Small Con Paradise in the Mid West.

Small Con Paradise in the Mid West.

I spent the weekend gaming with 399 other folks in St. Louis this weekend and had a blast.  For one, smaller conventions are really starting to appeal to me.  While larger cons tend to draw more vendors and events, I am more at home among the close-knit friendships you tend to find at a smaller venue. 
Geekway Mini 2019 was the break I needed as 2019 got underway.  We were able to play what we wanted, never needing to wait for a game to show back up in the library.  We were able to leave for lunch and not come back to find our table claimed by others.  And best of all, I got to lose another game of Turfmaster...  but more on that later.

Fellowship and other Things.
Games are great, food can be great, but they can both far better when in a group.  Luckily I have found such a group.  The Dardens and the Reeds, primarily, allow me to tag along -sans wife, and even go to lengths to keep me safe when Im far too deep into a bottle of bourbon...  how do I know?  Again.  Turfmaster, and I'll add those details later...  
Toby Gee has become another staple of gamesmanship and camaraderie...  and is, in my opinion, the single nicest Turkish coffee barista I know.
Our normal touring group has other regulars that were unable to make it, and they were missed, often and mightily.

Now for the games.
Overall, I enjoyed what I played, and we got in a good amount of games this year.  The following list is chronological at best.  I will separate each of the three days into their own blog post.

Thursday

1. Wingspan (7)

We arrived Thursday night, and after getting settled in, we gathered with Chris Darden and grabbed the game we knew would be scarce the rest of the weekend... 
Wingspan -from Stonemaier Games.
It's the first month of 2019 and already there is a buzz surrounding this game, so Chris, Scott, Alicia and I sat down to see what the fuss was all about.   This is a very well produced engine-building game.  Any fans of Stonemaier games wont be let down by the components and general quality.
As games go, this is a nice new take on what's popular right now.   Engine-building.
The Pros:  It's theme is unique and the components lean into it well.  The 150+ individual birds with unique traits is interesting and adds to the theme in several smart ways.
The Cons:  It's like most of the other engine builders out there...  next to no interaction with other players.  You are generally in solitaire mode on your own board.   The designer added some interactive mechanics, but they are few and far between.   The Bird-feeder component isn't a bird feeder....  its a bird house.  Finally, like my two plays of Scythe, I really had no idea how I was stacking up to the other players at the end of the game.  When your scores are in the 80-100 range it really is too difficult to intuit who the leaders are, and almost impossible to guess what their points are...  so I had no idea and was just along for the ride...  waiting to see how I scored on the bell curve.

Overall it is a fun game.  I'll play this again, and enjoy it.   Did it Spark Joy?  Yes.  Will I add it to my collection?  Probably not.

2. Nut So Fast. (9)

Dexterity game like Jungle Speed, where you frantically watch as cards are flipped and when a certain combination of images comes out...  be the first to grab the item.  Nothing new here, except where the focus is and that makes this game brilliant.
Other games like Snorta, Jungle Speed, Ghost Blitz or even Spikey Dastards have you struggling to catch the necessary details in multiple player stacks.   This can be quite difficult if the players are spread out and at best, these games reward the one player, in a trance,  sitting at the table ignoring everything but the next flip. 
In Nut So Fast, you only care about the two cards in front of the current player, and because of that, there is so much more competition for the grabbing.
If you play with us, chances ar, your gonna say ouch a couple times, but you will also laugh a lot more than when you play this game's predecessors.

Update:  1/22/19
Turns out the designer of Nut So Fast wants us all to know that he admires religious douche bags like John Piper and apparently doesn't care what you think your pronouns are.  He also apparently doesn't believe you have the right to no be touched without consent.   So DO NOT BUY THIS GAME. 

Friday:  Finding Treasure and eating Ramen. 
https://olriverstudios.blogspot.com/2019/01/geekway-mini-day-2-ramen-and-pirates.html
Saturday:  I crash and burn again in Turfmaster.
Sunday:  Time to get back before snowmaggedon.