Looking to learn some new games or a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon? Schenectady Wargamers Association, the same folks that organize the annual Council of Five Nations gaming convention, hosts monthly Game-a-thon events at Proctor’s in Schenectady.
These happen on the second Saturday of every month. This month’s schedule looks to have some fantastic board games on the docket.
In the morning schedule:
Imperial Settlers is a great, cutthroat engine-building card game where players build up a village of structures in order to raze and pillage their opponents. It features multiple different civilization-based factions, from Egyptians to Japanese samurai. Definitely fun for gamers who like a more confrontational game, but also very skill based with minimal luck outside of the draw of the cards.
Tragedy Looper is the game I am most excited to try. The premise is that players are time travelers and they need to work together to prevent a tragedy from occurring. The game plays out in loops where players go through the same scenario but make different decisions. This repetition not only captures that sense of time travel, but is also an interesting gameplay mechanism. One player is the mastermind behind the tragedy and the other players try to solve it, combining cooperative and deduction like elements. Imagine Clue stuck in a timeloop.
In the evening schedule:
Colosseum is a fantastic classic about putting on a show in the Roman colosseum. This includes hiring performers from gladiators to comedians, and impressing the nobles. Tasty Minstrel just reprinted this game after it being out of print for nearly a decade, and it’s great to have it available in the market again.
Village is possibly the worst name for game since Chess 2 (yes, really), but is a great game. Players choose what their villagers do throughout the town in order to score points. It’s got the classic worker-placement mechanism, where players decide what each family member does by placing that villager on a certain location on the board. However there’s a twist, time passes, and you villagers eventually pass away. How they die and how they are remembered is a morbid but intriguing way of scoring points!
There is a small fee to play each game which goes towards renting the space at Proctors. Make sure to sign up in advance if you would like to save a spot in a certain game. There is also a board game flea market this weekend, which is a great chance to pick up gently used game, or sell some that are getting dusty on your shelves. I hope to see you all there!