FallCon - A Cornucopia of Gaming

Good news everyone! After much prodding and multiple friendly reminder emails piling up in my inbox, I've finally uploaded our FallCon 22 Photos to the website. Thushyanthan did a great job again this year. It's really cool going through the professional photos and being able to relive some of the moments of that awesome weekend in September. We've decided to split the 2009 photos into a Winners Gallery and a Con Gallery. If we have the time, we'll go back and reorganize the photos from our past years in a similar way.

While Thushy was mainly busy with photography this year, he also experimented with a little bit of video. We'll be showcasing this on our Info page shortly so that newcomers can get a feel for the con. Let us know what you think:



On a final note, I'll be tabulating the results of our survey this weekend and will do a blog post next week summarizing the feedback we've received. It's not too late to take our survey or send an email Contact Us page.

Have a great weekend!
Jasen
 

Searching for a horse racing board game?

Do you want to immerse yourself in the excitement of the tracks? Do you want to place bets and shout encouragement for your horse to win? Horse racing is fun and exciting and there are several published board games that try to recreate the magic of the sport.

One such game is called Winner's Circle. This review was originally published on BoardGame-Reviews.com.

And they're off....!

Winner's Circle is a horse racing board game designed by Reiner Knizia. It is a strategy board game and allows you to bet on a favorite horse and help your horse to win. Winner's circle is:

• Designed by: Reiner Knizia
• Published by: Face 2 Face Games
• Number of players: 2-6
• Playing time: 45-60 minutes
• Player ages: 8+

The game is published by F2F Games and is available for purchase at fine game stores.


During the game, you will try to ensure that it is your horse that places first by:

• choosing to move the most appropriate horse (not necessarily the one you bet on)
• advancing your horses as far as possible
• slow down others' horses
• make threats or cajole other players into moving your horses!

The first horse to place the pace marker (space 18 on the board) will reward the bettor with an additional $100 payout per bet.

Only the first three horses to finish the race will pay out.


In this horse racing board game, you are a bettor and your goal is to make the most money at the end of three laps.


You start the game by placing bets among the seven horses available for the first race. After placing the bets, each player will take turns to roll a special die and pick any horse to move.

The strategy in this game is to move horses such that your horse is the one most likely to win.

How do you pick a horse to move?

First you roll a special die, which has icons instead of pips, and based on the result of the die roll, you pick a horse. Each horse is represented by a tile which gives its movement abilities for a given roll.

For instance, if you roll a helmet, the horse, Equipoise, will move five spaces.

All horses are mathematically balanced (Dr. Reiner Knizia is a mathematics professor at a German university!) to have the same movement capabilities over time.


Winner's Circle is a great horse racing board game and it is suitable for teaching players about:

• managing risk
• manipulating odds
• diplomacy
• having fun!

Winner's Circle is a game that is best played with 4-6 players. For a horse racing board game, it has interesting movement mechanics that allow for a lot of great table talk. It is an interactive game and it will surely provide a lot of fun for you in a short playing time.

Happy gaming!
Thushyanthan

Aladdin's Dragons was published in 2000 and is designed by Richard Breese. The heart of this game is a bluffing and blind bidding mechanism that creates tension for all players!

Aladdin's Dragons:

• Designed by: Richard Breese
• Published by: Rio Grande Games
• Number of players: 3-5
• Playing time: 90 minutes
• Player ages: 10+

The components for the Rio Grande Games version of Aladdin's Dragons are of excellent and durable quality.


In the game, each player takes the role of a treasure hunter and must search out the Dragon Caves for treasure. After retriving the treasure, they must then pass through the city on the way to the palace.

At the palace doors, they may need to bypass the guards at the doors and enter the rooms to buy the artifacts.

The winner is the one with the most artifacts at the end of the game.


Before the game begins, each player is given eight tokens of a particular color. Each token has a number from 1-9 (the value "3" is not part of the players' tokens).

Players then place one artifact per palace room. In a 3 player game, 3 palace rooms are used. In a 5 player game, 5 palace rooms are used. Next a random "palace guard" token is drawn and placed face down at the entrance to the palace. There are 10 palace guard tokens with values ranging from 1-10.

Before a round begins, a treasure card is turned up and the appropriate treasure tokens are placed in each of the Dragon caves.

Now the game begins.

During each round, play continues clockwise and players have a chance to place one of their player tokens, face down, at a time in each of the areas of the board.

The winner in any area of the board is the one with the highest sum of player tokens.

The areas of the game are resolved from the bottom of the board (Dragon Caves), then the city (middle of the board) and finally the palace. Players need to acquire treasures to pay for any artifacts they win.

There are five each of six different artifcats for a total of 30 artifacts. In a 5 player game all 30 artifacts are used; in a 3 player game, only 18 are used.


Aladdin's Dragons is a well-produced game that can easily be played by children 8-9+ years old. The blind bidding mechanism is something children enjoy because it is like a race and creates tension.

There is a lot of player interaction in the game and it can get repetitive with older players. The best thing to do in this case is to play the "Magic Version" of this game where you are able to invoke the magic powers of your artifacts!

Happy gaming.
Thushyanthan

Bohnanza is a card game designed by Uwe Rosenberg. Mr. Rosenberg's other popular game about farming is called Agricola and is several notches in complexity above this game.

This game uses an odd card order mechanism where players are not allowed to change the order of cards in their hand. This leads to some very interesting situations when playing the game!

Bohnanza is:

• Designed by: Uwe Rosenberg
• Published by: Rio Grande Games
• Number of players: 2-7
• Playing time: 30 minutes
• Player ages: 8+

There are several versions of this game published by a number of different companies. The version that I own is the Amigo Spiele version which comes in a nifty tin container. The Amigo Spiele version only supports 3-5 players while the North American, Rio Grande Games, version supports 2-7 players.


This game is affectionately known in several gamer circles as "The Bean Game". The game is a card game where players collect sets of bean cards by drawing from the deck or trading with other players.

In order to prosper, players have to negotiate effectively with other players to get the proper bean cards in order to sell them at a healthy profit.

The winner of the game is the one who has made the most money planting and selling beans.

Before the game begins, the deck is shuffled thoroughly and each player is dealt a hand of 5 cards.


Each player has two imaginary fields on the table. At the beginning of a player's turn, that player must plant the first bean card in hand onto one of the two fields.

The oddest feature of this game is that players cannot change the order of the cards in hand.

The player may choose to plant the second bean card in hand onto a field.

Once a field is planted, for example with Wax Beans, no other bean types may be planted on that field unless all the Wax Beans are harvested and sold.

A player may purchase a third bean field at anytime by paying 3 coins.

After planting beans, the player then reveals two cards from the top of the deck. This then forms the heart of the game: the trading/negotiation phase.

The player may choose to take both revealed cards. If the player does not wish to do so, then she may make offers to other players to buy/sell/trade the revealed cards. She may also elect to trade any other cards she may have in her hand.


Any cards traded during this phase must be planted.

The trading phase is key to the game because it is only during this phase that cards can be moved out of normal hand order.

Once trading is finished, the active player then draws three more cards and adds it to the back of her hand. Then the next player begins their turn.

Each type of bean is worth a different amount of coins depending on how rare it is. For instance, there are 20 Blue Bean cards in the deck. That means, that a player requires at least 4 Blue Bean cards in play to sell for 1 coin.

The game is over when the deck has been exhausted for the third time. The player with the most coins is the winner.


Bohnanza is, at its heart, a negotiation game. The game is about skillfully making trades with other players in order to benefit from the trades.

I have played this game with younger gamers (7 years) to older gamers (50 years) and both groups absolutely love it.

Sometimes there is a "take that" attitude during the trading phase of the game but that is what gives this card game the spark!

If some players are uncomfortable with trading, or insist on long negotiations, then the game may slow down. In most cases, however, it plays very quickly and can easily finish well within an hour.

Happy gaming.
Thushyanthan