Dice Tower Con 2019 in review, part 5
SUNDAY
And then there was Sunday. It was a relatively short day, mostly because the convention closed up earlier than on previous day and partly because I had to wake up extra early to make my flight home. We still had time for some games, though.
As the library closed at noon we grabbed a couple of games and headed off to find a table. First up was Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra. As we were setting up, Craig spotted us and asked if he could join. I had enjoyed the original Azul (admittedly not as much as Sagrada) and was eager to try out the new variation. The core mechanic of selecting tiles is the same, although the tiles now look like cough drops rather than accents for a decorative wall. You take a set of identical tiles either from one of the factories or from the central pool, and place them in the column where your worker is or in any column to the right. If you want to place to the left, you must spend a turn resetting your worker. This can be used tactically to avoid taking a set of tiles that are particularly unhelpful. Once you complete a column it flips over. If you complete the new column, it is removed from play. Scores are calculated based on which columns you have completed, and how many times. All of this gives the game more strategic depth. If these sorts of puzzle games appeal to you then the new Azul is worth checking out.
Our last library game of the convention was Yamatai, another economic worker-placement game with some elements of area control. The idea is that you are all merchants trading among a variety of small islands. The workers in this case are boats of various colors. Scoring an island requires that a certain collection of these boats (two green and one black, for example) be adjacent to it. The twist is that the boats aren’t “owned” by any particular player. You can score an island using existing boats placed by any or all other players, so long as one of the boats in question is one that you placed this turn. There are a variety of special actions that can be claimed, each with a number that will determine turn order – the cooler an ability you take the later in the order you will go. The abilities that are chosen then go back into the pool at the end of each turn, changing the available abilities as the game progresses. There are characters to be recruited, each of which brings another ability to be used. Yamatai is a clever Euro with a small amount of interaction (because the workers aren’t actually owned by the players the interaction has less impact than it otherwise might) and nice table presence. I would play it again but I don’t think I would buy it over other (similar) games that I enjoyed more, such as Great Western Trail and Architects of the West Kingdom.
After returning our games to the library we made one last visit to the vendor hall. I picked up some Folded Space game organizers and other such from Meeplesource. The Folded Space inserts are well designed, easy to assemble, and don’t significantly increase the weight of the game. If you can pick them up at a convention or otherwise get over the shipping cost from the UK they’re quite nice.
We also dropped by the Stronghold booth, where we tried out Brikks. One of the seemingly infinite number of roll-and-writes to spring from the mind of Wolfgang Warsch, this definitely-not-Tetris game has some interesting elements. Even more than most roll-and-writes, though, it would really benefit from having the playsheets laminated for use with dry-erase markers. You see, the active player rolls the dice to see what “shape” everyone has to draw on their board – and if they don’t like the result they have a certain number of re-rolls. When another player inevitably jumps the gun and starts drawing in that shape, it becomes difficult to erase when the active player decides to re-roll. This is especially true as the pencils that come with the game have no erasers. I liked Brikks well enough, but not as much as I liked Ganz Schon Clever. Perhaps the not-Tetris theme will work better for others.
After giving Brikks a spin we sat and talked with the demo guy about other roll-and-writes, and he recommended a fiendish little Japanese flip-and-write game called MetroX. Meeplesource had it on hand so on his recommendation I picked it up. Boy, is it tough to grok on the first few plays. You’re trying to complete subway lines in Tokyo or Osaka, depending on which play sheet you use, and you fill in boxes based on the card that you flipped. Except that if you run into another line that is already filled in – and if you’ve seen a modern subway map you will have an idea of how often this happens – you have to stop immediately. You only get so many “tries” to complete each line, and your score is based on the number of unfilled squares remaining on your map. Not for the faint of heart.
To sum up, Dice Tower Con is a great place to play lots of games. The attitude and atmosphere are casual, the game library is great, and the people (both staff and attendees) are friendly and helpful. It’s going to be smaller and in a different location next year, so your experience may vary from mine. Even so if you are interested in playing board games, board games, and then some more board games, it’s worthy of your consideration.