BGF 2010 has, sadly, come to a close. Although I was only able to spend a couple of nights at the convention, I was able to get in a large amount of gaming with good friends. If I’m not mistaken, this was one of the most attended, if not the most attended BGF to date with about 400 people attending the 4 day affair.
I’m a card carrying cult of the new gamer and I love to teach and/or play games I’ve never played before and this convention was no exception. What follows is the short list of games I can now tick-off my list:
- Haggis – A great trick-taking game for 2-3 with a bit of a Tichu feel. Played numerous hands with 2 and 3 players.
- Rattus – I got in 3 plays of this simple cube pushing game that pits opponents against each other trying to survive the attack of those pesky, plague-ridden rats. Easy to teach but there is a set of role cards that if taken in a two-player game make it relatively unbalanced. Looking forward to adding the Pied Piper expansion to my collection.
- Egizia – My favorite game of the convention. Egizia is, at its core, a worker placement game but there are other nifty mechanics thrown in that ratchet up the tension just a bit to make it hit that sweet spot for me.
- Fresco – I got in a two-player game and liked it. The theme of working to “paint” a fresco is a bit odd, but the mechanics all mesh very well with real-life situations that it makes it very easy to teach. I’ve never read the rules but I was able to listen to them being taught and then later was able to quickly get up to speed with my own game.
- Macao – The jury is still out on this one. Ended up winning on a tie-breaker but, for me, the game is slow to start and then gets even slower during the last several turns. The build up of activated cards can trigger extreme bouts of analysis paralysis.
- Hab & Gut – A very simple stock-manipulation game using shared information between the players on your left and right. Kind of nifty mechanism but really scratches my “you suck at games like this” itch.
- Railways of the World the Card Game – An okay set collection and route building game with hints of Railways of the World with a pinch of Ticket to Ride but without a fixed map. It left me with an impression of it being more an activity than a game.
I also participated in the annual BGF Math trade, got a free game (Hare & Tortoise), and bought a used copy of Rheinlander (Parker/Hasbro German version).