OrcaCon 2025 - Day 1

Today went to OrcaCon with my husband for our first time.

We are a cozy inclusive tabletop games convention with a focus in diversity, inclusion, and accessibility. We highlight marginalized voices in tabletop games, including people of color, the LGBTQ+ community & people with disabilities. We strive to create a welcome and inclusive environment for new and seasoned players. Join us for a weekend of your favorite board games, card games, role playing games, miniatures games, and more!
- "What is OrcaCon?" description from the site

It is a bit of a smaller convention for sure, but in some ways its nice for that. Not having to deal with crowds and being able to just relax and see everything easily plus having space to sit and play games. We basically made Table 167 our home base. Definitely saw some familiar faces and booths at the merchant row, was cool to see locals come to this convention. Also was quite surprised when I saw Our Family Plays Games, had no idea they were either local or coming in for this convention.

We played 3 games in total (although, quite a few more caught out eye).

Building an Ice Temple

We picked up Nunatak: Temple of Ice to try because I actually do own it but haven't had a chance to learn and play it. This one I got specifically because of the theme and how it looked building the pyramid. With the high praise from The Dice Tower I bought it with the hope that my husband would like it.

As I was reading the rules and going over things it dawned on me that the whole collecting cards thing was basically just Nidavellir: similar concept of drafting your "action" with it tied to a specific way of scoring while also being pulled in getting sets across the different building cards. The caveat here is that positioning really matters:

1. You get points if you build on top of your own ice blocks.
2. There's majority points for the immediate groups of 2x2 squares.
3. Finally, there's a bonus for having the most ice blocks on the outer edge perimeter of the temple itself.

So in this way, I do feel like it stands out from Nidavellir's drafting and bonus hero drafting chaining system.

The two player variant I felt is really interesting in that both players manage a neutral blocking player's ice blocks. You have to make considerations for when and where to use the neutral ice block as you won't get the card for it, however you usually don't want to wait on using it as you have to use it in one of every group of 3 ice blocks of your turn.

During our two player learning playthrough, I did find it funny how how even though I was keeping ahead in score during play my husband was lamenting on how I was definitely going to win. And yet, because of the high score multipliers he got with the Beast cards he push ahead and won that game. I felt it was tough to combat as there was definitely luck of the draw from turn to turn.

Overall, we both enjoyed it, especially my husband. It is a very light and breezy game to play and building up the pyramid is fun and has a natural table presence. I will say that scoring can get wildly swingy, especially if players are able to run away with a particular building type for scoring.

Insect Sumo Wrestling via Coin-Pushing

Kabuto Sumo is another game that I own that just haven't been able to play, especially since it isn't really soloable due to the dexterity nature. For me, this one was sort of on the short list of games to possibly cull from the collection as I wasn't really sure if it would be well received by my playgroup or myself. I guess I originally got it due to the novelty of the game's concept which is a dexterity game influenced by those coin-pusher arcade games.

There was a lot of back and forth in our two player game, but eventually I lost by running out of pieces to play. The physics behind how the pieces will move and interact definitely leaves some guesswork sometimes in how to push in a piece for your turn. My husband specifically liked the toy factor of this game, perhaps the Sakura Slam expansion and other asymmetrical player pieces and abilities may keep it around.

Banging up some noise for treasures and loot

Last but not least my husband picked Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure, a classic in the hobby. I have the Catacombs version but hadn't had a chance to play it others yet. Thankfully because Clank is pretty straight forward it was pretty easy to teach and have him up and running with familiarity of deck building norms.

There's not much for me to say about Clank, its a fine deck-builder but with how I've been trying to curate my library of games I felt it wasn't one that I needed to own. The reason I have Catacombs is because based on reviews and hype it sounds like the fact that you build out the dungeon procedurally as players really elevates the game. So I hope that's true when we do get around to playing it. Unfortunately they didn't have that version to try at the convention's game library.

That was it for day 1, unfortunately we had to leave somewhat earlier than I'd have liked but it was tough because there weren't really great food options for my husband and he definitely needed to eat. And since it's a small convention, he won't be joining for the rest of the weekend as he feels like he's seen it all. While I can understand the sentiment, I'll still be going with friends for Saturday and for now still planning on going Sunday and hopefully will play games with people there or at least be playing stuff solo.

As a teaser for what's to come, one of my highly anticipated games just came in: Ostia and its expansion, Ostia: Pirates.