The game is powered by a gumball machine-like cardboard contraption that spits out colored marbles. In Gizmos, players act as mad scientists gathering up interconnected machines in their secret laboratories. This year the company hit the floor at Gen Con with a number of lower-priced offerings, and none of them were quite as fun as Gizmos. Charlie Hall/Polygon GizmosĬMON is well known for its lavish miniatures games, like those found in the Zombicide series. It’s a high-stakes game of chicken with some of the most adorable creatures from the Games Workshop’s grimdark world, and one that I highly recommend. You can’t see them, but every other player at the table can. The backs of the cards in your hand show either bullets or malfunctions. As players move their three-dimensional cardboard cut-out cars around the table, they lay down cards representing the roadway in front of them.īut on every goblin car, there’s also a gigantic, poorly made gun. Players take the role of an idiot goblin going up against his peers in a race across the wasteland.
If you’ve been intimidated by GMT Games’ counter-insurgency (COIN) series, try this on for size.Īnother absolute surprise this year was Devir’s Gretchinz!, a card game about a Warhammer 40,000-themed road rally. Root retails for $60 and also has an early expansion, called The River Folk, that adds two new factions to the game. The system reminds me of the interlocking complexities of Scythe, but with an art style very nearly as endearing as that of Night in the Woods. In practice, each player at the table is playing a completely different kind of worker placement, area control game. Meanwhile, the Woodland Alliance fights using guerrilla tactics, and the Vagabond sits back, waiting to throw in his support with the oppressed. Subjects of the Marquise de Cat rule with an iron fist, while the Eyrie are dangerous birds of prey. In Root, up to four players each take on the role of a distinctly different faction of woodland creatures. There may have been more intense strategy games at this year’s Gen Con, but there were none more cute than Leder Games’ Root: A Game of Woodland Might and Right. Photo: Charlie Hall/Polygon Root: A Game of Woodland Might and Right Root: A Game of Woodland Might and Right, by Leder Games. The base game, and the More Dude standalone/expansion pack, will only run you $10.99 each. It’s the perfect way to begin or end any night of gaming, dude. Best of all, Dude is dead simple to teach, and games usually take no more than five minutes. But, in reality, it’s actually a subtle exploration of how we use language. In action, it looks and sounds completely bonkers. If they’re right, both players score a point. It’s a cacophony of people saying “dude.” When two players both think they’ve gotten a match, they call “sweet” and lay down their cards. Players all go at the same time, reciting the words on the card that they’ve drawn from their deck and trying to match that card to someone else’s across the table. There’s “dewd,” “dude?” and “doode,” just to name a few. On the side that faces each player, however, it’s written a whole bunch of different ways. This Target-exclusive party game from North Star Games comes with 72 cards with “dude” written on both sides. The game on everyone’s lips at this year’s Gen Con, both literally and figuratively, was called Dude. The retail price is $50 and, given the amount of cardboard in the box, that’s an extraordinary value.ĭude and More Dude, from North Star Games. You can find it in stores and online soon. Princess Jing sits two players, and scales well for both young and old. The hook is that one of your pieces on the board is a mirror, allowing you to see behind the screens to find the other player’s pawns. Imagine the classic game Stratego where, instead of moving soldiers around the board, you’re a young woman trying to sneak out of her parents’ castle. The most eye-popping game on the floor this year was a thematic hidden movement game called Princess Jing. My trip was all about great games that were available for fans to take home. With the rise of Kickstarter as a venue to fund and sell pre-orders for tabletop games, the last few years at Gen Con have seemed more about hyping future games than selling what’s on hand. Unlike in years past, most of them were actually for sale. This year, it seemed like every booth had a game that I’d never seen before. Literally hundreds of developers and publishers are on hand from all over the world, each one looking to draw the discerning eye of more than 60,000 attendees. What I love most about Gen Con, the United States’ largest tabletop gaming convention, is the vendor floor.
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