I just got back from a whirlwind convention tour, speaking on multiple panels and showing off the early prototype of The Lord of the Rings™: Ascension™ at San Diego Comic-Con and Gen Con. You can see a full playthrough of the game here. If you want to be one of the first to get the game, there’s less than one week left to back it on Gamefound! You can also read a deep dive into the mechanics in my design diary updates on Gamefound. The Lord of the Rings™: Ascension™ We launched Ascension at Gen Con 16 years ago, and it was such a joy to come back, interact with fans, show off the game, and even hang out with Tom Bombadil! But Gen Con is also one of the few times each year that I set aside to play new games and see what mechanics are out there. I wanted to write a quick review of the games I played and break down the interesting mechanics behind each one. These games aren’t necessarily new this year at Gen Con, but they were new to me, and some of them are quite innovative. Spoiler alert: I saved a sleeper hit for last! Wingspan Pocket https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/473508/wingspan-pocket This new entry from Elizabeth Hargrave is my new go-to version of Wingspan. We talked about Wingspan on the last podcast episode I recorded with Elizabeth, and the game has been a massive hit, spawning numerous expansions and variants. But Wingspan Pocket does what few games have done well: it translates the emotional core of a medium-to-heavy game into a bite-sized version. Wingspan Pocket uses the backs of cards to represent the food types and resources needed to play your birds, while tucked cards represent bonus points. A simple reserve-row and active-row system lets you acquire birds, resources, and eggs before building an active row of up to six birds, triggering the engine-building abilities that make the game what it is. Each turn presents a meaningful but simple choice: draft two resources or birds, play a bird by paying its cost, or lay up to three eggs, followed by triggering any active bird powers. Once someone plays their sixth bird, the game ends at the conclusion of the round after all players have had an equal number of turns. You earn victory points for birds played, cards tucked beneath birds, and optional goal cards. There’s also a solo mode that I haven’t tried yet. In the spirit of games like San Juan and Monopoly Deal, this is a hit for players looking for smaller, portable games that pack the strategic and emotional punch of their larger counterparts. It’s an excellent example of a designer who truly understands the core tension of her game and can present it in a much more compact package. Think Like A Game Designer is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Winterhaven Woods https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/339302/winterhaven-woods This game has a beautiful minimalist forest theme and a simple draft-and-play mechanic similar to games like Sushi Go! and my own game Dungeon Draft. The theme and mechanics, however, are a bit of a mismatch for me. You draft predators, herbivores, and trees, then place them in one of your three woodland spaces or out in the open meadow. The scoring system for these different animals and plants, however, felt a bit convoluted. For example, wolves can hunt animals in your meadow or in other players’ meadows. They must hunt in sets of three, they can only hunt unprotected animals, and there’s a timing system based on the moon phase shown on the cards that determines which player hunts first. It’s a medium-weight scoring system layered on top of a lightweight theme and drafting mechanism. The game is decent, but I felt the scoring complexity didn’t earn its keep relative to the gameplay value. For a lightweight drafting game, I’d rather play Sushi Go!; for something heavier, 7 Wonders or Dungeon Draft pack more bang for the buck (no pun intended in a game about hunting). Time Breaker https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/220234/time-breaker This Looney Labs game fulfills the promise of being simple and cute while staying true to the company’s brand (congratulations to the Looneys on celebrating 30 years of publishing!). You play as time cops hunting a time bandit on a randomized board made up of different time tiles, each of which allows you to “jump” to another tile. On your turn, you either move through one of these portals or play a card from your hand to move yourself or the time bandit. If you’re in the same space as the time bandit, you arrest him and he moves with you until another player arrests him or a card causes him to change locations. My only complaint is that the board contains a lot of numbers, with each tile listing a “Travel From Time,” “Current Time,” and “Travel To Time,” making the paths a bit difficult to follow. Other than that, it’s a simple, cute, lightweight game. Chrononauts is another time-themed game from Looney Labs that I highly recommend. You set up the board using the current timeline of historical events and receive a secret objective from an alternate future that requires changing history to match your timeline. You create paradoxes and play alternate-history cards until one player wins, or until too many paradoxes are created and everyone loses. If you haven’t played Chrononauts, you should. Playthings https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/449930/playthings I technically didn’t play this one myself, but I watched it being played, and it may have been the most innovative game I saw at Gen Con. Players alternate taking on the role of the “Night Terror,” hiding the toys of the other players while everyone else closes their eyes. The unique mechanic is that players physically sense what happens as the Night Terror drops toys and bells onto the playmat, with different senses activated depending on the situation (for example, placing fingers underneath the mat as toys are dropped). I have no idea whether the game is actually good, but I love seeing this kind of innovation and clever use of different senses to bring a game to life! Tag Team https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/434906/tag-team Many designers I know are trying to capture the mechanics of autobattlers (popular digital games such as Teamfight Tactics) in a tabletop format. Autobattlers are defined by a drafting phase followed by automatic combat resolution. Tag Team combines this idea with deckbuilding in a way that feels interesting and unique. You pick two fighters to form your starting deck and determine the order of the cards. During combat, the cards flip in that predefined order against your opponent to resolve the round. Then you draft another card from your reserve and add it to your deck, but you can’t reorder it. Only by inserting the new card into a specific position can you shift the battle in your favor, taking into account what you just learned about your opponent’s deck. The variety created by the “pick two” team-building system leads to interesting combinations, and the restrictions on deck order make every decision meaningful. I’ll need to play this game more to see how well it holds up over repeated plays, but after just one game it accomplished what every game should: it made me want to play again. Nocturian https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/264925/nocturion This was the sleeper hit for me. I had never heard of the game or the company behind it, but the layout and presentation immediately caught my eye. Nocturian is a worker-placement game in which each round begins with a die roll. The available dice determine which action spaces can be selected that round, dramatically shifting the strategy from turn to turn. There’s also an innovative timing mechanism, with a tracker in the center of the board that advances by different amounts depending on which resources players choose to collect. As the tracker moves, it both replenishes depleted resources and changes which side of the board offers double resources that turn. Once the tracker completes a certain number of laps around the board (depending on player count), the game ends. The game offers a relatively familiar system of gathering resources and spending them on quests and abilities that earn victory points, but everything comes together in a satisfying package that plays in under an hour. Nocturian is a great example of a game that introduces a few fresh ideas (dice-driven worker placement and an innovative timing mechanism) while otherwise executing the fundamentals extremely well. This was the only game I absolutely had to play a second time at Gen Con, and one of only two (Wingspan Pocket was the other) that will stay in my collection for a long time! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justingarydesign.substack.com/subscribe
