A Report from the Žižcon Board Game and RPG Festival

From September 13th to 15th, Prague's Zlíchov hosted the 9th annual Žižcon board game and RPG festival. If your heart beats for board games, it's time to pay attention and mark your calendar for next September. You definitely want to take a trip to Prague (unless you already live there, like me) and join this con.

Žižcon is a fantastic opportunity to try out all sorts of board games or RPGs, and most importantly, to win some – a huge draw is the "Play and Win!" concept. The organizers gather a bunch of interesting titles and mark them as prize games. You enter the raffle simply by playing a game and dropping your ticket number into one of the many boxes provided. If you don't actually want the prize, you don't have to compete for it – just write "Čus Hus!" on your raffle ticket. If that number gets drawn, the game becomes part of the festival's collection instead.

On Friday and Saturday, you can get your hands on anything that catches your eye. If luck is on your side, it's a great feeling to head home with a few extra boxes (I can confirm this from personal experience). Besides that, there's plenty more happening at Žižcon. You can sign up for organized sessions of specific new titles where the organizers will happily explain the rules, or dive into a one-shot RPG adventure – a perfect opportunity if you haven't been bitten by the D&D bug yet and only know it from those nerds in The Big Bang Theory.

Every day, you can also join in on Žižbingo. It follows classic bingo rules, but the squares are filled with funny activities that can make waiting for lunch much more entertaining. And that's still not all; the festival's board game library is massive, so you can play both new releases and older classics. Another great thing about the festival is that you don't have to spend ages reading rulebooks. Just look for the "gurus" – keep an eye out for people in neon tank tops and don't be afraid to ask if they know the rules to the game you want to try. If they don't, they'll find a colleague who can help you with the rules and get you started.

So, what did I try at this year's Žižcon? Winter evenings are going to be long, and it'll be nice to pull something out at home to keep us entertained for a few hours. Winter is coming, and with it, plenty of free time for gaming. Here is a small selection of the games I had the honor of playing at Žižcon and am considering buying for myself.

The first game I managed to try right after arriving was the funny and fast-paced party card game from Mindok, Co tě žere?. I'd recommend this as a quick warm-up for a longer board game session, or even as a travel game for the train. The basic premise is that we want to eat our opponents' weaker animals. In each round, players choose 1 of 5 cards from their hand. After everyone secretly chooses, the cards are revealed, and based on a pre-set hierarchy, it's determined who ate whom. If multiple players chose the same card, the animals fought and nothing happened. If only one player chose a card, they decide which weaker animal they want to eat; if an opponent chose that animal, they're out of luck and gone. Once only one player remains, or there's no one left to hunt, it's determined who gets the food tokens. You play for several rounds, and the first to get 5 food tokens wins. The game is easy to explain, fun, and fast, so why not add it to your gaming repertoire?

As a child raised on the books of Professor Tolkien, I couldn't miss the chance to try The Lord of the Rings: Journey to Mount Doom from Albi. After all, who wouldn't want to join the Fellowship on a quest to save Middle-earth, ending at Mount Doom, where the One Ring craved by the Dark Lord can be destroyed?

The game takes up quite a bit of space, and it took a while to set up all the cards, figures, and other props. However, the gameplay itself isn't that complicated – it's a cooperative system where players use dice rolls to move the Fellowship characters through individual spaces toward their goal, Mount Doom. Along the way, players must stay vigilant, watch out for Sauron's minions, and ideally meet allies in the early stages of the game. Every time the Ring-bearer passes a named location, a new phase begins for the Fellowship, bringing events from other enemy or ally cards, and sometimes you need to plan carefully when to move to the next stage.

The game principle isn't complex, but it relies heavily on luck. Even if it might seem too simple (it's definitely a nice game from Middle-earth that you can play with kids), it was actually quite a challenge to make it all the way to Mount Doom, win, and complete the quest. For me, it's a successful game from the world of The Lord of the Rings, and if you, like me, enjoy cooperative games with a high degree of luck, definitely pick up Journey to Mount Doom! https://www.imago.cz/pan-prstenu-vypravak-hore-osudu.

Another game that ate up some of our time before we got it on the table was Creature Comforts, published by Rexhry – a standalone game from the world of the well-known and beloved Everdell - Creature Comforts. Only this time, instead of forest animals, players operate on the seashore, exploring unknown islands with their scouts, building towns, and trying to rack up as many victory points as possible during the game. If you already have experience with Everdell and liked the game system, Creature Comforts is for you – the mechanics are similar; players play cards to build their little town, which generates victory points through animal helpers. At the same time, there are new components and other ways to score points. The visual side of the game is very nicely done, so if you want a game for your collection, go for it!

My cat-loving self couldn't resist MLEM: Space Agency from Blackfire, which I'd been looking forward to for a long time. I've tried plenty of cat-themed games, but these were the first cat astronauts I'd had the pleasure of meeting. I have to praise the game design – a beautiful neoprene mat with a space track where you send your cat astronauts on a mission to occupy planets, their moons, or deep space. Each player has multiple ways to score points – there are personal and common goals, plus other ways to get extra points. But watch out for your fellow cat astronauts; sometimes you need to trust your instincts and avoid a spaceship crash in time. In this game, cats are ruthless, and once they've conquered Earth, space is within paw's reach. If you want to hop into a spaceship too, get your own cat crew.

From the older games, we played Cartographers, which is great because it's for an unlimited number of players. All you need is a map and a pencil to draw your territory based on cards turned during the seasons, during which different tasks are scored. You have to be careful when a horde of enemies appears, which will ruin your map with negative points. A nice game from Rexhry from the Roll Player world, it has a beautiful pad where players draw their map, complete with a nice and fun header where you can design your title and draw a coat of arms. If you're looking for a family game for more players where you'll think a bit but also use some creativity, Cartographers is a great choice.

Another game that's been on the market for a while and that I'd only passed by until now is Chronicles of Avel from Blackfire, which should be getting a reprint this autumn. The game pleasantly surprised me – it's a fast family cooperative game where heroes gradually reveal a map with monsters they have to defend their castle against. In the end, they also face a final battle with the Beast. I really liked that the box included not just the rules, but a short story as an introduction to the world, along with a bestiary of all the monsters players can fight. All components were nicely detailed, and as a whole, the contents of the box left a very good impression on me. I'd definitely recommend keeping an eye out for when the game is available again, because as I said – Christmas is coming, and this little gift could provide plenty of adventure-filled moments for families with small children (and not just them, we adults enjoyed it too).

And that's still not everything we tried at the festival – if I were to mention all the games we played, this article would be twice as long, and who would want to read that? Better to get inspired and play one of those games yourself. And maybe we'll meet at Žižcon next year and play one together. So, long live board games!

author Jana Mrkvicová

photo Tormund.shoots