Gen Con Day One: What’s Hot, and What I Played

Posted on August 5, 2016 by Chris Wray

The first day of Gen Con 2016 is in the history books, and below I discuss four games that impressed me on the first day, but I want to first offer some general thoughts on the convention and what is hot so far.

The convention seems more crowded than I recall from last year.  The competition for demos of certain games was fierce.  Additionally, I don’t know that there is a stand out game or two like there was last year (when I’d say that Codenames and Mysterium took the convention by storm), although I think there are several high quality releases.  I’ve been impressed by quite a few games so far.

The GeekBuzz list still has extremely low vote totals, so there isn’t a good metric to gauge what’s hot at the convention yet.  If you’re willing to take my anecdotal evidence from my conversations with attendees throughout the day, the ten most discussed games seem to be (in order): Seafall, Codenames: Pictures, Cry Havok, Terraforming Mars, Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu, the Harry Potter deck-builder (which I admit had flown under my radar), Captain Sonar, Scythe, The Last Friday, and Islebound.

Continue reading →

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gencon mini report 

Posted on August 4, 2016 by Dale Yu

Words and descriptions when I get home. First trip back to the car.  My back is flared up so I’m taking smaller, more frequent loads.  

The down side is that I had to park about a mile away so it’s a thirty minute round trip 

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Gen Con Day Zero: Ten Games I’m Anticipating (And Five I’ve Already Played)

Posted on August 3, 2016 by Chris Wray

I’ll be blogging each day about Gen Con 2016, much like I did last year.  I get to Indiana tonight (Wednesday) and leave Sunday.

I’m looking forward to the group of games being released at Gen Con this year.  Though Spiel (Essen) will probably have the advantage for me in terms of quality game releases, Gen Con 2016 looks like it’ll have some big hits.  As I noted last year, the production schedule in recent years has changed so that many of the biggest and best games actually get released at Gen Con first and then getting a wider release at Essen.

I know several other Opinionated Gamers will also be at the convention.  Matt covers the convention in amazing detail, and he’ll begin posting in a few days.  I sort of meander around and play what catches my eye, writing up initial thoughts on the games I play each evening.  

This post contains my first impressions on what looks interesting to me.  Below are five cool Gen Con releases I played in advance of the convention, plus the ten games I’m most looking forward to trying at the convention.  Links are below to the BGG entry. Continue reading →

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Dale Yu: Review of Via Nebula

Posted on August 2, 2016 by Dale Yu

 

Via Nebula

  • Designer: Martin Wallace
  • Publisher: Space Cowboys/Asmodee
  • Players: 2-4
  • Ages: 12+
  • Time: ~60 minutes
  • Times played: 4, with review copy provided by Asmodee NA

via nebula box

Via Nebula is the new release from Martin Wallace – a designer whose games I truly have a love/hate relationship with. I don’t think that I doubt Martin’s genius at designing games – in fact, one of my top 3  games of all time is his Age of Steam. However, some of his other games have been so completely obtuse to me (perhaps due to dodgy rules or misprinted components, perhaps due to my inability to read correctly) that I’ve never quite sure what to expect when I first open the box. The anticipation of discovering the next Age of Steam keeps me coming back to Wallace games, but I’ll say that it’s been awhile since I’ve been blown away (maybe since Tinner’s Trail?)…  So what about Via Nebula – Continue reading →

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Nominees for 2015 Meeples Choice Awards

Posted on July 28, 2016 by huzonfirst

Well, the Spielfrieks user group just finished the first round of voting for the 2015 Meeples Choice Awards (using our spanking new voting application).  There was a 7-way tie for 24th, so we wound up with 30 nominated games.  It’s a bunch of excellent and varied titles, as usual.  Now we proceed to the final round of voting, in which the top three games of last year are selected.  If you’re a member of Spielfrieks, but you didn’t vote in the first round, you can still join in at http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/spielfrieks.

The 30 nominated designs are given below.  The final results will be announced next week.

7 Wonders: Duel
Above and Below
Arboretum
Baseball Highlights: 2045
Between Two Cities
Blood Rage
Broom Service
Cacao
Churchill
Codenames
Deception: Murder in Hong Kong
Elysium
Food Chain Magnate
Grand Austria Hotel
Inhabit the Earth
Isle of Skye
Mombasa
Mottainai
Mysterium
Nippon
Pandemic Legacy: Season 1
Ponzi Scheme
Steam Time
T.I.M.E Stories
The Gallerist
The Grizzled
The Voyages of Marco Polo
Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization
Tiny Epic Galaxies
Trickerion

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Tricks and Trumps #4: Modern Trick Taking Card Games (1996-1998)

Posted on July 28, 2016 by Chris Wray

This is our fourth entry in an eleven-part series featuring trick taking games.  This entry will focus on trick taking games from 1996 to 1998.  During this era, game designers, primarily out of Germany, were putting their own creative twists on the genre, leading to games that no longer resembled the public-domain tricksters of the past.  This entry includes Canyon, Njet! (a.k.a. Nyet!), Twilight (a.k.a. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde), Cosmic Eidex, David & Goliath, Löwendynastie, and Schnäppchen Jagd (a.k.a. Bargain Hunter).  

For previous entries, see #1 (Games Before 1965); #2 (1966-1990); or #3 (1990-1995).   Continue reading →

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