Now available for your listening and/or viewing pleasure: my Gen Con 2023 Recap with Amanda McKnight! We livestreamed this and it’s been edited and available in video and podcast formats. Embeds below:
gen con
Top 10 Gen Con Games!
Today (Wed 9/8/21) Rahdo and I discuss our Top 10 Gen Con Games LIVE at 12pm PT / 3pm ET!
GenCant 2016 Day 4: Pandemic: The Cure
Pandemic: The Cure
Yesterday was a busy day for me, so I only played one game on GenCant Day 4. And, unfortunately, I only played three of the four games I wanted to solo for #GenCantSoloCon. Still, if I’m able to play a single game on a given day, then it’s been a good day.
Pandemic: The Cure
I love Pandemic and love teaching it to new players. Unfortunately, like other cooperative games, there’s often the problem of the Alpha Gamer, where one person dominates the game, telling others what the best strategy is and generally sucking the fun out of the group experience.
This is why I now prefer Pandemic: The Cure, especially for new gamers. It sets up and plays faster than the original and it’s easier to understand for first timers. While an Alpha Gamer can still tell others what to do, each player has their own dice and can roll or re-roll to their heart’s content. Yes, there may be a preferred play with the dice you’ve rolled, but you almost always have a chance to roll for something better. It gives back more of the decision-making to each player, while the original Pandemic often has one best play that the Alpha Gamer generally sees before everybody else and tells them about it, basically forcing them to do it.
Like Pandemic, players in Pandemic: The Cure try to cure diseases before they spread throughout the world. The diseases are represented by six-sided dice in four colors and they are located in one of six different locations. If there are ever four dice of the same color in one area, then an outbreak occurs.
Each player rolls their own player dice and performs actions based on their rolls (like Pandemic, each player has unique abilities). You can re-roll any of them, but the catch is if you roll a biohazard die, it counts against you (there are some exceptions to this that I won’t get into here). Actions include moving from one area to another, treating diseases, sharing samples with other players, and curing diseases.
Cure all four diseases before you run out of disease dice or suffer too many outbreaks or epidemics and you win.
Just like the original game, it’s a lot easier said than done.
What I Played During GenCant 2016:
- Ca$h ‘n Guns
- Rome: Rise to Power
- Pandemic
- Valley of the Kings (solo)
- Dead Men Tell No Tales (solo)
- Ca$h ‘n Guns
- Bohnanza
- Between Two Cities
- KLASK
- Splendor
- Pandemic: The Cure (solo)
Not a bad four days of gaming! For me, though, one of the highlights of this year’s GenCant (besides finally beating Dead Men Tell No Tales) was volunteering to manage the official GenCant Facebook page. It was a treat seeing how people responded to the idea of a digital get-together. I’m proud to be part of this terrific community of board gamers and if you weren’t able to attend, I highly recommend joining us for next year’s GenCant.
GenCant 2016 Day 1: Egypt and Rome
Valley of the Kings
Day 1 of Gen Con was today and it looked awesome (although I have no desire to be in this). I loved seeing all of my online gaming buddies posting photos and reporting the latest and greatest from the con.
Valley of the Kings
It was also Day of GenCan’t 2016 and I participated in the #GenCantSoloCon by playing a solitaire game of Valley of the Kings. I’ve played this deckbuilder several times solo and I enjoy it as a get-your-highest-score game. Set in ancient Egypt, it’s a deck builder with set collection, in which you only score points by putting cards in your tomb (trashing cards) and you earn more points for collecting similar items. This sets up interesting choices throughout the game: do you play your card for its money value, its action, or trash it to start accumulating points?
Valley of the Kings is one of two deck builders I recommend to Dominion fans (the other being Trains).
Rome: Rise to Power
Rome: Rise to Power
After my solo game, I went to my Thursday night gaming group and I was able to get Rome: Rise to Power to the table. I’ve had the game for a few months and have been itching to play. Unfortunately, it’d been awhile since I’d gone through the rulebook (which isn’t exactly the easiest to follow), so there were a few pauses during the game to clarify some points. I’m usually pretty good at explaining games (I’m the designated rules guy during family game night), but I wasn’t at my best tonight. Thankfully, my gaming buddies are smart enough to figure out things on their own and we were able to play the game within the suggested time (45 minutes).
Rome: Rise to Power is a game that combines dice allocation, card drafting, set collection, area control game with variable player powers. Players are in ancient Rome trying to use its military to win regions throughout the Roman Empire, win influence with senators, and put on the best arena battles.
The dice allocation system is unique and it’s what appealed to me most when I’d heard about it. Yes, there’s luck involved with dice (duh), but there are several ways to mitigate the luck factor, mainly through the special powers each player earns through their combinations of senators and regions won. The third way to earn points, through the arena battles, is sort of wacky, but somehow it works: you buy cards to build a poker-like hand and play them after rounds three and five (the final round). So, three barbarians and two beasts are the “Battle Royale,” which is a full house in poker, and there other hands that score.
The overall consensus was okay. I liked it and agreed with two of my buddies; we’d like to play it again now that we have a better understanding of the game. The fourth guy didn’t care for it, but I’m thankful that they were all up for playing. I’ve got more than a few games in my collection that I haven’t played so it was good to scratch this one off the list.
Solitaire For Sale
For Sale
While getting ready for #GenCantSoloCon (here’s my schedule of games for this weekend) I wanted to see if there was a solo variant for one of my favorite filler games, For Sale. A few clicks and clacks on boardgamegeek.com and I can now play For Sale by myself.
For Sale is an auction-style game played in two rounds. During the first round, players bid on properties (numbered 1-30). A few properties are dealt out and players begin the auction by using their allotted amount of money tokens.The highest bid takes the current highest property, with the second highest bid taking the second highest property, etc. A player can drop out of the bidding at any time and receive half of their bid back along with the current lowest property. They can also pass (i.e., not bid on a property) and take the current lowest property for free. This process is repeated until all properties have been bought.
In the second round, players try to sell their newly acquired properties for checks (valued at $0 to $15,000). This time, the checks are dealt out and players secretly choose one of their properties. After everybody reveals them, the highest valued property earns the current highest valued check, the second highest property earns the second highest check, etc. This process is repeated until all properties have been sold. The player with the most money at the end wins.
For Sale is always a hit whenever I play it. It’s a fantastic quick play that also makes for a great introductory game for new board gamers.
Here’s the link to the original post of the solo play rules. And here’s my rewritten version; the technical writer/editor in me couldn’t resist streamlining the text and making things more consistent and orderly.
GenCant 2016
GenCant 2016
As I mentioned in my first blog of my challenge, this week is Gen Con, America’s Board Game Super Bowl. Gamers from around the world invade Indianapolis for an extended weekend of all things board games. I wish I had it in my budget to fly out for four days and be amongst my fellow tabletoppers, but it wasn’t meant to be.
Thankfully, there’s a terrific alternative for those of us who can’t make it to Gen Con. The GenCant website explains it best:
#GenCant started in 2014 on Twitter as Jason Paterson (@nakedmeeple,) Suzanne Sheldon (@425suzanne) and others were chatting enviously about all the Gen Con news in the social media sphere. One fateful Twitter exchange created the hashtag – and GenCant was born. Twitter gamers jumped in head first with enthusiasm by participating in the conversation, tweeting #GenCantContest photos, and donating prizes of all sorts. Soon the event had enough buzz that publishers and designers were asking how to get involved too.
- GenCant is a community created and fueled event.
- Call it an UnConvention, a Virtual Con, or Digital Gathering – just call it fun!
- GenCant is intended to be something a bit fun for everyone who can’t attend the world’s biggest board gaming event, Gen Con.
- GenCant is not intended as criticism or insult to Gen Con.
Cool, huh?
I love the idea of people taking something negative (not going to Gen Con) and turning it into something positive (going to GenCant). Seriously, what’s not to like about a free virtual gaming event that anyone can attend? They even have an official mascot, cool-looking badges, and prizes!
This will be my second GenCant and I’m excited. It looks like I’ll have four (actually five!) days of gaming.
I’m starting early on Wednesday with my regular gaming group, then I’ve got my other group on Thursday. On Saturday my wife and I are going to a friend’s for dinner and gaming. And throughout all of this, I’ll be participating in the #GenCantSoloCon.
(Yes, I solo game. I’m the only one amongst my gaming buddies who enjoys it; everybody else would rather play video games. Oh, these kids and their technology. Haha)
Hope you can join me and all of the others online for GenCant. Whether you’re gaming with your regular group, doing solitaire play, or a little bit of both, it’ll be a blast! (And don’t forget to tweet me with the hashtag #GenCant2016)
I’m not sure what I’ll be playing with my gaming groups, but here’s my solo schedule for #GenCantSoloCon:
Thursday Card Game: Valley of the Kings
Friday Co-Op Game: Dead Men Tell No Tales
Saturday Euro Game: Harbour
Sunday Dice Game: Pandemic: The Cure
GenCantSoloCon games
August Blog Challenge: Board Games
Trains
I haven’t written nearly enough this year (unless you count my news column at iSlaytheDragon.com), so I’m kickstarting my blog with my Blog Every Day in August Challenge.
Every day this month I’ll share thoughts and photos of board games and if I’m feeling particularly cheeky or inspired, I’ll write about other topics.
But it’s all about my favorite hobby this month.
Trains
My wife and I recently became HUGE fans of Trains; we’ve played it almost a dozen times since I bought it on Memorial Day weekend. I scored a like-new copy for only $10 thanks to a Facebook gaming group and I love the fact that it’s now cost less than a dollar per play.
Trains is a basically Dominion meets Ticket to Ride. It’s a deck builder with a map, so there’s some route laying mixed in with the card-playing. I was introduced to the game by one of my weekly gaming groups and after I’d played it the first time, I thought my wife would dig it. We’d enjoyed playing Dominion and Ticket to Ride together and after we played Trains for the first time, I knew we had a new favorite.
Pictured above is the Saitama map, which was a promo given out at Gen Con 2014 (and in turn given to us by a friend). I thought it was appropriate we played this one today in honor of our country’s biggest gaming convention happening later this week.
Day 211: Sushi Go!
Sushi Go (image from thegameaisle.com)
Seeing all of the tweets from Gen Con has got me ready for game night here at the house. I may run a solo game of Pandemic before bed, but I wish there was a Sushi Go! single-player variant. My wife and I gave it a quick run-through to learn the basics and I loved it.
The graphics on the cards are uber-cute, from the salmon nigiri to the dessert puddings. I love the card-drafting mechanism; it’s easy to learn and the interaction with other players is always a good thing in my book.
I’ve read this elsewhere, but I’ll say it again here: I believe this physical interaction is what has been fueling the board game renaissance. Even though we have more ways now to communicate with each other, from Facebook to Snapchat to text messaging to the next technological breakthrough, we’ve lost the daily interactions that were a bigger part of our lives just 10 (5?) years ago.
I’m guilty of it as anyone. I always seem to be quicker to respond to a text or an e-mail. In a world of multi-tasking, it’s just easier to do it this way.
But board games require you to be in the moment. It’s not as much fun if you’re playing a game while someone’s on their smartphone or laptop. So the electronics stay off the table while we deal cards, roll dice, and move meeples around.
We’ll be running a bigger game of Sushi Go! soon, but just based on our little preview, I know it’ll be one of our go-to games on game night. It’ll be fun to disconnect from the electronics while connecting with our friends and families.