SaltCon: More board games – My Day #1 (part 2)

A couple days ago I started a mini-series of posts writing about my fun experience last weekend at SaltCon. After 2 days of solid board game and card game playing, I headed home having played 20 different games with a lot of great people.

Today, I’m sharing more about this fun gaming weekend – covering the rest of the games I played on my day 1 (Friday).

For an intro to SaltCon as well as mini-reviews on the first 5 games I played, check out the prior post of Day #1, Part 1.

Here’s Day 1, Part 2.

 

Day #1 continued

Having arrived at SaltCon around 10 am on Friday ready to dive into a ton of board games, I wasn’t interested in ‘wasting time’ with things like eating.

So I powered through the typical lunchtime block with just a couple granola bars. But just because I did so, doesn’t mean that there aren’t many options for lunch.

In the corridors outside the main gaming hall and other open gaming area was an array of food choices. In addition, just down the street from the Davis Conference Center are many good fast-food restaurants.

However, playing those first 5 games was too fun to stop, so I just kept on rolling.
 

Mysterium

After a short break to wander outside for some fresh air, I dove into another game that I was super excited to play, which was also on one of the Hot Games tables – Mysterium.

Mysterium is a cooperative game where players are trying to solve a mysterious death. One player takes the role of a helpful ghost who lives in a mysterious ancient manor. Other players are a group of psychics invited to solve the mystery and bring peace to its residents.

The ghost was the previous resident of the manor who wants to share the truth about what really happened. However, the ghost can only communicate via dreams.

And in this case, the dreams are in the form of cards with super creative artwork.

Thus, the ghost and the other players work together to solve the mystery in 7 days (rounds). However, the ghost can not speak. Instead, the ghost hands out cards to each player that will give them clues to find the person, place, and weapon that caused his/her demise.

It’s a very creative game and one that I really enjoyed.

A lot of people describe Mysterium as a mix between Dixit and Clue. And since our family enjoys both Dixit and Clue, I had high hopes for Mysterium. That’s why I’m happy to say that I wasn’t disappointed at all. Even though we lost both times we played, it was a lot of fun trying to decipher the clues from creative artwork.

I wouldn’t really compare it to Clue directly. Sure, you’re trying to figure out who, where, and with what – but Mysterium is a cooperative game. So there at lot of cooperative discussions throughout the game on what the images may mean to convey.

One of the reasons Mysterium was on the Hot Games tables is because it’s super hard to get a copy. It’s published by a Polish company, Portal Games, and will be making it’s way to the US later this year!

Mysterium was another game that I bumped up higher on my games wish list.

 

Gaming with family

If you saw our pre-SaltCon post, then you know one of the reasons I was excited about going to SaltCon this year is that one of my nephews was coming to play games for the weekend with me!

Jake loves playing games and whenever we get together as extended families, he’s always interested in what games we’ll bring along. He’s also the one that plans to play long into the night.

He arrived near the end of our game of Mysterium around 6:30 pm so we planned to first grab some dinner.

I introduced him to a few of the guys that I’d been playing with and then we headed for the exit.

However, as luck would have it, at the last table we were passing before the exit folks from Mayday Games were just setting up a game of Sheriff of Nottingham.

 

Sheriff of Nottingham

Sheriff of Nottingham being another game I’d really wanted to try, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity and Jake and I joined in for a hilarious time.

Sheriff of Nottingham is a bluffing game where players are trying to sneak good (and contraband) past the sheriff. And we had a blast!

It’s the most I laughed all day.

Not only that, but Jake said he could totally see his dad liking Sheriff of Nottingham – which is saying a lot because there aren’t many games that interest his dad.

Players take turns playing the sheriff each round and the game ends after everyone has had a chance to the be sheriff twice.

Players start with a hand of 6 cards that include valid goods to sell in the city (bread, cheese, apples, and chickens) as well as contraband items (such as swords, arrows, silk, etc.). For the first phase of each round players can exchange cards in their hand for cards in either the draw or discard piles. Then they must choose cards to put in their cloth bags to take to the city.

Then they must declare to the sheriff what they’re taking in sets of goods. So for example, they may declare that they’re taking 4 chickens or 3 apples.

After all players have declared what they’re taking and handed the sheriff their bags, the sheriff decides if he wants to inspect any of bags. If he doesn’t trust a merchant player, then he can inspect their bag. If he finds any contraband (or items other than what’s declared), the merchant must pay the sheriff the amount listed in the bottom right corner of those cards.

If the sheriff discovers exactly what the merchant had declared, then the sheriff must pay the merchant.

In either case, the player still gets to keep the cards that they declared by storing them in the designated spot by their player board. Any contraband (red cards) that a player sneaks through is placed face-down by their player board. So the sheriff (and everyone else) immediately sees that the player has snuck something (or many things) through the gate.

The player who scores the highest number of points by getting goods through wins.

So what’s the fun of Sheriff of Nottingham?

The fun is in all the bluffing and wheeling and dealing.

Almost any negotiation (and bribery) is possible. Players were constantly offering money to the sheriff to check the other players’ bags. And players would often offer to pay the sheriff NOT to look in their bag. And on top of that, players would even offer to give the sheriff one of the cards from their bag if he didn’t look.

It was/is hilarious!

And with that, Jake was introduced to SaltCon and we left to grab a bite to eat with big smiles on our faces.

After we got back from dinner, Jake and I headed to the game library and checked-out a couple games to play.

The first game we chose was one of the “Play to Win” games – The Game of 49.

“Play to Win” games at SaltCon are games that are being given away at the end of the con to lucky winners. Every time you play one of these games, your name goes into a drawing on the last night to win that game. (While we always have high hopes, we didn’t win any games this way.)
 

The Game of 49

The Game of 49 is a very simple auction game. All players have to do is 4 of their tokens in a row.

Easy, right?

The catch is that to place a token, you have to be the winner bidder in an auction for that number.

Each player starts with $49 and a card is drawn from the deck – that number is up for auction. After someone gets that number, they play a token on the board in that spot.

However, there are some cards that are Wild – in that they cover numbers across a range. So when those are won, the player can place it anywhere in that range. In addition, there’s a payout on those cards. After taken, players earn $7 for each of their tokens on the board. That’s how players can get more money to keep bidding in the game.

It’s all fine and dandy until you get down to those much needed 4th spots. That’s when the bids go sky high (or as high as they can). And they’ll typically go as high as possible to simply block someone from taking their winning spot.

Because the numbers come up randomly, there’s a fair amount of luck in the game. However, since it comes down to bidding, there’s a bit of strategy needed as well.

Jake really enjoyed this fun bidding war in The Game of 49.

And it’s a game that I’d like to play again.
 

Mr. Jack

After playing a game with a fair amount of luck, Jake and I were down to just the 2 of us. So we opened up Mr. Jack and gave it a go.

Mr. Jack is a deduction game that I’ve had on my radar for a number of years. I’ve been interested in it because I really enjoy 2-player strategy games. I like solving puzzles and trying to outsmart my opponent.

In Mr. Jack one player represents Jack the Ripper who has taken the identity of one of the 8 characters on the board. The other player is trying to identify and then catch him.

It’s a very interesting game to cat and mouse as each player takes turns strategically moving the characters on the board. The investigator is trying to narrow down possible identities by moving characters into spots where they can be seen or unseen (depending on what they have yet to discover). And Jack likewise moves characters to keep them seen or unseen – trying to keep identities hidden.

Each of the characters also have special abilities that are activated when they’re chosen to move.

We played Mr. Jack twice – each taking turns being Mr. Jack and the investigator. In both cases the investigator won before Jack could escape.

I really enjoyed the back-and-forth nature of the game and trying to maneuver the characters in the most advantageous way. Mr. Jack is definitely a game I’d like to play many times more.
 

The Staufer Dynasty

Just when you’d think we’d be winding down at the end of a long game day with an easy mental game, we instead went the opposite direction and ended up playing a 5-player game of The Staufer Dynasty.

The Staufer Dynasty is an area control type game with a lot of options. Players are 12th century nobles trying to improve their status in the kingdom by placing envoys and nobles in positions of power in the 6 regions.

Players get 3 actions during each of the 5 rounds of the game and the order of taking the actions is determined by the position of the player’s pawns on the action board. The game has a unique way of determining that order and it adds another element to consider each turn.

There are plenty of other things to consider throughout the game as well.

As you can see from the photo of the game board, there are plenty of locations that are randomly set up to construct the playing area as well as tokens scattered around the board. When you place an envoy or noble on a spot, you get to claim the associated random token. Since each of those different tokens provides different benefits, you also need to pay attention to not only the location you want to grab, but also the token that you’ll get for it.

If that isn’t enough, each of the 5 rounds ends with scoring that also varies every game. These scoring elements tell which regions of the board will score each round and are drawn randomly to begin the game. So going in, you’ll know the order in which some regions score. But there may also be some that score depending on a game condition. So you may not know at the outset which region it will be. But by your choices you’ll influence which region it will be.

I know that’s a very high-level view without a lot of detail. But if I were to go into detail, it would no longer be a “mini-review”. Suffice it to say, there are a wide range of things to consider throughout the game.

I enjoy games that keep me thinking throughout and The Staufer Dynasty sure did that. I also love games with variable set up and opportunities for different strategies for scoring each time you play. However, I also like games with enjoyable themes to them, and The Staufer Dynasty just didn’t deliver there.

I’d concentrate my choices based on what could give me some points advantage here or there. But I never really felt a fun reason ‘why’ behind all the moves.

So in the end, I enjoyed the game and playing with the folks we did, but I don’t foresee playing The Staufer Dynasty again.

Once we finished that game, it was just after 1:00 am and our brains were ready for a rest.

Thus ended my wonderful Day #1 of SaltCon.

Then on to Day #2…

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