WBC 2014 Recap - Part 2

Well, I'll just pick right up from where Part 1 left off.  After another night of not enough sleep, Saturday morning was upon us.  Saturday is typically "Conquest of Paradise Day" for me, and this was no exception - sort of.  The 4th and final heat was at 9:00 am that morning.  Since Brian had arrived late, this was his 1st chance at CoP.  Due to my victory in Heat 2, I was in the semis, but I always like to play, so I joined in Heat 4 as well.  Randomly drawing Samoa again, I had fortunate tile draws.  The random effects took their toll a little bit, and the Hiva and Raitea players used them against the Tonga player and myself.  The only unfortunate part of the game was that the Tonga player misinterpreted some rules, and got a little perturbed about that, as well as thinking that the rest of the table was picking on him even when he was down.  I don't think that was true, but he had a little bit of a sore spot with the game, and that made things a bit tense.  In the end I pulled out the victory after conquering some of the native inhabited islands to the west.  This got me the #1 seed in the semi-finals.  I had my choice of homelands, so I picked Samoa, which had treated me so well in the tournament.  The semis consisted of 3 4-player games.  The 3 winners and the "best" 2nd place would advance to the finals.  I was a bit chagrined when the gentleman from the previous game was assigned to my table again, but he seemed to have gotten over the earlier game, and had a find attitude this time around.  Brian was assigned to my table, and our 4th was a young lady who's name I don't remember (I wish I hadn't lost my notes).  I thought I had another good game going, with several good island pulls.  The Tonga player and I were clearly in the lead, and Brian tried his best to convince the young woman that they should focus on us, but she was intent on attacking Brian.  That effectively took the two of them out of the game.  I was preparing to attack Tonga, but I waited too long.  By virtue of good island pulls and Arts&Culture cards, he declared victory.  I was 4 or so points behind.  One of the other games had to go to a tie-breaker, so that meant I wouldn't get in the final.  My reign as defending WBC CoP champion had come to an end.

Saturday tends to be full of semi-finals and finals, so getting into new games becomes somewhat of a challenge.  I decided to go to the demo for Concordia, a game which Paul had picked up in the vendor area based on reputation.  While waiting for the demo, we watched a bit of the Memoir '44 mega-Overlord game, which was simulating the entirety of the D-Day landing.  There must have been 16 or so players, presided over by designer Richard Borg.  I had the pleasure of chatting with him for a few minutes - he was very nice, and opined that the mega-Overlord scenario was probably a "bit much", but fun for a convention.

I had some trouble keeping my attention during the Concordia demo...lack of sleep was catching up to me, but I decided to jump in the heat after the demo anyway.  My opponents were all more experienced, but I think the most experienced had played maybe 5 or 6 games.  My big problem is that I really didn't understand how scoring would work - and scoring doesn't happen until the game is over.  Like many euros, you can score for a variety of things.  I just didn't have a coherent plan on what to focus on, but even though I finished 4th, my broad approach didn't land me too far behind the leaders.  I don't know what to think of this game...I didn't love it, but I would be interested in trying it again.

Brian had gotten himself into the Tigris & Euphrates semi-finals, so Paul and I met in open gaming for a few rounds of Confusion:Espionage and Deception in the Cold War.  This is a great 2-player game that doesn't get to the table often enough, where you don't know how your own pieces can move...thus your opponent has to say "yes" or "no" when you attempt to make a move.  The objective is to get the briefcase, and carry it off your opponents edge of the board.  Our first game was quick, with Paul essentially bum rushing the briefcase off my side for the victory.  Our 2nd game was much more "tactical", though Paul still won in the end.

Brian re-emerged, his dreams of glory in Tigris & Euphrates smashed, and then we were joined by Bryan Fischer and John Sizemore of Nevermore Games.  We broke out Thunder Alley, a NASCAR inspired racing game.  In Thunder Alley, you play a team of cars, and you use cards to move either your single card, or the entire row of cars that your car may be linked with.  As you play cards, damage will build up on your cars, eventually forcing a pit stop.  The winner isn't necessarily who finishes first, but who accumulate the most points among his cars for things like leading laps.  I liked the game, but I didn't love it.  It was a bit more fiddly than I hoped for, and there was a certain luck of the cards element.  Someone made the comparison to Formula Motor Racing, and I think that was apt.  I would play it again, but I think Formula D remains my car racing game of choice.

Bryan and John took their leave, and Paul taught us Pergamon, a game about digging for archaeological treasures, and then displaying them in a museum.  By this time, lack of sleep was really catching up to me.  I liked the game well enough, better than Brian did...but would certainly like to try it again when I'm more awake.

Sunday morning we got in a couple more games in open gaming.  Brian Goodman and Dave (gah!, what's Dave's last name) joined us for a game of Mag Blast.  This is a sort of tongue-in-cheek game about battling each other's space fleets.  The unfortunate part is that like Bang!, there is player elimination, and I was eliminated early.  After that, we got in one more 3-player game of Villainous Vikings, and then called it a trip.

So, another WBC in the books.  But what does the future hold?  The big announcement was that starting in 2016, the WBC is moving a little bit west, to Seven Springs Ski resort.  As you might expect with gamers, there is no shortage of opinions on this...many negative, and many positive.  There are some legitimate complaints, and some not so legitimate ("It's no longer an east coast convention!"  Really...it's moving an hour or so west...it's still east of Pittsburgh for crying out loud). 

The key for me is that the Lancaster Host is simply a dump at this point.  The management doesn't seem to care about the place...my favorite this year was the sign on a table in the foyer advertising "Sign up now for low 2013 membership rates!"  The food...never great quality...seemed a notch below this year.  And the surrounding area isn't much better.  I've stayed in 3 different hotels now - the "Rodehouse Inn", the Continental across the street, and this year, the Ramada just down the street.  All 3 of them are marginal quality at best.  I'm happy to try out Seven Springs...I think the drive will be a little longer, but an hour more at most.  But to be honest, I have limited time and money for gaming conventions.  Prezcon is a must for me every year, but I'm starting to hear the siren calls of Origins and GenCon.  I would like to experience both of those.  I may have to make a decision in the next year or two on whether to skip WBC or not.    A lot of that may depend on where I am in further development with Santa's Workshop, and a couple other game ideas I have.  We'll see...

One more year...

WBC 2014 Recap - Part 1

Unfortunately, real life has gotten a little bit in the way the last month or two, so I've not picked my blogging back up at the pace I would like.  However, things are getting back to normal, so I hope to do this a little more regularly.  I did manage to squeeze in time to make the annual pilgrimage to Lancaster, PA for the World Boardgaming Championships from Thurs-Sunday, though.  I took some notes - but have since lost those, and I didn't do a good job with picture-taking this year (I will be glad to see Summer 2014 come to a close...it's been challenging, and I've been off my game).  So, I'm going to do my best to give a brief recap, with some thoughts on WBC in general. 

My friend Paul Owen and I headed up early Thursday morning.  We got there around 10ish, and headed in to the Lancaster Host.  I thought about playing Stone Age, however I decided to play Thurn & Taxis, which I don't get to pay often...in fact my last play was last year at WBC.  I was seated with 3 veterans, and had to ask for a quick rehash of the rules, which they provided.  The game went fairly quickly...it ended about a turn or two before I was ready and I finished in last place...however it was very close with a 5 or 6 point spread from first to last.  I was pleased with how I fared against 3 players who obviously were much more familiar with the game than I was.  Next up for me was a round of 7 Wonders.  GM Nick Ferris has a great randomizing method to seat people with unique cards he hands out to everyone, calls a row and column and everyone had their table and seat assignment.  My three opponents consisted of 1 fellow who was pretty experienced and 2 other folks who were fairly new to the game.  We played 2 games in an hour, and I finished 3rd in both, for an overall 3rd place.  In both games, I was hampered with lack of certain resources. 
 


Paul didn't advance either and I tagged along with him to the Lampeter room where he was going to engage in some Wooden Ships & Iron Men.  I took the opportunity to relearn this game, and played against one of the experienced hands in a frigate duel.  As expected my experienced foe got the upper hand, I didn't adjust to the wind very well...but his hot  dice luck didn't help any.  Next up I took part in a heat of Navegador...another game I don't get to play often enough.  I concentrated on building churches, but my lack of investing in any kind of ships in the 2nd half of the game caught up to me in the end.  Still, I finished in 2nd, about 8 or so points behind the winner.  At 9:00 that night I participated in my first heat of Conquest of Paradise, which had been expanded to 4 heats this year.  As at Prezcon, we were playing with the advanced rules and random events.  My game went very quickly...we were done in under an hour.  As Samoa I started last, and my 3 opponents each found 2 or more islands on their first turn.  I only found found one, but I consistently found islands over the next several rounds, and was able to expand my Polynesian empire for a quick and bloodless win (there was no combat in the entire game). 

After that, Paul and I wen to the open gaming area where we found Peter Gousis and his friend Jerry and played a game of Tobago, a clever little game about finding treasure, where the location of the treasures is narrowed down in a sort of logical card progression by the players.  Peter had come to our Unpub Mini and I was glad to catch up with him.  After that we all joined several other players, including T.C. Petty III for some Coup, followed by Panic on Wall Street.  With Coup, we played with the Reformation expansion, where players are assigned to the Catholic or Protestant faction, and can't act against someone in their faction...although you can change someone else's faction.  It adds another twist to an already fun hidden role/deduction game.  We had played Panic on Wall Street last year, and I was kind of "meh" on the game, though as I recall I was very tired at the time.  This time we also started late, but I got into the game more...and manged to eek out a win as a manager by riding the high-risk shares. 

Friday morning came too early (all the mornings seem to come too early at these conventions...)  I briefly toyed with the idea of playing in the Circus Maximus heat, but decided to wait for the vendors to open at 10:00.  I made a beeline to the Stronghold Games booth in order to pick up the Die Fighter expansion for Space Cadets:Dice Duel.  (About a week later I had a package arrive at home...the copy of Die Fighter that I had forgotten I had pre-ordered...DOH).  I picked up a few other things as well - a copy of Caylus Magna Carta (the card game version of Caylus), Freedom:The Underground Railroad, of which I had heard many good things, and game called Quilt Show to use as a gift for a friend that is really into quilting.  I didn't actually sit down for a game until 1:00, when I decided to try my hand at a heat of Ticket to Ride.  I enjoy TTR but I haven't played in a tournament in years because it's so popular, and it tends to conflict with other things.  One player ran away with it at our table - I finished 4th...I might have finished higher but I knew I wasn't winning so went for the Hail Mary on the last turn and drew more tickets...none of them I had complete.  But I did get a set of translucent trains just for playing. 



There was another heat of Conquest of Paradise at 3:00, but instead I decided to help Paul with a demo of East India Company he was giving to a publisher.  Now, I hadn't played EIC in a quite some time, and was eager to see the changes Paul had made.  He had streamlined it by removing the dividend track, taking out the Caribbean, removing the tariffs, and eliminating the option of using wood to build new ships.  The demo went well, I thought, although afterwards, on the drive home in particular, we brainstormed some about the game.  I thought Paul had actually removed too much, and we talked specifically about a way to add the tariffs back in, and possible some changes to how the pirates work.  Now, I will also admit that I had an ulterior motive.  This same publisher had contacted me after our Mini Unpub, specifically about Santa's Workshop.  I had sent him rulebook, but he had contacted me right after we got to WBC to tell me that it wasn't what they were looking for.  Which is fine, I'm happy he looked at it...and did take the opportunity to get his advice for 5 minutes or so after the EIC demo was done.  I specifically wanted to get his feedback on the theme...which had really gotten a negative reaction from a publisher at Unpub back in January.  This particular publisher thought the theme may be a bit of a tough sell, but he didn't think it was necessarily a deal breaker.  So, I was happy to get some feedback.

About this time, Brian made his WBC appearance, and we just decided to hit open gaming.  Paul sat down to re-teach us St. Petersberg, and we were joined by a 4th player...who also wanted to teach the game.  Once we got started, it came back quick enough.  Our 4th player won, but I made a strong showing with a building heavy strategy.  Brian and I hit the vendors for a while, and I picked up a copy of Villainous Vikings.  We had seen a demo of this game last year at WBC when designer Jeremy Stoltzfus had brought his prototype to demo.  Victory Point games had picked it up, and I decided to get a copy, including a promo captain.  Brian and I sat down in open gaming to give a 2-player game a try.  Fortunately, Jeremy was a few tables over teaching some other folk, so we were able to get quick answers to some rules questions.  We had a fun game, but were thinking it would bet better with more than 2 players.  After our game, Paul joined us along with Bill and Laurie from Nomad games.  Brian had purchased a copy of Spurs from them earlier, and we broke it out. Set in the Old West, with just about every trope you can imagine packed into the game, this was probably the purchase of the con.  The best part was watching Paul and Brian "gunfight" by drawing bullets out of their bags.  Brian pulled out the victory, I was a few points behind in 2nd place.  The last game of the night was another round of Villainous Vikings, with Paul joining in for a 3-player game.  Paul ended up running away with the game, but I did think it was better with more players.

Well, I had intended to do one short recap of WBC, but I think it's probably better to break it up into two sections....so next up, Saturday & Sunday, plus general thoughts on WBC.

2014 Prezcon - Part 2

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

Picture courtesy of Boardgamegeek.com

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

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

Picture courtesy of Boardgamegeek.com

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


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

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

The South Island!

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

Picture courtesy of Boardgamegeek.com

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

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

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

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

Picture courtesy of Boardgamegeek.com

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

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

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

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

WBC 2013 Part 3

Alright...we come to Part 3 of my WBC recap, in which I talk about Conquest of Paradise, and then talk about Conquest of Paradise, and finally I'll talk a little about Conquest of Paradise.

I may have played a little CoP on Saturday

As I mentioned in Part 2 of this recap, I won my CoP game during the "mulligan" round on Friday.  So, I didn't really need to get up for the 9:00 AM round on Saturday.  But, I typically only get to play CoP at conventions anymore, so I rolled myself out of bed and made it over.  About 14 people showed up for the morning round, which meant 2 games of 4, and 2 games of 3.

Just thought I'd throw this in to break up the wall o' text.

I was in one of the 3 player games, along with Phil (I really have to write down these last names) - who is a CoP regular, and Guy, who I hadn't met before, but was familiar with CoP with a little bit of refreshing.  By random draw I was Samoa, Guy was Tonga and Phil had Hiva.  The game went well enough for Guy and I, but Phil had bad luck discovering islands.  Guy did some unusual exploring, sending his boat all the way out east, when he still had unexplored areas only 2 or 3 hexes to his southwest, but it seemed to work for him.  It quickly became apparent that Phil was falling far behind, and as sometimes happens in 3 player games (any game, not just CoP), he had the unenviable task of becoming somewhat of a kingmaker.  We got to the final turn (or so we thought) - Phil attacked both of us, his attack on me was unsuccessful, but he did break Guy's canoe chain.  Still, Guy - who had levied just about all his military chits at this point - was able to connect around that.  We flipped cards, counted points and Guy was the winner by a point or so.  At that point, we called Jerry over for the official score tally, and as we were counting, he suddenly said "Wait a second...you guys are playing a 3 player game...you're supposed to go to 25 points!"  Oops...we were all so used to the 4-player 22 VP condition, that this slipped right past us.  Now, things got a little uncomfortable, as Guy got a little irritated about having to play on.  I said something to the effect of "Well, we all made the same mistake", and his response was "NO - You two made the mistake...you told me it was the end of the game!"  Nevermind that the victory conditions are printed right there on the map.  I think Phil may have taken a little offense at this, because in the next round, he went full bore after Guy and left me alone.  This didn't help Guy's mood.  Still, Guy had enough military to reclaim his losses.  That left me last to go.  I'm not going to say I threw the match...because Guy had a lot of points, and I don't know for a fact that I could have caught him.  But I'll say this - having already qualified for the semi-finals, and feeling somewhat guilty that I may have inadvertently led Guy to believe the game was over before it was - I didn't put a lot of thought into my last turn.  I picked up a few more points, but in the end, Guy won officially.  Funny thing is, he didn't even come back for the semi finals.

Pic from BGG - perhaps the reprint will come with wooden huts

At noon, the semi-finals started, with two games.  The two winners, and the two players who finished closest to their winner would qualify for the final (which mean if 3rd place in game A finished closer than 2nd place in Game B, that 3rd place guy was in.  In my game, I had CoP regular Dave, and Andy from GMT games.  I embarrassed to admit that I don't remember our 4th players name.  As a top seed (by virtue of my mulligan win), I got to choose my starting territory, and I chose Samoa.  Dave had Tonga, Andy was Hiva, and the 4th player was Raiatea.  As I recall, I had decent exploration finds, but not great.  At one point, I was exploring to my north, and I decided to check out 2 islands that Andy had discovered, but kept hidden beneath his "discovered" markers.  The first was an atoll, which I revealed.  At that point, Andy said "are you sure you want to waste your movement on the other one?"  I actually paused, considering moving to an adjacent unexplored hex, but then decided to stick with the plan, and checked our what he had found already...which turned out to be Hawaii.  Ah...Andy with the mind games.  To be honest, I don't remember a lot of the rest of the details of this game, with the exception that near the end of the game, Player #4 moved in a war canoe to where Andy had sent a transport and some colonists.  Not having any war chits, Andy had to immediately retreat those pieces.  This turned out to be crucial, as Andy had an "Arioi" card had forgotten about, which could have cancelled that "combat" (even though he didn't have any war pieces, that counted as combat).  If he had done so, he could have colonized, and won the game.  With an extra turn, I was able to rebuild my canoe chain (which had been earlier broken by Andy), and pick up some points by attacking the pre-printed "NPC" islands on the map.  This was enough to secure victory, and Dave came in 2nd at our table. 

That set us up for the final, which consisted of me, Dave, my buddy (and Prezcon champ) Brian, and a fellow named Charles.  Quite simply, this turned out to be one of the best games of CoP that I've ever played.  I took Samoa as my homeland, Prezcon champion Brian took Tonga, a fellow by the name of Charles took Hiva, and Conquest of Paradise regular Dave ended up with Raiatea. The rest of us got a little nervous when Dave found 3 islands with his first 3 moves, but he had some atolls in there. The rest of us slowly revealed island groups, and after a few turns, Samoa, Tonga and Hiva all revealed one of the 4-village islands. Raiatea was not to be left behind however, as he eventually revealed 2 3-village islands. It was becoming apparent that we all had done roughly equally as well in island discovery, and no one was going to run away with a "lucky" victory.

As I am wont to do whenever I play Samoa or Tonga, I grabbed the island of Niue before my neighbor could. When it was becoming obvious that this was going to be a roughly equal game in terms of discoveries, Tonga decided to beat the war drums early and launched an attack on Niue. I struggled with the decision to use my Arioi card to stop the combat, but I decided to wait until a more crucial moment later. My  Samoans attempted to retake Niue a short time later, but to no avail.

To the east, Hiva and Raiatea quietly expanded their empires. The Hivans expanded via the atoll at Flint Island, and eventually launched their own attack on Niue, capturing it. In Samoa, I decided discretion was the better part of valor, and did not want to get into a 3-way tug of war over Niue. So, I used the "safety valve" and attacked the "NPC" island of Kiribati, and colonized it.

By this point, the drums of war were pounding across the entirety of the South Pacific, with War Canoes and Warbands seemingly multiplying overnight...well, all except in the southeast, where not much was heard from the Raiateans. After seeing the Samoans take Kiribati, the Tongans reasoned that many Samoan warriors were away from home, and launched a direct attack on the Samoan homeland. This is what the Arioi card was saved for! The Hivans continued to be a threat on the island of Niue, though it looked like they might turn their eyes to the fertile islands of the Raiateans.

Pic from BGG, but closely resembling our situation.

Sensing he might not have a better opportunity, Dave - as Raiatea, revealed his Arts & Culture cards to show 22 points - enough for victory. That is, until the dastardly Tongans revealed the Severe Deforestation card, causing the rest of the empires to lose a village, and dropping poor Raiatea back to 21 VPs.

There's nothing like revealing a possible victory to make yourself the target, and all eyes turned towards Raiatea. Or did they? The Tongans, still reeling from being thwarted earlier, launched a 2nd attack on Samoa itself. The extra turn had given Samoa enough time to build and reposition various warriors however, and the Tongans (with the "help" of some atrocious dice luck) were beat back. Samoa was looking further to the west, and was choosing between the Marshall Islands and Pohnpei to attack. With Hiva still left to go, Samoa thought they were eyeing Raiatea, but dared not take all his warriors, in case Hiva decided to strike west instead. Judging it safe to take only 3 war units to conquer a western island, Samoa chose to attack the more lightly defended Pohnpei, easily conquering it and adding it to the empire. Hiva did indeed launch an attack on the Raiatean homeland itself, successfully wresting it from it's original owners.

When all cards were revealed, Samoa and Hiva were tied at 24 VPs each. Samoa earned the victory based on the tiebreaker of number of controlled island groups in his empire. Critically, on the last build phase of the game, Hiva chose to build a 3rd village on the captured island of Raiatea, rather than building a transport canoe and chaining it to his empire. If he had done so, the score would have remained the same, but we would have had to go to the 2nd tiebreaker, which was Arts&Culture cards - where Hiva would have won.

I think this means I get WBC "Laurels".  I'm not sure I know what those are...but I think I get some.

 So...WHEW!!!  Before Brian dethroned me this year, I had won the CoP tournament at Prezcon for three years in a row.   But success at WBC had eluded me.  I had only made the final once, and that one time I came in a distant 4th place.  It feels good to have won at WBC...and in addition to a plaque, I got a $10 coupon to spend at the GMT booth, which I immediately used on Battle Line (with some "encouragement" from Paul). 

Thanks go again to Kevin for running another fine tournament...and let me also take this opportunity to mention the Conquest of Paradise reprint that is currently on GMT's P500.  Kevin tells me that the reprint will fix some of the color issues, include wooden tokens of some sort for the villages, include the expansion random event cards, and maybe a few extras (including a card that makes it tempting to attack Fiji...interesting indeed).

Brian, Paul and I did some more open gaming on Saturday night and Sunday morning...but I'll leave that for Part 4 of my WBC recap....

WBC 2013 Part 2

So, right off the bat, I have to issue a correction.  You have to understand, at these conventions, the nights can get late...and that leads to fuzzy memories.  My buddy Paul recapped his first day at WBC, and when I read that, I realized oh...the late night games I posted about earlier were actually on Friday night, not Thursday night!  So...what was played on Thursday night?  As Paul mentions in his blog, we sat down for a session of Settlers of Catan:Cities & Knights.  Now, I have to admit, I've not actually played a LOT of Settlers - my fair share, but not a lot.  I've played the Seafarers expansion on my tablet, and that adds a little bit, but it's still 95% the same game (my understanding is that the Seafarers rules were originally part of the base game).  Cities & Knights on the other hand, is a whole other animal.  This expansion changes the game significantly - to the point where it bears minimal resemblance to the original.  Paul told me he likes it better than the base game.  I'm not so sure - I did like it quite a bit, but our game took 3+ hours.  That's too long for a Catan game (although there may have been mitigating factors such as the late hour and the beverages being consumed). 

On Friday, I intentionally avoided playing anything in the morning, as I wanted to be there when the doors opened to the vendors area.  Last year I missed on getting a copy of Eclipse because I was late to the vendors.  In particular, I had seen Stronghold Games mention that WBC would be the first place to buy Space Cadets:Dice Duel, and that they had limited copies.  I got my copy of SC:DD, and several other things, but I'll save that for later (I think "limited" was a loose term for Stronghold, as it appeared they brought enough SC:DD to supply the entire convention :))

After the vendors had their way with my wallet, I had to choose between Stone Age and Agricola.  I like both games quite a bit, but in general I think I like Agricola a bit more.  Partially because I'm still not very good at the cards, and I think I have lot left to explore with that game.  That being said...I chose to go with Stone Age, as the late night and early morning left me feeling that I would just be raw meat at an Agricola table.  Turns out I was raw meat for my fellow Stone Age players instead. I went with the strategy of trying to get the hut multipliers, but they didn't come out very fast.  The fellow who won the game had 10 family members, but he didn't have the food problem, because the player to his left kept passing on the agriculture track.  She did get 88 points from the tool bonuses, though, which is the most I've ever seen for that.

That afternoon was the "mulligan" heat for Conquest of Paradise, which is "my game", if you will.  I had won three years straight at Prezcon, until Brian dethroned me this past year.  But for some reason I had come up short the past 3 years at WBC.  I arrived a bit earlier and saw many of the usual crew that plays Conquest, and then as typically happens, designer Kevin McPartland showed up, trailed by a bunch of folks who had just attended the demo.  At my 4 player table, by random draw, I was playing Tonga, veteran Conquest player Brian (a different Brian) was playing as Samoa, and two new players were playing as Hiva and Raitea.  It was a fairly uneventful game, to be honest.  The woman playing Raitea had unfortunate luck in finding little to no islands - and for some reason she made the decision to explore right up next to me, finding an island for me, essentially.  Being a new player, she did not really pick up on the need to go military at that point.  On the last turn of the game, I had enough military to pick off one of Brian's small islands, to ensure enough VP for the victory - that may have been the only battle of the game.  So, I was qualified for the semi-final.

That was it for tournaments on Friday.  The rest of the evening was spent in open gaming, which I detailed in the last post.  We did run into designer Ben Rosset, and his friend Eli at one point.  Later we came back, eager to try the latest iteration of Brewcrafters, but I believe they were smack in the middle of demoing to other folks.   In fact, that turned out to be one of my big disappointments of the con - I never did get a chance to sit down and play Brewcrafters.  I believe Ben mentioned that they were gearing up for an October Kickstarter campaign, so I'm excited for that to start. 

Next post will be about Saturday at WBC - aka - "Conquest of Paradise Day".  I would be remiss if I did not mention the reprint of CoP planned by GMT games.  It's up on their P500 list now, and I encourage folks to order it.  They will be correcting/enhancing a number of things in the base game, and including the random event cards that were originally published in C3i Magazine.

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....