Bottoscon Winter 2026 Retrospective

Rob Bottos is a great guy.

Not only is he kind and really interesting to talk to, but he also looks after his fellow gamers.

He’s run the regular Bottoscon in New Westminster since 2007 (with one year’s break due to COVID) and it’s been a smashing success. (This year it’s moving to Burnaby, but that’s another story)

However, after all of the insanity down south beginning in January 2025, with many Canadians either not wanting to risk the border crossing or not wanting to spend their money down there, he offered a new convention last June, Bottoscon Spring at the Royal City Curling Club in New Westminster.

This year, he’s gone even further.

Yes, last weekend, we had Bottoscon Winter 2026 at the Royal Canadian Legion in Coquitlam.

Three conventions! Just to help out gamers who really like going to cons.

The Winter and Spring cons are smaller, more intimate affairs, and there’s something to be said for that.

It was a cozy weekend of just gaming, a smaller group of attendees, and some really great games.

A couple of things before I go into the weekend, however.

First, there are many people helping Rob, and they deserve a lot of thanks as well.

Between Rob and them, the cons have gone off without a public-facing hitch (I know there have been hitches behind the scenes, but it’s rarely made obvious to those attending).

So hats off to them as well!

Secondly, I have to say that the Royal Canadian Legion was a great place to hold this smaller con.

The space was great, and the staff at the bar and the owner of the restaurant there were top notch.

It was nice being able to have a beer with my games, and a huge shoutout has to go to the the guy who runs the Cranky Old Fork restaurant in the Legion (I’m sorry, Rob, I can’t remember his name!).

He opened in the afternoon on Friday and Saturday for us so we could have lunch, when he normally opens at 6:00 pm.

The food was very good and reasonably priced.

The Mac & Cheese with garlic bread was so tasty!

Anyway, the Legion is a great place to play wargames (it fits, don’t it?) but of course the con is about more than wargames.

I love cons, partially because of the people I meet (more below on that), but also because it gives me a chance to play games with friends that I don’t see all the time.

What can be better than that?

Of course, still recovering from a cold that I had been suffering from previously didn’t help, but I still had a ton of fun.

So let’s take a look at what I played this weekend.

I got to the Legion right on time Friday morning and people were still starting to show up.

While I was waiting, Brendan showed up and we decided to break out a game for two-players just to warm up for the weekend.

That game turned out to be Fliptoons, which is one of my favourite games!

I have never played this two player before, so it was quite an interesting experience.

There is a lot of market churn at two players, because the left and rightmost cards are discarded at the end of each turn.

The market will not be stagnant.

It’s still a fun game and I do like the churn, especially when there are bad cards out there.

While we were playing, Ryan Guerra stopped by and introduced himself.

Turns out that he has a Youtube Channel called How I Roll, and it’s pretty good!

We talked about content creation (or whatever people are calling it nowadays) and he also joined us for another game of Fliptoons.

And we experienced what I love about this game.

Ryan triggered the endgame, but on the final flip, my flip was actually better so I won!

After a tiebreaker, which is to do another flip!

Anyway, we’ll see Ryan again, but it was very cool to actually talk to somebody who knows about this stuff.

By this time my other friends had shown up, so it was time to join them for a game of Can’t Stop, which is one of my favourite BGA fillers and is also fun on the table if you like chucking dice.

It doesn’t take long and it’s always a blast.

Then it was that time.

A game I will pretty much only play at a convention, and a game that I really need a year or two in between plays because of how much of a bear the setup is (along with the gameplay somewhat).

Yes, it was time for Eldritch Horror.

I love the stories that this game tells, and I love reading the cards (I did end up reading all of the cards except the portals, which made me feel really good but also was probably not good for my already-raw throat from being sick earlier). It’s just such an amazing adventure.

But what a chore to play.

I have friends who will never play it.

I have friends who will reluctantly play it.

And then there’s me, who will play it occasionally.

After almost 3 years, it was time.

But I’m now good until 2029 or so.

We actually didn’t do too badly.

We were probably one round away from winning it before Doom reached Zero and the world was devoured.

Sucks when that happens.

With the world ending, it was still time to play something a bit snappier and less drawn out.

So we broke out Roll for the Galaxy, another game where it’s been almost a couple of years since I played it.

While this game isn’t a favourite, I do like the dice-rolling action selection mechanism where you decide on an action you want to do (explore, build a development, colonize, produce, or trade) based on the dice you roll and that you have in your cup.

I ended up with a production/consumption engine going because of the way the planets I colonized ended up.

Not only that, when I produced, I got 1$ for each blue world that had a good on it, which made exploring for money much less necessary.

I only lost by one point, so it almost worked!

We needed another filler at that point, so we trotted out Cover Your Kingdom (a game I’ll be talking more about in my New to Me Games post for February).

This is an interesting spin-off of Cover Your Assets with even more craziness with people stealing your stuff.

I’m not yet decided on whether I prefer this to the original or not.

Will need some more plays.

But there were a lot of laughs, and that’s the main point, right?

Finally, we ended the night on a divisive game, at least for our group.

Earth hit the table, a game I haven’t played in a number of years, but which I love to death.

The reason it’s divisive is because there is a lot to take in and keep track of in this game, and it can be difficult on the table.

On a big round table for 5 players, some people can’t even really see the Fauna cards, and it’s very hard to keep in mind what you are going for in that.

It’s much easier for some people to do it on BGA because it’s all there and you just have to scroll.

For me, I find it a bit harder on BGA for just that reason, but I admit that (at least in this case) I had easy access to the Fauna so it wasn’t that hard for me.

I would never play live on BGA because there’s just too much to keep track of, with lots of scrolling, and a time limit.

Asynchronously, it’s not that bad, though.

Ideally, on the table, it would be a 4 player game on a rectangular table with the center board right between all four players, with two each sitting across from each other on either side of it.

Everybody can see and it should all be good.

Though it’s still a lot to keep track of.

With that, it was time to call Friday night. I have a half-hour drive each way so I needed to get home.

Saturday was the big day.

Saturday morning, I was finally able to get my copy of Combat Commander 20th Anniversary Edition to the table, after 6 years of playing one of my favourite games solely online.

I’ve already talked about how happy that made me, so I won’t belabor the point.

But it was very nice to just push pieces around, being able to eye my opponent, try to search for the pieces when we needed that new radio or new leader that just appeared out of nowhere.

It was pure heaven, and I am so glad I scheduled this.

I had originally scheduled one of my other favourite games, 1960: The Making of a President, for the 10:00 am timeslot, but nobody signed up.

I removed it and instead put this one up and Leroy found it and offered to play with me.

Even better, he mentioned that he would probably be coming to future Bottoscons, so I may have a (kind of) regular opponent!

My friends had started a very long game of Terraforming Mars, so I was searching for another game after mine ended.

That’s when I found Ryan again, along with a very nice couple (Joanne and Tim) who welcomed me into a game with them (and another person as well).

We were debating on what to play, and somebody (Joanne, maybe?) mentioned The Gang, which of course I am always up for.

This game of cooperative Poker where you are trying to figure out (without saying anything) who has the best poker hands in ranked order, is just so good.

We failed miserably, so we thought we’d try again.

After failing miserably again, we tried a third time.

By then, Brendan had joined us, so while one other person bowed out, we tried yet again!

While we were playing, another person came up to watch, so since we had once again failed, we invited him to join us and we tried one more time.

Yes, that’s five plays of The Gang, and none of them were winners (though we did come close a couple of times).

We still had six players, so why not break out Magical Athlete, one of the feel-good games of 2025?

This zany game of roll and move with asymmetric player powers is just so good and fun.

How can you not laugh at all of the antics that end up happening?

Our first race was kind of ruined by the character that moves forward one space every time a power is used, because everybody used their powers (sometimes you don’t have a choice).

But overall, the game is crazy fun and I don’t know how anybody could not enjoy it, at least a little.

Sure, it’s roll and move.

But the first time somebody lands on the Duelist space and the guy yells “Duel!” you know it’s going to be a blast.

What really made me feel good during this time, however, is when Ryan and I were talking more about content creation, and he (or maybe it was Brendan?) said “oh, Dave has a blog”. Joanne asked what it was, and when I said “Dude Take Your Turn,” she said “oh, I love that blog!”

That almost literally bowled me over.

Just to hear that from somebody out of the blue made my day.

I don’t think she’s a subscriber, but she mentioned that when she looks up games, she often finds my reviews and really enjoys them.

She said “I had no idea that was local!”

I don’t know if it would have been possible to feel any better than I did at that moment, and it just encouraged me to keep going with this, no matter how often I feel like I’m shouting into the wind.

Because I’m not.

Thank you, Joanne. I don’t know if you are aware of what you did there, but I really appreciate it.

The final game for Friday came about because there were nine of us looking for a game, mostly my friends but a couple of other people as well.

We needed to split into at least two groups and probably three.

I wanted to play another game of SETI with the new expansion, so I volunteered for that when a 3-player game was offered.

What I didn’t realize is that one of the players had never played it, so it would be a teaching game.

My throat was already kind of raw from my cold recovery as well as talking throughout the day, so I wasn’t sure I would be able to handle the teach, but I ended up doing ok.

It was a bit dicey for a while, but I managed.

And the game was still incredibly fun!

I ended up coming in second by only 8 points, and I managed to get a lot of technologies this time around.

I have to say that the expansion for SETI makes this game so much better, and it was already amazing!

If I am able to, I would never play it without the expansion now.

We did use only base game aliens because the new aliens have a lot more going on and we didn’t want to overwhelm the new guy (plus I was running up against the clock a little bit, and the new aliens do take more time to wrap your head around), but we used the corporations and the starting cards to give you a boost, and it went very well.

I have to say that both nights, the drive home was really nice. Driving at night when traffic isn’t that major is a real treat.

But Sunday morning came, and it was time for an abbreviated day of gaming.

And a pancake brunch from the Cranky Old Fork!

$12 for a big hashbrown, pancake, eggs and sausage/ham/bacon was a real treat.

I got there at 10:00 and was waiting for others to arrive. I was looking at my phone when somebody was looking at the games for sale, looking at Time of Crisis. I highly recommended that one, and while he was looking through it, he said “oh yeah, you have that blog, don’t you?”

A second mention of the blog out of the blue?

That really made my weekend.

Then Tim & Joanne arrived and were getting ready to set up Pax Pamir: 2nd Edition.

I haven’t played that game on the table since 2020, but it’s still in my Top 50.

A chance to play it on the table again?

Yes please!

I’ve played it a couple of times online since then, but it was nice to actually see the board, handle the cards, etc.

That, and playing it on the table showed me some of the nuances that I’ve completely missed in the online games.

So it will help me playing it online too!

This game was very satisfying, because I made a huge move to buy a Dominance Card knowing I would score a bunch, and not even realizing that it would actually give me the victory by being more than 4 points ahead of everybody.

But even without that, it was just fun to play.

After that, we were deciding what to play next and Joanne was throwing out some options.

This was one of the rare cons where I hadn’t yet played a new to me game, so when Joanne mentioned Expeditions (a game in the Scythe universe, though the mechanics are much different), I jumped at the chance.

This is an interesting mix of exploring, action selection, and card play to take actions in order to try and attain four goals.

It has a hidden map of hex tiles that you move on to and explore, revealing corruption that you have to destroy before you can take advantage of all the benefits of the hex.

The mechs that you are moving around are very cool, and I really do love the card play.

You can play a card for its icons, but if you have a worker of the right colour, you can take advantage of the bonus effect/action.

It was a game that was fairly easy to understand and I came within a couple of points of actually winning!

I really enjoyed this one.

Of course, it helped that I had great playmates. Tim and Joanne were so great to game with.

With only an hour or so left before I had to head out (and the con itself was closing in 2 hours anyway), we ended the day with a quick game of Sea Salt & Paper.

I managed to pull this one out by somehow getting lucky enough to draw the one card I needed to foil Joanne’s “Last Chance” attempt, getting me a bunch of points.

Even with that, it was a close game.

Sunday was just a wonderful day, thanks to both of them.

With that, it was time to head home and realize that it was time to go back to work.

The weekend was a great one, but real life has to be addressed at some point.

Thanks, Rob, for organizing yet another great convention.

Thanks, Ryan, for being a great guy to talk to, and somebody to commiserate with about this boardgame content creation stuff.

And for being a great guy to play games with.

Thanks Tim & Joanne for welcoming a new person into your group. We might even meet up at Terminal City in two weeks, and will almost definitely meet up at Bottoscon Spring in June (if they come, because I didn’t actually ask them if they were coming!)

And thanks to everybody there.

It was great to see friends I don’t see as often as I would like.

It was great to play a bunch of games over three days.

It was just great.

Here’s to Terminal City Tabletop Convention in 2 weeks and then Bottoscon Spring in three months!