Terminal City Tabletop Convention Retrospective – 2025

Last weekend was the 10th (maybe 11th?) annual Terminal City Tabletop Convention (though I guess it was interrupted by COVID so not actually 11?).

I have to say it was probably the best yet.

In previous years, the people running it didn’t do the best job.

Right after the COVID lockdowns were over, a new group took over but it was so late (and I think they actually lost the reservation for the previous space for some reason?) that they didn’t have a lot of choice in venues.

The venue they were able to get was…not ideal.

Last year, they moved to the Vancouver Convention Centre and it was much better! Though space was still a little bit of an issue, it wasn’t as bad.

This year, it was almost perfect.

The initial getting in process on Friday was still awkward and kind of stressful, but once we were in (and on Saturday and Sunday), the convention was the best in I don’t know how long.

Plenty of space for people! Sure, no outside food and drink was allowed (though they were pretty lenient as far as drinks go, at least in my experience) and the in-room cafe was way overpriced, but that’s not their fault. Those are Convention Centre rules.

Overall, I had an amazing time. I got lots of games played, saw a bunch of old friends I haven’t seen in a while, and met some new people as well!

Conventions are awesome, that’s all I have to say.

But you’re here for the games, right?

So let’s take a look at those.

Before we begin, there were a number of “new to me” games this weekend, especially on Saturday.

I’ll mention them briefly, but the more detailed information will be in my “New to Me Games – March” post which will be coming in early April

We were let into the convention hall at 3:00 pm on Friday, but of course the people I was going to be gaming with trickled in after that. The first hour or so was kind of slow, though I did meet up with a couple of friends and just chatted for a while.

Once we had enough people though, it was time for a quick filler to carry us through the empty time.

Sea Salt & Paper is a great game for times like this.

Simple, quick, and still a lot of fun!

The artwork is so fun with the paper figures, the set collection and is a blast.

It’s not a deep game, but it fills the time in a fun fashion that I really enjoy.

People were still trickling in, but we had a few more, so it was time for a wonderful filler that I just reviewed recently, Faraway!

This is also a great game, but one that takes at least one play to get the scoring down.

Once you do, though, it’s actually quite thinky!

You have to plan a bit, to make your cards that score trigger by having the right symbols.

I managed to win this one by 3 points, due to some high-point cards that were played early (so I could then concentrate on getting the symbols needed to activate them).

After that, it was time for the first meaty game of the convention, with one of my favourites. Scholars of the South Tigris!

This game is so amazing and now it’s two Garphill games I’ve played in 2025.

I have to make sure I play all of them I have, of course.

This time I went heavy into translating, with some tech track bonuses.

I had one scroll that gave me a bonus for Syriac and Chinese scrolls and then I translated four more of those. Plus a retired translator that gave me red dice and a scroll that gave me points for red dice.

I managed to pull out the victory in a nice fashion!

Then it was time to eat, so we headed to the Waterfront Centre food court. It was kind of late and I wasn’t that hungry (during the game, I was getting a food-deprivation headache so I bought a hot dog from the Convention Centre cafe in the hall, which was…not that good) so I just had a Subway sandwich.

The Chinese restaurant was calling to me, though.

Tomorrow…tomorrow I kept saying.

Once we were done with that, it was time to find at least one more game before I walked home (I live downtown, so I walked rather than drive, which meant I didn’t bring a lot of games).

A game of Fantastic Factories was on order!

This is one of my faves and it definitely fit the bill.

I love the dice chucking and placement of this game.

I also managed to pull out the win by producing a massive amount of goods with few buildings!

It was a tie-breaking win (my friend Brendan had a bunch of buildings but not as many goods), but it was still a win!

There was still a little time left, so it was time for a fun social deduction game with secret roles where you may not know what role you are!

Secrets is a game of spies, with the CIA, KGB, and one Hippie who could win the game.

It’s kind of hilarious because while you know what role you started with, it can change during the game and you can’t look at it once you’ve done so at the beginning of the game.

You’re secretly offered a card by the active player. If you accept it, then you have to do that card’s action, which may involve switching somebody’s role (either with somebody else or the role that’s in the middle unclaimed).

It’s a chaotic game that can be marred (like most social deduction games) by little errors in play or by players who don’t quite get the concept.

But it was still hilarious fun. I started as a KGB agent, but then became a CIA one.

Me and a fellow CIA agent won the game!

With that, it was time to make the trudge up the hill to home. As I’m getting older and less in shape, I’ve learned to just make the walk as casually as I can make it so that I don’t over-do it.

And it was successful.

Then came Saturday morning, the only time I got rained on even though the entire weekend was supposed to be rainy.

A win!

The convention opens at 9:00, and even though not all of my friends get there that early, for some reason I like to get there right on time.

Early, in fact, given that I like to have breakfast in the food court first.

I got there and people were trickling in. I was sitting there with a friend and we were just kind of looking at our phones. Not knowing when others would show up, we didn’t really want to start anything, but I did have a scheduled game at 11:00.

Finally, we had enough people (and one friend actually said “hey, why aren’t you playing anything?”) that we decided to make another try with The Gang.

This is a really fun cooperative game of Texas Hold ‘Em.

We had six players, so it’s especially hard because you have to determine (without talking about your hand) what order the players have as far as the ranks of their hands go. Somebody with a 7-high hand (no pair or anything) might take the “1” chip because they have the lowest.

But if somebody seems insistent on taking the “1” chip, then their hand must suck too!

Then the flop, turn, and river come out, with players making the same judgments each round, but with more information about their hands.

If you get the ranks right, you win the round and get a penalty next round.

If you get even one of them wrong, you get a bonus next round to hopefully make things easier.

But it’s never easy.

We lost this one badly, 3-1.

But it’s always a fun game!

After that, it was time for the scheduled tournament game of Toy Battle.

This was the print and play version, so this 2025 game will actually look a bit different when it actually comes out.

This is a two-player battler game where you play cards to place toy units out on the board, trying to either surround an area with a victory point marker (thus gaining those points) or just occupy your opponent’s base for an instant win.

The real game will have toy piece tiles rather than the cards, and it was funny that even right before the tournament started, Robin was using a portable paper cutter to get the maps ready, but it was actually pretty fun!

There are a number of unique maps, each with a different power for some of the spaces.

In this map, placing a toy on the pumpkin space will let you take a card from your discard pile back into your hand.

Other maps have other interesting powers.

More in my “new to me” post, but while this isn’t really something I want to buy, it’s an intriguing game!

After that, I joined Abi and the group to play some other games, some that I’ve really wanted to play for a while.

SETI: Search for Extraterresrtial Intelligence is a 2024 game that’s been getting rave reviews all over the place online.

This is another one of those “big deck of cards” engine builders which also incorporates multi-use cards (which the normal “big deck” games don’t do).

After playing it, I can definitely see the appeal!

In this game, you’re exploring the solar system, looking for signs of alien life.

You’re guaranteed to find some, because there are two alien species out there, waiting to be discovered!

You’re playing cards for their effects, or maybe discarding them in order to get some other effects, launching probes and sending them to the outer planets, and hoping to find signals or remnants of these aliens.

Depending on what aliens were actually randomly chosen, once they’re discovered you will be trying to interact with them for even more points.

But the card play in the game is very cool.

There are endgame scoring cards, missions that get flipped when you complete them, and some that are just quick effects and then they can get discarded.

And the game board, when put together, is quite beautiful!

And you do need to put it together. There are multiple rings around the sun that individually rotate depending on the state of the game.

One of our aliens had a “danger” mechanism, which would let you do things to get a bunch of points, but then whoever had the highest danger level at the end of the game would lose 10% (yes, that’s right, 10%!) of their points.

I really need to play this one again. I played it very inefficiently and I want to do better next time.

When we were done with that (2.5 hours later!), Abi and I tried out a 2-player deduction (maybe?) game that he had played a couple of times already.

Orapa Mine is almost like Battleship in which you are trying to deduce the location of the other player’s objects by guessing something.

Though in this one, you’re not guessing a coordinate.

Instead, you are sending a laser into a grid through one outside square, and being told where it exits and what colour it is when it comes out!

So my opponent might say “17” and I have to bounce the laser from that location (in this case, bouncing off the red one, up to the white one, and then back down to the red and then out 17). I then say “Pink, 17,” indicating that it bounced off of a red and white object (there’s a helpful colour guide on the player screen) and then right back out where it came in.

By doing this multiple times, you get an idea of what objects are where, until it’s time to guess.

If you guess right, you win! If you guess wrong, you lose.

I was totally lost in trying to figure this out, until it just kind of came to me.

I guessed one turn before Abi did, winning the game!

This really burned my brain. I’m not good at this kind of deduction and I didn’t think I was doing well at all.

Then I discovered I was.

Three of us got together again for a quick game (though we didn’t finish before everybody else was done) of an interesting trick-taker called Fives.

This is another “must-follow” trick-taking game where the lead player plays a card and the other players have to follow suit if they can.

Winning tricks is good! Except that you are trying to get as close to 25 without going over as possible.

You may find yourself unable to resist busting at 26 or higher.

One twist to the normal genre, however (and sadly I didn’t get a picture of this, so sorry!) is that when you can’t follow suit, you can turn the card you are playing face-down and make it a magenta 5!

Only one of these can be played in a trick, so if you’ve done it, nobody else can.

I believe grey is the trump suit, though like I said, you can play a Magenta 5 if you don’t want to win the trick.

The winner of the trick takes the cards into a pile, putting the card they won with on top.

At the end of the round, you get points for each top card you have equal to the number on the card, and if you go over 25, you bust!

It’s an interesting game, though we only played one round before moving off to greener gaming pastures, so I don’t really know how well it plays or how much I like it.

When we all got back together and decided who wanted to play what, it was time for me and three others to try out Knizia’s new(ish) game, Rebirth!

It’s another tile-laying game with some similarities (though not a huge number) to Havalandi. Knizia seems to like the “on your turn, play a tile to the map, get points for groups of tiles and do other things” and this is a classic example of that.

You’re laying tiles on the map, maybe getting next to a castle or monastery (which will get you a goal card), trying to group like tiles together, and close out other people from scoring.

The map and production is gorgeous and I thought I did pretty well.

But I was pretty far behind two of the other three people (I was actually ahead of somebody!)

I’m glad I played this one, but of course, more detail in my April new to me games post.

At this point, we were still playing some shorter games to round out the night, so Abi suggested Rajas of the Ganges: Cards & Karma, a kind of card game version of the famous Rajas of the Ganges (yeah, I know that’s obvious…)

This game uses cards as dice, and you will use those “dice” cards to buy buildings, goods, maybe even ships in order to fill out a tableau and then turn in sets for fame or money.

The money and fame will then allow you to flip over the next card in your chain, getting a bonus when you do it.

There are no points in this one. It’s just a race to see who can flip fastest.

I liked this one. It’s clean, quick, and just a lot of fun.

Finally, I rejoined my other friends and we ended the night (well, my night, anyway) with Living Forest.

This is a kind of push your luck game where you are trying to grow a forest, keeping the nasty fires away from it.

You will be playing animal guardian cards from your deck one at a time, until you bust by turning over your third “dark circle” or you decide to just stop.

These cards will give you symbols, allowing you to fight the fires that are threatening the forest, or perhaps buy new plants to make your forest even greener, or finally you can recruit other guardian cards that will make your deck stronger (though some of those have the dark circles too, but these cards usually give you some good stuff).

One of the things you’ll be trying to do is build out your forest with fresh greenery, some of which will give you more symbols as well.

This was a fun game with a little rules confusion at first, but I’m glad I tried it out.

With that, it was time to close out Saturday and the long (but peaceful) walk up the hill to home.

Sunday came, and it was miraculously not raining for my walk!

It started pouring a few minutes after I got there.

How lucky!

Sunday was a shorter day (only about 7 hours for me, though we didn’t really start at opening, so more like 6).

But I still managed to get 5 games in!

That’s because Sunday was “shorter games” day again.

Nothing really meaty was played, though that doesn’t mean they weren’t good.

Reforest: Plants of the Pacific Northwest is a tableau-building card game where you’re making a pyramid of plant cards in front of you.

Once again a game that uses multi-use cards, though in this case it’s mostly just playing the plant itself or discarding it as payment for playing another plant.

Some cards will let you put cards from your hand underneath them as energy (which is either points or can be used to play other cards).

Different plants can go at different elevations, and you can plant bigger plants on top of smaller plants.

It’s a pretty intricate game and you do have to plan ahead a little bit, or at least as much as drawing cards allows.

Just know that if you put a 400 foot tree on a space, nothing else is going on that space.

I enjoyed this one, and while it took us an hour, I’m not sure it’s really an hour-long game.

Maybe good for lunches?

After that, we jumped into the super-popular Finspan, a game that Abi had brought to a Sunday game day previously so I could actually teach it this time.

It’s a very easy game to teach because the rules are streamlined from its parent Wingspan and it’s not as complex.

Doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it’s a lot easier to understand the actions.

This game does away with the bigger central board and instead gives each player a humongous player board instead!

Instead of having to worry about food, you’re doing most of your fish purchasing by discarding cards (or eggs, or even young fish).

Fish can go into any one of three columns (unless the fish card says otherwise) and you can even have it go over a smaller fish (which will give you a point for the smaller fish).

Other actions you can take are drawing cards, laying eggs, or hatching eggs (along with moving the young that have hatched around your board).

This will also activate fish that you have in that column if they have an ability, which is also cool.

More in my April post, but I have to say I really enjoy this one.

Whether it’s above Wingspan for me or not, it may depend on what day and time you ask me.

After that, we were looking for something else to do, and Michelle had a new copy of CuBirds, a really cute little card game.

In this game, you’re trying to play sets of the same type of bird (they’re essentially sitting on a wire, getting ready to shit on you).

There are rows of bird cards on the table, and you have to play a type of bird from your hand (all of the cards of that bird) to the end of a row.

If the bird matches the bird on the other side from where you played, then you collect all of the birds between them.

Once you have enough of a type (as noted on the card), you can put either one or two (if the bird lets you lay down when you have 4/6 cards of that type, then you can lay one card down if you have 4 or two cards down if you have 6, discarding the rest).

First player to have two bird types with three cards down is the winner!

Or you can have 7 different species of birds in front of you.

That works too.

I enjoyed it. Cute and fun, nothing too taxing but that’s ok.

It was Sunday after a long couple of days.

However, it was time to get heavier!

Not in complexity, but in tone.

Empire’s End came out next, finally a game I brought!

Of course, this is the game where your empire is crumbling due to many disasters, but you bid resources to try and stave off disasters.

Or maybe take one or two because they will give you a good innovation!

Not going to go into too much detail here as this one was reviewed already, but you can tell I really like it.

It was the first time playing it since last year’s TCTC.

Finally, with not much time left, and everybody being tired (or I was, anyway), it was time for some light and light-heard card game fun.

Scout hit the table, one of my favourites (so I should probably review it soon, shouldn’t I?)

I didn’t get any pictures of this game, so how about a picture of a previous game?

I love this one just because of the chaos of not being able to move your cards around, having to form sets and runs just based on what’s already there, and also other cards that you scout from other players.

Doing that, I managed to end two of the four rounds by laying down a 6-card run!

But I was so far behind after the first two rounds that I wasn’t able to catch up to Brendan, who won it easily.

Still, it’s a great game.

With that, it was time to say good-bye once again to a great con, some wonderful people, and to actual peace and fun instead of the toil, stress, and drudgery that life has become over the last few months.

For three days, I was able to just lose myself in games, laughter, conversation (though some of the conversation did move into current events), and just being with people I like.

And meeting new ones as well!

It was a much-needed oasis and it was hard to get back to the real world.

But it will come around again next year. And until then, there will be more cons!

Canadian-only ones, though.

Enough of that.

Have you played any of these games? Were you there and I missed you?

Let me know in the comments.