Had a blast at SaltCON!

This weekend was SaltCON – the annual board game convention in Utah, USA – and it was a blast!

Although the event runs for 3 days, I just attended on Friday and Saturday. And even though I ended up leaving earlier than I had anticipated Saturday evening, I left feeling very full.

Full from a lot of great game playing and full from meeting a bunch of new friends.

Overall, I played 16 different board games!

Sure, I always wish I could have played even more games since I had so many on my “hope to play” list. But I’m happy with the variety that I got to play.

ION Awards
For me, Friday started with the ION Awards judging. The ION awards are to recognize excellence in unpublished games and once again I was grateful to be a judge in the ‘light games’ category. This year the other 3 judges were game publishers from 5th Street Games, Crash Games, and Gamelyn Games.

We recently reviewed a couple of 5th Street Games games – Jungle Ascent & My Happy Farm – so it was great to get a chance to meet Phil and play some games with him. It was also great to meet and play games with Patrick and Michael. And of course it was fun to play some very good games and discuss the merits of each and which should be crowned the winner.

It was a tough choice because the games this year were very good. In years past, selecting the winner has seemed much easier with a clear winner. But this time around it was a tougher call. Chances are good that all the games we played will become published games down the road.

In the end, the victory in the light game category went to Payload – a card game about chaining train cars together. It’s a fun game that’s simple to understand and play with enough thinking to keep it engaging to play again and again.

New Friends
When I wrote about being excited for SaltCON a couple weeks ago, I mentioned being excited that a good gaming buddy of mine would be in town to enjoy it with me. However, just a couple of days before the event, he let me know that his travel plans had changed and that he wouldn’t be able to make it. That definitely let some of the wind out of my sails.

But I was determined that this turn of events wouldn’t dampen my fun.

And I’m very happy to report that I left SaltCON having met and played with a lot of great people that I very much look forward to playing with again.

It didn’t take long for the connections to happen either. When I wrote about SaltCON earlier, I invited readers who might be going to SaltCON to contact me. The first I heard from was Doug Ensign (@MrDigDoug on Twitter) with an offer to teach me some games I had put on my Want To Play list.

We had planned to get in contact after the ION Awards judging and it turned out that we didn’t need to text each other at all. Because as soon as I left the judging room and started to wander to the main hall, Doug spotted me and introduced himself. And right away we were finding an open table to play some games.

But the best part is that we hit it off right away as well.

Not only is Doug a great guy, but he also introduced me to many other great guys. They’re all part of the Northern Utah Gamers Guild and meet very regularly for game nights.

The more games I played, the more people I met along the way.

I love how friendly everyone at the convention was/is. If you’ve never been to a board game convention, I can tell you that you shouldn’t be afraid to meet new people. Just imagine a ton of people having a great time doing something they enjoy and ever so willing to share their enjoyment with others.

People are eager to share what they love.

Lots of Games

SaltCON is all about playing games. With tons of tables set up in various halls and rooms, and a Game Library with loads of games to checkout and play, there’s never a shortage of something to play.

The first game Doug and I played was Seasons – a dice and card game themed around a kingdom of sorcerers with a 3 year (12 season) competition to be chosen as the Archmage of the kingdom. It’s a very colorful game with a number of ways to score points. There’s card drafting, changing conditions, planning ahead, and of course random dice rolling. All of which made it an engaging game for me. I really enjoyed Seasons and quickly added it to my wish list.

We then grabbed a couple more players to join in a game of Gravwell. We got Gravwell last month and have enjoyed playing it. It’s a light game with a mix of strategy and unpredictability. In Gravwell each player controls a spaceship that’s trying to escape the black hole they’ve been pulled into. The only problem is they’re running low on fuel and have to rely on gravity to move them where they want to go. And when you rely on gravity alone, you’re bound to sometimes head off in the wrong direction.

Gravwell was an immediate hit with everyone who played. In fact, on Saturday I was asked to pull it out again so those who enjoyed it the first day could show others the game – who in turn very much enjoyed it and are looking to get a copy.

After a couple of games of Gravwell a few of us went on a Rampage. We took to the streets of Meeple City as monsters to destroy the city and eat as many meeples as we could. Rampage was released last year and has been getting a lot of buzz because of both the theme and creative play. We flicked discs to move our monsters, dropped them from above to demolish buildings, flicked vehicles from on top their heads, and could even breath on building to knock them over. As buildings crumble, our monsters gobble up the meeples scattered in the neighborhoods for a yummy meal.

Rampage is definitely a game that draws attention. How can you walk past a game such as this without stopping to watch and want to play? And I can definitely see kids loving the different ways they can wreck havoc on Meeple City.

The next new game for me was Quarriors. That’s not to say Quarriors is a new game. It was released in 2011 but I just haven’t had a chance to play it yet. I love the deck-building game Dominion. And Quarriors is often compared to Dominion but as a dice-building game.

Instead of building a deck of cards, you’re building a pool of dice. Then instead of drawing 5 cards to your hand to play (like in Dominion), you randomly pull 6 dice out of your bag to use. On top of that random draw goes the randomness of what you roll on the dice. So even if you buy powerful dice, when you actually roll them, the results may be less than you hoped for. So there’s a lot more variability in Quarriors. But it is fun game and I can see why it has spawned so many expansions as well.

After that, I took a break to check into the hotel and grab a quick bite to eat for dinner. I was very ready to eat because I had spent my lunch break between ION judging games to play Space Cadets: Dice Duel instead of eating lunch. Space Cadets: Dice Duel is “Team vs. Team, Real-time, Dice-Rolling Game of Starship Combat” with a constant barrage of frantic dice rolling. In SC:DD team players take on different rolls and get different sets of dice for their specific roles. I’m very glad that in our game we had a captain that wasn’t rolling dice but stood over directing our efforts. He could oversee our team as well as the way our ship was moving around the board and direct us on what we needed on our rolls.

I was in charge of the weapons and sensors, rolling as fast as I could searching for the right results to load our torpedoes and get enough range to shoot or the right protection from our foes. I can’t say I knew much about everything else that was happening because I was so focused on my area of responsibility. I’d get a glimpse every once in a while of where our ship was on the board when we were ready to fire on the enemy, but most of the time was just roll, roll, roll. The game flew by and we had won.

After getting some dinner, I headed back to the gaming hall and ended getting in a 5 player game of Belfort to end the day. Once again, I met 3 new guys that were great to play with. Belfort is a worker placement game where each players sends their workers out to different space on the boards to collect varying resources that can then be used to build other things to gain victory points. There’s plenty to think about in a worker placement game and many different paths to victory. And Belfort is a well-designed game for sure.

The unique theme in Belfort is that the workers are elves and dwarves and players can also buy gnomes to unlock additional abilities. In a 5 player game, there were plenty of times that I was shut out of what I wanted to accomplish. Turn order makes a big difference in games like this because once a spot fills up with a worker, you’re out of luck. Good thing one of the spots you can claim relates to turn order. So if you keep getting shut out, simply claim those spots.

Belfort is a fun game and one that ended in a close race for final points. It also took just over 2 hours to play since it was a first time play for all of us. By that time it was 11:30pm and many called it a day.

But not everyone. Plenty of people at the convention continued playing all through the night or into the wee hours of the morning. I, on the other hand, also called it a night so I could be rested for a full Saturday ahead.

More Games to Play
I returned to the convention center just after 8:30 am on Saturday and quickly found someone I’d played with the day before. A number of games were set up in the Hot Games area which he had played before so we went from table to table as he told me a little about each of the games. Then we visited the large Game Library to peruse the shelves for games of interest.

However, instead of getting a game at the library we ended up meeting another of his gaming friends who had brought a bin of games to play and we pulled out K2 to start the day.

K2 is fantastic! I had heard about the board game K2 a number of years ago on The Spiel podcast (2010 release) and thought it sounded fun. But at the time we were reviewing so many new games that K2 faded on my list. Seeing it in the bin rekindled my interest and we quickly dove into it. Or rather, we set our sights on the mountain and ventured away.

One of the reasons I loved K2 is because it’s so well tied to the theme. Players each have 2 climbers that are trying to summit K2 for points. The higher up the mountain you get, the more points you’ll claim. But the catch is that your climbers must stay alive. If not, your points for that climber die as well. But just like real mountain climbing, you can’t just blast up the mountain. The higher elevations take up more oxygen and your climbers will need to acclimatize. There’s also less space higher up the mountain, so less climbers can fit on each space.

It’s a tough balance of knowing when to move, when to stay put, when to built a tent, when to summit and when to head lower. In addition to the other climbers, the weather is also constantly changing. Keeping an eye on the forecast is an important aspect in your decisions.

The board in K2 is also double-sided with different routes up the mountain as well as different weather boards for different levels of play. Even though the one we played was considered the easy side, one of my climbers died on the summit as the weather turned bad and he couldn’t get back off the summit because of the clog of other players below. With his tent a number of spaces away, and not enough oxygen, he just couldn’t hold out.

Of all the games I played this weekend K2 is the one I most want to play again.

I immediately put K2 on my “must buy” board games list. The only problem now is that there must be a supply issue because all the prices I can find are much higher than I had anticipated (CoolStuffInc lists at $34, but is out of stock and Amazon is currently showing $60). I’ll be price-watching for a while, because I really want to get K2.

Following up with our adventuring, we then gather a couple more players for a 6 player game of Around the World in 80 Days. As you might imagine, Around the World in 80 Days is a race to see who can get around the world the fastest. Players start in Paris and must go from location to location by using Train or Boat cards that take varying numbers of days to complete each segment. It’s an interesting game that I enjoyed. I just must have done more sightseeing, because my trip took a lot longer than 80 days and well past the 75 day journey of the winner.

The couple of games I played were light card games. The first was Hold Your Breath – a game just about to be published by Mayday Games that follows in the series of Walk The Plank and Get Bit that we’ve enjoyed. In Hold Your Breath players compete to see who can dive the deepest and still get back to the surface. I ended up winning by not going as deep as everyone else and being the only one to make it back to the surface on the last turn of the game. (After K2, I wasn’t going to let another one of my playing pieces die!)

The next game was Gravwell again – introducing new players, who in turn really liked it and wanted to know where to buy a copy.

After taking a lunch break (for an actual lunch this time), we stopped by the 5th Street Games booth to play Farmageddon. Farmageddon is a light card game about planting, fertilizing, and harvesting crops in order to build the most valuable harvest. In addition to working on their own crops, players must keep an eye on their opponents – looking for opportunities to sabotage and protecting themselves from being sabotaged. Once the crop deck is depleted, the game ends and players count up the value of their harvested crops.

Then things turned Gloomy.

Actually, we were still having a great time, we just sat down for a game of Gloom. All the players were great storytellers as they heaped misery upon misery upon their family members before killing them off. We reviewed Gloom just before Halloween last year and the storytelling helps make the game a lot of fun. But my favorite part is still the fantastic, transparent cards.

After a few light card games in the afternoon, it was high time to dive back into something meaty. It was time to play a game that I’ve had on my “want to play” list since it released in 2012 – Tzolk’in The Mayan Calendar.

Tzolk’in is an immediate eye-catcher board game. It’s a worker placement board game with a very unique mechanic that’s incorporated into the board itself – gears/dials.

As you can see in the photo, the Tzolk’in board has 6 rotating dials that move the workers and advance the game. Instead of taking actions or resources when placing workers on certain spots on the board, players get the actions or resources when they remove their workers from the dials. There’s a ton going on in the game and it’s quite confusing the first time through.

Needless to say, not being familiar with with the game put me at a great disadvantage. After all, we were playing with a guy that loves the game. The good news is that he was very helpful in explaining the game and is a very gracious player.

Even though I came in dead last, I’m super glad I got to play it and will gladly play again. Now that I’ve got one play under my belt, I’d have a much better idea of potential strategies I could pursue.

Unfortunately, my gaming day came to an end after Tzolk’in.

Games I Missed
I had to head home earlier than anticipated, which left a number of games I really wanted to play, unplayed. I knew there would be a ton I couldn’t get to (only so much time in a day), but the other big board game besides Tzolk’in that I REALLY wanted to try was Lords of Waterdeep.

Lords of Waterdeep is a fantasy themed worker placement game that many in the board game industry have touted as the best entry-level worker placement game – saying that it beats out Stone Age for that designation. Since we think Stone Age is a great family board game, I’ve really been interested in giving Lords of Waterdeep a try.

Another reader contacted me after our earlier SaltCON post saying they’d love to teach me the game. The husband/wife duo was coming from Idaho for the event and we planned to connect on Saturday to play. Unfortunately, we were both caught up in other games or out to lunch when we tried to connect. We finally connected/met while I was in the middle of the Tzolk’in. They found a table close by to set up Lords of Waterdeep for our game. And right after, I got word that I was needed at home.

I was pretty bummed. Not just because I wouldn’t get to play Lords of Waterdeep at the CON, but more disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to get in a game with the Birds – who had gone out of their way to gear up the game for me. Sorry Birds, I hope the rest of the CON was fantastic for you!

There were a few other games that I was hoping to get to Saturday evening as well, that will just have to wait for another time.

One of the games is Robots on the Line – a game just finishing up a successful Kickstarter campaign to be published. I had been in contact with the designer and we had hoped to get in a game. The good news was that just before leaving, I was able to meet Phil and he stepped me through how the game plays. I think it looks like a very promising family board game. I can see lots of kids (and parents along with them) grabbing robot parts off of conveyor belts to construct crazy looking robots to sell.

Another game I didn’t get back to play was Stella Nova. It’s a game where players take on the role of the wise men traveling to Bethlehem. They must gather the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to give to the Christ child while overcoming hazards along the way. I was curious to see how the game played, but simply ran out of time.

The last game I’ll make note of that I was hoping to play was Fantasy Frontier by Gamelyn Games. In Fantasy Frontier each player controls a unique airship with a crew of pioneers. Players manage the actions of these pioneers each turn in an effort to scout the land, gather resources, construct townships, and even battle it out in aerial combat. Creating geographic patterns via tile placement, the players will develop a new world each time they play. It looks like a fun game and I’ll just have to look forward to my next opportunity to play it.

Longing for more
Like I mentioned at the start of what has turned into our longest post ever – I left SaltCON very full. Full of a lot of fun. But I wasn’t overstuffed like a Thanksgiving dinner. I could have gone on and on.

As I drove home, I couldn’t wait for next year.

SaltCON was very well run and I tip my hat to the wonderful folks who organized and ran the many different elements. In addition to what I’ve written about already, there was also a math trade, game swap, workshops (painting minis), game events, and even a charity auction. And I’m sure there was even more going on that I didn’t know about.

And perhaps one of the things I like the most is that it’s super family-friendly.

Cheers to all my new-found friends and I look forward to next time we meet…and play.