Just to mix things up a bit, let's talk about board games! Meredith and I attended GenCon last week in Indianapolis and we had an absolute blast. I had reservations about spending four days in a jam-packed conference center with hordes of potentially unwashed nerds, but it was truly an awesome experience.
We met up with several friends from various parts of the country and spent four days playing games, meeting nerd celebrities, listening to amazing acapella video game choirs, and hanging out with our fellow geeks. Meredith and I have also gotten addicted to the Nintendo 3DS StreetPass system, in which your "Mii" (avatar) gets swapped with other 3DS systems when you pass by. You get to use these avatars as temporary assistants in StreetPass games. Needless to say, GenCon is a StreetPass nirvana!
Highlights of GenCon 2014:
- True Dungeon - This is essentially a full-sized D&D adventure that you walk through with your party. There were some really ingenious (and difficult!) puzzles to solve. Our group did pretty well early on, but we died during the final combat scenario. If you go to GenCon, True Dungeon is a must!
- Game Library - You can buy an eight-hour pass to a room with hundreds (thousands?) of board games. Everything from old-school 80s MouseTrap to the latest and greatest games being released at GenCon. Pick any game you want, check it out, and go play it! This is a great way to play games on a "try before you buy" basis.
- Tracy Hickman's Killer Breakfast - This is a stage show in which Tracy and Laura Hickman (famous authors most commonly associated with books set in the D&D Dragonlance universe) run a crazy D&D-esque game on stage. They bring up 8-10 random people for ~10 minutes and progress through an absolutely hilarious adventure, ultimately resulting in everyone getting killed and another 8-10 people being brought on stage. Tracy Hickman is incredibly funny and his improv is top notch.
- Food Trucks - This is sort of random, but the food trucks at GenCon are insane. The food is a bit pricy, but you can get just about any meal you can think of (Indian, Mexican, Italian, Mac n' Cheese, etc) and all of it is delicious!
Meredith took a couple of pictures that I'll have to steal from her and post later on. In the meantime, here's a picture of our GenCon purchases:
Here is a small selection of my favorite games of the Con:
Ortus Regni – The most beautiful game I’ve ever played. The artwork and quality is absolutely top notch. You build a deck of 24 cards from a library of 90 and use them to build and expand fiefs in your earldom. You can build armies and defenses, attempt to assassinate your peers, elevate yourself to kingship, and try to bequeath your earldom to your heir before you die of old age (run out of cards). You are encouraged to attack your peers, as a black token is added to a pool every round that is free of combat. After eight tokens are added to the pool, the barbarian horde attacks.
Cash ‘n Guns 2.0 – The only game I ever had to buy the moment I saw it. We were playing in the game library and looked over to see four guys pointing plastic guns at each other in some sort of stand-off. Everybody gets eight cards at the beginning of the round representing trigger pulls, five are blanks and three are live bullets. You try to bluff your peers into thinking you’ve got a live round in your gun, and on the count of three everyone aims at their desired target. Each player can then choose to lay down (pulling out of the round) or stand up and take it. The players that remain standing reveal their cards. If you remain standing and don’t get shot, you can draw money. There are also cards that give players various special abilities. The person with the most money at the end of the eighth round wins.
Coup and Coup: Reformation – I’m a big fan of the Werewolf Game and Resistance (party bluffing games), and Coup is in the same vein. Best part about it, however, is that Coup can be played by as few as two people, whereas Resistance requires five and the Werewolf game requires an entire school bus worth of players. Each player controls two randomly-selected government officials (there are five total officials) that have specific abilities. The identity of these officials is kept secret from the other players. Each player can bluff to use the special powers of any of the five officials, but another player can call their bluff. The player then reveals the card for the official with the corresponding power if they have it. If they have the card, the opposing player loses one of their officials. If they don’t have the card, they lose one of their own officials. A player loses the round when they run out of officials.
Machi Koro – This is a simple city-building card game that debuted in Japan some time ago and will be released soon (this week?) in English. There was an overview of the English version at GenCon, but a friend of ours brought her Japanese copy so we could play through it. There are ~15 cards representing different buildings, each with one or two numbers on the top. You roll a die on your turn and gain an amount of currency if you roll a number on a card you own. There are also attack cards that can give you currency from someone else’s bank if they roll a certain number, or give you currency from everyone else’s bank if you roll a number. You also have four “major attraction” cards you can build that give you special abilities (e.g. roll two dice instead of one, or earn double currency for certain cards). The first player to build their fourth major attraction wins.
-b0b
(...get your geek on!)
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