Intro
After making some serious mistakes during the previous Gen Con, I left at 5:30 AM CDT and had the badge mailed to my home. I managed to get there at 9:40 AM EDT, waiting for the doors to open. They were pretty good this year, opening the exhibit hall at ~9:52 AM.
Gen Con Gamernauts
Art - Ancient Ones
The dude sells portraits based on his novels he wrote. The portrait is painted on a metal foundation and illuminate with bright lights using no electric power. These bad boys go for $1,000 apiece.
Games Bought
Kitara 🐎🏞
The first game I've added to my list: Kitara. The designer Eric Vogel likes to create games with minimal rules with lots of strategies. This is a territorial control with engine building. Your troops don't die when your territory is conquered by majority count, they are just forced to retreat.
Khora: Rise of an Empire 🏛
I really enjoyed playing the demo version of Khora: Rise of an Empire. Worker placement, theme similar to 7 Wonders, choose a role out of 7 and execute in priority order, and engine/resource management.
Furnace ⚙️🏭
Furnace is a bidding/Century Spice Road from a resource engine perspective. Each player takes a turn bidding a chip to buy a card or acquire resources from a card. The card itself can convert one resource to another. Your base card has the ability to upgrade any card to make it more powerful.
Pictures 🖼🎆🌃
I knew I would like Pictures before the demo. My buddy Pogo gave me a sneak preview a few months prior. Each player is assigned a secretive card out of 16 and has a different apparatus to describe their secretive card. Each player's goal is to figure out what card is the right answer based on the available hints. The apparatus could be colored cubes, ropes, blocks, etc.
Lost Ruins of Arnak 🗿
CGE always has at least 1 good release every year and this year, it's Lost Ruins of Arnak. The game consists of deck building, worker placement, research tree, engine maintenance. We were 50 minutes into the demo and it literally felt like 20 minutes. That's when I knew that I gotta get this game!
Juicy Fruits 🍌🍎🍋🍊🍇
Capstone Games never disappoint. I knew I would love Juicy Fruits after hearing the instructions. Resource management with pattern optimization, engine via clearing the board of space, and buying victory point tiles. Your board consists of a grid with five resource tiles. The number of specified resources accumulated depending on the number of spaces the corresponding tile is moved. It seems very simple, but the strategy can be very abstract.
Kabuto Sumo 🐜
Have you ever played a carnival game where you had to insert some quarters to push the other quarters to fall off of the cliff of the table? Kabuto Sumo is exactly that plus character cards with unique abilities.
Crack the Code 🔴🟢🔵🟡
Crack the Code is the offspring of Hanabi and Mastermind. This is a coop puzzle game where you can't look at your own balls and you need to make sure you have the right color balls in the right order to match your goal. I think my friend Anners would enjoy this game.
Equinox 🌌🪐
From what the gamemaster mentioned about Equinox, this was an old game that got reskinned. The gameplay is very unique - Bid on a series of existing warriors and play a unique warrior card to give that warrior a survival value. The round is complete when all warriors are marked with a value. The warrior with the lowest value is eliminated. Add up all the correct bid points and the winner with the highest points win!
King's Forge 🔥🪨🎲
King's Forge I can never have too much engine building. Your set of dice is the engine as well as the resources to forge items for the king. Each dice color is associated with a cost value. First to forge a target number of items win. David, Darren, and I stayed up till 3:30 AM playing this game 🎲.
Four Gardens 🪴🏯
Four Gardens is one of those games that is semi-short, simple, and strategic. I just wish that it had a bit more dynamics and lengthier. But it's a game that is meant to be super simple, strategic, and short.
Games liked but won't purchase
These are the games I like, but wouldn't own for various reasons.
Dicer Miner
Dicer Miner reminds me of a simple strategic 20 minutes game. I would have gotten it was more exciting and more dynamic.
Power Failure
Power Failure reminds me of baby power grid. It is a teaser since I didn't get the in-depth part of the game and I end up wanting to play power grid.
Picture Perfect
Picture Perfect is a much better version than Planets. However, the entirety of the game is more stressful trying to remember all of the patterns to optimize points based on limited knowledge.
Pin Point
Pin Point contains 3 mini mediocre party games. Great for party games and guessing based on social trivia.
Iberian Gauge
I really like Iberian Gauge. This is a more-detailed version of Acquire. However, due to the lack of randomness, replayability will be a limiting factor after figuring out the strategy.
Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition
Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition is super fun! It's basically half the original game's play duration with Puerto Rico's role choosing. I just don't think it makes sense to own 2 of the same games that is an hour apart in game duration.
Build Up
Build Up is like Jenga with stacking weirdly shaped blocks on top.
Camel Up Off Season
Camel Up Off Season - Bidding style for priority order to pick a set of cards to gain points. It also includes an element of pressing your luck.
Nidavellir
Nidavellir is a game that is kinda fun but kinda not. Each player has tokens 0-5 and has to play a token in secret to choose turn order. The cards are basically different ways to score points. There is a mechanic to upgrade your tokens for a higher number. Think Sushi Go but drafting row by row of cards.
Almanac
Almanac started out really fun. Adding more cards to hold more gold, 3 different types of resources, and increase defense. It's a worker placement game with mission delivery cards to score victory points. At the end of the end round, the leader gets to choose an adventure of which map to proceed to. This is almost like an RPG game. After a few rounds, the engine is maxed out and it's just resource gathering and trading. There is nothing much more to the game.
Great Western Trail
Great Western Trail is a chunky detailed game. There are just too many moving parts. It's fun and engaging, but it's not exciting enough for me.
Fire Tower
Fire Tower - play offensive/defensive cards to attack players. The is an interesting concept of spreading fire in a grid structure. Last man standing wins. It's more of a fun attack game, but not really an interesting board game.
Holi: Festival of Colors
There is some strategy to Holi: Festival of Colors. It's almost more of a pattern recognition game. Although engaging, too simple for me.
Genotype
Genotype is the game I've been debating about. It's fun, but a bit too short and not dynamic enough. It's almost like half of a deep worker placement game.
Lizard Wizard
I've only heard the instructions of Lizard Wizard. It's hard to know how good this game is until it's played out.
Shamans
Part of Shamans is that everyone is trying to figure out who the bad guy is. Then the other half is to just play offensive cards. It's fun, but not deep enough.
Cover Your Assets
Cover Your Assets - super simple, super short, brainless, attacking game.
Dinosaur World
Dinosaur World is even more convoluted than Great Western Trails. Just too many little rules for little things.
Games play tested
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Okay
⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Meh
⭐️⭐️ - Terrible
⭐️ - Very Terrible
- Wonder Woman 84 - ⭐️
- Car Wars - ⭐️
- Messos - ⭐️⭐️
- Time Bomb - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Tavern Masters - ⭐️
- Conqueror - ⭐️
- Public Market - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Camp Pinetop - I couldn't understand his accent
- Outnumbered - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Wild Space - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Loop - ⭐️⭐️
- Santa's Workshop - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Madoshi - ⭐️⭐️
- Sideshow Swap - ⭐️
- Crystallized - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Emergency Broadcast - ⭐️
- Riftforce - Can't based on instructions
- RorSchach - ⭐️⭐️
- Mountain Goats - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Bites - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- QE - ⭐️
- Crumbs - ⭐️
- Fantastic Factories - Can't based on instructions
- Unmatched - ⭐️
- Goonies - Can't based on instructions
- Rocketeer - ⭐️
- Quest - Can't based on instructions
- Tumble Town - ⭐️⭐️
- Flick of Faith - ⭐️
- Jishaku - Basically Rattle Snake
- Gridopolis - ⭐️
- Wonderbook - ⭐️
- Flourish - ⭐️
- Beez - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Shifting Stones - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Iki - ⭐️⭐️
- LUNA Capital - ⭐️
- The Night Cage - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Parks - ⭐️
- Funfair - ⭐️
- Land vs Sea - ⭐️⭐️
- Chai - ⭐️
- Kodama Forest - ⭐️
- Shobu - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Red Cathedral - ⭐️⭐️
- Castle Party - ⭐️
- Skull King - Basically Oh Hell
- Cover Your Kingdom - Same as Cover Your Assets
- Gunslingers and Gambling - Can't based on instructions
- The Bears and the Bees - ⭐️
- Mind MGMT - Another White Chapel