I was fortunate enough to go to the Dice Tower West convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. The convention is hosted by the Dice Tower Network and runs over five days (Wednesday to Sunday). My brother lives in Vegas, so accommodations were great. The convention itself was a lot fun. The focus is on playing games, not so much on selling stuff or developing new games (though there was some of both). I played so many games that I will post a two-parter to cover them all. A third post will cover other activities during the con. I'll also have some other posts on other things I did in Vegas, including going to church on Sunday, geocaching, and visiting the Hoover Dam (which is only 45 minutes away by car). Here the rundown of games in chronological order. So the first game I played was...
Disney Star Wars Carcassonne
In yet another re-skinning of Carcassonne, this version adds a Star Wars theme. In stead of building a medieval countryside, players explore outer space. Trade routes replace roads; asteroid fields replace cities, and planets replace abbeys. The big change is adding the shields to tiles other than the city/asteroid field tiles. The new shields are faction symbols. Each player's character has a faction associated with it (Yoda is green and has the Rebels faction, Boba Fett is orange and has the bounty hunter faction, etc.). The factions give two bonuses: extra points for completed roads/cities/abbeys and dice bonuses for combat. When a player lays a tile, they can put one of their meeples as usual on the tile. If the tile is adjacent to a planet, the player can put a meeple on that planet. If another player already has a meeple on the planet, those two players immediately fight. Combat is by rolling dice, with the high individual die number winning. If a player has an adjacent matching symbol, they get to roll an extra die (up to three dice if there's more than one faction symbol adjacent). Only the highest die a player rolls counts for their combat, so naturally rolling more makes for better odds at getting a higher number. Also, if two separate trade routes connect (or two separate asteroid fields) resulting in two players on the same feature, they immediately fight it out over that feature. So there's no shared victory points unless they happen to roll a tie, in which case each player gets one point and then they re-roll until one is victorious. The game was interesting but the scores were through the roof. The faction tiles add points for completed features regardless of the player's faction, so a planet could score up to 27 points (9 for tiles and 9x2 for faction symbols). The game was a lopsided victory for one of the players.
Aquatica
In this game, players are deep sea explorers and conquerors. The game has some interesting mechanics. Each player starts with a handful of cards that let them do basic actions to acquire cards (which represent underwater regions). Regions can be either bought with money or conquered with might. Cards are laid out on a central board, giving a variety of purchasing options.
Each card taken becomes part of a tableau. The cards often have one or more bonuses on the bottom. The player puts the card in a special board with the topmost bonus showing. When that bonus is used, the card slides up to the next bonus. Once all the bonuses are used, the card is taken out and the card counts for victory points at the end of the game. Taking cards out is important because the board only has space for five cards--once the slots are full a player can't take any more cards until another card comes out.
Players also start with four sting rays that give bonuses like the card bonuses. Once the sting ray is used, it flips over to its used side. Different card actions allow the player to flip one or more rays back to their active side. The game also has a pool of other bonus rays that can be collected from purchased cards. Managing the rays is secondary to managing the cards, but still important. The original four sting rays can also be place on the central board's bonus tracks, giving end game bonuses for things like banking cards or having multiple sting rays spent.
I enjoyed the game. It has a lot of (but not too many) things going on. The art is good and the components are high quality. The sliding-cards mechanic was interesting and different.
Dune
This game is an update of the classic game from the 1980s or 1990s based on Frank Herbert's novel. The game play has been stream-lined, reducing play time from six or more hours to a quick two or three hours. We took a little over three hours because we had to learn the rules (two of the players had played the original and they needed to learn the changes). Each player is one of the factions trying to rule the spice-ladened planet of Dune. I was House Atreides, who are the good guys in the book. The four other players were the emperor, the Spice Guild, House Harkkonen (the bad guys), and the planet's natives, the Fremen. Each group has different special abilities. Players have to pay the Emperor when they buy their troops back from death (there's a resurrection area on the board; the emperor pays the bank). Players pay the Spice Guild to land troops on Dune (the Guild pays the bank to land troops). My ability was to look at cards secretly before they are drawn or played. Each turn a spice card is pulled, showing where a deposit of spices shows up. Seeing the card gave me a head start on collecting spices. Spice is what's used for paying costs. On each turn, players get to land and move troops around the board.
Combat happens whenever different un-allied factions are in the same area. Each player commits a certain number of troops (limited to how many are in that spot), a leader (who gives a combat bonus), and optionally cards that represent weapons or defense. My future-seeing ability let me see one of those four elements before I committed my own resources. Players reveal simultaneously. The weapon card kills the leader if no defense card stops it. The troop and leader (if he or she is still there) numbers are added. Whoever has the larger number wins. All committed troops are lost by the victor, the loser loses everything (troops, leader, cards). Another way to win the battle is the Traitor card--each player is dealt one card (the bad guys get four!) and if an opponent plays that leader, the player can declare that leader a traitor and automatically win the battle without any loses.
Another element in the game is the storm, which moves around the board, potentially destroying unprotected troops and spices, along with causing the sand worms to appear. When the worms appear, players are allowed to make or break alliances. The game starts with no alliances, so the first time the worms show up a whole negotiation phase happens.
The victory condition for the game is to take over three of the strongholds on the planet or four strongholds if players are allied. Individual factions may have separate victory conditions--the Spice Guild wins if no one has won by the end of the game (keep the spices flowing!) and the Bene Gesseret (which we didn't use) win if they can predict who will win on which turn (which is very difficult to predict but is awesome if it happens). I was not part of the faction that won but I did enjoy playing.
Summoner Wars
This two-player game has a summoner on each side who is able to play minions to fight the other summoner and his or her minions. The summoner can cast magic spells as well with varying effects (healing on his side or attacking the other side). The game has had lots of expansions with many different factions and sub-factions, some of which can be mixed with other sets. This time, I played one of the blood factions, who are aggressive. The guy I was playing against was an experienced player and made mincemeat of me. It was still fun, sort of. The game went so fast, I didn't get any pictures!
Oceans
This game is basically Evolution under water. Players create species by discarding cards from their hands. They enhance the species by adding cards. Each card has a special adaptation like speed, schooling, transparency, etc. Each species feeds off the reef or the deep. As the deep is depleted the game changes with some new, randomly drawn rules. Whoever collects the most food wins. This game has a few twists on the original game. The little translucent fish are fun, though they might be special deluxe items added to the con's library.
Chai
This recently-funded Kickstarter was on sale at the convention. I tried the demo and really enjoyed it, so I bought one of the extra copies they had. A full review will come later on the blog. Suffice it to say players are tea merchants vying to fulfill drink orders from customers. In addition to basic tea leaves, different flavors need to be added to satisfy the various customers. Players get those flavors from the market or the pantry. The theme works quite well and it is a lot of fun to play.
It's a Wonderful World
Players are city builders in a dystopian future. Cards represent buildings that can give resources or special powers or end-game victory points (or some combination of the three). At the start of a round, players draft a hand of cards. Next, each player puts down cards to build. The build cost is printed on the cards, using the five resources found on the central board.
The next step in the round is to collect resources and commit them to buildings. Resources are gathered one at a time, thus a building might be completed in time to collect a later resource in the same round. Any resource that can't be used for a building is put on the player's base card. Once five resources accumulate there, they are turned into one "wild card" red resource that can be used immediately or saved for later use. The last resources gathered are special leader tokens, either military or bureaucratic, which can also be used to complete buildings or are victory points at the end of the game.
The game is a fun tableau-builder with a bunch of interesting complications. I enjoyed it.
Chai: Tea for Two
This two-player version of the larger Chai game has a slightly different theme. Players are tea merchants who grow and gather tea to ship off to foreign markets. Players have a lot of options in this game and have to work their tea leaves through a field to their port. Each ship that gets all the tea it wants counts for victory points. I found this game also very thematic but less satisfying than the original game. This game will be coming to Kickstarter. The planned launch is May 25, 2020, but that's subject to change.
The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine
This trick taking game has an interesting twist--it's cooperative. A large deck has four suits with cards from 1 to 9 and a trump suit with cards from 1 to 4. A smaller deck has the same cards except the trump. The large deck is dealt out to players and then one or more of the cards is drawn from the small deck. The player dealt the 4 of trump goes first and has to take one of the small cards. Other cards (if any) are taken by other players. The player with a small card has to win the larger version of that card in one of the tricks. Players also have a hint card that lets them reveal one card from their hand and put a token on to indicate if it is their high, low, or only card of that suit. They play tricks until the proper person(s) win the proper card(s). The first few rounds are easy but the game gets progressively harder as trick taking becomes more complicated. Sometimes the cards have to be taken in a certain order. No table talk is allowed.
This was a lot of fun. Making it through the fifty different challenges would take a lot of time and commitment (and skill). We played six or seven rounds until we got stumped by bad draws for a tricky challenge. I enjoyed it even though it requires a dedicated group. A sheet lets players record progress so they can campaign over several different play sessions.
Machi Koro Legacy
I signed up for this game which was supposed to be played over three nights and Sunday afternoon, though we finished early on the third night. The game starts like the regular Machi Koro game though players start with a town board that gets reused and modified throughout the ten games played.
As with many legacy games, the game adds new components and rules, occasionally replacing old components and rules. The new stuff is stored in boxes. As each game ends, additional cards from the main deck are added. Also, the winning player gets to write his name in the back of the rule book along with the date and a name for his city. I enjoyed playing it immensely even though I never won any of the games. Three times I only needed one more turn. The game ends as soon as someone hits the victory condition. The group was fun to play with and we might play Clank Legacy next year.
Carpe Diem
Stefan Feld's "Make a Roman City" game has the players as ancient Romans collecting tiles from a board and placing them in their field to make a prosperous city. The buildings are created by placing more than one tile (tiles have "ends" or "middle sections" of buildings). Smaller buildings are on one tile. These often give immediate resources, like the bank (that gives money) or the bakery (that gives bread). Resources are used to buy other, more valuable resources or to collect victory points during that scoring phase of each round.
Like a lot of Feld games, players have a lot of options to score points throughout the game and at the end of the game. The mechanics are fun, especially selecting new tiles from the tile board. The tile board has seven sets of four tiles connected to each other by lines. Players move their token to a new set by following the lines, so planning ahead is good but hard to do.
I liked the game a lot though I still think Bruges is my favorite Feld game.
Get in My Belly
This game was on Kickstarter but did not succeed. The maker says he is going to try again after tweaking some stuff with the game and, more importantly, tweaking some stuff on the Kickstarter posting. In the game, each player is an alien who tries to outeat other aliens at an eating contest. Foods come in different categories and a player can win in two categories per round. Cards can be played that give bonuses or special powers. Once a food category goes over a certain limit, that player has to draw a card from the deck. The bottom of each food card says either "Yes" or "No," indicating if the player was able to keep the food down. Bonus cubes can be spent to draw a second card if the player gets a "No." The game is colorful and has a creative theme.
More in the next post!
Disney Star Wars Carcassonne
In yet another re-skinning of Carcassonne, this version adds a Star Wars theme. In stead of building a medieval countryside, players explore outer space. Trade routes replace roads; asteroid fields replace cities, and planets replace abbeys. The big change is adding the shields to tiles other than the city/asteroid field tiles. The new shields are faction symbols. Each player's character has a faction associated with it (Yoda is green and has the Rebels faction, Boba Fett is orange and has the bounty hunter faction, etc.). The factions give two bonuses: extra points for completed roads/cities/abbeys and dice bonuses for combat. When a player lays a tile, they can put one of their meeples as usual on the tile. If the tile is adjacent to a planet, the player can put a meeple on that planet. If another player already has a meeple on the planet, those two players immediately fight. Combat is by rolling dice, with the high individual die number winning. If a player has an adjacent matching symbol, they get to roll an extra die (up to three dice if there's more than one faction symbol adjacent). Only the highest die a player rolls counts for their combat, so naturally rolling more makes for better odds at getting a higher number. Also, if two separate trade routes connect (or two separate asteroid fields) resulting in two players on the same feature, they immediately fight it out over that feature. So there's no shared victory points unless they happen to roll a tie, in which case each player gets one point and then they re-roll until one is victorious. The game was interesting but the scores were through the roof. The faction tiles add points for completed features regardless of the player's faction, so a planet could score up to 27 points (9 for tiles and 9x2 for faction symbols). The game was a lopsided victory for one of the players.
Aquatica
In this game, players are deep sea explorers and conquerors. The game has some interesting mechanics. Each player starts with a handful of cards that let them do basic actions to acquire cards (which represent underwater regions). Regions can be either bought with money or conquered with might. Cards are laid out on a central board, giving a variety of purchasing options.
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| The central board at the start |
Each card taken becomes part of a tableau. The cards often have one or more bonuses on the bottom. The player puts the card in a special board with the topmost bonus showing. When that bonus is used, the card slides up to the next bonus. Once all the bonuses are used, the card is taken out and the card counts for victory points at the end of the game. Taking cards out is important because the board only has space for five cards--once the slots are full a player can't take any more cards until another card comes out.
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| Player board and cards--only two slots filled |
Players also start with four sting rays that give bonuses like the card bonuses. Once the sting ray is used, it flips over to its used side. Different card actions allow the player to flip one or more rays back to their active side. The game also has a pool of other bonus rays that can be collected from purchased cards. Managing the rays is secondary to managing the cards, but still important. The original four sting rays can also be place on the central board's bonus tracks, giving end game bonuses for things like banking cards or having multiple sting rays spent.
I enjoyed the game. It has a lot of (but not too many) things going on. The art is good and the components are high quality. The sliding-cards mechanic was interesting and different.
Dune
This game is an update of the classic game from the 1980s or 1990s based on Frank Herbert's novel. The game play has been stream-lined, reducing play time from six or more hours to a quick two or three hours. We took a little over three hours because we had to learn the rules (two of the players had played the original and they needed to learn the changes). Each player is one of the factions trying to rule the spice-ladened planet of Dune. I was House Atreides, who are the good guys in the book. The four other players were the emperor, the Spice Guild, House Harkkonen (the bad guys), and the planet's natives, the Fremen. Each group has different special abilities. Players have to pay the Emperor when they buy their troops back from death (there's a resurrection area on the board; the emperor pays the bank). Players pay the Spice Guild to land troops on Dune (the Guild pays the bank to land troops). My ability was to look at cards secretly before they are drawn or played. Each turn a spice card is pulled, showing where a deposit of spices shows up. Seeing the card gave me a head start on collecting spices. Spice is what's used for paying costs. On each turn, players get to land and move troops around the board.
 |
| Dune in action |
Combat happens whenever different un-allied factions are in the same area. Each player commits a certain number of troops (limited to how many are in that spot), a leader (who gives a combat bonus), and optionally cards that represent weapons or defense. My future-seeing ability let me see one of those four elements before I committed my own resources. Players reveal simultaneously. The weapon card kills the leader if no defense card stops it. The troop and leader (if he or she is still there) numbers are added. Whoever has the larger number wins. All committed troops are lost by the victor, the loser loses everything (troops, leader, cards). Another way to win the battle is the Traitor card--each player is dealt one card (the bad guys get four!) and if an opponent plays that leader, the player can declare that leader a traitor and automatically win the battle without any loses.
Another element in the game is the storm, which moves around the board, potentially destroying unprotected troops and spices, along with causing the sand worms to appear. When the worms appear, players are allowed to make or break alliances. The game starts with no alliances, so the first time the worms show up a whole negotiation phase happens.
The victory condition for the game is to take over three of the strongholds on the planet or four strongholds if players are allied. Individual factions may have separate victory conditions--the Spice Guild wins if no one has won by the end of the game (keep the spices flowing!) and the Bene Gesseret (which we didn't use) win if they can predict who will win on which turn (which is very difficult to predict but is awesome if it happens). I was not part of the faction that won but I did enjoy playing.
Summoner Wars
This two-player game has a summoner on each side who is able to play minions to fight the other summoner and his or her minions. The summoner can cast magic spells as well with varying effects (healing on his side or attacking the other side). The game has had lots of expansions with many different factions and sub-factions, some of which can be mixed with other sets. This time, I played one of the blood factions, who are aggressive. The guy I was playing against was an experienced player and made mincemeat of me. It was still fun, sort of. The game went so fast, I didn't get any pictures!
Oceans
This game is basically Evolution under water. Players create species by discarding cards from their hands. They enhance the species by adding cards. Each card has a special adaptation like speed, schooling, transparency, etc. Each species feeds off the reef or the deep. As the deep is depleted the game changes with some new, randomly drawn rules. Whoever collects the most food wins. This game has a few twists on the original game. The little translucent fish are fun, though they might be special deluxe items added to the con's library.
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| The central play area |
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| My species |
Chai
This recently-funded Kickstarter was on sale at the convention. I tried the demo and really enjoyed it, so I bought one of the extra copies they had. A full review will come later on the blog. Suffice it to say players are tea merchants vying to fulfill drink orders from customers. In addition to basic tea leaves, different flavors need to be added to satisfy the various customers. Players get those flavors from the market or the pantry. The theme works quite well and it is a lot of fun to play.
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| Chai in action |
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| My player board |
It's a Wonderful World
Players are city builders in a dystopian future. Cards represent buildings that can give resources or special powers or end-game victory points (or some combination of the three). At the start of a round, players draft a hand of cards. Next, each player puts down cards to build. The build cost is printed on the cards, using the five resources found on the central board.
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| Early on in the Wonderful World |
The next step in the round is to collect resources and commit them to buildings. Resources are gathered one at a time, thus a building might be completed in time to collect a later resource in the same round. Any resource that can't be used for a building is put on the player's base card. Once five resources accumulate there, they are turned into one "wild card" red resource that can be used immediately or saved for later use. The last resources gathered are special leader tokens, either military or bureaucratic, which can also be used to complete buildings or are victory points at the end of the game.
The game is a fun tableau-builder with a bunch of interesting complications. I enjoyed it.
Chai: Tea for Two
This two-player version of the larger Chai game has a slightly different theme. Players are tea merchants who grow and gather tea to ship off to foreign markets. Players have a lot of options in this game and have to work their tea leaves through a field to their port. Each ship that gets all the tea it wants counts for victory points. I found this game also very thematic but less satisfying than the original game. This game will be coming to Kickstarter. The planned launch is May 25, 2020, but that's subject to change.
The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine
This trick taking game has an interesting twist--it's cooperative. A large deck has four suits with cards from 1 to 9 and a trump suit with cards from 1 to 4. A smaller deck has the same cards except the trump. The large deck is dealt out to players and then one or more of the cards is drawn from the small deck. The player dealt the 4 of trump goes first and has to take one of the small cards. Other cards (if any) are taken by other players. The player with a small card has to win the larger version of that card in one of the tricks. Players also have a hint card that lets them reveal one card from their hand and put a token on to indicate if it is their high, low, or only card of that suit. They play tricks until the proper person(s) win the proper card(s). The first few rounds are easy but the game gets progressively harder as trick taking becomes more complicated. Sometimes the cards have to be taken in a certain order. No table talk is allowed.
This was a lot of fun. Making it through the fifty different challenges would take a lot of time and commitment (and skill). We played six or seven rounds until we got stumped by bad draws for a tricky challenge. I enjoyed it even though it requires a dedicated group. A sheet lets players record progress so they can campaign over several different play sessions.
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| The Crew components |
Machi Koro Legacy
I signed up for this game which was supposed to be played over three nights and Sunday afternoon, though we finished early on the third night. The game starts like the regular Machi Koro game though players start with a town board that gets reused and modified throughout the ten games played.
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| My town at the beginning |
As with many legacy games, the game adds new components and rules, occasionally replacing old components and rules. The new stuff is stored in boxes. As each game ends, additional cards from the main deck are added. Also, the winning player gets to write his name in the back of the rule book along with the date and a name for his city. I enjoyed playing it immensely even though I never won any of the games. Three times I only needed one more turn. The game ends as soon as someone hits the victory condition. The group was fun to play with and we might play Clank Legacy next year.
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| Strange new bits! |
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| Spoiler--there are ships! |
Carpe Diem
Stefan Feld's "Make a Roman City" game has the players as ancient Romans collecting tiles from a board and placing them in their field to make a prosperous city. The buildings are created by placing more than one tile (tiles have "ends" or "middle sections" of buildings). Smaller buildings are on one tile. These often give immediate resources, like the bank (that gives money) or the bakery (that gives bread). Resources are used to buy other, more valuable resources or to collect victory points during that scoring phase of each round.
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| My field |
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| My resource board |
Like a lot of Feld games, players have a lot of options to score points throughout the game and at the end of the game. The mechanics are fun, especially selecting new tiles from the tile board. The tile board has seven sets of four tiles connected to each other by lines. Players move their token to a new set by following the lines, so planning ahead is good but hard to do.
I liked the game a lot though I still think Bruges is my favorite Feld game.
Get in My Belly
This game was on Kickstarter but did not succeed. The maker says he is going to try again after tweaking some stuff with the game and, more importantly, tweaking some stuff on the Kickstarter posting. In the game, each player is an alien who tries to outeat other aliens at an eating contest. Foods come in different categories and a player can win in two categories per round. Cards can be played that give bonuses or special powers. Once a food category goes over a certain limit, that player has to draw a card from the deck. The bottom of each food card says either "Yes" or "No," indicating if the player was able to keep the food down. Bonus cubes can be spent to draw a second card if the player gets a "No." The game is colorful and has a creative theme.
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| The game in action |
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| The Kickstarter poster |
More in the next post!
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