Pair A Dice Games Corner
Viva Dice Tower West!
I’ll start by saying to the outside world, my party (PADG regular, Brandon, and my amazing wife, Cheryl) could be considered especially boring, but I know I’m sending this out to my people: we just basically land at a table each morning and play all the games we can. And we had a list in mind of stuff we’d been trying to play and largely, we played about 80% of that list.
Right out of the gates we played Brazil: Imperial (Portal Games), a game about the colonization of Brazil and the different folks in mind. Without wading too far into the politics and tragedy of colonization (not avoiding, but leaving that fantastic higher criticism to folks who know better than me), the game itself dives into beautiful aspects of Brazilian culture, while delivering a Scythe-like experience. Every turn you’re doing one action, sometimes your actions improve future actions by building buildings that come off your tableau and onto the board, or painting paintings which give you ongoing bonuses. Everyone is working toward their three objectives, and whoever completes their third, triggers the endgame, then points salad ending based on objectives and other common elements. The map is modular and can encourage conflict or encourage more multiplayer solo. It is gorgeous and a great time.
Next, probably should have gone to bed, but slipped in a few games of the new Star Wars The Deckbuilding Games (Fantasy Flight Games). Smaller box, but packing a punch, it borrows a lot from what Star Realms gifted the world: a great two-played head-to-head quick deck builder. The goal is to blow up three of your opponent’s bases before they can do the same to you, and while the game could feel random, the bases (10 of which to choose from) have an important one-time effect, or strong ongoing effect to give you consistency in your deckbuilding. It’s clever, it is Star Wars, loved it.
The next day we went to San Francisco during the gold rush: namely in Embarcadero. Embarcadero (Renegade Games) starts with ships coming into San Francisco with no plans to leave, so you, as a clever entrepreneur, use these ships rotting in the harbor to build shops and hotels and businesses. It’s a combination of clever hand management and building plastic structures stacking on top of each other for adjacency bonuses and improving card values. Often the higher the structures are worth more points. I ended up winning as a slumlord/hotelier with some of the tallest residences.
Next was a large, 7-player game of Twilight Inscription (Fantasy Flight Games). I’ve talked about this mega roll and write style game before, so I will just say I lost so badly that I was the laughingstock of the entire galaxy.
I had the opportunity to visit the Dice Tower West convention in Las Vegas this year, and I have to say, it was a blast in terms of the games I had a chance to play.
TLDR (Too Long, Didnt Read):
I realized by the time I finished this write-up, I had 8 articles, so I’m including a sentence version of each game I got a chance to play I haven’t mentioned in other articles.
Brazil: Imperial — Scythe-like civ game. Fantastic.
Star Wars Deckbuilding Game: Short, all-in-one, Star Realms 1v1 deck builder.
Embarcadero: Hand management, 3d adjacency builder.
Lacrimosa: Medium-heavy euro with deep interconnectivity and a unique deck-building action selection system.
Joan of Arc Orleans Drawn and Write: Medium roll & write style game with Orleans vibes.
Friday: Bargain Quest (Renegade Games)! I love Bargain Quest. Bargain Quest is a fantastic deconstruction of your typical D&D experience: the heroes take on the monsters on behalf of the village, but they need gear and loot to fight the monsters. You take the role of the quirky shopkeeps arming the heroes. You score points if they take down the monsters and save the village, and you score points if they survive — but also if they neither survive nor take down the monsters, you score points because you sell them goods.
A mix of card drafting and hand management, with a push/pull element of luring the best (maybe wealthiest?) heroes to your shop with some goods, but keeping enough to sell them things. The funnest (I know funnest isn’t a word).
Finally, we got a learning game of Lacrimosa (Devir Games) going (with a full game the next day). This is one of those new hype games I’d been looking forward to playing, you are trying to commission composers to finish the last/unfinished composition of Mozart, “The Requiem in D minor”.
A lot is going on in this game, I think it fits in that heavy-middle-weight euro. It has an action selection system where you are deckbuilding with a 9-card deck, two cards each turn, one used to choose your action this turn, and one you “burn” to select resources for the next turn, with four turns each round (and one card carried over to the next round). That’s a lot to read written out, but the deckbuilding element means you’re also buying new cards and burning old ones throughout the game to make stronger action selection cards.
With the actions, you’re paying for a couple of artists to galavant around Europe to have experiences to recall their memories with Mozart and help compose the new. You compose new operas, perform them and sell them to make money, and more. I really can’t say anything bad about this game except me. I am bad at this game. But everything is connected, and it has a delicate web of mechanics which affects the rest. Nothing you do doesn’t matter. Also, it is gorgeous, it is a tiny bit more expensive for a game of its weight, but what you pay in the money you get back in a deluxified game.
Finally Saturday, we broke the dawn (11 am) with Chinese food leftovers and Joan of Arc: Orleans Draw and Write (Capstone Games).
While I have played Orleans, I haven’t played in a while, but everyone describes it as a mini-Orleans. I really enjoyed this game. The group draws tokens (known as Followers) from a bag and each turn is spent selecting one of the available tokens and playing one of the actions based on the Follower selected.
I think from a very high-level perspective, this is a lot like a lot of “roll and write games”, check things off on a sheet to score points. The part where you are drawing Followers and selection actions is the main driver of the game. But as you spend resources you can build buildings, which allow you to improve your Follower actions. So you’re improving your action engine in a specific direction to help you in the point salad ending.
The total game probably takes an hour. One noteworthy thing I’d say is normally a roll and write is very multiplayer solo with very little interaction. However, in this one, you may, for example, build a trading post or mark off certain key resources, which then are crossed off your opponent’s sheets adding interactivity without going too far into “gotcha” territory.
Overall, while this is a very light game, it’s slightly meatier than most roll and writes — but also less meaty than say Hadrian’s Wall or Twilight Inscription.
Speaking of, we finished out the day with Hadrian’s Wall (Garphill Games/Renegade Games) out the day (which I’ve written about here) with that full game of Lacrimosa and there you have it. Overall, I was tired, but it was a fantastic time hanging out with my wife and some great folks.
The con itself was great and while the Rio itself wasn’t my favorite, the opportunity to play some amazing games with amazing folks was well worth it.
