Airecon 2024 – Day 2
I’m back home after 3 days of gaming at Airecon. I didn’t hang around the last day so consider this my last update from the convention. I am going to dive into some of the games I played more in First Thoughts and Review pieces over the coming months. Without further ado!
After another excellent breakfast at Baltzersen’s Tim headed up to check out the room for a talk he was giving on the history of card games. I had agreed to attend a Dodo tournament first thing and so set out to do just that. Dodo is this lovely kids game where an ball with a sort of weeble device in it rolls slowly down a mountain. The players have to find the correct pieces to build planks to stop the egg from just falling off the mountain, eventually getting it to the bottom and sailing away successfully. To find the pieces you roll a dice, turn over a piece, if it matches you put it on the plank. Enough pieces, plank is built. It gets harder as you get to the bottom so it is a race against time as the egg wibble wobbles down the path.
My partner Ben and I did not do very well in the first round but it was a lot of fun regardless. Being quickly eliminated meant that I could head to Tim’s talk however and I managed to get to it just as it started. I knew Tim is an enthusiastic speaker on his subjects of choice and that was no different here. He started with the Japanese Hanafuda decks and then built up the history of how we got to those decks. He covered the spread of cards in Europe and, early Chinese expressions of the form as well as many variations from India, Iran, Spain and more. It was a great talk that was well received. If you get a chance to see him talk, I urge you to do so.
Our commitments out of the way, Tim and I camped out on a table and dived into some gaming goodness. My first game of day 2 was technically Hardback as I played it past midnight but I’ve already mentioned that in yesterday’s report. We kicked off with a teach of Flamecraft. We were joined by Ava Foxfort who I greatly admired from her tabletop criticism work. Tim’s friends Rachel and Kieran also joined us and I set about showing them this lovely cozy game of helpful dragons.
Next up was Newsboys that I played a couple of times. Once with Ava and Tim and then with Ava and two of their friends called Doug and Rosie. I didn’t get any pics of this one unfortunately. Newsboys is a roll & write themed around being the kids who sold newspapers on street corners in Brooklyn around 1890. You have to balance extending your network with filling out areas for bonuses, and striking enough to get a proper pay day when it comes round. The core of the game involved flipping a card and rolling some dice to give you different numbers of symbols that represented areas on the map. You can then take one of those symbols you rolled and mark things up the number of times that symbol appears on cards and dice. It was a compelling puzzle and a lovely production, but I don’t think it is out over here yet.
Tim hadn’t played High Society before, so we knocked out a quick game of that before grabbing some lunch. That game has found its way into my con bag as it is just so good to take out and play at a moment’s notice.
Having popped to the game library we ended up playing Tiny Towns. The others hadn’t played it before but I had and I warned them that although it looked cozy you would be swearing at each other in a few turns time. My prediction was true but it was a blast to play. Rachel turned out to be a fabulous city planner and absolutely destroyed us.
With Rachel and Kieran heading off to do other things Ava showed Tim and I how to play Wind the Film. This was an utter brain burner and probably my game of the con. It’s going to be a little hard to describe but I will take a shot. There are 6 suits of cards with numbers from 1-12. On you turn you pick up one, two, or three cards from the columns in the middle of the table. You can only pick up from a single row, and must start from the outer edges. You add these cards to your 5 card hand at the front of that hand. Your hand can never be rearranged. But.
Here comes the odd bit. You then ‘wind the film’ by moving one card forward as far as you want from the back of your hand to the front. Now you have to play as many cards as you picked up leaving you with 5. What you are trying to do is play cards in a sequence, either ascending or descending, with each card being no more than 3 numbers apart. Every card you successfully play in a given suit will increase your points at the end, but if you go to far out of sequence, cards will get turned facedown deducting points.
The game is also called “Photograph” and I will be trying to track down a copy as soon as I can. It’s focused, beautifully presented, and an utter joy/nightmare to play. The right kind of joy/nightmare.
Rachel and Kieran joined us again for a quick game of Turncoats before we broke for a spot of dinner. The food trucks that Airecon provided kept me well fed over the course of the convention. After dinner Tim and I played a couple of two player games in the form of Wonder Tales from Button Shy and Forest Shuffle. I enjoyed both and I can see why folk have been so enthusiastic about Forest Shuffle. It has a compelling core mechanism and lots of opportunities to optimise in different ways. I won but only by a single point!
Ava joined Tim and I for some Makaifuda after getting dinner. This was a don’t follow trick taking game of underground monster fight club? It was a very odd game where you had to predict who was going to win then manipulate the outcome via the trick taking. I honestly don’t know what to make of it but would like to play some more.
Sam and Doug who we had played games with previously joined us for a bit of Caldera Park while Ava was away. This was a charming game of tile laying and pattern creation as you place large groups of animals and connect them via watering holes. There is a lot to consider for placing but it was very straightforward and a fun puzzle. It didn’t blow me away but it was a pleasant game to play.
The last game of the day was another of my favourites of the con. Doug and Sam had brought Broom Service with them. This is an early Alexander Pfister game that is sadly out of print. If you have seen Kiki’s Delivery Service, it is basically that but in game form. You are witches, flying around and delivering potions. You do this by selecting 1 of 4 cards you have chosen from a deck of options and choosing the brave or cowardly version of the action on the card. Cowardly you just get to do. The Brave version is worth more but if someone else round the table has the same card and also takes the brave action you get to do nothing. This sounds odd and not very interesting but it is absolutely delicious. The slight bluffing element brings a really spicy twist to a sort of pickup and deliver core. I had an absolute blast playing it and may seek out a copy.
I loved my time at Airecon 2024. I made new friends, experienced new games, and hung out with really interesting folk. Huge thanks to everyone who played games with me: Rachel, Kieran, 2 different people called Doug, Rosie, Mosiah, 2 different people called Phil, and Sam.
Special thanks to Ava Foxfort and my main convention buddy Tim Clare. Tim I had interviewed before but it was great to get to spend some gaming time with him and chat about a wide range of topics. Ava is a force to be reckoned with and I am sure whatever she does next will be worth your time. It was lovely to get to chat to her about the games, and other subjects, she is passionate about. I enjoyed her company greatly and we had some great smack talk across the games we played together.
I spend a lot of time looking at the seedier side of the industry through Brainwaves. The hobby of playing tabletop games though, is not the industry behind it. Events like this remind me of that and reinforce my belief that games are one of the best ways of bringing humans together. For a moment we can forget our troubles, and turn the cogs of the puzzle in front of us. We can curse our opponents, high five their success, and raise our arms in triumph. These are moments of emotion and revelation that are gifted to us by talented designers, publishers, and artists. How can we say no to such generosity?
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