Back in October, the nerdiest and most boardgame-passionate of my friends committed to 3 nights and 3 days straight of uninterrupted tabletop gaming.
There was a spreadsheet to organize timing and game choices, as well as a metagame to track our progress in a kind of informal tournament.
Our only requirement for the venue: a sturdy table (and like, running water and a fridge).
You can see a good chunk of them in the picture, but here's the official lineup, with BGG links. The check ✅ indicates that we actually got around to playing it.
| Lightweight | Medium weight | Heavyweight |
|---|---|---|
| ✅ Hansa Teutonica | ✅ Dune: Imperium – Rise of Ix | ✅ Twilight Imperium (4th ed) |
| Brian Boru | ✅ Terraforming Mars | Star Wars: Rebellion |
| Iberian Gauge | Gaia Project | ✅ Feudum |
| ✅ Undaunted: Reinforcements | ✅ Return to Dark Tower | ✅ My Father's Work |
| Ra | Oath | Eclipse |
Four of us stuffed into a Prius to do this trip. Here's the trunk space dedicated to games.
To keep a continuity going, we adhered to the following rules:
| Place | Special power at start of next game | |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | None | |
| 2nd | Chairs decision on 4th place's bonus | |
| 3rd | Decides who goes first | |
| 4th | Gains a starting bonus, as decided by the other players |
Ties break in reverse order, unless the game's mechanics are heavily dependent on ties. This rule overrides the game's first tiebreaker mechanic.
Multipliers for points: 0.5x for light games, 1.5x for heavy.
This was engineered to give anyone having a bad run of games a nice advantage and a leg up. In the end, the score for the metagame were super tight (🥇 had 25.5 points, and the 4th place person had 23—I ended up with the 🥈 with 25 points).
The "powers" were decided based on overall score, not the outcome of the last game.
Like I said, all we prioritized was a sturdy table. And a place far away enough from the city so we couldn't be tempted with routine obligations 😉
This was a small mistake, as the little "cottage" we rented wasn't exactly the nicest abode. It had the basics, and a cool backyard, but it was a little unclean and there was a sulphur issue in the water pipes... so it, well, stunk. But only when you ran the water! Which made doing dishes and showering a bad time.
Luckily there was a water cooler there so staying hydrated was not a problem. Also, we had beer. Lots of beer.
🍻 After a 2.5 hour drive and a grocery (beer) run, we warmed up with Hansa. It's a rude game of placing and displacing cubes on trade routes. We played it the wrong way but didn't realize it until later.
Then we got into a chunky game of My Father's Work. This 5 hour beast has you playing the roles of a multigenerational family of eccentric mad scientists. It has an app that reads to you, a constantly shifting boardspace, really wonderful art and tokens. I have pictures from various plays and will write about it on Hive... someday! Soon, I hope :)
🏝️ It was now midnight, so time for a nice medium weight game of Dune: Imperium. One of my favs. Worker placement and deckbuilding with strong Dune themes, almost-always fun turns, and many paths to victory.
We closed down at 3am or so. I had done pretty bad on all games and was firmly in 4th place. D'oh.
First full day of games. We we awake and caffeinated by 930am-ish, and
resolved to tackle the BIG ONE. Twilight Imperium. I've written about this beast before, so I'll just say it was as epic as always (except we did the 10-point version). I had a strong start and managed to hold onto second place.
🌌 TI literally took all day. Setup and relearning meant we started at noonish, and it was over around 6:30pm. As a palette cleanser, we did a co-op game (the only co-op game of the trip): Return to Dark Tower. This one sets itself apart with a giant animatronic tower that sits in the middle of the board, spits out skulls, and makes cool noises. As a group, we won!
Midnight was approaching, so plenty of time before bed. Terraforming Mars was next—another fav of mine. There are communal goals (terraforming a planet) but you're mostly working on your own projects and engine. There is not a ton of player interaction, yet it is still quite fun. I think I was second place again? Bedtime was a reasonable 2:00am-ish.
Rinse repeat with another behemoth. Feudum. ⚔️
This was new to most of us, so YouTube rule videos and rulebook reviews meant another 930am "start" and a 12pm "actual first turn." Feudum is just... gorgeous. And insane. An entire cyclical economy is run by guilds which you jockey for control over... all while doing Euro-ey area control, optional combat, engine building...
Again, game runs until 7 or so. We play it much faster now, heh. Undaunted was next, which was a team game set in WWII and based on deck management and dice rolls. My partner and I got creamed. 💥
Then it was back to Dune! We all liked Dune so much that we had to do it again, despite the abundance of options. It's really that good.
And around now is when we realized we were doing Hansa wrong. It was 1:30am or so when Dune ended, and we figured one last quick of properly-played Hansa was warranted.
We thought we might sneak a morning game in, but by now we were pretty tired. Check out was 11am and so we did the responsible thing and cleaned up and shipped out.
I'll end it there, as this "short play-by-play" is getting a little long. I do hope to write about most of these games more in depth soon. They are among our current favourites, if you couldn't tell, haha.
Until next time! 😁
Thank you for reading. All images taken by me, except where otherwise credited. I've also written about other games, if you're interested!
