This year, November was quite the crazy month for me with two trips back to back because of the change in dates for Pax Unplugged this year. On November 12th, I flew drove down from the Colorado Rocky Mountains, to fly to Nashville, rent a car, and then drive into the Smoky Mountains to Gatlinburg for my second Friendsgiving.
Friendsgiving in Gatlinburg is easily one of my most anticipated events each year now. This is essentially a private gaming event that gives me an opportunity to hang out with and play games with amazing people that I’ve met from within the board gaming industry as awesome people that are adjacent to the industry and have a passion for gaming just like me. It highlights one of my favorite things about board gaming, that despite being from different walks of life with different experiences and brings us all together with these amazing experiences.
Check out this awesome video from Grant Lyon for a closer look!
This event starts on Wednesday evening and ends Sunday morning. For 5 days, we lived and breathed board games. I got to play an experience a wide range of both familiar and new games!
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On Day 1, after arrival, dinner, and saying hello and greeting old friends, I go to sit down a play a few games. I brought out my game, DEER! and ran it a few times with different people, getting feedback and showing it off. I am aiming to have DEER! on crowdfunding later this year, so I pulled it out as often as I could. We also played a prototype that a friend was working on, as this is a gathering from all walks within the industry from straight consumer, content creators, designers, publishers and everything in between!
Following that, I got to jump in for a few plays of The Gang, from Thames & Kosmos, which is cooperative Texas Holdem. While I’m not always the biggest fan of cooperative games, this is such a fun and easy one to get into. Honestly, everything I know about Texas Holdem I’ve learned from The Gang. Which admittedly, still isn’t much, as I learn more about ranking hands each time I play.
This is such a great game for both gamers and non-gamers. I’ve introduced this to so many family members. And it’s easily one of the most popular small box games that comes out at cons regularly.
The Gang rates as a 8/10 for me on Board Game Geek.
We also played You Gotta Be Kitten Me!, a variant on Liar’s Dice, using cards with different images of kittens (and dogs in the deluxe edition) that have a certain number of hats, glasses, and bow-ties in different colors. Players will declare how many of a color or an item that they believe is in everyone’s hands until someone calls a player’s bluff. As you are correct or incorrect, plays will lose cards, resulting in less and less cards, thus less icons and colors, in play. This also adds in a handful of action cards that allow players to manipulate the game further.
I rated You Gotta Be Kitten Me! as a 5/10. I’m very meh on most Liar’s Dice style games.
Since my day had started around 2am, I called it a night after that game, which was a little after midnight.
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Thursday morning, I got up and went to the main room to hang out. My first scheduled game wasn’t until the afternoon, so I was just going to hang out and play some smaller games. I also was using the time to get a little bit of prototyping work in.
However, a friend was setting up a game of Luthier to play and teach and they only had two players, so I got called over to join.
I am a huge fan of Luthier, by Paverson Games and was able to participate in pre-production playtesting of the game. However, though I have my own copy at home from the recent fulfillment, I hadn’t gotten that physical copy of the table, so I was happy to jump in and play. I’m just going to say, man the deluxe components are amazing in this game. It is so incredibly over the top and ridiculous, but in absolutely the best way.
In our three player game, we had one new player, who took quickly to the teach and the flow of the game. Luthier is played in several rounds, each divided into two phases, the placement phase and the activation phase. During the placement phase, players will place out their workers, which a discs that have a secret value on the bottom, in the different locations across the board. Each player starts with their 1, 3, and 5 value workers. Locations can allow players to do a wide variety of things, from gaining patrons and instruments to build, to performing repair or perform actions to work towards achieving objectives for your patrons. It was a really solid and enjoyable games.
Luthier is easily a 10/10 for me on Board Game Geek.
It did push right up against my next game however, so I was rushing from one house the other other house (we were 80ish people occupying both a 18-bedroom and 16-bedroom houses, so games were split between the two as we occupied every flat, playable surface with games. I made it over there while they were still working on set-up, so it was all good.
The game I signed up to learn and play was Shackleton Base. Now, space games have been super hot lately. The big three during 2025 with the most popularity have seemed to be SETI, Galactic Cruise, and Shackleton Base. I love Galactic Cruise and it is one that I had the pleasure to playtest quite a bit before the production. SETI is solidly in my current top 5 games, and frequently holes the #1 spot, but that depends on the day. My husband and I both love SETI a ton and typically play it several days in a row, even occasionally back to back. We’re both excited for the expansion to be available.
So, with two other such awesome games in the category, and lots of people raving about how awesome Shackleton Base is, I figured I should get a play in.
Shackleton Base is a space euro-strategic style game in which players are working as different space agencies building on the moon in Shackleton Crater, while helping pursue the agendas of a range of corporation – three of which are in play each game. Each of three rounds in the game are broken up into three phases. During the shuttle phase, players will draft a shuttle tile, that will provide players with resources and the selection of astronauts that they will be able to play that round.
Astronauts come in three specialties (colors): Engineers (yellow), Technicians (red), and Scientists (blue). Each is used in different ways, selecting actions during the action phase, where each player will get 6 actions. Based on where players place their workers, they can do a range of actions, such as gaining resources, building, or working with the corporations. The player with the most points at the end of 3 rounds wins.
We played at 3 players and I really enjoyed my play of this game. However, this isn’t one that I’m rushing to add to my collection. The game is fun and solid and I had a lot of fun with it. I’m also sure that there is a ton more to explore with just the base game, not even considering the coming expansion, as we only played with 3 out of 7 available corporations. My concerns with this one are how it would play at 2 players. At 3 players, we had enough going on with competition for the difference spaces in the crater that you got the solid area control experience. I worry that at 2 players, there won’t be enough going on in that regard to feel engaging in the same way.
I’m also not super excited about the possibility of playing it at 4 players, as it felt a touch long during our 3 player game, though that did include a teach. I would definitely play this one again if someone brought it to the table. I’d love to explore more of it. However, side by side with SETI and Galactic Cruise, with my normal player count being 2 people, I don’t need this one. And it definitely ranks 3rd place out of the three for me. I’m glad I got the chance to play though.
On Board Game Geek, both SETI and Galactic Cruise rate at a 10/10 for me. I put Shackleton Base at a 7/10.
Following Shackleton Base, I got to play an early copy of Pinched, from Mighty Board. This is expected to be available in January, with pre-orders available on their website.
Pinched is a game about robbing the wealthy. Players take turns being the Mastermind behind grand schemes, trying to pull off the perfect heist, while trying to avoid lesser burglars also trying to steal what they can.
Players have a hand of cards that match the 5 possible locations players can try and rob. The goal of the Mastermind is to be the only one at a particular location, so they can take all the valuables. The other burglars are trying to match the Masterminds location, so that they can share in the loot, otherwise, they just gain one item from the river.
In your stash, in front of you, each player is trying to get goods of different values, then selling when the time is right, in a mechanism similar to Bohnanza for those that are familiar. For those that aren’t, a group of rugs might be worth $1 for 2 matching cards, but $5 if you can get 5 matching cards before you sell. However, you are limited to 3 spots in your stash. And once it’s your time to be the Mastermind, you will have to be able to play all of the cards you’ve collected in your hand, into your stash, sell stacks to make room for different valuable types, or discard them.
The game ends after everyone has been the Mastermind twice. The player with the most money at the end of the game wins. This was a fun one to play, especially with people that you maybe don’t necessarily know well enough to be able to fully get into their head. This also was a lot of fun at the full 5 player count. I’m not sure how well it would play at 2 or 3 players.
It was fun and if someone pulled it out, I’d be game to play, but probably won’t own it. My husband hates playing these kinds of games with me because I can get into his head really well. We stopped playing Not Alone, which had a similar concept of one player trying to be in a unique location and another player trying to be in the same location, because I could catch him out most times, until he started completely randomizing the location that he went to. It just takes a lot of fun out of the game if one person can easily dominate like that because they know the people they are playing with too well.
I’m rating this one at a 7/10 on Board Game Geek.
Following dinner on Thursday, it was Tichu & Tiara time! Tichu is a 4 player team based, trick taking game that I got to learn this year. My friend Steff taught me at Dice Tower East in July, then I promptly went home and played it 30+ times on Board Game Arena. Having played a ton of Spades on Yahoo Games during High School, I took to Tichu quickly.
Am I any good at it? It really depends on the game. Sometimes I feel like I’m doing well. Sometimes I feel like I suck at this game. So, the answer is just continue to play and continue to learn.
At this event, they had party tiaras, with rubber bands to put on your head, that could be decorated with sticker rhinestones. Last year, I remember the event had been pretty small with one group of 4 playing that I saw. However, it was opened up to learners this year, and we had 5 or 6 tables going with people of all proficiency levels! It was awesome to see brand new players next to very experienced players, with different levels in between. My partner (a new player) and I got stomped by some experienced players, but it was still a lot of fun and a really good time.
I rate Tichu as a 9/10 on Board Game Geek and I’ll keep playing and hopefully getting better.
Following the first game, my partner dropped out to watch the football game, which was fine as I grabbed some time to keep working on prototypes. After Tichu, was scheduled a broader Trick Taking event to learn and play a few different trick taking games, so I was hanging out for that.
I was able to get a two player playtest of my dice programing game Dingbats, playing with a new set of skill cards that I had been working on adding to the game. It was a good playtest and I got some good feedback from it, so I was glad to get it played.
Tichu went quite late though, so the trick taker event was pushed and so I called it a night and headed to bed, sometime about midnight.
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I’m going to call that good for this post. The remainder of Friendsgiving was just as game packed and full of awesome experiences, so I’ll follow up with the next couple of days soon. I’ve also got a Pax Unplugged recap coming up in the near future as well.
Thanks for reading. If you’ve played these as well, I’d love to know what you’d think.
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