Terminal City Tabletop Convention Retrospective – 2026

Has it been a year already since last year’s Terminal City convention?

Why yes, yes it has.

This year’s event was still down at the Vancouver Convention Centre on the waterfront, but it changed buildings to a much larger room.

This convention-goer approves of that decision!

While space was still a little tight on Saturday, there was no problem finding at least some space to spread out if you needed to.

With Bottoscon Winter 2026 happening just 2 weeks before, you’d think I would have been too tired to do something like this.

You would be wrong (though it was tiring!).

Three days of gaming after three more days of gaming two weeks ago.

Why can’t that happen all the time?

Anyway, the venue was really nicely laid out, but of course Convention Centre rules means no outside food or drink and you have to buy from their little cafe that was in there.

The cafe hot dogs (or at least the one I had) were way overpriced and not satisfying at all even if they would have been cheap!

But that’s not the convention organizers’ fault. They can’t do anything about the venue’s rules.

This building is not directly connected to the food court we usually go to (unless you take a long walk through an underground passage to the other building first), but it was nice to step outside and get some air sometimes.

Another great thing compared to last year is that the organizers decided to open at 9:00 am on Friday instead of 3:00 pm like they did last year. This made it so we had 3 whole days of gaming (well, Sunday ended early like always) instead of a long Saturday and two shorter days.

That was definitely an improvement.

The number of games I played wasn’t quite as comparable to last year, but that’s because two of the days had a 5-hour monstrosity played, which I’ll mention shortly.

It was so cool to see so many people who I haven’t seen in a while.

And Tim & Joanne, who I only met two weeks ago!

That was very nice.

I also met a few new interesting people, which is what conventions are all about.

That, and playing games that would not otherwise come out on a Sunday game day.

What’s that?

Get to the games, Dave?

It’s my blog, my rules.

Ok, ok, come back!

I’ll start now.

First, there a few “new to me” games, some of them older, which will make the Cult happy!

While I will describe them a bit, I will save most of that for the monthly “new to me games” post coming in April.

When playing the new Vital Lacerda game, Speakeasy, last week at our normal Sunday game day, I told Abi (who owns the game) that I definitely wanted to get in on a game of it if it was going to be played at the convention.

So of course, the first game we played on Friday morning was…Speakeasy!

(Can I just say that there are a lot of games named Speakeasy on Boardgame Geek? Yes, yes there are).

This was the monstrosity I mentioned above.

And I mean that in a good way!

This game is huge, it is a long teach, and can take up to 3 hours if you have new players.

We were kind of milling about and just chatting from 9:00 until 9:45 or so, and then we finally got the game out and started to set it up.

Abi and I had played the week before, so it was just Jim and Shawn who were new, but that did mean a full teach.

We started the teach around 10:15 or so, and that took us until 11:00.

And then we got started.

Three hours later, we finished with me not having done very well at all, but still loving the game!

I’m not going to go into a huge amount of detail on this one, mainly because I have enough plays of it that I’m going to be reviewing it soon.

Essentially, though, the game goes over 4 Acts between 1921 and 1931, and players are getting into the illicit booze business.

Producing it, buying it, selling it, maybe even stealing it from Chicago mob ships.

Meanwhile, the New York Mafia is trying to muscle in on territory and you can associate with a gangster to help you out in certain situations…or you can move in on their speakeasies first before you do that.

It’s a Vital Lacerda game, so you know it’s got a relatively simple “take one action a turn, but that action can lead to a whole bunch more” mechanism.

It’s the decision space that makes this game very complex.

This is an amazing game.

Probably not up there with Lisboa as my favourite Lacerda game, but definitely high in my rankings.

I guess that’s spoiling the review, but oh well…

Since I had bought a hot dog (ugh, not good) during the game, I didn’t really need to go out for lunch, so a bunch of us got together and played a game that Tartan has been wanting to get us to play for a while now, mainly because it plays 5 players pretty well and…guess what, we had 5 players!

Power Struggle is a game where you are all in a company, vying for control of various departments and also to gain the chairmanship of it, in order to gain influence, buy shares, form main departments, make corrupt bribes and move your way into outside consultancy.

Players are trying to be the first to four points, which can be earned by reaching the green area of the tracks, or possibly even being higher than your nemesis on the three tracks your card says.

There is a lot of take that, of course, as you are getting rid of other players’ employees and trying to take control of the departments that your opponents have.

Still, it’s an interesting game.

Not totally my cup of tea, but at least it’s not a fully economic game.

As you’ll see later, those really aren’t my jam.

It was fun, and it was nice deciding the order of the event cards because I was head of that department for most of the game.

It was great knowing what was going to happen.

While building up time to go to dinner, we decided to play a few filler games.

There was, of course, the always dependable Faraway.

I just love this game as a filler, because the scoring is interesting and it’s not like any other card game I know.

We followed that with a new card game called Trinket Trove.

In this one, players are bidding for trinkets, but they are using other trinkets to make the bids, so you’d better know what you want!

The cards in the game are both the trinkets and also their value is what you are bidding in order to choose the order for taking a new lot of other trinkets.

At the end of the game, what’s in your hand is going to score based on the system for each trinket.

So one Feather will get you 5 points, but two will get you 10, and three will get you 25.

Get seven of them and you have a whopping 145 points!

But that ain’t gonna happen, because the values in the top left are what you use for bidding.

This was a very quick filler game with some interesting bidding mechanics (I’m not very good at valuing things, so bidding games are kind of my nemesis, though I don’t dislike them at all).

We followed that with a couple of games of The Gang, which is another wonderful filler that ends up getting played a lot, and almost always more than once in a sitting.

This time was no different, as we lost the first time and had to try again!

With that, it was time to go to dinner (or maybe we did dinner before this? I don’t actually remember).

A three item combo from Famous Wok with a double order of honey garlic chicken and fried rice?

Yes, please!

I went there twice this weekend, it’s that good.

Anyway, when we came back (or after The Gang if we did dinner first), it was time for the last big game of the night.

Trying to decide who would be playing what, I finally settled in with a 4-player game of Container, another game that Tartan’s been trying to get us to play because it plays 5 players really well (one other player refused to play, so we were at 4 this night).

This is the old version, not the shiny new one that I’m not even sure if it’s gone out to backers yet.

I haven’t played this game since 2014, when I first learned it with a really bad teacher.

After a night of playing this for 2 hours…it wasn’t just the teacher that turned me off of it.

That’s because it is a pure economic game.

Like, so pure that it could marry a virgin princess.

You’re buying, producing, and selling goods and then shipping them to an island (what are in those containers, and do they assist with Dr. Moreau’s insane experiments?) where players bid on them to gain endgame money (hopefully).

You can produce, but you can’t ship what you produce to the island.

You need somebody to buy it and put it on their docks.

And then you need someone else (or it could be you!) to buy them off of the docks and ship them out.

It’s all interconnected.

Each player has a goal card for how much each colour of container on your section of the island is worth at the end of the game, but you will lose all containers in the colour you have the most of before final payoff.

So you have to plan.

I really suck at these types of games and I don’t get much enjoyment out of them.

I did enjoy this play, but mainly for the company and the laughs we had.

The game itself, I think I could go another 12 years without playing.

With that, it was time to make the long trudge up the hill to home, looking forward to Saturday and some more great gaming.

Saturday morning dawned and it wasn’t raining. A bonus!

I left early so I could grab McDonald’s for breakfast in the food court.

Since I was sitting there rather than taking it to go, I decided to go for the hotcakes and sausage meal instead of my usual McGriddle, because I had a hankering for both and while yes, it’s McDonald’s, so isn’t exactly IHOP, it would satisfy that itch for now.

I get it back to the table…and the clerk hadn’t put any syrup or butter in the bag.

How the hell are you supposed to eat pancakes without syrup or butter?

Thankfully she gave me some when I went back to the counter, but still…

It was also nice that, while I was sitting there killing time, reading my phone, waiting for the time to get to the Convention Centre, Tony walked up and sat down. We had a nice chat and caught up.

Then it was time to game!

Sometime on Friday night, Abi mentioned that a couple of guys had wanted to get in on the Speakeasy action but we had been full, and would I want to play it Saturday morning too?

Of course I would!

Abi wouldn’t be playing it this time, but Shri had actually played it with us the Sunday before, so between the two of us, we were able to teach the two newbies.

After a really long set up, of course.

“We’re not going to get there until around 10:00.”

“Ok, I’ll start setting up and we might be done by then!”

We barely were.

The teach started around 10:15 or so, then we got going.

I managed to eke out a victory, though only because of a slight misunderstanding of the rules that prevented Shri from getting 10 more points (I won by 3).

So put an asterisk on that win.

Come 2:00, it was time to go for lunch.

Famous Wok again for the win!

That’s so filling that I really didn’t need to have dinner, though I did grab a quick bite later on.

When we got back from lunch, some of the longer games had already gotten underway, so Vicki and I found some table space and set up a brand new copy of Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor.

This is a great new version of Forest Shuffle, and probably one that I prefer to the original.

It adds horizontal terrain (moors) that can’t hold any animals to the left and right, but can hold two on both the top and bottom.

There are a lot of different animals, different strategies and set collection types, and I overall find it a very good variation.

I’ve been playing it non-stop on Boardgame Arena with a friend of mine from New Zealand, but this was the first time on the table so I’ll talk more about it on my New to Me Games post.

Vicki owns the game, so it should come out at our lunch time games at some point!

After that, I convinced her to try out my new 2-player battle game called Tag Team.

Another game I’ve played on BGA once but never played on the table (but I played it live on BGA so it’s already been included as a legitimate “play” for new to me status), it was nice to actually feel the cards and turn them over instead of click, click, clicking.

I have to admit that the four suggested fighters, in the suggested configuration, aren’t the most exciting to play so I’m not sure how well it went over with Vicki.

I enjoyed it, and I can definitely see the potential with different fighters.

I love how this is essentially War with deckbuilding and the cards actually doing something.

Each player starts with their two fighters’ starting cards in their deck, in any order you choose.

You shuffle the other cards from those fighters’ decks into a pile.

You turn over the top card of the deck and do what it says, either attacking, defending, or something else.

When the deck is empty (pretty quick with just 2 cards!), you draw 3 cards from your shuffled deck, choose one, and place it anywhere in your battle deck without changing the order of the other cards.

And go to war again…then choose a card to place in your deck…then go to war again…etc.

I really enjoyed this and would like to see how much better the game is with different fighter combinations.

Tim and Joanne from Bottoscon Winter were walking around and said they’d come play a game with us when they were done with what they were doing, so Vicki and I had some more time to kill.

More Dartmoor!

Another great play of it.

We finished that and went to get Tim & Joanne for a quick game, as they both had scheduled games at 7:00.

They also brought Sy (who I also met at Bottoscon Winter) and his friend David so we could play a quick 6-player game.

Harvest is a really old game (1992, so 33 years!) about collecting points by harvesting fields.

You have to play on your own field if it’s empty, but otherwise can play on anybody’s field (unless theirs is empty, in which case you can’t).

You’re trying to play tiles in order to get a tic-tac-toe (including diagonally), but each player wins the tiles that are in their field.

So you definitely want the positive ones in yours!

This was actually a really fun game! Very quick, easy to teach, and while it does have some take-that, it’s a short game so who could get upset about that?

It’s not like they’re destroying the engine you’ve spent the last 45 minutes building or anything.

Joanne and Tim wandered off to their games, but Sy and David asked us if we wanted to play something, so we went to the extensive games library (another convention bonus) and checked out Dungeons & Dragons: Temple of Elemental Evil (the boardgame).

This game is supposed to be done as a campaign but you can play any of the adventures in the game as a one-off.

Of course, the Monster and Encounter decks are supposed to get tougher as the campaign rolls on and we didn’t take out any of the cards from the decks.

So I think we were actually playing with the hardest decks.

We did manage to actually win the game, killing off the Air Elemental that manifests when you find its altar.

I really did like the searching the dungeon and laying out tiles mechanic and I think this would be a good campaign to play.

As a one-off adventure, it was fine.

But the four of us had some laughs playing it, which is the most important part.

That took us to around 9:30 but I was bagged after a long day and not much sleep the night before, so I made the walk uphill to home a little earlier than I usually do.

Sunday dawned and I once again went to McDonald’s, but got my usual McGriddle this time.

It was very good.

I had vowed not to play Speakeasy on this day, but then Joanne and Tim showed up and started setting it up.

Thankfully, they were full with a couple of friends who were going to play it with them.

I think I could have resisted anyway, but it was nice to not have to try.

Instead, Cal and his two American friends who had come up for the convention stopped by.

Cal and Nick were going to have to be catching flights fairly soon, so we didn’t want to play anything huge.

It was filler time!

First, The Gang, of course.

That’s a given.

We lost, but it can be really difficult at 6 players.

Then Cal brought out Flip 7, that push your luck card game that is amazingly fun!

But also published by a company whose head is either a Trump supporter or at least doesn’t see anything wrong with the tariffs that were implemented last year.

I always have to mention that whenever I mention this game, though the game itself is so fun.

Poor Cal kept busting on his second card, which was hilarious (though I’m sure frustrating for him).

This is the push your luck game where you are trying to collect cards with different numbers, but if you get a card that you already have, then you bust and get no points.

Then Brendan brought out a game I haven’t played in years, and probably one of the most difficult games to search for on BGG.

Yes, I’m talking about The Game (though they seem to have fixed this because the first three results are The Game so I guess it’s not that difficult?)

This is a cooperative game where you can’t talk other than to indicate where you want to play next so you hope nobody else will play there.

There are two stacks ascending 1-99 and two stacks descending from 100-2 and on your turn, you have to play two cards.

You can’t go backwards once a card is played, so ascending, if you’ve played a 54, you can’t then play a 32.

However, if you have a card that is exactly 10 behind the current card (so ascending with a 54, you had a 44), you can play it! That’s when you might want to indicate that you don’t want anybody playing on that stack.

You play until somebody doesn’t have a legal move.

The first game, we emptied the deck and just had 8 cards left in all of our hands.

Not bad!

The second game…not so much.

Next, we had a few new players so…how about The Gang?

(Way too many “The X” games, aren’t there?)

On Friday, when I was involved in another game, some friends were playing Grand Austria Hotel, which is now one of my favourite games.

I was jealous and was hoping to get a game in sometime during the weekend.

Since we had a couple of new people interested and Shri had brought it, that became our major game for Sunday.

This time we were playing with one of the modules in the Let’s Waltz expansion, namely the actual waltzing.

I haven’t gotten this to the table since 2024, but I do have an ongoing 3-player game online, so I am quite familiar with it, though not the expansion.

This is a game where you are bringing guests into your hotel, feeding them, and then housing them in rooms that you have opened for them.

They won’t come into your hotel just for sleeping. They have to be fed too.

Arrogant buffoons.

Anyway, with the Waltz expansion, you can send them to the ballroom instead of into rooms if you want (or if you haven’t opened a room for them yet).

YOU WILL DANCE, AND YOU WILL LIKE IT!!!!

Ahem…anyway.

I love the action system where a bunch of dice are rolled and then, in snake-like turn order you will take a die from an action and do that action at the strength equal to the number of dice that were there before you took it.

So you could get a bunch of food, or be able to open a bunch of rooms, or whatever.

Or if there is only one die, you will get one food or open one room, or whatever.

There’s also an Emperor track because you’re trying to keep the Emperor happy by satisfying his whims.

This game is so great.

I discovered during this play that there is an additional advantage to online play that I normally don’t think about (in addition to the “not having to set it all up and manually track the score, etc” advantage).

If I suck in an online game, we’ll just be doing a rematch anyway.

If I suck on the table (like I did on Sunday), then I may not play it again for weeks, if not months or years!

Still, it was incredible to finally play this physically again, and I do really like the expansion.

So much so that I opened my phone, went to Boardgame Bliss, and ordered it.

After a long game of that (well, it was only long because we went and ate lunch in the middle of it), it was almost time to go.

I had time for one more filler game, so Shri brought out Long Shot: the Dice Game, a game I haven’t played in a number of years.

This is a fun horse racing roll and write game where you are betting on horses, buying them, and trying to get your favourite horse across the finish line.

The current player will roll the 6-sided and the 8-sided die.

The horse who has the 8-sided die number will move the 6-sided die number of spaces (there is only a 1,2 and 3 on it).

Then all players can mark something off on their player sheet for that horse.

One of the things you can do is mark off a jersey, which will let you then mark off any horse you want on the current horse’s card.

That way, the next time that horse is rolled, in addition to it moving, your horse will move one space.

You’re trying to have the most money by betting well, so don’t mess it up!

When that ended, I was sad.

It was time to say adieu to everyone and head home, back to reality and the idea of working the next day.

It has been such a full weekend of gaming, nothing but fun, and lovely conversation with people.

It was so good to see friends I hadn’t seen in a while, and new friends like Tim, Joanne, and Sy, and chat with them as well.

That’s what these things are all about, isn’t it?

I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to play with Robin (he wasn’t able to come on Friday and our rest of the weekend game schedules just didn’t mesh well), but it was cool to see him, Jim, Shawn, Evan, Sarah, and Sarah (or maybe Sara?), and many others.

It won’t be until June that there is another convention to go to, but that’s ok.

There will be plenty of gaming to do in the meantime.

If you were there and I missed you, I’m sorry to hear that! We’ll have to get a game in some time.

Maybe next year?