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Games I Have Played: Gen Con 2014 Edition
I attended Gen Con this past weekend along with the BF and had a lot of fun! We also played several new-to-me games, of course. (But not too many because I can get scheduling overload easily.)
Dungeon Dwellers: This is a card game that's trying to replicate the feel of an RPG. Each player has a character that starts out with a bit of armor or an ability or maybe an item. Then you build a dungeon, populate it with monsters, and work together to kill them in order to proceed to the next floor. It's a co-op game in that if one player dies, everyone loses, but if everyone survives the final boss, then the player with the most gold wins.
I feel that this game was very successful at its goal! It really did feel like a tabletop RPG (opinion based on the two campaigns I have ever played in, so mileage may vary), with everyone working together but also trying to get the loot for themselves. The game was simple enough to grasp with a 5 minute explanation, although there were some things you could do that were not immediately obvious or simple to remember. But those things also weren't anything necessary in order to play the game and proceed through the dungeon, just things that made it a bit easier. One cool thing was that the game came with pre-built deck suggestions, but as you get more familiar with the cards and game, you could build your own character deck that worked more similarly to the type of character you like to play. I played a mage, so I got to cast lightning bolts and then as my character got more powerful, I could double the damage I did with my attack. The BF had the rogue character, so he got to do all the sneaky stuff like backstabbing enemies and stealing extra gold.
We both enjoyed the game lots but didn't think it would work as well with just the two of us playing at home. (There were four people at the demo we went to.)
Grow: The Organic Building Game: This one was described to me as a territory acquisition game similar to Risk. Each turn you play a branch (until you run out of branches) and either a leaf, bud, or beetle. Buds (which you earn by playing leaves) go on leaves and then bloom the next turn, claiming the chain of leaves it is on and preventing people from placing their own buds on those leaves. Having a bud bloom earns you a beetle, which you can use to either attack someone else's bud/bloom or place on your own bud/bloom to defend it. The game ends when there are no more leaves to play. One other thing of note is that the game is a 3D game that builds up and out as it goes on.
I found this game when I was wandering around the huge hall and stopped to play because it looked interesting and pretty. It was a pretty fun game! (Although not quite $50 worth of fun for me.) I just played against one other person, which did work very well (a concern because a lot of games designed to be multi-player do not work well with just two players), and I think it would be lots of fun with more people as well. The two person game is highly strategic, but the game had a simple enough play style that it never felt like a chore to figure out what I should do. I think the game would be really good to play with young kids too because it's deep without being overly complicated and also has a nice physical element to playing it, moreso than with most board games.
Romance of the Nine Empires: Oh man, this game. Before I say anything else, I am going to let it be known that this game is incredibly complicated and that I did not like it at all. (Which is not to say that this game wouldn't be right up someone else's alley, but that person is never going to be me.) So. Romance of the Nine Empires is a non-collectible card game based on a fictional collectible card game that is featured in the movie The Gamers: The Hands of Fate which is itself based off of the real-life collectible card game Legend of the Five Rings. (Which is why I wanted to play this game. The BF and I attended the premier of Hands of Fate at last year's Gen Con and enjoyed it.) Before the start of the game you choose a faction, which gives you a pre-built deck that has some particular theme. Then you start the game with some castles that all have some food, and you need to build more building to support your ability to do more things, recruit some heroes to either attack/raid your opponent's castles or defend your own, or otherwise add supportive elements like sidekicks, armor, or spells that your heroes can use. Attacking has a complicated set of rules that the BF and I did not manage to figure out even after playing for an hour and half and with the help of the moderator. Raiding was similar to attacking except for all the little ways it was different, so we never quite figured that out either. You lost if all your castles were killed, or all your castles were out of food by the time winter rolled around, or you somehow managed to earn fifty renown points. The BF and I quit before the game ended, but it was clear that he was going to eventually be the winner.
I chose the faction that did quests to earn you renown. The problem with this was that the moderator had not had anyone use that deck yet so he wasn't sure how it really worked. (I would have chosen an easier one, but there were four decks and four people showed up. So someone was getting stuck with the complicated deck, and why not me.) About an hour into it, when the BF had managed to recruit like four heroes to my two and also get himself some armor to my none and a lot of buildings to my three, that the moderator was like "Oh, all the quests have additional rewards which are printed on these cards I've kept hidden in the game's box, and that semi-simple quest you threw away because it didn't do anything as far as you could see actually would have been very useful for you to complete. Sorry I didn't say anything about that earlier." The whole thing was an overcomplicated mess made worse by a moderator who didn't know how either my deck or the BF's worked. (I don't blame the moderator for his failings. He was as helpful as he could be, and I think AEG just grabbed some poor employee that morning and was like, "You're doing the Romance of the Nine Empires stuff today, have fun.")
There is definitely a market for complicated games like this that have a variety of potential plays but very few decent-to-optimal plays. That market is unfortunately absolutely not me. I really can't judge whether Romance of the Nine Empires is a good game of its type or not because, again, not my type of game. It could be the most elegantly crafted game of this style ever, and I would not care. That said, I very much doubt that it is the best of its genre, but maybe people who are not me would enjoy it. (Or maybe it's just a bad game.) The game does do the thing where you can take the pre-built deck and modify it by adding or taking out cards to get a deck more in line with your preferred way of playing, so that's cool I guess.
Geek Out!: Geek Out! is a geeky party game that's sort of like if you added double dog dares to Trivial Pursuit. You roll a die to get a category and are then given a challenge, like "name four named fantasy swords" or "name four scifi series that don't have any aliens," and you either say you can do that or pass. Then the person next to you is given a chance to either pass or name how many things they think they can name. And it keeps going around until everyone has passed except one person, who now needs to name however many things they bet they could. If you manage to do it, you get one point, and if you fail you get minus two points. We played a combined game of Geek Out! and Geek Out! Pop Culture Party. The original Geek Out! has very geeky things to name, and the Pop Culture Party edition has more general knowledge pop culture things ("name three songs that have a month in their title" or "name two characters from Cheers"). Judging on whether something counts or not is done by the group playing, so you can get into arguments about iffy answers.
This game was a lot of fun! I was pretty timid with my bets but it was fun trying to think up answers in my head along with the person actually doing the challenge. And I was still involved in the game because of answer judging being done by the group as a whole. I'm not sure how well the game would work with just two people, but I enjoyed it enough to buy a copy despite not often having people to play with other than the BF. Our group had five people playing, which was a good number, and you can do teams if you are playing with lots of people. Teams would probably be a lot of fun because I bet the bluffing aspect of trying to get someone to top your challenge (to their detriment) would go wild. One bad/awkward apple can make the game into a bit of a downer, if they are always trying to argue against the consensus or if they refuse to back down during majority of the betting rounds (so that they end up being the one to do most of the challenges). Our group had one person who was a bit like that, but I still managed to have lots of fun playing despite the couple serious arguments.
Ascension: Ascension is a deck building game where you buy heroes and constructs which in turn help you to either buy more things or kill monsters. There is a pool of so many honor tokens (the amount varies depending on how many people are playing), and when that runs out, you count up the honor tokens you've earned plus how much honor your deck is worth (everything you buy has a honor value) to see who has the most and who therefore won.
I actually played in the world championship tournament for this game because it is one that I really do enjoy playing. Each game plays out differently because different sets of cards flip up for buying/killing each time, and the cards can combo with each other leading to some very cool turns when everything works together. I competed in the tournament last year, my first time ever doing something like that, and I went 5-2 but my tiebreakers were not good enough for Top 8. I had even more fun in the tournament this year because I was way less nervous! But I again went 5-2 and had some of the worst tiebreakers and thus failed to make Top 8.
I thought the newest expansion was going to premier at Gen Con because that's what they did last year. But sadly no. Instead I won a second promo card as a prize, which was a bit of a let down from last year, but oh well. The set used for the tournament, Realms Unraveled, is my favorite set, so competing with it was extra special. You can get some really cool turns with this set, which is the funnest part of the game for me. (The BF and I actually play with an extensive set of house rules that make it easier to get the big turns without making too lopsided.) I have noticed that this set tends towards extremes where either the point differential is less than five honor or over thirty honor. I haven't figured out a good way to errata the cards to make the giant differentials less likely. Also I was not at all disappointed with my record; my two losses were just how the cards happened to play out.
Lost Legacy: The Starship and Lost Legacy: Flying Garden: These games were my gift to the BF. They play basically the same but with different cards that do some different things. These are both quick games, and you generally do best of thirteen matches. You start with one card in your hand, one card face down (called the ruins), and the rest of the cards in a deck. Each turn, you draw a card, play a card, and then do whatever the card text says. If all players but one is eliminated (which is a lot easier to do in a two person game than a multi-player game), then the player remaining wins. If you empty the deck, then the person holding the lowest numbered card gets one guess to find the lost legacy (either the spaceship or flying garden), which can be in one of the players' hands or in the ruins (which may have gotten more cards added to it over the course of the game). If they find the lost legacy, they win; if not, the person with the next lowest card number gets to guess. So it is possible for no one to win the game.
The game is in the same vein as Love Letter if you've ever played that. (And if not, you should. It is a super fun game that is quick to play, simple to learn, and doesn't lose its replay value. If the BF and I had downtime during Gen Con, we were almost always playing Love Letter as a way of passing the time.) The end game however is different, and the Lost Legacy games have a scifi/treasure hunter theme instead. Unlike Love Letter, which works well as either a two-player or multi-player game, the two Lost Legacies we played work better with more than two players. But they were still pretty fun! I liked Flying Garden slightly better than The Starship because Flying Garden seemed to have more cards where you had to make choices (Do you switch those two cards? Which card do you add to the ruins? Etc.) and that helped add some randomness and strategy to the two person game. One cool thing is how you can watch what the other players do to try to figure out where the lost legacy is, which is completely missing from Love Letter. It adds a different sort of dimension to the game. You can also combine the games and just use one of the lost legacies, which sounds fun but the BF and I have yet to try this. The games are conveniently travel sized, which makes them ideal for bringing along to things just in case.
So those are my thoughts on the games I played at Gen Con this year: several really fun games plus one big dud.
Dungeon Dwellers: This is a card game that's trying to replicate the feel of an RPG. Each player has a character that starts out with a bit of armor or an ability or maybe an item. Then you build a dungeon, populate it with monsters, and work together to kill them in order to proceed to the next floor. It's a co-op game in that if one player dies, everyone loses, but if everyone survives the final boss, then the player with the most gold wins.
I feel that this game was very successful at its goal! It really did feel like a tabletop RPG (opinion based on the two campaigns I have ever played in, so mileage may vary), with everyone working together but also trying to get the loot for themselves. The game was simple enough to grasp with a 5 minute explanation, although there were some things you could do that were not immediately obvious or simple to remember. But those things also weren't anything necessary in order to play the game and proceed through the dungeon, just things that made it a bit easier. One cool thing was that the game came with pre-built deck suggestions, but as you get more familiar with the cards and game, you could build your own character deck that worked more similarly to the type of character you like to play. I played a mage, so I got to cast lightning bolts and then as my character got more powerful, I could double the damage I did with my attack. The BF had the rogue character, so he got to do all the sneaky stuff like backstabbing enemies and stealing extra gold.
We both enjoyed the game lots but didn't think it would work as well with just the two of us playing at home. (There were four people at the demo we went to.)
Grow: The Organic Building Game: This one was described to me as a territory acquisition game similar to Risk. Each turn you play a branch (until you run out of branches) and either a leaf, bud, or beetle. Buds (which you earn by playing leaves) go on leaves and then bloom the next turn, claiming the chain of leaves it is on and preventing people from placing their own buds on those leaves. Having a bud bloom earns you a beetle, which you can use to either attack someone else's bud/bloom or place on your own bud/bloom to defend it. The game ends when there are no more leaves to play. One other thing of note is that the game is a 3D game that builds up and out as it goes on.
I found this game when I was wandering around the huge hall and stopped to play because it looked interesting and pretty. It was a pretty fun game! (Although not quite $50 worth of fun for me.) I just played against one other person, which did work very well (a concern because a lot of games designed to be multi-player do not work well with just two players), and I think it would be lots of fun with more people as well. The two person game is highly strategic, but the game had a simple enough play style that it never felt like a chore to figure out what I should do. I think the game would be really good to play with young kids too because it's deep without being overly complicated and also has a nice physical element to playing it, moreso than with most board games.
Romance of the Nine Empires: Oh man, this game. Before I say anything else, I am going to let it be known that this game is incredibly complicated and that I did not like it at all. (Which is not to say that this game wouldn't be right up someone else's alley, but that person is never going to be me.) So. Romance of the Nine Empires is a non-collectible card game based on a fictional collectible card game that is featured in the movie The Gamers: The Hands of Fate which is itself based off of the real-life collectible card game Legend of the Five Rings. (Which is why I wanted to play this game. The BF and I attended the premier of Hands of Fate at last year's Gen Con and enjoyed it.) Before the start of the game you choose a faction, which gives you a pre-built deck that has some particular theme. Then you start the game with some castles that all have some food, and you need to build more building to support your ability to do more things, recruit some heroes to either attack/raid your opponent's castles or defend your own, or otherwise add supportive elements like sidekicks, armor, or spells that your heroes can use. Attacking has a complicated set of rules that the BF and I did not manage to figure out even after playing for an hour and half and with the help of the moderator. Raiding was similar to attacking except for all the little ways it was different, so we never quite figured that out either. You lost if all your castles were killed, or all your castles were out of food by the time winter rolled around, or you somehow managed to earn fifty renown points. The BF and I quit before the game ended, but it was clear that he was going to eventually be the winner.
I chose the faction that did quests to earn you renown. The problem with this was that the moderator had not had anyone use that deck yet so he wasn't sure how it really worked. (I would have chosen an easier one, but there were four decks and four people showed up. So someone was getting stuck with the complicated deck, and why not me.) About an hour into it, when the BF had managed to recruit like four heroes to my two and also get himself some armor to my none and a lot of buildings to my three, that the moderator was like "Oh, all the quests have additional rewards which are printed on these cards I've kept hidden in the game's box, and that semi-simple quest you threw away because it didn't do anything as far as you could see actually would have been very useful for you to complete. Sorry I didn't say anything about that earlier." The whole thing was an overcomplicated mess made worse by a moderator who didn't know how either my deck or the BF's worked. (I don't blame the moderator for his failings. He was as helpful as he could be, and I think AEG just grabbed some poor employee that morning and was like, "You're doing the Romance of the Nine Empires stuff today, have fun.")
There is definitely a market for complicated games like this that have a variety of potential plays but very few decent-to-optimal plays. That market is unfortunately absolutely not me. I really can't judge whether Romance of the Nine Empires is a good game of its type or not because, again, not my type of game. It could be the most elegantly crafted game of this style ever, and I would not care. That said, I very much doubt that it is the best of its genre, but maybe people who are not me would enjoy it. (Or maybe it's just a bad game.) The game does do the thing where you can take the pre-built deck and modify it by adding or taking out cards to get a deck more in line with your preferred way of playing, so that's cool I guess.
Geek Out!: Geek Out! is a geeky party game that's sort of like if you added double dog dares to Trivial Pursuit. You roll a die to get a category and are then given a challenge, like "name four named fantasy swords" or "name four scifi series that don't have any aliens," and you either say you can do that or pass. Then the person next to you is given a chance to either pass or name how many things they think they can name. And it keeps going around until everyone has passed except one person, who now needs to name however many things they bet they could. If you manage to do it, you get one point, and if you fail you get minus two points. We played a combined game of Geek Out! and Geek Out! Pop Culture Party. The original Geek Out! has very geeky things to name, and the Pop Culture Party edition has more general knowledge pop culture things ("name three songs that have a month in their title" or "name two characters from Cheers"). Judging on whether something counts or not is done by the group playing, so you can get into arguments about iffy answers.
This game was a lot of fun! I was pretty timid with my bets but it was fun trying to think up answers in my head along with the person actually doing the challenge. And I was still involved in the game because of answer judging being done by the group as a whole. I'm not sure how well the game would work with just two people, but I enjoyed it enough to buy a copy despite not often having people to play with other than the BF. Our group had five people playing, which was a good number, and you can do teams if you are playing with lots of people. Teams would probably be a lot of fun because I bet the bluffing aspect of trying to get someone to top your challenge (to their detriment) would go wild. One bad/awkward apple can make the game into a bit of a downer, if they are always trying to argue against the consensus or if they refuse to back down during majority of the betting rounds (so that they end up being the one to do most of the challenges). Our group had one person who was a bit like that, but I still managed to have lots of fun playing despite the couple serious arguments.
Ascension: Ascension is a deck building game where you buy heroes and constructs which in turn help you to either buy more things or kill monsters. There is a pool of so many honor tokens (the amount varies depending on how many people are playing), and when that runs out, you count up the honor tokens you've earned plus how much honor your deck is worth (everything you buy has a honor value) to see who has the most and who therefore won.
I actually played in the world championship tournament for this game because it is one that I really do enjoy playing. Each game plays out differently because different sets of cards flip up for buying/killing each time, and the cards can combo with each other leading to some very cool turns when everything works together. I competed in the tournament last year, my first time ever doing something like that, and I went 5-2 but my tiebreakers were not good enough for Top 8. I had even more fun in the tournament this year because I was way less nervous! But I again went 5-2 and had some of the worst tiebreakers and thus failed to make Top 8.
I thought the newest expansion was going to premier at Gen Con because that's what they did last year. But sadly no. Instead I won a second promo card as a prize, which was a bit of a let down from last year, but oh well. The set used for the tournament, Realms Unraveled, is my favorite set, so competing with it was extra special. You can get some really cool turns with this set, which is the funnest part of the game for me. (The BF and I actually play with an extensive set of house rules that make it easier to get the big turns without making too lopsided.) I have noticed that this set tends towards extremes where either the point differential is less than five honor or over thirty honor. I haven't figured out a good way to errata the cards to make the giant differentials less likely. Also I was not at all disappointed with my record; my two losses were just how the cards happened to play out.
Lost Legacy: The Starship and Lost Legacy: Flying Garden: These games were my gift to the BF. They play basically the same but with different cards that do some different things. These are both quick games, and you generally do best of thirteen matches. You start with one card in your hand, one card face down (called the ruins), and the rest of the cards in a deck. Each turn, you draw a card, play a card, and then do whatever the card text says. If all players but one is eliminated (which is a lot easier to do in a two person game than a multi-player game), then the player remaining wins. If you empty the deck, then the person holding the lowest numbered card gets one guess to find the lost legacy (either the spaceship or flying garden), which can be in one of the players' hands or in the ruins (which may have gotten more cards added to it over the course of the game). If they find the lost legacy, they win; if not, the person with the next lowest card number gets to guess. So it is possible for no one to win the game.
The game is in the same vein as Love Letter if you've ever played that. (And if not, you should. It is a super fun game that is quick to play, simple to learn, and doesn't lose its replay value. If the BF and I had downtime during Gen Con, we were almost always playing Love Letter as a way of passing the time.) The end game however is different, and the Lost Legacy games have a scifi/treasure hunter theme instead. Unlike Love Letter, which works well as either a two-player or multi-player game, the two Lost Legacies we played work better with more than two players. But they were still pretty fun! I liked Flying Garden slightly better than The Starship because Flying Garden seemed to have more cards where you had to make choices (Do you switch those two cards? Which card do you add to the ruins? Etc.) and that helped add some randomness and strategy to the two person game. One cool thing is how you can watch what the other players do to try to figure out where the lost legacy is, which is completely missing from Love Letter. It adds a different sort of dimension to the game. You can also combine the games and just use one of the lost legacies, which sounds fun but the BF and I have yet to try this. The games are conveniently travel sized, which makes them ideal for bringing along to things just in case.
So those are my thoughts on the games I played at Gen Con this year: several really fun games plus one big dud.