Strategicon: Gateway 2012, Day 1

This year at Strategicon I actually went alone as none of my family went (their interest in games has waned) nor any of my students. I was excited for this one as not only were there specific tournaments I wanted to enter, but the guest game designer was Antoine Bauza from France and I own many of his games.


Geekdom at its finest

I arrived when the convention first opened so I could participate in a playtest of one of Antoine's new designs in development, SINBAD. Sinbad is a cooperative game with a variety of scenarios of varying difficulty on a map representing sinbad's adventures. Each character has different abilities that they contribute to the overall missin and various encounters as you journey to your destination in essence to confront a "Boss". Each player has his own deck of cards with ability symbols that are drawn to add for each challenge. We played a pretty easy scenario, with fairly easy challenges and our group defeated the games quite handily. An interesting cooperative game with no traitor element, but not too exciting.

























One of the best was meeting Antoine who taught us the game of course and had to translate some elements (as they were in French), and I was also able to have him sign my editions of his games that I brought: Seven Wonders, Bakong & Mystery Express. He also gave us a limited promo card for 7 Wonders that actually has a picture of his newly born baby on it.



Designer Antoine Bauza and myself

Next was actually more exciting, I got to playtest my game NISSE on the mainfloor and it was scheduled in the main catalog. I had a good group of four who signed up and were willing to playytest, and gave good feedback at the end. There was a Danish couple who signed up, but arrived late and were still excited just to watch the playtest as they understood the background and legend of Nisse from Denmark. In essence Nisse are the gnomes in scandinavian lore who helped a farmer with the duties on a farm as long as he received his bowl of porridge in the barn.

My visitors from Denmark

The legend grew to them bringing presents for the children, and this is the root for many stories of Santa Claus and Christmas. The game Nisse is an economic strategy game as you are the gnomes competing for tasks, porridge and special abilities to gain the farmer's favor to bring the most presents on Christmas morning. You compete each round in selecting tasks current for the season and placing tokens to gain the most return. For this playtest I was trying out a new tracking system for earned tokens. The playtest went well, and many other people came by to observe and check it out.




I was then able to play in a few tournaments in games I have never played before but wanted to. The first was the game FINCA, a former game of the year finalist. In the game you are collecting fruit from a windmill you move on, where your movement and what fruit you collect is dependant upon your location in a mancala-type rotation. Timing is paramount, and once you get the fruit you must then deliver to specific towns to fulfill orders that help you collect symbols. Ultimately the winner is determined by leading in various categories of symbols with victory points. It is actually very simple and fun to play (I got 3rd place). I want this game!

I then played a hit from this past year called HAWAII. It is bit heavier, but not necessarily longer game. It has your typical euro-mechanics of resource collection, tile selection and buying of victory points, but it has a variable set-up and your personal village is built on a grid that determines both up and down what scores in the end. I caught on pretty quick and ended up winning 1st place in the tournament as only one of two newbies to the game. Another must have game for me.

This was an absolutely great day in game-playing, the funnest first day I have had at any Strategicon.





Games with Relatives

With family in town for Brittany's wedding, there was of course some time to play games. I am finding more and more when I want a simple, interactive, fun game that is easy to learn but has strategy and can include up to 8 players, I break out Shadow Hunters. It is very popular with those who come to game night at the institute, and can be very social. My favorite part is the tense feeling of not knowing what side people are on and the challenge of discovering the answer and filling my win condition. Its that same tense nature as to why my wife Michelle does NOT like playing it! Joe Seeley and John Stagg seemed to like it in particular when we played tonight.

Gaming Session - at home in a village

After not having game night for a few weeks, we finally got to bring the Kennerspiel des Jahres ("Complex" game of the year) winner for 2012 to the table, Village. In some ways it is a typical good Euro-game with worker placement mechanics and resource collecting/management, but the workers are unique in that they come in "generations" and some in fact "die" and more points are earned if they get a place in the village chronicle for their deeds instead of being buried in the "unknown graves". There is great variety in the game as each turn random colored cubes (resources and attributes) are placed in various locations. A cube is then selected to utilize that location, and then the cubes are used to pay for different actions. Generations of workers are taken from the home farm to learn skills and perform actions as a craftsman, in the church, in the town hall, at the marketplace, or even traveling to other villages. There are many decision, choices and path to victory points, but it is not an overwhelming amount.

Sharks on my mind

So this is Shark Week on the Discovery channel, the yearly ritual where we scare the wits out of ourselves by viewing the awesome power of sharks and don't visit the beach for the month. As much as I love the beach and the ocean and body-surfing, I must confess that I really do have a horrible fear of sharks and being eaten by one that stems from a variety of experiences of mine growing up.

When I was young I really had a thing for reading and I loved books, and was a pretty good reader in elementary school. I had read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy in the 6th grade, and was even devouring the dry Silmarillion Tolkein history in middle school (mainly to decipher the elven language). I was a member of the Science Fiction book club at a young age and started collecting books. My dad had provided Encyclopedias for us and even invested in various Time-Life book series, my favorite ones were the leather-bound covers of the Old West.

One of the first series that he got was the Nature Library, and they had one volume called The Sea. The opening chapters were colorful and delightful about the wonders of the ocean. But there was a certain point in the book, I faintly recall about chapter 6 or page 90, that dealt with the deep sea. In that part were pictures of awful monsters that swam in the waters, especially sharks. That part of the volume freaked me out and sent a chill down my spine. When I was young I loved being scared and would watch horror movies for the thrill of the scare. But this was different. I felt an odd nervous urge to pull down that volume and thumb through, daring myself past page 90. Often I would get halfway, then throw the book back on the shelf and run to my room. It really freaked me out.

At the tender age of 9 my father first took me and my brother Randy to see Jaws in the theaters in 1975, after all it was PG (!) and a smashing success. The problem was at night I kept having nightmares about it, and would often envision Ben Gardner's head floating by and knew a shark was around. As I drifted to sleep I felt I was lying on the ocean surface and at any moment a shark would come up and gobble me. No wonder I pee'd the bed. It probably didn't help that on one of our trips to Catalina island we had brought back a souvenir shark jaw, gaping wide open and big enough to fit my arm through but you had to avoid the still sharp teeth. I think it was my brother Randy's and he kept it in our room hanging on the wall. Wonderful image for self-starting nightmares.

With sterling consistency, my dad took me in 1978 to see Jaws 2. I remember it vividly as we sat on the right side of the theatre. There is a part after a boating accident that Chief Brody wades out in the water to retrieve a piece of the blown-up speedboat. At that moment a wave rises up and a large object comes on top of him. It was the burnt body of the boat driver, but you think its the shark. It scared me so bad I jumped from my seat. Literally. I was sitting in the lap of the lady behind me, it was so embarassing.

As you can imagine there were times I was afraid of the water, but we went to the beach so often I overcame it for the most part. I remember vivdly one time I was at the beach with my dad and I was playing in the waves trying to ride a few and venturing out further where I couldn't touch. I saw my dad on the beach waving at me, and I didn't know why. All of the sudden I felt something smooth slide up against me and I looked down to see this dark mass on my right side move by, with this triangle fin above the surface break the water right under my arm.

My heart sank to my feet and all I could think of was to swim with all my might or be chum. Now I was known to be a pretty spastic swimmer as it was, this time I must have had arms and legs gyrating in every direction as I scrambled to shore. As I pulled myself onto the beach in sheer panic amid the relief of touching land, my dad came up to me laughing. In my bewilderment he pointed out the dolphins that were near shore playing in the waves, and one had rubbed up to me sideways with his flipper. Relieved only slightly, I still knew there was something sinister in the water.

Though I do still love swimming in the ocean, I try not to look down too often to peer through the glassy surface. That's where my imagination gets me. I make it a rule to always bodysurf where there are others around. I figure it increases my chances of survival if the man-eater has a choice.

You can imagine how I feel about this . . . .

Game Session

 We played Fresco tonight, a game I have had for a few years and had played with my brother, but it seemed fresh and new breaking it out tonight. It is a worker placement game where you are buying and blending paints to restore a fresco in a cathedral. It has similarities to other euro-games but has what I consider a few cool & interesting decision mechanics. Whoever is last goes first in selecting times when your workers wake up. This in turn effects their happiness/mood which can get you another worker, the order of paint selection at the market, and the cost you pay per paint. You then have to decide by secret plotting behind a screen where you will send your workers: to the market, to paint part of the fresco, to do portraits to earn extra money, to blend paints for more valuable colors, or to go to the theater to raise your worker's happiness. A bishop also moves around the fresco, and can give you bonus points if he is near the part of the fresco you restore. It has enough cool decisions that interplay with each other that makes it interesting (and tense!) but not too many. The game also can be played in an hour and is shorter than heavier games. Our game was tense with the first three spots separated by a single point! Some smart decisions by Charles helped shut out other players from getting more points on the last turn.



My decision-making view as green, in the lead, but got passed in the end.

We again played Kingdom builder and I did better, but still find myself not "seeing" better placements for my settlements.

Kingdom Builder
1- Tyler H, 2- Brett H, 3- CharlesG, 4- Mike H

Fresco
1- Lauren T, 2- Charles G, 3- Brett H, 4- Tyler H

Game Session

 I have been a bit sheepish about talking to gamers about games I have played since 2007, and having NOT played Agricola (one of the most popular and highest rated games). Well, no more and mission accomplished as I finally got a play in. I didn't do great and made both decision mistakes and card reading mistakes, but I loved it. It can be overwhelming with the variety of decisions to make, especially when you don't where you are going exactly (a problem with every new game you play, but must be plowd through), but I wanted to play it again immediately when we were done. I felt I actually had the win wrapped up by the second to last turn, but I neglected to fence my farm in before others snagged that action and it cost me big so I tied for second instead. The best part of the game is probably the variety, with an unending amount of occupations and improvements (each player has only 7 of each in every game, out of hundreds), and once you get the flow it is not complicated.

My humble farm, about half-way through.

The other game I introduced was this year's Spiel de Jahres (Game of the Year), Kingdom Builder. I had played it at the last Strategicon, and it also has great variety in that you use only 4 out of 16 boards, 3 out of some 15 goal cards, and special player abilities change with every board that is used. It was fun to play it again, although I felt a little boxed in by the cards I drew.

Kingdom Builder

1- Tyler H, 2- Nate J, 3- Josh D, 4- Brett H

Agricola

1- Nate J, 2- Tyler H/Brett H, 3- Josh D