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Handycon October 2024
Oct. 29th, 2024 03:53 pmThis past weekend, we went to Handycon, a lovely board games convention that's held several times per year in Milton Keynes.
On arrival, my plan was to find my friends and play games I already knew - but then, can't I basically do that any time?
So, what I ended up doing was almost exclusively playing new games (to me, at least) - of which there were seven, and all of which I enjoyed (to varying degrees)!
I started out by visiting the playtesting area and ended up playing two different games for the same designer.
Calypso:
This was a deceptively simple but actually fiendishly complicated chess/go-style game, which involved moving pieces around a board, flipping them from your colour to your opponent's colour or vice versa, transforming circles into squares into triangles, and trying to be the first to obtain three of the highest value types. I'm not sure I ever fully grasped how to play - but, over the course of the game, I did go from baffled to frustrated to intrigued to sort of obsessed, which is probably quite a good arc in some ways... I was almost starting to get it towards the end and I did manage to get two triangles on the board, but only because the designer helped me out quite a bit. It was, overall, very interesting, though - but not something I'd want to play a lot.
Rivals:
The same designer had a fighting game, with lots of cards and items and powers and combining of different things to create effective attacks. Also not really my kind of game, generally, but I enjoyed working out how to put everything together to maximise what I could do on my turn. I did win this one, but only because Dave (who was my opponent, rather than the designer) had a more complicated character and didn't quite grasp what to do as quickly as me. For a style of game I'm not that interested in, it had some really good aspects, and I enjoyed what we played of it (though I was glad we stopped partway through, rather than seeing it to the bitter end).
Coral Reef:
This is a game where you build up a tableau of cards, based on various hands that get passed around between the players, placing them so as to score points in different ways (depending on what is adjacent or in the same row or column). I generally like these kinds of games - and I enjoyed this one - though it took me a little while to get to grips with quite how many ways there were to score.
Let's Go! to Japan:
This was a major hit of the weekend - a game that's very much designed to appeal to me. The theme is planning a holiday to Japan, and you collect cards and set them out on the different days of your schedule. There are various things to match and collect and achieve, and it's all about working out what to put where, so as to maximise the points you'll get in the end. It has a lot of great aspects that all fit together to be extremely enjoyable - I played it twice over the weekend and loved it both times - and I'm really looking forward to playing it again at Christmas and New Year.
Rome In A Day:
This is a tile game, where you build a little kingdom and score points based on the right colour buildings being next to the right colour tiles. What makes it particularly interesting is that you have to split your tiles each turn into two sets, and one of the other players gets to take one of the sets to add to their kingdom (and you get a set from a different player to add to yours). So, you have to figure out how to split up your tiles, so that you get to keep the ones you want and you entice the other player to take the ones you don't want, but without giving away too many points! I really enjoyed it and always got my opponents to take the set I wanted them to take - but I didn't win, which perhaps suggests I was giving away too much.
Canvas:
This is another game that was designed to appeal to me - in that you collect cards with weird bits of art on them and build them up into paintings, to match various scoring conditions. The types of scoring were a bit like Sagrada, and I really enjoyed constructing interesting images and presenting my art collections to the other player at the end. There were various expansions available in the games library and I would be very keen to play this again and explore the other aspects that can be added to it.
Seti:
This was the other major success of the weekend - we saw so many people playing it and I think we were very lucky to be able to snaffle it from the games library when we wanted to play it ourselves. In theme and certain mechanics, it felt a bit like Terraforming Mars (though I don't think it will end up replacing that in my affections any time soon) - also in terms of being a bit overwhelming to learn the rules but not actually that complicated once you get going. It involves scanning the solar system for signals, researching different technologies and sending out probes to orbit and land on other planets - with the aim of finding alien life! There are two possible alien species to discover in each game, though these are randomised so there is some variety in aspects of the game that get revealed later on. We definitely didn't play the game to its highest potential - but I absolutely loved it, did quite a bit better than the others, and also came up with lots of ways to try out different methods of improving my strategy. We didn't have time (or energy) to play it again over the weekend, but Dave has ordered a copy and I'm very much looking forward to playing it again and figuring it out more.
So, a great weekend overall!
On arrival, my plan was to find my friends and play games I already knew - but then, can't I basically do that any time?
So, what I ended up doing was almost exclusively playing new games (to me, at least) - of which there were seven, and all of which I enjoyed (to varying degrees)!
I started out by visiting the playtesting area and ended up playing two different games for the same designer.
Calypso:
This was a deceptively simple but actually fiendishly complicated chess/go-style game, which involved moving pieces around a board, flipping them from your colour to your opponent's colour or vice versa, transforming circles into squares into triangles, and trying to be the first to obtain three of the highest value types. I'm not sure I ever fully grasped how to play - but, over the course of the game, I did go from baffled to frustrated to intrigued to sort of obsessed, which is probably quite a good arc in some ways... I was almost starting to get it towards the end and I did manage to get two triangles on the board, but only because the designer helped me out quite a bit. It was, overall, very interesting, though - but not something I'd want to play a lot.
Rivals:
The same designer had a fighting game, with lots of cards and items and powers and combining of different things to create effective attacks. Also not really my kind of game, generally, but I enjoyed working out how to put everything together to maximise what I could do on my turn. I did win this one, but only because Dave (who was my opponent, rather than the designer) had a more complicated character and didn't quite grasp what to do as quickly as me. For a style of game I'm not that interested in, it had some really good aspects, and I enjoyed what we played of it (though I was glad we stopped partway through, rather than seeing it to the bitter end).
Coral Reef:
This is a game where you build up a tableau of cards, based on various hands that get passed around between the players, placing them so as to score points in different ways (depending on what is adjacent or in the same row or column). I generally like these kinds of games - and I enjoyed this one - though it took me a little while to get to grips with quite how many ways there were to score.
Let's Go! to Japan:
This was a major hit of the weekend - a game that's very much designed to appeal to me. The theme is planning a holiday to Japan, and you collect cards and set them out on the different days of your schedule. There are various things to match and collect and achieve, and it's all about working out what to put where, so as to maximise the points you'll get in the end. It has a lot of great aspects that all fit together to be extremely enjoyable - I played it twice over the weekend and loved it both times - and I'm really looking forward to playing it again at Christmas and New Year.
Rome In A Day:
This is a tile game, where you build a little kingdom and score points based on the right colour buildings being next to the right colour tiles. What makes it particularly interesting is that you have to split your tiles each turn into two sets, and one of the other players gets to take one of the sets to add to their kingdom (and you get a set from a different player to add to yours). So, you have to figure out how to split up your tiles, so that you get to keep the ones you want and you entice the other player to take the ones you don't want, but without giving away too many points! I really enjoyed it and always got my opponents to take the set I wanted them to take - but I didn't win, which perhaps suggests I was giving away too much.
Canvas:
This is another game that was designed to appeal to me - in that you collect cards with weird bits of art on them and build them up into paintings, to match various scoring conditions. The types of scoring were a bit like Sagrada, and I really enjoyed constructing interesting images and presenting my art collections to the other player at the end. There were various expansions available in the games library and I would be very keen to play this again and explore the other aspects that can be added to it.
Seti:
This was the other major success of the weekend - we saw so many people playing it and I think we were very lucky to be able to snaffle it from the games library when we wanted to play it ourselves. In theme and certain mechanics, it felt a bit like Terraforming Mars (though I don't think it will end up replacing that in my affections any time soon) - also in terms of being a bit overwhelming to learn the rules but not actually that complicated once you get going. It involves scanning the solar system for signals, researching different technologies and sending out probes to orbit and land on other planets - with the aim of finding alien life! There are two possible alien species to discover in each game, though these are randomised so there is some variety in aspects of the game that get revealed later on. We definitely didn't play the game to its highest potential - but I absolutely loved it, did quite a bit better than the others, and also came up with lots of ways to try out different methods of improving my strategy. We didn't have time (or energy) to play it again over the weekend, but Dave has ordered a copy and I'm very much looking forward to playing it again and figuring it out more.
So, a great weekend overall!
