WBC 2013 Part 4

Ok, one last post about WBC 2013.  I'm not going to cover in depth everything that we did Saturday night and Sunday morning, because Paul did a great job covering it here and here.  Bottom line - we stayed up way too late on Saturday night, and then clung to every last minute into Sunday afternoon.

I didn't have quite as much fun with Article 27 as we did at Prezcon, but some of that may have been due to the late hour.  I also got a bum deal in which 4 of my 5 secret agenda tokens got pulled all on the same turn...and there was no way I was going to get everyone to agree to passing that many in one round.  All the same...I remain unsure about that game...with 6 players especially, it can be hard to keep track of all your bribes.  Panic on Wall Street I enjoyed, though it took me a few turns to get the hang of it.  I would like to try it with more than 5 players, though.  Code 777 - I've been wanting to try this with more than 2 players since Paul and I played it last year at WBC.  Unfortunately, 2 in the morning is not the best time to dive in...we gave it a shot, but it was just too much for our tired brains at that point.

On Sunday, I enjoyed Battle Line, which I picked up for $5 thanks to my $10 GMT coupon.  Neat little 2-player game - time will tell if I like it better than Lost Cities or not.  Spartacus - speed kills, speed kills.  My gladiator, with his ability to use speed dice as defensive dice, was a juggernaut in the arena.

I want to highlight my purchases.  Usually, I get caught up in convention fever and spend more than I should, and end up getting a stinker or two (see the "buy 1 get 2 free" Mayfair sale at Prezcon this year - there's a reason they were giving away some of the games for free).  I feel pretty good about my haul at WBC, though:

Dominant Species - Didn't play it at WBC, but I really enjoyed it during vacation this summer - I pretty much knew I was going to buy it before I got to the con.

Space Cadets:Dice Duel - possibly my best pickup of the con.  I still haven't had a chance to play the original Space Cadets, and I was suckered in a little by the "buy it first at WBC" schtick - but after a few plays, I can report that this game is a blast.  Especially after a long day hunkering down in front of "serious" games.

Pirate Dice - I had read about this, and previously tried to pick it up online, but it had been sold out.  When I saw it at a vendor table, I snatched it up quick.  I'm glad I did (though I found it online later for half the price) - this is another fun, wacky game - and much easier to get into than Robo Rally.  I've already ordered the expansions.

The New Science - Probably the only game I totally bought on a whim.  I'd heard a few good mutterings about it, but hadn't had time to really research it.  But the science theme called to me, and I went for it.  I've since played one game, and I'm glad I picked it up.  One game isn't enough to really run it through it's paces, and I'm mildly concerned about a mechanic or two...but all in all I really like it so far.

Agricola All Creatures Big and Small More Buildings Big and Small - I really liked this "mini Agricola" for 2 players when I picked it up last year.  It hasn't made it to the table recently...but I couldn't pass up on the expansion at the Z-Man booth.

Pandemic and On the Brink - Yes, I already owned Pandemic and it's expansion.  However, there's a new expansion coming out soon, and it will only be compatible with the new artwork in the Pandemic reprints.  So I rebought the base game and the first expansion.  The good news - the On The Brink box now fits everything...but will it fit the new expansion???

Battle Line - As mentioned, I got a $10 GMT coupon for winning Conquest of Paradise...I thought about getting the Dominant Species Card Game, but they were sold out, and Paul convinced me to pick this up instead, and I'm glad I did.

So...sadly, another WBC has come and gone.  And now I get to sit here and be jealous of all the info coming from Gen Con.  But, Prezcon is only 6 months away...and my copy of the Lords of Waterdeep expansion should arrive in a few days.  Looking forward to the next big event!

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.

WBC 2013 Part 1

Well, this year the World Boardgaming Championships seemed to sneak up on me.  Held every year in early August, in Lancaster PA, the WBC is essentially a bigger version of Prezcon.  While Prezcon has 600ish attendees, the WBC gets 1500+ - one of their board members recently told me that they are the 3rd largest pure boardgame con, after Origins and BGGCon (clearly, he wasn't counting GenCon with it's 30K attendees as "pure boardgame").  In any case, like Prezcon, the WBC is a tournament style convention first and foremost, although they have a very large open gaming area.  At the beginning of each year, the Boardgame Players Association (BPA) members vote on which games will make the "Century List", i.e. the 100 (give or take) games that will make the cut at WBC.  They actually run a little over 100 as publishers can sponsor games, and my impression is that there is a core group of favorites that it's almost impossible to get dropped.  Now, this is a long convention - it officially runs from Monday - Sunday, however they have "pre-con" events starting the previous weekend as well - so you could spend 9-10 days at this convention if you so desired.

Last year, the WBC was plagued by some infrastructure issues that hit the aging location - The Lancaster Host.  Primarily this was in the form of lack of air conditioning in much of the conference center, including the large "Lampeter Room".  As you might imagine in a building full of gamers - who's hygiene habits can sometimes be questionable - this led to some uncomfortable situations by weeks end.  One of the side effects was that more people escaped to the open gaming area, which was still cool - and that led to a lot of crowding and table scarcity.  I'm happy to report that the A/C was in fine form this year, though. 

Unfortunately, I have a little too much in the way of home responsibilities to go for the whole week, so I typically head up on Thursday and stay through the weekend.  This year my buddies Brian Green and Paul Owen joined me at the con.  I'm not going to give a thorough game-by-game rundown like I did for Prezcon, but I want to hit a few highlights.  And, unfortunately, I was a little lazy on taking pictures - so any that you see here are likely one's I've stolen from the internet somewhere.

Pic from BGG user David Morriss

Thurn & Taxis - It had been about 3 years since I last played this euro about building postal routes across Bavaria (you have to love euros and their themes) - since they removed it from the Prezcon list much to my friend Grant's dismay.  The other players at the table were gracious enough to help me shake off the rules rust.  I'm happy to say I finished in a tie for 2nd - and I conceded the actual 2nd place finisher to another player who was looking to move on in the tournament.



7 Wonders - This was the largest game I played in, with probably 120+ participants.  The GM separated everyone into 4 player games.  Each table was to play two games, you got points for your finish in each game (8,5,3,0 I believe and 8.2, 5.1, 2.5 and 0 for the 2nd - the decimals to help prevent ties).  In my first game I was the Pyramids of Gaza and finished in 2nd place.  In the 2nd game I had the Hanging Gardens, and I misplayed the very last card, causing me to finish in 3rd instead of 2nd.  If I had finished 2nd both times, I would have had the highest total, and moved on.  Bummer.

Amateurs to Arms - This game about the War of 1812 was published last year, from Conquest of Paradise designer Kevin McPartland and co-designer Jerry Shiles.  I had pre-ordered it, but had yet to get it to the table.  So, I went to the demo, and then played in the "Mulligan" round.  This is a card driven game, in the same vein as Twilight Struggle - i.e. each card has text that you use to invoke certain events, or a number value, which you can use as "operation points" to do many different things such as levy troops, build forts, etc.  Each side starts at opposite ends of a "peace track", and where those two counters meet on the track determines the winner.

This is an interesting game, but I'm not sure these type of card driven games are my cup of tea - I'm so-so on the aforementioned Twilight Struggle for example.  The game is beautiful - the map consists of essentially everything east of the Mississippi.  But 90% of the action takes place around the great lakes.  So, there's a lot of empty real estate.  It also runs long - I conceded to my opponent after 4 hours - although he didn't have a huge advantage, and it's conceivable I could have come back.  I definitely want to get some more plays of this under my belt - but considering it's length, and it's only  2 players, I'm not sure when that will happen.  Let me take the opportunity once again to praise the components of this game - in particular the map and cards.  The map is practically a work of art, and the cards contain lots of historical tidbits.  Also, the "designers notes" are a funny read - Jerry's sense of humor certainly comes through.

This is the upper right quadrant of the board...but where most of the action takes place.

Thursday night open gaming consisted of playing World Without End, St. Petersburg and Hex Hex XL.  St. Pete is an interesting one - Brian and I had both played this several year ago, as were just getting into the "hobby boardgaming" arena, and both of us came away with negative impressions that kept us from the game for years.  Paul brought it back out, and re-taught us, and we played again.  Brian didn't change his opinion much, but I came away with a better impression.  Some of that might be because I had a good game, and won - but I think years of playing these games now has given me some insight into many of the mechanics, and I think I just "got it" this time around.  I'm not saying it's my favorite - but I won't avoid it either.  Hex Hex XL was one we had high aspirations for - but it fell flat for us.  Brian in particular seemed disappointed, but I think a large part of it was due to having only 3 players.  My intuition says this one would be better with 5+ players. 

More to come in Part 2.....

Historicon Day 2 and 3

After a somewhat disappointing Day 1, I returned to Historicon on Day 2 with my 8 year old son, Liam.  We had gone to Historicon last year for the first time, and had a ball, primarily playing games intended for juniors, put on by the "H.A.W.K.S." - the Harford Area Weekly Kriegspielers.  This year was no different, as we played several games put on by them.

Warriors:Rescue the Kits

Sneaking throug the woods on the right flank

First up was a scenario based on the "Warriors" series of books by Erin Hunter.  Our game apparently recreated the climactic final confrontation of book 1, where the cats of the Thunder Clan attempt to rescue their kittens, stolen by the treacherous Shadow Clan.  There were 6 players, 3 to a side, each controlling 4 cats - Liam was on the Thunder Clan side, and we were informed that he was controlling "Firepaw", the hero of the book.  Liam's allies charged to middle of the field and engaged the conniving Shadow Clan in front of rock formation where the kits were being held.  Liam meanwhile, sent his team of 4 through the woods on the right flank, until 2 of the Shadow Clan cats broke off to engage him.  After a few twists and turns, Liam's 4 cats led by Firepaw started to get the upperhand against the 2 Shadow Clan cats.  The GM reminded the players that the goal was to rescue the kits, but Liam chose to battle to the end.  Meanwhile, his allies in the middle eventually got the upperhand as well.  At the end of the 2 hours allotted time, the game was not quite over, but it was clear that Thunder Clan would carry the day.  The game was a fun start to the day!

Firepaw leads the assault

Team Rocket's Gambit

That's a lot of Pokemon!

Next up was a game based on the Pokemon franchise.  Now, I know next to nothing about Pokemon, and Liam isn't a particularly big fan either...but I discovered that he knows more about it than I thought he did (I'm sure it's discussed at school quite a bit).  The GM, William Acheson, had a beautiful table set up, and dozens upon dozens of Pokemon characters on the table.  We had 3 players per side, and the goal was to control a portal of some type located on the top of a hill in the middle of the board.  I could quickly tell that I was in the minority in terms of Pokemon knowledge.  I think I offended one young lady on our team when I told Liam "I think you should move your racoons to the front".  From her, I got a very indignant "Those are NOT racoons - they're Zigzagoons!"  (I just had to look that up). 

Don't trample the lettuce!

I ended up getting drafted to play some characters, as there was one opening at the table.  So, I had to control my own pieces, as well as help Liam.  Why did he need help, you ask?  Well, even though this was billed as a kid's event, the rules were more complicated than any miniature game I had previously played.  Each turn was broken up into roughly 12 segments - Place orders (of which there were 7 or 8 order types) cast magic, reveal orders, "stand and shoot" fires their first, "charge" orders are resolved, "rush" orders are resolved, "stand and shoot" gets to shoot again, "advance" is resolved, "run away" is resolved, finally melee happens.  I'm sure I got that wrong, but you get the gist.  And for each of those segments, there were particular rules and dice rolls that had to happen.  Not to mention terrain effects.

The game was scheduled for 3 hours, and at the end of three hours, we weren't particularly close to a result.  The GM gave a slight victory to Team Rocket (not us, alas) due to the fact that they had people (er...Pokemon) on the hill, but I think given another turn or two, we could have pushed them off.  So, while I appreciate the level of detail of the table, and the work involved...I think this was a bit much for a true "kids game".

Break

We had circled a lego pirate game to play next, but after 5 hours of straight play, and checking out the game, we decided to pass (it was being run by a gentleman who had run a similar game last year, which ended up being out least favorite).  So we took the opportunity to do some shopping in the dealer area.  I ended up getting talked into buying some starter sets for Wings of Glory (formerly Wings of War) - the WWI aerial combat game.  This turned out to be a bit prescient....  After checking into our hotel, we were deciding what to play that evening.  We had picked out a spaceship game, but before we went there, we wandered by one other table...

It was Beauty that Killed the Beast

Let me post the description here:

As Fighter Command orders your Long Island squadron to

New York City with a rendezvous point of the Empire State

Building, you wonder what is going on? When you check with

Flight Control about your target, they respond with “You will

know it when you see it” Kids Rule for 2 hours

Inbound towards the Empire St. Building...Wait..what is that?!?!

KONG!!!!!!

I think you know what's coming....sure enough this was a King Kong scenario...using the Wings of Glory rules, which I had just purchased.  The GM, Cliff Brunken had found the King Kong scenario on boardgamegeek.  Basically, Kong stood on a hexagonal Empire State building, and each turn rolled a die to see where Kong would go.  Kong had the same reach as the range of our guns, so we had to get in close...too close.  Oh, and we had to make sure not to fly into the building, or shoot Fay Wray. 

Get close...but not too close...

This game was the highlight of the Con.  First of all, Cliff made it super fun, especially for kids.  He made Liam the flight leader, and through some "GM's grace", made sure that Kong fell at the hand of our intrepid leader.  Second, Cliff really put some effort into the game.  Unfortunately, his aerial phot of Manhattan didn't get made on time, but his Empire State Building and Kong were great.  Wings of Glory doesn't have any plans that match the planes from the film (he was using the recent Peter Jackson version for models), so he had that model plane, at the same scale, imported from Japan and painted to the right specifications.  My only complaint was that by random chance, it was a little too easy for us to accidentally shoot Ms. Wray...but you have to do what you have to do to save an entire city.  My wallet is lucky that the particular vendor that carried Kong statues was sold out, or I would have likely bought one on the spot.

Dinos vs. Nazis

Himmler is about to be carried back to the nest.

My buddy Grant was running a Star Wars scenario on Sunday morning, but we were too late to get tickets for that.  So, instead we opted for another scenario.  It's 1945, Hitler realizes his only chance to win the war is to use a time machine to travel back in time and eliminate the enemy early on.  As he powers up his time machine, with his loyal minions nearby, a Soviet artillery shell explodes nearby, causing the time machine to travel back 4 billion year to the age of the dinosaurs.

Not looking good for Eva Braun and her bodyguard.

In this game, we played the dinosaurs, and our objective was to eat as many Nazis as possible.  They were worth various points, and we had historical Nazis, as well as film and TV Nazis (Col Klink, the eyepiece guy from Raiders of the Lost Ark).  I'm not so sure the game is balanced all that well, as some dinosaurs have it easier than others - but then again, Liam's Pterodactyls outscored my T-Rex - and hey, you're playing Dinosaurs eating Nazis, so who can complain?

Historicon

So this weekend, I'm attending the big miniatures convention in Fredricksburg, Va - Historicon.  This is my second year attending Historicon - last year I went for one day only - Saturday - and brought my son, Liam.  We pretty much stuck to just kid friendly games and had a blast - but this year I thought I'd go down by myself on Friday, and take part in some more "adult" games (get your mind out of the gutter). 

I just got home from the first day, and I have to say that it was - overall - a very frustrating day.  I have come to the conclusion that I am a boardgamer first - and as we were leaving, I mentioned that to my friend Paul Owen.  His response - "funny you should say that, I just blogged about that myself."    Paul eloquently states what I think the crux of the issue is -

"I've mentioned before that I find miniatures gaming to be more about the physical instantiation of the game components that represent the game state than about the gameplay itself.  The length of time required to set up, play, and clean up a game represents a significant investment relative to the number and complexity of decisions that a player makes in that time - not to mention the cost of those components and the time spent painting and assembling them."

 I too, find miniatures games to be very visually appealing - but often at the end of a 4 hour (or much longer) game, I find myself thinking "why wasn't that as fun as I think it should have been"?   Part of the appeal of miniatures is the lack of a board - and the grids/hexes/spaces that confine board game pieces in their movement.  In miniatures, you can go anywhere and do anything, usually with the help of a trusty tape measure.  However, this can also be a detriment, as their is often vagaries that are not covered in the rules, or disagreements on measurements ("you are at 7.05 inches, therefore you're out of range!") 

Rules vagaries was a big part of my dissatisfaction with today's events, but by no means the only one.  First, I learned a very important lesson about Historicon - pre-registration is damn near mandatory if you don't want to be frustrated by lack of game choices.  Historicon is not the "must attend" event that Prezcon, and even WBC have become for me.  Therefore, I waited to just pay my fee at the door - in fact just a few weeks ago, due to some travel that my wife was doing, combined with potential lack of child care, I almost had to scratch Historicon off my list.  However, this is a problem - when I go there at about 8:30 this morning, the tickets for the first 6 or 7 games I was interested in were all gone.  I was getting pretty agitated, and finally snapped at the poor woman behind the counter - "well, what games DO you have?!?!"  I ended up with an 11:00 game centered around some minor skirmish in the American Civil War.  Later, I ran into my friend Grant Greffey, and he mentioned that he was in a 1:00 English Civil War scenario called "The Battle of Alford".

This sounded appealing to me, as I had noticed that in the description of me ACW scenario, it said something like "familiarity with Piquet rules is desired".  Also, the ECW scenaro listed room for only 4 players, while my ACW scenario held 8.  That's a thing I've discovered about miniatures gaming as well - those huge tables with a great big group playing look great...but it can get dreadfully bogged down, and you may only take your turn once an hour or so.  So, I try to limit my playing to scenarios with 6 players or less.  In any case, I swung by the front desk, and miracles of miracles, they still had a ticket for the ECW scenario, so I promptly traded.  The other thing about Historicon, is that if you pre-register, you can sign up for 2 games each day, whereas if you walk in the door, you can only get one ticket per day...leaving you scrounging around for openings in other games. 

Finally, at 1:00 we settled in for our game.  I was immediately disappointed with the battlefield - a simple green piece of felt, with some dirt scattered on it.  Not very exciting compared with some of the other visually stunning set pieces that were on display.  The GM allowed a 5th player in (so much for 4 players), and we took sides - both Scottish, actually, one loyalist, and the other "Covenanters".  The GM briefly described the rules - interestingly, they were running the same scenario three times that day, but using three different rulesets.  We were using a slightly modified "Renaissance Wars" ruleset by Saga.  Unfortunately - and this was also somewhat of an issue, I felt - the GM did not seem as well-versed in the rules as one would hope.  This led to a lot of delays during the game as there was hemming and hawing over various actions.  The game evolved into essentially, our two lines of troops crashing into each other, backing away due to morale rolls, and then crashing into each other again - now this may be what actually happened during that time period, but I found it a little dull after a while.  Grant and I (as the Covenanters) also had what could be called "craptacular" dice rolling.  I had the left flank of our forces, and was pretty evently matched against my counterpart.  In the course of one turn, due to some really bad dice rolls on my part, and really good ones on his part, my troops all but routed off the board.  A few more turns, and we conceded the game.

Our Covenanters prepare to advance on the Loyalists

Shortly after that, I departed to come home.  So, in an 11-hour day (counting travel), I got in all of one game.  Very frustrating.  But, tomorrow I return with my son, and I've already secured tickets to a couple of kid-oriented games.  So, I'm hopeful that things will go better tomorrow. 

One more thing that points to me being a boardgamer over a miniature gamer - at the flea market of the biggest miniature game convention on the east coast...I bought a Eurogame.  Hey, someone had an unpunched version of Le Havre they were selling for $30 - how can I pass that up?

Vacation Gaming

Over the first week of July, my family and I took a vacation to the mountains of West Virginia.  Joining us were my good friend Tom and his wife Kelly....and later in the week, their daughter Sarah and her husband Matt.  Tom is one of my oldest friends, and we've been playing games for almost that whole time, and this was no different.  We squeezed in a lot of gaming this trip, although we didn't quite get to all the games we brought along (ok, I was probably optimistic bringing two full rubber bins full of games...).  I'm not going to cover every game we played, because we played a lot of favorites, but I thought I'd talk a little about the games that were new to me, and my impressions of them.  I will mention that we took day trip on on the Cass Railroad...and I couldn't resist pulling out my phone and playing a game of the Ticket to Ride app...while riding a train.  Now that's meta-gaming! 

(I'm going without pics in this entry because I'm way behind, and already have some additional gaming to blog about...)

Last Night on Earth

 I've mentioned before that I'm not a big fan of the zombie genre.  I'm ready for this current fascination with all things zombie to come to a close.  I wasn't a particularly big fan of Zombicide when we played it at Prezcon, although lack of sleep and food probably affected me.  However, Tom had brought along a copy of Last Night on Earth and wanted to give it a go, and I agreed.   Unlike Zombicide, which is cooperative, this game is played with one side playing the human survivors and the other side playing the zombies.  There are several different scenarios, and the map is more or less randomly generated by picking from different boards and assembling.  Each faction has a deck of cards that they draw from in order to get resources, or enact events.

In our scenario, my human survivors had to get to the truck, and escape town.  However, to operate the truck, they needed to find keys and gas, and then survive one round at the truck with those items.  Now, as luck would have it, I drew a keys card at the very beginning of the game, and was lucky enough to have the gas station come up on the map not too far from my survivors.  3 of my survivors started in the center of town, with one at the farmhouse, on the opposite side from the gas station.  Since I had keys, and knew where the gas was, my survivors made a beeline to the gas station, and then back to the truck.  Tom, playing the zombies, got his own luck in several card pulls that essentially enabled him to get all the zombies on the board in the first few turns.  He also pulled a card that stopped me from performing actions for one turn, which ultimately led to his zombie horde overrunning me one turn prior to my escape.

Last Night on Earth didn't particularly do anything to sway my opinion on all things zombie, but I hesitate to judge the game too quickly based on a scenario where lucky draws (on both sides) seriously compromised the main flow of the game.  I never had to split my survivors up to go scrounging through different buildings...never really needed to use any of their special abilities.  I'm not sure this is a particularly "deep" game, but Tom made a good point that it is fun to step away from euro games and play something a little more frenzied now and again.  If you like zombies, this one may be up your alley...and it comes with a soundtrack!

Ticket to Ride:Asia

I've owned the Asia expansion for TTR for some time now, and I had played the "Legendary Asia" side, which is essentially TTR on a new map.  What I had not had a chance to do yet was play the "team" variant on the other side of the map.  In this version, you pair with a teammate, and you can share some of your tickets and train cards.  You don't share everything, and by rule you're not allowed to just blurt out to your teammate what you have hidden in your private hand.  I think this is a little bit of a problem at the start of the game, when you are choosing your initial routes - and there's not way to communicate...you could end up with routes on totally opposite sides of the map.

Once the game gets going, I did enjoy this variant on traditional TTR.  Having a partner can be very helpful, as you take your turns back to back, and if you're on the same page, you can really start laying down routes quickly.  We managed to get this in twice during the trip, once as a 4-player (2-team) and once as a 6-player (3 team) game.  In our 4 player game, I played with my son Liam as my partner, and I continue to be amazed at how quickly he's picking up on games these days (sorry, proud dad moment).  We didn't win, but it wasn't for lack of trying, and as an 8-year old, he played as well as many adults that I've seen.  I teamed with my wife Becky in the 6-player game, and unfortunately we came in last by quite a bit.  Part of that was due to me drawing new tickets near the end, and keeping some I should have discarded because I read the city names incorrectly.  Grrr.  In any case, I really do like this variant, and it may make things interesting for those that have cooled on TTR in general. 

Dominant Species

I had heard of Dominant Species, and new it was highly regarded, but this was my first time trying it.  In this game, you take on the roll of one type of animal (insects, mammals, birds, reptiles, etc.) and you attempt to assert your dominance by multiplying and adapting to new landscapes as the map grown in front you.  You establish dominance in map hexes by being best adapted to the elements that are located a the corners of the tiles.  This is more or less a worker placement game, as you place your action pawns (APs) on various actions the side of the board, and then resolve those actions in descending order. 

On our first attempt at the game, 4 of us played only 3 rounds as we learned the game.  Fortunately for me, we called it short as it got later, because I started at the mammals, and I did not recognize the need to take the "adapt" action early enough to add new elements to my species, and when my one element got wiped from the board, I was in bad shape.  But hey...that's why you play a learning game, right?  The 2nd time we played this game, I came out with a narrow victory as the insects, when Matt - who had taken over the mammals from Becky - almost randomly chose some creatures to remove from the board due to an card he played on the last play of the game.  He took some of Tom's critters, denying Tom the "survivor" bonus in the last round, giving me the win. 

This game is very good...and very deep.  From 1.5 games, I can tell that there are multiple paths to victory...and you really have to be on your toes to form a coherent strategy.  I'm not doing it justice with a quick blurb in a blog entry focusing on multiple games played over vacation.  Suffice to say I'd like to play it some more...and with WBC coming up, and I can see myself swinging by the GMT booth for that convention discount....

Roll Through the Ages

Roll Through the Ages is a quick little civ builder game that I picked up on a whim at my local game store a few months ago.  Finally had a chance to pull it out, and I quite enjoy it as a "filler" game.  You roll a number of dice equivalent to the number of cities you've built (you start with 3), and get a number of rerolls each turn.  You use the outcome of the dice to build cities/monuments, buy civilization advancements and feed your cities...the more cities you have, the more dice...but the more you have to feed.  The game ends when all the monuments have been built, or when one player gets to 5 advancements.  In our games, we found that they took 30 minutes or less.  It's light, it's quick...and yet that civ builder feeling is still there.  I recommend it if you're looking to fill that niche.

Agricola:Farmers of the Moor

I'm a big fan of Agricola, but had yet to play the Farmers of the Moor expansion.  Tom, Matt and I sat down to play a round.  Even though we were playing with Farmers of the Moor, we still played "family style" (i.e. with no occupations or minor improvements) because Matt was a bit rusty on Agricola.  For the base game, I had been waffling for some time on whether I liked the full game of the "family" game better - I have just not played with the cards a lot, so I don't know them well, and I always feel a bit overwhelmed.  However, last time I had played "family style", I really came to realize how limiting that was, not being able to play minor improvements and occupations that will allow you to help feed your family, etc.  However, with adding the expansion, I was happy to not have to worry about such things this time around (in fact, my friend Paul Owen recently told me that he prefers playing Farmers of the Moor "family style" ). 

With a lot already going on in Agricola, I was afraid that adding more stuff would really cause a dilemma of how to use your family members.  As it turns out, they've added some action cards that allow you take the "moor" actions without necessarily using one of your farmers, and that's a big help.  Not only can you use the cards for "free" if they're still available on your turn, but you can pay food to use them if another player has already taken them.   We had a very close game, with Tom pulling out the win with 39 points compared to 37 for both Matt and I.  I nearly ran out of peat to heat my house, but converted to a stone cottage just in time (although I'm not sure that I realized you could use wood to heat your house...and we had the wood spaces getting up to 12+ pieces of wood at one point).  I'm eager to try this variant again, and see how adding the minor improvements and occupations affects things.

Pandemic On the Brink 

Pandemic is a favorite of my wife's, and I like it well enough - but we haven't played much with the On the Brink expansion.   To be more precise, On the Brink is something like 4 expansions in one.  We'd played with some of them, but one I really wanted to try was the "bioterrorist" expansion.  Becky, Tom and Kelly agreed, and I volunteered to be the bad guy (I have never been the traitor in Shadows of Camelot or Battlestar Galactica, so I wanted to try it out...although you're not a "traitor" per se in Pandemic).  Our first game did not go well - for anybody.  It was fun sneaking around the board and planting purple cubes, but the other 3 players made a concerted effort to cure and then eradicate my purple disease...thus eliminating me from the game.  Unfortunately for them, the "normal" diseases used their inattention to reach critical mass...and they lost in the "regular" way.  We played again a day or so later, and added in the "virulent strain" cards as well.  This may have been a bit much for the good guys...as they got a virulent strain that forced them to remove a red cube every time they passed through a city with a red cube in it.  I used that to plant a bunch of purple cubes alongside the red cubes, knowing that they were forced to deal with red first.  This eventually led to me being able to trigger a purple outbreak, getting all the purple cubes on the board, giving me the victory.  I liked the bioterrorist expansion quite a bit...although maybe that's because I was the bad guy!  But still, I think it spices up a game, that for me, had gotten a bit stale.