Southern Board Game Fest, Day One Recap
Thirty-six hours have passed since the low hum and din faded away, and yet, I still feel the last lingering buzz of excitement from Southern Board Game Fest. I say this every year, I suppose, but this SoBo was my favorite yet.
Southern Board Game Fest is an annual (very loosely defined, of course) board game convention in south Louisiana that raises money for New Hope Foundation, a mentoring service in our town for under-privileged and at-risk youth. SoBo itself is entirely volunteer led, and this year was excellently captained by Mitchell Prudhomme, my frequent co-host on our Lagniappe series of podcasts. Mitchell and Logan breathed some fresh air into SoBo, empowering the volunteers to “plus up” the Festival (a nod to Uncle Walt).
We added a few cool new events and supercharged our GeauxPub section. But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, aren’t I? Let’s start with Friday, traditionally just a set up day, but this time an actual full day of gaming (if by full I mean six hours or so).
After set up was complete — and thanks again to all the volunteers who showed up to help — we went right into the gaming. First up for me was a penny rail game called appropriately, Penny Rails, by Travis Hill and Button Shy Games. It’s an 18 card take-off of a cube rail game, and my buddy Andrew Bucholtz gave one excellent teach. I love cube rails games, but this one missed the mark for me, only because the cards themselves are a little fiddly in terms of connecting the routes. I get the appeal as it is essentially a cube rail game in your jacket pocket, but I think I’d rather play the bigger versions.
Next up for me was the amazing The Yellow House, published by 25th Century Games. It’s a two-player trick taking game set in Provence, where players recreate the classic art arguments between Gaudin and Van Gogh as to what is most important for art. The designer, Geonil, has a knack for these two player experiences, and so far, this has been my favorite. I’ve talked about it a lot, so my friend Gordon wanted to learn it. We did not have time to finish, because I had a big event, but I could see that he really enjoyed our first round or two.
That big event? The first annual Unmatched tournament, courtesy of our friends at Restoration Games who sponsored some promo cards to give out to all participants and the final four winners. I was so worried about the lack of interest, with only four or five people signed up for the weeks leading up to SoBo, and then pleasantly surprised when 15 people signed up the week of the event, with a handful more showing up at the tourney. I will have a separate blog post wrapping up the tourney, but thanks to Jerod, Doug, Andrew and Bradly for contributing to the smooth running. In two hours, we had sixteen gamers compete using 32 different characters (out of a possible 52 that I brought) until we crowned Ethan (playing Alice exclusively) the big winner.
With the tourney done, it was time for a few more games. Since Bradly was in town, and Andrew had his Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring trick taking game with him, we decided to play some more scenarios. I have played — literally, not figuratively — hundreds of games of The Crew and its sequel, but as much as I like The Crew, I think I would much rather prefer playing the Lord of the Rings version. We played two more scenarios, although I botched one pretty badly on the last turn so we replayed it, and it is as good as I remembered from last year’s SoBo. This one is definitely going on the “to-buy” list, because my two sons love LOTR and card games so it would be fun to play together with them.
After that, I wandered around the SoBo festival hall for a bit. In years past, we would normally have only a dozen or so people playing games. Of course, the festival did not usually start until Saturday, so that was probably the reason. But now that we officially opened up on Friday, it was amazing to see the gaming hall almost completely fill up.
We had dozens and dozens of gamers from all across the south (Austin, Dallas, south Texas, Tampa to name a few areas) enjoying the access to the library and the early access to our play-to-win section. I saw Magical Athlete being played a lot, as well a few games of Kites, which would be a tough game for me to play late on a Friday!
Instead of breaking out our usual heavy euro, Andrew Bucholtz and I roped in some gamers for two lighter games: Cabanga! and Spires. Cabanga! has officially joined the list of card games that I like to play at the end of the night, games where you have a chance to laugh and talk smack without taxing your brain to much. I’m thinking of games like No Thanks! or Scout or Fuji Flush, or maybe even Wine Cellar. It was the first opportunity to play the game for the entire table (Marshall from the SoBo library, Nate the Great from our old Anubis gaming days, Sagan the former SoBo director and head of Jet Coffee game nights, Andrew and myself), and there were definitely some laugh out loud moments. I don’t even remember who won. Maybe we were all winners because we played Cabanga together!
Finally, to close out the night, Andrew taught us Spires, a card game from TC Petty. I scrunched my eyes a bit during the explanation, because frankly it did not sound like much fun at all. Then, we started playing, and hoo boy, did I enjoy that one. The goal seems almost impossible; you are trying to collect cards but not taking more than three in any suit, and you don’t always seem to have control over what cards come your way. But then, there are ways to mitigate the collection, and frankly, there was just enough crunch and just enough back-stabbing to be a great end of the night experience. I would definitely play that one again.
That’s the wrap up from our day one at SoBo. I’ll post the second and third days soon, along with some interesting info on our game library check outs and hot games. Until next time, laissez les bon temps rouler!
— BJ from Board Game Gumbo