Southern Board Game Fest (“SoBo”) 2025!
When I walked in to Bradly’s office for the first time ten years ago, carrying Steam Park, and sat down with Bradly and Bryan and Eric to play Dead of Winter while chatting about future trips to GENCON and Dice Tower Con, I would have never guessed that ten years later our little community would be hosting our fifth (almost) annual Southern Board Game Fest.
Last month, dozens of volunteers from south Louisiana hosted 250 gamers from Iowa to Iowa (Louisiana residents will get that joke) to play games, tell stories, shop the vendor hall, playtest some brand new games, and try the hottest cardboard creations from Essen and GEN CON. We moved this year’s SoBo to the Lafayette Downtown Convention Center, a private facility just two blocks east of Jefferson Street, the heart of downtown.
Thanks to some awesome sponsors like Techneaux, and some very caring publishers and industry friends like GameToppers LLC, Fight In A Box, Flatout Games, Weird Giraffe Games, and Talon Strikes (and more!), we sold out of every badge available at the new facility with weeks to spare. Plus, we even sold out our day tickets, too!
But my convention started on Thursday evening. My wife and I enjoyed a birthday feast with my good friends, Patrick & Cindy Newman, along with SneauxBunny, at one of our favorite local restaurants, Social. Cindy turned 29.5, and we celebrated with some amazing food and lots and lots of laughs. It was a perfect start for SoBo!
On Friday, I met up with the Newmans and the Newman — John Newman, that is, director of the festival. Along with Logan and Marshall and a host of other volunteers, we got the SoBo board game library loaded up and headed to the convention center. The facility was new to me, so it took a little while getting used to it.
We set up a main room for open gaming and the vendor hall, a dedicated space in the back for our scheduled playthroughs (which I lovingly nicknamed “The Dungeon” because the main lighting system got knocked out before the con), and plenty of space for a food truck specializing in Cajun cuisine. We even had an area for our GeauxPub section which was hugely popular all weekend.
With so many volunteers, the set up was a breeze, and so we started playing. Jerod and the Newmans played Cities with me, a great little tile laying city builder from our friend, Dr. Steve Finn, and Phil Walker-Harding.
We only had the center until 8p, so we had plans to hit a local pizza brew pub, but a huge rain storm chased us all to our houses and hotels. Luckily for me, Andrew Bucholtz from NOLA arrived, so we headed to the office with the Newmans to play Distilled, so that he could practice his spiel for the guided playthrough he was scheduled to do.
Distilled is a game that is really growing on me. As I told Logan, who owns the game, it was a game I liked during the first play but I am beginning to love it. It’s quick, it’s thematic, and it has the coolest little push-your-luck mechanism that really appeals to me. Glad I got to play it again.
Jerod met up with us at the Gumbo Pot bright and early, and we played a few rounds of The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game. I was expecting another ho-hum variant on The Crew, but I was wrong. This thing is VERY thematic and very well designed. Each player grabs one of the famous characters from the books, and cooperatively tries to win whatever goals have been set. Trading cards among the players is tied to the storyline, too. This is definitely going on the “to buy” pile for Christmas gifts for Matt and Jack, my two LOTR obsessed sons.
And then we were off to the festival. It was great seeing my friends from BGG Con like Nick & Carla Kopp from Weird Giraffe Games and Woody & Adam from Hutchu Games arrive. I didn’t get to play with the Hutch Games group, but I did watch a couple of playtests of their brand new game, Playground Empires designed by our very own Sterling Birdwell from Lafayette. Expect to see that coming out on crowdfunding later this year and we will definitely stream a play.
I did get to play Pacific Paisley, a new tile laying game from Carla that should be hitting Kickstarter soon. We are laying down various sizes of paisley-shaped animal tiles, trying to create little habitats in the ocean to score points. It’s gorgeous and has some cool puzzly bits for scoring. I really enjoyed it.
Next, I played two small box games. I taught Duck & Cover (I ended up teaching and playing it four times during the convention), which was a big hit with a big group that included Andrew and Rob and Dave Dugas. I also played Longboard with Mitchell and my friend Stephanie Stratton. Longboard is a Reiner Knizia card game from 25th Century Games that to me is an excellent three or four player version of Lost Cities.
Andrew Bucholtz loves cube rail games even more than I do, and he brought Gulf, Mobile & Ohio and was ready to teach. Sure, it might have the worst name in board gaming, but this is an excellent twist on the genre. We had a full five player game with Corey and the Newmans, and I like the fact that the train companies can share the same color tracks, which seems confusing but makes a lot of sense on the table. I also loved how there were tons of different companies to invest in. Great game!
For lunch, Rob and I walked outside to the food truck/trailer and grabbed some awesome jambalaya. Cousin Joe’s was the name, and Joe can cook up some mean chicken-and-pork jamablaya. I hit the food truck two or three times during the weekend! It was a great upgrade to our previous experience of having no food at the convention (although I did miss just walking down to the Festival Acadiens Et Creole for music and food as in past festivals.)
Jerod and I taught Rob two new games: A War of Whispers (with JoJo) and Amalfi: Renaissance (with Jeremy). A War of Whispers is like playing a game as Little Finger from Game of Thrones — you are behind the scenes string-pullers, scoring points for your hidden factions on an area control board. Amalfi: Renaissance is still amazing. If you like “extend your turn” tableau builders like Tapestry, you will love Amalfi especially in this gorgeous version. Both of these games are hidden gems that everyone should play.
My only disappointment of the day was our play of Andromeda’s Edge. It was an excellent teach from JoJo, but I was pretty distracted with some things I needed to do for the convention at the time, and visiting with people as we gamed on the beautiful GameToppers LLC table and mat that Logan brought. It didn’t help that I lost eight of the nine space battles I started! I’ll chalk up my so-so experience to the distractions, and I’ll try to play it again.
Finally, we ended with three lighter games. Jerod and I played Sunrise at the Studio, by Edo Baraff and Steve Finn, with our friend Carla. This was on my list of play-to-wins (we gave out 65+ games at the festival!) and it was as good as advertised. I need to get a copy for myself! I also finally got to play Belratti, a fun little take on Dixit where players are divided into teams trying to sniff out fake art in an auction, and Bunny Kingdom, which I have had on my Shelf of Opportunity for a while. I’d give all three games two thumbs up.
And then it was on to Sunday, the final day of the convention. Of course, we started early again, this time with a game of Aqua Gardens with Rob, Jerod and Andrew in the Gumbo Pot. (We should have streamed it!) Andrew kicked our butts with one of the best scores I’ve ever seen in that game. That game is always a hit, and I have to thank Woody from Hutchu for tracking down a copy for me. Thanks Woody!
We drove back to the center, and right away jumped into a cool game. Jerod brought Iwari, one of his favorite area majority games. We played a full game with Rob and JoJo and Doug, and not only is this a show stopping game on the table (many people came by to check it out), but it is always a close duel that has a lot of tension as you score up the second round.
Logan and I played We’re Sinking! with Dave Dooooogas’s brother Jesse, and surprisingly, I enjoyed it a lot. It is one of those “cooperative ’til it’s not” games with a humongous toy factor as the ship sinks. Games like this, when done right I.e. breezy and with not too much rules overhead, can be a lot of fun at a convention.
After the game, I ran into Jason and Donna Dinger, and they told me that they had a blast teaching The Acadians and Fromage. Fromage was a very popular game at the convention, and it was also good hearing how close The Acadians is to finally hitting retail from Spielworxx Games. Keep an eye out for this final link in the Cajun Trilogy.
Patrick Newman had promised to teach me Clank Catacombs, the dungeon crawl version of one of my favorite games. It was as good as advertised. I really like what Catacombs brings to the universe, making the exploration way more fun. I guess the puzzle part is better if you can see the whole board as in the original Clank! but I may try to find a copy for myself because I liked the thrill of exploring new tiles.
After another round of Duck & Cover, this time with the Slidell krewe (Jayson, Chad and D-Rock), I taught Creature Caravan to the Newmans. What a gorgeous little card tableau game from Red Raven Games! This was my first non-two-player game of it, and I think three players might be the sweet spot because it creates just enough competition for the zombie and trading boards.
The last big game for me was Shackleton Base: A Journey to the Moon, designed by Fabio Lopiano and Nestore Mangone. A new edition is coming soon from Pandasaurus (thankfully, because this has been hard to get), and I wanted to try-before-I-buy. I’ll admit, I did not understand a thing about this game until the third era, and by that time, it was too late to catch up to the others. But, I understood enough to want to play again soon.
I call Shackleton Base the “reverse SETI” because just like in SETI, there are some additions to each game that make it different. In SETI, it’s the random aliens that surprise you about halfway through as you discover the alien tech. In Shackleton Base, we lay out three different companies each game, and although they don’t change the game as much as SETI, you still need to account for what they do. I’m ready to try it again.
And that was a wrap on Southern Board Game Fest 2025! I played twenty different games, including ten new-to-me games. But even better than playing the games was the joy of catching up with old friends and making new ones along the way. I cannot wait for SoBo 2026!
Until next time…or until SoBo….laissez les bon temps rouler!
— BJ from Board Game Gumbo
** Complimentary copies of many of the games discussed were provided by the publishers. **