Subject: Fw: GenCon report (long, some OT elements) Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2000 20:18:35 -0700 Patrick Dolan wrote in message news:... Okay, I've had a couple days to recover from GenCon, and thought I'd share my thoughts with everyone. I'm crossposting this to the relevant groups instead of breaking it up into separate chunks partially because a few of the games could fall into multiple categories, and partially because I figure some folks might be interested in some of this info & may not subscribe to the other newsgroups. I'll break the games down by CCG, BOARDGAMES & MINIATURES. I didn't get to play nearly as many demos as I wanted, so I don't have a lot of firsthand experience with some of these, but I'll specify which ones I played & which ones I didn't. Pretty much every time I asked about a release date, I was told "End of October, beginning of November", which is sort of the critical timeframe for publishers to take advantage of the Christmas market. So, if there isn't a date listed, it's a safe bet that it's due out at the end of October or beginning of November. CCG's There were an awful lot of these, of course. Most of them were pretty forgettable, though I had hoped to demo a couple I have no intention of buying just to see how they worked. The most novel one I saw I don't really have any info about, it was a racing CCG where you used the cards to move actual miniature cars around a large oval track. It looked like they might have been selling it at the con, and I think it might be made by Upper Deck, but don't quote me. Magi Nation: Basically MTG with simpler mechanics, a "stand in" for the player, and cute anime-style artwork and a few new twists. Each player has 3 mages, played one at a time. The goal is to eliminate all your opponents mages by using your creatures to kill their creatures, then kill the mage. One twist is that each mage has to use their own health to summon the creatures, who then get their summon cost in health. Then, when two creatures fight, the weaker one is killed, and the stronger one loses health equal to that of the weaker one. Another twist is that each mage starts with specific cards that you pull from your deck and/or discard pile, giving them each a unique style. I haven't played this one yet, but we've got a couple of decks and will definitely give it a try. It looks like a fast, simple game suitable for killing time. www.magi-nation.com Terminator: Got a free deck of this & briefly scanned the rules. Basically, it's Aliens VS Predator with Terminators. They even give you a simple set of tweaks that allow you to play your AVP decks against the Terminator decks. Personally, I never liked AVP, so I doubt I will like this one either, but hey, a free deck is a free deck, right? http://www.eternity.com/ Wizard in Training: Got a free card of this, but didn't play it. I've seen someone else describe it as "the Harry Potter CCG", and that certainly seems to be what they were trying to portray it as. Basically, you're a wizard in training, and you need to duel other junior wizards in order to advance in your studies. www.upperdeck.com Gregory (I don't remember the full name I'm afraid): I only saw posters for this game in the same area as Wizard in Training, no flyers, no cards, nothing else. I kept going through looking for information or a demo, but didn't find anything. The artwork looks really creepy & surreal, so even with no information, I'm looking forward to seeing the final product. www.upperdeck.com Jedi Knights: Shoot me now, _please_! Are we going to have to suffer through a new Star Wars CCG every year? No, I didn't play it. No, I don't have any info, apart from the fact that all the art will be computer generated. Okay, I shouldn't be so harsh, it might be a great game, but still.. Don't they have any faith in their existing Star Wars games? It's like they are trying to distract consumers each year with a different product. www.decipher.com ShadowFist: The classic CCG returns in classic form. From what I've seen, it's the same game, just put back into production, which is perfectly fine by me. The core decks are: Architects of the Flesh, The Guiding Hand, Eaters of the Lotus, The Dragons & The Ascended, in case you were curious. Available now. www.shadowfist.com Scooby Doo: I posted earlier to the CCG newsgroups about this, so I'll keep it brief. Basically, this game does a surprisingly good job of capturing the feel of the classic cartoon. Players take turns controlling Mystery, Inc. and try to solve mysteries. This is done by lowering the fear level (the Mystery, Inc. player) and raising the fear level (the opponent). Once the fear level hits zero, the mystery is solved and the victorious player draws a card from the opponents Plot Pile & crosses that plot off their list. They also get to guess which plot their opponent set aside (from the set of 15). The first player to guess (either through guessing, or eliminating all other possibilities) the plot their opponent set aside, wins the game. It's a simple game, but still fun. I was told that this game shipped to distributors last Friday, so it should be hitting stores any day now. (couldn't find a web address) Judge Dredd: My favorite of the new CCG's. The goal of the game is to gain 20 points of Prestige. This is done by eliminating crimes. Each turn, players _must_ play a crime card if they have one. Then, the Duty Judge (the player with the most Prestige) rolls a die to determine whether the shift takes place at day or night (this can affect cards) and then assigns one crime to each player (the Duty Judge has to be careful though, any unsolved crimes at the end of the shift result in him losing Prestige). Next, each player takes turns adding Perps & other cards to the crimes, in order to make them more difficult to eliminate, or to increase their Prestige value. When a player attempts to eliminate a crime, they first try to simply get the Perp to back down. If this fails, out comes the heavy artillery, which can result in dead Perps (bad, because they can't be used to earn Prestige) or dead Judges (very bad, since you only have five total). If the Judges take control, either through negotiation or violence, and the Perps are still alive, they must sentence them to one of three possible terms (Lenient, Fair, Severe), each of which has special effects that may help, or hinder the player. Die rolling is used to resolve various effects in the game, making it less predictable than a typical CCG, and it seems to be pretty simple to play once you understand the mechanics. Cool artwork, great Judge Dredd characters (I've gotta get a Mean Machine, dangit!), and play mechanics that make the game feel like Judge Dredd make this a winner in my book. Available now, but as it's an imported item brought in by Pinnacle, I don't know how easy it will be to find. You can order directly though. http://www.peginc.com/Company/about.htm BOARD GAMES This was my main focus at the con. There were many more boardgames than I have listed here, and thankfully there seemed to be more boardgames than CCG 's.:) Star Wars, The Queens Gambit: A big, complicated looking game recreating the ending of The Phantom Menace. There are actually three different boards that you play on at the same time, using three different forces. The center board has three different levels. All total there are 160 figures to worry about. I didn't try this one, frankly it intimidated me. www.avalonhill.com Cosmic Encounter: I was really hoping this one would be for sale at the Con, but it was not to be. Basically, it's the old, original version of Cosmic Encounter, jazzed up with top of the line production values. A large carrier type spaceship replaces the cone, defensive allies have their own mini-ships to park in orbit near the planet, and the tokens have been replace with stackable rocket ships. A gorgeous looking game that will entice anyone to play, especially with the elegantly simple rules of the original game. Oh, they were giving away a free exclusive Alien Power at the con. I can email the stats to anyone who's interested. www.avalonhill.com Space Beans: Not really a board game, but not a CCG either. Also not a "new" game, but it was new to me, so I figured I'd post about it.:) Basically, you're trying to make collections of like-colored cards. Once you have a number of cards equal to the value of one of the cards in the collection, you can "harvest" it and remove it for points (IE- If you've got 5 blue cards, you can only harvest them if one of the cards is a 5), or try to build it up even bigger. You have two collections, one visible, one hidden (from other players, not from you). You must play at least one card every turn, and if you can't play one that matches either of your collections, you must harvest or discard one of your collections & use a new card to start a new collection. The real trick is that you have to pass any cards you don't use to another player. Simple, but fun, with nice little sci-fi parody "bean" characters on the cards. Not sure who publishes this, but it's in stores now. Castle: Didn't get a chance to play this, but the mechanics were described to me and it sounds like fun. You have a basic square castle layout (walls, towers) and a hand full of characters that you can play into, onto, or outside of the castle. The goal is to eliminate your hand, which is easier said than done. Some cards can't be played until other cards are in play, some must be played next to specific cards, or in specific locations, and other cards drive existing cards back into their players hands (you mark your cards with colored tokens). Looks like a fast, fun game from what I saw. Available now. www.descartes-editeur.com/english.htm Dragon Delta: Watched, but didn't get a chance to play this. It's sort of a crazy bridge-building game, where you drop planks across pillars sitting on islands, in an attempt to make a path from one side of the board to the other. While you're building, you're also moving your pawn, trying to get it to the other side of the board. The other players can "freeze" you for a turn, remove your bridges, give themselves speed boosts, etc. Adding to the fun, the game uses a mechanic not unlike Robo Rally, where each player plays five cards face down & then all players execute each card in sequence simultaneously. Looks like a tricky game. The players we watched were very impressed with the amount of strategy required to play the game. Available now www.descartes-editeur.com/english.htm Aladdins Dragons: A beautiful looking game, though slightly hard to tell where the spaces are until you've had them pointed out to you. Basically a bidding game, each player has 8 tokens (value 1-9, but no 3) to place on the board. However, there are about 14 spaces to play them on (the last few spaces are either used or ignored depending on how many players there are). At the bottom of the board are the dragons caves, where treasures may or may not appear at the start of the turn. The middle of the board is the city, where you can get spells, gain the ability to use two magic artifacts in a single turn, exchange treasure (the merchant here is stupid, he'll exchange one of any type of treasure for three of any type, including the type you just gave him!), and gain the ability to decide who the first player is (a disadvantage when placing, but the first player wins ties in the bidding). The top level has, first of all, the guard space. Each turn, the guard is given a random number from 1-9, hidden from the players. Only by bidding equal to, or greater than the guards value, or paying the difference in treasure, are the tokens you placed on the rest of the top level active. The rest of the spaces are reserved for artifacts, which give you special abilities, and determine the winner of the game (whoever has the most artifacts when they run out, wins). Players take turn putting one token at a time on any space they want (face down, to hide the value from the other players), until nobody has tokens left. Then, the game goes one space at a time, starting in the dragons caves, awarding things to the high bidder in each space, and occasionally awarding things to the second, third & fourth place bidders. The catch is that when you reach the top of the board, where the artifacts are, you must pay the value of your bid, if you are the high bidder. Worse, if you used multiple tokens to bid on an artifact, you must pay each tokens value in a different type of treasure. It's a very cut throat game with a wide range of valid strategies and options each turn. Fun and very challenging. Available now http://www.riograndegames.com/ L5R Diskwars: Not really a boardgame, or a CCG, or a miniatures game. Basically Diskwars with a couple tweaks. It does look nice, with an extremely high-gloss finish on the disks, and painted illustrations (all taken from the CCG, from the look of it), and some of the new mechanics are nice. There are now items that can be attached to a disk at the start of the game, each homeland has an ability that can be used during the game, spells are now categorized level 1, 2, 3, and assigned to one of the five rings, restricting which shujenga (spellcasters) can use them. There is also a form of dueling, but it seems like just a weird missile variant from what I've seen. Didn't play it, so I don't know if it's different enough from DW to make it worthwhile, but it does provide a new setting for DW at the very least. Be warned however, there are a lot of typos, missing stats, re-use of existing DW disk stats/spells, and unclear rules that it might prove frustrating for those not already familiar with DW. Available now http://www.alderac.com/ The Hills Rise Wild!: I didn't even see this on the first day I was at GenCon, or even for most of the day on the second day. However, late in the day on Saturday, it caught my eye as I walked past. I saw a board & a bunch of "cardboard heroes" type standups. Upon closer inspection, I noticed they were all extremely well illustrated, and the board looked intriguing, being a collection of square sections, promising a lot of variety. So, I picked up the box & looked at it. Much to my amusement, it turned out to be a Lovecraftian Hillbilly miniatures combat game. However, I had spent my allotted funds, so I simply grabbed a flier & went to run my demo. During the demo though, one of the players pulled out his copy of the game & let me look through it. The more I looked, the more I liked (especially once I saw that each of the 24 unique characters had their own unique corpse counter, and they all died in a different, yet still horrible, fashion). Then I realized that every year I went to GenCon, I made a point of buying at least one cool-looking game that I'd never played, or even previously heard of, and I hadn't yet gotten a game like that this year! So, with the dealers hall closing around me, I ran back & grabbed a copy. I haven't played it yet, but I'm very glad I bought it. It's a miniatures game that uses full color cardboard standup counters and a modular board. It also uses cards, representing the hidden contents of shacks scattered around the board (some good, some bad, you won't know till you stick your head in). Four groups are rushing around the board, searching for the key that will open the Whateley manor (fairly centrally located) so they can go in & try to find old man Whateley's copy of the Necronomicon & take it back to their home, whereupon they win the game. You've got the typically inbred, vaguely monsterish Whateleys, the submersible & reptilian Marshes, the hooded Cult of Ezikiel and the creepy DeGhoules. Every character has completely unique stats, unique weapons, and unique abilities, creating a lot of variety. The rules are simple, but extremely well explained. It is a miniatures game, meaning you measure movement & ranges, and have movement modifiers for various terrain features. Combat & other critical events are resolved with a 10 sided die, using a pretty simple system. The cards in the shacks add to the chaos, granting weapons, health, booby traps or hideous death to whoever is lucky/unlucky enough to first enter the building. Great artwork & character designs, well written rules and a terrific theme make this game look like a winner. Available now (the website has printable stat sheets, pics of the characters, new board layouts, etc.) http://www.tccorp.com/pagan/ Wizard Kings: This is one of those "block" games you've probably seen at cons for the past few years. The playing pieces are simple painted wooden blocks with stats on the side facing the controlling player. The maps are big hexes, capable of holding a bunch of the blocks inside 'em. I've been intrigued by them for quite some time, but this is the first time they've had a theme I was interested in (the others are historical military conflicts), fantasy. The armies are orcs & elves in the basic set, with undead & dwarves available in expansions ($10 each for a full army). The maps are generic landscapes with varying terrain types shown, cities marked and roads snaking around. They are geomorphic though, allowing you to mix & match them however you want to create new battlefields easily. It's a surprisingly elegant system that has some unique twists. First off all, you don't see what your opponent has until battle begins, creating a "fog of war". Next, when you move a unit into an opponents hex to attack, you have to move any additional units into the hex via different hex sides, for a maximum of 6 units attacking at once (land units, that is, you can also have two flyers, and they can come in from anywhere). This provides a nice simulation of having to outflank your opponent to gain an advantage (if he has units next to the one being attacked, it's going to be tough to get a large force in). Combat is also fairly clever, but simple. The blocks have four sides, each side showing a number of triangles. Each side has a different number of triangles, one or more sides have no triangles. You start with the maximum number of triangles pointing up on the piece. When you fight, you lay your blocks down towards your opponent, pointing your arrows at them. The arrows indicate how many dice that unit gets to roll. As units take damage, you rotate them to show less & less arrows pointing towards your opponent. If a unit with no arrows takes damage, they are eliminated. Each unit has a "to hit" number and a letter. The letter indicates what sequence they attack in (A, B, C, D), the number shows what they need to roll equal to or less than on 1D6 to score a hit. Each unit also has a move value, and a movement type that allows them to ignore terrain that other units have to stop in each time they enter. There aren't any "powers" or "abilities" associated with any of the units, except that you have three characters that can cast spells. Each race has a different list of spells, and this is where the biggest difference between the races comes into play. Some can do the same spell for a much lower cost (to cast a spell, your spellcaster must take damage equal to it's value, 1-3), some have spells that nobody else has. You win the game by capturing 5 of your opponents cities, or by capturing 2 of his three spellcasters (they can't be killed, only captured). We tried to play this game, but completely misunderstood the basic setup (we made the mistake of asking someone playing the same game next to us, because the demo guy was busy), and couldn't actually do anything (we wound up with our forces packed together on the border like sardines). However, I'm still very impressed by the mechanics & production. It looks like a fun, large-scale fantasy combat game that plays quickly & easily. Plus, you can have up to four players competing at the same time, which is always fun. And more races are on the way, including human & beastman. Available now www.wizardkings.com www.columbiagames.com Red Alert: Like Range Wars, Red Alert takes the format of Diskwars and creates an entirely new game out of it. Red Alert is ship to ship combat in the Star Trek: Next Generation universe. You "build" your ship by choosing which ship you want, what tech upgrades you want, and what crew you want. You then head out to play one of the many scenarios they have available, or just try to blow up your opponent(s). Making this difficult is the fact that you have to try and anticipate what your opponent will do, because at the start of the turn, each player must issue three orders, one for each of the three phases of the turn. Additionally, your ship _must_ move each phase, and if you don' t issue a turn order, it must move forwards (the ship disks have flat edges on opposite sides, making it easy to move them in a straight line). You can follow your order before, or after your move, or you can ignore it, but you cannot issue a new order to get yourself out of a pickle. However, if you issue an "activate crew" order, you have some flexibility (assuming you bought crew, that is). You can use this to activate any one of your crew, each of whom may have the ability to issue different orders, or may even be able to issue multiple orders The catch is that most of the more useful crew are on the Bridge, and if you take a Bridge critical hit, you lose all your Bridge crew. Combat is either via phasers (a set range with a handy measuring stick) or via photon torpedoes, which move around the playfield on their own for three turns & can be steered like ships. When a hit is scored, the player who dealt the damage flips a number of damage chits equal to their weapons damage value. All that come up "hit" cause a point of damage, all that come up "critical hit" are ignored. Then, if any successful hits are scored, the five different damage chips (each has a different critical hit location) are flipped again, if four come up "hit" and one comes up "critical hit", the victim suffers major damage (like losing their shields, or engineering, or weapons, etc.). If the successful hit was on the hull, and not the shields, 3 "hits" and two "criticals" will cause two different critical hits. If a ship takes two criticals to the same location, it's immediately destroyed. There are five factions to choose from, Federation (two different starter packs, each with a different ship), Klingon (two ships, like the Feds), Romulan (two ships, like the Feds), Cardassian (one starter pack) and Ferengi (one starter pack). Yes, I know, the Ferengi? Actually, they have a very cool, and nasty ability. Some of their crew allow them to buy tech from other races to equip their ships with at the start of the game. Worse, at least one of their crew lets them mimic any tech in play for a turn. The game plays very quickly, is easy to learn and feels extremely true to the source material, allowing you to raise & lower shields, fire photon torpedoes, board enemy vessels, take critical hits to vital parts of the ship, etc. I was very impressed with this game. The only slight drawback is the rarity scheme, and the fact that every few flats you get will have one "scenario" flat which is just a huge honkin' disk that gives you a scenario to play. If you're like me, you'll quickly get sick of these, wanting more crew, tech & ships instead. I wasn't going to play this, as I had already bought it & figured I'd play it after the con, but we wound up walking past the demo just as it was starting, so we jumped in. I had an excellent game, piloting a Klingon ship & taking out the most powerful opposing Klingon general in the game with a critical on one phase, then taking out the same players shields on a critical in the next phase. Plus I did heavy damage to a couple other ships & managed to avoid taking so much as one point of damage throughout. I was one happy Klingon, let me tell you. I even went back to the WOTC booth & bought the ship I kicked butt with afterwords.:) I think this is available now, but I haven't seen it in stores yet. They were selling it like crazy at GenCon though (be warned, the two Fed ships were far and away the most popular). http://www.wizards.com http://www.lastunicorngames.com/ Chrononauts: Got to play a prototype version of this game. Several of the cards we used, we were told, will be removed or changed before the game hits stores. The gimmick is that each player is a time traveler, altering the course of history. Each player is given two cards detailing their victory conditions. One lists three objects that must be collected, one lists three years that must be either red (altered) or black (unaltered) to restore the players home timeline. Players can also win by getting ten cards in their hand (not counting the two victory condition cards). The playfield is made up of a grid of cards listing years from the early 1900's to 1999, each with a key event described. Altering the timeline is accomplished by using cards to flip "linchpin" years. Each linchpin has a symbol on the bottom, and any cards from that year on that have that symbol, must be flipped to match it (IE-if the flipped lyncpin has a red iceberg on it, all cards with a black iceberg must be flipped to show the red iceberg on the opposite side). Cards that are flipped by a linchpin being red-side up create paradoxes (the date is still black at this point) that must be patched, resulting in history being altered even further (giving it a red, altered, date). For instance, if you flip the "John Lennon assassinated" linchpin to it's red side ("John Lennon narrowly avoids gunman's attack"), the Columbine Massacre of 1999 is flipped, causing a paradox. The patch for 1999 is "Senator John Lennon passes legislation banning all firearms & repeals the second amendment". Certain linchpins have a more far reaching effect than others (such as changing "Hitler opens Munich Olympics" to "Hitler assassinated at Munich Olympics"), and one has catastrophic consequences. If 1962 (Cuban missile crisis) is turned into a paradox, the patch is "World War III", which eliminates all the timeline cards from that point on, meaning players can't retrieve artifacts from those years, and can't count them towards their victory conditions (well, actually, one time traveler has a red 1962 as part of their goal, he's a cockroach). It's a chaotic, fairly random game (you can win by someone else inadvertently creating the timeline you're looking for), but lots of fun. After all, who doesn't want to throw a monkeywrench into the fabric of space & time? http://www.loonylabs.com/ MINIATURES GAMES Didn't play many mini games this year, apart from Mage Knight. Still, I have a few comments about some things I saw, so I figured I'd include this section anyway. Krash: Finally got to see the mini's for this game out of the box and painted. They looked nice, but the guy at the booth said that you pretty much have to glue 'em together, which sort of defeats the purpose of making the cars modular, and blows a hole in the "collectible" aspect of the game, IMHO. Unfortunately, the guy at the booth wasn't terribly helpful or enthusiastic, so we didn't get any info on how the game works or any future expansions. Available now www.cellentertainment.se Lab: Another game by Cell Entertainment, we only saw the flyer for this while rummaging through our loot at a local eatery. It sounds like boxed miniatures game with lots of crazy monsters & machines. They've got a few illustrations up on their website, but no real information. We would have gone back & asked about it, but after our first encounter at the booth, we decided it wasn't worth the effort www.cellentertainment.se Terrakit: This is a company that makes the least expensive miniatures scenery I've ever seen. There are a few drawbacks, of course. Their hills are too steep for figures to stand on their slopes, the buildings are made out of white Styrofoam and don't have much in the way of details. However. It should also be noted that the hills are $3, fully flocked, a Celtic Tower with parapet (looks like a sideways "L") on the second floor (11" long, 6" high, parapet is 3" high) is $10 fully assembled & painted, a 9" tower with three floors (all removable) is $20 fully painted & assembled, etc. Better yet, if you want to build the stuff yourself, you can buy the kit form for half the price. And if you're building it yourself, you can easily add all kinds of details to jazz it up And they've got some pretty sophisticated models available, covering everything from medieval castles to futuristic bunkers to Japanese fortresses. All in all, this stuff is the best value for the money I've ever seen. Plus, once you detail 'em and paint 'em up (especially with textured paint), you'll never know they're made of Styrofoam. Available now. www.terrakit.com Mage Knight Rebellion: I posted extensively on this in the rec.games.miniatures & rec.games.miniatures.misc. newsgroups already, so I'll keep this brief. Basically, MK is a collectible miniatures game. For $18, you get 10 random figures, instructions, a comic book, a ruler & dice. Booster packs are $6 for 5 random figures. Each figure is made of a soft plastic, prepainted & mounted on a base. The base has a dial built into it, with a slot in front of the character showing their current stats. Some stats have a color as well as a number, indicating a special ability. Each of the four stats has about 6 special powers (IE- Green on movement means something different than green on attack). When a miniature takes damage, the base is rotated a number of clicks equal to the damage caused. This alters the characters stats, generally weakening them & removing special abilities. Some characters, however, can increase some of their stats & gain special abilities as they take damage. Also printed on the base is the characters front & back arcs, their center point (to attack, the targets center point must be within the attackers front arc), the range of the characters attack, how many targets they can attack at once with their ranged attack (if they have a range greater than 0), the characters name, their # in the collection and their faction. Combat is straightforward. You add 2D6 to your characters attack value. If you equal or exceed your targets defense value, you rotate their base a number of clicks equal to your damage value (each character has four stats; move, attack, defense, damage). Roll a 2, and you damage yourself, roll a 12 and you automatically hit and do an additional point of damage. It's the same for ranged combat, except you can attack from up to your range in inches. Each turn, you get to take one action. You can either move a character, use a characters special ability, or attack with a character. You then mark that character with a token. Next turn, you can use a character without a token at no penalty, or you can use one with a token, but it will take a point of damage at the end of the turn. To move multiple characters at once, you can put them into formation. Now, a single action can make them all move, attack, or use a special ability (they must all do the same thing & be capable of doing the action). You also gain combat bonuses by being in formation, but it also means that you have less flexibility each turn. When only one player still has characters on the field, the winner is determined by adding up the point value of all the opposing characters each player killed. A very cool twist is the ability to capture opposing characters. This is done with a regular attack, but the target gets +2 defense. If you succeed, you've captured the opponent. The drawback is that the capturing character can no longer do anything except move or pass (no attacking, no special abilities) until they are killed, or the game ends. However, if you end the game with any captives, you earn double their point value in victory points, which can be quite significant. Mage Knight could easily become a major hit (I think it will). The miniatures are very well designed, they're cheap, the game is easy to learn, fast & fun to play, and the variety of characters (at least 160) & abilities make every game unique. www.mageknight.com (nothing there yet, but they're working on it)