commentary

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, […]

SATURDAY While at the Weird Giraffe booth (like big Euros, Weird Giraffe became a theme of the convention for us) we kept hearing about Stellar Leap, another space-themed game with a dice-rolling engine aspect a la Machi Koro. When we spotted a copy in the library we decided to give it a try. It turned out to be a lightweight 3.5X game (you can attack other players, but you can’t actually knock them out of the game) with some neat mechanical twists. You can perform up to 5 actions on your turn, two from column A and up to three from column B. These include increasing population, moving population from one planet to another, exploring new planets, mining asteroids, and sending out away teams. The production quality is quite nice – multi-level player boards are always welcome when cubes are involved, and the species meeples are different shapes as well […]

FRIDAY We started out the day with two panels starring the lovely and talented Geoff Engelstein. The first, Designing Games as a Team, was full of practical advice. If you are planning to co-design a game at any point, or even think you might, track down the video – it’s probably on YouTube by now – and watch it. Take notes. Possibly re-watch it and take more notes. No, I am not kidding.

THURSDAY Apparently coating French toast in coconut corn flakes and deep frying it is a thing. And, having gone to all that effort, regular maple syrup just won’t cut it. You need bananas Foster syrup instead. It is as horrifying (and delicious) as you think it is. Probably the best thing I ate during the entire convention. We started out on Thursday with a stroll through the vendor hall. There will be games later, but it started out with the vendors. We had been there on Wednesday for a quick scan; today’s foray was more in-depth.

This was my first experience with DTC. Bob had attended last year and recommended it to me so I decided to give it a try. The con is a great opportunity to play new games and meet new gamers to play them with. In my specific case, I managed to get in 20 new-to-me games over the course of the convention. I hope to have the opportunity to bore you all by blathering about them all in this and future installments.