Must… get… sleep…

Each night I start these reports later and end up with less text.  The tradition continues this late Saturday night as we just returned from an 9am – 11pm gaming marathon.  Matthew joined us today and it was our best day yet.  The crowds really pick up on Saturday making the show floor quite congested; combine that with a Colts / Bears pre-season football game in the adjacent RCA Dome and this was one busy downtown today.

The morning started at 9am with a meetup of a small group of diehards from BoardGameGeek.  I coordinated this in one of the discussion forums and it was great to see such a strong turnout.  We checked out a couple of games from GameBase7 and went to the reserved tables in Hall 500 to start.  Three games hit the table right away – For Sale, St. Petersburg, and HAVOC: the Hundred Years War (wow, it feels cool to do a BGG link for that game!).

Jacob and Matthew teach For Sale to ginn5j’s (website) three sons.  This was a big hit and was followed by Pick Picknic.

I brought out an early (but portable) playtest version of our soon-to-be-published game HAVOC: the Hundred Years War (website) and taught it to ginn5j, rschmucker, and qzhdad.  Amazing coincidental side note: Randy Schmucker’s father taught my chemistry class in high school!

ginn5j, rschmucker, and qzhdad join me in a game of Havoc.

I think impressions were favorable and at least one of the group indicated he will pick it up at BGG.Con.

Another group of BGG’ers play St. Petersburg.

Zambo and ynenn (Jason Little) get ready to try a stack of Jason’s prototypes.

Thanks to everyone that showed up to make this a nice diversion and chance to put faces to names.  Let’s do it again next year!

We wrapped up around 10:30am, hit the show floor for a while, grabbed some lunch, then went to our second annual Anime BESM RPG session.  This is very light-weight RPG action and perfect for kids – think of it as interactive story telling with low emphasis on killing monsters (these are rated TV-7Y – no killing!) and high emphasis on role playing, humor, and fun.

Matthew played a brutish bully-bashing 3rd grade girl; Jacob played the kid-with-no-name and was only allowed to speak twice during the adventure.  But boy, did we listen when he spoke.

Next we split up on the show floor, with the boys playing some more Pokemon while I sought out some collectible game that looked at least a little innovative.  I don’t understand how each year new CCG games get released that bring nothing new to the industry – same old mechanics, same old themes (fantasy, anime, superheroes).  Tucked away in the back row of the show floor was a very impressive booth by Temple Games where they were showcasing their new collectible tile game titled ChiZo Rising.

Some of the tiles in ChiZo Rising.

I sat down for a demo, expecting to be disappointed but ended up being surprisingly interested in the game.  There are some interesting mechanics here based on the geometry of tile laying – interesting point #1.  They also implemented a real “action stack” of tiles – interesting point #2.  I enjoyed it enough to pick up two starters and two boosters for $30 total and will report more soon as I give it a try with the boys.  The artwork is pretty impressive as well as you can see from the photo.

Jacob, Matthew, and I then challenged each other to a game of Ticket to Ride: Europe in the Big Box Play & Win section.  This was a first play for the boys and we all enjoyed it immensely – I’m convinced this is even better than the original.  I prefer the tightness of this board and the ability to use train stations to squeeze in an extra ticket or two.

Jacob and Matthew near the end of our game.

The “play & win” and “learn & play” areas were well done – they had DVD instructional videos for several of the games (as you can see below).  A great way to scale the teaching process.

Unknown gamer learning Pirate’s Cove from the DVD.

Ahhh, this takes too much time each night!  But, if I don’t take the time then I rarely remember important details and almost certainly fall too far behind in my posts.

The day started with an early RPGA Living Greyhawk adventure for Jacob and me.  We created our characters at GenCon 2004 and played a few adventures at GameStorm in Portland this year.  Even if you are a casual D&D gamer this is a fun way to take advantage of the convention to do something a bit different – this is always a highlight for us.

That’s our GM in the upper left – she did a great job narrating and we successfully accomplished our mission with an undersized party.

Jacob and I took advantage of some free time around lunch to roam the floor some more.  I spent a brief amount of time at the auction, winning a couple of interesting military history books, and allowed Jacob to spend some time doing demos at the Wizards of the Coast section.  I returned to the floor and wandered over to the Z-Man Games booth to see what was up and found Rick Thornquist and Valerie Putman getting ready to try out the new game Parthenon.  This is a production of Siren Bridge Publishing and Z-Man will be handling sales and distribution.

Rick, Valerie, and game designer Jason Hawkins join me for a demo of Parthenon.

This is a very interesting game, and one that I think might have a great deal of appeal to eurogamers.  There are quite a few borrowed elements and mechanics in this game.  The theme and art treatment immediately reminded me of Attika, but this game is quite a bit deeper.  The basic idea is resource gathering to build out through a tech tree with a wide range of random events and other influences that can change the game enough to keep it interesting from play to play.  Also, each of the city-states (or islands, I can’t remember) starts with a different resource slant, creating some differences in strategy depending on the player.  I can’t comment on balance or how long the game takes yet, as we only played through the first of three years during the demo.  But I did like it enough to buy it on the spot and look forward to giving it a try shortly.

Oh, and while I was playing Parthenon these two gents walked up:

That’s John Bohrer (Winsome) and Martin Wallace (game designer extraordinaire).

 At 2PM Jacob and I took off for the boardgame hall for our schedule event: Giant Seafarers of Catan.  We enjoy playing this once each year on the “big board”.  This time we were up against a friendly couple (they might have just been friends, but who knows…) and it was a tight, tense match that I managed to win by grabbing the largest army tile for my 13 points.

Jacob and I during our Seafarers match.  I was orange and managed to build out to the island in the upper left (you can barely see me making my way to the see on the main island).

One side-note: the guy who makes the Settlers Organizer dropped by to let us his cool little contraption during the game.  I figured the least I could do was give him a little promo here – this is a helpful little caddy for Settlers and the expansions!

The Settlers Organizer in action.

 After Seafarers we had a bit of time to roam the floor again.

This is Robert Johannessen, designer of Quest for the Dragonlords.  Dave Eggleston was kind enough to donate this game to me and I picked up the latest expansion today.  It provides an economic upgrade system to the game and includes some very nice pewter miniatures.

Here’s a glimpse of the latest Lock ‘N Load release, Band of Heroes.  This takes the original system (Vietnam based) into WWII.  I picked up the original two years ago and have only played it twice, but it is a solid system worth checking out.

Jacob tried out the Axis & Allies Miniatures game today.  He said it was the best game he played all day (not counting D&D).  When I probed and asked if it was because of the game or the really cool minis, he replied “well, hmmmm…”.  I’ll try it myself and report back…

The day ended with another Days of Wonder booth shift.  Denise Patterson, Valerie Putman, and Rick Thornquist all stopped by to chat and I roped Mark Kaufmann’s son Michael into taking this snapshot.

That’s all for now… see ya tomorrow.

Day 1 is over – a great start to what looks to be the biggest year ever for GenCon.  They appear to be running out of room at the convention center and are one of the driving forces (along with the Indianapolis Colts) leading to a build-out of a new stadium and convention center.

I’m not going to post all of the photos here, but go ahead and check out my flickr photo stream for a larger selection of pics taken at the show.

Jacob and I originally scheduled a morning session in the True Dungeon, but unfortunately Jacob is not yet old enough for this event (the minimum age is either 13 or 14 depending on who you ask), so our first task was to get a refund for those two tickets.  This process went very smoothly, taking only about 10 minutes – this is in stark contrast to the line (once again) for those that needed to pick up their badges.  Looks like it was another 2–3 hour wait for most.

With nothing scheduled for the day other than some booth demo work at Days of Wonder, Jacob and I decided we would spend most of our time on the show floor.  With 45 minutes to burn while waiting for the floor to open, we wandered over to the boardgame area in the 500 hall and checked out Carcassonne – the Castle from GameBase7.  This is a nice little Carcassonne variant but I didn’t see much there that I haven’t already seen in other versions.  I prefer the Carcassonne – the City.

We hit the show floor about 10:15am.  Our first stop was Fantasy Flight, mostly because they were in a conspicuous location and I saw an empty World of Warcraft – the Boardgame demo table.

Jacob poses with Fantasy Flight CEO Christian Petersen.  If you haven’t already done so, make sure you read his rant about how the company started.

This game, as you might expect, is enormous.  I wonder if FFG and Eagle Games are actively competing for heaviest (in pounds) game.  We played through a single turn and got a decent feel for the game.  This is a dungeon-crawl board/RPG game that involves completing quests, buffing up your character, and rolling lots of dice.

The map, cards, and character boards for World of Warcraft.

This is game is likely to be a winner because of the licensing tie-in, but I’m not sure there’s much of a game in there in terms of creative mechanics or concepts.  It felt a lot like Runebound to me (yes, I picked up my $20 2nd edition upgrade at the FFG booth) though the bits are much nicer and the scale much grander.  There’s also a player-vs.-player element to the game that I never experienced in the demo – perhaps there’s more to it than I’m seeing?

Jacob hanging out with designer Kevin Wilson and pundit Rick Thornquist.  Rick and I bumped into each other a few times throughout the day but never found the time to have a real conversation – hopefully that can happen tomorrow.

Jacob and I still have a long list of demos we want to try out on the floor.  One of these is Axis & Allies Miniatures, though I’m skeptical of the game itself based on some comments by Joe and Tom.  Avalon Hill has an absolutely spectacular showcase of WWII vehicles and other static displays – they win the prize for environmental impact.

Jacob with the tank.

The demo highlight of the day for us was Railroad Tycoon, the remake of Age of Steam and collaboration of Martin Wallace and Glenn Drover.  Age of Steam is a game I’ve wanted to introduce to the boys but it is a bit dry and complex.  The video-game tie-in and simplification of the system might make for the perfect train game for our family, and I wasn’t disappointed by the demo. 

Jacob joins me, three other playtesters, and Keith Blume from Eagle Games in a demo of Railroad Tycoon.

The board is huge for this game – bigger than the World of Warcraft board.  I like the scale of the board and the way it conveys the scale of the United States.  We played with a mix of real game components and substitutes, so it is difficult to get a feel for how all of the bits will work together.  The game itself was great and I didn’t find myself missing some of the complexities taken away from Age of Steam.  Jacob also gave it a big thumbs up.  Did I mention how big the board is for this game?

Our final stop of the day was at the Days of Wonder booth.  Jacob and I agreed to help out Mark Kaufmann again this year by working three shifts at their booth.  Jacob and I both love their games and love teaching them to others.

I took responsibility for the 3pm demo session for Shadows Over Camelot, the outstanding cooperative game that I’ve mentioned before.  Days of Wonder built a beautiful 3D setting for the game, including a castle and areas depicting all of the quests.  They also did a fine job painting the knight miniatures.

The 3D setup for Shadows Over Camelot.

I guided a group of seven others through an entire session of the game, played without the traitor (though in hindsight I probably should have included it).  The game was finished in about 1:50, which isn’t bad for a whole group of newbies.  I think they were enjoying it so much that they didn’t want it to end; they especially didn’t want it to end with a failed quest (which is often the best way to finish the game, BTW).  The game could have easily been over in 1:30, one reason why this game ranks so high for me right now.

That’s me, third head from the left, teaching 7 others how to play Shadows Over Camelot.

Time to retire – Jacob and I need to be back at the Con by 8am for our RPGA event.  Saturday we’ll bring Matthew with us for some more RPG action (including a kids LARP!) and boardgaming.  Stay tuned for my day 2 report tomorrow!

Sunday we joined the Ken and Brandon for some D&D in the afternoon (our ongoing Forgotten Realms campaign) and some brief boardgaming in the evening. Looking at my game collection for unplayed 2–player games, I discovered A House Divided, the light American Civil War wargame published most recently by Phalanx.  I won this at a the Rainy Day Games auction a few months ago (I think Dave sold it??).  Jacob, Brandon, and Matthew decided to try another unplayed game that I picked up at Goodwill a while back: the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone Game.

The boys played this cold out of the box, teaching the rules to themselves and struggling through what is a needlessly complex rulebook.  There are actually 6 different games in the box (6 3/4 if you count the final random card draw for the end-game); a couple of them involve some skill but most are very luck driven.

Matthew, Brandon, and Jacob working through the rules.

They called for help for the rules to the last sub-game – I read the rules 3 or 4 times before finally figuring out what the designer must have meant.  In fact, Ken and I finished a (shortened) game of A House Divided well before the boys got through this game.  Comments after the game included “I don’t want to play that again,” “we should sell this for $0.99 at a garage sale,” and “we should give this back to Goodwill.”  Anyone want to trade?

Ken and I had a much more positive experience with A House Divided.  This is a very light, somewhat abstract strategic level depiction of the Civil War.  I say abstract because of the simplified movement system, which is essentially city-to-city via roads, rivers, or rails.  This game has about the same complexity level as the Columbia block games and even shares some similar mechanics for combat resolution.

Ken studying his options as the confederate player.

There’s a lot to like about this game.  I was able to read the rules in 30 minutes before Ken arrived and teach him in about 15 minutes – the basic game is very easy to learn.  Movement choices are constrained in each player’s turn by a D6 die roll to determine the number of available “marches” (2–6 per turn per player, first turn each player only gets 2 marches).  There’s some quirkiness to the victory conditions that can lead to some odd strategies, especially since we decided to end after 10 turns while 8 turns into the game (this was about 2 hours into the game).  Ken wisely started chasing around claiming union cities to try and get the victory points (via maximum army size) to swing in his favor.  The games seems fairly well balanced as well, offering interesting choices to both players even with the basic rules.  I look forward to playing again through the entire campaign, perhaps with the advanced rules that introduce supply and command.  Definite thumbs up and if you like games like Hammer of the Scots and Liberty you’ll probably enjoy this one.  My one complaint in relation to the block games is that I found there to be too few dice rolled in combat.  This may seem like an odd complaint, but since there’s no “strength” of units in this system (only firepower) Ken and I often found ourselves rolling a single D6 against each other, waiting to see who would roll a 1 or 2 first.  When a unit is damaged, it automatically recovers back to full strength at the end of combat.  I prefer the block system where units “remember” their damage and can be restored through a supply process.

We head out for GenCon Indy this Wednesday morning for some quality family time and four days of gaming goodness.  This has turned out to be a successful formula for our family:  Jacob and I spend four days gaming, Matthew joins us for one day, and Julie spends two days up in West Lafayette with her grandmother.  We’ve also arranged for family get-togethers on Thursday and Sunday night.  We’ll get back Monday morning in time for me to work and for the boys to hit football practice.

I’ve made my Backpack planning page for GenCon public.  I’m coordinating a BoardGameGeek meetup this year, so if you are going, join us at 9am Saturday morning at GameBase 7 (the open boardgame checkout area).  Jacob, Matthew, and I will be wearing our dark blue BSW t-shirts.  Come join us for some friendly chat and open gaming!

It was my turn to host the southside Tuesday game night for the RipCityGamers group.  My attendance at RCG events has gone up dramatically since I started hosting (surprise).  We had a huge turnout this week – 11 players in total. 

In the kitchen, Chuck, Doug, KC, and Mike played a game of Around the World in 80 Days.

Chuck and Doug during their game of Around the World in 80 Days.

Here is how the session went in Doug’s own words:

First up was Around The World In 80 Days. While certainly not winning the award for Best Use Of Box Space, and having gotten some lukewarm reviews, I found myself enjoying this little gem. Basically you pick one of a set of face up travel card that depicts either a ship or a train and also a number of days (ships range from 4 to 9, trains from 2-5). Each travel card has an action associated with it based on how it was placed near the board. For example, if you pick the card next to the balloon icon, you may roll a die to try to shave some days off of your trip. Next, you can move to the next location on the board, but only by playing the designated cards from your hand. For example to move from San Francisco to NYC, you must play two train cards. The sum of the numbers on the cards determine how many days it takes to make the trip. The goal is to use as few days as possible without being the last player to make it back to London.

There are several other mechanisms that I won't go into, but I'll mention that I felt they added flavor without feeling tacked on.

Chuck got off to a fast start, and I think he collected darn near every "first player in" marker there was. However, he spent quite a bit of time doing so, and thanks to an early Submarine card I was able to get my time down early and keep it there. I was also aided by Chuck, who was sitting to my right, spending a lot of time taking the First Player travel card and thus giving me a good selection of cards to choose from.

Mike and KC brought up the rear, and both of them made a lot of good plays that kept them in the running. I was fortunate to have all of my balloon and elephant rolls go well the first time, and I think I spent a total of two gold coins the entire game. I also managed to avoid the detective (who adds two days if you end up in the same locale he's in), but stuck it to the other players regularly.

In the end, Chuck and I got into London first, although Chuck had used up 79 days to just make it under the wire. I managed to get in in 69 days, which is a tough score to beat and only KC looked to have a real shot. Since he had to not be the only person not back in London at the end of a turn to avoid an automatic loss, he managed to use a couple of action cards to minimize his time down to eight days that would have tied me. However, since I got in first, I would have won the tiebreaker. In any event, in his attempt to find cards to help him get into London cheaply, he drew a storm card that added two days to both his and Mike's time (Chuck and I were safe in the Club by then, and thus didn't lose days), and so his final score was 71. Mike limped in in the same round, avoiding an auto loss, but his total was 80 days, giving Chuck third anyway.

It's light, it's fast, it's wacky, but I had a great time. And that was *before* I won! Despite a grossly oversized box, this is a nice little game that I'll be picking up.

A few of us were in the mood for some Settlers action, so we decided to play Seafarers of Catan, an expansion I’ve rarely played except for some scenarios from The Book.  Jacob and I will be playing Giant Seafarers at GenCon next week, so this was a good opportunity to brush up on the rules.  Jim and Rita joined me and we played one of the exploration scenarios.

Rita and Jim help me setup Seafarers of Catan.

Jim moved out in front early in the game – the dice rolls were leaning his way (many 5s and 6s, almost no 8s) and did a great job exploring and positioning himself for more settlements out in the unknown lands.  Rita was mostly hosed throughout the game but enjoyed herself; I made a charge at the end and got myself to 11 points before Jim finally pulled out the 12 point victory.  Rita and I were both convinced that Jim could have won 2–3 turns earlier but were not going to help him out at all – one more turn and I would have been the victor. 

In the kitchen after Around the World in 80 Days completed, the same group pulled out my copy of Industrial Waste.  This was an eBay auction win for me and I haven’t tried it yet, but it is good to know that the game is complete.

Chuck, Doug, KC, and Mike playing Industrial Waste.

Once again, Doug did a nice writeup:

Next up was Industrial Waste. I could not remember why this game didn't work with four players (it works nicely with two), but it became apparent as the game went on. To end the game (not win, end) one player has to move his factory token to the 20 column of the growth track. However, if the accident card comes up (there is one in the deck), and you've got too much waste sitting around (which was common for us), your factory tokens move back one or two spaces. As such, both Chuck and I were one card play away from ending the game in a couple of situations, hesitated as we felt we weren't in a good position to win, and ended up getting dragged back down the growth track.

After two hours of this, we gave up and called the game. Chuck won handily, I'm sure I was in last place or close. The game itself is really fun and has a lot of opportunity for screwage, but my god not for that long. The last 30 minutes were excruciating. What a shame.

The problem is that you have a set size deck regardless of the number of players. Since you play 15+ cards every turn with four players but only 9+ with two, that means that the accident card comes up much more often with four players and since it's impossible to always have a bribe card handy to stave off falling back on the growth chart, we saw a lot of ebb and flow. I suppose more savvy players might be able to avoid this, but since only the person who thinks they will win wants to end the game, I really don't think that anything can save the four player version with the possible exception of adding a second deck with the second accident card removed (and possibly reshuffling when an accident appears).

Mike Deans had this followup:

I was just going back over the rules to see if we missed anything, and we did. I don't think we were reshuffling the card deck after the accident came up. This would only have made the game longer if we did, however, as the accident card would come up more often!

Reading comments on the Geek there are a lot of positives for this as a 4-player game, so I'm not sure how/what we doing wrong. I think we may have been bidding too high for resources at the start, and not focusing enough on managing waste output. I'd be interested in giving it another go.

Upstairs, the kids / young adults engaged in a four-player game of Doom: the Boardgame with Jacob as the game master.

Jacob explains the rules to Jenna, Colin, and Graham.

 I don’t know too much about what happened in this game, other than the fact that the Deans boys now want their own copy of the game.

Wednesday night after football practice Jacob asked to play Take it Easy.  This is a fantastic light puzzle game that plays quickly.  Julie plans to introduce this one to the game sessions she runs at school.  It has some great spatial elements, requires a small amount of analysis, and the scoring uses single-digit multiplication.

Julie, Jacob, and Matthew playing Take it Easy.

 I usually do well in this game but got crushed by everyone; Julie was the victor.

Here’s a quick report on what has been going on at my lunchtime gaming group.

Last week we played two light games: For Sale and Leapfrog.  For Sale continues to be my favorite filler and I think it will continue to come out frequently this year.  I especially like how easy the game is to teach and how close the scores tend to be at the end.

Eric brought in his copy of Leapfrog, an interesting race game with extremely cool froggy bits.  The mechanics are simple – each player has a fixed number of bid tokens that influence how his or her frog moves.  In general you are trying to get your frog into the lead but each round has some twists that keep things interesting.  Extra frogs (when you play with fewer than 6 players) move randomly.  I’m not a big fan of blind bidding / bluffing / out guessing games (some would say For Sale is a blind bidding game but it doesn’t feel that way to me) so this wasn’t my cup of tea.  This would be a good one for kids given the cute little frogs.

Yesterday we gave King of the Elves a try.  This Alan Moon game isn’t highly regarded but I think it is a decent game.  It can play quickly as you can choose to the end game after as few rounds as you like; we played three rounds and I think the responses were favorable.  Arron and Tamara both did much better than I, though I’ll blame the fact that I never drew a gold bonus card on my poor showing.  Playing this reminded me of how much I enjoyed my one and only playing of Elfenland – maybe I can play it again at GenCon this year.

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