#27/52. A game you can finish in under 15 minutes - Tsuro

A coworker has been fascinated by my board gaming hobby and has been asking me question after question about it. She seemed flummoxed when I told her about ConQuest Avalon that was held back in November. Since then she has continued to ask me about the types of games that I play so I finally brought one in to play with her at lunch time. The first game was Qwirkle. I wrote about that game here. The game I brought in today was Tsuro: The Game of the Path. This is perhaps the most zen game in my collection.

In this game each player is a dragon flying over the skies of ancient China. Each dragon starts at the edge of the board - where on the edge does not matter. Each player is dealt three tiles with varying paths on them. There is a grid on the board. You choose one tile and lay it on the grid before your dragon piece. Move your dragon to the end of the path before it. Then the next player goes. The object of the game is to avoid running into another dragon and to avoid running off the edge of the board. The last player remaining on the board wins.

Because there are several paths on each tile, planning which direction to lay your tile down can sometimes be a bit tricky. As the board becomes more and more crowded, the potential paths become longer and more complicated. It is even possible that a player can lay down a tile that will move more than one dragon at a time. It is possible for one player to run another player off the edge of the board. However, more often than not, a player will end up maneuvering themselves to the edge of the board to avoid the other dragon(s) and will accidentally run him/herself off the edge of the board. Colliding with another dragon will also knock both of the dragons out of the game.

This is a quick and easy gateway game to teach to just about anyone. I've taught this to non-gamers, young gamers, and my 95 year old Grandma - who subsequently beat me. I bought this game on the recommendation of a FLGS employee and have really enjoyed it ever since.

#22/54. A Game with a Horror Theme - Elder Sign

This is probably the only game that I am going to feel like I "cheated" on, but by the rules of this challenge, this is a legitimate play of this game. On January 25, 2016 I played a game of Elder Sign using the Elder Sign Game Application produced by Fantasy Flight Games - the same company that produces the Elder Sign board game. This is a single player game application of the board game.

Elder Sign is a horror themed board game based on the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. In the regular board game each player plays one or two investigators, each with special abilities or skills, who are investigating strange occurrences happening within the Arkham Museum. Usually, the idea is to stop the disciples of an elder god from Lovecraft lore from calling forth the elder god and thus the end of the world. This was not exactly the case in the scenario I was running the other day.

In this scenario, the group of four investigators is trying to gather enough supplies at the Arkham Museum in order to travel to Alaska to fight an elder god named Ithiqua - a wild and evil being - in order to rescue a colleague who has been looking for evidence of Ithiqua's existence and has apparently been captured. This is a very hard scenario. Once you leave the museum and travel to Alaska, there are a series of challenges to fight through while maintaining your health and sanity levels.

In this particular play-through I managed to get all the way to Ithiqua's cave with three of my four investigators still alive and sane. In the final battle against Ithiqua you have to fight Ithiqua three times without failing in order to defeat him and rescue your colleague. If you fail even once, your colleague goes insane and the character who failed will quite likely die. If he or she does not die, he or she will be very badly wounded. In this case, I was not successful and all four of my investigators died.

This game, and especially this scenario, is a challenge. You roll dice to try to match symbols in order to defeat the challenges. At times you can apply red or yellow dice to give your attempts some extra oomph. At other times the challenges will deprive you of the regular (green) dice you thought you had access to. There is a lot of luck involved in this game and the occult and horror theme makes this game NSFW, but otherwise ok for mixed company.

In Other News...ConQuest SAC is Coming!!!

I am REALLY looking forward to the upcoming local convention - ConQuest Sacramento! It is scheduled for April 1-3, 2016 at the Crown Plaza Hotel here in Sacramento, CA. This is the biggest board game convention that is held here in Sacramento and is going on it's 11th year. This is the first year that this convention is being held at the Crown Plaza Hotel. It moved to this venue because it had outgrown its old venue.

This is my third year attending ConQuest Sac and is my second year running games. I just submitted my games for this year and I am really looking forward to this slate of games.

Friday, April 1st @ 12:00 - 5:00 p.m. - RoboRally: In this game you are a super computer that has grown bored with producing widgets. You've colluded with the other super computers to develop a capture-the-flag contest using the factory robots and factory floor. There are obstacles and dangers, including your opponents and your own short-sitedness that can really mess up the best laid plans.

This game is the game that got me back into board gaming. I love this game but don't get the chance to play it nearly as often as I would like. I used to have the base game and all of the original expansions, but I lost them in a divorce. Now, in order to obtain the expansions I would have to spend hundreds of dollars to purchase them via eBay. I just don't have that kind of money to spend on this game. However, I have found a place where the game board maps have been made available as PDFs. So my plan is to download the images, print them out, and laminate them so that I have them available to play with at this convention.

Friday, April 1st @ 7:00 - 11:00 p.m. - T.I.M.E. Stories: Asylum:  You have just graduated from the T.I.M.E. Agency Academy and are a newly minted agent ready for your first mission. Your group is going back in time to prevent a time-altering catastrophe from occurring. You have a limited amount of time to fulfill your mission before you are drawn back to your home time and you have to report in. If you fail, you will be sent back to start over from the beginning with only your memory of what transpired before to guide you through the second run.

This game is one of the most innovative games to come out in 2015. It's a combination of a choose-your-own-adventure and RPG*-in-a-box. If you have never played an RPG, this is a great introduction. If you have played an RPG, this will seem familiar and will be great fun as a one-shot game. Join me for this gaming experience!

Saturday, April 2nd @ 1:00 - 5:00 p.m. - The Dread Hangover: This RPG is unusual in a few ways...Dread is a RPG that uses the horror genre instead of the fantasy or sci-fi genre. When I play Dread, I always do these games as one-shot events rather than on-going campaigns. The idea is to spend a few hours enjoying a horror genre story that gets your blood pumping as you try to get your character out alive.

Speaking of characters, the Dread characters are generated through questionnaires rather than a series of stats that are generated via rolling dice. Usually the Game Master (GM) will generate a different questionnaire for each person to answer at the start of the gaming event. The character will react to situations based on how the player answered the questions. In the case of this convention, I'm going to answer the questionnaires and generate the characters ahead of time and then pass them out to the people that show up. They will take some time to read through the questions and answers in order to "get to know" the character they are going to play for the evening.

Finally, Dread does not use dice as the randomizer. Instead it uses a Jenga-type tower to create tension and decide hard actions. Don't let your prowess at playing Jenga scare you away from trying this game however. The game is not about the Jenga tower. It's about the story and the tension that builds. Most of the pulls a person does will NOT result in the tower collapsing, but it will start adding to the tension that will build as the structure of the tower becomes more precarious. Join me for this unique type of RPG!

Saturday, April 2nd @ 7:00 - 11:00 p.m. - T.I.M.E. Stories: The Marcy Case: This is the first expansion for T.I.M.E. Stories and is an excellent story to play. You are sent back in time to 1992 small town U.S.A. to rescue young Marcy who has disappeared. You are told that she is important to the future and shown a picture of a young girl. From there everything goes crazy. It doesn't matter if you have or haven't played the base game. This expansion will allow you to join in on the experience and successfully (or not) play through the scenario. It's a great way to spend your evening at the convention!

There is one more expansion coming out at the end of January called "A Prophecy of Dragons." If I am able to get this expansion before ConQuest SAC, I'll sign up to run it on Sunday. However, its release keeps getting pushed back. The original flier that came in the base game box said it would be released in Q4 of 2015. Now the word is that it will be released on January 31st, 2016. I've pre-ordered it from Great Escape Games. We'll see when it comes in...

*RPG = Role Playing Game