Circle DC - 3 days of Historical Board Gaming

I flew back in from 4 days in DC and boy are my arms tired.

crickets

Okay, okay. I know. Bad joke. But I just spent 4 days with some of the sassiest game designers and developers in existence. The bad jokes were everywhere. Fort Circle Games puts on a yearly con called "Circle DC", partially to promote their games, partially to snap up new designs. It's small, which I like, about 250 attendees - this means you can get some good face time with everyone there and it's well attended by established and upcoming designers.

I flew in on a red eye flight and landed about 7 AM local time on Thursday, went to my hotel and dropped my bag off. The room wasn't ready yet but that's fine. I took my backpack and walked to the nearby National Mall and started exploring the free museums on the Mall:

I went to the National Art Gallery and briefly perused it, they had a neat exhibit on documentary photography as art. Lots of photos of Black culture in the '70s, very cool.

Then I stopped by the National Museum of the American Indian and went through the whole museum. I'd highly recommend this one, they have a wing dedicated to a pretty thorough documenting of the history of treaties with Native American tribes including view points of both the US government and the Tribe at the time and an accounting of how it almost ever works out for the tribes. This is a topic close to my heart, I hate when the various Native American groups are portrayed as constantly breaking treaties because almost universally they didn't actually agree to this treaty that's being broken or the US broke it first.

I walked to the Hirshhorn and I don't have much to say about this but I love the lolrandom nature of modern/contemporary art. The boulder on car is a very me feeling piece.

I capped off a monumental amount of walking by finishing the journey across the mall and going into the Holocaust Memorial. Sobering. Powerful. I'd recommend it for anyone and everyone.

Friday - Suday I played games instead of walking all over creation to see museums.

So what did I play? Warning: I have no pictures because I am a damn scrub.

Playtests:

• Twilight Struggle: South Asian Monsoon.

  This is a smaller take on Twilight Struggle (two player cold war game) that is meant for seasoned players who want a crunchier puzzle. Cool stuff. Needs some serious polishing but that's what development is for.

• Tsar

  Tsar is a co-op-ish game where the four players are ministers working under Tsar Nicholas the second. Your job is to run Russia well and keep the Tsar happy. Well actually your job is to rob Russia blind and increase your personal wealth. You do this while navigating a shared hand of events that require you to expend personal political power to resolve and occasionally build up the country... so that you can steal more stuff that isn't nailed down... or bring war, famine, etc for you to deal with. It's neat though not exactly my jam. The shared hand of events is cool, but it'd be more fun for me as an RPG experience.

• Foxes and Lions

  This is about the Italian Wars and is hugely influenced by Machiavelli's writings. Five players, each playing an Italian Kingdom except the one that plays the Pope. Multiple non player factions representing the French, the Spanish, the Ottomans, etc. Mechanically it uses the COIN sequence of play which models the build up of actions over a "season" (whether that season is political, environmental, generational etc) where you have a few small tit for tat turns punctuated by large turns where the whole board state can change. Cool game. I look forward to Liz and Paul (the designers) getting it published.

• The Poisoned Chalice

  This is by Akar Bharadvaj, who is a professional war game designer. Yes that's a thing, wild I know. This game is about the Iran-Iraq war and takes what's normally a solitaire system - the States of Siege system - and turns it into a two player system. It's a neat idea, the crux of it seems to be the Iranians have to deal with dissidents and internal turmoil, the Iraqis have to deal with terrible military leadership because they're afraid of competent leaders leading a coup against Saddam's government. Lots of bad feeling decisions to make, imperfect knowledge, and failure. All the things I like in a board game.

  Non playtests:

• Rainbow

  Unicorn game from Allplay, it's a simple trick tacker with a nice unicorn rainbow aesthetic. Good time killer/family game.

• Hubworld: Aidalon

  A new card game from netrunner fans, kind of like a non asymmetric netrunner. I like it for what it is, but I'll have to see more than the preview set to really develop an opinion on it. Also one of my companions jacked my demo sets by accident so now it lives on the east coast. Damnit.

• Psycho Raiders

  I ran this game for some friends, and we pulled in friendly passersby to join us. It's a 70s slasher movie mixed with a old school hex and counter war game. Very simulationist, a campers versus psychopaths experience where the kids frequently die early on. People love this gory, stupid gnarly game and I cannot recommend it enough if it sounds like your kind of nonsense. We ran it like a TTRPG and I would highly recommend running it like that and not worrying too much about the rules.

• Ferox

  Showed a couple friends this, it's a two player deckbuilding game heavily rooted in the cannibal horror movies of the '80s. Movies like Cannibal Holocaust, Cannibal Ferox and a bit of Zombi 3. Mechanically this game is a joy to show people, you pay for your cards with a resource called rage, that you pay to your opponent who then uses it on you creating a really appealing back and forth tempo. A tempo of atrocities but like that's kind of the point.

That's all I played and while I'm torn on having attended based on the cost of the flight and hotel, I loved hanging out with friends both old and new, getting to meet people I only know online, and just the general air of camaraderie hanging out with other designers and developers. If you're into a hobby and almost exclusively interact with it online I cannot recommend going to niche conventions for it enough. I'll probably go back next year but not on a red eye this time, I've made that mistake once and never again.