Handy Con 4 Review

A short couple of weeks ago I attended the latest iteration of Handy Con, now ensconced in a new venue in Maidenhead. It’s a good venue, even bigger and able to accommodate that much more cardboard, and I didn’t have to walk nearly so far from the train station this time! It was, once again, an excellent convention.

This article is a chance to dump a pile of thoughts on all the new games I got to play there. That includes a couple of brand new Gen Con releases that Paul of Gaming Rules! Brought over, as well as some classics that I hadn’t had chance to play before.

Keyforge

Keyforge is the new 2 player card battling game from FFG which has everyone a-flutter because of its unique distribution model: every pack contains a complete deck and every one of those decks is not only unique, it cannot be played with any other. That sounds insane but it’s my kind of insane. So despite not caring about games of this style before I was interested.

Having played, I still am! That first play was enough to understand the rules and get some idea of what I’m supposed to be doing, but certainly not enough to really say whether we are on to a winner here. What I can say is that I could already see the interesting combos that can arise within the deck I played and it was clear from being on the receiving end of my more experienced opponents actions that the scope for learning and mastering your deck is certainly there and that does get me excited. It’s the scope for discovery and exploration rather than the homework of deck construction that makes me interested in Keyforge, and this taste was interesting enough to leave me planning on picking up a deck when they reach the UK.

Istanbul The Dice Game

I’ve enjoyed a couple of games of Istanbul in my time so I was curious, if dubious, about the dice version. After all, so much of Istanbul is in the interesting spatial movement puzzle. Well, that puzzle is completely gone and in its place is a simple dice based resource collection system. The Istanbul trappings are there, swapping pineapples for rubies, and more importantly are the races to turn in resources early to get cheaper rubies. It creates a tense little system and forces you to choose between long term strategic bonuses and just grabbing what you can as soon as you can. It was fun without feeling exceptional, and strikingly good value given the amount of stuff in the box.

Newton

Oh, Newton, you are the apple in my eye. I had a stunningly good game of this new CMON euro, whose art and graphical style is perhaps describable as “10 years old” and “the graphic designer fell asleep on the beige filter key in Photoshop”. Which is a shame, because the gameplay was a treat! A simple choice of cards to play each round that combo with the previous cards you’ve played in surprising ways, coupled with an action investment system that lets you boost every subsequent action of a given type, but at the cost of the cards you need to use to actually trigger those actions.

As I said, I had a stunningly good game of this, ending a whole loop of the score track ahead of everyone else, so my opinion is utterly biased. I suspect my final measure of this game will be how repeatable this kind of success is. There is also the potential issue that the game divides itself into a set of almost entirely separate areas with little player interaction, and your assigned player board pushes you strongly into one of these in the early game. Which need not be a problem if you like those kinds of Euro games. I’m definitely keen to play it more, with just enough journalistic integrity to keep an eye on it.

War Chest

Bag building chess? 2 player skirmish games hold a limited appeal to me, let alone abstract ones, but this proved very neat. Incredibly easy to pick up, super slick, a lovely tense back and forth with a great arc, all in 20 minutes! Consider me exceedingly impressed! The delightful poker chip pieces add a tactile treat, while the big mix of different unit types offers the promise of plenty of replay value.

Glass Road

I’d been told I needed to try this Uwe Rosenberg classic and oh my what excellent advice that was! An incredibly tight game (just 12 actions), where half points can literally mean the difference between victory and defeat. It’s classic player board building but with Uwe’s talent for clever building powers that motivate so many interesting decisions. The resource management is elegant and ingenious. The player interaction, through bonus follow actions off of the action card selection, is surprising, exciting and utterly brilliant. I just wish it were easier to get hold of in English!

Brass Lancaster

Not entirely a first impression as I played this a couple of years ago but that was long enough ago for me to have mostly forgotten it. This was of course with the stunning new Roxley edition. The artwork is so vivid you almost emerge from the game covered in coal dust and with a lifelong chronic condition. But I suspect that might have been what Martin Wallace was aiming for when he designed it all that time ago.

By the end of this play I was finally beginning to feel like I had some kind of handle on things. Early game errors cost me but I was pulling off some very satisfying plays by the mid-game. Despite its sometimes rough, clunky, edges, as though the game was itself made out of cast iron instead of modern steel, I could totally see the on going love affair gamers have with this title. There is truly nothing quite like it in the modern hobby and as such it earns a kind of reverent appreciation. I’m certainly looking forward to digging into my own copy.

Madeira

Just to push the average weight of my weekend even further (and after my epic breakfasts, it was already pretty heavy) my final ‘new’ game was Madeira. A lovely game about wine, surely? Something gentle and – oh no! This mind bending monsterpiece is the weighty crown atop What’s Your Game’s already meaty head, and what a game it is. It’s interlocking pieces forcing you into mental gymnastics that would make a circus performer cringe. Somehow you must cram dice values, primary actions, resources, worker feeding, worker positioning, secondary actions, scoring tiles, turn order and bleeding pirates into your calculations. A spreadsheet would be in order if it weren’t for the excellent design that makes any one thing seem so attainable, and yet anything more seem impossible to achieve. But you do achieve things! Like other What’s Your Game releases Nippon and Zhanguo, this is a system I know I’ll be able to do better in next play.

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It wasn’t all new titles! I got in plays of Azul, Lowlands, and Century Eastern Wonders (review coming soon!) As well as a couple of prototypes and even a solo game of Page Quest up in my room before breakfast. An all round excellent weekend of gaming and I’m looking forward to digging into some of these titles more in the future!

You can also see hear some more about my thoughts on Keyforge, Newton and War Chest, as well as a great overview of many of the things going on at Handy Con in the video below!