2014 Prezcon - Part 3

Time to wrap up this year's Prezcon coverage.  Saturday at Prezcon is always interesting tournament-wise...there's a few heats left, but mostly you're getting down to semi-finals and finals...so your day may be packed...or you may have lots of time for open gaming.  My day started by bringing my extra games down to register for the auction - or rather, the auction store.  I wasn't sure whether to register for the regular auction or the "store", but I didn't think I had anything that would start a big bidding war, so I just went with the store.  One of the games I put in was Kids of Catan, which is a beautiful game, but the mechanics are little more than roll and move, and my kids outgrew it a few years ago.  I was gratified to later in the ballroom to see that a young mother has purchased it, and was playing it with her young children. 

Picture courtesy of boardgamegeek.com

Game-wise, first up for me was a 9:00 heat of Chicago Express - I was eager to see if I could put to use any of the lessons I had learned the previous day.  For a little while, it looked like it would just be a two player game between myself and another fellow - but Mike Senzig Jr. walked up at the last minute and joined us.  Mike is an excellent player, particularly at these types of economic games.  In the end, Mike beat me by about $10 or so...although I did the same thing to the 3rd player that had
been done to me the day before - diverting the red train just before it reached Chicago.  We finished in about 45 minutes or so, and we started a 2nd game "just for fun", and to try out some different theories, but we didn't get to finish as we had to run to other things.  If I'd only been in a 2-player game, I likely would have won and reached the finals cheaply...but I'm not too upset, as I'm sure I would have been far outclassed there.

Next up was the semi-finals for Carcassone.  My luck didn't quite hold up this year, and finished 3rd out of 4 players, failing to make the finals.  Which wasn't too bad, as that saved me from the dilemma of playing while running Lords of Waterdeep. 

2 games during the 2nd heat

At 1:00 I had my 2nd heat of Lords of Waterdeep.  I didn't play in this round, but just kind of hung out and waited for questions (there weren't very many), and did some browsing at the vendors.  I had 6 games of 4 players in the 2nd heat, and all the games went fairly quick.  After the heat, I did a quick tally
to get 16 finalists - I had 11 individual winners, and took the closest 5 2nd place finishers for the semis.  This in theory would set me up with 4 4-player semis, from which the winners would advance to the finals. 

I had some time before the semis, so I wandered to open gaming, and Paul joined me for a game of 7 Wonders with a group.  Again, names are escaping me, but there was one young guy there with his father and his future father-in-law, and Mark Crescenzi joined us as well.  I hadn't played 7 Wonders in a while, and I'd forgotten how much I like it.  The expansions are nice, but a simple game of the basic game is still a lot of fun.  We also had time to get in a game of The Resistance, although we aborted halfway through when the traitors became obvious.

At the Waterdeep semis, I ended up short on players, as some folks elected to play in Ra.  That turned into a little bit of an issue on Saturday night, as I was conflicting with both Ra and later Stone Age, which appeal to the same type of players.  For the semis, I ended up with 11 players, so we played 2 4-player games and 1 3-player game.  I was in the 3-player game against John Gaebler (who I had narrowly beat in Heat 1) and Jonathan Bartholomew.  I drew the building lords, Larissa, and I did a decent job building buildings without raising suspicion, and scoring 2 25 point quests in the final turns, but John Gaebler got the lieutenant early on, and then just got his euro-engine running, finishing with 198 points.  In the other games, Mahmooda Sultana and Tim Gleeson won, with John Emery being the highest 2-place finisher.  Again, however, we were conflicting with the final for Stone Age, which Mahmooda was in.  She begged me to move the final later, but I was looking to avoid what happened last year, when the Waterdeep final went until midnight.  So I told her she had to choose - she went with Stone Age, which put Mike Crescenzi in the final.

After a quick bio-break, we got the final started.  I drifted in and out, just making sure there were no questions.  John Gaebler was in the lead heading into the final round, but in a stunning play, Mike Crescenzi managed to used intrigue cards and build a building which allowed him to collect 4
wizards over the course of the turn to complete the 25 point wizard quest, and emerge with the victory.  It was a very dramatic ending to the game.  Overall the Waterdeep tournament went well again this year - although we were down to 41 players from 60-something last year.  At this point though, I'm 99% sure I'm going to turn over the GMing duties to someone else.  I enjoy helping out the con, but GMing Waterdeep caused me to miss some other opportunities I would have liked to take advantage of. 

The final - from L to R, Tim Gleeson, John Gaebler, John Emery, Mike Crescenzi

 

Next up was Saturday night gaming.  I found the rest of the gang downstairs playing Cash N Guns, and joined in for the 2nd round.  I'd seen this one played, but had yet to play it myself.  It's a quick fun social game, and I think distills the essence of Bang! down into something more steamlined.  After that, we played The Resistance, and then pulled out our old favorite Citadels.  I love Citadels, but 2:00 AM after 5 days of Prezcon may not have had me at my best....

Meeple City being terrorized

Sunday morning there were still heats of 7 Wonders and Settlers of Catan happening, but I headed to open gaming, hoping to get Santa's Workshop in front of Chris Kirkman and Darrell Louder.  I found Ben Rosset and Josh Tempkin down there, and looking at the game library, we chose to play Rampage.  I'd played a few times with my kids, but I'd been wanting to play with adults.  We had a blast, but Ben and I could not overcome Josh's sticky tongue (I'll leave it at that).  Brian joined us after that, and gave one of Josh's prototypes a try.  Entitled Lesser Evil at Unpub, he had rethemed it with a police motif, where you had to clean up the streets of your district in order to become the new commissioner.  The new name is completely escaping me...it might be Commissioner.  When I figure it out, I'll update the blog.  I very much liked the game, with a sort of dice-as-worker placement mechanic, as you tried to get rid of the "felonies" in front of you - and the use of cards to help you manipulate your dice.  However some actions may require you to increase the number of misdemeanors in your district, which, while not as bad as felonies, are still not good.  The objective is to be the player with the least amount of points in front of you by the end of the game.  I'd heard good things at Unpub about Lesser Evil, but I did hear complaints about lack of theme...Josh now has a theme...but I'm not 100% sure it's carried out that well yet...but he just has basic game pieces, I think some artwork on the various cards could help alleviate that quite a bit.  Mechanically, I very much liked it.

With threats of another snowstorm hitting the mid-Atlantic, that was about it for Prezcon 2014.  Overall, I had yet another great experience, though I think I learned a few lessons this year.  I was trying to stretch myself a bit thin.  I wanted to play in a bunch of tournaments of course, but I also enjoy the open gaming with our group.  The GMing cost me some opportunities to do some other things, and I was also trying to get Santa's Workshop in front of folks.  Unfortunately that only happened once, and I wasn't able to get it in front of Chris, Darrell and TC, but I did great feedback from the one play.  I don't know the attendance numbers, but it felt a bit down this year - I don't think they met their goal of 700.  I was very disappointed in the vendors this year - they seem to be getting fewer and fewer.  The most shocking thing may be that I only went home with 1 new game - Flash Point, which I picked up in the auction store.  In fact I actually made money on games this year, with my lot going for a little over $97 in the auction store.  There was also a bit of a stomach bug going around Prezcon this year - Mike Sr. fell prey to it on Wednesday, and Paul had a rough Sunday morning.  I understand a few people went the ER.  In the course of writing these blog entries, I will remind myself to once again try to remember to write peoples names down and take more pictures.  Next up is likely Historicon in the summer, and then WBC in August, but I look forward to next year's Prezcon.

Conquering Medieval Japan...and tilting at windmills!

I'm a bit behind, as tomorrow is our standard Tuesday gameday, and I haven't even blogged about last Tuesday yet...not to mention the weekend.  I will make this quick, and likely add links and pics later.

Last Tuesday, we had a crew of 5 - Grant, Mike, Brian G., Brian D. and myself.  After some hemming and hawing, we decided to throw down on one of our favorite wargames...er...eurogames...er, well anyway...one of our favorite games of the recent past - Shogun from Queen Games.  Now this is not to be confused with the old Milton Bradley Shogun which was part of their "Gamemaster series", which include Axis & Allies and Fortress America.  That game has undergone an identity crisis, changing first to Samurai Swords, and now known as Ikusa.  In any case, we were playing Queen Games Shogun, which is based off an earlier game called Wallenstein, and an even earlier game called Im Zeichen des Kreuzes, which is about the Crusades. 

Now there is some debate in our group as to whether Shogun is a eurogame trying to be a wargame, or a wargame trying to be a eurogame.   The board is a map of Japan, which is divided into 50 or so territories, which are grouped into 6 larger regions.  During game setup, you "draft" a certain number of territories, and place your starting armies (euro style wooden cubes) in those territories.  The game lasts 2 "years", which have 4 seasons each - although you can only perform actions in spring, summer and fall - winter is for feeding your people - if you can, that is - you may start to feel a bit like Ned Stark - "Winter is Coming".

Now during the 3 "action seasons", you can take up to 10 actions, by placing your territory cards on the different action spaces on your player board.  Those actions consist of rice collection, tax collection, building castles, temples and theaters, two battle actions, and 3 different reinforcing type actions.  You also bid gold for turn order, as well as a special ability that turn (collect more rice, more gold, attack or defend better, etc...).  On each turn, the order in which the 10 different actions will occur is random.  You will know the first five, but only know the order of the 2nd five after you've completed the 5th action. 

Let's get right to the most unique part of this game - the battle tower.  Whenever an attack happens, the attacker and defenders cubes are scooped up, and thrown in the battle tower...which is a little like a dice tower, except it's designed to capture some of the cubes thrown in.  The winner is the player with the most cubes to emerge from the tower.  Note that in some cases, an army may emerge with more cubes than he had going into the battle...cubes stuck in the tower from previous events came come free at the most opportune - or inopportune times!  Green cubes represent peasants, which may or may not help you depending on whether you've taxed them for gold or rice lately. 

Quite simply, this is a great, engaging game, combining eurogame mechanics with the most unique and entertaining combat mechanic I've seen.  Our game was particularly close, and in the end I beat Grant by 1 point.  The only reason I was able to do that is that Grant fell short on feeding his people in the 2nd winter, and had a rebellion in 1 province.  By sheer luck, the territory that contained his least manned province was drawn, and he lost it to the peasants.  Great game, can't wait to get it to the table again...although we've all agreed that we need to bring in the expanions, Tenno's Court. 

Grant left, and the remaining 4 of us played a game of Gingkopolis to end the evening.  Not a whole lot more to say...I had a more challenging game than my victory a few weeks ago...coming in dead last this time.  I was never able to get a good engine going that kept feeding me tiles and workers...I was always short on something, it seemed.

Fast forward to the weekend, where our family made our annual pilgrimage down to Blacksburg for the Virginia Tech spring football game.  I won't say much about the football game itself - defense looked great, offense looked very shaky, which is par for the course lately for the Hokies.  But the trip is also a time to get in some gaming. 

We didn't get into town until late on Friday evening, so we decided on something easy and entertaining - Resistance.  It wasn't quite as whacky as our escapades at Prezcon, but we still had a good time.  We played 4 or 5 games, and after 2 "standard" games, we introduced the concept of "Morpheus" and the assassin to our group.  It was a tough night for the resistance...the spies seemed to have the upper hand...poor Morpheus even got assassinated in the last game.

Saturday night Tom and I took the opportunity to teach Walnut Grove to Becky and Susan.  Becky had played a 2 player game with me a few weeks earlier, but now we had a full 4 players.  Tom stayed just a step ahead of me, claiming the bonus tile for largest field before I could (I had a 7 tile wheat field that would have reaped big points...)  In the end Tom won with 27 points.

The women were OK with Walnut Grove, but weren't super crazy about it, so we ended the night with one of everyone's favorites, Lords of Waterdeep.  We had a very close game.  I claimed the "Magisters Orb" quest early on which gave me the ability to play on occupied spaces, and that was a big help.  Once again, though, Tom was just a step ahead of me, swiping a few quests before I had a chance to get them.  And I was one cleric short of being able to complete another high value quest on the last turn.  Tom won with 130 or so points, Becky and Susan were just behind him, and I finished in dead last with 115 or so.

I figured that would be it for gaming, but on a lazy Sunday morning, Susan taught me Finca.  The theme of the game is that you're harvesting and selling various fruits in a Mediterranean setting.  The interesting mechanic here is the movement of your workers around a track designed to resemble a traditional windmill.  Your workers move the number of spaces forwarded equal to the number of people on their current space...and the space they land on, they collect the number of fruit equal to the number of figures on that space.  It's an interesting mechanism, and reminded me slightly of the circular track in Navegador.  When you collect certain combinations of fruits, you can turn them in via donkey cart to collect tiles in different regions on the board.  There are ways to get certain bonus point tiles, and when a certain number of provinces are empty, the game is over.  I enjoyed this little game, and would like to play it with 3 or 4 players...I imagine that with more players, planning ahead is virtually impossible. 

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....