Oiling My Go Stones: A Short Journey To The Smooth and Shiny

I've been focusing a lot on Go lately.  That includes watching lectures on Go theory on YouTube, playing at my University's (new) Go club and playing in an online tournament. 

And sometimes, to pass the time, I've been replaying professional games and studying patterns on my own in front of my personal Go board.  This is a calming, relaxing, evening-type activity that pairs well with some fresh warm tea. 
To further add to the experience, I decided to try my hand at oiling my Go stones.  The purpose of this process is to give the stones a softer, smoother feel and a shinier appearance.  These little details can make a big difference in the overall enjoyment of the game.

Anyway, I wanted to take things even a step further I decided to use a scented oil.  That way, not only would the stones look and feel better, but they would smell nice too.

I had this lying around.  Why, I don't remember.

"Ocean" scented oil with stick things. 

 It's some light scented oil use with the reeds to make rooms smell nice.  This one smells very nice.  But not like the ocean.  I've smelled the ocean.  It smells fishy and salty.  This smells like flowers and happy times.

A couple of notes on my oil choice:

1.  Some people oil their stones with olive oil or canola oil.  They work, but apparently the oil spoils after some time leaving your stones smelling like rot.  No.
2.  Sewing machine oil is recommended, but I don't know what that is.  I don't sew, nor do I machine.
3.  I had heard of using scented oils, seemed like a good idea.

To start, I a few drops (that's all it takes) in a ziplock and carefully dropped the stones in so as not to chip them (yunzi stones chip reasonably easily).

Then I massaged the stones with the oil in the bag until they were well coated and spilled them out of a paper towel.

My pebbly mound

 Finally, I spread them out, wiped off any excess oil, and let them dry overnight. 

The oil left a shiny coating and soft feel to the stones, but they didn't feel greasy.  And they smelled wonderful.  Not like an old lady who bathes in perfume.  Just a subtle calming scent.

You can see a before and after below.  Notice the shiny!

Left: Before oiling.  Right: SHINY!

 I did the white stones too.  They don't benefit as much in appearance as the black ones, but they do feel softer.  And the smell..

Overall, a success.

Shogun: Cube Tower and Samurai Power

Shogun is a wonderful, happy marriage between Risk and Euro-style games.  That is, a marriage between a terribly boring dice rolling sort-of wargame and the best types of games on the planet. 

There are several games out there that attempt to  create a good Euro-Risk experience.  Kemet comes to mind as another one that I have played that is pretty excellent.  Check out Jake's blog for a quick overview of Kemet as well as other some other things if you are a BSB enthusiast (Beer, Speakers, and Boardgames.  No Backstreet Boys, sadly).

Shogun is another Euro-Risk game, and it is also pretty excellent.  It is a Japanese re-theme of the German themed Wallenstein.  They are basically the same game, but just in different thematic settings.  The choice of me grabbing Shogun over Wallenstein was my love of Japanese-themed games, so an easy choice.
Actually, I bought this as a Christmas gift for my brother, who I have converted over to Euro games despite him loving Risk even though it is a horrifically bad game. Considering all the boardgames I bought as gifts this year are Japanese-themed, I had to get this one.  It was the perfect gift, really.   He loves this game now. I'm a gift-giving master.

Here's the box.  That samurai gentleman is quite handsome, looking out into the distance like that.

The sun sets, and Samurai Sam surveys the seaside for sushi for his supper.

The game takes place on a map of Japan, with players having armies on the territories that they own.  Over the course of the game, more armies will be added and existing armies moved around and used for attacking other territories.  Sounds just like risk so far...looks kind of like it too...

On top of that, there is a building element to the game.  Players can build castles, temples, or theaters in the territories they control.  At the end of each year (the game is played over 2 years, with four seasons/rounds per year), points are scored for each building built and territory owned.  Furthermore, there is an area majority mechanic that awards extra points in each collection of territories of same color for the most of each type of building built there.  This is actually the most effective way to get points, as having a castle and temple majority are worth 3 pts and 2 pts in each province. 

A temple built along the coast of Kii.

And the game continues to get more complicated (it took us 45 minutes to learn the rules and set up.  Worth it, but this game has a lot of little rules and complications).

Every round consists of 10 possible actions:  3 building actions, confiscate rice, confiscate money, a few reinforce troop numbers actions, and 2 attack actions.  All of these are depicted on your player board.

Player board.

These actions resolve in a different order each round, determined by random draw, so you can't always do things in the order that you want.  The order of the first 5 actions are revealed before the round, and the others are revealed during the round one at a time.  A common issue is the money action coming up late in the round, so you don't have enough cash to do what you want.  Got to plan around that...

Speaking of planning, before each round you place cards, relating to territory you own, onto your player board facedown. The action you take then applies to the territory whose card you placed on that action space.  For example if I place a territory card on the "build castle" space, then I can build a castle on that territory.  Likewise, a territory card on an attack space lets me attack using troops from that territory.  Not only is this an interesting idea in its own right, but it also makes it so you can't add troops to a province and attack with it on the same turn.  Again, got to plan ahead.

Planning planning, choices choices.

Getting rice (to feed the people of your territories later) and money makes the farmers of the land upset, and creates the chance for a revolt.

Revolt marker.  Don't steal from these people again.

Taking over an unoccupied territory or inciting a revolt by getting stuff from your own territory already with a revolt marker starts a fight with the farmer armies (FARMIES!!!).  Not being able to feed all of your territories at the end of the year also can lead to revolts, with the more food you can't provide leading to more and bigger revolts.  This is another typical Euro-style game mechanic of feeding that keeps overexpansion in check.

Mozzie, the bear with the drunken past and affinity for headwear, very much enjoyed the farmies.  He rooted for them from the stands.

Mozzie.  Sporting a holiday bow, sun-shielding farming hat, and a fine silver pitchfork.

But there's one more surprise left, a core element of the game....The CUBE TOWER!!!

Cube Tower!!

The cube tower is the impartial God that can turn the tide of battle.  In a battle, both attacking and defending army cubes are thrown into the tower. Whoever has more of their cube armies come out of the tower wins the battle.  All defeated side armies plus the equivalent number of winning side armies are removed and the surviving armies put on the newly conquered territory.
But here's the kicker.  These initial cubes enter, and only some of them come out.  Some of them don't.  And sometimes, ones that don't come out come back out during a later battle.

SURPRISE!!!

   

    

Top-down view of the cube tower.  There are people stuck in there!

It's fun and adds an element of suspense to every battle.
Thematically, though, I don't think this makes much sense...

In the Suruga territory:

Samurai 1:  "Where's Johnny?!"
Samurai 2:  "Lost in the mountain again, I presume.  I don't think he's quite all there."
Samurai 1:  "Well we lost the battle because he wasn't here!"

In Iyo, on the complete other side of the country:

Samurai 3: "We won the battle!!  It's all thanks to the new guy who showed up."
Johnny:  "WHO AM I!!!!"

Makes. No. Sense.
And teleporting samurai are already unrealistic, so I have no qualms naming a samurai "Johnny."

The cube tower is AMAZING!  If you have the edge in armies going into the tower versus your opponent, you will probably win the fight, BUT you always have to take into consideration what cubes are left stuck in the tower.  Maybe you fight a risky battle where you are at a disadvantage, because you have been unlucky on other turns and remember that you have a lot of cube stuck in the tower.  So there is a small element of luck here, but somewhat calculable odds of winning just means you have to choose your battles wisely.
And the suspense when throwing those cubes in is just fun.  And the surprises are fun.

Onto actually playing the game (finally).
First things first.  I started off the game with an energizing beverage.

For 100% kids, like me.

This game is intended for 3-5 players, but we only had 2 willing participants at the time.  So we went with a very simple, unofficial 2 player variant, which basically consisted of 3-player rules but on an artificially shrunk map. It's not perfect, but it worked pretty well.

The game was close.  It came down to one final battle.

I lost by one army in that battle.  Which caused a 2 point swing in the game.

Final score.  I'm yellow.  Obviously.

I lost by 2 points.

Shogun is great.  It does take about 2 hours with only 2 players, mostly due to some analysis paralysis in the planning phase later in the game.  With 3 or 4 players, it would probably take 3 hours, which is pushing my limits on how long I want to play a single game.  But that is really the only major flaw I see here.
It's pretty cool.  And the cube tower is a winner.

And in case you were wondering what happened to Samurai Johnny:

Holiday Gaming: Family Games

Because holidays are for family.

By now, you may be under the impression that I prefer heavy games, with lots of thinking and strategy and little wooden bits.

And you would be correct.  Love that stuff.

BUT, that's not to say less heavy games are bad.  I don't care for them for the most part, but I'll play them.
And so we come to Family Games.  These games (by my own definition which I am making up at this very moment) have pretty simple rules, play somewhat quickly, and almost always involve a reasonable amount of luck.  So while hardcore gamers like myself may not love these (I like lots of complexity, tough decisions, little to no luck), they are great for people like, say, my family who just want to have fun.  Hence, "family games."  These games are accessible to everyone and not just people who treat boardgames as a hobby/way of life instead of just a way to pass the time.

Enough background.  Every Christmas, I play boardgames with my family.  I try to get them to play heavy euros and rarely succeed.  So we play lighter games, where my chances of winning are significantly decreased.

Here's the rundown of the new games we played this holiday season:

1.  Sushi Go!

The name of this game is obviously borrowed from what the referee screams before a sushi eating contest (3...2...1...Sushi GO!!), or the intestinal effect one gets after eating bad mall sushi (never eat mall sushi!).
Sushi Go is a very simple card drafting game with very cute artwork.  Players play cards simultaneously, then pass their hand, then play another card, then pass the hand, etc.  The point of the game is to make sets of various types of tasty treats (tempura, nigiri, maki rolls, sashimi) which score points.  The rules are super simple, and though a lot of luck is involved there is plenty of decision making and room for strategy like any other card drafting game (knowing what's coming, what you've passed, what your opponents want).

Food should not have faces.

We played this one 5 times.  I won 3 and tied for first in another.  That counts as a net win for me.

Win Record: 1 for 1

2.  Splendor

MY PRECIOUS!!!

Splendor is a Spiel des Jahres (Family game of the year) nominee, and rightfully so.
It's all about collecting gems (henceforth referred to as "the shinies") and using those shinies to buy cards which are worth points and give you discounts on buying future cards.
On your turn, you have the options to take 3 different colored shinies, take 2 of the same color shinies, reserve a card to buy later along with a gold (joker shiny), or buy a card.

Shiny.

This game really shines in two regards.  One is the component quality.  The artwork is very well done and the shinies are depicted on very solid poker chips, not the plastic kind but the kind that makes the nice clicky noises that drive my sister crazy.  Normally I would call this a cop out, because individual gem-shaped shinies could be cooler.  But those could also be small and fiddly and I just like the way these turn out.
This game is also great, I think, as a gateway into heavier games.  The rules are simple and the decisions don't seem very tough, but there is some strategy and engine-building elements involved.

A light strategy game that looks nice and is a decent amount of fun.  I call Splendor a splendid game, though it's not complex enough for my taste, so I can't call it splendiferous.  

My mom is not so great at strategy games.  But she gets this one somehow.  She won both times we played.  Kudos to her.

Win Record: 1 for 2

3.  Machi Koro

Machi Koro is a tableu building game, where you buy cards to expand your city of Machi Koro.  The goal of the game is to build the 4 big buildings that every player starts with.  To do so, you need money, which you get from the smaller buildings you build throughout the game.

The game works on a Settlers of Catan type dice rolling system.  When a certain number is rolled, it triggers certain cards matching that number.  Say you roll a 3.  You may have a card that gives you money when you roll a 3.  Another player may have a card that give them money when anyone rolls a 3.  Another play may have a card that steals YOUR money when you roll a 3.  And some cards give you more money for having certain types of other buildings (like the Cheese factory gives you more money the more Ranches you own).

Let it be known that I absolutely hate Settlers of Catan.  I hate dice rolling.  I hate being at the mercy of that numbered cube.  I wish that die would die.

Machi Koro is very simple and highly luck-based, though there is a bit of engine-building here.  I'm just not into the dice-rolling.  Would play again with casual gamers and family, but I'm not too impressed, especially with the hype this game has been getting.

Also, my copy of the game came with several mis-cut cards, which just makes me angry.

We played once.  I had everything I needed to win.  Then I rolled a number on what should have been my final turn that let everyone else steal my money so I couldn't buy the winning building.

Win Record: 1 for 3

4.  Tokaido

Tokaido is a game about traveling across Japan, doing all the things vacationing travelers would do in Japan.  Eat good food, meet other travelers, take in the beautiful scenery, buy souvenirs, stuff like that.
Players move across the road as many spaces as they like on their turn, however whoever is farthest back on the road gets the next turn.  So you have the choice to jump far ahead of everyone and get to those hot springs before someone else can, but then players behind you can take it more slowly and get in extra turns while they mosey along a few spaces at a time.
Decisions in this game involve choosing when to jump ahead and stick behind and when to take what you want/need versus blocking spaces from other players who need them.  Kinda interesting.

Peace be the journey.

While there are decisions to make, there are few difficult ones.  Decision making becomes more important towards the end of the game, when players need that one last visit to the temple or last souvenir to complete their set, but early game consists of everyone moving as slow as possible to get as much stuff as possible which isn't too exciting.

Yet there is a very zen feel to this game.  I just enjoyed the trip.  And when I didn't have any particularly good plan, I just went shopping.  Shopping is always fun.  This game is just like real life.
Furthermore, this game is very thematic and very pretty.  I like Japanese-themed games, mostly because of the artwork that goes along with it, and this game is no exception.

I would suggest this one if you are looking for a pretty, thematic, chill game.

Oh, and I won this one.

Win Record: 2 for 4

5.  Wasabi

Hot.

I picked up Wasabi at my local game store recently, knowing it was out of print (I have a thing for having to have games that are out of print) and that it was a family game I could give as a gift to them.

Wasabi is about playing ingredient tiles on the board one at a time, trying to get ingredients in a row that match one of your recipes.  The recipes vary in length from 2 to 5, with more points awarded for completing harder recipes.  Furthermore, the ingredients for 3 to 5 length recipes don't have to be in order listed on the card, but doing so means completing the recipe "with style", awarding you green wasabi cubes which are extra points on top of the points for just completing the recipe.  Wasabi cubes get stored in little ceramic bowls, which are there for no real reason other than to look awesome.

The final complication is that completing a recipe allows you to take a special power card, like the Spicy! card which lets you play two ingredients on a turn instead of one, or the Stack! card which lets you play on top of a previously played tile, or the Wasabi! card which gets you a wasabi cube when played and is used to block spaces on the board to block other players from completing recipes there.

Very easy light game.  Lots of luck involved, tiny bit a strategy, involving a bit of planning but mostly involving being mean and blocking people.

The being mean strategy led me to the win by a landslide.

Win Record: 3 for 5


That's the final score.  Decent win rate, especially compared to my 0 for 7 last holiday season :/

Hope everyone got in some great gaming over the holidays!

Happy Holidays from the Panda Meeple!

Happy Holidays from all of us (just me) at the Panda Meeple.  May your days be merry and bright and full of games.

 

And be nice, because Panda-Claws is coming soon. 

Gen Con Special: Day 3 and 4 Finale (a.k.a The One With the Awesome Zombie Drawing)

Well it's been over 3 months since Gen Con.  I've been lazy and haven't been telling you this story in a timely fashion.  But the finale is finally here.  

Day 3:

Saturday.  The third real day of GenCon.  Was I boardgamed out yet?  Nope.

The day started like any other.  We played a few games.  I don't remember what exactly anymore.  It's all a blur.

But then...the best thing of Gen Con:

At noon, we went downstairs (it was conveniently located inside our hotel!) for "Helix and Helix: Cabin Fever."  Or, "Our Zombie LARP" as we called it.
So...LARPing.  Live Action Role Playing.  Probably would not call this my thing.  I don't really like acting as some character and whatnot.  But this seemed different.

Here's the idea for these zombie LARPs, put on by Ozarks Rising: There is a small group of players, who get to choose their specialization.  Warriors specialize in (foam) swords.  Marksmen specialize in (nerf) guns.  And Medics are good at healing people when they (inevitably) die.  Your team enters some zombie-infested scenario, played by some (scary) volunteers.  You play out the scenario, it's dark and scary,  the zombies attack you, you try to kill them before they kill you.

Combat involved light hits with the foam swords or shots with nerf guns.  Rule number 1 was "no crotch shots."  I suppose that's fair.

I chose to be a marksman.  Marksmen have a choice of having a small sword and nerf pistol, two nerf pistols, or a heavy nerf battle rifle.  I chose the rifle because it did more damage and looked badass.  I also was wearing a lot of clothes, so I had more armor then everyone else (long pants, long sleeve shirt, hoodie, all extra bonuses over shorts and short sleeves.  I came prepared.  Forgot my totoro hat, though).

Our team also had a father-daughter pair of medics, who do this every year together.  Super cute.  And as veterans they had some nice leveled-up skills that are super handy when us noobs are dying.

Our scenario consisted of a cabin in the woods, where there was a party, but then there were zombies so there was no party and we had to kill the zombie.  Bad cliche writing, just like the best horror movies.

So we entered the first room.  Not too scary yet.  The lights were on.  Then zombies appeared.  Like, flooded the room.  I tried to shoot, but my gun was jammed.  So I basically ran around for 5 minutes dodging zombies with no means to attack back.  Luckily, these zombie were slow.

We made it out alive, I unjammed my gun, and we moved on.  Then things got really scary.  From then on, the lights in the cabin were out.  We fought in a room with a bunch of cubicle dividers which, not surprisingly, spawed zombies from behind.  With no warning.  And some of them were fast.  And some of them had giant clubs.  And one of them had a banjo.

My strategy was to run around, not get hit, and go for headshots (stand in place without moving, call out "1,2,3 headshot"  then fire and hit.  Does extra damage).  This works fine, until you over commit to the headshot and the fast zombie with the bloody club hits you and does a ton of damage. I died there, but one of the medics saved me and I was all better.
I actually felt pretty worthless.  I did kill one zombie that dropped a key.  I felt special, I had the special item.  It was supposed to open a shed we needed to get into.  But then the crazy undead tree next to the shed got a bit overzealous and knocked the shed down, so my key was worthless :(.

We all got out of there alive.  It was just awesome.  My heart was pounding the whole time.

Despite LARPing probably not being my thing, I enjoyed this immensely because

1.  I didn't have to do any acting.  It was just me, shooting the scary things with my nerf gun.  And me being terrified wasn't acting either..

2. A combat LARP seems way awesome.  It's like playing a first-person shooter for reals.

3.  Zombies.

I would do this again.  Like, next time we go to GenCon, I will sign up for multiple of these.  So much fun.  I just wrote a ton about this, because it was THE HIGHLIGHT OF GENCON for me.  Great.  Highly recommended. 

Sadly, I have no pictures.  The zombies stole the camera to take selfies.

Here's my best attempt at recreating the scene:

This is pretty accurate.  Drawn to scale.

We chilled a bit after our zombie encounter, which was pretty exhausting.  Played some more games.  Ate some snacks.  Etc.

That evening, we went to do our True Dungeon Adventure, which we were looking most forward to.  Bascially, True Dungeon is a live action Dungeons and Dragons themed dungeon walkthrough.  There is a full environment you walk through that is very dark and, honestly, pretty cool.  We did the puzzle version, meaning that we had a puzzle to solve in each room to get through, with less emphasis on combat.  Combat works by shooting a little shuffle board disk with your weapon token in it towards an outline of a monster, with the monster taking damage based on where you hit it, how strong your weapon is, and some randomness that only the dungeon master of the room knows.

Awesome starting bag of goodies. 

My shuffleboard weapon.

Thoughts:
1. The environment was cool.  It was really dark.
2.  The puzzles were lame.  There was only one good puzzle in the bunch.  The others were either solve-able but way too hard for the time limit or weren't really puzzles so much as "flip all these little switches at random until you get the result you need."  Dumb.
3.  The final boss battle against dragons had animated dragons on a video screen.  I've been told in past years they had an animatronic dragon for these types of things.  Dumb.
4.  Combat is hard.  And we, doing the "beginners" version of the dungeon, were upset that the first fight we had was against a tornado that didn't take physical damage.  Dumb.

This was the most expensive thing we did at Gen Con (other than our steak dinner) at over $50 apeice.  It was also a huge disappointment.  I'm glad I did it in terms of getting the experience, but I wouldn't do it again.  I would do more Zombie LARP stuff.

At least we made it out alive.

Commemorative survivor pin.

I love us.

Day 4

On our last day, we played a few games in the morning.  Then we hit the dealer hall again looking for last minute deals while they tried to sell off stuff they didn't sell during the other days.  Didn't find anything worthwhile.  So after lunch, we headed home.  Made great time. 

Had a great time.

GenCon Special: Day 2

Our second night hotel stay was in the much more luxurious Hyatt in downtown Indy, rather than the dank caverns of the outer city Super 8.  Our new room was nice, clean and non-itchy.

Even cooler was that our hotel was directly connected to the convention center by a set of tunnels called the skywalk.  Easy access to the Con all day every day without ever having to set foot in the sunlight.  Quite vampire friendly.

Sadly, the hotel didn't have a waterfall.  I like waterfalls.  I stayed at a hotel in Nashville once that had a waterfall.  I liked it.

Friday morning, we played a game of Terra Mystica in the morning, a fairly heavy euro game where players start as different fantasy races trying to build up a network of buildings into cities on a crowded map.  Great game with 4 players and getting better every time I play it.

We also played a couple of games of Eight Minute Empire: Legends, a card drafting and area control game where you use your cards both for endgame points and as action cards to add troops to the board or move troops on the board in an attempt to have the majority of troops in various areas, the main way of scoring points.  It's short and simple and fun.  And the art is beautiful, from the game's designer and artist Ryan Laukat (more on him later).

After a few games, we prepped to head over to the convention center.  We decided that Friday would be our pseudo-cosplay day.  We are not cosplayers.  We did not put almost any time at all into our costumes.  Normally, we wouldn't even consider this.  But we were at a gaming convention, so why the heck not.

Group theme:  Miyazaki film characters!

Cute bunch.

I'm a totoro.  Cuz totoro so adorable.
I didn't go all out for my costume.  I wanted something comfortable and casual that still conveyed the essence of totoro.
I had the awesome hat custom made by Yako on Etsy.  She was quite friendly and did great work very quickly.  She fit it to my head size and made in blue at my request, cuz I love the blue totoro the best.  I may never have an occasion to wear the hat again, but I love it.

Our first event of the day was Artemis, a spaceship bridge simulation.  Basically, each member of your team has a different role as a starship crew member, like driving, navigating, communicating with other ships, monitoring power consumption in the ship or operating weapons.  There is also a captain who makes all the hard decisions and coordinates the whole ordeal.  No other crewmates can see info from the others, so everyone has to communicate with each other for things to run smoothly.

For our first short cruise, I manned the weapons.  Basically, the captain told me what weapon to load and when to fire.  I wasn't too excited for it.  Though if he had left me to my own devices, I probably would have just shot nukes at people at point blank range.
That's how I play first person shooters:  charge into the fray, take a couple of guys down with me, respawn.  I think I'm playing these games wrong.

Our second adventure had me navigating and researching enemy spaceships.  Nobody told me about the researching part.  People were all "what do you know about this ship?"  and I'm all like "nothing." And then people got angry before the captain came over and told me I had to scan stuff...lame.

My third shot was at driving the ship.  I crashed it into a space station.

Lastly, we had only a few minute left for our timeslot, so the guys in charge cranked out an impossibly hard scenario, with floods of enemy ships trying to kill us.  I played the engineer, trying to direct ship power where it was needed, repair broken ship sections, and keep all the systems cooled. With us getting hit constantly, it was a micromanaging nightmare.
We need more power to weapons so we can actually shoot them?  Oh, okay then, I guess we can do that, but imma take all the juice away from the thrusters so we can't move anymore.  Also, everything is overheating.  Also, all of my repair dudes are dead, nothing is getting fixed anymore.
This...was actually a lot of fun.

Overall, this wasn't my favorite event.  I probably wouldn't do it again, but it was worth the experience.

Aboard the spaceship with the Miyazaki Crew!  And another guy!

 We bounced from our space adventure to our next even: SUPER ROBO RALLY!!  This deserves full capitalization, because it was impossibly fun.
Basically each player has a giant robot made of LEGOs.  That enough is awesome.  My robot was Wall-E.

Wall-E is such a sad looking LEGO-bot.

The goal of the game is to get to the "flag" spaces on the board in a certain order.  Before a turn, everyone inputs a series of moves that they choose from a randomly generated set of possibilities. These get inputted by all players via a cell phone that communicates with the main computer off to the side.

Then the fun starts.  The moves begin to resolve, in some order determined by a priority randomly assigned to your move bank.  But maybe you don't get to go where you want, because another player moved in your way first.

And after all moves have resolve, the conveyer belts trigger and you move some more.  Watch:

Just wonderful when you end up on a belt by accident and then go completely the wrong way.

Also, if you walk off the board or fall in a hole, you die.  Don't die.  Though at one point, I was so far away from where I wanted to be I jumped off the edge of the board on purpose so I would respawn in a more reasonable place closer to the center of the board.

Spin-Bot is dead.

Anyway,  SUPER ROBO RALLY was great fun, maybe my second favorite part of the whole Con...

Rawrrrrr!!! Sock monster!

Since this was vacation, we wanted to treat ourselves to one great meal.  So we had advance reservations for St. Elmo's Steakhouse in downtown Indy.  They have world famous shrimp cocktails, they say.  And boy, were they delicious.  We also go our steaks with sides for very reasonable prices. Great meal overall and fantastic shrimp cocktails.  Nice.

Back at our hotel that night, we played City of Iron, a weird mashup of an economic game, area majority, deck-building, I don't know, read the description somewhere else.  It's fun though.  And the art is fantastic.  Why?  Because it's Ryan Laukat again.  And we still aren't through with this guy...

We made our last trip over the convention for the day for a kind of "games in development playtesting" event.  And we requested to the new Eight Minute Empires expansion from, guess who...Ryan Laukat.  He was a super nice guy, it turns out.  He signed a City of Iron box and player board.  His signature is pretty.

Went back to the hotel.  Called it a night.  Solid day.

Twonky bot.  Looks kinda like a Panda-bot.  Adorable.

GenCon Special: Travel and Day 1

GenCon.  A general gaming convention.  Lots of games.  "The Best 4 Days in Gaming" they say.  It's been over a month since we went.  The high has died down.  Here's what I remember from that 4 day blur of games and jolly good times:

Our original plan was that we were going to drive out to Indianapolis for this smorgasbord of fun on Thursday, get there Thursday night, do a small bit of fun stuff, then go on a boardgame/event rampage on Friday and Saturday with a cooldown period on Sunday before the drive home.

But we got antsy.

We booked a one night stay at a cheap hotel on the edge of Indy, then drove up Wednesday afternoon. The goal: get there early so our rampage could include ALL off Thursday. We wanted all the time we could get.

So we drove up Wednesday afternoon. All spontaneously-like.  I felt like such a rebel.

Booking a really cheap hotel turned out as you might expect.  We stayed at a super sketch Super 8.

Dramatic re-enactment of our hotel stay. And that's the guy that fixed the broken bathroom light, obviously.

Didn't even go into the bathroom.  And the bed was hard and the pillows were flat and the air was itchy.

So itchy.

But who cares.  We were at Gen Con!  Almost, at least.  We played a few games that night.  We played Fleet, a short little card game about getting fishing licenses, and Innovation, another card game where you build a civilization with a huge variety of abilities.  We also played CO2, a great game about building clean power plants and combating carbon emissions (more fun than it sounds, trust me).

We then retired for the evening.  Hard to sleep, though.  Too excited.  And I think the boogieman was under my bed.

Day 1:

After a sleepless night on a slab of concrete and pillows made of what I can only assume was pudding, we made our way to the Con!!!!

This is my badge.  My 4-day badge.  My ticket to the best 4 days in gaming. My badge of honor as a board game connoisseur.   My admission to a geeky, crowded heaven.

Yes, that is totally my real name.  I didn't edit this photo or anything.

We had the whole morning before we had any scheduled events.  So we wandered around for a bit.  Checked out the scene.

Saw some cool miniatures stuff.  I'm always impressed with these things, even though I don't play myself.

Then...the dealer hall.  A giant exhibition hall filled with board game dealers selling  their newest games,  clothing dealers selling costumes and nerdy t-shirts with pikachus and other beloved characters, and artist alley filled with beautiful fantasy art.

I bought this.  I can't resist a Totoro.  Totoro so adorable.

Art by Rebekah Crowmer.  So awesome.

Jake also bought Panamax, a brand new Gen Con release.  Meaning we got to basically play the game before the rest of the public!

We later went to a couple of demo rooms where we played Harbour, a very mediocre harbor themed worker placement card game (honestly, it was pretty lame), and Concordia, a fantastic Roman Empire themed game where you develop a trade network and please the gods or something like that.  Best game we tested at the Con, in my opinion.

Later in the evening we played a rip roaring game of MAMMOTH SETTLERS OF CATAN!  It's Settlers of Catan, but giant.  Giant board, giant wooden pieces, giant foam dice.
I hate Settlers of Catan.  I really do.  But this was worth it cuz it was GIANT!  Ahh, good times.

The game is giant, but I am still giant-er.  I feel like a kaiju.

I'm orange.  I'm losing.  Both very typical of me.

Cute guy, playing his giant board games.

We played some more games.  Like Imperial Settlers, another Gen Con release.  It has pink meeples.

Imperial Settlers.  Brand new game release.  One of first to play it.  Aren't we special?

There was some more wandering around, then we went to bed.  Solid day.  Had to get geared up for an epic Day 2!