BGG.CON 2015 is a wrap. Overall, it was a good con. I played a lot of great games, fist bumped one of my favorite game reviewers, Richard Ham @rahdo, and run a demo of my game, #MillCity. Below is a list of games I had the chance to play and a rough rating breakdown for each:
Hengist – I thought that this game needed a bit more meat to it. I played it twice and thought that the players had too many cards or that there wasn’t enough tension. It has some interesting mechanisms to it such as a hidden raiding path to victory points. However, not enough for me to purchase this game. Maybe some tweaks to the rules could help make this game more engaging. (BAC Rating: 5/10).
Quartermaster General – I still love this game and played it twice. I wish I had access to the Air Marshal expansion but didn’t. The second game was interesting in that the Japanese player (not me), was bored since he could not really do anything. However, we found out that he thought he had more Land Battle Cards and discarded his only two (he played US before). (BAC Rating: 8/10).
1775: Rebellion – I actually enjoyed this game. There was enough going on with the area control and combat mechanism to keep the tension high in this tug of war over the colonies. This would be a game I would buy. (BAC Rating: 7/10).
504 – Hmm… I am not sure about this game. We played one of the initial scenarios which included prestige, pickup and delivery, and roads. The rules were TOUGH to get through. Once we got going it moved. But, I am not even sure how the other 503 games would work. Still on the fence with this one. (BAC Rating: 6/10).
Antarctica – Wow. This was a fun game. The mechanism whereby the sun is constantly moving and granting actions the player first in the shipping queue is awesome. The scoring mechanism was pretty neat as well; it leveraged a drafting (as in driving behind someone) style mechanism. Also, the board looked awesome. Definitely a by. (BAC Rating: 8/10).
Automobiles – This was a fun game. However, I am not sure I would buy this one, except if my son wants to play. Interestingly enough, it reminds me of a Haba game that he has that uses dice to move a long a race track. (BAC Rating: 6/10)
Black Hat – This game interestingly enough melded trick taking with a board game. Unfortunately, we played the basic game which was just ok. I would like to give this game another whirl with the advanced rules. (BAC Rating: 6/10)
Bretagne – First and foremost the art on this game is lovely. I am going to reach out to the artist to see if he/she could do #OnTheCrab. The game play was interesting. However, I was disappointed in the errors in the graphic design and the low number of components to play the game. I would like to try this game out one more time to see if playing the game after struggle through the rules will help to improve rating. (BAC Rating: 6/10)