2014 Prezcon - Part 1

Well, another year has come and gone for my annual pilgrimage to Charlottesville, VA - home of Prezcon.  Prezcon is the first game convention I attended, way back in 2009.  Hard to believe this was my 6th year attending.  In 2009 my buddy Brian and I started on Thursday..in the last few years that migrated to Wednesday.  This year, our friend Tom had business meetings in Charlottesville on Monday and Tuesday, giving Brian and I the excuse to join him at the convention on Tuesday evening.  Which quickly turned to Tuesday afternoon.  Incredibly, the wives bought off on this.  We'll pay later, I'm sure.

The first game we settled down to was, like in previous years, Circus Maximus.  This year, GM Jake Jacoby had a surprise for us - instead of the typical oval, we were racing around a "cloverleaf" track, with a free-for-all area in the center.  Unlike the last several years, I decided to try being a "rabbit" - in other words, a light, fast chariot.  That was the idea, anyway - I had poor rolls on my setup, and ended up on the slower end of the lights, with not much in the way of stamina either (used for whipping to go faster).  I was also chosen to start on the inside lane, which meant I was the furthest back at the start.  There was not a whole lot of drama to the race as another light chariot got out in the lead and stayed there, despite the efforts of the heavies to smash him to bits.  The cloverleaf made for an interesting change, but I feel that it was to the advantage of the light chariots, as once they got ahead, it was not as easy for the heavies to get to them as it is on the oval, when they can slow down and wait to be lapped. 

Next up was Power Grid, an old favorite.  I'm always a little wary of the heavier euros as Prezcon, as there are some real sharks in the water, but I consider myself competent enough at Power Grid that I won't embarrass myself, and I could even make a good showing.  In this case, though, I simply played awful.  Actually, I don't think I was doing too terrible, but I was letting the leaders slip away, and I made the move to catch up at the wrong time, buying up to 12 houses, when the rest of them stalled at 11, which ended up killing me in turn order the following turn.  I finished in last place :(

For some reason, Brian, Tom and I decided to end our Tuesday with a game of Dungeon Lords.  This is a great game, but I hadn't played in a while, and it wasn't coming back very quickly.  Tom had never played, but fortunately Brian had played recently and got us squared away.  Again...a great game...but probably not one to start after midnight.  We were up to 2:30...starting off Prezcon with a bang.

Next morning...since we were there for a Wednesday morning for the first time, I finally got to play in the Prezcon Agricola tournament.  See my earlier comments about the euro sharks...and unlike Power Grid, I don't consider myself a very good Agricola player.  I was at a table with Tom, our friend Mike Senzig Jr., who'd arrived that morning, and Aaron Buchanan, the GM of Castles of Burgundy, and a very good euro player.  In the card draft, I tried to set myself by taking a lot of cards that helped with wood gathering and fence building.  I was doing OK at the beginning, I think, but I waited far too long to grow my family.  Mike was able to build a couple of extra rooms early on, and get to 4 family members pretty quickly, and then he was off to the races. 

Avast, me hearties!

Following Agricola, I played in the Merchants and Marauders tournament.  This is a game that got a lot of press when it came out a few years ago, and I snatched up early...but it had been a while since I had played.  In our previous plays, our group thought that the Merchants had a bit of an advantage...but what fun is that?  For the tournament, the GM lowered the speed on galleons, and allowed pirates to go into port after other players.  In my 3-player heat, we all went the pirate route.  One player had the misfortune of running into a Spanish man-o-war, which doomed him in his sloop.  I managed to upgrade to a frigate, and was doing well as a pirate, but won the game by delivering an in-demand cargo to my home port and stashing my riches.  With my win, I qualified for the final, but unfortunately, that conflicted with my first Lords of Waterdeep heat.  I enjoyed the game, but some of the nagging feelings returned - it can run a bit long, and there can be downtime while other players perform their actions - particularly in port.

Following M&M, it was time for my annual game of Formula De.  I like this racing game a lot, but I dread it at Prezcon a little bit, because the GM Doug Gallulo will run up to 10 players on a board.  That's too many, in my opinion.  Sure enough, in our race we had 9 players, although I was lucky enough to be drawn starting in 3rd position.  I grabbed the lead halfway through the first lap, but miscalculated on the back stretch, as I was trying to set myself up to use the 30-sided die coming out of the next turn.  I stayed in 4th when I should have gone to 5th, and was promptly passed.  2 turns later as I desperately tried to make up the difference, I spun out, and that was it.  This game can be unforgiving if you make one mistake, or get one bad roll.

I'm trying to pay my debts...

Wednesday night it was time for Game of Thrones.  By random draw, I ended up with the Lannisters - I should have asked to redraw, as I think in every game except for one, I've played the Lannisters, and that put me off from the get go.  The game progressed fairly normally for the first 2 or 3 turns, but the player to my right, as the Tyrells was clearly coaching the younger Martell player to his advantage.  The were putting a pounding on the Baratheon player, who was very young and pretty inexperienced.  Instead of helping Baratheon, I sensed blood in the water and tried to take my share.  I should mention that we had turned up several muster cards, but nothing had come up to adjust our supply yet.  I had captured a bunch of barrels on the board, but without the supply action, I could not take advantage.  The Tyrell player eventually took the land area between our capitals, and also The Reach, which contains two barrels - and he threatened to take Lannisport from me by using the Ser Loras cards which allowed him to carry his attack token with him.  I had to quietly accept my losses - and THEN the supply card came.  Of course.  By this point, with Baratheon effectively out of the game, the Starks, Greyjoys and Lannisters had essentially an alliance against the Tyrell-Martell block.  There was some baiting of the Martell player, accusing him of being a pawn for the Tyrells, which caused him to make at least one bad move, attempting to "prove" he was playing his own game.  In the end, the Starks made a play to clean up the last of the Baratheon holdings, the Tyrells turned on their Martell lackey, and used that Ser Loras card to attack the Starks.  In an equal battle, it came down to the draw of the "Tides of Battle" card, the Tyrell player got a +1 to Stark's "0", giving him the victory.  The game didn't end until 2:30...which was WAY too late for that to go on...

Next up...part 2 of Prezcon 2014

PREZCON - Part 5

Well, this should be the last installment of my recap of PREZCON 2013.  And I thought I was going to do this in 2 blog posts.  Ha!

Sunday is always bittersweet at Prezcon...it seems to arrive too fast, and well...wait, I'm not sure there's anything "sweet" about it....just bitter.  There's kind of a frantic-ness to it as you try and squeeze in a few more games before you check out and hit the road.  There's several finals on Sunday morning, but there are typically a few heats left for some late starting game.  There's traditionally the last heat of Settlers of Catan before the head right into quarter/semi/finals.  But that's at 0800 - for God's sake, don't they know people have been up playing 2R1B the night before?!?!  There's usually RoboRally that morning, which I always seem to miss.  Brian swore he was playing that this year...didn't happen.  Lastly, there's a few heats of 7 Wonders on Sunday morning.  Two years ago, when 7W was the new hotness, I learned it on one day, and then advanced all the way to the finals (where, sadly I finished 4th.)  My luck hasn't been quite the same since, but I figured that's how I would spend my Sunday morning.  Instead, I talked a little to Ben Rosset during our Pitchcar session the night before, and spent Sunday morning having him demo his new design for me....

Brewmasters

I first heard about this prototype game when Paul Owen returned from UnPub and raved about it in this blog post.  To quote Paul from that entry, "I am convinced that "Brewmasters" stands to outshine Agricola in the worker-placement genre".

Now, I work with a lot of military personnel, and if there's one thing you need to know about the military...it's that they love their acronyms.  One that has been popping up recently is BLUF - Bottom Line Up Front, where they will give the "bottom line" of a briefing at the beginning, and then dive into the details.  So, let me give you the BLUF on Brewmasters - I agree with Paul's assessment 100%, I loved this game almost immediately, and I would pick it in a heartbeat over Agricola. 

Now, I apologized to Ben while we were playing, and I'll apologize again now for all the comparisons to Agricola, as I'm sure every designer wants their game to stand alone.  But I think a compare and contrast is very appropriate in this case.  I like Agricola quite a bit, but there a few bugaboos for me.  The minor improvement and profession cards can create an unfair advantage for a player depending on the random draw, and while blocking players from certain action spaces and having to always feed your family creates a certain tension...sometimes that tension crosses the line to outright annoyance.

But, how about Brewmasters?  In this game, you are the owner/manager of a small independent craft brewery.  Get out of here, Budweiser and Coors with your mass-produced watered down dreck!  Your brewery starts out pretty basic, with limited capacity to store ingredients and a modest production line.  You have two workers or actions (not sure what these disks represented - me, as the owner, and maybe 1 partner?) that you place on an Agricola-style board to take certain actions.  Once each action space is taken, it is blocked for other players in that round.  These actions include gathering certain ingredients, collecting money, etc.  Some of the squares will continue to gather resources if they're not used, ala some of the resource spaces in Agricola (there's that comparison again!)  However, after that, it is time to put your shift(s) to work in the brewery.  You start off with 1 shift, but can gain up to 2 more during the game.  On the brewery actions board, you can use the same actions as other players, or even use the same actions multiple times yourself (assuming you have multiple shifts).  And this is the heart of the action - where you improve your brewery, research new breakthroughs, and actually "process beer" (i.e. brew a new batch, and move anything else down the line to eventually ship).

I made sure to add a brewpub to my operation

Now, I should mention that in our game, Ben replaced one of the brewery actions (which was to grab a specialty recipe for your sole use) with instead leaving all recipes available to everyone for the entire game...with a +2 VP bonus for the first person to brew a certain recipe.  I should also mention that he has the beers split into 3 broad categories...ales, stouts and porters.  (The beer nerd in me wants to point out that beer is really broken down into only two categories - ales and lagers, and that stouts and porters are really types of ale...but Ben has put a lot of effort into this, and that may be unnecessary detail.  Or maybe a clever ploy for future expansions.).  In any case, you have to brew the basic "ale", "stout" or "porter" before you move on to any specialty recipes in those categories. 

Over the course of the game you can improve your brewery by adding more storage, increasing your production capacity, adding a brewpub, etc.  All players can add these things.  You can also hire specialty workers, establish co-ops with local famers, etc...but only one player can get each worker, etc.  These are like the professions/minor improvements in Agricola...except that they are out there on the table, available for anyone...no blind hands of cards!

In our game, Ben coached me through some initial rookie mistakes (there's a lot to take in here), and in the end I ended up winning by a fair amount (though I'm sure Ben was experimenting with different things on his side).  It's not a perfect game, not quite yet.  The difference in our score was mainly due to me increasing 3 out of 4 research tracks to the end, which got me lots of bonus VPs.  I was able to do a lot of research, because in the last few rounds, I didn't have much for my 3 shifts of brewery workers to do...and I think this was somewhat of a result of that 4th brewery action not being in the game.  Although, looking back at Paul's blog, they seemed to have that issue as well.  So, I think Ben still has some tweaking to do here.

Is that a VivaJava Coffee Porter?

But, I think he's close...real close.  And Ben can't take my money fast enough to reserve a copy of this game.  At the end of our demo, he asked me a very specific question, about which decision areas I liked most in the game.  I hemmed and hawed a little, and don't think I gave him a very satisfactory answer...mainly because I was still taking it all in - I liked it all, dang it!  I've been thinking about it since, and I'm not sure I have a more specific answer.  I like the fact that there isn't hidden cards like in Agricola...and I like the fact that the brewery actions are always available.  There is still the tension of decisions like in Agricola, without the overbearing worry that someone else will take a key spot.  The theme really calls me to more than medieval farming (although Ben may have a hard time competing with little wooden animeeples in terms of visual appeal).  I liked the decision space between trying to brew massive amounts of basic recipes, or going for larger point-value specialties, and how to allocate your brewery improvements.

Not sure the next time I'll run into Ben, but I'll be eager to try Brewmasters again, hopefully with more than 2 players.  This is a good one....cheers!

Tobago, Shadows Over Camelot (The Card Game) & Spartacus

Somehow in all my blogging about Prezcon, I missed a few games that Brian and I played in open gaming.  Early on in the con, we borrowed Shadows Over Camelot - The Card Game from the library and tried it out.  I'm a big fan of the board game version, which really kicked off the current cooperative genre...particularly the "coop with a traitor" variant.  I had heard the card game had come out, and put it on my wishlist.  After one playthrough, I'm a little "meh" about it.  However, we only had 2 players, and with only 2 you do not play with a traitor.  This is basically a memorization game, where each player takes turns flipping cards from the deck, which represent different quests, and have point values.  When you think a certain quest is in the sweet spot of 11-14 points, you stop, and reveal all the cards that have been flipped.  If you're right, you get a "white sword", if you're wrong, you get a "black sword", or maybe several depending on how off you were, and what other quests had accumulated points.  There are some clever twists to try and prevent you from memorizing everything, such as variable point cards, and a "Morgan" card that made us count out loud as we flipped more cards (to presumably mess up any point totals we were trying to remember).  I'd like to try it with more players, but right now, it's off my "must own" list.

Tobago is clever little treasure hunting game.  Brian had learned it from the Selzig's, and sat down to teach me.  The clever mechanic is the gradual narrowing down of treasure locations based on cards drawn during the game.  I would categorize this as a light family style game, and while I wasn't head over heels for it, I would like to try it with more than 2 players.




A game I had picked up a few weeks ago based purely on description and reviews (thanks again, D6Generation) was Spartacus:A Game of Blood and Treachery.  Gale Force 9, the publishers, had a presence at Prezcon and were selling the game, in addition to giving demos.  In fact, there was a Spartacus tournament this year, but I had too many conflicts to try it out.  I did get a demo from the GF9, but I think he focused on the wrong thing.  He really focused on the gladiatorial combat - which from what I understand, is really a sideshow to the meat of the game, which involves political maneuvering, wheeling and dealing, and betrayal of alliances among the players.  Paul seemed to have similar thoughts, which he posted in this blog entry.  I'm still looking forward to getting this one to the table. 

Final Thoughts

Well, another Prezcon has come and gone, and I'm already counting down to the next one.  I'm a wee bit jealous of my friends Glenn and Grant who started on Monday...but I'm not sure I'll manage that until the kids are grown and gone.  I'm a little on the fence about my GMing experience.  I'm glad I did it, and I already volunteered to run Waterdeep again next year, but I did feel I missed out on some gaming time for myself, especially when it got to Saturday night.  Perhaps I can ask not to be scheduled on Saturday night...but I don't want to make Justin's job any harder. 

As for the other changes, I'm kinda neutral on the change they made to have the auction on Thursday night.  I usually had more time on Saturday to make it the auction, but I understand their desire to deconflict with the vendor hours.  And I'm not a big auction buyer anyway.  I think the change to have an open gaming area downstairs was a huge success, which led to less overcrowding in the main ballroom.

I can't have a Prezcon blog without talking about the loot I got.  From the auction store, I picked up Caylus.  On more than one occasion, including at Prezcon, I had heard Lords of Waterdeep compared to Caylus, sometimes being called "Caylus-lite".  So when I saw a copy in the auction store, I snatched it up.  As I mentioned before, I picked up a copy of TC Petty III's VivaJava in the vendor area.  For a while, I thought that may be it.  But then I succumbed to the Mayfair booth.  I picked up a copy of World Without End, the "sequel" to Pillars of the Earth.  This was primarily driven by my enjoyment of Pillars, and the same fantastic artwork.  But Mayfair also had a sale going on some game stock they were trying to get rid of.  Buy 1, get 2 more of lesser or equal value for free.  So, I picked up Amazonas, The Dutch Golden Age, and Gangster.  Amazonas I had looked at hard once before as a family game, so I pulled the trigger and picked it up, and selected the other two games based purely on theme.  I got $150 worth of games for $50...not bad, and if I really don't like them, maybe they can be yours at next year's auctions!

Well, I think that about it wraps it up for me on Prezcon 2013.  One thing that dumbfounds me is that we managed to miss out on playing Citadels, which has become our go-to late evening game.  Ah well.  I will mention that our car/travel issues continued right until the bitter end.  Somehow - Brian must have been regaling me with stories of his Julius Caesar adventures, I missed the regular turnoff on our way up Rt. 29.  We ended up coming out on I-66 about 15 miles further west than normal.  Ah well...it could have been worse...I could have come home without a plaque!

What's up next?  Well, we have our regular Tuesday game night at the Game Parlor in Chantilly, so I'm sure I'll post about that.  I need to spruce up this blog with a better background, and more links and such.  And then I need to get working on that game idea.

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....