UberCon games report 2
Nov. 7th, 2007 03:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mikeknI stayed up until about 2 AM on Friday, but skipped the Illuminati game because I knew I wouldn't last through it. Saturday morning I got up and hit Harold's New York Deli for breakfast. Harold's was the only food in the hotel, and proved very handy during the con. For folks who aren't familiar with it, they are known for their giant sized family style portions. For breakfast I ordered something simple: 2 eggs scrambled, hashbrowns and sausage. What I didn't know at the time was if you got scrambled eggs you usually ended up with closer to 4-6 eggs worth. I didn't need lunch that day :)
Saturday
I got into the con too late for the 9 AM Munchkin Cthulhu game, so I killed some time visiting Galen and playing Chuzzle in the computer room. (Chuzzle is addicting, but I had the con high score for most of the day)
The first board game of the day was Space Dealer. This is a realtime game with each player taking the part of a space faring race, producing goods to deliver to the other players and the neutral races. The game lasts exactly 30 minutes - controlled by a soundtrack provided on CD. Each player has two 30 second sand timers, and every action you take requires you to set up a timer - the action is not finished until the timer runs out. Even when both of your timers are running, there isn't much down time as you can be planning out and preparing for your next step. This was an interesting style game, and one I'd play again if the opportunity presented itself, but not one I needed a copy of. I won by only a few points more then the next guy. Between this and winning BattleLore on Friday, I now had two prize buttons (good to trade in for stuff at the end of the con).
Next up was the independent game Venus Needs Men!. This game is a 1950s style alien invasion. You play one of five aliens trying to capture or destroy the Earth's population, or one person can play the Earth and try and defend the planet and get the people to safety. Each alien has different strengths and weaknesses (as do the Earthlings), for example I played the robots from Pluto (out to destroy all living things), who could travel by worm hole, but would show up in a random location. In our game no one played the Earth, but there was lots of combat between players as we tried to save the population for ourselves. Game play is pretty simple - each turn you could take one action for all of your ships: Build, Move, Attack or Population. You also had a limited number of "Zap" cards that could do various things (extra turns, prevent a ship from being destroyed, etc), or you could discard one for an extra action. It was an ok game - nothing noticeably broken but also nothing that really jumped out and caught my interest. If I was more into the theme, then maybe.
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complexated and I had some time to kill so we decided to learn the rules to Taluva, a game she had picked up a while ago but not gotten to play yet. This is a tile placement game where you are building and settling a volcanic island - an active volcanic island. The building of the island is in 3D, with volcanoes erupting to create 2, 3 or more layers of tiles. Game play is very much like Carcassonne - place a tile, place a settlement. There are three types of settlements: huts, towers and temples. Huts are the easiest to place, but the winner is the person with the most temples. The game normally ends once all the tiles are played (and there are much fewer of them then in Carcassonne), but it can be won early by playing all of two of your three settlement types. It can also be lost early by being unable to play a settlement on your turn (if you can't play you are out of the game and the remaining players keep going). I expect we'll be playing a lot of this one in the future :)
After two games of Taluva, we played a game of Carcassonne (or maybe it was the other way around...) Not too many expansions since we had a new player or two with us. By now we were getting close to time for our next game: O.X.E.N., but I checked in on it and found that it was not ready yet (it is in development and was being run by the designer) so we took our time and finished up Carcassonne. In the end itcomplexated won by sharing the giant farm with me - so close!
At this point we took a dinner break andcomplexated and I, along with someone we'd been gaming with went off to Harold's. We split a small corned beef rubin and a kasha knish. The three of us made it though about half the sandwich and a third of the knish before we were stuffed - I took the leftovers home and got dinner for violet_amy and I out of it on Monday.
After dinner we poked into the dealers room again - I picked up Zombie Fluxx, a Giant Microbe Brain Cell, and a tube of Icehouse pieces (I only need one more Xeno tube to finish my set). We also played some computer games until our 9 PM game started.
At 9 we played a six player game of Cosmic Encounter (Mayfair edition). There were lots of amusing goofs among the players as folks got into the swing of the game. We only made it around the board once before someone won though. We thought we had him blocked, but a cosmic zap (his second) got him the win.
Again it was time to kill some time, so we played several games of Red Dragon Inn, even had a few people pass by and join us.
After that it was about midnight, and time for Are You a Werewolf to start. We played three games - the villagers won all three, and I even survived two of them (I was always a villager). In spite of daylight savings giving us an extra hour, we called it a night shortly after.
Saturday
I got into the con too late for the 9 AM Munchkin Cthulhu game, so I killed some time visiting Galen and playing Chuzzle in the computer room. (Chuzzle is addicting, but I had the con high score for most of the day)
The first board game of the day was Space Dealer. This is a realtime game with each player taking the part of a space faring race, producing goods to deliver to the other players and the neutral races. The game lasts exactly 30 minutes - controlled by a soundtrack provided on CD. Each player has two 30 second sand timers, and every action you take requires you to set up a timer - the action is not finished until the timer runs out. Even when both of your timers are running, there isn't much down time as you can be planning out and preparing for your next step. This was an interesting style game, and one I'd play again if the opportunity presented itself, but not one I needed a copy of. I won by only a few points more then the next guy. Between this and winning BattleLore on Friday, I now had two prize buttons (good to trade in for stuff at the end of the con).
Next up was the independent game Venus Needs Men!. This game is a 1950s style alien invasion. You play one of five aliens trying to capture or destroy the Earth's population, or one person can play the Earth and try and defend the planet and get the people to safety. Each alien has different strengths and weaknesses (as do the Earthlings), for example I played the robots from Pluto (out to destroy all living things), who could travel by worm hole, but would show up in a random location. In our game no one played the Earth, but there was lots of combat between players as we tried to save the population for ourselves. Game play is pretty simple - each turn you could take one action for all of your ships: Build, Move, Attack or Population. You also had a limited number of "Zap" cards that could do various things (extra turns, prevent a ship from being destroyed, etc), or you could discard one for an extra action. It was an ok game - nothing noticeably broken but also nothing that really jumped out and caught my interest. If I was more into the theme, then maybe.
complexated and I had some time to kill so we decided to learn the rules to Taluva, a game she had picked up a while ago but not gotten to play yet. This is a tile placement game where you are building and settling a volcanic island - an active volcanic island. The building of the island is in 3D, with volcanoes erupting to create 2, 3 or more layers of tiles. Game play is very much like Carcassonne - place a tile, place a settlement. There are three types of settlements: huts, towers and temples. Huts are the easiest to place, but the winner is the person with the most temples. The game normally ends once all the tiles are played (and there are much fewer of them then in Carcassonne), but it can be won early by playing all of two of your three settlement types. It can also be lost early by being unable to play a settlement on your turn (if you can't play you are out of the game and the remaining players keep going). I expect we'll be playing a lot of this one in the future :)After two games of Taluva, we played a game of Carcassonne (or maybe it was the other way around...) Not too many expansions since we had a new player or two with us. By now we were getting close to time for our next game: O.X.E.N., but I checked in on it and found that it was not ready yet (it is in development and was being run by the designer) so we took our time and finished up Carcassonne. In the end it
complexated won by sharing the giant farm with me - so close!At this point we took a dinner break and
complexated and I, along with someone we'd been gaming with went off to Harold's. We split a small corned beef rubin and a kasha knish. The three of us made it though about half the sandwich and a third of the knish before we were stuffed - I took the leftovers home and got dinner for violet_amy and I out of it on Monday.After dinner we poked into the dealers room again - I picked up Zombie Fluxx, a Giant Microbe Brain Cell, and a tube of Icehouse pieces (I only need one more Xeno tube to finish my set). We also played some computer games until our 9 PM game started.
At 9 we played a six player game of Cosmic Encounter (Mayfair edition). There were lots of amusing goofs among the players as folks got into the swing of the game. We only made it around the board once before someone won though. We thought we had him blocked, but a cosmic zap (his second) got him the win.
Again it was time to kill some time, so we played several games of Red Dragon Inn, even had a few people pass by and join us.
After that it was about midnight, and time for Are You a Werewolf to start. We played three games - the villagers won all three, and I even survived two of them (I was always a villager). In spite of daylight savings giving us an extra hour, we called it a night shortly after.
