by Corey

After a year of Charterstone and then starting 2020 off with Euphoria, the group decided to take a break from worker placements.  When Donnie and I were at Carnage Con in November 2019, he noticed Power Grid at the flea market at a good price.  At least he thought it was Power Grid.  Right before he cashed out, we noticed it was actually one of the sequel games and not the original Power Grid like he wanted, so he put it back down.

Fast forward to January 2020, we were at the Eloquent Ogre Mini-Con and he saw the game again, this time the right one, and again at a good price so he quickly scooped it up.  It turned out that a couple of the guys in our group have played Power Grid before and enjoyed it so we agreed to play it for our February session.  It also supports up to 6 players so it was a great choice because we were going to have 6!  At least I thought so.   The day had come to play and a few members of the gang decided to grab some food from... lets just it is a popular fast food restaurant chain.  One might say they grabbed too much food.  So much that one of our players felt ill and had to bail.  However, I think it was just an excuse because he became disinterested after watching some overview videos.  That's ok, we still had 5.

Power Grid is a bit Monopoly meets Ticket to Ride with some engine building mixed in.  The object of the game is to build cities on a map and then power those cities using power plants.  Everything costs money.  Paper money.  The power plants are acquired though an auction, the cities are built on the map over connected routes, and resources for your power plants are bought from a fluctuating market.  The more houses you can power with your power plants, the more money you earn back.  The satisfying part is getting the perfect mix of power plants to power your cities.  In particular, I at one point had 2 power plants that allowed me to power a combined 9 cities with just 2 resources.  The downside is you can only hold up to double the resource consumption amount of your power plants.  What I didn't realize until late is that you can only consume ONE of those resources, so I guess I may have cheated a few rounds. 

The Boardroom opened late 2019 amid a lot of buzz. It currently boasts 500+ board games that range from the classics to the top 100. It's a welcoming, well-lit space that has cozy couches, small and medium tables, as well as a large boardroom table (where we finished our Board Game Fam Charterstone campaign last year). There's comfort food and beverages of all kinds, including milkshakes.

When we met the owner, Kerry Winger, at the Champlain Games Festival last spring, she was interested in having us come in and show off our stuff. After the cafe opened, she hadn't forgotten about us! After visiting a few times and getting a feel for the space, we picked a night and started advertising.

Figuring out how it was going to work was the biggest challenge. We printed out and laminated rules, we dug up our extra copies of some games, we brought out our posters, and we stationed ourselves at tables.   

Several people from the board gaming community came to play our games.  Fellow local game designer, Nathan Meunier (who has a Kickstarter as of this writing) came and we got to talk shop.

Some of our lesser-played games got to the table giving us the opportunity to show something different. New ideas for old games emerged. BirdSpot, a roll and write currently being designed for a contest, was brought out and play-tested. 

Coming soon to the Boardroom: Giant 27Panic! — a floor-sized version of our time-traveling, train-path-building  co-op game. Stay tuned for dates.

Have you ever been to a board game cafe? What did you like about it?

by Corey

It started with the arrival of an impulse Kickstarter backing of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shadows of the Past Board Game by IDW in 2016.  Being that this game tickled my nostalgic TMNT fandom, of course I backed it at the "Works" level to get everything.  It arrived a year later and in order to justify the massive investment, I quickly assembled a group of close friends to get together and play it regularly at a monthly interval.  We had a shell of a time stomping the foot but were ready to move on to a new game.

For 2019 we started the legacy game Charterstone by Stonemaier Games and designed by Jamey Stegmaier.  We played a scenario every month and completed the campaign in December.  I'm not going to reveal any spoilers but we enjoyed the surprises and twists along the way.  I won the campaign, but I digress.  We all agreed that it was time to play more than just one game for an entire year in our group.  For 2020, we were going to pick a new game each month to play.

That brings us to our first session in January 2020.  We chose Euphoria as sort of a "gateway" game from Charterstone.   Like Charterstone, it is also designed by Jamey Stegmaier and published by Stonemaier Games.  Donnie won Euphoria from a play-to-win at CuseCon 2019.  While we did technically play it there, we didn't get a chance to finish so both of us were eager to get it back to the table.

If you aren't familiar with Euphoria, it is a worker placement game set in a dystopian future where your workers are dice.  You must roll your workers whenever you retrieve them.  This represents your work force's "knowledge" and if it ever ends up being 16 or higher, you must lose a worker.  Can't have your workers getting too smart after all.  You also start the game with 2 characters that are part of 1 of 4 factions.  You place your worker on locations that earn you various commodities and resources representing food, bliss, energy, stone, brick, and gold.  Some locations earn you artifacts, others give you an additional worker, and others promote factions.

You win by placing 10 of your own stars on the board.  This is done through various means.  Some worker locations earn you stars by trading in resources or artifacts.  Another way is to contribute workers to markets, of which you can't remove until 4 total workers are involved.  Another way is fully promoting the faction for your character.  This is the important one to note, at least it was for me...

There were 5 of us playing and the game was pretty close as we entered the final moments.  I really thought Donnie was going to win.  He had a decent engine going for earning artifacts and changing them back in for stars.  My strategy early on was to be involved with all of the markets.  However, I had been steadily earning bliss as a byproduct of one of the abilities Donnie was using from his character.  There was a moment that I discovered I could easily change that bliss along with the heap of energy I collected into resources which, in turn, I could convert into stars.

I had it all figured out, except I almost ran just short.  My cycle of bliss and energy into stars only got me to 9.  It was at that moment I noticed an entirely different option from a market that would have been much easier for me to get the stars.  I pointed it out to the other players and lamented that it would have been a better play for me.  That is when Donnie of course took advantage.  I pointed it right out to him!  Here is what I didn't realize: it also advanced one of the factions.  The very faction I still had not yet earned a star from.

That's right, Donnie's usage of the revealed market benefit moved my faction far enough to earn me my 10th star and I won.  Oops?

Have you played Euphoria?  Did it end in spectacular fashion?  Tell us about it!  And be sure to check back next month for the next Board Game Fam blog entry.