I attended 2 days of this year’s World Boardgaming Championships in Lancaster, PA. It’s not as prestigious as it sounds – while there are many tournaments held there, anyone can come and have fun. I was much more interested in open gaming than in competing, though I did participate in one tournament heat.
The BPA site is clumsily designed and not very newbie-friendly, and it unfortunately mirrors some of the WBC convention experience itself (you are initially confused and disoriented, but gradually learn to navigate the landscape in spite of the many quirks). I joked about attending mainly to “watch the old guys play wargames,” but it’s undeniable that grognards are the WBC’s primary demographic. One look at the BPA logo might give you a hint in that direction, but any dyed-in-the-wool boardgamer would also recognize the name of the BPA’s president, Don Greenwood: Mr. Avalon Hill himself, designer of seemingly a thousand titles, among which resides Advanced Squad Leader, one of the most renowned wargame franchises ever published.
So, “Wargamers’ Mecca” is the most apt 2-word description I can muster for the WBC — those guys were everywhere! Thankfully, there were plenty of other options available for the less-hardcore among us. As I mentioned, I mainly concentrated on (casual) open gaming, and there was ample time and space allotted for that.
Day 1
I drove out to Lancaster with fralim on Friday morning. Upon arriving, I met my pal Severus, and we immediately launched into a game of Race for the Galaxy with the new Rebels vs. Imperium expansion. Severus is quite the gaming savant who routinely beats the pants off of everyone, and he won effortlessly. We both went for military, but he pulled it off much better than I.
Upon exploring the open gaming library for a short game, we were dismayed at how generic the selection was. As Severus was off to see a game demo, fralim and I eventually decided to play a teaching game of Notre Dame since fralim hadn’t played it before. He seemed to enjoy it, despite being strapped for cash and nearly overwhelmed by the rats several times.
I went to check out the vendors’ area, where I immediately snapped up a copy of Conflict of Heroes: Storm of Steel from the Academy Games table. fralim showed me a few of the finer points of the rules and strategy. This looks like a really cool game, and I’m not sorry to own both it and Combat Commander: Europe. Same genre, but wholly different approaches to gameplay.
After putting SoS back in its box, fralim realized we had about an hour before the Chicago Express tournament. He’d heard that the new Narrow Guage & Erie Railroad Company expansion would be given away to all heat winners, so that was on his list of things to do. Our friend PrinceHamlet arrived, and we tried out Fire & Axe, a very attractive light strategy game about Vikings that was surprisingly civil (and also had very little to do with either fire or axes).
The Chicago Express heat was kind of surreal. I had never played a board game competitively before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. We were seated randomly, 4 to a table. My grouping was pretty polite and well-mannered. The B&O company launched out of the gates pretty early and was clearly going to beat the other lines to Chicago, so I sprung for a couple shares of it. The next-highest line on the income track was Pennsylvania, which I also won a share in. That would have been enough to win me the game, but I wasted some precious cash a share of Central, which resulted in a tie for first place between another player and myself. The tiebreaker to decide the winner? A die roll, which I won. Put an asterisk next to my win if you must — the other guy definitely deserved it.
fralim, PrinceHamlet, and I sat down to play our first-ever game of Starcraft: the Board Game with the Brood War expansion. Mercifully, one of the guys from Fortress Ameritrash swung by and helped us to grasp some of the rules. I played as the Arcturus faction of the Terran race, fralim was Aldaris of the Protoss, and PrinceHamlet chose to be the Zerg Overmind. The game moved surprisingly fast despite its considerable weight. Since attackers have a huge advantage over defenders, the game definitely provides an incentive not to turtle. Despite this, PrinceHamlet built up and built up, readying his forces for the inevitable invasion as fralim and I rattled our sabres nervously. John had the special victory condition that gave him victory if he had 3 bases, but he only had 2, and his turtling Zerglings were no match for the Battle Cruiser and Wraiths I sent in to raze one of his bases. I ended up winning on victory points, but mainly because we all played overly tentatively and defensively. We’ll get it right next time.
Severus and PrinceHamlet went home for the night, and fralim and I were pretty fried, but we just had to play one more game: Thebes. He pretty much destroyed me.
Day 2
Saturday morning began very ambitiously with fralim and I breaking out Through the Ages. I began the game with Julius Caesar, while fralim took Homer as his leader. He took a sizable lead in culture during the first half of the game. After a while, though, my military started to push around his poets and artists, and ultimately just sat on them. I ended up drawing 3 War on Culture cards when I had a strength advantage of 47 points. It definitely reinforced the notion that you can’t afford to ignore military in this game.
fralim then taught me how to play Finca, a light set-collection game with an ingenious little rondel mechanic. I enjoy rondel games, so that was a win. I may pick this one up at some point.
I had recently acquired a copy of Stephenson’s Rocket, and managed to get it to the table with Severus and fralim. Severus totally ran away with the game, owing mostly to the shrewd placement of his stations. It’s definitely a game that I’ll have to play a few more times before I grok it. Only Knizia can make a set-collection game out of a train game. fralim called it “opaque,” not unlike Tigris & Euphrates, a game by the same designer which we later went to see demoed.
fralim had to leave, so Severus and I played his newly purchased special edition of Caylus. The artwork and the metal coins are fantastic, but I have no problem with the plain old regular edition. The battle for control of the provost is especially tight in 2-player Caylus, and at one point, it was all the way back at the bridge! Amazingly, I won the game by a single point, though I’m sure there’s a margin of error considering that it was Severus’ first play, and it had been a long time since my last Caylus game. We were unsure of whether a player’s supply of houses is limited, but lucky for me, it turns out that houses are unlimited. I built a prestige building with my royal favor at game end.
I left to go home at that point, but Severus stayed to play in the semi-finals of the Race for the Galaxy tournament. He’d spent the whole weekend playing heats in order to qualify, and he ended up making it into the pool. Later that night he texted me to let me know he got 4th in the Final. Not too shabby!




















