Bottoscon Spring 2025 Retrospective

I love game conventions.

Not only do they give me even more of an opportunity to play great games, but it gives me the opportunity to game and chat with many people who I don’t see very often.

That’s why Bottoscon is one of my favourite conventions. I know (at least in passing) almost everybody who goes there, and there are always interesting conversations to be had.

With all of the turmoil down south, and many of us Canadians not wanting to go there for our usual conventions, the originator of Bottoscon, Rob Bottos, decided to put on a smaller, more intimate convention for those of us who are refraining from making that trip.

Hence, Bottoscon Spring, held in the upstairs lounge of the Royal City Curling Club in New Westminster, British Columbia.

Limited to around 70-80 people (the November convention usually has 130-150), this was a close gathering where people could just come and game in a really nice venue.

The pictures don’t do it justice.

I also wanted to give a shoutout to the Royal City Curling Club Bistro, who opened basically just for us and where the food was overall excellent!

Many thanks to Rob for setting this option up for those of us disinterested in travelling south, and my friends Brendan and Michelle for faithfully tending bar and lending other support!

I had my first beers in quite a while (other than one last year), since I generally drink whiskey at home, not beer.

They were wonderful.

How were the games?

As good as the beer.

(all of the game names are linked, either to Boardgame Geek or, if I’ve reviewed it, to my review. So don’t be afraid to click on a game name!)

Before I start, I should say that we didn’t end up getting Merchant of Venus to the table, like at most cons.

Sometimes I avoid it anyway, but it comes out for at least some people.

Not this time, but probably in November!

Speaking of…have I mentioned that I won it last year?

I sometimes forget if I’ve said that or not.

Anyway, I got there early on Friday and so helped move some of the tables as shown in the pictures above.

When people started arriving, though, it was time to game!

People were still trickling in and Richie and I were sitting there waiting for others, so I asked if he’d be interested in trying my new 2-player card game from New Mill Industries, Lepidoptery.

This card-shedding game also has a bit of Connect 4 in it as well, which is really cool.

I’ll talk more about it in my New to Me Games – June post in a couple of weeks, but suffice to say players alternate trying to beat the cards that have previously been played, either a single card, pair or run of 2, or triple or run of 3.

When doing so, they will place a token in the column for that pattern, and one of the goals of the game is to get four of your markers connected, either on a column, row, or diagonally.

It’s a fun little game, very quick.

Just what the doctor ordered as people were still arriving.

When my friends finally arrived, it was time for the first heavier game of the weekend, a request from one of my friends.

Yes, it was time to rock out.

Rock Hard 1977 is a game I’ve already reviewed, so I won’t go into to much detail, but this is still such a great game.

I was Benji “Bam Bam” Bernstein and I rocked really hard.

I ended the game in December (I have never seen this game end naturally, always somebody triggers it, even if it is in the last round) and lost by one point!

Which is too bad.

I love the artwork and the board, and the game is just so much fun.

At the tail end of that game, Vicki arrived so we had five players.

Time to cover your assets!

One of our convention staples is the hilarious card game called “Grandpa Beck’s Cover Your A$$ets“

This game has so much take that, but you can’t help but laugh at it.

You can lay down a pair of card assets, but if you don’t cover it with another pair, it’s liable to be taken by somebody else!

Of course, you can stop the theft by having your own card of that asset (or the wild Silver or Gold). But they might have a second card too!

Nothing’s funnier, then somebody laying down a Coin Collection card and saying “give me your coin collection.” Then you slap down one and say “no!” Then they put a gold down and say “yes!” Then you slap down a Silver card and say “no!”

Now you are suddenly $95,000 richer because of that.

The game is just so much fun chaos.

Even people who don’t like take that in their games may like this game because everybody’s laughing.

There’s a reason it comes out at every convention.

After a little bit of discussion, we decided to go on a trip to Japan.

Unfortunately not really, but in card form!

Let’s Go to Japan (that’s the review link) is a fun game about planning a trip to Japan using cards.

It was a new game for two people and, as always, the scoring was a bit opaque for the new folks.

We also used the Grab Your Passport expansion which grants variable player abilities but doesn’t really add much complexity…unless you’re unclear on how things go together anyway.

I’ve been using that on my BGA plays and really enjoy it!

I don’t think the game went over too well with the newbies, but not everybody likes everything.

They seem to be like me, enjoying a play of a new game even if it ends up being a game they ultimately don’t want to play again.

Or maybe I’m projecting.

Anyway, while one player disappeared back home to grab some dinner, the three of us left brought out my copy of the excellent Sea Salt & Paper.

This works great for that 45 minute time span if you need it.

We even incorporated the Extra Salt expansion, which adds a few more cards.

Of course, silly me didn’t take a picture of them, but I’ll save that for my review.

If you check out my review of the base game, though, you’ll see how this game works and how much of a joy it is.

And the artwork is amazing!

Everybody was back together again, so out came another favourite of mine, Fantastic Factories.

This is such a great dice game where you are trying to build “goods” as quickly as possible, by constructing buildings that will help you do so in some way.

I built a couple of buildings that let me produce goods fairly fast, but I didn’t get as many buildings together as the others and I couldn’t outrace them in goods production by too much.

So while I triggered the end game, I lost to Scott by a couple of points.

It was closer than I thought it would be!

It was getting late, people were getting tired, so the last two games of the night were much lighter.

I was really happy to play Diamonds again, for the first time in two years!

This trick-taker is showing its age a little bit, but I love the mechanic of you getting diamonds and storing them in your vault.

If they’re in your vault, they are worth two points and can’t be stolen.

Otherwise they’re worth one point and somebody can definitely steal them!

You know I love trick-taking games, so this is always a hit.

It’s a bit long sometimes, but I do love it still.

Ending the night on a laughing note is 6 Nimmt! (Also called Take 5)

This chaotic card game where you are trying to avoid taking bulls (points) is super-fun.

Since each player chooses a card secretly to place, based on looking at the cards on the table, you might be good or you might end up taking a whole row.

Sometimes you have to bet that somebody will play a card that takes a row and opens up a space for your card.

This is another game with lots of laughs and even more because I managed to pull out the victory after a horrible first round.

With that, it was time to head home for the night, but I was planning to get there bright and early Saturday morning.

I was scheduled for my first really heavy game of the con at 10:00 am.

I thought I might get a quick game in early, but people didn’t really show up in time for that.

A friend of mine had wanted to introduce me and Richie to People Power: Insurgency in the Philippines, 1981-1986. (that will now be called People Power from now on as my fingers are getting tired).

This is only the second COIN (Counter Insurgency) game I’ve ever played on the table, though I own five of them (including this one, though we didn’t play my copy).

This is a great introductory COIN game! It has all the concepts of a COIN game, is relatively simple to learn and play, and isn’t quite as vast as some of the other ones.

There’s the Government faction (which was me), the insurgency faction (NPA, Richie) and the non-violent Reformers (Jeremiah).

Funnily enough, the government was played by a white American-Canadian while both other factions were played by Filipino-Canadians!

That irony was noted.

Anyway, the game took 3 hours after teaching (which is on the shorter side for a COIN game) and while I thought I was doing fairly well at first, my Government forces collapsed near the end and I was way in the back.

Jeremiah earned the victory in the last Election phase (there are 3) with Richie close behind him.

I’ll talk about this more in the “new to me” post, but I really enjoyed it.

Even though my brain was burning afterwards.

So it was time to go into another brain-burning game!

Even with my headache.

Actually, not quite, as we were still waiting for a couple of people to finish their game.

A friend introduced Richie and I to a quick (very quick!) trick-taking game called Trick & Snipers.

This one goes only one round with all of the cards dealt out.

It’s a must-follow trick-taking game where you are trying to win certain cards in tricks.

You must either take a 7 (any suit) in the trick or steal a trick with a total of 13 (the value of the card that is winning the trick and the off-suit card you play added together).

Winning a trick without that gets you nothing (except that it will add to your victory if there is no clear winner at the end of the game).

If you win in either of the other two ways, you get a point.

If you get 2 points, you win the game!

That’s it, nothing more.

Fun game, but nothing I need to play again.

But it’s only 5-10 minutes, so if somebody brings it out in between games, I won’t say no.

(I may copy and paste this into the “new to me” post since that’s basically all there is to it!)

Then it was time for another all-time fave, one that I brought and wanted to play but was also requested by a friend.

The Prodigals Club is a game where you are trying to tank everything: go broke, have your friends hate you, and be the worst politician around.

Now that I own this game and can take better pictures, I should probably review it.

It is one of my favourites.

I usually do pretty well in this game, but I think my brain was still hurting from earlier in the day and I had trouble staying on track.

Much like some of Knizia’s games, you are scoring in multiple categories and your final score will be the highest category (you want a low score).

You can’t just tank your friendships and expect to win, because the people may still love you, or you may still be rich.

This game is just so great, so you know my review is going to be gushing.

Maybe I shouldn’t review it…

After those two back to back games (with a quick filler in between), maybe it was time for a light game?

Nope!

Lana wanted to play Rock Hard 1977 again, so we brought it back out.

I was Raphael Santiago and man did Raphael suck this game.

His candy dealer was a cheat or something.

Maybe just incompetent?

I tried to use candy five or six times during the game, and three times it was sugarless!!!!

That doesn’t give you the pep for more actions.

Remember how I mentioned above that I’ve never seen the game end naturally? Instead, it’s been triggered, even if it was in the final round?

This one just ended.

I was sad.

Still always enjoy this game and it’s a rare game that hits the table twice at the same con, so yay!

Finally we went light to end the night, because my head was pounding a bit and I was feeling pretty exhausted.

Archaeology: the New Expedition also seems to hit the table at most conventions because it’s another relatively quick set collection card game.

With only 3 players, you do take out a bunch of cards, but it’s still always fun to dig for treasure (draw a card) and then maybe buy some other cards from the market, and then sell sets to the museum!

You can also go exploring the tombs if you have a map.

This game doesn’t tax the brain too much, so it was a perfect way to end the night.

Throughout the con, I kept hearing that SETI: The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence was hitting the table in various groups, including during my People Power game, and I have really been wanting to play that one again after my March play.

As I was leaving Saturday night, Brendan flagged me down and said he would set up the game first thing Sunday morning for me and others who might want to play, though he might not play himself (I think he had already played it twice this weekend?)

I was very grateful for that, and when I arrived Sunday morning, we started doing just that.

Unfortunately there was another game also scheduled for the same time, so there wasn’t much call for any other players other than Vicki, so Brendan did agree to play instead of just teach.

SETI is another great game from Czech Games Edition, where you are searching for signs of intelligent life out there, scanning for signals outside the solar system, trying to find traces on planets in the solar system, and maybe just crunching the data you’ve retrieved from the signals to find signs.

It has an incredible amount of options and it’s really cool how you will find two alien species every game, and they are all so different (there are five options that are randomized with two chosen blindly).

The card play is cool with multi-use cards, and you just have so many avenues to explore.

I find it really brain-burning because of that, as I have trouble focusing on just one (while dabbling in others). I find myself spreading out too much and not doing enough in each one to really succeed.

But I do really like it and want to explore it more.

Ironically, I was taught a couple of things incorrectly in March (things that made the beginning of the game harder) and it turned out I did slightly better in March than I did this time.

Not sure how that works!

But it was really enjoyable. I must play this one again.

Brendan had really been wanting to play one of his other games, and it’s a game in a genre that I’m not too thrilled about playing.

However, since he had gone to the effort to bring out SETI mainly just for me, I didn’t want to say no because I wanted to thank him for all he did.

So we got to draw on a map with crayons.

Yep, Empire Builder is a train game of sorts, a pick-up and deliver game where you are building rail lines across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Picking up goods in one city and taking those goods to another city.

The fun thing is you draw these train lines with crayon!

I’ll talk about it in more detail in my new to me games post, but suffice it to say that while I ended up doing kind of well, I made a big mistake in not building track across the country, instead having lines up the Pacific Coast and then through southern Canada, then back down to Chicago, Detroit and New York.

I had some huge deliveries from southern Mexico to Chicago or Omaha, but because I didn’t invest in the track that way, I took the long way around.

Still, as meh as I was feeling about playing the game itself, it was actually quite fun!

Not something I really need to play more of, but I won’t feel meh about it again if it does come out.

And it was published in 1982, so the Cult of the New to Me will be ecstatic!

That was over 5 hours of gaming right there, not counting the teaches, so my Sunday was pretty much shot at that point.

But it was a good “shot.”

I really enjoyed Sunday.

It was time to head for home, though, fully satiated on games.

I left happy that, of the seven games I had brought for the weekend, five got played!

That’s a much better percentage than usually happens.

Rob has already reserved the dates for next year’s Spring convention, and we still have the main Bottoscon happening in November, so it will be great to see all of these wonderful people again.

Once again, many thanks to Rob for taking care of us, and Brendan and Michelle for doing so as well.

The food was good, the beer was excellent (and I had my first cider, and I didn’t hate it! Thanks, Richie, for buying it for me), the gaming was awesome.

And the people…the people were just unsurpassed.

I can’t wait for November to roll around and do this again.

Speaking of November, it looks like Grant, one of my online wargaming friends (not Players’ Aid Grant, but from Pushing Cardboard) will be coming in November.

A chance to meet another new face I only know online!

This weekend was wonderful, and I hope you are able to maybe come out next time (there are still tickets for November!) or we can meet at some other convention some day.

Until that day, stay beautiful, my friends.