Bottoscon 2024 Retrospective

Once again in November I was able to attend Bottoscon, the largest wargaming convention in the Pacific Northwest. This year, they managed to get over 150 attendees, which is amazing considering that when they began 18 years ago, they had 32 attendees.

The convention is run by Rob Bottos, a prominent wargamer, and a cohort of other people who help keep the con organized and well-run, solving problems and making sure that everybody is having a good time.

It helps that I’m good friends with two of them!

The convention is in beautiful New Westminster, British Columbia, right along the Fraser River at the Inn at the Quay.

While the convention started as a wargaming convention, “regular” board games have assumed a bigger space as time has gone on.

This year, there were even some RPGs! Which I wasn’t aware of until it was mentioned in another blog post.

Wargames were still quite prominent, though.

Just like last year, the con was a 4-day convention, running Thursday – Saturday, November 7-10 (though Thursday had limited tickets available) and it was a very long, but very satisfying convention.

I wasn’t as tired as last year, though probably because I stayed at the hotel Friday and Saturday night so I had no travel time.

I’m going to go through the four days and talk about all of the many games I played: 24 total plays of 20 games!

And a bunch of new to me games, so I won’t go into great detail about them.

I’ll save that for my New to Me games post in early December.

Just like last year, the lighting was terrible for taking good pictures, so pardon the shadows!

These were taken on the fly.

Also, I’m not going to detail when we took lunch and dinner breaks, but this year the Boathouse restaurant (attached to the hotel) offered tableside service for lunch and dinner on Friday and Saturday so you didn’t even have to leave your table.

And you could get beer!

I took advantage of that on Friday, so it was non-stop gaming, but Saturday we walked over to the River Market and had some food there.

A chicken burrito from the Mexican food place and Chinese Sausage and Fried Rice from another restaurant, both were to die for!

It was also nice to just get outside for a bit.

But I did enjoy my beer on Friday night. That was a rare treat.

With that, let’s begin!

I got there early on Thursday morning, and ran into my friend Richie (one of the staff) who had brought this cute little card game called Star Trek: Lower Decks – Buffer Time: the Card Game (wow, that’s a lot of colons).

He invited me and my friend Cat (who had also showed up with her husband, though her husband was already in a scheduled game) to try the game out for him and tell him how it was.

It was…not great. At least as a 2-player game.

You’re trying to complete job assignments while also doing some secondary tasks, all while trying to avoid your officer bosses.

It’s a bit of push your luck and a bit of…I don’t even know how to describe it.

But with only two players, there are not a lot of cards to play.

Richie wasn’t disappointed though. He only bought it because he loves the show anyway.

We never did get a chance to play it with more players to see if it would help.

It probably wouldn’t, though.

By the time we were done, some more people showed up so it was time for a classic!

Roll for the Galaxy is the dice game version of Race for the Galaxy, and for me it’s preferable.

We actually got two games of this in (with a couple of different people switching out) and while I pushed the endgame in Game 1 (and ended up losing badly), I was more patient getting VP chips in Game 2 and pulled out the win!

In Game 1, I focused more on getting planets and developments out, and there were a lot of cheap ones.

Not conducive to getting points!

I learned my lesson, though.

The next game that came out, thanks to us sitting around waiting for others to show up so we wanted to get a quick game in, was Bang! The Dice Game.

I’ve played Bang! before and found it a bit too long for what it is, considering there is player elimination.

Bang! The Dice Game just flew by and was a blast the whole time.

We played two games of it and I was the Renegade both times, which made it very hard for me to win.

And I didn’t.

But I love the dice-rolling mechanic and the laughs as players collect arrows and are riddled with bullets.

The expansion we played with in the second game adds other ways you can get rid of arrows, and you can either play it safe and try to heal or be brash and annoying, possibly doing a lot of damage but possibly taking a lot of damage yourself.

This was a fun one.

After that was one of my favourite card games, Scout.

I can’t believe this game is 5 years old already!

This is an amazing card-shedding game where you are playing runs or sets down onto the table that others then have to try and beat. Or they can “scout” and take one of the cards on the table (giving you a Scout token). Which will make what’s left easier to beat.

The trick is that when you are dealt your cards, you can’t change the order of them. You can just flip your entire hand.

Going around until somebody runs out of cards. That person gets a point for every card they’ve taken (by beating what’s on the table) and every Scout token they have.

All other players get the same, but then they lose one point for each card still in their hand.

Loads of fun.

As you can see, Thursday was a day for light and relatively quick games, and that didn’t change later.

We next brought out Fantastic Factories, another of my favourite games.

This is just such an amazing dice-rolling and placement game, trying to get your engine going by building factories to produce goods, or maybe buildings that will help mitigate your dice or give you resources.

I linked to my review of the game above, so I won’t ramble on more about it, but suffice to say that this is always a highlight of any day that I play it.

Then came a very quick game of one of my Boardgame Arena staples, Can’t Stop, the push your luck dice game where you are trying to fill three tracks.

I never win this one at the table for some reason, though I’m not bad on BGA.

I guess I just roll badly.

But it’s always a blast!

Cover your A$$ets is a card game where you are trying to collect stuff and steal other people’s stuff!

This is always a fun time with a lot of laughs.

There’s nothing better than somebody trying to steal an opponent’s Coin Collection and getting stymied, but then you do the same thing and take it. Since the previous steal attempt depleted all of their Coin Collection cards, they’re ripe for the picking!

But then somebody immediately steals it from you because you don’t have any left either.

Lots of take that, but it’s just in good fun. It’s a quick game and it’s all luck in the cards you draw, so you just have to sit back and take it.

So maybe not for everybody, but if you don’t like it, do you just hate fun?

(Don’t answer that)

It was getting late and there were just three of us left for the night, so Cat asked if we might want to try Azul: Queen’s Garden that she had just bought and hadn’t really read the rules yet.

Remember that I don’t mind that if we know going into it that nobody knows how to play!

So we decided to try it.

And it went on quite a while.

Probably would have been faster if everybody knew how to play, but it was a hard game to learn on the fly.

More complicated than basic Azul, but it was interesting.

The idea of tile-laying by paying the cost in tiles (or garden areas) that you’ve previously drafted was interesting, and how you are trying to form groups of either the same symbol or the same colour was brain-burning.

There was a lot of looking up of rules.

But overall it was fun!

With that, though, I had to get home and get to bed because my brain hurt.

Friday dawned and I drove to New Westminster, looking forward to staying at the hotel and thus playing later into the night instead of having to leave!

Spoiler alert: it was a late night.

While Thursday was full of quick games, Friday had more in-depth games.

Remember how The White Castle is in my Top 50 games played of all time, even though the one time I played it we played it wrong?

I finally played it right!

And didn’t do as well, which seems counter-intuitive since us playing it wrong actually meant we had fewer actions than we should have.

Anyway, it was really nice to play this one again, getting things done correctly, and it was still enjoyable!

I need to play it again and see if I can chain actions better, because I love the dice drafting and placement of this game.

I just felt like I didn’t have enough time to do what I wanted to do, even with the opportunity to chain actions.

Probably because I’m not very good.

Anyway, still likely in my Top 50 and I really do want this to get to the table again.

After that, it was time to learn a new, more complicated economic game.

Panamax is a game about shipping goods east to west, or vice versa, through the Panama Canal.

Like 18XX games, you are a company but you are trying to win by having private money. Company money doesn’t mean anything at the end of the game, though you need company money to pay out share dividends (yes, you are selling shares of your company as well) and to pay maintenance on cargo that is either sitting in your warehouse or which is out on ships at the end of the round.

The game goes three rounds and you get four actions in each round, so time is tight!

The dice-drafting in order to take actions mechanism is really cool.

I don’t like 18XX games, and economic games in general give me a headache (though I don’t mind a lot of them), but this one was actually pretty cool.

I’m glad I learned it, and the owner of the game has had the game for a long time so he was very happy to finally get it to the table. And to have somebody else teach it!

After that brain-burning, we needed a break so it was time to Scout again.

I actually won this time!

Since we were staying at our tables for dinner, it was time to bring out another new to me complicated game.

Brew Crafters has you playing a company that, well, crafts beer and sells it!

This is definitely an economic game and you have to build your buildings, hire assistants, and do your actions as efficiently as possible because you have to pay your workers (and also upkeep on some of your buildings) at the end of each year.

The main way to get money is to brew and then sell your beer, but that can take a couple of rounds to do if you don’t do it right.

I managed to do all of that and only take one debt!

But I didn’t do very well overall.

While I’m very glad I learned the game, as it’s been coming out to Sunday game days and just not getting played, I’m not sure I need to play it again.

Definitely a good game, but not something that my brain works well in playing.

But hey, I was drinking a beer while playing it, so that’s something!

Finally, probably my one real mistake of the weekend, though it was still enjoyable.

It’s 10:00 and four of us left (which turned into five before we started).

Hey, why not Terraforming Mars? We all know the game and can play through it quickly, right?

Why not do all the expansions we’re familiar with?

We all know them and can get through them fast, right?

We finally finished at 1:20 am.

Oops!

It was fun, though, playing with the new Prelude Cards and corporations. I had a Venus corporation and had a bunch of Colony stuff early, so I went heavy into both of those.

Got a ton of points from cards, but couldn’t really get a lot onto the board so came in a distant third.

I finally got up to the room, unpacked, and sat up for a bit to unwind, finally getting to bed around 2:00 am.

And didn’t get much sleep.

It was time for breakfast at Angelina’s!

I had a nice time chatting with Rob Bottos and some friends, as well as other convention-goers that I didn’t know. The food there was amazing. Sadly, I didn’t take a picture!

Saturday had a mix of quick games and longer games (ok, one very long game), but it was a very nice day overall.

We started with a quick game of 6 Nimmt! (or Take 5 as it’s now known on Boardgame Geek), which is a go-to filler card game where everybody’s laughing as they take bulls (points) that they don’t want to take but were forced to by the order everybody plays their cards.

We played a couple of rounds before putting it away and it was a lot of fun.

Then it was time to break out the first of my games and rock out!

Rock Hard 1977 is a brilliant game of trying to carve out a career as a rock star in 1977.

I’ve already reviewed it (link above) so I won’t go into too much detail about the game itself, but suffice to say that at 5 players, when three of them don’t know how to play, the game can get quite long.

I think a 4-player max would be good in this one. That way, you get all of the extra stuff (three players can get the goals, two demo tape studios, etc) but it doesn’t take as long.

Still, if you’re having fun, then the time passes pretty quickly!

Nothing is worse, though, then an event on the last round of the game that makes it so you can’t go to any after-hours Hangouts!

What the hell?

This is the first of my 4 plays where the game actually went all the way through to December, but it was still a great experience.

And a newbie won!

I guess that makes me a Heavy Cardboard “excellent teacher.”

After lunch, it was time for something big and long.

For us, a convention staple game is Merchant of Venus, a game that usually takes 3-4 hours, maybe slightly longer.

This time…not so much.

Six hours later (an hour of that was dinner, but still…) we finally finished with me reaching the money threshold first.

Yes, I finally won a game of Merchant of Venus!

In the game, you’re travelling around various star systems, discovering lost civilizations and then buying and selling goods to/from them. Hopefully one of the civilizations who buys that particular good inhabits a star system that’s close!

As soon as somebody breaks $2000 (or some other arbitrary limit), the game ends in victory.

And that was me!

Sorry, I can’t get used to that. I never even come close to winning this game.

But I did!

Ok, I’ll shut up now.

Oh, I guess I just meant I should shut up about WINNING IT ALL!!!!

Let’s go to the last two games of the night.

After that monstrosity (which I won!), it was time for something a bit lighter.

11 Nimmt is a bit more of a tactical/strategic version of 6 Nimmt!.

Instead of rows of cards, you are playing a card to a stack of cards that’s out on the table. The card has to be no more than 10 higher than the card you are playing on top of (so if it is a 12, you can play any card from 13-22).

If you take a stack of cards back into your hand, either because you want to or because you can’t play a valid card, that gives you a bull and you can now play multiple cards (following the same rules) on a stack! If you have the 13, 15, 19 and 22 in your hand, you can play all four on top of the 12!

If you take a stack again, then you can play cards to two different stacks!

The first player out of cards wins the round and you score the bulls (or whatever they’re called in the game) on the cards that are still in your hand.

I liked this a lot better than 6 Nimmt because it’s just as much of a filler, but you actually have more choices.

Finally, it was only four of us left as others had gone home or gone to bed, and Brendan really wanted to try Let’s Go to Japan.

We rediscovered that the teach of this game can be very difficult, much more difficult than the actual play!

But after we completed our Japan trips, both Brendan and Richie understood the game and they wanted to play it again on Sunday before I left.

This is just such a cozy game of playing cards, matching symbols, and basically planning your trip!

So much fun that I reviewed it (linked above).

Saturday night was a lot earlier than Friday night, with me getting up to my room around 11:00.

I had a bunch of iPad game turns to do as well as just catching up on some reading, so I decided to sit outside on the balcony (with my coat on as it was chilly) and just veg out, looking at the view and doing iPad stuff.

The view was marvellous. There’s something about fog over the river that was just breath-taking and peaceful.

It really centred my mind.

After 45 minutes, I went back inside and did some other reading and things like that, getting to bed around 12:30.

Sunday dawned and while some idiots were going to Angelina’s at 7:00 am, that wasn’t going to be me!

I grabbed a quick breakfast and went down around 9:00 to get started on the abbreviated last day of the con.

Brendan was sitting at the table so he pulled out a new to me game called Qwixx (a game that I actually have on my iPad, but haven’t played on the table before).

This is just a roll and write game where you are trying to roll from low to high on two colours (yellow and red) and high to low on two other colours (green and blue).

Once you cross off a number in a colour, you can’t use a number to the left of that again.

This is a really quick and light game (more in the New to Me post, of course, though not much more) and it was fun for what it is.

Who doesn’t like chucking dice?

Another friend had brought my favourite trick-taking game and I knew we had to play it at least once this weekend.

Schadenfreude is the game where you want to come in second in all things.

You want to get points, but as soon as somebody breaks 40 points at the end of a round, the game ends. They lose!

Instead, the highest score below 40 will win the game.

Tricks are won by the second-highest card played, which is another innovation, and you score the card you played plus any other non-suit cards that other players played.

It’s just such a fascinating game.

I was doing well until the last round where I got pushed over the edge, which was sad.

After that (I skipped lunch to get more games played before having to leave a little after 3:00), it was time for a great game if you play the shorter version of it.

Ecos: First Continent is a fun tile-laying game with some bingo elements as well.

The caller (Harbinger) draws an element tile from the bag and calls it out. Players match that element to a requirement on one of their cards. If you fill the card, you yell “Ecos!” and you get to do the effect of the card.

You may be placing terrain tiles down, growing the world. Or you may be placing and moving animals, or maybe just getting more elements for your other cards.

It’s a really fun game, but we played to the 80 point threshold and it just dragged…and dragged…and dragged.

The game doesn’t end until the Harbinger draws a Wild element after somebody crosses 80 points, and that last round was excruciating.

The winner had 130 points, if that tells you how long that final round was.

It’s a fun game, though. I enjoy it…until the end if you’re playing long.

Don’t play long, unless you have fewer people playing.

Just don’t.

The final game of the day was our requested second play of Let’s Go to Japan.

I had no idea Brendan and Richie liked the game that much, but they were both really excited to play it before I left, which was a nice feeling.

I didn’t do nearly as well this time.

I guess I’m a terrible trip planner.

But it was fun as always!

With that, it was time to head home. It had been such an enjoyable four days of gaming, and I really didn’t want to leave.

But life goes on, and the time away from doing fun stuff like this just makes it sweeter when you get the chance to do it.

It was nice seeing a bunch of friends who I only see once or twice a year, and it was really nice to just have games on the agenda, nothing else.

Ok, food was on the agenda at the appropriate times, but mostly just games.

Next year will likely be four days again and I am already planning on making that trip.

Thanks, Rob, for another great convention, and all of the work that you do. And to Brendan and Richie, great friends who also make the convention go smoothly (and who I got to play a lot of games with this time around!).

And, of course, to the other staff that makes the convention so great but who I don’t know personally like those two.

Here’s to another year!