SoRCon 2016!

“What!? Why would you even do that!?”

It’s just turned midnight on Friday evening and I’m sat at a table in a large room playing Porta Nigra, a recent euro game about constructing the buildings of a fabulous Roman city. And my opponent has just taken the brick I wanted (the swine!). He didn’t even need it.

Around me are piles of board games, tables of gamers arranging cardboard pieces, staring at hands of cards or moving markers around victory tracks and smiling with glee as they do so. I’m sat inside the concrete shell of a leisure estate Holiday Inn on the edge of Basildon and I won’t be stepping outside into the fresh air again until Sunday. I’m at SoRCon, one of the UKs growing selection of board game conventions and when I finally emerge, bleary eyed from lack of sleep and fuzzy headed from endless rules explanations, I’ll at least be sure of one thing: I’ve had a great time!

SoRCon was my second board games convention, the first being MidCon last November (and you can check out my adventures there in this article) and I was curious to see the difference, if there was any. SorCon has a similar structure, a 3 day weekend within the confines of a hotel, but rather than having everyone spread over multiple rooms, almost everything is contained within a single large conference room. This was a really impressive space, able to accommodate everyone even during the Saturday rush, and still have space for a small games library, a shop and a bring and buy (scourge of my wallet that it is). Honestly this was great, a big improvement over MidCon, it was easier to find games to play and the organisers were able to make occasional announcements to everyone and altogether made for a much better sense of being part of a community.

The games library was a cool difference to MidCon too. A selection of games had been put out that anyone could pick up and play, all donated for the event by attendees. I didn’t use any myself, as I didn’t fancy having to learn and teach a new game from the rulebook, but there was a reliable flow of people wandering across to use it. The store was much smaller than MidCon’s and without any enticing deals I was able to resist (thank goodness!) but I was less successful with the Bring and Buy… seriously I need to start bringing games rather than just buying them! Added to my collection was a copy of Lancaster (that I’ve been crazy about since MidCon) with its expansion, and Legendary Encounters Alien (which I’ve heard great things about), all for £35. Seriously the deals you can get at these things are murder on my shoulders as I carry the games back home.

All in all, SoRCon was a fantastic weekend! It’s a slightly smaller con than MidCon, and it’s the better for it. The atmosphere was great and it was full of lovely, friendly people, which seem to be the standard for the board game community! I don’t think you can go too far wrong with a weekend of board games so if you’re available for this or any convention I would whole heartedly encourage you to make the trip to one. And if you’re looking for one to start with, SorCon 2017 would be a great choice!

Would you like to know more!? Then here’s a run through of my weekend and quick thoughts on some of the games I played!

 

Friday

 

Basildon being a comfortable distance from Norwich and the convention not starting until 2 meant a nice leisurely start to my day! A train ride to Chelmsford and a bus journey through the Essex countryside all that was required to get me to Basildon. Of course, it got me to Basildon bus station, a 20 minute stroll from the hotel, which I managed without getting lost despite a few moments of panic. It even gave me a chance to experience Basildon’s town centre… yeah so games!

I had barely checked in when I immediately bumped into a friend I’d made at MidCon, Martyn, and we agreed to meet up in the gaming hall to get started! We were joined by another early starter, Steve, and decided to start off with something nice and simple to warm up into the weekend: Russian Railroads.

 

Holy moly was that an overwhelming game! Yet I was able to blunder through quite nicely in no small way helped by the fantastic graphic design and iconography that manages to be clear despite the insane number of options available to you. We followed this up with a classic Euro, Brass, that despite telling the story of the industrial revolution in Lancaster manages to avoid the pitfalls of being dry or tedious in anyway. It also manages to avoid involving brass in any literal way, which makes me especially curious about the name. Chris (not Creaking Shelves’ Chris), who joined us as we were about to start, and myself managed to get by while Martyn and Steve rocketed off to a closely fought final score that all came down to Martyn’s collection of shipyards. The final game of the evening came courtesy of myself with Porta Nigra and the infamous brick stealing incident, but fortunately (and despite this set back) I was able to romp home to victory. It helps saving the game you know until last thing at night!

 

Saturday

 

Having not pushed things too far last night I was up and out of bed with a minimum of fuss and downstairs for a cracking fried breakfast (just the thing to kick the day off). Wandering into the game room at about half 9 I was able to join a friendly gang for a game of Freedom: The Underground Railroad! This is a game I’ve been on the look out for a while, a cooperative game with a dark, powerful story to tell. In it, you play members of the campaign to end slavery in the United States, through which you need to try and help slaves escape from the Deep South across the many miles to Canada. On the way however, you must try and avoid the slave catchers who patrol the map, but often you are faced with impossible choices and not everyone can be saved. It’s not a comfortable game, but it is an important one.

After that we broke out some slightly less emotionally weighty games: Gym and Sow (from the Pack O Games series I reviewed last week), Roll for the Galaxy (first impressions back in November, but it only continues to grow in my estimation), Mottainai (surprisingly quick and takes multi use cards to the extreme), Hexemonia (a fine quick civilisation building game) and Isle of Skye (a fantastic little tile laying/auction game that’s been getting a lot of buzz recently. Really glad I got to try this one out!). The final game we played was a really intriguing Taiwanese game called Joraku, only available from a couple of retailers in the UK for frankly exorbitant prices (import costs you see). It is a simple trick taking and area control game set in warring Japan. The card you play let’s you place troops in the correspondingly numbered region, or take that many movement/attack actions, but also the winner of the trick scores the region in which their daimyo is based. It was an absolutely lovely little game, with a great if simple art style. If you can find a copy of it for a reasonable price definitely give it a try or better yet, send it to me…?

Heading into Saturday evening there was a special event, featuring both running around and street poetry! At a board games convention!? Yes you read that right. This was the Quiz-a-hunt –a thon –a thingemy taking the idea of a pub quiz to the next level and then some. I had randomly signed up in the day, filling the last space on a team of people I had never met and inadvertently turning me into a source of quite some mystery and conversation. As I should be, of course. Fortunately I was soon introduced to everyone and we could face the gauntlet of events. Along with the traditional pub quiz (if you can call a quiz written by Christopher –no, not that Chris – nor that Chris – traditional), we also faced the challenge of composing a street poem dedicated to board games (all props go to Hilly for saving us from that one), a hunt to match up sets of connected cards from a pile of 60 (60!), and some physical recreation. Like a dexterity game they said. Well! We were handed some foam disc firing toys and challenged to drop them into sweetie tubs from across a room, with someone acting as a “ball boy” running back with all the missed shots to reload the gun. It was a good laugh!

What? How did we do? Oh you don’t need to hear about that.

Ok! We didn’t come last! … in every event. :p By the end of this it was past midnight but far from heading to bed I decided one last game was in order! Martyn and Chris from yesterday had suggested Viticulture so I continued my cunning scheme of teaching new games to people late at night so I could win. It’s an effective strategy!

Sunday

Sunday was not such an easy start! But it at least began with an incredible discovery: the pancake machine. You press a button, and a minute later a pancake comes out the slot at the end! It’s magical! Ok, so maybe I was getting pretty tired at this point but that didn’t keep me from playing some new games! I joined Chris Marling (from Go Play Listen, go check it out!) to finally get to play Concordia! This has been mentioned on podcasts left right and centre since its release so I was hugely keen to play! It didn’t disappoint! The interaction between the board and the hand of action cards you hold, which are actually the key to winning the game, is fascinating though the scoring is a challenging aspect of the game that I didn’t fully grasp in this first play. Nevertheless I managed to achieve my personal objective of getting a guy to Memphis… so I could sing “Walking in Memphis”. Hey, you’ve got to choose a strategy in these games somehow!

The final game of the con (only two games on Sunday! Well I didn’t get started till 11 everyone and we were all pretty shattered by this point) was another from my wish list, Istanbul, 2014’s Kennerspiel des Jahres winner. It totally deserved its reputation, a cracking game. There were a lot of things to talk through at the start (we had the coffee expansion too) but once over that hump the gameplay itself was smooth and enjoyable. I do love a good spatial puzzle and the unique movement mechanics really scratched that itch. I even won! Entirely thanks to Claire generously forgetting she could win a turn before.

With that there was only time for some goodbyes and to start the walk back to the train station. A walk made even longer by my extra games. Thank goodness I don’t have a car or I’d end up buying even more games! A promise to myself for next Con is to sell as many games as I buy! My arms, wallet and shelf space will thank me.

Hopefully you’ve enjoyed this rather extended look at SoRCon! It was a cracking weekend and I’ve met some great people and played some smashing games! I’ll definitely be looking at returning next year and I hope to see some of you there!