The Full Board Gaming convention is in its third year, and once again I headed a couple of hours up the road to Torquay to join the 130-odd people escaping the winter blues. It’s a play convention with no vendors in attendance, where board gamers assemble in the characterful TLH hotel complex to hang out, eat well, and of course – play games.
Play a lot of games.
After rolling up on Friday morning I caught up with my convention friends. Board game conventions are really important to me, as they’re the few times a year I get to spend time in person with some of my favourite people in the world. There were plenty of content creators in attendance, and I caught up with the Whose Turn is it Anyway podcast crew, Joel from Devon Dice, Mark from Ninjageek Games, and Paul from Gaming Rules!. Along with that bunch, I was super pleased to catch up with my long-time friends from various places, including Punchboard supporters Brett and Krissie (who travelled all the way from Scotland!), Rach and Phil, and some folk I hadn’t had a chance to meet yet, including Aiden, who also travelled up from Cornwall.
If you’ve never been to Torquay, it’s the typical British tourist resort you’d expect if you grew up on Agatha Christie stories. In fact, she was born there. It’s a seaside town full of hotels, gardens and palm trees. The TLH resort hotels are straight out of the mid-Twentieth Century. We played games in the ballroom, for example. How many hotels have you stayed in that have a ballroom? The carpets in many places have seen better days, and the floors have some interesting contours in some of the rooms, but it all has a certain charm. It feels cosy and familiar. Safe and warm.
The food, however, is superb. The whole point of Full Board Gaming, and the play on words (full board), is that it’s a residential convention with breakfast and dinner included. Breakfast is a Full English buffet, cereal, porridge, fruit salad, yoghurt, toast, and just about everything else you could want. Dinner is superb. We had choices of plaice, homemade chicken and leek pie, curries, chicken escalope, and more. Vegetables, a full salad bar, waiters bringing you drinks, and lovely desserts. It’s a far cry from grabbing a spiral potato or a 15 quid hotdog from a van in a hall.
What about the games?!?
I hear you. Enough about the food, tell us about the games.
Schadenfreude – A superb trick-taking game where you try to get as close to 40 points as you can without going over. The twist in the tail is that the second-place person wins each trick. Track down a copy, it’s great.
1 A.M. Jailbreak – Saashi & Saashi’s card shedding game from last year. It’s simple, cheerful, and great fun. You can read my review from last year right here.
Railway Boom – If you’ve already read my review of Railway Boom (read it now), you know how much I like this game. I’ve played it so many times in the few months since I got a copy. I played it twice more over the weekend.
Decko – Decko is a new game from Haakon Gaarder, who you might already know from his games Villagers, Streets, and Moon. This is an entirely different game which was described to me as being ‘Balatro but on the table’. If you know the video game Balatro, it’s actually not a bad description. A really clever mix of deck-building that reminded me of Avante Card, and poker.
Keep an eye on this, it should do very well and get a lot of press once the Kickstarter fulfils. I hope to have a review later in the year. I loved it.
Idle Hands – I reviewed Idle Hands from Newmill Industries last year (read that review here), and it remains one of my favourite trick-takers. A really nasty little game reminiscent of Stick ‘Em, where you try to get the cards with really big negative points into the hands of the other players.
私だけの晴天 (My Own Sunny Day) – This is a random trick-taker I picked up from Travel-Games from last year’s Tokyo Game Market. It has a clever mechanism where at some point in the first round you have to pick up an umbrella card at some point, and try to win as many tricks with it as without. On the way back, the same applies, and you have to put it back. Cute, bright, and good fun.
Lunar Trick – A really clever trick-taker (are you noticing a theme yet?) where the thirty cards get divided into suits by the players, and half the deck is trumps. It really hurts your brain, and is from doujin designer Iori Tsukinami, the same person who designed the amazing Joraku. Well worth tracking down. If you want to know more, read my review.
Eternal Decks – I already reviewed Eternal Decks, so I won’t talk too much about it here. You can read that review right here. It’s a co-op, limited communication game with drop-dead gorgeous production, tons of variability, and is unlike anything else I’ve played. If you can track down a copy, play it.
Wiggle Roulette – A silly game from Oink Games where players take little wooden creatures from a bag. Three quarters of them are eels and worth points, the remaining quarter are red snake pieces. You draw between 0 and 4 pieces in secret, and try to collect as many eels as possible before you collectively get too many snakes. Silly bluffing fun which works great with bigger numbers of players.
Orleans – The now classic bag-builder. Orleans is always fun, and desipte not winning, it once again left me wondering why it is I never pick up my own copy…
Doggerland – Doggerland is a beast of a game. A huge board with a load of things going on. It’s an action programming, worker-placement game about hunting and gathering. Think of it like Stone Age, but with about ten times the complexity. It’s a long game when you don’t play the shorter mode, but it’s great, and I need to get it played more often.
Panda Spin – Carl Chudyk (Innovation, Red 7, Glory to Rome) made a kinda trick-taking, card-shedding game with upgradeable cards covered with gorgeous pandas and other animals. It takes a minute to get your head around, but the Scout-like principle of beating what’s on the table is easy and accessible, and I love the way the cards get some crazy values and powers if you’re forced to put them back in your hand.
Hitster – This one was new to me. A fun party game where you try to identify songs played from an app when you scan QR codes on cards. You try to build a timeline of songs, and ideally identify the artist and track too. Good fun.
Terminus – The last game of the convention for me, and it was a treat. I hadn’t played Terminus in almost two years, but I’m glad I did. It has a clever rondel action-selection mechanism, a shared board for network building, asymmetric and shared goals, and a nasty habit of never giving you the things you need when you need them. There’s a lot going on, and some people won’t enjoy it, but for me it was one of the highlights of the weekend.
Summary
Full Board Gaming is great. Matt, the organiser, and his team go out of their way to make everyone feel welcome and included. There was so much else going on that I didn’t even take part in. Massive games of Ready, Set, Bet on a big screen (read my review of that right here), murder mystery events, big games of Blood on the Clocktower, ten pin bowling, and more.
If you’re in the south-west of the UK, I highly recommend checking it out. It’s cosy, friendly, inclusive, and the perfect antidote to the January blues. See you all again next year.
Lovely write up Adam, and great to play some games together. A great weekend, looking forwards to the next one.
Likewise, and thanks for the games. See you soon, hopefully.
Thank you so much for your kind comments and detailed review. The food is my favourite part! See you all across the year at other conventions!
I think even without the games, we’d still come along for the food and company! 😀