What I Hope to Play at BGG.CON 2014

I will return to BGG.CON this year, and I get to bring a friend this time! Yes, Julie will join me for the first time! This will be my ninth visit. Of course Jim will be joining, but sadly not Jill :-(. I screwed up my hotel reservation early on (booked the prior weekend) so we are staying a short walk away at the Grand Hyatt.

I looked over my backlog of games I've been wanting to play and cherry picked a few to propose to play at the convention this year. I'm usually not eager to play the new hotness from Essen so many of these are from past years.

  • Navegador (2010) -- I like most of the Mac Gerdts games and generally love the rondel mechanic. This was a big hit back at BGG.CON 2010.
  • Letters from Whitechapel (2011) -- Looks like a great deduction / chase game and is very highly regarded even three years after publication.
  • Village (2011) -- Classic Euro worker placement. Jim and I will have to be convinced to learn this vs. playing our classic BGG mainstay Pillars of the Earth.
  • Empire Express (2012) -- I know Jim used to play a lot of crayon rail games and I've played twice. It always seemed a bit long and tiresome, but I love the core mechanisms. I'd like to see if this express version hits the mark.
  • Terra Mystica (2012) -- This game is ranked #2 on BGG and I still haven't tried it... don't think Jim has either. Gotta try it.
  • Bruges (2013) -- I've played many of the Stefan Feld dice games and have enjoyed them all, so looking forward to trying this release from last year.
  • Russian Railroads (2013) -- Several folks in my game group say this was the best release in 2013 and... I haven't played it yet. Worker placement with railroads, so I'm in. Jim and I wanted to play last year but had a hard time finding an open table.
  • Castles of Mad King Ludwig (2014) -- One of the new hot games that I want to try. I think it might be in high demand in the hot games area so I suspect you'll see this on my list again next year.
  • Alchemists (2014) -- Ditto for this game. Might be in high demand.
  • Nations: the Dice Game (2014) -- Love Nations the board game, hoping I'll like the dice game.
  • Red7 (2014) -- This is one of the Essen release card games that I think Julie will like. Hopefully it will be in the library.
  • CUBIST (2014) -- This is an Essen release abstract game that has you building structures with dice that you roll first. Looks like fun and very cool to look at.

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