Geekway to the west has always been one of my favorite conventions of each year. It may be in fact my favorite convention of the year. The reason is you and your friends get to come and play games that you have not been able to experience. Most of those games you even have a chance at winning a copy at the end of the show! The hotel is amazing with probably the best free breakfast I have ever had at a hotel. Before the show my friend (bgg user name Cyko) and I participated in the Board Game Geek Geekway Virtual Flea Market. We almost sold too many games to fit in my car.
You can't see in the picture, but the backseat is also full and we had a third friend (Mitchell) riding with us. On the way down, Cyko brought out Unlock: Nautilus to play while riding down. This was slightly distracting while driving down, but I actually did help solve 2 puzzles from just hearing what they were talking about. We could not solve one puzzle (I have heard that there may be an error), and we unfortunately met our demise probably 10 fold.
We made it down in one piece and unloaded my car. Mitchell was unloading the back when he dropped his King Cobra 40oz he got at a local gas station. It shattered all over the place and we then called it pulling a Mitchell. Mitchell had several Mitchell like situations, but we love him anyways. Once we got everything in the room, Cyko and I proceeded downstairs for a volunteer dinner and got our badges early. The dinner was tacos and they were excellent. I recommend being a volunteer if you attend this convention someday. You get to meet lots of people and get some nice perks as well.
The rest of this article will be a summary of the games we played during the convention and what I thought of them. As always, thank you so much for taking the time to read my articles. Please share them to your gaming friends and you can find me on twitter @so1ks. Hopefully one day I will see you at Geekway to the West. Now to the games!
We made it down in one piece and unloaded my car. Mitchell was unloading the back when he dropped his King Cobra 40oz he got at a local gas station. It shattered all over the place and we then called it pulling a Mitchell. Mitchell had several Mitchell like situations, but we love him anyways. Once we got everything in the room, Cyko and I proceeded downstairs for a volunteer dinner and got our badges early. The dinner was tacos and they were excellent. I recommend being a volunteer if you attend this convention someday. You get to meet lots of people and get some nice perks as well.
The rest of this article will be a summary of the games we played during the convention and what I thought of them. As always, thank you so much for taking the time to read my articles. Please share them to your gaming friends and you can find me on twitter @so1ks. Hopefully one day I will see you at Geekway to the West. Now to the games!
Wingspan by Stonemaier Games was by the hottest and most challenging to obtain play to win game at Geekway to the West. Since Cyko and I had our badges early, we were able to obtain a copy first thing Thursday morning.
Wingspan is an engine building game that has you trying to collect birds to obtain victory points. Each bird requires different food and habitat. Finding a way to maximize your resources and obtaining the birds you need makes this a very strategic game, but not overly complicated to learn. The theme really came out with the dice tower bird house, egg tokens that look like the colored Easter egg candies you can get at the store. What really showed the extra mile that was taken to show the theme was all the unique birds on the cards. These cards showed the habitat, what they ate, what area of the world they are from and an interesting fact about the bird. For example, did you know the Turkey Vulture defends itself by projectile vomiting on its possible attacker. This is but only one interesting bird fact you will learn from playing Wingspan.
Everyone in our group enjoyed it and would definitely play it again. I would recommend this to anyone who loves birds or resource management/ engine building games.
Wingspan is an engine building game that has you trying to collect birds to obtain victory points. Each bird requires different food and habitat. Finding a way to maximize your resources and obtaining the birds you need makes this a very strategic game, but not overly complicated to learn. The theme really came out with the dice tower bird house, egg tokens that look like the colored Easter egg candies you can get at the store. What really showed the extra mile that was taken to show the theme was all the unique birds on the cards. These cards showed the habitat, what they ate, what area of the world they are from and an interesting fact about the bird. For example, did you know the Turkey Vulture defends itself by projectile vomiting on its possible attacker. This is but only one interesting bird fact you will learn from playing Wingspan.
Everyone in our group enjoyed it and would definitely play it again. I would recommend this to anyone who loves birds or resource management/ engine building games.
Gizmos is all about making the best machine for the Great Science Fair. You will be collecting marbles of 4 energy types to help you add new attachments to your machine. This machine is also your engine builder for the game and as you improve it, the bigger a combo you can make. At the end of the game whoever made the best machine and received the most victory points wins the game. The marble mechanic is similar to another CMON game called Potion Explosion. I am pretty sure they used the same marbles for both games. The difference is that you only have one row of marbles and can only select one from the row. Your engine will allow you to grab more marbles and even random marbles from inside the marble machine.
Gizmos felt like Potion Explosion to me and I think I liked this one slightly more. While I enjoyed Gizmos, I was not craving to play it again. Gizmos is a fun game that would work well with families.
Gizmos felt like Potion Explosion to me and I think I liked this one slightly more. While I enjoyed Gizmos, I was not craving to play it again. Gizmos is a fun game that would work well with families.
Stone Age is one of the original worker placement games and this anniversary edition adds a new winter difficulty to the game. I have previously played Stone Age online, but have never played a physical copy before the convention. Everyone else in my group had never played Stone Age before, so we decided to play the regular version instead of winter difficulty.
Stone Age is all about being the best in the village. You will send workers to get resources, enhance their farm, improve your tools and even shack up to make new workers. I see why some many enjoy Stone Age and also use it as an introduction to worker placement games. Stone Age is fairly easy to learn, but has many different strategies to victory.
I would gladly play this again and would love to own the anniversary edition. I would recommend this to worker placement lovers and those trying to get their friends into a worker placement game for the first time.
Stone Age is all about being the best in the village. You will send workers to get resources, enhance their farm, improve your tools and even shack up to make new workers. I see why some many enjoy Stone Age and also use it as an introduction to worker placement games. Stone Age is fairly easy to learn, but has many different strategies to victory.
I would gladly play this again and would love to own the anniversary edition. I would recommend this to worker placement lovers and those trying to get their friends into a worker placement game for the first time.
Aegis promoted itself as combining robot combat. We played 2 vs 2 for our match. Cyko and I were against Mitchell and our friend Dave who joined us on Thursday. Each player has 5 mechs that they use to defeat the other players or in our case team. Aegis proved to be fairly easy to learn and managing your energy is key. Your energy is your movement, attack, and combining ability. When mech is taken out, you reduce your max energy. If both players are reduced to 5 or less, you win. You can also win by knocking out all your opponents mechs. This is most likely case if they combined. The mechs on your team can combine in different ways such as your A mech and your EG mech can combine into a AEG mech. Getting your combiner mech out on the board is fun and while sacrificing some energy and HP, you gain so much power. Aegis is just fun knocking the crap out of each other fun. Highlight for me was using all my energy to knock out another player's combiner in one turn. The move was called final uppercut or something like that. Basically I sliced him in half with an upward sword cut.
While our intro game was fairly simple, I can see where learning the various mechs and combinations could make things way more strategic. I would like to get a chance to play this more. I am a big mech fan so I may be a bit biased.
While our intro game was fairly simple, I can see where learning the various mechs and combinations could make things way more strategic. I would like to get a chance to play this more. I am a big mech fan so I may be a bit biased.
Coimbra had been on my short list of games I really wanted to play this weekend and I was glad I got the chance. Coimbra is nice mix of dice drafting, set collecting, card drafting and route navigation. Each round dice will be rolled and players will draft 3 dice each. Depending on the number and which card spot will determine your priority for picking a card that will provide benefits and also have a set collection aspect. Depending on the dice color and card abilities, you will navigate on the map and place tokens on locations that provides rewards. The dice colors will also provide you income or other benefits depending on the track representing that color.
I really liked how Coimbra used the dice in various ways to make you think hard on which die you chose. Do you go for the color you want, or a number for card picking prioritization. This is but one of times you will need to think hard to make the best decision. I really enjoyed it and hope to add it to my collection some day.
I really liked how Coimbra used the dice in various ways to make you think hard on which die you chose. Do you go for the color you want, or a number for card picking prioritization. This is but one of times you will need to think hard to make the best decision. I really enjoyed it and hope to add it to my collection some day.
Azul Stained Glass (SG) is the second in the Azul line. I really enjoyed the original Azul and was curious to see what Azul SG did differently. Instead of 5x5 tile square in Azul, Azul SG has double sided columns with 5 spots on each side. These spots are already colored to show which glass pieces go in each slot. Azul SG maintained the same drafting of tiles/glass pieces. This time you will place your pieces immediately in their spot. The tough part is that you have to place where your Glazier meeple is located. You can move your Glazier to the a different column as long as it is to the right of the Glazier. The problem is when your Glazier is at the end of your columns and you see all those shinny blue glass tokens ready to be taken for your first row. Before you can grab them, you have to take a turn to have your Glazier go back to the first column. Scoring is a bit different with extra points added for completing both sides of 2 side by side columns. Also depending on what column you complete will also net you more points as well. I found the scoring to be simpler than Azul and I enjoyed this one more. The glass tiles look like Vicks Cough Drops. I would love to trade my copy of Azul for Azul SG because I enjoyed it more and also I have 3 friends that already own Azul.
War Chest was a game I had heard a lot of talk about on Facebook and Board Game Geek, so I was real curious about this title. War Chest is a Chess like game that has players fighting to control 6 specially marked locations on a grid. Each player will get 4 different poker chip classes that will provide different abilities. You will be pulling coins from your bag and performing either an action for that coin type on the board, buying a new coin, bolstering that unit or adding that unit coin to the board. You can only have 1 of each coin type on the board. When a coin is defeated it goes back into the chest reducing your total coins for that unit. Ultimately if you only have the unit coin on the board and no other coins of that type, you can no longer do anything with that unit coin. War Chest was my biggest disappointment of Geekway. Cyko and I both agreed that it was way to easy for one person to get momentum and steam roll to victory. War Chest just didn't do much for me but maybe others see something I am missing. The poker chips were nice.
New Frontiers was Cyko's most wanted game to play at Geekway to the West. We both have played Race for the Galaxy and Roll for the Galaxy a lot. The best way to describe New Frontiers is a more streamlined and easier to learn Race for the Galaxy. Don't worry most of the icons are still there. This was actually really easy to learn because we have played the previous versions. The big difference with New Frontiers from RftG is how you pay for technology and planets. You use the income from selling goods and any bonuses from technologies to play for everything instead of cards. The game ends when either a player fills up their technology or planet spots on their board. Scoring is like the others in the series. I prefer this new version to Race for the Galaxy and I feel Roll for the Galaxy is different enough to stand on it's own. I actually won this from the Play to Win library, but traded it to Cyko for the next game that he actually won in the Play to Win library. We got lucky and 3 of us won Play to Win games.
Teotihuacan was the game I most wanted to play at Geekway. I am very glad I did, as I really enjoyed it. Teotihuacan is almost impossible to pronounce and I never heard the same pronunciation twice from anyone at the convention. Teotihuacan is an odd combination Rondel and worker placement. Your workers will be going around the board and performing actions depending on their location. You can have up to 4 workers on the board at one time and having more than one at a location will increase the strength of the action you can perform. This can mean more resources, building more steps to the pyramid or other actions. What is neat about Teotihuacan, is the pyramid actually physically being built in the middle of the board with tiles. so by the end of the game you will have a completed pyramid.
I highly enjoyed Teotihuacan for the complexity and smoothness of the play. Teotihuacan can be a real brain burner at times but still a great time. As I previously mentioned Cyko won this in the Play to Win library and I traded him for this. Ultimately we almost always play together so it didn't matter who got what. Either way I am happy to come away with this game at the end of the convention.
I highly enjoyed Teotihuacan for the complexity and smoothness of the play. Teotihuacan can be a real brain burner at times but still a great time. As I previously mentioned Cyko won this in the Play to Win library and I traded him for this. Ultimately we almost always play together so it didn't matter who got what. Either way I am happy to come away with this game at the end of the convention.
I am a big fan of Alexander Pfister's previous games and I was excited to try out Blackout Hong Kong. This was Mitchell's game he wanted to try out the most. Blackout HK seemed to take some mechanics from his previous games like Mombasa's picking up a whole card row when you need to add something back into your hand. Each round 3 dice (red, blue, yellow) will be rolled and each die has different resources the various faces of the die. You will then play specialist cards from your hand into 3 different columns. (a fourth can be added via upgrade) You will place 1 card in each column. The color of the specialist will tell you which die you will get resources from and how many. These resources will be used to get new specialists and complete missions. This will help you can expand into Hong Kong to help restore power. In the end, the player with the most victory points wins.
We had an odd thing happen during our game where we ended up rolling the rarest resource each time and had trouble getting the easiest resource for our die rolls. This one started out rough, but by the end of the game we all really enjoyed it and wanted to play it again. Would definitely recommend this if you are a fan of his previous games like Mombasa and Great Western Trail.
We had an odd thing happen during our game where we ended up rolling the rarest resource each time and had trouble getting the easiest resource for our die rolls. This one started out rough, but by the end of the game we all really enjoyed it and wanted to play it again. Would definitely recommend this if you are a fan of his previous games like Mombasa and Great Western Trail.
Battle for Rokugan was our last Play to Win game that we got to play for the convention. Battle for Rokugan is a area control game similar to Rising Sun. Everyone has the same unit/action tokens except for their factions add 1 extra of one of the better tokens. Each faction had their special power. Mine for example was that I win ties. Each round players would draw up to 6 tiles and 1 at a time add them to the board face down. You can add them to a border to invade, ninjas can just attack any location and don't need to be placed on a border. There are also raid and peace tokens that will either burn an area so no one owns it ever again or make it an area that can not be attacked ever again, but that you still own. You can place a tie face down incorrectly to bluff another player into bolstering their defense in the area. The game ends after 5 rounds and points are totaled by areas you control and also the end game goal card you have. Our buddy Dave got his first ever board game victory by demolishing us in it. No one else was even close. I am pretty sure I threatened to murder Mitchell's future children and wife if he attacked me and he did. He resorted to making threats at me and well Cyko started to look strong so we called a truce and attacked him. All to Dave's benefit. We have a fun time, I would prefer to play Rising Sun or Blood Rage than this. Cyko really didn't like it, but these type of games are not his cup of tea.
Sunday when the play to win library was closed and winners were announced, we sat to play our final game of the show. Western Legends has been on my must play list since it's release last year. I finally got to play it and it was awesome! Western Legends is a sandbox game, which basically means you can do what you want in the game. Each player is given a historical character from the old west. Players can hunt down criminals, be criminals, be cattle ranchers, poker players or miners. Most will be a mix of most these, but you can play how you want. Almost everything is done with a deck of poker cards. The number/jack-ace of the deck is used to determine the strength of a gun fight. You will also use the poker cards for special actions, reactions, or bonuses that are printed on each card. Finally you will use them to actually play a hand of Texas Hold'em. I found it all entertaining and saw so many different ways I wanted to try to play. Cyko went almost completely poker, Mitchell went complete criminal and I took the lawman role. Mitchell seemed to be running away with it as he was a great robber, even ironically after he deposited gold at that same bank. Cyko was catching up by playing poker but was having horrible luck with the cards. I started off extremely slow, but made up a 10 point last turn that gave me the victory. This was my game of the convention and I could see it moving into my top 5 games overall. I have ordered Western Legends and look forward to playing it all.
Geekway to the West 2019 was a great time. We might not have played as many games compared to prior Geekways, but the quality was higher than the previous years. Each of us said that at least 7 of the games could have been our game of the show. That was how good the games were. Next year we are bringing more friends for more fun. Hope to see you there.
Mitchell having a great time and proving it with gun fingers
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