Gencon Recap

 

Back from Gencon and what a whirlwind trip it was.  I traveled with Laura (my wife), Dan (my awesome brother), Ellen (his wife) and Ryan (another buddy).  It was a long drive, made worse for me by my lingering dizziness.  I thought I might be pretty bad off during the Gencon week, but once the show started, my head cleared and it was go-time.

I won’t bother with a blow-by-blow.  That would take far too long.  Instead, I’ll hit the different games we tried out and my thoughts on them.

Evil Baby Orphanage (Wyrd Miniatures):

This was a game several of my friends were looking forward to.  I was on the fence about it, but when we got an advance preview of the game, I jumped at the chance.  It’s a non-collectable card game involving capturing evil people when they’re babies and building a child-friendly orphanage to keep them all calm and not hurting each other (no Genghis… don’t bite Hitler!).  The game was fun, but turned out to be much longer than I expected.  Dan ended up picking this one up (he had funded the Kickstarter for it) but I found it to be a “pass” myself.  I’d play it if it came up, but it would be low on my list of things I’d want to try.

Verdict: TOO LONG, NO THANKS

Attack on Planet Earth (Flying Frog Productions):

Laura, Ellen, Dan and I lined up for a demo of Attack on Planet Earth.  The game can be played co-op or competitively and is designed around a bunch of alien races all trying to take over the planet.  You move your aliens to different places, attack the resistance, and subjugated humans while trying to stop other aliens from doing the same.  It was actually pretty different in gameplay from a lot of other Flying Frog Games, but wasn’t enough to really warrant a purchase.  Especially since I had just spent a lot of money at the booth on something else…

Verdict: WAS FUN, BUT NO THANKS

Last Night on Earth: Timber Peak (Flying Frog Productions):

The first of the games I actually went to find a Gencon and it did not disappoint.  A whole new set of boards, new experience abilities, new characters, new cards.  I picked this up and we played a couple games at the hotel room that night.  Dan wasn’t feeling well (bad food) so Laura, Ellen and I played.  There has often been concern that the humans are at a real disadvantage in the game.  Let me tell you, the experience abilities seemed to turn that right around.  Both games the humans had a pretty solid time of it turning back the zombie horde.  I’m looking forward to combining the games and seeing if they bring a nice balanced mix to the whole thing.

Verdict:  PURCHASED, AND HAPPY I DID

Level 7 (Privateer Press):

The second of the games I actually went to find.  The line for the PP booth was hours long, but Dan spotted one of our locals and asked him if he wouldn’t mind picking up Level 7 for us when he reached the front.  It took a day later to get the game, and we played it on Friday night.  Now understand we were reading the rules around midnight in order to start playing, so we did get a lot wrong, but we had a ton of fun playing.  The game is a board game with tile exploration similar to the Dungeons and Dragons board games.  It’s semi-cooperative in that the players work together, but you can win without the other players winning.  It’s an alien horror game, and does very well at keeping the horror feel going throughout.  We ran into trouble at the end of the game when it seemed to fall apart, but on Sunday I went back to the PP booth to ask some questions and sure enough we played it wrong a little.  Still, fantastic game and really looking forward to the next time it comes out.

Verdict: PURCHASED, AND REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING IT BACK OUT

Chupacabre (Moostache Games):

This was a simple dice game that could be played very quickly.  Each person has six dice with different animals on them.  You roll your dice, put all the like animals together, and then anyone who rolled the evil Chupacabre could start trying to eat other animals, so long as there were not too many of them to overpower him.  Any that he ate, you got to keep the dice and then you all roll again.  Whoever ends up with all the dice wins.  We did notice that the game got to the point of one person winning was pretty much impossible to stop, but made a houserule to help out with that.  Plus, since one-on-one games ended in about 2 minutes, it’s not a big deal.

Verdict:  PURCHASED, IT’S A NICE GAME TO PULL OUT WHEN YOU’RE WAITING FOR SOMETHING ELSE

Smash Up (AEG):

This was a new non-collectable card game where you took two of eight different decks and put them together to make your one deck.  So you could be playing Zombie Robots against Pirate Aliens and then the next game be playing Zombie Wizards against Robot Tricksters.  There were eight factions so you could play up to four players.  Each group had its own feel.  Zombies brought creatures back from the discard pile.  Dinosaurs had lots of strength (and lasers).  Ninja were all about killing and moving their people around.  You had to attack different locations and earn victory points as the game progressed.  A fun diversion, but I think there would quickly become “best deck combinations” and if you happened to get two that played together well, you’ll end up with a leg up over everyone else.  Dan ended up picking it up, so I’m sure it’ll hit the table again soon.

Verdict:  PASS, BUT I’LL PLAY IT WHEN DAN BRINGS IT OUT

Mage Wars (?):

This was the “surprise” game for me this year.  Almost every year there’s a game I get that I didn’t even know existed before I got there.  This year it was Mage Wars.  We got a demo of the game and it sounded really interesting, so I tried to buy one.  But they were sold out.  But they said on Saturday morning they would have 80 more copies to sell.  I managed to get one of those copies and sat down with Laura to try to figure out all the rules on Saturday night.  Wow, it was complicated.  We got through part of it, but it was going to take me a long time just to figure out how to do everything, so we put it away until I had a few hours to devote to learning how to play it.

Verdict:  PURCHASED, BUT NOT EXACTLY SURE HOW GOOD IT IS YET

X-Wing (Fantasy Flight):

We demoed the new X-Wing game and Dan dubbed it “Wings of War 2!”  I never played Wings of War, but it seems like it’s pretty much the same game as this one, except this one has more customization available and used more ships at a time.  We had an enjoyable demo where Laura and I (the TIE Fighters) all ran into Dan and Ellen (the X-Wings) and stuff blew up.  I checked out the game itself – it was being sold as two TIE Fighters and one X-Wing, and then expansion packs of $15 were another single ship.  Wow.  A bit too rich for my blood.

Verdict:  PASS, BECAUSE IT WAS TOO EXPENSIVE

Iron Kingdoms Roleplaying Game (Privateer Press):
We bought tickets to play in the new IK RPG on Friday morning.  By this point we already knew that we weren’t going to get a copy of the game.  Only 350 copies arrived at Gencon and they sold out quick.  Still, we wanted to try out the game, so there we were.  We had five people (Slaz joined us for this one) but the game only allowed four.  We managed to convince the GM (Doug Seacat, no less!) to let me step in as the warjack so we could all play in the same game.  By the end of it, we were all smitten with it.  Fantastic game, I love the world (I always have – I was playing in Iron Kingdoms back when the only thing PP had to their name was the first Witchfire Trilogy book), and the rules actually seemed to flow very well.  Even my wife, who hates new rules, said she would love to play this one.

Verdict:  OHMIGOD I CANNOT WAIT FOR THIS BOOK TO ARRIVE IN STORES!!!

Flashpoint (Indie Games):

I had played this one before, but I didn’t realize they were going to be at Gencon and when I was on my own for a short time, I wandered past them and did a double-take.  I sat down to play a demo mostly because this is one of my favorite board games of all time and I did not own it yet.  I’m going to tell you what it’s about and ask that you ignore the “meh” comment that comes up when you hear it: you’re a team of firefighters trying to save people in a building.  Yeah, doesn’t sound that interesting.  But trust me, it’s awesome.  I had the same reaction as you but my buddy, Zusmer, kept raving about it and I tried it.  At Gencon I bought it and convinced Dan, Ellen and Laura to play it despite their “meh” reactions and it ended up being one of the best board games we played all weekend.  Give this game a try if you like cooperative games.

Verdict:  PURCHASED, ONE OF THE BEST GAMES I HAVE PLAYED

Zombicide (Cool Mini or Not):

I picked this one up through the kickstarter but I figured I’d see how the game itself played.  Laura and I sat down for a demo and got what I would dub “the worst demo this year”.  The girl who was trying to teach us the game (“trying” is probably the wrong word… “reluctantly” might be better in its place) could not care less about us.  She texted on her phone, talked to other people at the booth, and randomly flipped cards and moved zombies and told us we were dead.  Had I not already purchased the game, this demo would have certainly turned me off from getting it at the con.  But I do have it already, and will have to give it my review later when I can actually play it.

Verdict:  WORST DEMO OF THE YEAR, THOUGH I ALREADY OWN THE GAME AND HEAR IT’S GOOD

True Dungeon:

This isn’t really a board game or anything, but rather the whole True Dungeon event that I always hear about.  This was my third Gencon and the first time I had done True Dungeon.  I didn’t know anything about what I was doing.  We had seven people in the game that I knew and were joined by three others – one who was a veteran who was really nice and helped us out, and two adolescent girls, one who was nice and the other who spent the whole time complaining and yelling at people.  She almost singlehandedly ruined the experience for me until she was pulled out of the game halfway through (for unrelated reasons).  Overall, the word I have to say about it is: confused.  I didn’t really know what I was doing, the people who were running the event didn’t really explain anything, and poor Slaz had to help four brand new people who had no idea what was going on.  Add to that the rooms were all quite dark so no one could read the primers that they offered the new players so they would know what was going on.  It wasn’t until around room 4 or 5 (after the annoying girl was gone) that I finally started to understand the game.  And by then, the game was nearly over.  I would probably enjoy it more the next time, but it’s priced pretty high for the entertainment value.

Verdict:  WOULD DO IT AGAIN IF WE COULD GET ALL OUR OWN PEOPLE IN ONE EVENT, BUT WOULDN’T MIND PASSING ON IT TOO

Indianapolis Brew Tour:

On Saturday afternoon when the floor was packed, Laura, Ellen, Dan and I all went on the Indy brew tour of four different breweries.  Some were bad, some were fantastic, some were bland and some were nice middle-of-the-road.  We spent almost four hours drinking and chatting with other Con-goers in a non-gaming-atmosphere.  A great break from everything else happening.  My only worry about doing it again would be that I would want to see different breweries.

Verdict:  WOULD DO IT AGAIN IF I KNEW IT WAS NEW BREWERIES, GLAD I DID IT

Tracy Hickman’s Breakfast:

About 500 people piled into an auditorium-style room to watch Tracy Hickman do an improv/gaming session where he kills lines of people at a time.  The people often have their own things they do to try to mess with Hickman.  The concept seems really fun, except that I could not hear anything anyone was saying.  My wife could only hear every other word.  And half of the people who tried to do something funny just turned out to be lame instead.  I left after an hour of not being able to hear any of the jokes so that I could get in line to get Mage Wars instead, and Dan, Laura and Ellen left not too long after that.

Verdict:  NEVER AGAIN

Fortune and Glory (Flying Frog Productions):

I usually remember the terrible demos I receive, but this is without a doubt one of the best demos I received.  I didn’t really want another FFP game (they all play similarly and we have many of them already), but this one looked interesting.  It’s a competitive game where you all play Indiana Jones-type treasure-hunters going around the world to search for treasure.  As you do, Nazis are trying to thwart you, and you have to go through obstacles to reach the prize.  Sometimes you have to race against other players to reach the goal.  If you fail at a challenge, it flips over and becomes a Cliffhanger!  (Will the Doctor manage to escape the plane crashing into a mountain?  Find out next turn!)  The woman running the demo did great at selling the game like a story, hamming it up as much as she could.  If I didn’t already have a ton of loot and were it not already Sunday, I might have made this my impulse buy of the con.

Verdict:  PASS, THOUGH IT DOES LOOK LIKE A VERY FUN GAME

So there you have it – most of the events and games I tried (I left a couple out because I didn’t really care enough about them one way or the other).  An exhausting con, but had a fantastic time.