2014 Prezcon - Part 2

Let's see...where was I...oh, that's right...up way too late playing Game of Thrones.  Thursday morning I had to be up by 9:00 for my demo of Lords of Waterdeep.  I had a few people come by - 3 or 4 - not quite as many as showed up for the demo last year.  Waterdeep has been out for a year and a half now, and is quite popular...most euro enthusiasts have probably played it by now.

Picture courtesy of Boardgamegeek.com

After my demo, I headed straight for a heat of Pillars of the Earth, again being GM'd by my buddy Paul Owen.  I was in a 3 player game with Mark Beckman and another gentleman who's name escapes me.  I'm very much a novice at Pillars, and I know that Mark is an excellent euro game player, But I played a very good game...right until the last turn.  Truth be told, I thought the game was coming down to me or Mark, and I had discounted our 3rd player...and so did Mark.  In the penultimate turn, I used a pawn to take the first player for the last turn, setting myself up to hopefully take the glassblower...which would have given me a lot of points.  Unfortunately, the glass blower ended up on the board, vice in the area where he could be bought immediately.  As I drew pawns from the bag, I of course drew Mark's pawn first.  He hemmed and hawed, but ultimately decided to go for the defensive move of paying to get the glassblower (blocking me from getting it).  I drew about half the rest of the pawns before I realized, that as the player drawing the pawns, it had been my right to take one "mulligan" and redraw.  We discussed it at the table, if I could go back, and brought in Paul who ruled (correctly, IMO) that I had forgotten it...so tough luck.  In the end that likely cost me the game...but to my and Mark's surprise our 3rd opponent came out of nowhere to claim the victory.  Which is a lesson in never underestimating anyone.

At noon, I got in a heat of Carcassonne, and managed to win.  For whatever reason, I've been doing well at Carcassonne the last few years at Prezcon - 2nd overall 2 years ago, and 3rd last year.  With my win, I was on my way to the semi-finals again. Directly after that, I played in a heat of Stone Age, where I was promptly trounced by a Stone Age afficianado named Rodney.  I made the mistake of not collecting very many cards - I was in the lead, and then promptly got lapped when the card points were counted.

Picture courtesy of Boardgamegeek.com

Next up, at 3:00 was a heat of Chicago Express.  I'm not a huge fan of stock market type games...and despite it's train theme, that's really what Chicago Express is.  However, I find this game growing on me.  In fact, I like it more and more every time I play.  My heat didn't go so well - we had a 3 player game, one lady was brand new to the game...but the other fellow was clearly a veteran player.  I did learn a hard lesson, as I took 2 of the shares for the red railroad, he took the remaining 1 share, and just as I had the red railroad approaching Chicago, he veered it off in a different direction.  The veteran won by a significant amount.  I would also like to give kudos to Lee Sensabaugh, the GM -


who in my opinion is one of the friendliest GMs - or person, in general - at Prezcon. 

We had time late that afternoon to get our gang (Brian, Tom, myself, Paul and the Senzig clan) together in open gaming and get in a game of Viva Java. We had to cut short due to some pressing tournaments coming up, but I was likely on the way to victory, thanks to playing the "going rogue" card, and investing in other players brews.  Halfway through the game, we did have designer T.C. Petty III show up!

The South Island!

Next up was one of the highlights for me - my old favorite Conquest of Paradise, once again GM'd by designer Kevin McPartland.  This year, Kevin decided to mix it up by adding in almost all the optional rules, plus the expansion random event cards.  I was excited about this, as I was ready for things to be changed up a bit.  In my first game, as Raiatea, I discovered New Zealand early on - which, with the optional rules gave me both the north and south island.  However, the player playing Samoa used the random event of Fijian Raid to completely decimate his Tongan neighbor, paving the way for him to move in for the kill.  He was able to ride that to victory. 

Picture courtesy of Boardgamegeek.com

After Conquest, our "gang" got together for some late night gaming, bringing out Space Cadets: Dice Duel, and following with a favorite from last year, Bang!  Dice Duel was a blast, although I was surprised we didn't go more attention from others in the room.  It was somewhat awkward with uneven players, but we made it work.  With Bang!, I threw in one of the expansions, and that only served to confuse things - some of the cards were odd, and the new characters didn't seem that balanced - Mike Sr. had a guy that could hold 10 cards, for example.  The one drawback to Bang! is that it can drag a little long, and with player elimination, that can be no fun...in the end, we called it quits with Tom's sherriff and Mike Sr.'s outlaw in a virtual standoff.

The mornings always seem to come early at Prezcon, and Friday was no exception - even though the first thing on my docket was the 10:00 heat of Lords of Waterdeep.   I had about 20ish folks show up for the first heat, and I managed to play this year as well.  I was determined to keep it to 4 player games this year, and in my first heat I think I only had to go to 5 with one game.  I only had one group go long, but they were able to find me over at the 2nd heat of Conquest of Paradise. 

Friday afternoon and evening ended up being a Conquest of Paradise marathon.  In the 2nd heat, I was once again Raiatea.  In an interesting twist, New Zealand was discovered directly between Raiatea and Hiva.  The Hiva player and I decided on a truce - he would take the North Island, I would take the South.  I also made a run for sweet potatoes, though I was unsuccessful.  My memory is failing me here a little...as everything from that day is a bit jumbled together, but I did not win, and then Kevin had to decide on how to run the semis/final game. 

The final was scheduled at 4:00, but Kevin wanted to run 2 semis starting at 3:00, as he had 5 individual heat winners, and would fill in with 3 2nd place finishers - of which I was one.  In one moment that made me ornery, one young player that was a heat winner complained because that would conflict with a heat of Leaping Lemmings.  Kevin was hemming and hawing, especially since
not all the winners showed up.  The young fellow went so far as to get the tournament director, Justin, to come over and arbitrate (at which point Justin said "Kevin is one of our best GM's...whatever he decides goes").  In the end, Kevin ran the two semis, and I made it in. 

Picture courtesy of Boardgamegeek.com

In our semi, I was with Brian, and Steve Bondra, and another fellow.  I had a decent game, but again finished 2nd to Steve.  As it turns out, in the other semi, Steve Cameron ran away with the victory in such a dominating fashion that both I and Brian (our 3rd place finisher) made it to the finals.

The final game started out terribly for me.  I found no islands for the first 3 turns.  That was drawing various remarks of pity from the other players...and they were completely discounting me.  I should mention that I was Hiva, and Brian was playing Raiatea.  At one point he essentially offered me a small island as a way to appease me and stop military aggression.  It sort of worked, as I then went on a tear and found a bunch of islands in a row.  I also successfully discovered sweet potatoes.  I was gearing up to land colonists on 4 islands at once, for an 8 point jump, when Steve Bondra declared victory.  As Samoa, he found a bunch of islands and was able to isolate himself.  One more turn, and I think I would have been able to make a run at it - but isn't that always the way of things?  I was still able to squeak out a 3rd place finish.  In general, I liked playing with the advanced rules, though Malaria never came into play, and Sweet Potatoes are had to get to.  New Zealand factored in several of my games, and the random events change the strategy significantly, in my mind.  The rule is that the player in last place gets to draw and implement the random events - this leads to a tactic of intentionally lagging behind.  In the finals, I was drawing the majority of the time, but I never got any of the "super" cards.  Twice Steve Cameron managed to lag behind me, and he got two cards that would have helped me significantly.  Oh well...lesson learned for WBC....

After almost 8 hours of Conquest of Paradise, it was off to open gaming.  Some other familiar faces were showing up, including Ben Rosset, Nick Ferris and Josh Tempkin.  I got in a game of Coup with Ben, Nick and several other fellows, and managed to pull off the win.  Although I still don't think I caught Ben lying.  After that, Ben, Nick, Josh and Brian were gracious enough to give Santa's Workshop a try.  They only ended up getting through about half a game, but I got quite a bit of good feedback.  I loved Unpub, but with 3 game designers playing, I think I got more valuable feedback during that playtest than during Unpub.  This led to significant changes, which I will detail in an upcoming blog post.  After closing that up, Brian, Tom and I sat down with Ben to playtest his Homebrewers - the "prequel" to Brewcrafters.  I think Ben has another solid idea here, although it's certainly in a more "rough" stage than when I playtested either Brewcrafters or Brewcrafters:The Travel Card Game.  Combining dice rolling, negotiation, and card management, I look forward to playing the next iteration the next time I see Ben. 

Well that was enough for that night, and that's enough for this blog entry.  Next up in Part 3, I'll wrap up with Saturday and Sunday, and some overall thoughts about Prezcon 2014.

PREZCON - Part 4

Saturday morning left me with a choice...play in the 2nd heat of Walnut Grove, or the 2nd heat of Power Grid?  Now I was mildy irritated with the con, because it "officially" starts on Wednesday morning, and Monday and Tuesday are "pre-cons"...and yet the first heat of Power Grid was Tuesday night.  As far as I know, they give out plaques for everything on Monday and Tuesday...so I'm not so sure what's "pre" about it.  In any case, I had a decision to make.  In the end, I went with Walnut Grove.  Power Grid is one of my favorite games, but we'd been playing it a lot at home recently, and there are some real sharks at Prezcon (***cough***Crenshaw***cough***).  Plus, since I was pretty sure I was making the final of Walnut Grove based on my first heat victory, I wanted to get some more practice at that. 

Walnut Grove

We had a 3-player game in the 2nd heat - myself, Kit, and another fellow who's name I've forgotten (I have GOT to write this stuff down!).  I had a pretty good game...too good, as it turns out.  I was able to do most of what I wanted, and I was able to get the bonus token that gives you points for resources.  I used that score 17 points at the end of the game, and blew away my two opponents by over 10 points.  And then Michelle Hymowitz, the GM, came over and explained that that bonus token was used only for goods in your barn...not ALL your goods.  Oh...uh...yeah...sorry about that.  My opponents were gracious, and insisted I keep the win, since we had all been playing thinking it scored the way we had originally scored it.  But we did a theoretical "what-if", and how would I have played it differently, and it turns out that Kit would have been real close to my score, and had a good chance of winning.  Since I was already in the final from my first victory, I happily conceded and asked that Michelle advance Kit to the final.

Carcassonne

This was not our final, and they're using crazy expansions

Next up was the semis of Carcassonne.  We had a tight 4 player game.  I made an unusual move about 2/3 of the way into the game.  There was a farm that 1 player had dominance in.  I placed a token that allowed a 2nd player (not me) to share that farm.  I hemmed and hawed about the move, and I'm sure the original farmer wasn't happy with it, but the move completed a road and an abbey for me, which gave me back two meeples...of which I was short.  With my last tile, I was able to complete a 10 point city that I had sole possession of, which also connected to a small farm that I was in sole possession of.  That was enough to push me over the top, and advance me to the finals.

The finals were supposed to start at 1300, the same time as my next heat of Waterdeep.  But the winners of all the semi-final games were present, and were able to start at 1200.  Wow...what an intense game.  My first 2 meeples went down as farmers, so I dominated a field that already has several small "football" cities completed in it.  I had 2 abbeys going, and managed to complete a few football cities myself.  I was able to get a 2nd farm going where I had sole access to 4 cities.  Over the course of the game, two players managed to get 3 meeples in the original farm where I had had 2 meeples.  Near the end of the game, I had 4 farmers on the board.  One tile would have allowed me to connect everything and dominate all the farms on the board.  Unfortunately, that tile did not come.  Adding up the score, I ended up with 63 points...and the two guys who shared the large farm both got 64 points!  So, I finished in 3rd place by 1 pt.  As Carcassonne is such a popular game, I was able to pick up my 3rd place plaque for free.

Lords of Waterdeep

Next was my 2nd heat of LoW.  I had 28 players...15 of which were new to this heat, which gave me 40 unique players for the tournament!  That's quite a turnout!  I'll be interested to see where I "rank" overall.  When I told the convention organizer, Justin, he actually put his arm around me and said "I guess we did good, huh?"

So, I had 4 games of 5, and 2 games of 4.  Here was my opportunity to play...but I decided against it.  Not because I had an ethical epiphany...but I was scheduled to be in the Walnut Grove final in 2 hours, and didn't want to risk getting in a long game of Waterdeep.  Turns out I probably shouldn't have been worried, as all the Waterdeep games finished well in advance, but still...if I'd been playing and having to answer a lot of questions, it may have gone long.

As for tracking "Larissa"...she won at least one game, and should have one another.  A young woman named Elizabeth, who I had taught at the demo, had Larissa, and had completed the quest that gave her the ability to play where an opponent had already played.  So, in essence, they couldn't stop her from building buildings.  But, she became so enamored with just building, that she forgot to complete quests as well, and ended up losing by 5 or 6 points.

After the 2nd heat, I had to determine who had made the semis.  I had 11 different winners, and I figured I fill the bracket out with the 5 "best" 2nd place finishers to get 16 semi-finalists.  That would be 4 games of 4, and the winners would be in a final game of 4.  So, I started ranking people by percentage of overall score.  I did this for every game, and started ranking before I realized that the people in a 4 player game had an advantage in that they were only "splitting" their score 4 ways instead of 5.  So I went back and redid the ranking based on delta from the winner's score.  Next year I'm bringing a laptop and excel!

Walnut Grove

Well, after Waterdeep, it was on to the finals of Walnut Grove.  It was 4 player final with myself, Brian, Kit and Jack.  I saw that once again the bonus tile for resources was available, and decided to make that a center point of my strategy - which meant that I need barns to store as many resources as possible.  I took "neighborly help" at the beginning of the game, in order to help me pay one of the "taxes" in town...and kept it the entire game, paying it off at the very end of the game.  I was in fact able to build two new barns, and get the resource bonus tile, as well as the bonus tile for having fenced in pastures.    Jack went heavy on new workers, as he picked up the bonus tile for # of people.  In the end, when we added up the score, I finished in 1st with 27 points (I think)...3 or 4 ahead of 2nd place.  Jack was catching on to my strategy in the last turn or so, but I think I caught Brian and Kit by surprise.  So, hurray...my streak ended in Conquest of Paradise, but I still got a 1st place plaque this year!

Zombicide

After Walnut Grove, Brian and went down to open gaming to give Zombiecide a whirl.  This was a kickstarter game that Brian picked up a few weeks ago.  Now, I should mention that I'm not a big fan of the zombie genre...I'm just tired of it, frankly.  It seems like it's been uber-popular for about 5 years now...and I'm just done with it.  But...I agreed to play the game.  We gathered another player, Amber, and gave it a shot.  The game certainly does reflect the zombie theme well, with hordes of the undead lumbering after you as you try to complete your goals.  But, to me it's rather fiddly.  There are a LOT of plastic figures to fiddle with.  There are two decks of cards...one for zombies, and one for items, that have the same exact backing...just different colors.  We kept getting that confused.  My other problem was that I was hitting "the wall".  Several days of little sleep, and intermittent food were taking their toll on me.  After an hour, I just looked at Brian and said "I'm done".  I went to get some much needed dinner.  He and Amber continued, and at some point Tom joined them.  Again, I'm not a zombie fan, but I would give this one another try, just to give it a fair shake when I'm not suffering from Prezcon-itis.

Lords of Waterdeep

At 2100, it was time for the LoW semis and final.  As I mentioned, I had wanted to get 16 people playing - the 11 winners and the top 5 2nd place finishers.  Well, not all the winners ever show up, so even if people were ranked lower than 16, I encouraged them to show up.  We had 11 total people turn out.  I saw Cindy, who had finished at best a distant 3rd in one of her games loitering around, so I invited her to round the group out to 12.  Then at the last minute one of the winners showed up, so we had 13 (I wasn't cold hearted enough to kick Cindy out at that point).  So, we went with 2 4-player games, and 1 5-player game.  I was going to take the winners and the top 2 2nd-place finishers to a final of 5 people.  In hindsight, I wish I'd separated the the semis into 4 games, even with some 3-player games, to get a final of 4 winners.  Well, lessons learned.

At this point, all the players had at least 1 game under their belt, and there was not much I needed to do.  Paul and Glenn joined me after a while for a game of Formula Motor Racing (see below) to pass the time.  Actually Brian joined us as well, as his LoW semi-final finished in 45 minutes or so (sadly, he did not advance).  

In 2 out of the 3 semis, the player with Larissa won the game.  Uh-oh...maybe she is a little overpowered?  In any case, I was able to get my 5 players together quickly.  Jack, who had been in the Walnut Grove final with me, asked if we could push the final to Sunday morning.  I declined, not knowing if any of the other players had conflicts...and frankly I didn't want to drag out my commitment any more. 

I don't think I had to answer a single question during the final...the players all knew the game pretty well at that point.  In fact, I got sucked into a game of Pitchcar a few tables away while they played.  Again, the player with Larissa won the final.  We had a bit of discussion after the game as to whether she was too powerful.  At this point, most people had flipped and thought she was.  I will say, though that the champion (again...I'm forgetting his name...) was clearly the most knowledgeable player in general - he had won all his previous games easily.  The suggestion to remove Larissa from the game was generally frowned upon, because that would take an element away from the game...you're never sure who has what Lord.  There was a suggestion to reduce her bonus from 6 to 5 points, which I think merits some consideration.  When they recalculated the final score using only 5 points per building, the winner was only 2 or 3 points ahead of the field rather than the 8 or 9 he won by.

Wizards of the Coast is putting out an expansion for LoW this summer, and I'm eager to see if there are new Lords who score via different means.  Perhaps this will help balance out Larissa.

Formula Motor Racing & Pitchcar

As I mentioned above, Paul and Glenn came up to keep me company during the Waterdeep semis, and brought Formula Motor Racing with them.  This is a quick little racing game that I've owned for years, but never seem to get to the table.  Relative position is manipulated by card play, and the winner is whoever is in first when the card deck runs out.  Each racer gets two cars...and traditionally several races are played, with finishing positions giving you pts...whoever has most points after, say, 3 races is the winner.  We played on the one quick race, though.  Glenn was unfortunate to have both his cars knocked out early.  I couldn't seem to gain position (I was stuck with a bunch of cards for other color cars), and I think it was Paul who won in the end.

When the Waterdeep final started, Paul went off to demo his East India Company for some folks.  I got the Waterdeep finalists started...then wandered over to where a large Pitchcar track was being setup.  They had the works...jumps, ramps...I think it was estimated that they had one base set and 5 expansions.  So who were the "they"?  Chris Kirkman, of Dicehateme fame, and TC Petty III, designer of VivaJava, I had met before at the last two WBCs.  For the first time, I met Darrell Louder, designer of Compounded (which I had recently backed on Kickstarter) and Ben Rosset, designer of Mars Needs Mechanics and the forthcoming Brewmasters (more on that later).

They kindly invited me to be the 8th player in their pitchcar extravaganza.  I didn't want to be a bad GM, but my Waterdeepers seemed fine, so I joined in.  I may have been drinking while driving (shhh).  Starting from the last position worked out much better for me than it did in Formula De earlier in the week.  Fortunately I was able to get past the two younger racers that were ahead of me and doing an adept job at blocking Darrell.  By the end of lap 2 I was in the top 3, and in the final lap I charged ahead, passing TC and Ben.  I got a little nervous approaching the finish line and pulled what we in the croquet world call an "Aunt Emma", by hitting too softly, giving TC the opportunity to make a miracle finish.  But it was not to be, and I managed to win the race.  And then, like any good winner I made the excuse that I had to tend to my Waterdeep players so I didn't have to help pick up the track...

2 Rooms and a Boom

As pitchcar was winding up, and I was wrapping up the finalists in Waterdeep, a woman named Emily came up to and pitched a game they were playing downstairs called "Two Rooms and a Boom".  "Eight Minutes of the most fun you'll have at Prezcon" or something like that was how she pitched it.  Well, who could refuse that?

It turns out that Emily was with Clyde, our "Morpheus" friend from Resistance.  2R1B (how's that for an acronym) is another social game, like Werewolf or Resistance.  There's nominally two teams, one red and one blue.  On the blue team is the president, on the red team, the bomber.  The goal for the bomber is to finish the game in the same room as the President, thereby blowing him up...the President of course wants to survive.  Each player is given a card showing their identity, and team.  Then everyone is randomly divided into the two rooms.  While in your room, you can talk to anyone you want, even reveal your identity by showing your card.  A "leader" needs to be elected in each room, and after 3 minutes a timer goes off, and the leader sends a certain amount of people to the other room.  This continues for 3 rounds, each successively shorter.  At the end, the bomb goes off and we see if the President survives.

Sounds simple, right?  Well, then they start adding in other roles.  The doctor, who must get the President his pills.  The engineer, who has to arm the bomb.  And "gray" roles, who don't care about blue vs. red, they just have their own victory conditions.  Later on we added zombies and werewolves.

This is a fun game, but you have to be in the right mood, and the right beverages don't hurt.  I was up to 2:30 AM playing it, and I heard later that some teenagers arrived shortly after I left, and they were up until 5:00 AM.  When you start to add a lot of different roles, it just gets completely chaotic...but in a fun way.

Well, next up a review of my last day at Prezcon, and some closing thoughts....

PREZCON - Part 3

Well, Friday arrived all too soon.  I didn't have anything lined up until my 10:00 heat of Lords of Waterdeep, so I was able to sleep in a little bit...

Lords of Waterdeep

I got down to the main ballroom at about 9:30 in order to start setting up for my first heat of Lords of Waterdeep.  I had my own copy and I had borrowed my sisters copy to setup, and I was a little worried that we would be short of copies.  Now I should mention that I've updated my copy of LoW, replacing the euro-style cubes with custom made meeples, which you can find on this BGG thread:  http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/807557/custom-meeples-updated.  I had been having a bit of debate with myself as to whether I should play in the tournament I was running.  Paul Owen opined that he was not going to play in his Pillars of the Earth tournament, so as to keep any ethical questions to a minimum.  I had decided that my ethics weren't quite as up to snuff as Paul's, and that I would play if there was an open seat.  I recruited Tom Snyder to be my "assistant GM" if there were any questions in the game in which I was involved.  Turned out to be a moot point...as I had exactly 25 players show up for the first heat, which meant exactly 5 games of 5 players each.  My fears about not having enough games were also unfounded, as at least 6 other people showed up with games.  I was pretty happy with the turnout...and it's a good thing I didn't play as I felt that I was kept pretty busy running around and answering questions (I did manage to sneak over to the vendor area, which had just opened, and pick up a copy of Viva Java, though).

A 4 player game in action

I did have a bit of a GM quandary, when Chris - the longtime GM of Puerto Rico - approached me and asked if their specific group of 4 could play together, to insure a "quick game".  I hemmed and hawed for a moment, then agreed, with the exception that I may add a 5th player.  As it happened, with 25 players, I did have to add a 5th to their game, but their buddy Jack showed up, so they took him.  As it turned out, they were not the "quick" game...in fact they were the slowest, the only game to take over 2 hours to complete.

I did have one request for the players - I asked them to track who was playing which lord.  In particular, I wanted to track the "win rate" for "Larissa", a specific Lord role in the game.  As I mentioned in my earlier post, you can score end of game points based on your Lord role, depending on what type of quests you have completed ( 4 points for specific quest types).  That is true for 10 out of the 11 Lords supplied with the game.  The 11th Lord is "Larissa", who scores 6 points per building that her player has built during the game.  There is some threads on boardgamegeek where the opinion has been expressed that Larissa is overpowered...and I wanted to test that theory. As it turned out, only 1 of the 5 games involved Larissa, and she did not win in that game (though I believe was a close 2nd).

All in all, I think my first heat as a GM went very well.  All the players seemed pretty happy to play, and I had one person tell me that the only reason they came to Prezcon was because LoW was on the schedule.  So, were off to a good start!

Conquest of Paradise

 Next up was the 2nd heat of Conquest of Paradise, which was to be followed shortly thereafter by the semis/final.  As the 2nd heat was being set up, there appeared to be a turnout of only 6 players, including myself and Brian Greer, who had both won our first heat.  Realizing that if we just had 1
2nd heat game, we would be able to skip a semi, and go straight to the final, Brian and I volunteered to sit out, and we ended up playing a "fun" game with designer Kevin McPartland, and his design partner Jerry Shiles.  I regretted this decision later on (I'll explain why shortly).  For our "fun" game, we decided to play with the optional rules, which include Malaria, the southern half of New Zealand, and hunting for sweet potatoes.  We were also going to play with the random event expansion cards (published in C3I magazine).

For the first half of the game, I was a bit distracted...let me tell you about my friend Brian.  I've known Brian since freshman year of college, and at some point in college he got the nickname "Slop".  I want to say this started from his propensity to make "slop" shots in pool...but he also has the unfortunate habit of spilling his drink...and other things.  I ran an errand real quick before CoP, and when I got back, I found that Brian had knocked over my Lords of Waterdeep box, spilling the contents everywhere.  He took responsibility and said he would get it all organized again, but the OCD gamer in me couldn't wait, so I was organizing and counting pieces while playing CoP. 

The game itself didn't go well for me.  Brian got a random event card that he was able to save, and later used in battle.  He, as Tonga, invaded my Samoan homeland, and defeated me.  That was essentially the end for me, although I limped along.  Meanwhile, Kevin managed to sail to South America and discover sweet potatoes, which gave him +2 VPs.  In the end, Brian was left with a bit of a kingmaker choice between Kevin and Jerry, and Kevin pulled out the victory.

Carcassone

The actual city of Carcassonne...it does look like the game!

There was an hour break between the 2nd heat of CoP and the final, so I jumped in on another heat of Carcassonne.   My opponents were an older gentleman, and 2 young kids (probably 10 or under).  Now, I have no qualms beating young kids - they can be vicious.  I had to fight for my life against a young girl in the semis of Carcassonne last year, and you can ask Paul O. how he felt after losing to a 9 year old girl in the finals of last years Chicago Express. 

I feared that this game was going to go the same route as my heat 2 game, as I didn't score any points for about the first half of the game.  I started coming on in the end though, and managed to pass the 2 kids, and ended up finishing 2nd.  With one 1st place, and one 2nd place, I felt comfortable that I would make the semis.

Conquest of Paradise

Now it was time for the final of CoP.  The finalists were myself, Brian, Rob McKinney, and "New Guy" that I only beat by 1/2 point in the 1st heat (I really have to write down people's names if I'm going to keep doing this blog thing).  This is where I regretted not playing an "official" 2nd heat game.  In the final, Kevin allows people to pick their starting island based their margin of victory in their earlier games.  With a margin of victory of only 1/2 point...I was picking dead last.  Now, I'm not blaming Kevin, he's been doing it this way for years...I should have remembered that and played in the 2nd heat.  So...I ended up with Raiataea. Brian was near me with Hiva, Rob had Tongoa, and "New Guy" had Samoa.

If I'm to be completely honest, I was looking forward to the challenge a little bit.  I'd won the CoP tournament the last 3 years, and every year I had played Samoa in the final.  Maybe I shouldn't have relished the challenge so much....

Island exploration started poorly for me...finding only atolls and I think one 1-village island.  I did what I could do to finish developing my home island, keeping a wary eye on Brian.  In subsequent turns I would discover small islands...enough to keep me generating canoes and colonists, but not keeping up with the other empires.  The turn that I decided to focus on military, I discovered Hawaii, which is a 4-village island, and I think that may have hurt...it kept me thinking I should produce colonists and villages, rather than go all-in on military.  At one point, I had 2 war bands and 2 war canoes, which gave me a raiding party of 4 military units.  I decided to strike at Brian's home island ( a bit of retribution from our "fun" game).  He had 3 military units, plus the 2 automatic defenders that come out (think of them as a sort of "National Guard").  Things didn't start off well for me, but Rob played a card that allowed a re-roll in any battle (he was interested in seeing me win).  When I got a roll that made 1 of Brian's units panic, I played a card that turned that into 2 units panicking.  After a few more dice rolls, I went from being a 5-4 underdog to having a 3-1 advantage.  Taking Brian's capital would be a huge turnaround in my fortunes!  So, I promptly rolled 3 bad rolls, and lost the battle.  Sigh...

The rest of the game was a race between Rob and Brian.  I made a half-hearted effort to sneak in the back door of the Samoa player, but it never panned out.  Rob, unfortunately made a tragic blunder.  He "declared victory", thinking he had 1 more point than he needed for victory (you always want to have 1 extra point, because another player can play the "deforestation" card, which will wipe out one of your villages, and thus 1 VP).  Well, Rob laid out his cards, and had unfortunately miscalculated...he only had the exact number needed for victory, and Brian did in fact have the deforestation card, which he promptly played.

I was left in a bit of a kingmaker role between Rob and Brian at that point.  Although, Brian had put out a picket line of war canoes that was going to prevent me from doing any serious damage to him, and Rob had an open "mythical island", for which I had a card that gave me extra VPs.  So, I attacked that island and took it.  I took too many forces, for I left myself wide open to Brian, who captured my capital and cut my canoe chains to other islands.

So, in the end, Brian earned his first WBC plaque, and I came in a distant 4th.  I'm looking forward to redemption at WBC.  I also hope that CoP remains on the Prezcon schedule.  It had been on the chopping block earlier this year, before Justin relented and kept it on the schedule.  I think Kevin had 12 players this year, which is up from the 9 that I think he had last year.  I need to figure out a way to spread the love for it at Prezcon.

Stone Age

Next up for me was a heat of Stone Age, another euro worker-placement game.  In this game, you send your - uh - cavemen out to collect resources, which you use to purchase huts and cards.  You can also go to the village and procreate(you start with 5 cavemen, and can give birth to up to 5 more), move up on the farm track, or get a tool.  At the end of each round you have to feed all of your cavemen, or you take a -10 VP hit.  The cards you purchase can give you in-game bonuses, as well as provide for (significant) end-game scoring.  At the very start of the game, the card that was in the #4 slot (meaning you needed to pay 4 resources for it) was the 3X hut multiplier...meaning it gave you 3 pts for each hut you built at the end of the game.  In  Prezcon heat last year, I passed on that card, and it was used to beat me later...and I was informed "it's the most powerful card in the game".  So, this year, I jumped on it.  Unfortunately, in turn 1, you have no resources to start with, and I was unable to roll well enough to get 4 wood to buy the card.  So, I essentially did nothing on turn 1.  That was a particularly stupid move on my part, because I was in line to be the start player in turn 2.  Which meant as the cards slid down, I was the first to place, and easily got the 3X hut multiplier when it became cheaper.  I should have realized that and not bothered in turn 1, and done something more productive.

At that point, I seriously considered the "starvation" strategy.  There is a strategy that you don't worry about food, take your 10 VP penalty each turn, and use those workers to do other things rather than hunt for food.  I chickened out, though, because the starvation strategy is boom or bust.  It's a bit controversial as well, in that some folks consider it against the spirit of the game.  I probably should have gone for it, as I had a "bust" game anyway, finishing a distant 4th in our 4 player game.

Article 27 & The Resistance

After Stone Age, I didn't have anything on my schedule as far as official tournaments.  I hung around the Pillars of the Earth final, and watched Tom win the whole thing.  After that, we got our gang together again (minus the Selzigs, who we learned later crashed early that night) for some late night social gaming.

First on the list was Article 27, from Stronghold Games, one of my favorite game companies.  I was sold on Article 27 after hearing Stronghold Games found Stephen Buonocore talk about it on the D6Generation podcast.  Accommodating up to 6 players, the gist of the game is that each round, one player acts as the secretary general of the U.N. and presides over voting on a number of issues.  The heart of the game is the 3 minute negotiating/bribing round where players try to bribe the secretary general (and each other) to put certain issues up for vote...and to pass the measure.  Issues are represented by colored disks with symbols on them.  At the start of each round, you randomly draw 5 disks and put them on your player mat, behind a screen.  These issues are arranged from +5 to -5 points, and you are solely looking at the color of the disks to see which ones you want to pass that round.  However, at the beginning of the game, you drew a token which represents your "hidden agenda" - this corresponds the symbols on the disk.  The more of those you get to pass over the course of the game, the more bonus points you score in the end.

The game is pretty fast and furious, and inclusion of a wooden gavel in the game only adds to the fun.  We were finding that being secretary general later in the game tends to reap the most benefits, as players are eager to get their secret agendas passed.  I wonder if this is a bit of a flaw in the game, as an early secretary general doesn't get the benefit of desperate players.  There was also, not a lot of bribing between non secretary-generals, although we started to do more of this near the end of the 2nd game.  This game will require more plays before further judgement (don't the all?).





After A27, we broke out The Resistance again.  We seemed to have our act together a little bit better on the 2nd night.  Although a fellow named Clyde joined us, who was a very experienced Resistance players - in fact Clyde's specialty seems to be the social games...you'll hear more about him later.  In any case, he started introducing new roles, such as "Morpheus", the "leader" of the Resistance, and the Assassin, who can still win the game for the traitors if he successfully kills Morpheus at the end of the game.  Later we introduced the Bodyguard, and, well...I've forgotten, but I'm pretty sure there was at least one other role introduced.  It was wacky, and fun, and again I didn't hit the bed until late...

PREZCON - Part 2

Well, my original idea was to make it through my PREZCON summary in 2 posts or so.  But since the first day - and only a half day at that - took it's own rather lengthy post, that idea might be Down in Flames (which I didn't play).  So, what did day 2 have in store for me at Prezcon?  Let's find out...

Lords of Waterdeep

First thing on Thursday morning was my 9:00 demo of Lords of Waterdeep.  That's right, in my 5th year at Prezcon, I decided to take a turn at being a GM.  Justin Thompson had put out a call earlier in the year (or, last year, rather) for some new games at the 20th Prezcon.  My initial instinct was to volunteer to run Merchants and Marauders, the excellent pirate game from Z-Man games.  However, I could easily see games of M&M stretching to 3+ hours, and being new to the GM thing, I wasn't sure I wanted to give up that much of my own gaming time.  So I turned to another hot game that released last year, Lords of Waterdeep.  Even with inexperienced players, games should only last about 1.5 hours or so.  For those unfamiliar, the setting is the D&D Forgotten Realms city of Waterdeep.  You are one of the mysterious "Lords" of Waterdeep, and your job is to keep the city safe from various monsters, cults, and another shenanigans.  However, being too lordly to get your own hands dirty you hire adventurers (the stereotypical warrior, rogue, wizard and priest) to complete these quests for you.  Despite it's D&D theme, this is very much a Euro-style worker placement game, where you collect cubes, er, "adventurers" and money to meet a quest's requirements, and in turn score VPs for that.  You can also use the "Intrigue" cards to help yourself or hinder opponents, and you score end-game points based on who your lord is, and what type of quests you completed.

I was curious what kind of turnout I'd get for Waterdeep - I knew it was a fairly "hot" game last year, but the Prezcon crowd can tend to stick to old favorites.  My first indication was the turnout at the demo.  I had 5 players stay the whole time, and I talked them through about 3/4 of a game.  I had 3 - 5 other people stop by for various lengths of time and observe the action.  All the players at the demo seemed excited by the game, and I thought it was a success.  How'd the game do in the actual tournament heats...stay tuned to find out....

Pillars of the Earth

I wasn't the only one in my "group" that was a new GM this year.  Paul Owen was running Pillars of the Earth.  In fact, Paul was demoing next to me as I demo'd Waterdeep.  Paul was running his first heat promptly at 10:00, following the demo hour, and I joined in.  Pillars is based on the Ken Follet novel of the same name (which I've downloaded to my tablet, but have yet to read), and revolves around the construction of a cathedral in 13th century England.  Another euro worker placement type game, the novel mechanic in this game is that each players "master builders" are drawn randomly from a bag.  The first ones drawn have the opportunity to be placed - but at a cost.  You can choose to let them sit, and place them later for free.  I hadn't played since last year at Prezcon, and was rusty on the rules...and it showed.  I was able to get the metalworker early in the game which gave me points for just owning metal, but in the mid and late-game, I wasn't able to efficiently chain my craftsmen together to equal the points of the other players.  I don't really know what a good strategy for this game is...but I know I need to get it to the table more.  I will add that Pillars has one of the most beautiful boards I own, and you get to build a neat little cathedral during the game.

Carcassonne

At 1300 on Wednesday, I squeezed in another heat of Carcassonne.  I've never had a game of Caracassonne before where I didn't score any points during the game - they all came from end game scoring.  Note to other players...this isn't a wise "strategy"...I came in dead last....

Chicago Express

 I'd played Chicago Express 2 or 3 WBCs ago, and while I thought it was relatively interesting...I just never got back to it.  During the game, 4 different railways are build from the eastern seaboard, extending towards Chicago.  The players have the opportunity to buy stock in each of the railroads, which will pay out dividends at certain points.  So, you may find yourself working with one opponent to extend the blue train, and a different opponent to extend the yellow train.  First train to Chicago gets an extra dividend payout.  Paul gave us a quick recap before the heat, and during our practice game, I thought I was doing rather well.  Not so in the heat...where I ended up "teamed" almost exclusively with the woman to my left, and the 2 players across the table ended up with stock in the other two railroads.  In the end, my "partner" was able to manipulate the auction for the 5th railroad that joins the game, and I lost a lot cash bidding the initial stock high.  I ended up in 4th place.  I don't know that CE is a smash hit for me, but I'm definitely interested in playing it again.

Walnut Grove

Michelle Hymowitz had taught this quick little euro to Tom Snyder and I last year at Prezcon, and here she was running Walnut Grove as a tournament game this year.  This game is described as a "mashup" between Carcassonne and Agricola - and I see where that's coming from...but it is it's own unique game as well, I think.  A game lasts 8 rounds, where each player had to gather resources, improve their farm, and feed and heat their workers.  Each player starts with a basic farm board.  The Carcassonne comparison comes from the tile draw at the beginning of each round - you  draw so many tiles, and get to keep a certain amount, depending the disk that's turned up to mark the new round.  You want to fit these tiles to your existing farm in the most efficient way - like colors to like colors preferable.  There are yellow, green, blue, brown and gray "fields" in your farm.  Later you send your workers out to produce resources in those fields, and the larger continuous colors will provide more of those color cubes.  Later you have to feed (same color cubes as your farmers) and heat (brown cubes) all your workers - they may require more food or heat depending on the severity of the winter.  Meanwhile, you have another meeple that you move around in town, purchasing upgrades (more workers, more buildings, selling cubes for money, etc...).  You can always take "neighborly help", but there's the chance that, unless you pay that back, you'll end up with negative points at the end of the game.

Before the heat, I watched Michelle giving a once-over of the game to some new players.  I got teamed with them during the heat, and a 4th player, Jack, joined us and learned the game as we played.  In the end I pulled out a victory with 27 points.  I thought I had a good grasp of it, as Michelle was constantly coaching the other players while I did my own thing.  I very much like this game - it has the depth of choices of a good euro...but plays quick...with players that all know what they're doing, you can finish in less than an hour.

Conquest of Paradise

Five years ago, at my first Prezcon, I fell in love with the game Conquest of Paradise.   I had sat down because I saw the setup of a blank map of the South Pacific, which looked completely different from any other game I had seen...and quickly got my rear-end handed to me.  And then immediately went to the vendors and bought a copy of the game.  You know it's a good game if you get crushed at it, and immediately know that it's a must-have!

So what is it?  CoP is a game about the Polynesian expansion across the South Pacific circa 500 A.D.  There's a million games about medieval Europe, or WWII, or the Roman empire, or even, these days...about farming!  Name me one other game about Polynesian expansion in the South Pacific!  Well...as described above the game board is a (mostly) blank map of the South Pacific.  As one of up to 4 starting Polynesian tribes, you're quest is to spread your civilization across the seas.  Game play early on, is dominated by sending your exploration boat out "into the blue" to discover new islands.  By blind chit pull, you find out if each hex you enter is open ocean or contains an island.  If you've found an island, again by blind pull, you pull an island hex to place on the map...which you can keep hidden from the other players.  This can be a large island like Hawaii which can support up to 4 villages, or down to an atoll which can support no colony (but is worth 1/2 VP if you control it at games end).  As more and more islands are discovered, and the empires crowd in on each other, you may be forced to train war canoes and war bands to deal with those other pesky civilizations.  Additionally you can "buy" cards during the game, which can have various effects, including just bonus VPs, extending your canoe ranges, or effects in battle.

At Prezcon (and WBC, for that matter), the game's designer, Kevin McPartland runs the tournament.  These days he's focused on his newest game, Amateurs to Arms, but he's still running the CoP tournies.  In the first heat, I was pitted against Rob McKinney, stalwart KGB member (Kingstowne Gamers Board (?) ), a new gentleman to the game whose name escapes me, and rounding out our foursome, Kevin McPartland himself.  Now, I should mention, that after my inglorious introduction to the game 5 years ago, I've been on a bit of a streak.  In fact, I came into this Prezcon as the 3-time defending champion.  So, there was a little pressure to defend my title.  I randomly drew Samoa as my starting island...which is my favorite starting position.  Samoa and Tonga start with larger islands (capable of holding up to 4 villages), but are directly adjacent.  Hiva and Raitaea only have 3-village islands to start, but have more space between them and the other players.  I like Samoa not only for a larger start island, but Samoa has the easiest access to several pre-printed islands on the map, which for gameplay are considered already settled by other Polynesians...but are available to be conquered.  I think of it as an "out" if you are unlucky in your island discovery phase.

In this game I was anything but unlucky, as I discovered 3 islands within the 1st two turns, 2 of which were Hawaii and Tahiti, which hold 4 villages each.  The problem with the 4-village islands, though, is that they can be slow to build up, as you can only add one village each turn.  That, and as soon as you reveal them, you become a big target for the other players.  And that's what happened.  As we were building our empires, and I was forced to reveal my islands, I drew the attention of the other players - in particular Kevin.  He attacked me, and with some card play threw me off one of my islands, and cut my "canoe chain" to some further islands in my empire.  In the subsequent turn, we made a deal that he would leave if I wouldn't attack him, and we had to focus on another threat...the new player whose name I can remember (I'll call him "new guy" from here on out).  I was able to reconnect my canoe chain but it was going to take me a while to rebuild the burned out villages from Kevin's attack.  So I took the "out" and sent my warriors west to attack the NPC islands.  This worked and I was able to establish a presence in 2 new islands quickly.  That, and another turn building villages, and I declared victory.  Now, when you declare victory, you have to turn over your cards and reveal any hidden VPs.  Turns out that it was closer than I thought, with me only winning by 1/2 VP over "New Guy".  Whew...it was close, but with a victory I was assured of advancing to the semi-final...

Bang & The Resistance

With tournament gaming over for the day, our "group" - me, Tom Snyder, Brian Greer, Paul Owen, Glenn Weeks and the Selzigs (Mike Jr. and Mike Sr.) gathered in the lower atrium area for some quick, light social games.  First up was Bang,  a cowboy themed card game, where the players take on different roles.  Only the Sheriff is known.  The deputies are there to help the sheriff, the Outlaws want the sheriff dead, and the Renegade wants everyone except himself dead.  Players play cards against other players at the table, trying to shoot them (range is based on distance from the other players around the table), and counter cards such as "Missed!" can be played.  Also cards like "Indians", "Gatling Gun", "Dynamite" and "Jail" can throw kinks into the game.  What really made this game fun is that it's styled after the so-called "Spaghetti Westerns", and the cards are all in Italian, with English subtitles.  We had a lot of fun with our terrible Italian accents.

After 2 or 3 games of Bang, we switched to The Resistance, a social game in the mode of Are You A Werewolf, where you try to discover the "traitors" at the table.    Unlike Werewolf, which can drag for hours, Resistance is centered around accomplishing 5 missions.  A leader picks players to be a members of a team to go on the mission.  The entire group votes on the composition of the team (if the nos prevail, the leader card passes, and a new team is proposed).  Once a team is selected and approved, those team members put in a "yes" or "no" card for mission success...any "no" will cause the mission to fail.  From there the game goes into accusations and finger pointing, and further teams are more difficult to get full approval.  3 successful missions and the Resistance wins the game, 3 failures and the traitor wins.

What made our game(s) especially fun is that we kept screwing things.  Owing to the late hour, and perhaps a few too many adult beverages, we had spies that forgot they were spies, spies who incorrectly identified loyalists as other spies, etc.  No matter...we had a lot of fun playing (or trying to play), and lots of laughs.  The Resistance is definitely a tighter, quicker playing version of Werewolf, that I would recommend in a heartbeat.

Well, who know this blogging thing would take so much time?  Until next time....

PREZCON - Part 1

Well, I figured I would talk some about my favorite annual convention, PREZCON ("The Winter Nationals") which happens every year about this time in Charlottesville, VA.  The con officially runs 5 days (Wed - Sun), but they have a "pre-con" on Monday and Tuesday (really, they should just tell the truth - the con starts on Monday).  This year, the con ran from Feb 18 - 24.  Prezcon is the first gaming con I ever attended, and this marked my 5th year.  Several years back I had really got back into gaming with some local pals including Paul Owen, Grant Greffey, Glenn Weeks and Brian Greer.  After hearing some of the guys talk about "Prezcon", Brian and I decided to give it a go, and we've been hooked ever since. For those unfamilar, Prezcon is a "tournament" style convention - they run tournaments for ~90 games over the course of the week...and each game has a number of heats and quarter/semi/finals depending on it's size.  There is plenty of open gaming, though...and this year Prezcon set aside a specific area for open gaming, which I think was a fantastic decision.

Brian arrived at my house promptly at 0800 on Wednesday morning, and just as promptly informed me his "check engine" light had come on and he needed to take his jeep to the dealer - car issues would be a bit of a theme this con.  We were able to drop it off and get on the road in plenty of time.  I did get flustered when we got close to Charlottesville by a mob of police escorting several black vehicles down the road - certainly not the President...the Governor maybe?  The motorcycle cop who came up inches from my window wildly gesturing for me to move over to the right flustered me enough that I missed the exit for the hotel (I'm counting that as a car issue).  No problem, we were able to U-turn and get back by about 10:45 or so.  I thought I'd see if we could check in early - the desk attendant saw my Virginia Tech hoodie and gave me the conspiratorial "I'll make an exception for a fellow Hokie!"  It's always good to get some Hokie love in the heartland of the enemy (UVa).  So we were able to bring in the cooler and games, and not worry about those for the rest of the weekend.

Circus Maximus

But enough of that...what about the games?  First up, at noon on Wednesday was Circus Maximus.  This Roman chariot racing game is run annually at Prezcon and WBC by an affable fellow by the name of Jake.  At the beginning you get to pick a light, medium or heavy chariot, and assign 4 points among driver, horses and endurance.  You roll some dice to randomly set your initial stats based on the points you allocated, and off you go.  Now, in 2012, I came in 3rd in this tournament, and narrowly missed competing for 1st when a light chariot scampered over the finish line before I could trample the driver, who was being dragged behind her horses.  I had found that the heavy chariots seemed to have the advantage, and here in 2013 I went that route again...and got exactly what I wanted when I rolled a relatively fast speed for a heavy.  I made an error by not giving my horses the whip off the start though, and a fellow heavy ran his wheel into my #1 horse on the 2nd turn.  It didn't kill my horse, but knocked my overall speed from 20 to 12 for the rest of the game, and from then on I was just hoping the leaders would kill each other.  It was not to be, and I finished in 5th place or so.  It's a fun game, and I still need to break out Circus Minimus, the little paper and chit game I bought a few Prezcons ago.  One other note...my good friend Tom Snyder showed up about 15 minutes late for Circus Maximus...I gave him a copy of the key to our room, and then didn't see him for several hours.  Turns out he had to take his car to a garage due to hitting a large pothole on his way to C-ville, which threw it out of alignment.  The car curse continued....

Formula De

Next up was Formula De, the F1 racing game, run by Doug Gallulo.  Formula De has been reprinted lately as "Formula D" - same game mechanics as far as I can tell...at least for the basic game...Formula D adds a way to cutomize your cars, including using some pre-packaged drivers in almost a role-laying type scenario.  In any case, this racing game uses different size dice to roll for movement as you track through your gears...a 4-sided for 1st gear, 6-sided for 2nd, etc...all the way up to the "golf ball", a 30-sider if you can manage to get to 6th gear.  The key to the game is the corners...every corner on the track is outlined in red, with a number next to it indicating how many times you have to "stop" in that corner.  This, of course, means people have to really watch how they manipulate their gears.  You have certain stats on the car - brakes, tires, engine, body damage etc, that you roll for at certain times to see if you crash or not.  We ended up with exactly 20 players in this heat, which was unfortunate (in my opinion), as the GM opted for 2 10-player games.  Now, the game can handle 10, but if you start much further back than 6th place, you have your work cut out for you.  I must have had a terrible day in qualifying, because I started in 10th place (random die roll).  In the 2 lap race, I never passed more than 1 or 2 people, and in the end I finished 6th (due to some other folks crashing).  However, props to Liz, the young lady who started next to me in 9th place...I believe she finished 3rd.  The other unfortunate aspect of a 10 player game was that it put us over the 2 hour time block for the game, which meant I missed out on the start of Merchant of Venus. 

Carcassonne

We didn't play with the dragon...

Since I missed out on Merchants of Venus, I decided to sit in on the 7:00 PM heat of Carcassonne, the classic tile laying game.  I'm glad I did.  It was a very close game, in which my buddy Glenn was involved.  I managed to pull out the win with the very last tile I pulled, which allowed me to sneak into a high value city that several other players were already in.  This, along with a later 2nd place finish would be enough to get me into the semi-finals (more on that in a later post). 

Game of Thrones

One of the attractions for the year's Prezcon, was the addition of several new games to the agenda.  One of these was Game of Thrones (2nd Edition).  I love the source material, and I love this game.  In my very first trip to Prezcon, the first game I played was Brittania, and while I enjoyed it, I have since decided that 5-hour monster games are not for me at a convention.  I happily made an exception for GoT. 

Ned...if you only had another support token...

Game of Thrones has been compared to Diplomacy in that you are constantly making and breaking alliances during the game.  I drew the Lannisters as my house (I'm always the Lannisters...next time I'm refusing).  My friend Brian was the Baratheon's and Tom drew the Martells.  A fellow by the name of Ryan (who we would game with more in the con) drew the Starks.  A gentlemen who's name escapes me drew the Greyjoys, and the GMs son, Farrin, drew the Tyrells.  The Grejoys tried to mess with me right off the bat, but I promptly threw them back into the bay, and then explained to the inexperienced Greyjoy player why it would be better for us to be allied for a while.  That alliance lasted...until the last turn of the game.  I spread into the heartland where I was able to capture enough "barrels" to give me maximum supply for the entire game...which meant I could field more/larger armies.  Voting went well for me early on as I was able to secure both the Iron Throne and the Raven.  The Tyrells, to my south were a little unpredictable.  I left the Greyjoys to skirmish with the Starks, while the Baratheons and I met on the field of battle a few times.  It became apparent that no one was going to win the game by capturing 7 cities early, so I set in for the long haul.  Unfortunately for me, at the beginning of the last turn, on the 2nd to last card draw of the game, we had to vote for position along the 3 influence tracks.  Critically, I lost position severely on the raven track, which meant I couldn't play "star" tokens.  This killed me (literally and figuratively) on the last round, as I didn't have enough actions to support everything I wanted to do.  In the end, the Martells pulled out the victory, and I finished 2nd due to tiebreakers.  We headed off to bed at 1:30 in the morning, after a 9:00 PM start.  Later in the con, I had the chance to fill in in the final game, but I was tied up with other games at that point.  Still...great game, can't wait to get it back to the table. 

Well, my intent wasn't to do a separate blog post for each day....but I'm running long already.  So, check back later for Part 2....