MeepleCon 2018 Recap

by Ambie Valdés

Last weekend I went to my second MeepleCon, a board game convention in Las Vegas! The convention was three days, but we ended up getting a flight early Sunday morning to go home (other flights were a lot more expensive), so we were only there on Friday and Saturday. But we still had tons of fun playing games!

I played 22 plays of 15 different games at the convention (plus some Craps), 8 of which were new to me. The most played and my favorite new game was The Mind, a new cooperative card game where you have to play the cards in order without talking! Jess had a copy that she borrowed from Scott Alden and was bringing it around to everyone at the convention to try out. It was really hard and a lot of fun, and I really want to get it. Unfortunately, it's currently only available in Germany, but I heard that it will be coming over soon.

On Friday we met up with Edward (from Heavy Cardboard) and Steph, and we got to learn Caylus from Edward! Caylus is the grandfather of worker placement games, and it can be pretty mean, since only certain actions will trigger each round, and you can pay money to get the actions not to trigger. It was pretty fun, and the negotiation with triggering the actions was very interesting.

After playing a few games with Edward and Steph, we mentioned that we wanted to play Craps, since we were in Vegas. Little did we know, both Edward and Steph wanted to play! So we played together (on both Friday and Saturday night) and had a lot of fun!

I also finally got to play Anachrony, a time-travel themed worker placement game with really neat minis. I enjoyed it, but the time-travel didn't stand out too much to me, since the mechanic was basically a loan (you "sent" resources through time), and that part didn't feel like time travel. But I liked the rest of the game, which was like a dystopian survival theme. It was a lot of planning, building up buildings, and getting workers so that you could have a good engine to get points and evacuate when the crater hit.

We also got to play some not new games. I was on the Meeple Overboard podcast last week where we talked about games we wanted to get to know better and play again, and Adrenaline was one of mine. So Chris and Wendy offered to bring their painted copy and play it with me! I got to play the full game this time (my first time I think we just played a medium-length game), and it was pretty exciting. This time Toby got a bunch of good kills with his Rail Gun!

Last year at MeepleCon, I was going to play Dungeon Petz with Sam Healey from The Dice Tower. Since he saw my first Strategically Thematic segment about Dungeon Petz, he wanted to play it, and I finally got to play it with him this year at MeepleCon! Toby and I even made it into his MeepleCon Vlog. We also got to play with Nick from The Brothers Murph, another fan and proponent of the awesomeness of Dungeon Petz. Dungeon Petz is one of my favorite games, so I always have a lot of fun playing it. But it's pretty difficult and needs multiple plays to know what you're doing!

Toby and I decided to just eat buffets for Friday and Saturday, so that we would only have to eat one meal each day. Thursday night we had Teppanyaki (which we also went to last year), which was really good and fun. On Friday we went to Wicked Spoon, the buffet in The Cosmopolitan. We had been here once before and it was really good, but this time we were disappointed in the normal food. The desserts were excellent, but none of the regular food was very good.

On Saturday we went to an all you can eat sushi place called Sushi House. Apparently there's a lot of sushi places in Vegas, and this one had good reviews, but the sushi wasn't that great. But what was fun about the place was there were cute sushi posters that reminded me of Sushi Go! Also, once again, the dessert was good. Maybe Vegas just has really good desserts?

Overall, I had a fun time at MeepleCon, and it was very relaxing compared to all the conventions I went to last year! It was nice taking longer lunch breaks and relaxing throughout the day (and taking breaks to play Craps). We still got a lot of gaming in, but we didn't overextend ourselves, and I was well-rested on Sunday night (after taking a nap when our early flight got home)! I also got to learn quite a few new games from their library - even though it was a smaller library, it had a good selection!

Share: