SaltCon 2022 Recap – 22 Games Played

I had a fantastic first weekend of March because I was hanging out and playing tons of games with my friends at SaltCon Spring 2022!

I look forward to this 4-day gaming event with much anticipation every year. And it was especially great this year because the air was finally clearing around the Covid pandemic. Which means we could see the smiling faces of the 1,700 or so people who came out to play all sorts of games.

This year I was able to attend 3 full days of the event and played 22 different board games, card games, and dice games!

It was a lot of fun and I’m ready to share my thoughts on each of the games I played.

(Consider it like a bunch of mini-reviews.)

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2020 & 2021 – Years in Review

In getting ready to write my 2021 Year in Review, I realized that I never posted a 2020 Year in Review.

Maybe that’s because 2020 felt like a gap year for everybody – and many things just didn’t happen.

Well, that gives me a better chance to take a look at both years and compare how they’ve shaken out for family board game playing time.

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Board Game Gift Guide 2021!

If you’re looking for some great game ideas for friends and family, you’ve come to the right place!

This marks our 11th annual Board Game Gift Guide and we love sharing great gift ideas!

And this year we’re sharing another 40 game ideas!

Since there’s a wide range of people (ages & interests) you may be considering, we break down this game guide into various categories and share a handful of game ideas in each category.

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Qwinto Dice Game Review

We have no idea what “Qwinto” means or where on earth that name came from, but we do know it’s a fun dice game!

Over the last few years, “roll-and-write” games have been pouring out from almost every game publisher. These are games where players either roll dice or flip cards and then write the results on their personal sheets. A few such games we’ve reviewed include That’s Pretty Clever, Kingdomino Duel, and Metro X.

Qwinto, by Pandasaurus Games, is the latest we’ve played and we’ve been hooked!

We got a copy in the game trade at SaltCon 2021 and have played over 20 times this past month. And when we play a game that much, you bet we’re going to tell you all about it.

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SaltCon 2021 End of Summer Fun

“Back in the Game”

That was the bold statement on the winning t-shirt design for SaltCon End of Summer 2021. And it couldn’t have been more appropriate!

It was awesome to be back at SaltCon this past weekend playing game after game for a couple of days straight.

SaltCon is the big board game convention in Utah, USA and it’s packed with gaming goodness. The event is typically held for 4 days in March each year, so I was sad when it was announced last Fall that the March event would be canceled. But, the news a few months ago that they’d hold an “End of Summer” SaltCon for 3 days at the end of July got me excited again.

Let’s dive in!

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Best Games of 2020! – The Dice Tower Awards

The best board games, card games, dice games, family games, and party games of 2020 have been awarded!

The Dice Tower recently announced the winners of The Dice Tower Awards — the annual crowing of the best board games published last year.

With thousands of new games published every year, there’s never a shortage of great new board games to play.

Top board game reviewers, podcasters, and industry contributors from around the world participated in the nomination and voting process.

Now, let’s see The Dice Tower Award Winners for 2020:

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King of Tokyo: Dark Edition game review

In 2012 we reviewed one of the hot new board games that year, King of Tokyo.

King of Tokyo is a push-your-luck board game where you get to play “king of the hill” using dice, special ability power cards, and cool monsters.

It’s no wonder why it jumped to “hot game” status because it’s easy to play and a lot of fun for up to 6 players.

iello quickly published an expansion for the game, King of Tokyo: Power Up. And a couple of year later released King of New York.

Last year, they published a collector’s edition of the game called King of Tokyo: Dark Edition and we’re excited to share our thoughts about it.

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Cubitos – a fun dice-building, racing game!

It’s time to get your race face on.

Because today we’re sharing all about this dice-building, dice-rolling, power-upping, push-your-luck, racing game!

It’s a new game by AEG called Cubitos.

And if you think you’re staring at SpongeBob SquarePants on the cover of the Cubitos game box, you’re not. What you are staring at though is a really big chunk of cheese wearing lederhosen!

Why? We have no idea.

But it definitely grabs attention. And if you’re like us, it makes you very curious about what’s inside. So, let’s dive in!

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Board Game Gift Guide 2020!

It’s that awesome time of year again when we look for great fun ideas for gifts for family and friends.

With this crazy year, we know many families have already been grabbing a lot more board games to pass the time together throughout the year.

But it’s always nice to get some ideas for fresh games to play too.

This marks our 10th annual Board Game Gift Guide and we love sharing great gift ideas!

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Reign: The Final Battle Royale Game Review

“Four factions of warriors battle to survive on a doomed land that will be destroyed piece by piece, taking its occupants with it. You must strategize to survive—by fleeing, fighting or sacrificing your weakest members—whatever you must do to be the last one left standing when the land around you has been annihilated.”

Reign is a skirmish battle royale style board game, from PlayMonster, where 2 to 4 try to eliminate all the other players’ troops to be the last one standing.

Players not only have to watch out for each other but also the impending disasters which destroy different sections of the board and with it any troops and Power Stones that have the misfortune of being on that section.

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