My Vacation -- Part 2 -- GenCon!
Aug. 22nd, 2007 02:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHi,
OK, so aside from visiting my folks (see previous entry), the other thing I did on my vacation was take in GenCon. On the flight into Indianapolis, I had a pleasant surprise --![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
boxninja was on the plane from Scotland and (just as randomly), his friend John (also from Scotland) was on the plane as well. So the three of us grabbed a cab into the city. I was staying at the Hyatt with a number of indie-game designers from MA. It was a bit cozy, but it wasn't terrible and the Hyatt was a pretty nice place to stay.
On Wednesday night, I got a chance to try out Embargo with the game's designer. It's a fun little abstract game for four players. The game has some interesting endgame situations where it's possible to stalemate someone to your complete detriment. I and one other player could win, but only if the other stopped interfering. Then the game designer came close to winning and we agreed that the game's creator should never win at his creation, so that stopped him cold, but left the fourth player free access to for a win. So the player I was stalemating, sacrificed himself to force the designer to try and stop me, which he didn't so I won. Clearly some kingmaker issues, but a lot of fun anyway.
On Thursday, I spent most of the time wandering the dealer's hall looking at all the shiny new products and saying hi to people. There was nothing particularly stand-out in the hall, but it was fun to wander about. In the evening, I hung out for awhile at the Embassy Suites (where a lot of after-hours gaming goes down). While there, I played in a game of "Lichens and Labyrinths" -- a yet-to-be-published game. As you might guess, it's a tongue-in-cheek take off of D&D. In fact, I'd rather call it a beer and pretzels RPG since we were basically getting drinks and having a lark with it.boxninja was the GM and the rest of us came up with a trio of doughty adventurers -- two roguish magic users with no combat skills and a warrior. The dungeon was built using a deck of cards and our basic strategy was to shove the warrior through the door while the wizards blasted from behind. It was a pretty good strategy except that you only got XP when you killed a guy. There was no group XP. So I'd often blast a guy down to shreds and then the others would finish him off and get the XP/loot.
In the end, we faced off against the Big Bad, got our clocks completely cleaned and then ran through the Jailbreak encounter which got our asses out of the oubliette and into sweet, sweet freedom and that's where we called the game.
Friday was my big gaming day. First up was a WWII coastal forces game in the Black Sea. I'd first tried coastal wargaming last year and liked it so much I was back again. Once more I was on the German side, but this time I was in something a bit tougher than the converted fishing boat I got last year. Unfortunately, my shooting and our overall strategy was crap and the Russians managed to get a big spread of torpedoes off against the convoy we were protecting. Thus I pulled hard in front of the convoy and sucked up six torpedo hits -- considering that even one torpedo hit had an 80% chance of sinking me, there was nothing left of my boat. The Russians went on to hammer the convoy and most of the escorts. According to the event organizer, the Soviet players probably sank more tonnage in this one encounter than the entire Russian fleet managed during the whole of WWII. Still, it was a fun game as always and I've picked up a fair number of miniatures to run my own games here at home.
The second event of the day was a 2-hour demo of C.A.V. by Reaper minis. C.A.V. is a big-stompy mech game (like Battletech) and it's recently upgraded to a new edition. It's a very fast-playing game. There's no complicated damage charts or power/heat management issues or anything. It's abstracted up a bit so that you can play with several squads of mechs/vehicles/infantry and just slug it out. Each unit has a small table with its stats. As you take damage, you move to the next column of stats which are usually a bit worse. It's a bit like clicky-base miniatures except the stats are contained on the card. There's no overwatch, but you do get to return fire with one weapon against a unit that just hit you (and firing is simultaneous so you use your current stats before the damage degrades them). Frankly, I rather liked it. I'm a bit worried that there's not enough tactical depth to it, but it does play really quick and everything is intuitive. In the demo, I played a bunch of bruisers in the middle and got taken out, but I managed to kill one other guy and seriously messed up a few others.
Then I did some shopping and in the evening it was off to the Suites. On this night, I got to watch a few people play Handy. Essentially, this game is Twister for your hands. You all sit around a table and you're on two teams -- one team with the guy on your right and one team with the guy on your left. One team starts and each member of the team flips a card. Each card highlights a finger of the hand. You pick up a ball and place it between the two nominated fingers. So I might have to put a ball between my index finger and your ring finger. Then you go on to the next person. Soon, there's this latticework of hands and balls hovering over the table until it all comes crashing down. It's a way cool game and I'll probably pick it up and bring it to Diesel some night.
But I got roped into a game of Battue: Strom of the Horse Lords. This is a board game. You place city tiles face-down on a grid. The pieces are shaped like Tetris pieces so you have to futz around to get it to all fit in the square. Then you place your barbarian horde outside the city, ready to attack the walls. On your go, you attack the walls and after breaching them, you move into the city. As the hordes move into the city, you flip tiles to see what section of the city you've entered. Beat the defense value of the city tile and you can draw loot cards. The game ends when the central palace and two other key city sites have been captured. You total up victory points to see who the winner is. The game seemed way too random for my tastes, but it wasn't a chore to sit through.
Saturday was my big shopping day. I also took in a demo of AT-43 and it convinced me that it's a game worth picking up. The pre-painted plastic minis are at least as good as any paintjob I could do and if they're pricey, they're also ready to play out of the box and that probably puts them even with the cost of painted minis. Additionally, during the last hour that the dealer's hall was open on Saturday, Rackham said everything in the booth was 50% off if you paid cash. I only wish I had more cash and more luggage. But I got good starter army for the Red Block faction.
So what did my final haul from GenCon look like?
* Suppressed Transmissions 2
* Transhuman Space: In the Well
* Transhuman Space: Deep Beyond
I got all three of these at the SJGames table "3 for $10". Hard to pass up quality sourcebooks like that.
* Spirit of the Century (Hardback)
I'm hoping to use this game (or at least the underlying system) to run something soon.
* Iron Heroes Revised Rulebook
* Iron Heroes Players Handbook
I'm in a game of this so that's why I picked this up. As I mentioned earlier, Wizards announced 4th ed. D&D so I'm not real anxious to get any more d20 stuff until they start trying to dump it.
* Panzertales World Take Museum Illustrated
This is the English translation of a Japanese book about WWII tanks. I really liked the illustrations in the book even though I couldn't care less about the line of model tanks the book is shilling.
* C.A.V. starter set
After the Demo, the Reaper guys gave me a coupon for 25% off so it seemed like a good deal. I wanted to read through the full ruleset, but for fast mech fun this seems like a good bet.
* Mechaton starter set
Someone who isn't Vincent Baker, but who really likes Mechaton (the lego robot game) put out these box sets that have enough pieces to build a squad of four "Squat" mechs (the standard design in the Mechaton book). This is a fantastic idea and I'd like to put together larger "army" packs for next year (including vehicles and infantry units).
* Lots of Coastal forces miniatures in metal and resin
I need to get another couple of freighter and some German S-Boats, but I'm well on my way to having a nice starter set to play out some coastal actions here in MA. Also, the ships are dirt easy to paint so hopefully, they'll be in action soon.
* AT-43 Rulebook
* UNA army book
* Red Block Colossus
* Red Block Dragonnov Unit
* Red Block Dragonnov Specialists
* Red Block Hero
I'm getting into AT-43. There, I said it.
* Tekumel RPG (Tri-Stat edition)
This one was a $5 cheapie and I love me baroque settings.
* Order of the Stick: Start of Evil
I read this on the flight home. It was really good.
* Mouse Guard Winter 1152
* Tears of Innana
* Secret History Part 2
More comics. All by Archaia Studios Press. They were all pretty good, but Tears started a little slow.
* Solipsist RPG ashcan
boxninja pushed this one on me. I haven't had a chance to look it over yet.
* Sons of Liberty ashcan
You know how I wanted to do that Early American Legends Wiki? Yeah, no need, this game pretty much takes care of the whole thing. Magical/mystical American Revolution. You can play as a Rebel or a Tory and it uses a fun rummy-like mechanic. The people who were playtesting it seemed to be having a blast and I'd really like to give it a whirl.
Anyway, that was all the shopping. That night I went to the Suites and wound up sitting down with Emily Care Boss (who flew to GenCon straight from Ropecon in Finland). She brought with her the Finnish Zombie RPG -- Zombies at the Door (whatever that is in Finnish). It's a pretty simple game where you try and move your marker up off the top of a "zombie meter" before the zombie token catches up and eats you. Our group decided that we'd do a zombie game that took place on a luxury cruise. That's right: we played the Love Boat zombie movie. I played Charo. It was all fun and games until little Johnny was the first to get eaten by the zombies. In the end, however, only Charo escaped.
It was a fun, breezy game but I turned in early to cram my bags full of loot and prepare for my flight home. As mentioned elsewhere, that flight home took over 16 hours total. But other than that and the speeding ticket, it was a very successful GenCon and I had a great time.
later
Tom
OK, so aside from visiting my folks (see previous entry), the other thing I did on my vacation was take in GenCon. On the flight into Indianapolis, I had a pleasant surprise --
boxninja was on the plane from Scotland and (just as randomly), his friend John (also from Scotland) was on the plane as well. So the three of us grabbed a cab into the city. I was staying at the Hyatt with a number of indie-game designers from MA. It was a bit cozy, but it wasn't terrible and the Hyatt was a pretty nice place to stay.On Wednesday night, I got a chance to try out Embargo with the game's designer. It's a fun little abstract game for four players. The game has some interesting endgame situations where it's possible to stalemate someone to your complete detriment. I and one other player could win, but only if the other stopped interfering. Then the game designer came close to winning and we agreed that the game's creator should never win at his creation, so that stopped him cold, but left the fourth player free access to for a win. So the player I was stalemating, sacrificed himself to force the designer to try and stop me, which he didn't so I won. Clearly some kingmaker issues, but a lot of fun anyway.
On Thursday, I spent most of the time wandering the dealer's hall looking at all the shiny new products and saying hi to people. There was nothing particularly stand-out in the hall, but it was fun to wander about. In the evening, I hung out for awhile at the Embassy Suites (where a lot of after-hours gaming goes down). While there, I played in a game of "Lichens and Labyrinths" -- a yet-to-be-published game. As you might guess, it's a tongue-in-cheek take off of D&D. In fact, I'd rather call it a beer and pretzels RPG since we were basically getting drinks and having a lark with it.
boxninja was the GM and the rest of us came up with a trio of doughty adventurers -- two roguish magic users with no combat skills and a warrior. The dungeon was built using a deck of cards and our basic strategy was to shove the warrior through the door while the wizards blasted from behind. It was a pretty good strategy except that you only got XP when you killed a guy. There was no group XP. So I'd often blast a guy down to shreds and then the others would finish him off and get the XP/loot. In the end, we faced off against the Big Bad, got our clocks completely cleaned and then ran through the Jailbreak encounter which got our asses out of the oubliette and into sweet, sweet freedom and that's where we called the game.
Friday was my big gaming day. First up was a WWII coastal forces game in the Black Sea. I'd first tried coastal wargaming last year and liked it so much I was back again. Once more I was on the German side, but this time I was in something a bit tougher than the converted fishing boat I got last year. Unfortunately, my shooting and our overall strategy was crap and the Russians managed to get a big spread of torpedoes off against the convoy we were protecting. Thus I pulled hard in front of the convoy and sucked up six torpedo hits -- considering that even one torpedo hit had an 80% chance of sinking me, there was nothing left of my boat. The Russians went on to hammer the convoy and most of the escorts. According to the event organizer, the Soviet players probably sank more tonnage in this one encounter than the entire Russian fleet managed during the whole of WWII. Still, it was a fun game as always and I've picked up a fair number of miniatures to run my own games here at home.
The second event of the day was a 2-hour demo of C.A.V. by Reaper minis. C.A.V. is a big-stompy mech game (like Battletech) and it's recently upgraded to a new edition. It's a very fast-playing game. There's no complicated damage charts or power/heat management issues or anything. It's abstracted up a bit so that you can play with several squads of mechs/vehicles/infantry and just slug it out. Each unit has a small table with its stats. As you take damage, you move to the next column of stats which are usually a bit worse. It's a bit like clicky-base miniatures except the stats are contained on the card. There's no overwatch, but you do get to return fire with one weapon against a unit that just hit you (and firing is simultaneous so you use your current stats before the damage degrades them). Frankly, I rather liked it. I'm a bit worried that there's not enough tactical depth to it, but it does play really quick and everything is intuitive. In the demo, I played a bunch of bruisers in the middle and got taken out, but I managed to kill one other guy and seriously messed up a few others.
Then I did some shopping and in the evening it was off to the Suites. On this night, I got to watch a few people play Handy. Essentially, this game is Twister for your hands. You all sit around a table and you're on two teams -- one team with the guy on your right and one team with the guy on your left. One team starts and each member of the team flips a card. Each card highlights a finger of the hand. You pick up a ball and place it between the two nominated fingers. So I might have to put a ball between my index finger and your ring finger. Then you go on to the next person. Soon, there's this latticework of hands and balls hovering over the table until it all comes crashing down. It's a way cool game and I'll probably pick it up and bring it to Diesel some night.
But I got roped into a game of Battue: Strom of the Horse Lords. This is a board game. You place city tiles face-down on a grid. The pieces are shaped like Tetris pieces so you have to futz around to get it to all fit in the square. Then you place your barbarian horde outside the city, ready to attack the walls. On your go, you attack the walls and after breaching them, you move into the city. As the hordes move into the city, you flip tiles to see what section of the city you've entered. Beat the defense value of the city tile and you can draw loot cards. The game ends when the central palace and two other key city sites have been captured. You total up victory points to see who the winner is. The game seemed way too random for my tastes, but it wasn't a chore to sit through.
Saturday was my big shopping day. I also took in a demo of AT-43 and it convinced me that it's a game worth picking up. The pre-painted plastic minis are at least as good as any paintjob I could do and if they're pricey, they're also ready to play out of the box and that probably puts them even with the cost of painted minis. Additionally, during the last hour that the dealer's hall was open on Saturday, Rackham said everything in the booth was 50% off if you paid cash. I only wish I had more cash and more luggage. But I got good starter army for the Red Block faction.
So what did my final haul from GenCon look like?
* Suppressed Transmissions 2
* Transhuman Space: In the Well
* Transhuman Space: Deep Beyond
I got all three of these at the SJGames table "3 for $10". Hard to pass up quality sourcebooks like that.
* Spirit of the Century (Hardback)
I'm hoping to use this game (or at least the underlying system) to run something soon.
* Iron Heroes Revised Rulebook
* Iron Heroes Players Handbook
I'm in a game of this so that's why I picked this up. As I mentioned earlier, Wizards announced 4th ed. D&D so I'm not real anxious to get any more d20 stuff until they start trying to dump it.
* Panzertales World Take Museum Illustrated
This is the English translation of a Japanese book about WWII tanks. I really liked the illustrations in the book even though I couldn't care less about the line of model tanks the book is shilling.
* C.A.V. starter set
After the Demo, the Reaper guys gave me a coupon for 25% off so it seemed like a good deal. I wanted to read through the full ruleset, but for fast mech fun this seems like a good bet.
* Mechaton starter set
Someone who isn't Vincent Baker, but who really likes Mechaton (the lego robot game) put out these box sets that have enough pieces to build a squad of four "Squat" mechs (the standard design in the Mechaton book). This is a fantastic idea and I'd like to put together larger "army" packs for next year (including vehicles and infantry units).
* Lots of Coastal forces miniatures in metal and resin
I need to get another couple of freighter and some German S-Boats, but I'm well on my way to having a nice starter set to play out some coastal actions here in MA. Also, the ships are dirt easy to paint so hopefully, they'll be in action soon.
* AT-43 Rulebook
* UNA army book
* Red Block Colossus
* Red Block Dragonnov Unit
* Red Block Dragonnov Specialists
* Red Block Hero
I'm getting into AT-43. There, I said it.
* Tekumel RPG (Tri-Stat edition)
This one was a $5 cheapie and I love me baroque settings.
* Order of the Stick: Start of Evil
I read this on the flight home. It was really good.
* Mouse Guard Winter 1152
* Tears of Innana
* Secret History Part 2
More comics. All by Archaia Studios Press. They were all pretty good, but Tears started a little slow.
* Solipsist RPG ashcan
boxninja pushed this one on me. I haven't had a chance to look it over yet.* Sons of Liberty ashcan
You know how I wanted to do that Early American Legends Wiki? Yeah, no need, this game pretty much takes care of the whole thing. Magical/mystical American Revolution. You can play as a Rebel or a Tory and it uses a fun rummy-like mechanic. The people who were playtesting it seemed to be having a blast and I'd really like to give it a whirl.
Anyway, that was all the shopping. That night I went to the Suites and wound up sitting down with Emily Care Boss (who flew to GenCon straight from Ropecon in Finland). She brought with her the Finnish Zombie RPG -- Zombies at the Door (whatever that is in Finnish). It's a pretty simple game where you try and move your marker up off the top of a "zombie meter" before the zombie token catches up and eats you. Our group decided that we'd do a zombie game that took place on a luxury cruise. That's right: we played the Love Boat zombie movie. I played Charo. It was all fun and games until little Johnny was the first to get eaten by the zombies. In the end, however, only Charo escaped.
It was a fun, breezy game but I turned in early to cram my bags full of loot and prepare for my flight home. As mentioned elsewhere, that flight home took over 16 hours total. But other than that and the speeding ticket, it was a very successful GenCon and I had a great time.
later
Tom
