What is a gamer boardgame? My previous GenCon report covered family boardgames, games that are great to play with younger kids, or informally with friends who drop by for dinner. Gamer games are slightly more complex and tend to last a bit longer (an hour or two).

While Monopoly often doesn’t get a fair shake in gamer circles, it would be an example of a slightly more complex game. (In contrast, charades, Apples to Apples, or Pictionary might be decent family games.) These gamer-games have made a huge resurgence in the past decade or so, often they’re designs imported from Germany, which has a healthy boardgaming industry. Games like Settlers of Catan, Blokus, or Puerto Rico are classic examples of gamer games. For the video game crowd, it might be easiest to compare a party/mini-game style title with a strategy game. Many Wii titles are easy to pick up and play and lots of fun, but they don’t provide the same game experience as sitting down and powering through a few hours of Civilization or Starcraft. Now that we’ve defined our terminology, here’s a listing of some of the more interesting, deeper games that I found at the GenCon convention.

Fantasy Flight Games

Known in the industry for producing very “American” styles of boardgames (conflict-driven, lots of plastic miniatures and dice), Fantasy Flight always has a strong presence at GenCon. This year was no exception. They were previewing the new PVP card game. In this 2 player game, players take on the role of either Gabe or Tycho and then proceed to pound the snot out of each other. Players have an intellect value which is their hand size, and can freely discard and redraw up to their hand size once per turn to keep the game moving. Every card has a main use (attack, item, or hijinks – sort of an instant-use card) as well as a block value. Thus players are often force with the choice of using a good block, or saving it for later to use in their own attack. Players are limited in playing cards by their character statistics, so only certain numbers and values of cards of each type can be played in a round. The game alternates turns until one character loses all their life points. Of course, Gabe and Tycho play differently both from different starting stats, but each also has their own special ability.

Middle-earth Quest was on display and getting heavy play as it was released at this year’s GenCon. It is set in the time between Bilbo leaving the shire and Frodo following after. It plays up to three “good” players vs one player in the role of Sauron. Both sides tend to have more things they would like to accomplish than they have time to do them, so it is often a balance between doing some of what you want and some things you feel you simply have to do. Fans of the BattleLore series of light wargaming will be pleased to hear there are two new expansions coming, one featuring three dragon figures and one expansion with a Hydra and the two early promotional figures (Hill Giant and Earth Elemental).

The game I was most interested in the FFG booth was the new expansion to Kingsburg.  Kingsburg is one of my favorite lighter games for the teenage set. Players roll their own set of three dice and then assign them to slots on a board to acquire goods. Players then use these goods to build buildings that confer other advantages. This new expansion adds in five different ways to change the game. Everyone has new development cards (with two new rows), players are dealt two extra rows which they can use to overlay any of their existing rows, soldier tokens eliminate the king’s die roll giving players more strategic options (use your low tokens during the game to score the value of your one remaining token at the end of the game), Governor cards give each player a special ability, and the last expansion option is an event deck. Players can mix and match the expansions to play with one or all of the expansions at once. Anyone who has the base game should pick up the expansion as it adds in even more replay value.

TerrorBull Games
The folks at TerrorBull Games were attending their first GenCon. These fine UK designers are the makers of War on Terror, a game of both aggression and diplomacy. It has been out for awhile, but if you’re unfamiliar with it, it is highly diplomatic (it even comes with a secret message pad). Players vie for control of areas of the global map using various means, and can even fund terrorist to do their dirty work. Unfortunately, once terrorists are used on the board, they can also be used against you. A player can turn officially evil, gaining access to more powerful cards, but then all the other players gain rewards when they attack the evil player. The game ends in four ways: liberation of the world (by a single player), universal peace (by unanimous agreement of all players), liberation by the terrorists, or “extreme liberation” through the use of nuclear forces. In addition to its entertaining gameplay, it has some educational components and has been used in some schools and other programs to help communicate the issues involved.

Academy Games
Conflict of Heroes made a big splash last year as a solid wargame with very accessible rules that still encompassed most details required to simulate important historical battles. In particular, the cardboard tokens and game boards were top notch, creating a nice overall feel to the game. Academy Games was back this year showing off the next game in the series, CoH: Storms of Steel. The game plays exactly the same, with the exception of a small rules change to make the game flow more easily. (Players can now both have an activated unit at the same time.) The new game has new unit types and the obligatory new scenarios, but I was pleased the most with the addition of terrain tiles.  There are various multi-hexagon terrain tiles that can be overlaid onto maps to mark changes in elevation (cliffs, etc…) or to change the terrain around. This opens up many more combat possibilities than would be possible with simply a default set of map boards. Academy Games didn’t change a winning combination beyond an expansion into new units and battles and a few tweaks to improve the system further.

Rio Grande Games
While they didn’t have a booth in the dealer hall, Rio Grande Games definitely had a presence. They instead sponsored an entire large room with free drop-in gaming. Conference goers could stop by anytime and play a pickup game of any one of many Rio Grande Titles. Intrepid Rio Grande gaming staff were on hand to help players figure out rules and answer any thorny questions as they come up. I was able to play several newer games including the Ra Dice Game, Sherwood Forest, and Maori. All three were on the light side for gamer games but still had some decisions to be made. I played the Ra Dice game with two nice young women and was bumped out of first place by a single point. The game plays somewhat like Yahtzee but scores like an auction game called Ra. Roll the dice to collect sets of symbols which allow you to score areas on the board. If a die rolls a sun symbol you can’t reroll it. Sun symbols accumulate until an age/epoch ends. Score all the areas but the monuments at the end of every age. At the end of the third age, everything scores, including the monuments and a winner is declared. I liked the game. It doesn’t stand out to me as a unique game in terms of mechanics, but there are so many different ways to score points, nearly every roll provides players with decisions on how to proceed. There is a luck factor present, but not so much that it completely overwhelms the scoring. I think its largest disadvantage is the somewhat complicated scoring. It is straightforward to anyone who’s played the original Ra, but since this seems to be more of a lighter weight game I suspect it will take new players a few games to figure out how the scoring works. As a family game it probably would take a few games to get into the swing of it, but from then on it would be fine.

With Sherwood Forest, the heart of the game consists of worker placement to get more workers, enhancement items, or try to waylay travelers. To attack a traveler, a player puts one or more workers in a tree next to the road. When a traveler comes by, if the player has enough power to attack, they can defeat the traveler to claim the reward (points, gold, and sometimes more workers). Most, but not all, travelers are far too powerful for an individual to tackle, so players may cooperate by adding workers (if asked) onto a tree when it is first occupied. Upon a successful attack, all players gain the same number of points, and then money and workers are divided as equally as possible with leftovers determined by the “active” (first) player in the tree. Travelers follow a set path, so the first group who is able to attack a traveler must do so. Since many of the traveler cards are hidden information (you can spend actions to peek at them), it is sometimes possible to mess up other players’ plans by sending in a very weak traveler forcing a strong contingent to attack the far weaker target for far less reward. In our game, I had a poor first turn and then colluded with the leading player in later turns to catch up. However, in the late game I was unable to cooperate with the other two players so was forced to again cooperate with the leading player in order to secure a second place win. We played the basic game and I found it OK, but not great. The advanced game brings in more complex rules about the negotiations that can go on, with special situations that cover when they are binding agreements and when they are just gentlemen’s’ agreements. While I think the advanced game would be slightly more fun, I felt the whole of the game was just a bit too slow paced for me for this style of negotiation game. I prefer my heavy negotiation games to move along at a fairly fast clip since so much of the game will depend on how people cooperate (or not) rather than a single player’s skill.

My play of Maori went well (I won) but it didn’t grip me as a must-have game. Players take turns moving a ship token around the outside a grid of tiles. The ship token’s location affects which tiles a player may choose on their turn. Chosen tiles are placed in a reserve or placed on a player’s board to form islands. The goal is to score points by forming valuable islands that contain palm trees, huts, or other bonuses. I tend to dislike pure abstract games, and while this was fairly abstract there were enough different types of items on tiles that I felt I had multiple scoring options to pursue. While I didn’t play a round, a large section of the Rio Grande room was set aside for Dominion and its newest expansion Dominion: Intrigue. If you’ve been living under a boardgaming rock for the past year, Dominion is a very excellent game where players begin with a small deck of 10 cards, and then slowly purchase cards to add to their deck throughout the course of the game. Some cards grant more money (which then let you purchase better cards) while other cards have bigger affects on the game (let you draw extra cards, steal other players’ cards, even allow you to get rid of cards you don’t want). The game appeals to family gamers and deeper strategy gamers as well. Just about the only negative comment you will hear about the game is that players have to pause and shuffle their cards on a regular basis (about every two or three turns at first.) In the span of less than a year, I’ve already played the base game of Dominion more than any other game in my collection. The only reason I wasn’t playing the expansion heavily at the convention is because I have the expansion on order and will be able to play with my own copy soon. If you like boardgames, be sure to check Dominion out soon! Both the base game (Dominion) and the expansion (Dominion: Intrigue) can be played as stand-alone games (you only need one of the two to play) although I’d recommend the base game to start with since the expansion has cards that provide many more options at a time and may be a bit trickier from which to learn.

Asmodee Games
Asmodee Games is known for taking French game designs and bringing them to the North American English-speaking audience. Without fail, their games are graphically gorgeous. Anyone who likes a bit of luck and a bit of conflict in their games should be familiar with their name. There were three titles in their booth that attracted my attention. The first was Magnifico. My best description might be a sort of Risk-like game set in the time of Leonardo DaVinci. Players take over different areas of the board to claim territory and increase income. Income is used to buy more troops, combat vehicles (tanks and air support that are unaligned so they can be captured if left on the field of battle), fortifications, and technological improvements. Technological improvements are quite important. Each turn players bid for the right to purchase a technology card. The first and second highest bidder (blind bid) may select a card of their choice. Later, they can pay the (somewhat hefty) research cost to make that technology available. Some of the cards I saw improve the attack ability of tanks, improve fortifications’ defense, and things of that ilk. While it isn’t all that different from a large number of Risk-like conquer the world games out there, the setting and technology cards are enough to make me interested. Who doesn’t want to wage war in a classic DaVinci circular tank?

The next game I looked at was Heroes of the World. In this game, players recruit famous figures from history to assist them as they try to take over the world. It is a mix of area control with some combat. As the game drags on, more and more heroes are played giving players more power and flexibility, coming to a crescendo of an endgame. One aspect I appreciated in the game was the exposure to so many historical figures. If I recall correctly there were even short bios in the rules so that you could learn what each figure did, making it an educational game at the same time! The final game I checked out was actually an expansion. It was also a cooperative game!

Ghost Stories now has an expansion called White Moon shown at the convention. In the basic game, players roam around a town and cooperatively try to knock out ghosts as they appear. It has received high praise from the boardgame community and it was difficult to acquire for most of the past year but is now back in stock. It is even playable with young teens, making it a good candidate for family gaming where direct, head to head competition is not desired. The expansion plays like the base game and adds in townsfolk tiles into the middle of the board. Ghosts around the edges appear and try to eliminate the townsfolk while players attempt to meet requirements to save them. Each townsfolk has different requirements to be met and they have appropriate rewards or penalties that occur if they are saved or defeated respectively. With its slightly limited availability, I haven’t yet gotten a chance to play the basic game for myself but everything I’ve seen make me very interested in both the base game and the expansion. So far, everything points towards Ghost Stories appearing on my recommended game list for the coming holidays.

Mayfair Games
Mayfair Games was once again out in force at the convention. The company made a name for itself on the popular Settlers line of board games but in recent years has really been reaching out to even more family and kid-friendly titles. (As an aside, they were a major sponsor of the kid-gaming area.) In the Settlers line, Mayfair was showing off Catan Geographies: Germany, a very beautiful special scenario version of Settlers of Catan with a few special rules just for that setting. Another big gamer game at the convention was the newly released Steam: Rails to Riches. This is a slightly modified version of an extremely popular gamer game, Age of Steam. With some new rules, this version is slightly friendlier to new players (the original game had a reputation of often forcing players into bankruptcy mid-game due to poor player planning.) This new version is also compatible with a wealth of fan-made game boards and scenarios that exist for the original Age of Steam. The final game I was checking out at the Mayfair booth was Pack and Stack. This game definitely qualifies for a family-oriented game. The theme consists of players trying to move all their furnature using very limited numbers of moving trucks. At first, players roll dice to determine their furniture (various color-coded rectangular blocks of wood) and then everyone races to choose an appropriate available truck card. Then everyone must take their furniture and stack them correctly on to their trucks. Each truck has different amounts of space as well as limits on how high you can stack them. At the end of each round, players lose points for failing to fit furniture onto their truck as well as having empty space on their truck. The game ends when someone has lost all their points and the winner is the player who has lost the fewest points. This looks to be a great game for anyone who likes a little bit of spatial reasoning, a dash of luck (the dice), and plenty of good natured competition.

Caledea
One of many smaller publishers at the convention, Caledea was showing off their game of the same name.
Caledea is a sort of abstract wargame that takes place on one or two 9×9 square maps. Each map is grouped into nine 3×3 regions with each region containing every possible pair of terrain types. Since a player’s country (one of a dozen or so) favors two types of terrain, every 3×3 grid will contain exactly one double-matching home territory. Players use dice to represent armies. A single die is a basic unit which can be upgraded to calvary (a stripe) and then on to a general (a plus sign). Players start with 2 to 4 units, and can then gain more units as they capture more homeland terrain (one for each 3×3 section of grid). There are no provisions for replacing defeated armies, so attrition can take its toll. Players also have a set number of actions each turn and a limited gold supply each turn (based on captured territories). Actions can include movement, upgrading, attacking, as well as a few special properties depending on the country. Attacks are resolved based off of unit experience, matching territory, and defensive structures. For every advantage, a player gets an additional die to roll in combat. Both sides roll dice and the highest value wins. The loser eliminates its participating unit and the attack is continued until no units are left. There are nine different countries (or races)and each has unique advantages and disadvantages, beyond their terrain preferences. Some start with fewer units but can upgrade cheaply while others have more starting units but high upgrade costs. Countries also vary in the number of actions they have available each turn and have one of three types of special powers. On the whole, I found it interesting. I typically don’t care for abstract games but this seemed to have enough going on for it that it would keep the game interesting. I’d probably prefer to play shorter games on a single board to avoid the long game lengths that might occur on a double board with more players. The rules and combat are simple enough to quickly teach new players, making it a decent option to expose to less experienced gamers.

Z-Man Games
One company that has come a long way in the past few years to become a fairly major player in the boardgame world is Z-Man Games. They were showing off several new and recent titles. An expansion to Pandemic was on hand, Pandemic: On the Brink. Pandemic is a cooperative title where two to four players cooperate to try to eliminate the spread of diseases around the globe. Players take turns using just a few actions to move around, eliminate current disease outbreaks, or work towards finding cures for a disease by collecting and trading cards. Each player is also given a character card which provides them with a special ability (such as being better at moving, better at curing, or better at eliminating the disease cubes.) Once a cure is found for each of the four diseases, the players win. What makes the game tricky is that more and more disease cubes are always being added onto the board and if you ever get four in one location an outbreak occurs which spreads cubes to adjacent areas. The game starts out fairly open but quickly develops into a frantic pace where players are trying to put out “fires” of outbreaks while simultaneously trying to find the time to actually cure the diseases. Pandemic is one of the best cooperative games I’ve ever played. Many couples (my spouse and I included) have mentioned in online forums how it is a great game to play together since there is no direct competition. The game has a few ways to make it harder or easier so families could also include younger players and still have a good chance at winning.

The new expansion, On the Brink sold out completely within the first 2 ½ hours of the convention. The expansion is actually several options in one. There are new player role cards (including an option for playing with 5 players), new ways to make the game harder (through the use of super viruses, etc…), and even rules to add in an extra player who plays as a bioterrorist and tries to get everyone else to lose. Perhaps my favorite part of the expansion is the inclusion of several Petri dishes to hold the cubes that represent diseases – a very nice touch.

The other game I was excited to see at the Z-Man booth was Tales of the Arabian Nights, a remake of an old classic. This is more of an adventure game or storybook experience game than a pure strategy game. I would compare it favorably to the old choose your own adventure style books of the 80s with a big dose of gaming thrown in for good measure. Players move around the game board and go on quest and other journeys as they vie to see how each other’s stories turn out. Since the game is more of a shared experience than a direct head-to-head conflict-driven game, it should be an excellent family-friendly game provided everyone is comfortable with the amount of text involved.

That wraps up my gamer-center report of the convention. Just a few more things to cover in my final report (video games, collectible games, and several oddball things.) While I didn’t see as many must-have games that I’ve come across at past conventions there were plenty of things that caught my eye. Now its down to a battle of wills with my pocketbook to see which (and how many) of the new crop of games make it into my game library. If you enjoyed the photos, be sure to check out my photo journal of the convention over at Boardgame News that was posted over the weekend.

Tags: Misc, Unplugged