Play It Again in Vancouver

Vancouver and SHUX 2019

Darlene and I returned to Vancouver, British Columbia terminal week to enjoy 3 days of board gaming at Close Up and Sit down Down's third annual board gaming convention (SHUX 'nineteen) after enjoying ourselves so much last twelvemonth at SHUX'18.  Once again nosotros got to meet a bunch of new people (as well as bumped into a friend local to the Santa Cruz area) while learning and trying out many different games.  Every bit always, there's besides lots of other gaming-related stuff going on all around the convention hall but we pretty much stuck to the game library and play expanse for the whole convention this time.

We dove in deep starting with the viking-themed, "worker placement"-style game A Banquet for Odin.  It'south proficient only I'chiliad not sure I really desire to play it again, and it's besides actually time-consuming to teach to new players.  (Luckily we plant someone who already knew the game to teach u.s.a..)  We moved on to endeavour the tableau-edifice Valeria: Card Kingdoms (not smashing), before getting transformed into mice trying to boxing and escape our rat guards in the story-based adventure game Mice and Mystics (very cute!).  And then we tried playing classic Disney villains in Disney's Villainous with just the 2 of the states – and then tried it once more when the showtime game ended rather abruptly.  I give it a pass – you're pretty much at the mercy of your card draw, with piddling decision making to do each turn.  The card decks do wonderfully capture the spirit of the feature films though.

We both loved playing the presently-to-be-released Ecos: First Continent and I immediately put in a preorder for it.  Next upward was trying Lowlands, a archetype euro-style game with the added twist of having to make up one's mind whether to requite up some of your precious plow actions to work on the community dike property back the rise seas.  We liked it… only not as much equally Istanbul that we tried afterwards in the day.  I've had that in my wish list to try for a while and playing it with a group of 5 turned into an firsthand buy.

Richard joined united states of america for the bizarrely themed and misrepresented Lords of Waterdeep after somebody nosotros met before in the day insisted we try it.  It was okay, but it was actually just a totally abstract cube-exchanging thing. Notwithstanding, from there we moved on to finding a group to try laying out a suburban neighborhood together in the puzzle-y "roll and write" game Welcome to… – and yep, the third purchase every bit a result of SHUX this year!

We joined up on the last day with another couple to effigy out how to play the intriguing time travel-based cooperative mystery adventure game  T.I.Yard.E. Stories – which turned out to both not be so straight-forward without giving ourselves any story spoilers and reminded me why information technology got some less than stellar reviews.  The problem is that the game intentionally sets up the story to play out in such a way that you lot're going to run out of your allotted actions and neglect multiple times and and so "get" to experience going back in time once more to try again with your new knowledge.  However, unlike a well-scripted time travel movie, it's not that fun to have to go dorsum and repeat previous sections to get together needed equipment again.  Nosotros ended upwardly cheating a flake on the second go-effectually only to be forced into a 2nd failure anyhow where we decided to quit without seeing the start story through to its cease.

Nosotros didn't get to cease the last game of the weekend, The Ancient World, with yet another couple before the convention closed down.  This one started out rough and afterwards I discovered that there'due south a newer edition of the rules which would take avoided much of the confusion and outright invalid actions we were taking.  Maybe we'll attempt information technology once more sometime somewhere.

Darlene had to take off super early Mon morning to teach a class past noon, but I hung out for the day in Vancouver and ended up going for a walk to Stanley Park and spending the afternoon at the Vancouver Aquarium.  Click through for the full gallery:

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Source: https://crimdom.net/2019/10/vancouver-and-shux-2019/

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