Dragonflight GameCon 2025 - Day 1

Here's a quick history for Dragonflight GameCon, from their site:

The first Dragonflight convention in 1980 resulted from an interaction between members of The Brass Dragon Society, a Seattle role-playing group, and members of Western Washington Wargamers. The interaction between two groups with divergent activities lead to the broad spectrum of gaming we now have. For more than two decades the convention was held at Seattle University. Now the convention is held in a Bellevue hotel, most recently the Bellevue Hilton.

Over the years, many area gaming organizations, companies, and individuals have worked as volunteers to make the convention a success. Now known as Dragonflight GameCon as of 2023, it’s volunteers that have made the convention the outstanding success it is today!

Had to get up early to submit my games for the auction.

Ruins

Was able to sign up for Ruins early in the morning.

While I enjoyed getting to play and learn it, especially since its a John D. Clair card-crafting game, I definitely failed at the objective of shedding my hand. I lost every single round 😅.

So, that aspect wasn't really fun. Sure I got to do impactful plays in the game... but none of it mattered when I never was able to advance myself in the game.

High Rise

This was one that I was interested in trying out. High Rise is a pretty simple game of move as far as you want to take actions, but spaces you move past are possible actions you're giving up for the round. Your goal is to build skyscrapers in the city for points, resources and benefits while managing corruption. The end result map was pretty cool.

Shake That City

Shake That City was one that I was considering buying quite a few times. I waffled on the Kickstarter but ended up passing on it and there were times I would see it at Mox and consider getting it.

Played it solo and thought it was okay. It's a fine, thinky puzzle where sometimes you'll be blocked from choosing what you want due to the orientation of the cubes and where you're allowed to place. Definitely a game I've cooled on after trying it out.

Photo Tour: North America

This one kind of struck out at me while I was browsing the library, the art looked gorgeous. It honestly plays like another family weight game, Trekking the World, but I think it's a little bit more interesting than that. In Photo Tour: North America, you're travelling around a map by different vehicles along paths in order to reach landmark destinations to take photos of. Majority of actions are restricted in availability where the cards, actions and resources only refresh once all options are taken, or if y0u spend a resource to force them to refresh.

In the solo mode, there's a deck of AI cards that will grab cards, dice and resources. Honestly, it moves very quickly I feel, being able to play stuff out of nowhere, so solo is a very quick race while trying to maximize your points. The Landmark cards are really interesting, often giving you bonus actions and triggers.

Astra

Last sign up for the night, Astra is a game that I own but hadn't gotten around to playing yet. It's an interactive area majority and influence game where you're discovering stars of constellations in order to claim them. The gameplay is actually quite simple, you either observe and fill out stars on a constellation or you rest in order to get back resources.

The one thing I didn't like was while 4 of us were new I do feel like there was kingmaking happening where the father was literally making plays that would give cards to his son. A little frustrating because it felt like any moves or plays I made wouldn't matter. Like, literally he got 3 cards before anyone else was able to claim any. Also, because people weren't spreading out to different constellations it felt like there weren't any forced decisions. I think that was more of the issue with playing at 5 players, or just that particular group.

And that was my first day for Dragonflight GameCon. Looking forward to tomorrow.