A Cubicle Gamer’s Thoughts : Ticket to Ride 10th Anniversary Edition

Unless you don’t like board games you probably know about Ticket to Ride. You can buy it pretty much anywhere and it’s one of the gateway games of this generation. I know it was my first board game, beyond the likes of Risk or Monopoly, a few years ago. Most of my friends who play board games love and own one flavor or another of Ticket to Ride.

If you don’t know, which if you don’t I recommend you give it a try, Ticket to Ride is a train laying game where you connect cities together. You are given destination tickets and the goal is to connect those cities together in some way. Eventually a player runs out of trains, which means the game is over and everyone counts up there points and a winner is determined. There is next to no direct conflict. Routes are a finite resource so technically you “fight” over them, but there is nothing you as a player can do to harm another player. Unless of course you count blocking other people’s routes intentionally, which I suppose is a viable tactic but I don’t think it would make for a very fun game for either of the players. In all the games I have played I have never run into someone intentionally screwing someone else like that. Adding in Alvin and Dexter changes that a bit, but that’s another post 😉

This isn’t about the game itself. It’s a great game which I really enjoy. If you haven’t played it I highly recommend at least giving it one play through so you know what people are talking about.

What I wanted to talk about was the 10th Anniversary Edition of Ticket to Ride. It’s a new version of the game which was released last year to celebrate 10 years of Ticket to Ride. This is the exact same game, with the addition of the USA 1910 expansion included in the box, as the non-anniversary version of the game.

Included in the box is everything you would expect: game board, 5 sets of trains, score markers, and a bunch of cards. What is awesome about this version is what all those things actually are:

-Each of the 5 sets of trains come in a tin and each set is custom, meaning it’s not just color which differentiates the players anymore. There is the green caboose, black coal car, blue passenger car, yellow barrel car, and finally the red circus car(complete with giraffe sticking it’s head out). Each one is unique and looks great! All of them come in their own tins which tie into the type of car you are, giving your color a bit more flavor. You’re not just red anymore, you’re the Circus Railway and have trains cars to match it

-The game board is larger and much more detailed. The board is much more colorful with more flavor on it. You can see cars, steamboats, buildings for the cities, etc. They did a great job remarking the board for this edition of the game.

-Cards are now normal sized. This wasn’t a huge deal, but it does help. If you played the original Ticket to Ride you might remember the cards included were mini cards. While not bad, they were a bit small. Now with this version(along with the USA 1910 expansion) you have full sized cards to play with. The card stock used is great, they shuffle very smoothly!

-Speaking of USA 1910… That expansion is now included in the game box. Mainly what that means is you get a bunch of new destination tickets and another bonus points condition you can use. These allow for some different sets of destination tickets to be used. For example: Big Cities has every ticket connect into the biggest cities, meaning the deck is much smaller and the competition will be more fierce.

If I had one grip it would be the size of the box. To accommodate the larger board the box has to naturally be larger to accommodate the board. This box is 14 inches x 14 inches, while the original is 11.5 inches x 11.5 inches. It’s not a huge deal at the end of the day, just something to be aware of if you OCD about your shelf ascetics.

Overall I think this is a great improvement over the normal Ticket to Ride version. If you’re in the market for the USA version of the game, this is the one to buy! Owning the original isn’t a barrier of entry either 😉 It’s a great gift for someone to buy the newer version and give the older game to someone who doesn’t have it! That’s what we did and my parents now have the game to enjoy. Nothing wrong with sharing the love, right?

Lessons from the Iron Kingdoms : Fools Rush In

This past week I finally got to the store early enough to get a game of Warmachine in. I haven’t had one since my all in one box had arrived because of various commitments I have had, mostly work though. It was great to be out and chat with people.

I played a 25 point game against Skorne. Here is my list:

Commander Adept Nemo

-Lancer

-Centurion

-Squire

Journeymen Warcaster

-Defender

Arlan Strangeways

This was my opponents list:

Tyrant Xerxis

-Bronzeback Titan

-Titan Gladiator

-Cyclops Shaman

Paingiver Beast handlers

Mortitheurge Willbreaker

Lots of stuff to pummel my face in, which in the end they did. It wasn’t the greatest match for me to use Nemo, but I like Nemo so I wanted to use him anyway. This was one of my first games beyond battlebox games and my opponent was a veteran. I made a bunch of mistakes and I wanted to share them here.

My biggest mistake, which cost me the game, happened as one of my opening moves. I had allocated my Centurion 1 focus to run, and that proved to be a fatal mistake against this list. I wasn’t thinking 100% straight and doing what I was doing in my battlebox lists: running up to engage. Turns out, Bronzebacks can hit pretty darn hard =P My jack was one rounded. The lesson I learned here was that running isn’t always the best. I should have walked him up, locomotioned him three inches, and then used his special ability so he couldn’t be charged. My opponent’s list didn’t have shooting so I didn’t have much to worry about in that department, just the changes.

Lesson learned.

In the post-mortem we discussed what I could have done differently. Two smaller things came up. First was to prevent my Lander from being engaged so it could have arc’d that important Chain Lightning into his group of guys. Had I gotten a lucky roll(and not had a miss with my first two rolls…) I could have knocked out his Beast Handlers early in the game. Instead the Lancer ran up and ended up getting engaged with his Gladiator, which meant bye bye Lancer.

The other small lesson I learned is think about where my Jacks are assigned. Against this list I should have left the Defender with Nemo, instead of assigning him to the Journeymen. It wasn’t really necessary for this game and would have allowed me a bit more flexibility. Heck, it may have made the difference in this game since I could have fully loaded him up and sent him into the Bronzeback.

In the end I made a desperate assassination attempt to no avail. Xerxis walked up and beat Nemo into a fine pulp without breaking a sweat. I learned some things and will be a bit better prepared next time. Nemo is fun to play so I’m going to keep at it with him. I’m also going to try to get some games in with Stryker1 as I like him as a caster as well. Though I think I need some other models before I break him out again(such as Jakes).

Two real games beyond battlebox and both against Skorne. This one I learned a bunch, and in the other I learned target prioritization. The Agonizer really brought my game to a halt in that one…

Sorry about the lack of pictures. I didn’t break out my phone so I didn’t get to snap any.

Hopefully soon I will have my army painted. I have the supplied and intended to start over the weekend. For whatever reason I can’t get the paint to mix and get the color I want. I tried a bunch and just gave up because I didn’t want to waste the paint. Someone suggested a wet pallet so I might give that a try.

Until next time!

A Cubicle Gamer’s Impressions : Gloom

At my job we were given every Friday off in July for the completion of our project. I’m pretty excited because I have always thought 3 day weekends were the best! What better way to spend the first day off than gaming at your friendly local game store? I met up with 4 friends and we played for a few hours. Our list was :

-3 games of Sushi Go!

– Gloom

–Age of War

Everyone had fun, but today is about Gloom.

I have been wanting to try out Gloom for a while now. It looked and sounded like a fun game with something a bit different to offer. I was very surprised, and pleased, with what I played. One of the unique things about this game is it’s played entirely with transparent cards. It’s one of the few games I know which is played with them and it works really well.

Gloom is a pretty simple and straightforward game. Players have a “family” of 5 cards in front of them and then a hand dealt from a deck. Cards in the deck are Self-Worth modifier cards, Untimely Death cards, and Event cards. The end goal of the game is to have a family with the lowest self-worth on all of your family cards. This is a game about making terrible things happen to your family and good things happen to your opponent’s family. It’s fantastic!

Family member and some modifier cards

Self-Worth Modifier cards will adjust a family member’s self worth up or down. You’ll want to play cards which lower self worth on your own family and cards which cheer up family members on your opponents family. Part of Gloom is that it’s a storytelling game, so all the Modifier cards are very thematic. For example some of the bad ones are: Was mauled by a manatee, was terrified by topiary, and stole from a stiff. Some of the good things that can happen: had a picnic in the park, was wondrously well wed, and was delighted by ducklings. There are a ton more, with many more options in the expansions, and all are very fun and thematic! Some of them have effects, such as increasing the hand limit.

This is where the transparent cards come in. The modifier cards are laid on top of the family cards so the cards below can show through. Only the parts of the card which show through are in effect. So don’t get too attached to that nice hand modifier because if someone else plays a modifier card on top of it the effect is no longer in effect!

Modifier card being player on a family member

Event cards are one time play cards which have some sort of effect. They can range from moving modifier cards from one character to another or bringing a character back to life. For example: imaginary friend, the root of all evil, and a second change.

Untimely Death cards end a characters life. They can be played on any character on the table which is still alive. Dead characters can’t be modified. The game ends when one player’s characters are all dead. Again, these are very thematic and fun. For example: was baked into a pie, was devoured by weasels, and was burnt by a mob.

I won’t go through all the rules as they are available on the Atlas Games website: Gloom rules.

Gloom was pretty strategic and you had to pay attention to everything going on. One player could play something on your cards that would mess up your best laid plans. Since cards could be played anywhere you could prematurely end the game if it’s to your advantage by killing off a player’s characters(doesn’t have to be yours!).

That’s exactly how I won =) One player had one character left, but was winning. the player before me modified one of his characters and brought his score way down. This opened the opportunity for me to kill off his remaining character and come out on top. If I hadn’t been paying attention I would most likely not have come out on top.

Overall I had a lot of fun with this game! I enjoy storytelling so I was putting a bit into that while we played. It’s not the center of the game, but it’s a fun addition if your group gets into it. We were all laughing and having fun. At the end of the day, isn’t that what a game is all about? It took up probably 45 minutes to play the four player game, which included reading through the rules and fumbling with them a bit.

If you’re looking for a fun card game that’s a bit different, give Gloom a look.

Taking it up a notch!

I saved up some money over the last few months and was able to purchase this:

It’s the Cygnar All-In-One Army Box! I’m excited to get it together and to start playing higher point games. I already have the Squire and Journeymen put together ready to be added to bases. I’m also going to do the Gunmage UA at the same time. I have all the cork cut out and ready for basing.

I think I’m most excited about putting together the heavy kit with Centurion/Avenger/Hammersmith. I opened the box with the parts and went through it to make sure the pieces were all there. It looked like the kit was really well done and smartly implemented. It helps that I REALLY like the Centurion’s look!

Unfortunately I can’t take full advantage of my box just yet. The box is missing a few Gun Mage parts. Mainly a whole mage, all their arms, and most of the bases. I already submitted my parts replacement so hopefully those come through soon.

All in all I’m very excited to have my box in hand! I should be able to get a game or two in on Tuesday.

Easy Cork Bases

Sorry for the lack of miniature related posts. I haven’t been able to make it out to the game store on Tuesday nights so I haven’t been getting many games in. However, I have finished up the remaining three models I have(pictured below) and will be starting the adventure of painting soon. I should also be acquiring more models in the near future. All that means is the miniature related posts will start flowing a bit more frequently =)

Onto bases!

Everyone has a different strategy on how to base their miniatures. Some will just glue them onto the plastic base provided. Other will go all out and sculpt some truly amazing things! I wanted to share my thought process and what I did for my bases.

You may have noticed from earlier posts that my minis had some additional height thanks to what they were standing on:

I wanted to add some height to my miniatures so they weren’t exactly the same height as everyone else’s minis. Plus I thought it gave them a bit of pedestal to stand on and show off a bit more. On the function side I was thinking it would easier to measure some of the minis that end up hanging over their bases a bit.

It’s pretty easy to add this element to your bases. You just need some cork:

An Exacto knife to cut the cork with, the base you want to use, a bit of a fingernail, some wood glue, and a sponge brush. You can find cork at any of your big box craft stores and should be pretty inexpensive.

First step is to cut the cork to the size of the base you want. I just lay the base right on the cork and cut around it. Your cut doesn’t have to be exact, you’ll see why in the next step. I will trace the bases next time when when I’m doing a lot of bases at once.

I have been using two “cookies” per base. I felt that was the right amount of height, but you can do however many you like. Once you have everything you need for the minis you’re making bases for you’re going to start ripping at the edges, all the way around.

To accomplish this just push your fingernail into the edge of the “cookie” and then just tear all the way around it. You won’t want to take off much, just enough to give it a rough, organic looking edge.

Do that for all of the “cookies” you made. Now you have a pile of rough “cookies” and a bunch of scrapes. I saved all my scrapes(you can see that in the earlier picture with the bag), but you don’t have to. My plan was to maybe use some for rocks or something, so I figured I might as well save it as it could be useful later on.

The next part is the most time consuming. Cork is fairly brittle so we want to harden it up a bit to stand up to being moved around the table top. First you’ll want to glue one of the “cookies” to the base. This is where the wood glue comes into play, just put a bit on the base and put the “cookie” on top. You could probably use super glue, but this seems to work fine.

Once you have the first “cookie” on all of your bases you will want to make a mixture of wood glue and water. I believe my mixture was 2 parts water to 1 part glue. This part is a work in progress since that was a bit thin for my tastes, but it worked fine. If you find a better ratio please share it with me! With a sponge brush you will want to apply a bunch of the mixture to the first layer on the base. I have been doing it until it starts to pool a bit on the top of the cork, which you can see below. It may take several dabs before it gets there.

The reason you want the mixture is cork is very porous and will absorb the glue and water. What you end up with is a hard layer of cork once everything has dried. It will be much less susceptible to breaking apart while you’re handling your minis.

Once the first layer has mostly dried you can add a dab of straight wood glue to the top of the first layer and add the second layer. The glue will keep the second layer stuck on and add to the hardening process. At this point just repeat the same process for the second layer as you did with the first layer by applying the glue mixture.

After finishing up the top layer you will want to let them sit out to dry totally. I left mine out for a day or so, but part of that was I was just busy with other stuff going on and couldn’t get back to them =) Once they are dry feel free to attach your mini however you see fit. Personally, for the larger models(warjacks) I stuck a pin into the foot and drilled all the way through the base. Then I just super glued the pin into the foot and the base. One my older models I attempted to pin the infantry feet but that didn’t go well, so this time around I just super glued them directly to the base. We shall see how that goes, if I have any problems I’ll probably end up buying a smaller set of pins and pin those in too.

There you have it! It’s more time consuming than it is difficult, but I think it adds a nice dynamic to the minis. Obviously you can do it in whatever order you want(such as painting the mini first, then attaching it). I’d love to see what you all did with your bases!

I’d be happy to answer any questions you all have.

Here is a picture of the three models I assembled while I was taking pictures for this post:

I primed right on the bases this time to try it out. Let’s see how it goes!

A Cubicle Gamer’s Initial Impressions : Vye

Full Disclosure : We purchased the basic edition of Vye ourselves, it was not provided to us.

The day is finally here! Sorry ahead of time for the bad pictures!

Vye: The Card Game of Capture and Control has arrived on our doorstep! We are VERY excited to receive the game after backing its campaign last year. With excitement we opened the package with care:

The box was very well packaged. It was shipped in a bubble wrap USPS shipping bag. The box itself was tightly encased in bubble wrap to protect it while in transit. Sand Hat did a great job with the packing and the game made it in pristine condition!

The box itself was shrink wrapped. It’s a very sturdy box and the artwork is fantastic. Once you open the box it’s separated into 4 wells: two for cards and two for the two bags of cubes. It’s not the end of the world that there is only two bags for cubes, it’s easy enough to change that. When Vye gets a second print run, that might be something for Sand Hat to consider improving what’s in the box. Beyond that there is the a nice size rule book that sits on top.

The cards feel great and are high quality. They don’t stick together as some cards are prone to do. That may change with use, but I don’t think that will be the case here. Not only do they feel great but they look amazing! The artwork for Vye is just awesome, it was one of the reasons we ended up backing the project. It looks even better in hand than on the Kickstarter page. Here is a sample of some of our favorite, with the back of the cards in the middle:

I won’t go into our impressions of the game itself, as we have already done a bunch of basic games using stand in components(normal deck of cards and coins). Not to mention we haven’t actually played the real game quite yet =P You can read that article here : Preview Games. The short version: the game plays quickly and is a really fun area control card laying game. We have really enjoyed it.

I also wanted to take this opportunity to congratulate Sand Hat Games on the delivery of Vye. I know for them they still have lots of games to ship out, but for us this Kickstarter campaign is closed. The game was successfully funded mid October 2014 and it was delivered the end of May 2015. According to the Kickstarter page it wasn’t supposed to be delivered until June 2015 so technically they are a few days earlier than they anticipated. Though I know it’s only by a few days =) Sand Hat ran a very professional campaign. The communication flowed freely and there was really only one point where I wondered where an update was(it had been over a month with no word, save for comments). Other than that I’m very satisfied with the way they ran the campaign and the goods they delivered. I can’t speak for the collectors edition since I ordered just a regular game, but what I received is exactly what I pledged for and expected.

I’m very happy with the physical product we received. It was well worth the cost of the pledge and I predict many, many play sessions of Vye in our future. Again, congratulations are in order for Sand Hat who ran a great campaign! We will definitely be keeping an eye out for the next game from them. Keep an eye out for our final thoughts on Vye now that we have the real game.

One last thing: included with the game was a neat post card from Sand Hat thanking everyone for backing:

This was a very nice touch by them to thank backers!

Matt Wolfe on Rescuing Wombats and Pooping Cubes

Good interview with Matt Wolfe. He’s a designer local to me coming out with a unique game. I haven’t met him before, this interview just piqued my interested and I recognized the name from my LGS’ calendar

The Inquisitive Meeple

Interview with Matt Wolfe on his game Wombat Rescue, which is currently on Kickstarter. For 1-4 players, Wombat Rescue is a network/route building game, where players wombats trying to rescue their 4 baby wombats from the dingo. “To save them, you must create new smell areas that will lead them home. You will create smell areas by eating and digesting food so that you can poop out another cube and expand your smell area. The first wombat to rescue all of its babies wins!”

View original post 3,356 more words

Transparency

In whatever I write about I try to be transparent. I don’t want to introduce bias or mislead you into thinking something I don’t believe. A writer can never remove bias from everything since they have an opinion. Just know I am attempting to be transparent with you all and I’m not attempting to hide anything.

However, that isn’t what I wanted to talk about today. I just thought I would open up with it!

I have been thinking a lot about transparency. Not about the concept in writing, but about how it works in games. It’s an interesting concept that I haven’t seen used much in games. I think the best example of it is the card game Gloom, by Keith Baker. Gloom revolves around using transparent cards to cause terrible things to happen to the family you control. This is what one of the family cards looks like with a tragedy being laid on top of it(note, this is an image from BGG):

The goal of the game is to lay down as many tragedy cards onto your different family members as you can. Each leading to an eventual death. A player can also play happy things onto another players family to raise that families worth. The player at the end of the game with the lowest family worth wins.

It’s an interesting concept and makes use of the clear cards. That really intrigues me and Gloom is one of the few card games which makes use of it. A few others are Swish and On the Dot(neither of which I have played). Beyond that there isn’t a whole lot aside from poker cards, which admittedly you can play a lot of different games with poker cards. But, there aren’t many specifically designed with transparent cards in mind.

I mentioned I had been thinking about it and came up with a couple ideas which might be interesting:

-Transparent “loot” cards which you equip to a character by putting right onto the character card

-Each card is a different piece to an item that you eventually have to build from your hand

I have personally been working on an idea for the second one where the players have components in their hand which they combine in front of “discover” an item. They can then use that new discovery to purchase better components and whole items from the community pile. The goal is to use the whole components on a set of people available to all players. The player with the longest chain of components on the people wins.

I got it on paper and I’m working up some mock cards to give it a shot. I found a tutorial online on how to make homemade transparent cards. Once I have made some I’ll let you all know how it went and post the tutorial I followed on here. I don’t want to post it until I use it in case it isn’t helpful =)

A Cubicle Gamer Previews : Smart Green Heroes

Full disclosure : I was not paid for this preview, unless you count pizza at the launch 🙂 I used a prototype version of the game provided at the launch party.

Smart Green Heroes box

“Smart Green Heroes” is a game designed by Chris Faulkenberry and Jonathan Estes. The game is being published by Smart Games Systems. Last night I attended the Kickstarter launch party at Atomic Empire and had a chance to play one of the later prototypes of the game. Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures of the game so the ones in this post are from the BoardGameGeek page.

“Smart Green Heroes” is a consumer game with a message. It’s about being a small business leader who is attempting to go green. Your goal is to go green in 4 different areas of your business. It’s not going to be easy though, there are 2-4 other businesses which are competing for customers and to become the first fully green business. In order to accomplish your goal you will start projects, hire consultants, and search for opportunities.

The game is pretty straightforward. I am not going to go into depth of the rules and how to play, that can be found in this video by Smart Play Games on YouTube. Every turn you will choose from 3 actions: look for projects to start, search for opportunity, and finally hire a consultant. Projects provide energy, community, and environment which are “green resources” from your company and then used to green your company in the 4 different categories. They also award cash, which you use to pay consultants and start new projects. Some carry risks, which are always bad. Projects also give you the chance to win you customers, which in turn provides you with more income. Other players can help you, and sometimes you NEED to get their help, but I will talk a bit more about that later. Projects are essential to winning the game.

Searching for opportunity gives you the chance to gain cards which can be played almost anytime. There are lots of cards and effects, but some of them are: mitigate risk, gain an “at large” customer, advance projects, and many more. Not all benefit you directly, some effect your opponent: mitigate their opportunity card effect, potentially take customers, and a few others. These are a fun addition that add a different dynamic to the game since they can be played almost anytime. If you’re holding them your opponent doesn’t know if you’re going to stop their card or use it for your advantage.

Finally on your turn you can hire consultants. They are free to hire on, but require a retainer at the end of every round. There is only one of each consultant, so once someone hires them they stay there unless that player stops paying them. An opportunity card can steal consultants away from opponents during that players turn. The consultants give you a nice advantage, but at a price. I’ll be honest, in our game we didn’t use the consultants very much. To me it almost seemed a waste of an action to hire them so I didn’t end up attempting to use them. I think if I were to play again I would try to make use of them.

Every turn you get to take one of the actions above. Once every player has had a turn you enter the upkeep phase. In turn order players advance their projects, pay upkeeps, etc. Once the last player has done their upkeep everyone is paid and the first player advances one to the left. Then a new round begins!

Smart Green Heroes board setup and ready for play

I wanted to touch on projects again. I mentioned that players can help each other on projects. This is all but required, but that isn’t a bad thing! When our group was playing we were all attempting to start projects ourselves, at first anyway. Once we got into the swing of things we realized we couldn’t do the number of projects we needed alone. We all had to work together to fund projects and get them going. All parties that helped receive the resulting benefit of a completed project. Once it clicked this quickly became my favorite part of the game. It fostered a sense of community and comaraderie among the players because we all stood to gain from the project.

That’s “Smart Green Heroes” in a nut shell. It was a fun game that I really enjoyed! Our play time was about an hour and a half. Another game around us completed sooner(which also had the designer playing!), but I’m confident we could get sub 1 hour games now that I know the rules. The game I played didn’t have final components, but what it did have looked good to me. If I had one complaint in that department it was the color of the tokens, the purple token should be one of the majority customers and the “green” customers should be the blue tokens. This would just help with clarity since purple is one of the project colors. But, it’s a small physical issue that I expect would be ironed out before final printing, as I said before I was playing a prototype after all =)

As I mentioned before, my favorite part was the help players can give each other on projects. For me it fit thematically and just made sense. The game is about greening your small business and just like in real life, it’s hard to do it alone but together we can get a lot done! This mechanic really helps drive that point home.

One of the really cool touches to the game is that the opportunities and projects are all real things. Jonathan wrote a book about greening your business and his research went into the game. Every project is a real project which real companies did to help green their business. This is neat because it helps the game in it’s dual purpose: be fun and teach people some of the things they can do to green their business. It also helps individuals learn about it because all the projects aren’t huge expenses, I believe some are along the lines of: switch to LED bulbs. Meaning, things you could do with your family to become a little more green.

At the party I met Chris and Jonathan, the designers, and both are great guys. Smart Game Systems is onto something here. If this sounds interesting then follow this link to their Kickstarter campaign, which just went live last night!

UnPub Mini – April 18th

I apologize for not posting more often. I have been really busy at work and haven’t had a whole lot of time recently. That should change a bit now that our release is nearly complete.

This past weekend I attended the UnPub Mini event at Atomic Empire in Durham, NC. Here is a link to the event details and a list of games. For those who don’t know, the event was for unpublished games to be play tested by people with the designers on hand to answer questions and explain their games.

Unfortunately I arrived late as I didn’t get some work done at the house in time. But, I had a lot of fun while I was there! I was able to play three games from two designers. I won’t go into too much detail about the games, just my experiences.

1. A La Kart – A game by Daniel Solis. This is a fun kart racing card game for 2-6 players. We were just playing with two players. The theme is based around “Sugar Rush” from the movie Wreck it Ralph. I had a lot of fun with this small game. The point is to use the cards in your hand to score the spaces on the track. I played 3 different decks and each was distinctly different in their play style. The game was really quick at about 10-15 minutes. I had a bunch of fun and I would most definitely pick this up when it’s released.
2. Trickster Fantasy – Another game by Daniel Solis. I think Daniel said up to 7 could play, but we were playing with 4. The premise of the game is to have as little cards in front of you as possible at the end of the game. Each type of card in your hand has an ability to change things up. I don’t want to say too much about this one because I don’t know what state the game is in and Daniel said things might change a bit. But, this was fun and could easily be applied to different themes. We’ll see what Daniel has in store for this =)
3. Blowback – This one was designed by Nathan Bivins. This can play 3-4 players. The name is the final name as Nathan is currently looking to possibly rename it. Regardless of the name, I thought this was a fun game! I ended up being the traitor(one player is working against the rest of the players in secret) for this one and it was a fun game of trying to mislead the other players without giving myself away. Once we all got the hang of it we started playing pretty quickly. This is the first game of this kind that I had played before so it was a new experience for me. I think my favorite part of the game is how there is still potentially stuff to do on other player’s turns when they play cards. It keeps things interesting and engaging. The game felt mostly done, just a few small tweaks we mentioned to Nathan at the end of it. I will be looking for this when it goes to a publisher.

I wish I could have gotten there earlier and played some more games! I walked by some of the other tables and some of the other games looked fun and interesting. One neat idea I saw being played was a MOBA(a la League if Legends) as a board game called 8-Bit Battle Arena. That was pretty cool seeing played out. I also saw Valley of the Mammoths, which was an interesting mix of dexterity and deck building. I didn’t have a chance to play it, but I would like to check it out in the future if possible.

I had a bunch of fun and saw some cool games. If you have the chance to check out an UnPub event I highly suggest it. The event was well organized and had plenty to do and see!

To read more about Daniel Solis and his games, you can visit his blog. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a website for Nathan Bivins to share, otherwise I would.