RogerBW's Blog

I went to ACWest – the first spin-off venture for the Airecon team. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.

I got in quite early and started with Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition, battling against The Organization. Turns out they're pretty tough!

I got together with some of my fellow Zatu bloggers and tried out Earth, my first time playing with my own copy. Still fun! I'm increasingly getting the idea that the path to success here is to leave options open so that one can take advantage of any opportunity that shows up.

Then on to Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game, at which I seem to do worse each time I play. Still had a good time, mind.

And as we were chucked out of the main gaming rooms into the bar, Nokosu Dice, still hard to find outside Japan and great fun.

Saturday morning was grey—as was the whole weekend, really.

But there were compensations.

First game was four-player Fort; I really didn't like the theme, which implied an exclusively transactional view of friendship, but the game itself was quite enjoyable.

More Sentinels, going up against the Organisation again, and this time beating it.

Nyet!, a trick-taker from a few years ago in which one excludes various options (such as which suit will be trump, and the value of each trick) until just one is left. I liked it, but I was slightly disappointed by the presence of duplicate "1"-value cards, which seemed to me to take some of the fun out of it.

My ongoing attempt to learn Ashes Reborn: Rise of the Phoenixborn brought a comprehensive defeat.

Not so a few rounds of Kabuto Sumo, which has become my favourite "slow" dexterity game.

More Earth, and a fully-grown Giant Redwood.

A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game turns out to be the perfect fit for my Crystal Twister dice tower. ("I do a wound on a five or six, that should give me at least two, right?")

More Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game.

And more Nokosu Dice; the three-player mode worked, but I thought not terribly well.

Sunday began with more Sentinels, trying out the November solo challenge against Gloomweaver. Tough going, but winnable, just about (Nightmist was defeated but Unity and Alpha were still standing).

On to Furnace, which really feels like two separate games: the relatively straightforward auction, and the headcracking challenge of arranging your cards to maximise earnings.

And finally Riftforce with the Beyond expansion. I still have positive nostalgic feelings about this because of the great demo I got from the designers at UK Games Expo in 2019, but it stands up well in its own right too.

Then to car and home.