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August 31, 2006

August 30th Boardgaming

Another Wednesday, another club meeting... Not a good night for me as far as winning goes (I was a reasonably close 2nd three times out of five, and dead last the other two), but a lot of fun anyway. Details, for those who care, inside the fold.

When I arrived at Eric's, Jim and Alex (who I hadn't met before) were just setting up Techo Witches, which I gladly joined in for. The game is a very clever sort of race game, with players building routes for their vacuum-cleaner-mounted figures in advance by eyeballing route pieces and the state of the board. When you actually move, from 1 to 6 pieces will be laid out in a trail based on your plan, and if you did it right you'll go where you want and not hit anything. It's easier than it sounds, but it's still not easy. Eric certainly has a gift for it, and I managed to get most of my programming right, but in the end I miss-judged a rather desperate attempt to hit my final target the round before Eric was sure to hit his... Eric took the win cleanly, as expected, the next turn.

We set up Goldland next, a game I hadn't really heard much about before except from Eric since, for some reason, it's never come out in an English edition. It's a solid exploration game, with some very interesting resource management systems working within it. Every square can potentially require the expending of resource, and most allow the acquisition of others, so much of the game becomes trying to find a minimum-cost route to the gold-rich temple in the far corner from the starting space. Alex managed that task, with an especially nice feature that each "pay resources to enter" space he uncovered on his route had a space providing the necessary resources right next to it. Eric and I were just a move behind Alex, but that wasn't quite enough. I ended up in the back of the game because of a couple of no-reward turns, including one where I moved myself to a spot where I could neither acquire any resources at all nor explore, so I literally wasted that whole turn. Still, it was great fun and I'm going to be looking for this game for myself, because I know several people who would like it. Final score was Alex in front, then Eric, Jim, and me, 17/15/14/12.

We unpacked Great Wall of China next, this time doing the rules right. (In fact, Eric had found a set of rules online and reviewed them himself prior to my arrival.) And it's just as good as I'd hoped it would be. It has a lot of the feel of Samurai to it, which certainly doesn't hurt in my book, but here there is no board, no differing suits, a couple new special powers, and no upper limit on the number of pieces one can place in a conflict. Alex and Jim and Alex and Eric got into a huge fights each, but both were over high-score tokens (I believe an 8 and a 5 and an 8 and a 4), and in the end they were right to have done it. On the final turn, I was denied (by being locked into ties) three potential scoring tokens and Alex claimed others, and that decided the game... Alex won, but just a point over Jim and I in a tie. 36/35/35/26. If there were any hard feelings from the miss-play last week, I think they evaporated.

Mark (who I had also not met before this game evening) had arrived while were were playing GWoC, and Ray arrived just as we were setting up Lifeboats. This a a delightfully fun game of backstabbing and shifting alliances. Play consists of manipulating survivors of a ship's sinking, voting which boat springs a leak, which passengers are tossed overboard, and which boat manages to inch toward safety. No one can be trusted, and no one is really safe. This particular game turned on one particular round not far from the end when, in a critical vote, four of the six players decided to use one of their three limited "override the vote" options, neutralizing each other and leaving the other two players to make the decision. Yes, I was one of the four. Even then, I cam in a close second to Jim, 23/20/16/13/13/13. I'll be watching for the forthcoming Z-Man Games release of this one!

Ray then headed back out (he'd come primarily to be part of an arranged game that, unfortunately, had fallen apart without him knowing it) and the rest of us picked Mü as a good 5-player game. It's a very tricky sort of Bridge-like game (trick-taking with bidding), with complex and shifting partnerships, many trump options, and more than a few fiddly bits. I don't think any of us completely avoided mistakes, but I managed more than my share, only achieving a good hand both in bidding and play right at the very end, when I came back from -16 points to end, still in last place, but positive. Eric won with exactly 200 (the target), then Mark had 171 (he'd proven an astonishingly good player in defending, breaking several bids decisively), then Alex at 140, Jim at 67 and me at 52. Ugly! But I really think I figured out the game with only 2 hands left to play, so I'm hoping to get another go at this!

And, with that, Alex, Mark, and I called it a night, though Jim and Eric were setting up Memoir '44 as we left.

Posted by ghoul at 05:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 27, 2006

Milage Update

Also of note, for those who care...

On the drive back from GenCon, just around the north edge of Columbus, OH, at 52,003 miles on the odometer, my Prius milage display hopped up to 45.2 MPG.

Then, during the drive back from last weekend's gaming in Fall River, MA, at 53,017, it made another hop up to 45.3.

It has since dropped back to 45.2 due to the low milage observed on short drives like my daily commute to work, but I expect to see 45.3 again after next weekend's trip to Fall River and just maybe 45.4 by the end of the warm weather for the year, though I wouldn't bet too much on that last happening.

Posted by ghoul at 02:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Before The Next Club Meeting

Here's two things I'm going to do.

  1. Limit my game selections to 2 or 3 each week.
  2. Carefully re-read those games before the meeting.

I think with those I'll manage to both get more games I pick on the table (though I certainly haven't done poorly on that count so far) and have fewer mistakes in the games I teach. The Great Wall of China incident alone is enough to encourage that!

Posted by ghoul at 11:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 26, 2006

Catching Up On Gaming

It's been just over a month since I last posted a boardgame club report, but since I still have my notes, I thought I'd catch up and add things since then.

So below the cut are two club meeting reports (I missed two meetings as well, one while at GenCon and the other trying to catch up on sleep missed at GenCon), as well as a brief comment on a GenCon demo and some casual gaming on a Friday afternoon.

The 7/26 club meeting had me play 4 games. (By the way, I've now asked and I'll be using names not just initials in these reports.)

Beowulf was played for the 2nd time with the club, this time with the unfortunate "everything falls apart" happening to Eric. It turns out after-the-fact that we may have been a bit overly generous with Risks, allowing players to take a risk, fail, and then supplement their bid anyway from their hand, which is OK if the risk gives you something but not enough, but not OK if the Risk completely fails. The rules specifically say if a Risk fails completely, you're out of the bidding. This led to a lot more random play than the game intends. Anyway, final result was Matt winning in his first play of the game, Adam in 2nd, my in third, Dave in 4th and Eric at the back. 30/27/21/15/-15.

Eric brought out Don, a game none of the rest of us were familiar with, for a short fill while we waited on Rich's arrival (Jim had already joined us near the end of Beowulf). This is an interesting little bidding game, with winners claiming numbers which, when they appear as the final digit of someone else's bid, means you pay THEM, not the bank. It takes some time to get the hang of things, and I wasn't alone in getting caught over-bidding then going several turns without getting paid, which means several turns effectively out of the game. In the end, Eric dominated and I was a surprising (given my big mistake) 3rd place. 10/9/7/6/4/2.

Formula De was next. This one is a favorite of mine, one of the classics of a genre I very much enjoy (race games). Rich had arrived, so we had 7 players, which means the field was crowded enough this game got to really shine, and we used Track #2 (Nederland - Zandvort No 1), which I find much more enjoyable than the much slower Track #1 (Monaco). There were the normal problems (bad luck can eliminate a car, and in this case took out Adam barely into turn 4, then another driver a couple turns later), but that's the nature of the game (and of Formula One racing). We had a real neck-and-neck finish, with me 1/2 a space ahead of Dave at the end. By the book, I moved first and so won the race. However, by an optional rule I actually prefer which makes the tiebreaker the number of movement points left over after the line, Dave beat me by rolling a 30 over my 27, so was 2 1/2 spaced ahead. So I don't know if I call that a win or a 2nd place (we hadn't expressly said we were using the optional rule, after all), but it was a great ending either way.

I sat out a Linkity game when dinner arrived, as did Ethan and Erin. It was Erin's birthday, which was also celebrated. With 10 players, we then turned to a party game, in this case Time's Up. This is a nice little variation of Charades, played in progressive rounds where the limitations on the type of clues you can use become more and more restrictive. But since the answers are from cards and are the same in each round, the 'secret' is to learn to recognize them when they re-appear. Adam and I teamed up, but only managed 3rd place in the end, while Jim and Eric absolutely cleaned up on everyone round after round for their win. Final score was 32/25/24/21/18. And that 32 was achieved as 11 points in each of the first 2 rounds and 10 in the final. Only one other team ever got into double digits for even one round, and they came in 2nd in the end due to their 2nd round score of 11. As Charades games go, this one's very nice!

At GenCon, I played in several demos, none of which really qualify as a full game, so I won't report any here. The only one of real significance was a demo play of The Order of the Stick Adventure Game, which I found to be a lot of fun, but clearly far too long for its strategic depth. We only played 3 turns per player, but it was quite obvious how this would drag out, and the rules admit to the game's playtime. Oh, it has some interesting bits and frequently HILARIOUS cards, so I'll probably find some people to play it with, but I much prefer my 3+ hour games to be a bit more weighty. The explanation that the game was designed to take the place of a D&D session when critical players can't make it doesn't persuade me, I fear.

The Friday after GenCon, I was early down to Fall River for the GURPS campaign, so I pulled out a filler game at Stillpoint to pass some time. King of the Beasts - Mythological Edition is one of many Knizia games that looks very simple, and is in terms of rules, but not necessarily in terms of strategy. Like Trendy, cards are played until one suit (here representing dragon, unicorn, or other mythological beasts) gets enough points to win. But the trick here is that, every time you meld a set of 3 to 6 cards, you put some forward toward that suit and keep others toward winning. The creature that reaches 6 cards first wins and scores 2 for every card kept, and the 2nd and 3rd place creatures each score 1 point per card. Simple? Yeah. (Though posters on BGG point out that the rules lack a statement of what to do if the deck completes without a winner... that never happened in our plays.) We ended up playing 4 hands, each with different players. The first Pat won over me and Kurt, 6/5/4. Then Pat and Kevin split a win over Kurt and I 4/4/2/0. The third game was a win for me over Kurt, Pat, Kevin, and Nick 4/3/2/1/0, and then Nick got his revenge over Kevin and I 7/4/4. Everyone seemed to enjoy the game, particularly for a 10-15 minute filler.

This week, I was back at the club, this time up in Laconia. We started with El Grande, using the nice new 10th anniversary set though playing with only the base rules. I've only played this once, and that years ago, so I wasn't that embarrassed by my 4th place finish, as the game really was tight. Eric won, then Adam, Dave, and myself. 112/108/96/94.

We broke out my GenCon purchase of Knizia's Great Wall of China, but a mistake by me in the rules meant we barely got started before we mistakenly stopped. Rather than refreshing each wall section after it was scored, I somehow decided the initial 5 sections were the whole game. Dumb. Eric took an unassailable lead, and without additional scoring tokens entering play, we all just stopped playing. I hope we'll put this on the table again with the RIGHT rules, because I think there's a good game here, spoiled by my mistake. The score when we called the game was looking to be 12/8/7/5/3 (I had the 7), but easily twice, if not three times that many points were left undistributed by my mistake.

China was brought out while we waited for pizza and 3 others to arrive. I'd read (but never played) Web of Power, the original game this is an update of, so again I wasn't expecting much from my performance (as it's a fairly subtle and unforgiving game). Apparently I looked harmless and unfocused enough that everyone let me got unchecked, building a chain 8 houses long that really should have been blocked. Not that it was enough to do me any better than a tie for third, because Eric was going to claim his 3rd win in a row pretty much from the start. 31/29/28/28/26.

Pizza arrived, but was badly overcooked (to the point of burned for one, and just below that for the other), and a surprising degree of drama was necessary to get that corrected. Not surprisingly, this distracted us from gaming for a significant time. Set had come out to occupy the three late arrivals while China was completed, and then we re-assembled into two foursomes. Ticket to Ride - Europe was played by one group while I joined Eric, Ethan, and Adam to try out Blue Moon City (which only Eric had played before). I'd read the rules (I had picked up a copy just before leaving for GenCon), but I still happily listened as Eric explained them (he's VERY good at that), then we set to play. The game is an odd mix of competition and cooperation, as you try to re-build the titular city structure by structure. Each building requires certain efforts to be re-built, most several different steps. Multiple players (as many as 4) cooperate to achieve this, then share in rewards. Collect enough rewards and you can buy into the victory objective, with the game going to whoever buys 4 steps first. Essentially, this game split into two pairs, with Eric and Ethan working one half the board and Adam and I the other. This proved to be my downfall, as Adam was one step ahead of me in turn order, so was able to dive in for the win the turn before I claimed it. Still, a very close game, with Ethan also just a turn or two from the win in the end. 4/3/3/1. A future re-play will probably see a bit more competition, and Eric observes that a 3 player game may have significantly better competitive dynamics.

Replacement pizza arrived (though it wasn't all that much better), and then Eric, Adam, and I headed back to Concord.

And, with that, I'm caught up on gaming reports.

Posted by ghoul at 08:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 15, 2006

GenCon Acquisition Summary

Yes, it's all listed before, but this is mostly so I have it in one place if I manage to find time to try (as I tried and failed last year) to do some cursory commentary as I read through all this...

Sorting is now Board/Card Games, RPGs, and Other Stuff, alphabetical rather than by selling company and rough order of purchase (as previous listings were).

Final count is around 112 items (counting the whole pitcher of dice as one item), at least one of which I plan to give away.

Board and Card Games

  1. aBRIDGEd
  2. Aqua Romana
  3. Battleground dwarven army starter
  4. Battleground dwarven army expansion
  5. Bison
  6. Blink
  7. Buccaneer
  8. Darkness Falls On Sevinpold
  9. Dead Man's Treasure
  10. Dead Money
  11. Drakon
  12. Easter Island
  13. Emira
  14. Figaro
  15. Funny Friends
  16. Gamer's Quarterly magazine with a mini Settlers of Catan expansion
  17. GoDice
  18. Grand Tribunal
  19. Hey That's My Fish
  20. King of the Beasts
  21. Knights of Charlemagne
  22. Knizia's Great Wall of China
  23. Mag*Blast
  24. Masons
  25. MiniMonFa
  26. MiniMonFa fairy expansion
  27. MiniMonFa undead expansion
  28. Oltre Mare
  29. Ostia
  30. Palatinus
  31. Pieces of Eight: The Cursed Blade
  32. Pieces of Eight: The Maiden's Vengeance
  33. Recess
  34. Reef Encounter
  35. Rigor Mortis: Aye, Dark Overloard
  36. Robber Knights
  37. Rum and Pirates
  38. Shear Panic
  39. Space Station Assault
  40. Take Stock
  41. Tempus
  42. The Arkham Horror Dunwich expansion
  43. The Great Space Race
  44. The Order of the Stick Adventure Game: The Dungeon of Dorukan (including "Zombie Gamers" promo card)
  45. Times Square
  46. Tombouctou
  47. Toppo
  48. Under the Shadow of the Dragon.
  49. Vapor's Gambit
  50. Villainy (all 3 decks)
  51. Wings of War expansion deck: Recon Patrol
  52. Wings of War expansion deck: Top Fighters
  53. World of Warcraft boardgame Shadow of War expansion

RPGs

  1. Agon
  2. Carry
  3. Cyberpunk v3
  4. Cyberpunk v3 GM screen
  5. Cyberpunk v3 character dossier
  6. Don't Rest Your Head
  7. Drowning and Falling
  8. Faery's Tale
  9. GURPS Mysteries
  10. Hero's Banner
  11. Hollow Earth Expedition (with modified d8s)
  12. inTERRORgation
  13. Lacuna
  14. Mortal Coil
  15. Paranoia Little Red Book
  16. Play Dirty
  17. Primetime Adventures
  18. Push Volume 1
  19. QIN: The Warring States
  20. Run Robot Redux
  21. Runequest
  22. RunequesGM screen
  23. Runequest Rune of Chaos intro adventure
  24. Seven Leagues
  25. Shock
  26. The Princes' Kingdom
  27. The Secret Lives of Gingerbread Men
  28. Wilderness of Mirrors
  29. WWE Know Your Role

Other

Posted by ghoul at 02:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

GenCon Day Three PM and Day Four

More ShadowWorld, and this time a mission that looked overwhelmingly impossible until the pieces started to come together and, in the end, seems to have gone quite well. Some very scary scenes for me, such as when Starchild had to be the voice of cold, harsh necessity when others wanted to save some soldiers caught in our mission crossfire (she'd Precog-seen that any attempt to interact with the soldiers massively increased the chance of disaster for all parties; ignoring them meant they all died -- which was likely anyway -- and we got away). Very uncharacteristic of her... but I think the right reaction.

That only went to around 3:30, so I was back in my room by 3:45.

The next morning was a sleepy breakfast, loading up the car, and checking out of the hotel. But that still left time for more dealer's room! I happened to meet up with Dan and Alex, two of my college roommates. Actually, Alex was easy to run into, as he works for Mayfair games (I mentioned him before), and Dan I happened to cross paths with while checking out the Paizo booth (mostly for new Cheapass releases). We agreed to not be out of contact until next GenCon and exchanged email and other contact info.

I managed a return to a sight of an earlier minor setback, the Pizza Box Football booth, where I'd missed the drawing for their nifty free dice boot on Friday by about 2 minutes stuck in the human traffic outside the dealer's room. This drawing, I was the only one who showed up, so I now have the nice, useful tool for future use. I also have a couple of very nice card-game assistance racks which I'd seen being used for the Order of the Stick game demos. I think I'll be giving these quite a bit of use!

After 4 PM and the close of the con, Julia, Lou, and I ate a fantastic steak dinner at Ruth's Chris and I set off to Cincinnati to spend a night with my family, another GenCon in the books.

Last day purchases are under the fold.

Your Move Games gave me a copy of Space Station Assault after I played a quick demo of Battleground (even though I already own and like Battleground).

Paizo sold me Dead Money, the new Cheapass release, and gave me a Dr. Lucky miniature and a pack of Gamemastery item cards when I also bought the deluxe Euro-style Kill Doctor Lucky (pre-order only; I won't get it until October).

From Chessex, I got a whole pitcher of random dice. That's around 20 ounces of new dice. Because you can never have too many!

A visit to the SJG and nifty Cthulu-themed stuff corner of the booth shared with Atlas Games got me GURPS Mysteries, The Unspeakable Vault of Doom cartoon collection, a Cthulhu bumper fish, and Under the Shadow of the Dragon.

Innovatium sold me two Hold-iit! card game organizers and a set of nice plastic Settlers of Catan frames.

Hyperion sold me Vapor's Gambit, an interesting looking hoverboard race game.

For Pizza Box Football, I got the logo-engraved dice boot, as mentioned above.

From Exile Game Studio, the very cool looking Hollow Earth Expedition (pulpy action goodness with some cleverly-made d8s to let you replicate huge numbers of d2 with a smaller number of d8s).

Firefly Games sold me Faery's Tale.

I returned to Mayfair's booth to pick up some of their Italian partner's games, Rigor Mortis: Aye, Dark Overloard, and MiniMonfa with its undead and fairy expansion sets.

And I picked up a few (4) Gen-Con logo-emblazoned items to wrap up the con.

And that's about it.

Posted by ghoul at 10:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 12, 2006

GenCon Day Three AM

Up again with barely 4:30 of sleep (I don't really sleep well after about 8 AM unless I'm really tired). Minor annoyance with the hotel, which seems to think I'm checking out today, but it is quickly cleared up.

Back over to the con proper to find that, yes, we "They Might Be Llamas" has advanced in NASCRAG!

I then make my way to the dealer's room and encounter one of my college roommates, now an employee of Mayfair Games. We catch up a bit and he advises me on titles worth considering from their new releases (I'd held off their booth until I managed to find him). A quick visit later and I have the Gamer's Quarterly magazine with a mini Catan expansion, Palatinus, Hey That's My Fish, Figaro, Bison, Shear Panic, Ostia, and Emira, plus a free University of Catan t-shirt (I already own one from a while back, but a 2nd isn't a bad thing).

Then it's a quick TFOS visit. Mike Pondsmith was just getting the strangeness going when, unfortunately, I had to bail after an hour to join NASCRAG round two. That went quite well (we required but one substitute player, and we got two of the NASCRAG front-men as GMs. A bit of a walk to their distant hotel (the next one past where ShadowWorld ran last night), but another fun game of slightly silly but tricky puzzles/riddles, and this time a bit more actual D&D rules, as I even got into a couple of fights! When old man Innis wasn't catching his breath, he was putting the Greatsword smack down on beasties, including a flying spaghetti monster (clearly not THE flying spaghetti monster, as it went down to a few well-placed blows).

We fumbled with a few of the puzzles (one early and long puzzled-over), and got a nice silly result when the two married couples lost on a Newlywed Game pastiche to the two unattached guys in the party. We might not make it into the next round, but I'm hopeful (even though it'll mean missing ShadowWorld) and it was certainly fun either way!

UPDATE: No Advance for the potential llamas (well, two of us did advance as alternates... the victorious unattached guys, in fact!). So it's ShadowWorld tonight.

Posted by ghoul at 06:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

GenCon Day Two PM

Played in a wonderful Dogs in the Vineyard game, where 3 new players were absolutely wowed by the system (understandable). Very cool stuff, as expected. I played a very straightforward, rather flawed "Guns Solve Problems", "Act Now, Think Later" sort and ended up in a nasty fight midway through the game, but came out reasonably well in the end. The town was cleansed, with fire in the more critical parts. Great fun!

I made one more purchase (the lovely QIN:The Warring States) and played a Order of the Stick board game demo (though the game sold out around 2:40 on Thursday; I did get a copy!) before heading to dinner (with an acquaintance from The Black Road and several of her friends to an italian place I found wonderful, and will be enjoying leftovers from today), then off to ShadowWorld play which went until 4:10 (4:30 including the walk back to my room).

ShadowWorld was tense and dangerous, as it tends to be, and we learned lots of unexpected facts, even if they don't quite form any appealing theories as of yet. Starchild didn't do too much (she's trying to be careful with her oft-unexpectedly uncontrolled powers), but where she did participate, I think it mattered.

Today, I check for NASCRAG advancement (which could override other plans), perhaps (if not overridden) play in a 50+ person Teenagers From Outer Space game, and then look for less obvious-at-first-pass purchases before (again, if not overridden) heading back for more ShadowWorld.

Fun, fun!

Posted by ghoul at 10:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 11, 2006

GenCon Day One PM and Day Two AM

Well, I'm successfully and completely moved to the new (and both slightly nicer and much closer to the con and connected via skywalk so less exposure to the wet and humid world) hotel.

NASCRAG went well last night, but after last year I won't even try to predict if "They Might Be Llamas" (my team) advanced. We had fun, though. I was playing the grumpy old widower fighter and ended up (as an over-zealous step in our disguise) married to the dotty Druidess. Which led to more grumpiness.

This AM, I loaded bags into bags and headed to the dealer's room again, this time not distracted by an hour in the OotS line...

I still haven't actually seen any of the ShadowWorld players, which suggests last night's game went late.

Purchases below the fold.

Human Head Studios sold me all three Villainy decks, because I just can't decide among an evil monkey, a mad scientist, and a creepy teenaged witch. Though I took a button as a minion of Mugga Mugga, the evil monkey.

Z-Man sold me Tempus, Reef Encounter, and Take Stock, plus game me a Take Stock t-shirt.

Atlas Games sold me the first two Pieces of Eight sets (and I now have 2 of the con-special captain coins), Recess, and Grand Tribunal.

I found a copy of the WWE d20 RPG Know Your Role that I've wanted for some time.

Kenzer and Company took my money for The Great Space Race.

A con-discount convinced me to by a 30% discounted Darkness Falls On Sevinpold.

Mongoose sold me their new Runequest (with GM screen and the Rune of Chaos intro adventure) plus the Paranoia Little Red Book (a player-creation and basic rules guide for newbies).

At Crystal Caste, I picked up the 2006 GenCon dice set

And, lastly, I stopped by Wicked-Dead and acquired several new (and old) John Wick and Annie Rush RPGs et al, including Wilderness of Mirrors, The Secret Lives of Gingerbread Men, Lacuna, Run Robot Redux, Play Dirty, and inTERRORgation.

At that point, my bag started to tear, so I hoofed it back to the hotel to unload.

25 more acquisitions.

Posted by ghoul at 11:22 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 10, 2006

GenCon 2006 Day One

OK, so I'm still behind a Boardgame Club report (from 2 weeks ago), but I'll jump ahead to today's activity instead of doing that.

I'm in Indianapolis, at GenCon!

I've done some game-playing (a very fun Four Colors Al Fresco session) and have more planned tonight (NASCRAG with Julia and Lou).

I've done some shopping. Today's list of purchases is under the break.

UPDATE: Oh, and I've been moved from my original hotel to another due to a water pipe break. Which meant carrying all my things 2 1/2 blocks in the humid August evening. No fun.

From the Giant in the Playground booth, the new Order of the Stick collection book, the Order of the Stick boardgame, 4 new OotS t-shirts, 2 new OotS character pins, 2 OotS Christmas Tree Ornaments, and the 2 OotS Give-aways (another pin and a fridge magnet).

From Playroom Entertainment, 3 Knizia titles, Dead Man's Treasure, Knights of Charlemagne, and King of the Beasts (and 3 promo cards for their other games, which I don't really count).

From the HeroScape booth of Hasbro, this year's give-away figure, Sir Hawthorn.

From Fantasy Flight Games, the new editions of Drakon and Mag*Blast, the Arkham Horror Dunwich expansion, the World of Warcraft boardgame Shadow of War expansion, Knizia's Great Wall of China, and two Wings of War expansion decks.

From R. Talsorian Games, Cyberpunk v3 (with GM screen and character dossier) and GoDice.

From Rio Grande Games (at the Out of the Box games booth), Rum and Pirates, Masons, Oltre Mare, Funny Friends, Tombouctou, Toppo, Times Square, Buccaneer, Robber Knights, Aqua Romana, and (from Out of the Box) aBRIDGEd. And was given a copy of Blink in a can for my prodigious purchase.

From Molniya Miniatures (which turns out to be run by an old friend of mine), a nice Golden Horde horse archer.

From Twilight Creations (which, I discovered, is run by someone who went, for a year, to the same high school I did), Easter Island.

From Your Move Games, the dwarven army starter and expansion decks.

And, from the Forge collective booth, after accidentally semi-insulting Luke Crane by rejecting Burning Empire even as he was ringing up my order of games NOT made by him, there's Mortal Coil, Shock, Primetime Adventures (the newest edition, as I have only the first), Carry, Drowning and Falling, The Princes' Kingdom, Seven Leagues, Agon, Don't Rest Your Head, Hero's Banner, and Push Volume 1.

That's 53 items purchased or received so far.

Posted by ghoul at 06:28 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack