Strategicon Gateway 2012, Day 3

My third day on Monday at the convention was fairly short where I spent most of my time at the auction and actually helping other players with games. I did get to try Noblemen, a new game that will be published by Tasty Minstrel Games and is not yet in the US, it was a winner a few years back of the Hippodice game design competition in Germany. I was able to get TMG employee and a game designer in his own right (Eminent Domain), Seth Jafee to teach it. It is actually a really good game with euro-style mechanics of tile laying and action selection, and it has many things going on but they all work fairly seemlessly together. This will be one to look for when they print it over here.

Designer Seth Jafee

Strategicon Gateway 2012, Day 2

Designer Ta-Te Woo

A longer second day at the convention as it was Saturday, but fewer games played as I spent a lot of time at the flea market and chatting with others. I did get to spend some time with Ta-Te Woo, another game designer who is from here locally in Southern Cal and attends some of the SoCal Playtesters group that I have attended. He has a current game on Kickstarter (a groupfunding site) called The Battle of Red Cliffs and I was able to play some of that. It is a card game where you try to match sets of different numbers and colors on cards, and you keep one card from each set for a final scoring in each round to help you move up different levels. Fairly simple with some strategy, but not too exciting and I didn't feel in control of my choices. Also completely abstract with no real connection to the theme which is a let-down for me. In the little tournament we played I did ribbon by coming in first place.

 
I was able to play a game that I actually purchased last year and have always wanted to play but never found the time, the 2006 Spiel des Jahres award winner Thurn and Taxis. What better way to learn than to enter an official tournament for it! Thankfully they took 10 minutes to explain how to play, and I could tell I was among grizzled veterans. The guy running the tournament tried to help me with my first turn, but I caught on pretty quick and could manage. The game has you creating postal routes of a specific city length in the 17th century in Europe. You must create them by collecting city cards and placing postal houses in lengths from 3-7 and collect various bonuses due to regional colors and combinations. I was pretty aggressive and surprised them by winning and ending the game quicker than they thought. I moved onto the finals and took 2nd place overall! The game is not too complex, but more meaty than Ticket to Ride. I'm glad that I have it!




Beginning my winning route

Due to my run at T&T, I  missed out on the Village tournament I wanted to be in. But I did get to play another game that I own, but have not played, Antione Buaza'a Mystery Express. I thought it was like Clue, but I was wrong, and Antione was there to teach us. It is a deductive game where you need to solve a murder on a train, but you need to find out who, where, with what, why (motive) and even the time! It uses some good mechanics in tracking cards by you selecting actions on each leg of the journey. It actually plays pretty smooth, I had the most trouble with the time part. I actually did pretty well and tied for second.

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.





Strategicon: Gamex 2012 Day 3

Obviously we never go to the game convention on Sunday, but I always go back for the last day on the Monday holiday. The main reason is the auction they hold where you can get great deals on games, and it is also entertaining. I was able to pick up a couple of games for great deals and it was worth it. With the convention closing down I only really played one game:

KINGDOM BUILDER: Rick Baptist, a guy I've gotten to know at the past Strategicons, taught me this game. I've been wanting to play it, by the same the guy who designed Dominion. It has great replayability, as you use 4 of the 12 boards provided, each with special pieces, and deal out 3 win condition cards out of 15 just for that game. The variety is very appealing, and game play is simple and straightforward as you lay pieces each turn trying to gain victory points according to that game's win conditions, and move next to special spaces which give you abilities for more plays. The only aspect I didn't like was a card you drew each turn to determine what type of terrain you could play on. This random element had a controlling factor in the game, but otherwise I liked it and did pretty well my first time, placing 3rd out of 5 players.

I am yellow and was not able to connect many places, but did fill every hex row (a victory point condition).

This is the area I started in and it became a bottleneck for me.

Strategicon: Gamex 2012 Day 2

Today's games at the convention were MUCH better and way more strategic. When I first arrived I spent some time at the flea market and was able to pick up NinjaBurger for Caleb as he liked it. I then went right into some events.

ENDEAVOR: I picked up this game at SaltCon but have never played it, so I went to a "Gaming 101" session to learn how to play it, then I played in the tournament. It is a very elegant game requiring balance and timing, much like Egizia. You are in Europe and acquire buildings that give you abilities to contribute to colonizing and adding to shipping lanes to reach other regions such as North America, the Indies, etc. As you do so you increase in your ability to build, increase population, wealth and prestige. There are a variety of mechanics and strategies to gain victory points. Very strategic with interesting decisions, I was enthralled. I made it to the finals of the tournament, but then got bombed by greater competition and came in 4th again. I can't wait to play this again.

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: I absolutely loved the TV series and heard great things about the game, but have never been able to get a group together to play it fully. This was the opportunity. It takes a few hours to play, and is a great cooperative game with a traitor element.You play a character from the series, and have to overcome a variety of crisis, fight off cylon ship attacks, and jump the fleet to get closer to Kobol. And do that with 1-2 cyclons hiding among you and trying to thwart your efforts. There are great mechanics in the game by which all contribute skill cards to overcome the crisis, but cyclons can add the wrong cards without revealing who they are. In our game the humans (I was one) had a fairly easy time with the crisis, and it seemed the game was in hand even when the cyclons were revealed. But then it went downhill without the traitors really doing much Galactica was destroyed before they could make the final jump. This game is not for everyone, but great with the right crowd that is invested. I own the game and can't wait to play again.

I played Starbuck and am in the Viper with a red disk underneath to the rear of Galactica.

The FTL drive was damaged (front of the ship) and kept us from jumping.

TOBAGO: I love this game and think it is genius in its design, so we checked it out of the game library and I taught it to Nate & Tyler. We had a good time and it played well, they seemed to enjoy it. No game is ever the same so it stays fresh.

RA: Another game I own but have not played and have wanted to. One of the Startegicon staff taught it to us, and game designer Tom Jolley joined us. Ra is an auction game of tile collection for sets. The cool part is the auction and the sun tiles you use, it plays very smoothly and easily. I like the design (Reiner Knizia) and would definitely play it again.

Played some great games today, and even had the opportunity to chat for about 20 minutes with game designer Richard Borg and he gave me some tips and how to deal with publishers.

Strategicon: Gamex 2012 Day 1

I've been looking forward to this gaming convention, some members of LMB came this time so it was fun being in a group here. Caleb came again, but this time we didn't get a hotel. We arrived in LA about 1:00 PM and got right to it. We sat down at Steve Jackson games and tried the first thing we saw:

NINJA BURGER: Generally I do not play many Steve Jackson games, as they are very random and require little skill. Ninja Burger is no different as you make dice rolls against your ability scores to overcome obstacles to deliver burgers with ninja stealth to difficult places. The theme is cute and Caleb had fun, in fact he won our game and got a prize, Cthulhu Dice. We had to end the game early because, well, it wouldn't end quick enough.

FRAG: Our day was not starting out well, as instead of playing Carcassonne, we played another SJ game Frag, that is all about just killing your opponent. You move around the board, collect items if you can, and fire on opponents all based upon dice rolls. Whether you got new items all depended upon if you could roll a 4,5,6 on a d6, which of course I couldn't. You could get the best gun, ammo and position to shoot, and your opponent could just play a "Miss" card and you missed. This game was random and the closest to Candyland that I have ever played. To make it worse, our group of 4 played with an ex-marine dude who was aggro and a jerk to play with. He was "too" into it and it got heated. I hate not finishing a game, but the arguing of some players left a bad taste and I walked away from it. I could imagine the game might be cool, but it was too random and one of the worst experiences ever.

FLASH POINT FIRE RESCUE: I had been looking at this game and found some one to teach us and it was fun. It is a cooperative game that was published through Kickstarter funding, and I had almost contributed to it. We played the basic game and kicked its butt, rescuing all 10 victims of the fire (you only need 7 to win) and left no flames in the home. We were showed the advanced game and saw how much more challenging it was, it seems like a fun game with general appeal. I'd like to get it.

Caleb contemplates putting out the fire.

LAST WILL: I had just learned this game last night, so I got into the tournament at the con. It was even better learning more strategies, but I must admit I was more scared of buying properties and just relied on the one strategy I know of finding one activity and maximizing it. I advanced to the finals, but really blew it there by not trying new strategies and came in 4th place. Each play so far gets better and I would like this in my game rotation.

WITS & WAGERS: I've played this party game before, and we played it just to relax and take a break. Betting on trivia.

WIZ-WAR: This game was just recently re-released (8th edition) so we checked it out from the game library to learn to play it, another mistake. First of all it was really late, and we didn't read all the rules, so our attempt to play was poor. The game is that you are a wizard protecting two treasures, and the one that gets two of either the treasures or killing a wizard wins. Its basically capture the flag without a team, choose to go after a wizard or his treasure, or protect yours. You special abilities and spells are all based upon cards that you drew each round. It was similar to Frag in how random it was, and how in the luck of the draw one card made the difference. Hated it.

I had a fun day, but hoping to have a better game selection tomorrow.