Apart from one local con, I haven’t attended a convention in years. They’re uniquely wearying, like swimming freestyle in a petri dish. So when a friend mentioned they would be attending SDHistCon, an annual historical gaming convention in San Diego, and wouldn’t mind splitting a room, I declined. Then Harold Buchanan, the con runner and designer of Liberty or Death, mentioned that he would like me to participate in a pair of panels, and would reimburse me some small amount. I declined again. It took pressure from two further acquaintances before I booked the flight.

I’m glad I did. SDHistCon was the most enjoyable convention I’ve attended by a mile. What follows are the eight highlights of the show.

The Night Witches bomb enemy convoys.

#1. Night Witches
Designed by Liz Davidson and David Thompson

Everything I know about the Night Witches can be summed up by three words: women, pilots, lesbians. Pretty much Dad’s erased Google history.

The board game emphasizes the middle term. As an all-women regiment of night bomber aviators in WWII, you’re tasked with dangerous missions in the dead of night. Just as most historical wargames don’t emphasize the masculinity of their protagonists, Night Witches invests its energy in the details of its bombing runs than its participants’ gender. It’s literally a game about flying blind, searching blacked-out landscapes and dodging searchlights (and the consequent flak) in order to drop bombs on enemy positions or supplies on friendly lines.

This is going to be a campaign game, and while I only played the first scenario, the designers gave me a glimpse of everything to come. There’s a nice variety to the missions, not to mention some ongoing concerns that cannot be neglected. Within a single mission, for instance, you can fly multiple sorties, taking time to refuel and rearm. Waste too many precious minutes, however, and enemy forces may reinforce or move out of range. Across a full campaign, you’ll develop skills, lose and replace pilots, and eventually receive better hand-me-downs from your male peers.

Assessing the topics on the table.

#2. Peace 1905
Designed by Nathaniel Berkley, S.P. Shaman, Maurice Suckling, and Bill Sullivan

I’m a sucker for “peace games,” and Peace 1905 wears its intentions on its sleeve. After only eighteen months, the Russo-Japanese War has worn down both sides. Now it’s time for them to meet over the negotiating table.

There’s an old saying about how war is what gets boys interested in history, but it’s what happens between the wars that’s the really interesting stuff. Peace 1905 proves the truth of that aphorism, examining how peacemaking is every bit as fraught as the processes of war. Various interests are unveiled, then debated and claimed by either the Russians or the Japanese. Both sides have been given specific directives, hidden from their opposition, that they must claim in order to conclude the war. Meanwhile, both are striving to secure stronger concessions from their enemy. Press too hard, however, and the war will continue — but in their opposition’s favor now that they’ve been outed as negotiating in bad faith.

Even as a prototype, the resultant highwire act was tense and exciting. Peace 1905 seems influenced by exemplars like Versailles 1919 and Churchill. Exactly the inspirations I want to see more historical games draw from.

These pieces won’t be used in the final game. For one thing, they liked to tip over.

#3. Molly House
Designed by Jo Kelly and Cole Wehrle

I’ve already written about Molly House, and seeing as how this demo was given less than a month after my preview, not much had changed. If anything, I found myself helping along Drew Wehrle’s teach. His attention was divided, you see. It’s not that I’m such an incredible teacher of games. (Although I am. I am the God of Teaching Games.)

But there was something wonderful about watching an entirely new group of people learn this thing. Going into Molly House at my own game nights, I more or less knew everybody’s reactions beforehand. Here, everything was new. The early interest in the setting. That initial confusion at the game’s suits and ranks. The eventual realization that Molly House is a surprisingly evocative piece of historical literature, full of joy and terror in equal measure.

I’m not saying anything I haven’t said before. But I can’t wait to see Molly House finished and spilled over into the world.

Wait. Is this game historical? If you want it to be, sure.

#4. My Favorite Things
Designed by Daiki Aoyama and Pepe_R

Okay, so this doesn’t have anything to do with historical games. And it wasn’t one of the convention’s many prototypes and sneak peeks. Instead, this was a palette cleanser we played after the main convention had gone to bed. Taught by Meeple Lady, the Wehrles, Liz Davidson, and I learned this blend of trick-taking and get-to-know-you game.

It’s a hoot. It could be described as “precious” without slight. Everybody comes up with a topic. “Favorite periods of war,” was one Cole Wehrle answered, but “favorite hats,” “favorite Hebrew Bible characters,” “favorite rom-com tropes,” and the rather nasty “favorite people at this table” also made appearances. Then these topics are passed to somebody else, who answers and ranks them in secret. These are then passed back and the game begins.

As trick-takers go, it’s light. Your goal is to play the highest-ranked card, but there’s a small twist. In addition to ranking favorites, everybody has included a single least favorite thing. This least-favorite card trumps a card of the highest rank, adding some flavor, not to mention strategy, to the proceedings. It goes without saying that any skullcap adorned with a cultish political slogan isn’t at the top of my list of favorite hats. But do I like it less than Tom Vasel’s red fedora? Good luck guessing.

Charge!

#5. The Halls of Montezuma
Designed by Kevin Bertram and Gilberto Lopez

I was chilly on The Shores of Tripoli, so there may have been some wariness as I demoed its follow-up. To my surprise, The Halls of Montezuma is crisper, more hard-hitting, and, perhaps most importantly, more open than Bertram’s first release.

In our case, we tried the four-player mode, which sees both sides of the Mexican-American War divided between political and military concerns. In practice this resulted in a cooperative mishmash, but never mind. It wasn’t long before our adventuring troops had secured a route to Mexico City, while Apache and Comanche tribes claimed the borderlands, the Republic of Yucatán seceded and allied itself with Papa USA, and our Marines began menacing the coast. You can bet we hummed the Marines’ Hymn once or twice.

But while the game provides a bombastic good time, with handfuls of dice and big sweeping maneuvers, it doesn’t shy away from its history’s uglier side. As we began the preliminary work of drafting the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, our efforts were stalled by racists who weren’t interested in diluting our pure white American bloodlines. We still managed to browbeat Mexico into ceding a majority of its territory, but there were considerations above and beyond your usual wargame to keep in mind.

Can you tell I’m losing?

#6. Hammer and Sickle: Hunger and Utopia in the Russian Civil War
Designed by Alex Knight

After Land and Freedom, I’m on board for anything Alex Knight wants to design. Apparently that’s a sprawling political and military portrait of the Russian Civil War.

To be honest, this was one of the most daunting games of the convention. It isn’t an entry in the COIN Series — despite what some have assumed — but each of the game’s four factions brings its own leaders, tactics, and objectives to the war. The Bolsheviks command most of the country and can deploy armored trains, but are surrounded on all sides. They’re uncomfortably allied with the Anarchists, who function almost like the direct opposite, using irregular peasant armies and discontent to spring up in enemy territory. On the other side lies the White Army, rolling back the revolution one atrocity at a time, and the New Nations, a loose coalition of countries that have taken advantage of the Russian Empire’s collapse to declare independence.

Hammer and Sickle isn’t complicated, but it does present a tangled intersection of allegiances and systems that can prove daunting, not to mention take a good few hours to complete. I’m eager to see this one develop.

Shuss did not give permission for his likeness to be used in Ahoy.

#7. Shuss
Designed by A Flawed And Fallen God

Now that Stonewall Uprising is out in the world, Shuss arrived at the con to demo his next historical game… about Gundam robots punching one another.

But while I could not care less about Gundam, there were a number of non-game highlights at the con, Shuss among them. I tried ahi tuna for the first time. And the second time. The Wehrles purchased seventy dumplings for a large group of folks I’ve only interacted with online. I took food photos like a normie.

The panels went well, too. I chatted with Candice Harris and the Player’s Aid guys, and answered questions about ethical criticism and unethical generative A.I.

It was intimate. Not overcrowded. Filled with people I wanted to meet. There were no booths selling kitsch. There wasn’t an expo hall at all. Instead, somebody had set up a table for selling food and drinks. It was staffed by an honor jar.

On the whole, I suspect that’s what I want out of a convention these days. Interesting people but less bustle. A way to buy bottled water without having to stand in line. Demos sans the race to get event tickets. I don’t think I’ll attend Gen Con again. I’m even considering skipping SaltCon from now on. But SDHistCon? Yeah. I think I’ll be back.

At least until it gets bigger.

Try not to faint.

#8. Arcs
Designed by Cole Wehrle

Fun fact: my most-linked article from r/boardgames is the one where I talk about what I don’t like about the early prototype for Arcs. Not its sister article. Not the positive one.

Before heading home, Cole Wehrle insisted I give the newer version a try. This was specifically a demo of the sans-arc version — the very same I wasn’t all that impressed with last year. And I’m happy to report that it’s significantly better.

There have been countless changes. The trick-taking card system is intact, but with a few tweaks that makes it more fluid and more liable to switch leads between players. The map is tighter, making it easier to get around. Bigger than those, however, is a subtraction that feels so natural that it’s hard to remember it was ever there in the first place. Where once your cities, shipyards, and techs required both resources and time before they rolled out, now those costs have been erased. The card system is enough to wrestle with, and resources are now wholly tied to objectives and bonuses.

I’m reserving judgement until I get my hands on the full thing, but my session left me hungry for more. This isn’t the first time that’s happened with a Wehrle joint; if anything, it’s expected. That doesn’t make the revelation any less relieving. As I sat in the airport, jotting down notes about the titles I’d played, I underlined one sentence: Arcs is good now.

This article was funded by the generous donors at my Patreon, who regularly receive early glimpses of difficult pieces. For instance, there’s an exclusive article on my favorite movies of the 2023. My next article, about the ways we overemphasize replayabilty in board games, is available right now for supporters.

I was reimbursed $200 for taking part in two panels at SDHistCon.