That Board Gaming Thing 2017

That Board Gaming Thing is a local invitation gaming con that happens every year in September.   The con has  branched out into another, larger con in the winter (Jan/Feb) but this is the one I like better (there's more of a history, the organizers do more stuff).

As a warning - this post is image intense and the final image is definitely NSFW.

This year, I managed to play 25 total games and of those

• 19 were unique (I replayed some)
• 10 New-to-me Games Played (which may or may not have had expansions included)

Games played were:

• Sagrada (new)
• Great Western Trail (new, played twice, bought player mats)
• Terra Mystica 
• Honshu (new)
• Okey Dokey (new)
• Mysterium
• Dark Moon (twice)
• Century Spice Road (new)
• Isle of Skye
• Fiji Flush (new)
• Mountains of Madness (new)
• Kingdom Builder
• Las Vegas
• Ghost Stories
• Last Friday (new, yuck)
• Concordia
• Photosynthesis (new, we didn't finish, but I'm counting it)
• Werewords (four times, new)
• Joking Hazard (new)

And now onto (most) of the games I took pictures of - it's how I track what I've played at these cons.  I keep a notebook of plays so I can remember what I've played.  I used to track on Boardgamegeek.com, but a glitch lost all of my plays.   I take pics because I don't always want to haul out my notebook and my phone is pretty handy (also, instagram is fun)

We played Trivia on Friday night and won gift cards.  My partner and I combined ours to get Great Western Trail (they had sold out of Sagrada already, which I really wanted) and I ended up buying the player mats.  I also bought goodies to upgrade it and at the same booth bought lots of goodies for Terraforming Mars, which is a game I intensely enjoy (I know a lot of people who do not like it, and I think their complaints are valid, but I love it like kittens... boardgaming kittens anyway).

So here are some of the shots:

This is Sagrada, I really, really liked this game.  It's a pretty easy/light gaming where you are merely rolling dice and taking turns placing them into your stained glass.  You have to follow some pretty simple rules, there's a little wiggleroom with some extra powers (that you pay for) and it was ultimately pretty damn fun.

And I won.  Of course I did.  I tend to win first games (and then fail all the way around, haha).

This is Great Western Trail.   It was pretty prominent at another gaming convention I had attended earlier in the year, but I never got around to playing it.  I actually quite liked it.  There are a lot of mechanisms in the game that give you different options.   I go Longhorn.  Of course I do.
I totally bombed this game.   It was still fun :)

Terra Mystica - one of my favorite games in the entire universe.  I kicked a pantsload of ass in this game. Much love to it.  We played with the Fire and Ice expansion.

Honshu is another easy filler game with relatively simple rules.   There's a bit of a bidding mechanism (much like Isle of Skye, actually), and it's fun to play.  I can't remember how I did, but I'd never say no to a game (though I wouldn't buy it either).

Okey Dokey is another fun little card game.  We played it during lunch (obviously) and I think there's a little more strategy than we realized.   We thought we won the game, but after posting it on social media, someone stopped by to tell us about how we failed (we didn't pay attention to one of the rules, which states that the 0s can't be in the same column... oops).

Mysterium, which is a fun game.  I really enjoy it and I'd love to play it at every convention.  I would like to play the ghost to see what happens.  I imagine it's infuriating (much like Codenames) when people start going off into crazy land on their theories as to why a card is given. 

Dark Moon is basically BSG-light and I always have a lot of fun being mad at this game :)

Century Spice Road is a fun game that would make for a good filler (a la Splendor).  I went ahead and purchased this one, too.  Yay!

Tile laying/auctioning/bidding game Isle of Skye.  We totally played it wrong the last time we played it so we wanted to play again correctly (we were tired and mis-remembered the rules last time).  I like this game a lot (again, not enough to own it, but I like it when it's brought out).

Fuji Flush is a way, way fun card game.  I hope I get to play it again.   I really need to find local gamers in the area ;)

Another game of Great Western Trail - you can see the overlays that were part of this box.  And the metal coins.  Of course I bought both upgrades ;)

This is Mountains of Madness, another Cthulhu-theme-stamped game that is a co-op.  It has some ridiculous rules that make it a lot of fun.   As you go more mad, certain rules are placed upon the player that no other players are allowed to know about.  For example, I could not talk to anyone without touching them, which made it hilarious.  Someone else had to place their hands above their head to talk.  Someone else was only allowed to point.  It got bonkers when I wasn't allowed to have my eyes open if I was talking.    I really, really want to play this again with a specific friend who I think would enjoy the bonkery.   We lost so badly, but it doesn't matter because of the wild time we had.

I absolutely hate Kingdom Builder, but when it was brought out I played it anyway.   I didn't mind humoring friends who always humor me and tried to keep my crankiness dialed down a few notches ;)

Dice rolling favorite Las Vegas always makes it out at the con at some point.

Ghost Stories is a fun co-operative game that we lost the last time we played (with these specific friends), and after discovering we messed up a rule that would have made it easier for us we wanted to play again to vindicate ourselves.  And we did!

This is called Last Friday (I think?  Last Night?) It's a Friday the 13th themed game that can't be called Friday the 13th for legal reasons (presumably).   Someone is Jason (or the killer) and everyone else is running around Camp Crystal (or whatever it's called here).   The game is played over night and day rounds.  During the night, not-Jason is stalking/killing the campers and during the day we look for him.    I couldn't be bothered with this game and spend most of my time on my phone trying to solve a puzzle that the con-organizers had devised for us.

Concordia, expansion board, but no Salsa/expansion related other stuff.   Another favorite of all of ours.

Photosynthesis was a hot game at the con and we wanted to try it out.  After realizing, several miserable rounds in, that we were playing some rules completely wrong, we packed it up.  We made the game far more painful than it needed to be, but the idea behind it is really cute.  I'd like to try it again without learning it from the rulebook.

Were-words is a word game based on the Werewolf party-deduction game.
Full disclosure:  I hate Werewolf with a white hot passion of a thousand dying suns, but this little word game was way more fun.   It involves using an app on the phone, and thankfully whoever brought it had an iPhone (I imagine older, defunct one) in the box.    This makes me feel better about saving my ancient smartphones that work fine, but don't have the memory/capacity/speed to keep up with a ton of work apps.  I could totally get behind this.  We played several games with some of us taking turns being the mayor.

Another Dark Moon game.  Luckily (?) I've never played the infected yet.  Pretty sure I'd just get myself quarantined.

Joking Hazard is a game, ala Cards Against Humanity, that you should only play with certain friends.   The cards can get quite questionable.   You play by creating a comic strip (instead of a question/answer like CAH), and the person who creates the first two panels judges who wins.  We played until we were bored with the game, which probably would have been three games, but we stopped tracking points.   It was late, we were drinking, yadda :)