a pursuit of fruitless endeavors and endless refinements

Winter House Con And The Final Countdown

As 2018 quickly draws to a close, my game group decided to get a last game day in.  We started at about 8:30 am at Reese’s and went all day, with the last of us leaving shortly before midnight.  It was great, it was epic, and as always, a fun time with friends.  I don’t know if we can make this a tradition but it seems like a great way to close out the year.

Up first we had Ubongo 3D.  I’d been wanting to play this game for some time as it looked like a great abstract game that I could see joining my collection. I was not disappointed as the game, even on the easier setting, was quite challenging.

After Ubongo, we lightened things up with the new printing of Camel Up.  This is always a great a game and convinced maybe a couple of sales for some of the players that have been on the fence.

While Reese scared up some lunch for us plebs, we decided to hit a heavier game of Porta Nigra.  I haven’t played this since liking it way back in 2016 at another gamefest down in Texas.  I was happy to see that it still held my interest and was a good mix of complexity and strategy.  It’s funny to see this game in the bargain bins online (recently as low as $10 on CSI) as it is a great euro game with a lot going on and multiple paths to victory.

With Porta Nigra wrapped up and lunch complete, we turned to Sagrada.  This is a nice game with great components and tons of variability. We played it with five players but I think I’d prefer it with three as some of the game is drafting and it is hard to see what impact your draft leftovers leave for your opponents.  Three players would make that more manageable.

Next we hit Century: Spice Road.  This game played like a slightly more involved Splendor with engine building mainly in your hand management/creation while you eventually tried to acquire victory cards.  I’m not sure if the extra complexity makes it better than Splendor or if it is just more complicated.  To its credit, Century: Spice Road seems like it would have more depth and would be better in the long run over multiple plays than Splendor as the latter seemed “solved” after a few plays.  The only decisions left in Splendor seemed to be the best tactical decision on the turn without the chance to develop a true strategy during the game.

To get everyone back involved, we broke out 7 Wonders.  A long staple in our group that doesn’t come out much anymore.  This is fine as we’ve played it so often that it is like sitting back and watching a favorite film.  We did have some new players to the game, which always brings a fresh perspective to a classic like this.

With the night winding down and three of us left, we broke out a quick 18 card micro game, Supertall. There isn’t much to say on this except it seemed overly complicated for it’s size.  This is likely my expectation for small games to be quick and easy clouding the actual worth of this game but it still played fast for as complicated as it seemed.  This is from a series of micro games and looking through my friend’s catalog of games, there seemed to be more interesting choices there so hopefully we’ll see a few more of these come out.

I talked us into one more quick game before we jumped out into the cold night.  This time, it was Piepmatz.  I’d heard a bit about this game and all the squirrel-fucking shenanigans it can offer from Colton and Reese as they found it at Gen Con earlier this year.  I never got the chance to try it out but they said it was a lot of fun.  They weren’t wrong.  This fun little card game is all about the rough and tumble world of bird feeder conquering.  These little bastard birds constantly fight to get the most seed out of the feeder, causing a never-ending cascade of victory and defeat all the while dodging bastard seed-stealing squirrels and bird-scaring crows.  It played easy and was fun to watch the story of this Game of Thrones-esque backyard world of birds and beasts.


Winter House Con was great with fine food, liquor, and friends.  It also helped me get within reach of one of my yearly challenges, my 100×1 challenge of playing 100 different games this year.  With the big bump up in gaming done this weekend, I am within five games of completing the challenge.

I have a little over 12 hours left. Time to bust out some solo games on the last day of the year and see if I can’t push through to the end!

Previous

Making Your Own Wash

Next

Victory And Happy New Year!

2 Comments

  1. Brent Roeber

    Had a great time playing games with you fine gentlemen. Hope to have a chance to do it again some time.

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén