My biggest highlight of PAX Australia, the ultimate in games conventions, was spending three whole days playing board games with complete strangers.
At PAX, designers, distributors and publishers have booths set up with their games waiting to be demonstrated and played. It's the ultimate in try before you buy – someone who loves the game teaches it to you and then plays it with you and whoever else is around. I love to play new games but I don't exactly look forward to having to read and understand the rules and then explain them to someone else, all while trying to figure out how to play the game myself. Having someone on hand who knew the rules inside out and wanted to teach me how to play their game was a huge treat.
At PAX, there are so many games being demoed that there's no way you play them all. But I gave it a fair crack, playing 30 games over the course of the three days!
PAX even has a games library where you can borrow a game and then go set it up with a sign letting people know if you need players, want to learn it or can teach it. And then your new best friends, turn up and come and play it with you. I tell you, these people are games enablers!
Let's Play Games is a Sydney based games distributor who had multiple booths at PAX filled with games being demoed and sold. I stumbled across them by accident when I saw the Skyrockets game and someone waiting to teach it. It was a quick, co-operative game of tipping over hourglasses filled with coloured sand. These were our fireworks and we had to get to the end before all the sand ran out. After I finished playing the game the demonstrator asked if I wanted a sticker for the Games Quest. Of course I said yes. Free stickers!! This was before I found out that if I played enough games I'd win a prize. Now that's just being ridiculous people – you're basically paying me to do something I want to do anyway!
I played another couple of games at that booth, the Viking ship card game, Knarr, and the Sea Salt and Paper card game before the the need to play all the games and win something big really hit home. This was helped along by discovering that Knarr, which I had fallen in love with, was one of the prizes. All I had to do was play fifteen games and it would be mine!
Going on a games quest was heaps of fun. Hunting for the posters with the Games Quest logo, sussing out the games on offer, choosing which to play and as the weekend wore on, which to wait for and which to come back to later was all part of the adventure. One of the things I really liked about the quest was that I ended up playing a whole bunch of games I wouldn't have otherwise tried. Like to figures and dice rolling combat game Archen Forge. I've never been drawn to the aesthetics or mechanics of these kind of games but it was fun to actually play one and confirm that yes, these aren't really for me.
Same goes for the trading card games (TCGs) like the anime-themed Grand Archive or the fantasy world of Flesh and Blood both of which I played at PAX. I know people really get into the cards and what they can do and how to use them strategically but the battle format of these games doesn't do much for me. Also the idea that she with the most money (and best cards) wins doesn't seem that fair either. I think I'd like TCGs more if they had moving parts and cool components. But then I guess they'd be a board game and not a TCG! I don't mind the deck building world of Dominion but all the players have access to the all the cards in that game.
It's probably just as well that I'm not into trading card games as I could see myself spending a fortune on getting all the right cards – I always like to get the whole set whether that be a trilogy of books or a series of movies. Step away from the cards, Indrani, step away!
There were a few lighter games with cool mechanics. Micro Macro Crime City combines a Where's Wally? style drawing with an Agatha Christie crime scene. There's a drawing of a place with all sorts of crimes going on and you have to figure out what happened to the baby or who killed the guy and why. They had a huge drawing all along the wall of a booth and you had to track your way through it to solve the puzzle. Great for people who love details.
Nekojima was my favourite party-style game to play when you want to have a bit of a laugh. Think Jenga but with wooden poles that you have to stack vertically. Two poles are connected with some coloured rope to represent telegraph towers. You're trying to make sure that the power lines don't touch and that you don't topple the whole thing over. At first I thought we were working together to make the best arrangement, but no, we were actually trying to be the person who didn't knock it over. If you did, you lost the game.
There's always time to play a game even if you've only got five minuets to spare and Don't Skip Leg Day is one such game. It's a set collection card game where you're trying to get the most points. Think Sushi Go for gym freaks. It comes in a cool takeaway smoothie container like you'd get after your work out at the gym.
I spent all of Friday playing games and trying to get to fifteen so I could win a copy of Knarr. That was until I played Gnome Hollow. Then I desperately wanted to win Knarr and Gnome Hollow. How to choose? Would I even be able to play twenty games needed to score a copy of Gnome Hollow before they ran out? Decisions, decisions.
Gnome Hollow is the cutest game ever with adorable gnomes who place tiles to build fairy rings. When you build fairy rings you get mushrooms which can be sold at the market in exchange for the doodads and whozits which gnomes so dearly love. You can also visit the flower market and take home bouquets to brighten up your cottage and score points at the end. It's a friendly and polite game. Each player builds their own fairy ring in the common garden. If they want to place a tile in someone else's ring, they need to ask for permission first which can of course be denied with no hard feelings.
By Friday afternoon my brain was turning to mush. So I focussed on playing some more fun card games that didn't require too much brain power although I have to admit that I didn't really get what was happening in Landmarks or how to play it.
Curses and Covens on the other hand was a lot more fun. It's a buffing and deception game where a group of villagers are working to hide the witches in their midst from the lone witch finder. Our witch finder was in cosplay and looked the part of a witch finder intent on rooting out evil.
In Surf's Up you're trying to catch the best waves without running into any other surfers or being stung by a bluebottle. You get a limited hand of numbered cards that are used to bid for a wave. Once you've caught that wave, you lose that card, making it harder to catch waves and score points as the game progresses.
Festival is another tile placement game – I seem to have been rather taken by them and played quite a few while I was at PAX! You're trying to create a stunning fireworks display and score points for your patterns and colour combinations depending on what bonuses have been drawn for the game. The cool thing about this game was that you can stack the tiles and get points for doing so.
Saturday morning saw me back at PAX, bright and early, and ready to take on some more games. Stamp Swap was my first stop for the day. And unbelievably, my first Euro style strategy game for the convention. That's if you don't count Gnome Hollow which I'd put in the cosy games category. Although it definitely has strategy. Stamp Swap on the other hand is a lot more cut-throat as you compete with other players to build the best stamp collection. And then of course there's the mandatory trading with mixes things up and makes it more interesting.
Next on the games menu was playing Land vs Sea with its creator, John-Paul Jaques. Having the designer of the game play it with me was a HUGE fangirl, geek-out moment. I couldn't believe I was sitting across the table from John-Paul and playing his game. A game that has been around for ten years, sold 75,000 copies and I'd never even heard of it!
Land vs Sea is another tile placement game where one player is land trying to build large islands and the other player is sea, trying to create vast oceans. There are layers to the game with bonus points, mountain ranges, coral reefs and trade routes to navigate. Land vs Sea is one of the best tile placement games I've played. I think I'm drawn to these games because they use a different part of my brain and force me to think spatially, something that doesn't come easily to me.
Jean Paul was really kind and didn't smash me in the game when he had a chance. And he told about the hidden easter eggs he included on the cards. How cool is it to play with a designer? Of course I had to buy the game and then get it signed!
Mercurial is a card and dice manipulation game with gorgeous artwork, custom dice and pretty crystal components. You collect cards to go on a quest and then cast spells to defeat monsters. This game feels like it has the battle focus of a TCG but with cool components. It's just what I was wishing for when I was playing Grand Archive and Flesh and Blood! But playing this game made me realise that I don't have the patience or the attention span for reading the fine print on multiple cards and then learning what all of those cards do. I think it's due in part to my bad eyesight and to my poor memory. I think this is one game I'd like to have another go at playing to see if I could learn to love something new.
Onwards and upwards to the airplane pilot-themed Sky Team. This is a two player game where a pilot and co-pilot are trying to land a plane. The catch? The only way they can communicate to safely land the plane is through dice. They have to use the numbers on the dice to clear the runway, adjust the angle of the plane, adjust the wing flaps and drop the landing gear. This game went right over my head and I pretty much had to be coached thought the whole thing, partly because I completely blanked when the rules were being explained. Hey, in my defence, it was early on Saturday morning and I'd already played several games.
Decryptio on the other hand was a fun, team deduction word game. Your team mate gives you a coded message which you have to decipher from their clues. They have to make the clues easy enough for you to guess but not so easy that the other team can guess your words. Sounds simple until you try to do it and then things get interesting. I'd definitely add this one to the games library for when I've people coming around and we want to play a quick game.
I managed to cram in heaps of many games early on Saturday morning because not many people were around and I didn't have to queue for long. Which meant that I managed to play twenty games and could get my copy of Gnome Hollow! Yay! Huge thanks to Let's Play Games for their Games Quest and to all my fellow players and the lovely people who demoed the games and explained the rules to us!