Blog Report 23-6 – 2023 Closes on Circle DC

Sunday was the last day of Circle DC 2023, a small tabletop gaming convention held in Washington, D.C. and hosted by Kevin Bertram of Fort Circle Games. This was the first year for Circle DC and I attended two out of three days. The convention is aimed at players and designers with many teach-n-play with designers for players and lots of opportunities for designers to playtest or demo their games.

Land and Freedom

Sunday I got to play a game of Land and Freedom: The Spanish Revolution and Civil War designed by Alex Knight (@LandandFreedom1 on Twitter) and available from Blue Panther. Land and Freedom is a three-way, semi-cooperative, card-driven game (with a bit of bag-building thrown in) where the players are three political factions (Anarchists, Moderates, Communists) facing off against the Fascists. It is semi-cooperative in that all three factions must cooperate to defeat the Fascists (must be winning on three of four military Fronts at end game) but each also has separate social-political tracks that they must manage to hold initiative or gain/lose achievements. Alex was an excellent teacher and let us play the game, offering advice that we didn’t always take but was appreciated. I played the Moderates and started off well but fell behind never to really catch up. We ended up losing the game by one Fascist army. If we had defeated that one army I would have still ended up in last place as the Communist player would have won with the Anarchists close behind. Alex also designed a simple (but effective) Bot for each faction so the game can be played by less than three people.

Don’t let Mrs. RockyMountainNavy know, but I already ordered my own copy and you should too! I found this game so impressive that I added Alex to my “Watchlist” of designers who’s games I need to immediately crowdfund or buy.

Photo spray

Saturday

Who do you recognize? The games are a mix of old and new; classics to prototypes.

Sunday

A smaller, slower day but that just made the games a bit more intimate and enjoyable.

2024 can’t come fast enough

My deepest thanks to Kevin Bertram of Fort Circle Games for organizing and hosting this awesome little convention. I’ll let all of you in on a little secret—this is my first non-professional gaming convention I attended in person since Genghis Con 1982 in Denver, Colorado (several lifetimes ago). It’s not that I don’t want to attend gaming conventions, it’s they just often don’t line up with my personal or professional obligations. I really enjoyed the flavor of this small con which allowed me not only to play but to also meet and talk to different designers and players. I am already looking forward to next year. Who knows? Maybe I’ll try my hand at running an event of some sort, or maybe sponsor a prize in the raffle drawing (I’m sure Kevin is taking note to those comments right now!).

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Feature image courtesy RMN

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