Attended my 1st Geekway to the West, here's a brief synopsis on what it is and what I did.
What is Geekway?
Mostly it's a 4-day long board game library. There are some events and there are some dealers but mostly the convention is check out a game, play it, then return it.
There's two libraries, the standard library and the play and win library.
Play and Win (P&W) - companies have donated games to GttW, in exchange they'll be played all weekend then raffled off on Sunday (final show day). GttW posts this list ahead of time and these trend towards newer games.
The regular library may have anything. If the game is newer and highly rated on BGG, don't count on finding it in the library. (My group did play Azul, but we checked that out at 8AM Saturday.) If it's older, you'll probably find it sometime during the weekend.
What did I play?
New to me designated with *
Feast for Odin
Endeavor: Age of Sail*
Eldritch Horror
Anachrony*
Between the Castles of Mad King Ludwig*
Azul
Terraforming Mars
Roll for the Galaxy*
Vikings Gone Wild*
Space Base*
Micro Brew*
Brief reviews of the new games
Endeavor: Age of Sail - we only played the basic game; there a whole different level. Base game was fine, not great. For sure someone at your table needs to have played the base game first before launching into advanced. Definitely has potential, no final verdict yet.Anachrony - only played the basic game, and only halfway through. The rules are a big hot mess. Watch the how to play video for sure. After a couple rounds the iconography starts making sense and the game speeds up. It was painful getting there. No final verdict.
Between the Castles of Mad King Ludwig - my most surprising find. It's semi-cooperative. Your building two castles, one with each neighbor. Your lowest scoring castle is your final score. I liked it, would play again.
Roll for the Galaxy - huge disappointment for a top 100 BGG ranking. It has the luck of the draw of Race for the Galaxy but now adds die rolls. It was ok, but I never have to play it again.
Vikings Gone Wild - pretty basic deck builder. Fast paced and light. Would play again, but this is more in line with an end of night let's not start anything too involved game.
Space Base - Basically this game is Machi Koro with added layers of complexity. Pretty light and fast paced, also an end of night type game.
Micro Brew - Micro-game. Very light, very quick but not much going on. Also, it only plays 2.
My Geekway experience
it was good, but not great. I'll totally go again, but to make it great I need to do some planning.1) Research the P&W games. The P&W games have multiple copies, so you will get to play them.
2) Watch the damn how-to-play videos. Learning a game on the fly is a chore.
3) Have some more structure. Just don't show up and wait for the fun to begin.
See you next year Geekway
