My holiday gaming session (so far)

While almost everyone who we’re going to see on our holiday travels are folks who don’t play board games, I knew that I’d get one good chance to game when an old buddy brought his son to see us.

As I’ve written before, I packed a tiny game library of four Pack O Game games. And that was enough for us to get a couple hours of gaming in.

We got in two games of Hue, a game of SHH, a game of DIG and three or four games of GEM. The consensus was that HUE was fun, SHH was okay (good word game but no one felt like playing a word game) and DIG was really interesting.

And they both really liked GEM. GEM was the big winner by far.

To be fair to DIG, it was the last game that I taught so that might have lessened its impact. And I do think that more plays of DIG would have made them like it more. But GEM was a hit from the first play. Replays were demanded and it’s the longest game of the four (still pretty short) My gaming buddy said that the others were fun, small games but GEM felt like a ‘full’ game.

In fact, while my friend’s son has played a lot of board games, this may have been his first auction game. If it really was, it was a good introduction to auctions. (For Sale would have been better but GEM was still good) I forwarded them the black-and-white demo so they could make a copy but I bet they will be ordering their own copy before long.

This is far from the first time I’ve taken games from the Pack O Game series out. They’ve seen plenty of play at home and at conventions. However, this is the first time they’ve had to stand on their own as the entire game library and they did well.

Minimalist game packing

December is proving to be a busy month, full of traveling. More than that, I’m not going to be around any gamers during the weeks I’ll be away from home and luggage space is particularly tight.

So I am going super light as far as games are concerned. 

In addition to a deck of cards, which is pretty a default for me, I’m taking a tiny, hard plastic case that is just big enough to fit four games from the Pack O Games line. Yeah, I’m going that small.

And I’ll admit that I also am only taking four so it won’t be as expensive if something happens and I have to replace them :D

So, here’s what I’ve packed:

HUE: It’s not my favorite of the games in the series nor one of the best but it is _the_ most accessible. Teach it and play it in ten minutes while still having interesting choices.

GEM: On the other hand, I do think GEM is one of the best games. It manages to pack a solid auction game in a tiny package. By having both the money and auctioned gems tight, the game is definitely tense and one bad choice can sink you.

SHH: I’m not big into either word games or cooperative games but I think SHH, which is both, is a game that will really click for non-gamers. The fact that it is the prettiest game in the series also makes it an easy sell.

DIG: Slot number four was a tough call. I almost went with BUS since I think it is a very clever and ambitious pick-up-and-deliver game. However, DIG is cuter (non-gamers, remember) and easier to teach. And still a good pick-up-and-deliver game.

In other words, when I knew I would have to go super minimal, I chose games that I knew would work.

My Tiny Epic Experiences at RinCon's July fundraiser

Two or three times a year, RinCon has fundraisers. Which basically means that, in addition to having a friendly local gaming convention in Tucson, we get a couple micro conventions. It's pretty awesome.

I hadn't been able to make the April or June fundraiser so I made sure that I went to the July one.

The guy in front of me in the registration line didn't come with a group either so I introduced myself and I ended up gaming with him for the rest of the morning and the afternoon. Luckily, he turned out to be a great guy. (Thanks, Craig)

He had both Tiny Epic Galaxy and Tiny Epic Quest. I had been very eager to try out Galaxies and I was willing to give Quest a try. Those two games ended up being the highlight of the fundraiser for me. Other folks sat down with us and played. I basically got my chair and everything else fell into place.

I got to play Tiny Epic Galaxies both with and without the expansion. I backed both and I'm glad I did. It is a slick design and the tiny part barely impacts function. I can understand why it is the best regarded of the Tiny Epic series.

In between Tiny Epic experiences, we got in a couple games of HUE. Every time I go to one of these events, I take the Pack O Games with me and I always seem to at least get HUE on the table.

At this point, I have played HUE with five or six different groups. And it keeps on getting better every time. The first time, I thought it was okay. Now, I think it's really good. This was the first group that really started using the poison cards and they worked better than I expected.

I didn't back Tiny Epic Quest since adventure games haven't been my style. (Although I have been coming to like them more, partially because the difference between them and RPGs has been shrinking for me) It was described to me as Zelda as a board game.

And boy, was it ever. I'm not much of a video game player but I could see enough at parallels with the Nintendo franchise that Tiny Epic Quest totally felt like Zelda to me. You travel across the map to explore temples and learn magic and fight goblins. Minimal for an adventure game but that minimalism actually created a lot of tension. So much to do with so little.

While I was leaving, I somehow got in a quick game of Cunning Folk which I did a _terrible_ job teaching. But I'd like to think the other players at least pretended to have fun.

It wasn't the start of RinCon for 2017 but it was the start for me and a jolly fun start it was.

A visitor gives us a chance for some micro games

We are having a couple of out-of-town friends visit us, actually overlapping. And, while most of the time will be spent seeing sites and having quality toddler time, a little bit of gaming is going to creep in.

On the second night of Greg's visit, our toddler obligingly fell asleep early so we were able to get in a decent selection of micro games.

SHH, part of the Pack O Game series, is a silent cooperative game where you build words one letter at a time. You can only use each vowel once per word and each consonant once per game. 

I have to admit had low expectations for the game. And I really wanted to get it played because I want to play all the games in the first series of Pack O Games before the second one comes out. But, while I do have some I really like, cooperative games and word games really aren't a big focus for me. But we ended up having a lot of fun with it. There was a lot of tension in it and we played it a second time, where we totally bombed.

I then pulled out HUE, a tile-laying game that is my usual game to introduce people to Pack O Games. It is very fast and simple but the simple twist of getting all your hand at the start of the game and your last card being which colors you score makes it very solid. As usual, it went very well.

We ended with my homemade copy of Cunning Folk, which is like Coup for two to four players with just nine cards. Lots of lying and bluffing. Don't get me wrong, it is not as good as Coup. But the fact that it plays down to two and still gives me that feeling makes it a keeper. We got in two games of that and called it a night.

Convention fundraiser lets me try out Scythe

The highlight of the July Rincon fundraiser for me was getting to learn and play Scythe. At one point, while I was there, there were at least three tables playing Scythe and very likely a fourth table.

One of the amazing things about the Tucson gaming scene is Rincon. Not only is it a nice local con, it has fundraisers through out the year, giving me some micro conventions to enjoy as well. Seriously, it's a really amazing community.

While I got warmed with a quick game of HUE (which actually manages to impress me more and more with each play), I spent most of my relatively short time there with Scythe.

Scythe is shaping up to be one of the big games of 2016. It's set in a sort-of steampunk 1920 Europe. When I say sort of steampunk, I mean that it reminds me a lot more of the steam powered agricultural equipment of the late nineteenth century. The players play different powers in this Europe, building up their political and economic power.

Scythe is a 4X game, which means eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXtermimate. Which means move out, build up, get stuff and fight. The actual mechanics of the game is action selection. Every player has a dashboard of actions, basically the same but tweaked for their national faction.

To be honest, I'm willing to bet most folks reading this know more about Scythe and have played it more than I have. Since I knew I wasn't going to buy it, it was off my radar.

The first thing that impressed me about Scythe was the design of the player boards. They are slotted for the wooden pieces, making it easy to know what goes where. And when you reassign them, new costs or powers get revealed. Simple but so clever as far as making house keeping quick and easy.

The other thing that quickly struck me is that Scythe has very intuitive mechanics for anyone who has played Euros. I told Carrie afterwards that Scythe is Le Havre on steroids and with fighting. Which isn't a perfect comparison but it gave her an idea of how it works and that she'd be able to pick it up quickly.

My learning game got me trounced. I didn't focus on popularity track enough, which helped tank my score. And I had a blast. It was so much fun and I hope to play again.

Scythe is a really smart design. It has a lot of things going on, game mechanic wise, but all of the gears fit together really well. It's full of tough, interesting choices built on a tight economy. The fact that it has a playing time of two hours is less is just icing on the cake.

I'm not planning on buying Scythe any time soon. Between a two-year-old and three cats, we won't be playing it. But our son will get older and we can lock the cats in the bedroom. In a few years, I can see myself either picking it up or getting a game that Scythe ends up inspiring.

Getting a chance to play Scythe was really amazing. It's looking to be one of the highlights of the year for me. I hope I got to play it again :)

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/169786/scythe

HUE - the gateway to Pack O Games

HUE is the first game in the Pack O Game series and, in some ways, could be considered the ambassador for the series on a whole.

Every game in the series consists of thirty cards, each one cut to about a third the width of a regular card. That means you get stick-like cards and a deck looks literally like a stick of gum.

HUE is the tile laying member of the family. Every card is divided into three squares and three different colors, although about half the cards have the colors divided the long way, making them skinny lines.

Everyone gets five to six cards, including one with a poison symbol in the middle. Special rainbow cards are set out to start the board and then everyone takes turns placing a card on the board. Cards must share at least one edge with cards already out but they can cover one square of a previously placed card.

Now, here's the good bit. You don't play the last card in your hand. You score with it. For each color on the card, you score points equal the largest area of that color on the board. You score double points for the color in the middle of your scoring card. But any area that has a poison symbol is zeroed out and doesn't count for scoring.

The biggest hurdle HUE has to overcome is that there are a lot of time laying games out there and there are even a lot of pocket-sized ones. The Clever Pipe Game and Aquarius were two of the first games I picked up, before I even started collecting games seriously. It takes a lot to stand out in the pack.

But HUE does have a twist that makes it interesting. Your last card being your scoring card, particularly when you get your whole hand at the start. It gives you an end goal at the very start but also gives you the flexibility to change that goal if you have to.

Mind you, HUE doesn't fire Aquarius or small tile laying games for me. However, the more I play it, the more I enjoy it. It keeps growing on me. I don't think I'd turn down a game (it doesn't hurt that the playtime is so short)

None of the first series of the Pack O Game games reinvent the wheel. They all use tried and true mechanics, with just a couple twists to give them their own flair. By being a part of such a large family of tile-laying games, HUE doesn't stand out as much as some of the others like BUS or TAJ. But it is still a solid, well designed game.

HUE really is a good introduction to Pack O Games. It is easy to teach, even to non-gamers. However, the scoring makes it interesting, even for serious gamers. Honestly, the fact that it comes in such a portable package is just gravy.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/159143/hue