Board Game Geek Convention!

Adam and I were fortunate enough to be able to drive down to Dallas the week before Thanksgiving attend to attend the annual Board Game Geek Convention (BGG Con).  What does one DO at a board game convention.  Well, you play board games!  Lots of board games.  Not like Yahtzee or Parcheesi or anything like that.  We played games like ones that have already made appearances on the blog.  🙂  I’ll give you a synopsis of our trip and the games we played.  But I will tell you, we had the best time, and would love to be able to go back next year.

Day 1, Thursday November 15
First, on our way down, we ALWAYS stop at Dairy Queen since the closest one to us is at least an hour away.  We miss Dairy Queen.  It reminds us of our dating and newly wed days in Rexburg.

When we got to the hotel, it was too early to check into our room. So we went and checked into the convention, and we each were given 4 games from the prize shelves. Thank goodness we had a car that we could deposit those games in and so we could look around free of the burden of carrying games.

We then went into the main gaming room.

And found a players needed flag and were taught how to play Hoo Yah! It wasn’t our favorite game, but it wasn’t bad. The interesting thing about this game was the man who taught it never looked at me (Jessica) while explaining the rules. EVERYTHING was directed at Adam. He seemed a little shocked every time I spoke or had a question or idea. He got used to me by the end, but it was a little funny.

Game: Hooyah!
Result: WIN
Played by: Marvin, Chris, Adam and Jessica

After a break to check into our room and take care of nursing momma business, we played Argicola: All Creatures Great and Small.

This is a two player game, so it was just us. We got the game from the library, and sat down at a table to learn the rules since Adam was already kinda familiar with them. We bought this game at the Con. It’a good one, we ended up buying it.

Game: Argicola
Result: Adam: 47 Jessica: 32
Played by: Us

After that we were a little hungry and didn’t want to brave the traffic (we were at an airport hotel and there was TONS of construction). So, we hopped on the shuttle that was proved to take people to off-site restaurants and such. There was quite a humorous conversation on the trip out about how gamers would make better city players than actually city planners. But we reached the conclusion that using the starvation strategy would probably be a little harsh, and perhaps we should stick to worker placement games. 🙂

After dinner, back on the bus, we ran into another couple, Scott and Susan, we rode out with. They turned out to be from Oklahoma City as well. And we had a nice conversation. We went to the library and got Dungeon Lords and the new expansion we were excited to try. But we ran into Scott and Susan and ended up teaching them how to play Dungeon Lords. It was great fun. Dungeon Lords is just fun, but a bit complicated alone without adding the expansion into it. Only a little bummed we didn’t get to play that. It’s always more fun to play with more people when you can.

Game: Dungeon Lords
Played by: Scott, Susan, Adam and Jessica
Results: Adam and Susan tied for the win, Jessica and Scott were so pitful it didn’t merit recording their scores.

That was our last game for the day, and we went to bed.

Day 2, Friday, November 16th

We woke up rather leisurely, and that was great for us not having kids wake us up. We left and went out to breakfast and to visit the Dallas Ikea. It’s a good thing we took Adam’s car and didn’t have room to bring home some of the stuff I was eying.

We got back in time to do a couple things. We attended the Escape Experience where we learned how to play Escape! and get a chance to win some cool stuff.

Game: Escape
Played by Adam, Jessica and 3 other people
Result: WIN

And then we headed up to grab our Arkham Horror game and set up for our epic 7 player game of Arkham. We were teaching 2 people and 2 of our players had dropped out and we were down to expecting 5. Well, we had two players wander by and ask to play too. AWESOME!

Now this is not a short game with 4 people. With 7, it should have taken around 4 to 5 hours to play. It took us 2. It was the EASIEST game of Arkham we have ever played. It was a little ridiculous. Everyone was getting the rolls they needed and beating everything.

Game: Arkham Horror
Played by: Shawn, Gerry, Jessica, Clint, Ken, Gordon and Adam
Result: WIN

After grabbing something to eat, we found some one with a players needed flag and learned how to play Courtier and Love Letter from another Scott. I enjoyed both games, but don’t think we’ll be adding them t

o our collection soon. Well, maybe Love Letter. It’s a really easy filler game to cleanse the palate between games.

Game: Courtier (2x)
Played by Scot, Adam and Jessica
Results: Scot 1 win, Adam 1 win

After that, we ventured into the Hot Games room. This is the room where the latest games that have been released are always set up with people teaching how to play them. In here, we played a very pretty gam

e called Tokadio. It’s a track game, and you’re trying to make it to the end of the track making as many stops as you can. It was fun. The people we played with were hard to understand, but I won!!

Game Tokaido
Played by Mirasol, Steven, Adam and Jessica
Result: Jessica -83 Adam – 82

After a quick breather and dinner at Applebees (after which we swore we would not leave the airport in our car during rush hour again!) We went browsing the games library and found one of our favorite games, Lord of the Rings PLUS an expansion, Friends and Foes, we’ve been wanting to try. We checked it out, grabbed a players wanted sign and went about setting it up. We got two players, Erik and other Adam (as he was called later on), and had a very pleasant time teaching them how to play and getting beaten down by Sauron. In the end, all the Hobbits died and Sam (the last hobbit left) made it halfway through Shlob’s Lair by himself.

Game: The Lord of the Rings
Expansion: Friends and Foes
Adam: Sam
Erik: Frodo
Jessica: Merry
Other Adam: Pippin
Result: Lost

After our grim defeat, we called it a night.

Day 3, Saturday November 17th

We got up pretty early, had breakfast and made a new friend in the process. Alas, I don’t remember his name, but he was by himself behind us in line for the breakfast buffet. We invited him to come sit with us when we got a table so he could get to the flea market in a decent amount of time too.

After breakfast, we went to the flea market. WOW! That was a mass of people and lots of money changing hands quickly. We found a couple games of some friends, and we were done there.

Stashing their stuff in our car, we then wandered into the main game room and found a couple poeple looking for players. We play 3 games with them.

The first was called Bohnanza. It’s basically a trading and collecting game. Adam did not like this game at all. He doesn’t like bidding games like that at all.

Game: Bohnanza
Players:
Kate 12
Elisa 17
Ian 16
Jessica 15
Adam 13

Then Kate left, and we player Shadows over Camelot. It’s a crazy memory game. Not my strong suit right now, and it doesn’t work out well when someone is SUPPOSED to the a traitor. We did end up winning though. 🙂

Game: Shadows Over Camelot
Players:
Elisa: Traitor
Ian
Jessica
Adam
Results: Win

Lastly, we played Love Letter a few times. It’s a small card game where you are constantly trying to find the princess or a roll that is higher than yours. It’s pretty fun. Very short, very fast.

Love Letter
Ian won 2 games
Elisa won 1 game
Adam won 1 game
Jessica won 0 games

After that we had our 2 hours shift working in the game library. It was SO much fun. I loved being able to talk with people about what they were checking in and out. There were a few people who actually benefited from me knowing about a game. 🙂 We even ended up having to sort out a game that got mixed with it’s expansion. It was a really fast two hours, and it was great fun.

This is a shot of one side of the games library. It was amazing how many games there were.

When I shift ended, we decided to eat relatively big lunch/dinner so we didn’t have to worry about it during the prize giveaway later.

After lunch/dinner, we got the game The Road to Canterbury. I was not a fan. I think I just didn’t really like the theme of it and the mechanics were just weird to me. This just wasn’t my game. Adam had read the rules before, but wasn’t extremely well versed, so we were kind of learning on the fly and that didn’t make things any easier for me liking the game.

The point of the game is for us to tempt travelers making their way to Canterbury with on of the Seven deadly sins. Your goal is to get sinners to sin themselves to death, but you can forgive a sinners sins along the way (but you really only do it to give yourself a tactical advantage). In the end, I did win. Woo! I’m the best tempter… ::reads sarcastically::

Game: The Road to Canterbury
Adam: 131
Jess: 132 <–win

After that, we were both in a sour mood. So I went to pick out a “light” game to wash the bad taste out of our mouths. I came back with Yggdrasil, not a light game. But we were both a little more enthused about it since we’d played it on iOS before and felt like we could handle it.

As we were setting up, Other Adam (from the LOTR game the night before) ran into us, and we asked him if he wanted to join. He agreed and we played. We had to pause mid game for the awards and giveaway, during which we didn’t win anything, and we thought we had things well in hand when one of the Enemy Norse Gods moved across a threshold we weren’t paying attention to, and we very suddenly and anticlimactically lost.

Game: Yggdrasil
Players: Adam, Jessica and Other Adam
Result: LOSS

After we cleaned up this game, Other Adam brought out a game called Coup which is similar to Love Letter in that you have a role card and you are trying to be the last person standing. The difference is you have to use money to do things instead of the influence of the person on your card.

Game: Coup
Players: Adam, Jessica and Other Adam
Result: Adam 1 and Other Adam 1

After this game, Adam and I went and got Taluva. We headed up to the room so I could take care of Mommy-type business while Adam learned the rules. It’s a fairly simple game so it didn’t take long. Then we took it back down the main gaming room, grabbed a players needed sign, and started setting up. We got two other people to play with us, Linda and Norman.

Taluva is a tile laying and a space crowding game. You lay out a tile and then expand your settlements. The cool thing about this game is that you get to build up as well as out. The goal is to lay out a certain number of certain types of buildings. The game ends when one person has placed 3 of their temples. Linda beat us all.

Game: Taluva
Players: Adam, Jessica, Linda and Norman
Results: Linda 1
Adam 2
Jessica 3
Norman 4

We cleaned everything up and then grabbed Samurai and headed back up the room to play in the quiet. Samurai is a game about laying out influence around an island to gain rice patties, Buddhas or towers. In the end, I won by ONE rice patty! It’s a fun little strategy game. I liked it.

Game: Samurai
Players: Adam and Jessica
Results: Jessica, by one rice patty!

Sunday, November 18th

The next day, we returned the game and headed back to reality. It was a great way to spend a few days doing our favorite thing. We will be going back. It was pretty awesome.

Here’s what we ended our trip with game-wise. We bought a few games while we were there too. 😉