glass building down and to the left of that tower.
Since some things are new this year, I’ll try to remember to share information and photos of things that I had started to take as common knowledge at the previous location, but may be different here.
Though, as usual, this will mostly be a recap of my gaming experiences of the day, with a little food thrown in.
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I am just catching up with the world of Keyforge, having recently just reviewed Age of Ascension, the second cardset for the game. Before I’ve even had a chance to grow weary of my initial four decks, I find that my tardiness to the world of Keyforge has once again put me behind the eight ball as decks for the next expansion have arrived on my doorstep!
Continue readingI’m writing this up from the registration line of BGGCON this morning, the convention’s first time at this new hotel -now outside of the DFW airport (again), and after an afternoon and an evening, it’s already been a nice change, as you can walk outside to nearby restaraunts and the views are, well, not of endless tarmac.
One of the other features is that it is connected to via an underground tunnel to the Amtrak station. I mean, when you arrive by train, the hotel is right there!
The hotel is…large. I’ll talk more about it tonight, tomorrow, on Twitter, and all week. But this is a post about the second time we took the train to BGGCON so that we could play train games aboard the train.
Just got home from a fantastic weekend of gaming (Thursday evening through Sunday afternoon) with friends… enjoying a truckload of new games straight from Essen. (OK, so not really a truckload, unless it was a small hand truck being pulled by a guy on a moped. Still, 32 new games isn’t a bad weekend – especially when you get to play them with great people.)
Here’s my ‘hot takes’… organized by day. (Disclaimer – the majority of these are based on one play, though under excellent conditions with experienced gamers and a rules teacher who had read the rules ahead of time and/or played the game previously.) There are some thoughts about games I didn’t get to play at the end as well.
Continue readingWelcome to the 2nd edition of Opinionated Drinkers. Now that fall is here it’s time to break out some darker, warming beers like stouts and porters. It’s also the perfect time to stay inside and play a game or three, what with it getting dark so early and all those Essen releases just crying out to be played.
I’ll be writing a full review of Nova Luna soon, and Brandon gave you a preview a couple of days ago, so I won’t go into too much detail other than to say I am enjoying the puzzle aspects of this one and I am very glad I picked it up. It paired well with the rye porter. I am not a big fan of rye flavor in general, but it’s subtle here, and the roasty flavors balance it out. I may have also been singing Total Eclipse of the Heart during this play because I might still know all the words, but I’ll never admit to that.
We always play a thematic game on Halloween while handing out candy. For the past couple of years we’ve played Halloween for obvious reasons, but this year we decided to go with The Bloody Inn, since we had a perfectly-named beer to go with it. This game from 2015 is a card-based strategy game. You and your fellow players are farmers turned innkeepers whose business plan is to kill off your guests and steal their money; the player who steals the most money wins the game. You can read more about it in our initial preview of it here.
The Heretic Shallow Grave Porter was delicious. It was roasty, with a bit of a coffee flavor and just a touch of sweetness. It was definitely a treat.
As a kid I played a lot of games solo, even though that is not how they were meant to be played. As an adult I can usually find someone to play with me, but I am often drawn to games with a solo option. Arkham Noir is a game designed only for one player. You can read my review of the original game here. Case #2 has the same mechanics, but adds a new story, new victims and a new twist. I’d been meaning to give it a try, and needing one more game for this post was the perfect excuse. The game holds up well and is still an enjoyable solo experience. It’s made even better by Yves Tourigny’s great art. Someday I’ll win this one on the harder setting.
The beer was interesting. It’s an ale with peppers, aged in bourbon barrels. I could taste the bourbon, but it wasn’t overly boozy, and the peppers added a little bite, but not too much. (I am an absolute wimp when it comes to hot peppery spices). It was a good beer to sip while pondering how to solve the murders.
I’ve got a few beer and game pairings in mind for my next post, but I’d love to have suggestions if you have any. I live in Massachusetts, so beers available here or nearby are most appreciated, but I will be travelling to Ohio, North Carolina and California over the next few months, so any recommendations there are welcome as well.
So last year, we did a fun thing where we asked our writers to give short comments on games as they play them, and many of our readers felt this was a great way to read about the games. These comments are often made after their first play – sure, this isn’t a great experience base to write a review, but sometimes seeing what people think about them in a rapid fashion still can help. So, here are our quick thoughts, hopefully alphabetized correctly. We plan to post this a few times during November/December, and unlike last year, we will try to continue aggregating these one-liners in a single piece. To help you distinguish what is new, any older comments will be in italics and the newest ones will be in a regular font. The most current set of comments was published Sunday November 17 – it’s starting to get quite long – I think it’s around 34 pages in my wordprocessor, with almost 300 game comments — I expect a large addition in the coming week as BGG.con happens this coming week!
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