GENCON 2012 - Day 0

So in this Day 0 of my GENCON adventure blog post, I will link the many many pictures I have taken as well as a short description of each. In my next post, I will share my insights, thoughts, feelings etc of my experience.
Here we go!


Day 0

True Dungeon - I did not want to try it this year but
perhaps in the future I will. Seems like a lot of fun!

GENCON loot! There were quite a lot of loot
there. GEEKNATIONTOURS supplied us
with a cap each so I am good after that. These merchandise
are kinda pricey though.

Mechwarrior booths. I originally did want to go for these but
I waited near the end on Sunday and by noon they were all
sold out! So all my Generic tickets were cashed into credit
and I hope to be back next year to use them!

GEEKNATIONTOURS Dinner - Met so many interesting people.  D6 Generation
where we got to ask questions. I have always wondered if
anyone kept score on Craig's Rapid Fire section and he
says the guests will always remember. We also met up with
Steven from Stronghold games, Geof Engelstein and Eric from Wyrd Miniatures.

2nd loot of the night. Evil Baby Orphanage.
Fun light game where players try to amass 10
points worth of Evil Babies (i.e. Baby Hitler etc)
to win the game. The bonus was getting to play
the game with the designer as he shared a lot
of the design process that finally produced the
copy we saw before us. Very enlightening experience!

Another bonus was being able to play the game with the D6 Generation, Geof
and fellow GEEKNATIONTOUR members!

Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small

Quick review on Agricola:All Creatures Big and Small. Now I had never thought I will get any 2 player games because mainly it will limit the people I can invite over to play this game. However after getting Twilight Struggle, I decided to take a look at 2 player games as well. Since I am in NYC now, I decided to get a few 2 player games so I can play with my wife.
After Gencon2012 (pictures and short writeup will be coming soon! so wait for it! :)) I was still itching to play games so I decided to break out Agricola:ACBS to play with the wifey.

1st round

2nd attempt, 50 points this time

It is a quick and fast game for 2 players. It is tightly designed, has awesome components (wifey loves the little sheepeeples) and quite fun to play. Its not very thinky and easy to pick up but since the "market" is rather tight there will be a lot of interaction between the players. 

Players take turns placing each of their 3 workers onto the "market" to obtain resources or build special buildings. Players are trying to maximize the space on their own farms and have as many animals as they can. Each animal type that you have less than 4 in your farm will cost you 3 demerit points. Otherwise, everything else will count as points for you. The player with the most points will win.

Not sure if it can last 10+ plays though as usually the first few moves are quite similar. I think the main replayability will be when both players are aware of each other's moves and plan to block. That will probably make it even more competitive.

I cannot wait to try the other games with the wifey and see how it goes :)

Gencon - updates abit slow..

Hi all,
If you are looking for more news, do follow me on twitter @duckizz. I am constantly updating my twitter with news and pictures! I will blog again once I am back in NYC but for now do follow me!

Thanks!

Gencon 2012 - Wednesday

So I arrived today and my first surprise was being fetched to my hotel in a stretched limo! Though I wasn't alone but it was way cool to travel in style lol.
Hotel is great. I realized there is a benefit to staying alone so it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It's also so cool that the hotel (and indeed a lot of the places in Indianapolis) are so receptive to gencon and accommodate us. Many gamers can be seen playing games at the hotel lobbies and various empty areas and there is no hostility from the hotel management at all.
After checking in, I walked around the convention center and it is HUGE! Like OMG huge. I cannot wait to see all of us geeks at the opening to the dealer halls tomorrow.
First game I sat in was star fleet battle force. It looks like a pretty quick game involving ships and playing of cards. Reminds me of that spaceship card game I played recently. While the star trek theme intrigues me, I doubt I will get it though. Plays up to 6 and plays quick.
After that I got to walking somemore before the welcome dinner and met up with Tom vasel of the dicetower podcast. Boy is he tall! At least 1 head taller than me! Got to talking with him and then met up with Eric summerer, Cody jones and John from the now defunct Game on with Cody and John. It was so cool and quite amusing to actually see them in real life and hear those voices in my head (via podcasts) in real life as well. I am offering to help them and I will do so via taking pictures for Tom.
Dinner was kinda cool as the organizer of gencon was on hand to answer our questions. Bummer I don't have my badge and tickets yet so I hope I will get it by tomorrow before the vendor halls are open! Then we met with owner of stronghold games and also Eric from Wyrd miniatures. Manage to snag 2 goodies from Eric! After that the d6g crew was there to chat and answer questions.
After dinner, the group headed outside to play a game called Evil Baby Orphanage which is the latest kickstarter game from Wyrd miniatures which I just got. It is quite fun but I think a group of 4-6 will be a good size to play. We were 8 while the novelty was amusing, it dragged on a little too long after a while. Can't wait to try it back in Singapore! Also the evil babies are so intriguing that now I want to find out the background.
After that I walked around the hotel a bit more and there were still many groups of gamers playing all over! I decided to walk over to the convention centre again to meet with Joel who is commonly known as eekamouse that reviews boardgames as well. Saw Lance (known as undeadviking) chatting with tom and sat in and listened to them talk shop. Ryan (also from the network) joined in a little later.
Everyone decides to turn in after a while as its the first day of gencon tomorrow and it's going to be a long day! But man it will be exciting!
I heard there is some game that fantasy flight is keep user wraps and no one know what it is yet! I can't wait!!
Ok time to zzz... Night everyone!

Heading to GENCON 2012 soon!

hi all! In a couple of hours I will be heading to Gencon 2012! I am so excited :P

What are some of the games I am interested in?

Seasons
I have been playing this on Boardgamearena.com so I have gotten quite a good grasp of the game. It looks fantastic and plays really well! It has a nice drafting element for the advanced level games, good looking components and dice to add a good dose of randomness to the mix. I highly recommend this and will definitely get my copy at the convention.

Speaking of which, you can enter a contest on BGG now for your own copy of Seasons!

Morels
I recently purchased this and while I haven't logged in a play with Wifey yet but I will before I leave USA. I will be at the booth to collect the remainder of my extra pieces (the walking sticks). The designer/self-publisher is a very nice person that responds quite swiftly if you have any questions. Oh he is also very eloquent (go look for his video interview by BGG) too! Go support this product and his company!

Tsuro of the Seas
I have Tsuro and it is a fun light game that can cater for a lot of people. I will be interested to see if Tsuro of the Seas can cater for the same amount of people but perhaps with a little bit more complexity.

Zombicide
This is a kickstarter that recently shipped out to the supporters. Already there are initial plays and pictures on BGG and all are positive so far. I am looking out for a good zombie game but so far haven't found it yet. This is a co-op though and I am not particularly fond of co-ops. Still I hope I will get a play in and then decide for myself how it goes.

Rolling Freight
A train game that has dice? Interesting. I would like to take a look at this first to see if it can scratch my train game itch before I decide to dive into 18xx. It is highly recommended by Tom Vasel but I am not always in agreement with his recommendations so lets see how this goes.

Leviathans
Ah.... the miniatures game about flying airships. Reminds me of a supped up version of Wings of Glory but with dice involved. Or a better Battleship Galaxies. I certainly hope to grab a play of this and see how it is. But the box is so big so unless I am buying nothing else on this trip, unlikely I will be bringing this with me home.

Sheepland
Game about herding your sheep lol.... Pity there will only be demo at Gencon and not available for purchase. But its good to have a try at this first and see how it goes. I am drawn to the cute....sheep.... Don't judge me!

Relic
A game that combines Talisman and Warhammer40k? Ooooo very intriguing for me. I am not sure why I have this fascination with Warhammer universe (I LOVED Chaos in the old world btw) but this will be very attractive to me! Hope to get a demo in on this.

Merchants of Venus
I think this is one of the most highly anticipated titles of 2012. I have heard rumours that FFG will be releasing this at GENCON! I sure hope so then I can snag a copy (hopefully!) :p :P

so that's about it! Time to have some breakfast before the service to airport arrives!

WooT WooT!

I'm off!

tomorrow night at this time i will be on my A380 on my way to New york (with stopover at Frankfurt). Got myself a good seat on the upper deck in front of the emergency exit so hopefully I can recline the seat all the way down.
Yay! Gonna see my wife soon :)
Then a few days of chilling, eating, watching musicals then its off to GENCON 2012!

Btw the contest is still ongoing so comment away people!

Weekend Gaming: 28-29th July 2012

Continuation of my 3 days of epic boardgaming (with different groups), here goes!

1955: The War of Espionage

First play correctly! I won! Woot

2nd play but i lost...

So the last time when I last talked about this, I was complaining how bad the game was and all that. However I have realized that we got the rules wrong. The set that I was playing on has since been sold so I manage to get another copy and had to bring it out to see how it is. I must say that it is significantly more fun to play with. The rule that we had wrong initially was we would win when OUR home country is secured. That led to some first round wins. So to win the game,, either you brought your OPPONENT's home country to your side OR 3 other country tokens to your side (including your own home country). Needless to say, the gameplay has significantly improved and game time has as well. There is a lot more tactical decisions now especially when both sides have secured 2 countries and are gunning for the last 2. 

However if you are very aware of the cards and what has been played, I guess you can pretty much guess what your opponent is doing. I am hoping that perhaps in the future there maybe more gadgets for us to utilize or maybe add in a few more cards for variety. Still not a bad 2 player game that will take you at least 30 minutes to play. Now i would recommend it :)

Troyes

I played this once quite some time ago and I did not really played it well then. Given a chance recently, I decided to get my own copy and manage to bring it out for a 4 player session. It is fun for me with all the dice rolling and trying to figure out the combinations. I must admit I am still not that quick to pick out the various combinations that can net me the most points or create an engine but I had fun. I do wish Castles of Burgendy components are of this quality then I will certainly buy it. Maybe there's a 2nd edition? :) Anyway, this play session helped me better understand the rules and I can play it on Boardgamearena.com now. Not a bad game and I hear there's an expansion coming out soon. Reading about it though, I think its not adding that much things for me to warrant a buy. I would have preferred if they added another player or more character role cards. Lets see how the review goes for it then.

Feudality
We played Feudality again and this time I got to see the big battle in action this time around but in general the main fun of the game is buying the extra tiles, placing them strategically on the board and hoping for a good dice roll. I know it sounds totally random because of the dice roll but that is kinda the fun in this game as we are yelling for HUAT AH (or good roll) when the Senior Player rolls it. Battle wise, this was mostly done by the player that was already winning just to see how a battle will work out. It ended up allowing him to draw in points with another player but he manage to win it due to the tie breaker. Now if the runner up had won, I would have called foul because of underlying relations (Ahem :P). Still I would like to play it again with competitive players that will attack each other just to see if warring will work well OR it will just prolong the game to for agonizing hours.

Village

Village again I know. I just had to give this game a few more goes with my various groups just to see how it will sit with them. It sits real good I am happy to report. Fun to play, easy to teach with many different paths and very engaging throughout the game. There is no direct screwage though you can do so but it wouldn't feel very personal if done as many other more direct interaction games. I manage to win this with a combination of the Village annuals and monks (I am the blue player here). Great fun and a great buy! Go get it if you have not.

Antiquity

The map after about 3 hours of play and we STILL have not finished.

My cities after 3 hours of play.

OK so I FINALLY got this to the table. After getting it in a trade + top up a few months ago, I was dying to get this played so I know how it is and well, see what the hype is about. It was quite hard to get through the rules since its the first time both of us have played this but sometime through the 3rd round or so, we are quite comfortable with the phases in the game and were gunning for the victory conditions. Well at least my opponent could, I was pretty much stuck with my bad beginning choices. This game is all about the choices at the beginning because you place your starting city and then work from there. This game also requires a few plays to get used to what each building does and thus allow you to better plan and maximize their effects. 

Components wise its hell to try to bag everything and put everything into nice little boxes so to allow setup and tear down easier. Still its kinda fiddly with all the different chits and the lousy player board where you place all your house stock and city layout does not make things easier. And there are a LOT of bits to take care of. Every resource you setup on the map you have to underlay with a pollution chit so that you are reminded of the waste you are creating when you take away a resource from the land. Every turn you are reminded that you need to be able to feed your people OR you get tombstones popping out all over your city. Every turn you are reminded of pollution as your city may produce more waste than it can manage and damage the land surrounding it.

The victory conditions and how to attain it is still kinda a blur to me and I suspect a few more plays will correct that. However it is an interesting game and I can see what the attraction is because after you master the game, the sense of achievement you feel should be outstanding. Though i suspect a 4 player game with all new people will take quite a big chunk of time, after a few plays it will get better.... I hope.

So all in all, a great weekend of gaming. I manage to get a few new games in and I am contented :) Now to look forward to New York New York, the Wifey and the games I'll get to play in Gencon 2012! 

WOOOT WOOT WOOOT!