I went to an in person wargaming con AND played a new video game that blew my mind in the last two weeks. - Image Heavy!
Consimworld Expo
Every year in Tempe, the local college town, Consimworld holds an in person gaming convention with a focus on monster games.
... what's a monster game you ask? Oh sweet summer child...
They're hex and counter wargames that are either very large, very complex, or (frequently) both. Maps measured in foot increments that sound more appropriate for small room footprints than a game, counters numbering in the thousands, play times in the tens to hundreds of hours. Those are monster games. This con started as a way for people to play it and find others to play it with them. I have kind of a perverse fascination with these games. I don't want to play them, but they're like a trainwreck. I can't look away. See the bottom of this post for some photo examples.
Okay so I don't want to play this massive games, why do I go? I have some friends that go and it gives me an excuse to play games with them for a week. This year I played:
After Pablo
A game about the rise of the Mexican Cartels in the wake of Pablo Escobar's death. A favorite of mine, from a weird dude in Colorado that normally makes Black Metal influenced horror games. Very stabby. Very push your luck. Lots of fun. Has a pretty satirical take on the DEA which I like, where influence in the DEA is used to hinder your opponents and move your guys through the legal system with no consequences for the actions they're taking. No one ever goes to jail, they just get sidetracked by the court process for awhile.
Pax Pamir
Pax Pamir is about the so called 'Great Game' in Afghanistan in the 1800s, players take on the roles of Tribal chieftans allying with the Russians, the British, or the remnants of the Durrani Empire and attempting to take control of the country. Super stabby, lots of room for plotting against your friends and pissing them off - which as you're gonna see is a theme in games I like. Also the non standard production makes it kind of fun to play, it feels almost like a historical object with the cloth mat, resin markers, and metal coins. Best moment of the game was me engineering a point scoring event for the last place player with the idea that it would end the game with me in the lead and despite her telling me multiple times she'd win I was so focused on the genius of my plan I never fully realized what she was saying.
Prototype - Fruit
My friend Dan goes to this con and this is one of his current prototypes - players are local big shots that are attempting to influence Central American countries for personal gain in the first half of the 1900s. The United Fruit Corp serves as a non country aligned interest that players can have a secret stake in, and generally doing things good for the United Fruit Corp is bad for the countries. Weird how that works out. Almost like the term Banana Republics came from toppling democratically elected governments in favor of U.S. business (banana business!) friendly authoritarian regimes.
Maria
The War of Austrian Succession - three players take control of six factions and attempt to win the war for Prussia, Austria, France, or the Dutch Pragmatic Army. I love this game, I love the dynamics, I love how you bluff to fight... I'm not very good at it. At one point I was half a turn away from winning and then I ended up in nearly last place almost completely destroyed. C'est La Vie.
Dynasty
Richard Berg's last published game Dynasty has the players taking on the role of an Emperor and Governors of the Five Dynasties period in the mid 900s China. It's a weird game. I don't like it and neither did my friends. The game play loop is a bit too open and aimless. The way to win is to really partake in a farcical game of hot potato where you want to become emperor to get a bunch of victory points then immediately have your dynasty crumble so that you're in a position to once again take over as emperor from whichever poor bastard got it after you and get those sweet, sweet ascension victory points.
Dominant Species: Marine
Dominant Species: Marine is the second in a series and is the more svelte and sleek of the two. It's also one of the meanest games I've ever played. You place workers to select actions that have your cubes (species) spread around the map, adapt to new environments, colonize new environments (land, hydrothermal vents, sand etc), kill other players cubes, or trigger event cards that can include things like solar radiation and a game ending meteor. It's a brutal scrabble to score as many victory points as possible which is generally done by pissing your friends off and undoing all their hard work. Not a game for the fainthearted. I, of course, love it.
Prerelease - New Cold War
I'll be blunt. I didn't like this game. It's a four player take on a pretty popular two player game. The factions are the U.S., China, Russia, and the European Union. Typically these games will have one side start off more powerful and over the course of the game their power wanes and the opposing faction will gain in power - they're games of managing your resources and opportunities for scoring wisely. Being four player inherently makes this more random which takes a lot of the satisfaction out of it and being published by a German company by European designers it has a pretty euro-centric focus that I don't think really matches recent world history all that well. The time frame for the game is between 1989 and 2019 and it's a game in which the U.S. and China are eclipsed in global prestige and influence by Russia and the E.U. I liked the idea but it needed more time in the oven - supposedly the was what is being sent to the printer so that won't be happening.
Fate Of The Elder Gods
Fate of the Elder Gods is a wacky game about being a cult trying to summon the eldritch deity you worship and end the world. Lots of chaotic take that elements, a cool curse mechanic where you know you're cursed but not with what and another player is in charge of letting you know when you've triggered it, fun player powers. This game is a blast, it plays quick, and I've loved it since I got it in 2017. Picture is from BGG because I neglected to take a photo of it. Oops.
Crisis 1914
Two to five players take on the Great Powers in the lead up to WW1. It's a game about building a tableau in front of you and posturing to score victory points, that also raise tension. If things get too tense WW1 happens early, if you caused it you lose. Super neat push your luck game that's surprisingly social. I really liked it. Maurice Suckling, the designer, is pretty prolific and you may have played one of the many video games he's written for: His first credit was 1997's Driver. Yeah the 1970s cop movie influenced GTA3 clone that beat GTA3 to market by 2 years. Small world.
Prototype - Fruit (again)
The danger of being friends with another game designer, you're probably gonna play more than one prototype of theirs when they visit. This time it ended up being the same prototype multiple times. I still liked it on my second play - I settled on a strategy of making problems for everyone else and being chaotic. It was fun, if not particularly effective.
Lets Make A Bus Route!
This is a flip and write, where you flip a card over and it gives you the shape of a route segment to draw out on the main map board. As you pass symbols on the route you'll cross off point markers on your sheet. Most points wins. This game is frickin' adorable. I loved it and it's super light and quick. Great for families. Picture for this one is also from BGG because again - I suck at taking photos.
Dune Imperium
Dune Imperium is not normally the kind of game that would be my cup of tea. And this wasn't an exception, but I am glad I played it. Its very popular and I can definitely see why. Functionally this is a deckbuilder and a worker placement game where you use the workers to acquire resources and you use cards to acquire more cards. I would describe the theme as 'pasted' on. It's Dune sure, but it could be almost anything else too. Mechanically this game is pretty tight but it just doesn't grab me. Last picture from BGG - I'll get better eventually.
Prerelease - Red Dust Rebellion
Red Dust Rebellion, or as I constantly call it: Red Dead Rebellion. A game about marxist insurgencies of the future... on Mars. This is a so called 'Full Fat' COIN series game, the 13th in the series, it is a three to five hour game for four players that I have playtested A LOT over the last two years. This was my first live play of it and it was fine, I'm kind of burned out on COIN at this point so it can't be any better than just 'fine' for me but I played with some friends from the company publishing it and that was a blast. The key in situations like this is just have the right attitude - I was the 'Mars for Martians' marxists so I played into that persona and had plenty of fun. This game will be released later this year and I think it'll be a pretty big hit.
1000xResist
Wow.
Wow.
I'm not a big visual novel fan. This game isn't a visual novel, but it's closer to that than anything else. I loved this game. It's a twelve hour fever dream concerning itself with big sci fi ideas (alien invasions, clone societies, manufactured religions), inter-generational trauma, cycles of abuse and violence, and what we have to do as a society to maintain the health of our society. I have to be careful about what I say because I wouldn't want to spoil this game. But over the course of four characters lives, a thousand years, and multiple trips into the memories of the character that started all this (and it's very much like Satoshi Kon's Paprika or maybe The Cell) a truly fascinating story unfurls with betrayals, big reveals, literal (for me) jaw-dropping moments... just wow.
Red to Blue.
The game really has a point it's making about the kind of societies we create and how we can't just stand by while events happen that change those societies. You can't just assume that this is as bad as it can get, it can always get worse and you need to fight against that. Influenced by the experiences of Asian diaspora and the Hong Kong protests of 2019-20 the game really drives home the point that we are very much responsible for the societies we create and the ills that come with them. This, to me, is the best kind of sci fi: big ideas and strong statements about society.
Six to One.
Visually the game is full of just extremely vivid and psychedelic visuals, mostly occurring while sharing memories with other characters - but even some of the "real world" segments are spectacular looking, particularly when aliens are present. I would absolutely love to see this made into a big budget miniseries and truthfully I think that's the better medium for this story. Normally I would say that the studio was doing the game a disservice by making it a game but then treating it more like a passive form of media like books, movies, etc. That's my criticism of Naughty Dog's games normally, that it is clear they would rather be making movies. Here though the game has no pretenses about what it is while Naughty Dog force feeds you exposition while you "play" what are effectively interactive cutscenes. Slowly pushing a dumpster across an area to use it climb up to a ledge while being exposited at in Last of Us for example. 1000xResist is nothing but story (and the occasional platforming section, don't worry it's the opposite of a precision platformer) and so it just doesn't bother me the same way.
Sphere to Square.
This game made me feel and made me think. Me over thinking something is common, but feeling? that's rare. I cannot recommend this enough.
Hekki Allmo Sister.
Monster Game Shots
There are some of the games in play at the con I grabbed shots of. Minor details in captions.
Pretty sure this is Three Days of Gettysburg (3rd Edition), a 3 map game (full size maps are 22inx34in) for 1 - 6 players, 1,600+ counters, playtime is listed as up to 75 hours for the full scenario.
I think this is a combination of the three listed games: Guderian's Blitzkrieg, Case Blue and Enemy at the Gates. You don't always buy a monster game, sometimes you make one. Though Case Blue is a monster game in it's own right. Guderian's Blitzkrieg: 3 full maps, 4 14x22 maps, 2,800 counters, 1-6 players, up to 75 hours for full scenario. Case Blue: 9(!!!) full size maps, 1 14x22 map, 3,500 counters, 2 players, I'd assume 120 hours minimum for a game - no time is listed.
Day of Days: 2-8 Players, up to 36 hours, 4 full size maps, 2,200 counters.
Not sure, unknown WW2 North Africa game. Looks like it's 2 34x44 maps, so effectively 4 full size maps.
Ostfront. Craig has been working on and playtesting this for years, it doesn't have a publisher yet and I wouldn't dare to guess the map assortment/counter count/play time, but I'll note: That's almost ten square feet of maps on display there. Remember when I said that the size of these games was the size of small rooms?
Sword and Fire: Manilla. This is a module for Advanced Squad Leader which is a lifestyle game, people who get into it end up with tens of maps, and tens of thousands of counters. The rulebook for the series is a 4 inch d ring binder that is full, and has supplements. 2 players, 6 24x37 maps, 1,100 counters, 25 scenarios: play times range a couple hours and a couple days.
The Devil's Cauldron: The Battles for Arnhem and Nijmegen. 2-4 players, 4 full size maps, 3 9x12 extensions, 3,000+ counters, up to a 40 hour playtime.