We Didn’t Playtest This Either

27 March, 2010 (15:13) | Uncategorized | By: breamy

Asmadi Games – makers of We Didn’t Playtest This At All, has come out with a sequel – you guessed it – We Didn’t Playtest This Either.  Both games are ridiculously stupid, but still somehow fun.  Most games only take about 5 minutes to play – so if you don’t like it, you don’t have to suffer long.

The rules are simple – draw a card, play a card. The object is to win. If you lose, you didn’t win.

The cards have all the information needed printed on them.  Many cards are either “I win” (if a certain condition exists, like you are the only one left in the game wearing blue) or “You Lose” (which you play on other players).  There are a variety of other cards as well, but I don’t want to ruin the surprise.  Most of the cards in both games, have funny little quotes on them to go along with the name of the card – reading those is probably as much fun as playing the game.

Not games I want to play for hours (though I have watched people do just that), but fun games to kill a few minutes while you wait for everyone to show up for your regular game.  Definatly falls into the beer and pretzels game category.

-Blair
CagedGorilla.com

GAMA Trade Show

27 March, 2010 (15:05) | Origins, Uncategorized | By: breamy

Jay and I (Blair) just got back from the GAMA Trade show in Las Vegas.  We attended to find new games for Caged Gorilla, and to network with other retailers. It’s an annual trade show for publishers and manufacturers to show retailers what great new products they are coming out with, or already have published,  and to convince the retailers to carry their products.  Most of the big companies were there: Mayfair Games, Bandai, Wizards of the Coast (though a pretty small presence), Upper Deck, AEG, etc.

Wizkids announced 2 new lines of Hero Clicks – “The Brave and the Bold” and “Blackest Night” both based in the DC universe (If I’m remembering right).  They are also coming out with a line for Watchmen including a huge Mr. Manhattan “miniature” that stands over 14″ tall.

We found some fun, inexpensive games from Three Sages Games – Elven Checkers, Gnome Crystals, Dwarf Stones and Halley’s Hold’em.  We should have them in stock within the next week.

Looney Labs announced a an upcoming game based on a major movie property (the contract is still pending, so I can’t name the movie yet).  We are re-stocking some of their products and will have their new game when it comes out around August.

I got to check out the upcoming releases from Steve Jackson Games – Zombie Dice and Cthuhlu Dice.  Both games look fun, and are reasonably priced.

August Monthly Game Day

23 August, 2009 (08:37) | Uncategorized | By: tkloha

So Becky, Blair and Grant showed up at 1pm. I put out the fruit tray, veggie tray, chili cheese dip, salsa and chips and the brownies were slightly hidden so the kids wouldn’t clamor for them.

The first game we played was Catan Geographies: Germany(which I explained in my Gen Con post). Becky won. Then we played a game Becky and Blair brought called Coloretto by Rio Grande Games. Horrible translation in the rules(it was previously released in German) but we finally got the jist. Everyone started the game with one card that had a colored(pink, brown, green, blue, black, orange or a wild) chameleon on it or they had a +2 card. 15 cards then were placed face down and a card with a rounded arrow was placed on top of that and then the rest of the deck was shuffled and placed on top of that. The card with the rounded arrow on it denoted the end of the game. What you did on your turn was take one card from the draw deck and place it on one of the 4 card rows. In the later rounds you could either take a card row or draw a card and place it on a card row. Each card row could only hold 3 cards. Once everyone had taken a card row you would start over drawing cards and placing them on card rows. Once you took a card row you were out for that round. The object the game was to collect color sets, but only 3 colors counted positive at the end of the game and any other colors you had at the end of the game counted negative. I won this game

Next we played Redneck Life by Gut Bustin’ Games. Redneck Life played jsomewhat like regular Life but more inappropriately. You rolled diced to determine your redneck name and along the way you would land on spots that said Go Rednecking. The person at the end of the game with the most teeth won the game. The first stop you made you determind your education level and profession by rolling 2 d6. The next stop you got married, rolled dice to determine your spouse’s name, rolled another die to determine your wedding costs, bought a car, bought a house and bought life, car and house insurance if you wanted to. The next stop you made you got divorced, rolled a die to see if you kept the house or lost it and paid the divorce lawyer.(Important to mention you started the game with no money so everytime you had to pay for something you had to borrow from Uncle Clem in denominations of $100 they were called Check and Scrams) Next stop you got remarried where you rolled dice to determine your new spouses name and then rolled dice to see how many red-head step-children named Darryl you acquired,  you also had to either pay $200 or $100 to get the tattoo of your ex’s named removed. Along the way some spots would make you lose teeth, acquire youngins, lose youngins etc. The next stop you stopped to gamble. At the end of the game was called the Day of Reckoning where you sold you car(s) and house for half and paid down your debt, then if you had any money left you bought teeth(that you had lost during the game) for $100 or if you still had debt you lost a tooth for every check and scram you had left(it was possible to end the game -teeth) Becky also won this game.

Next we played a game called Zig Zag by Rio Grande Games. In Zig Zag each player was given a goal(water, meadow, cobblestones, sand) to each. Then the obstacle course cards were shuffled and in the 3-4 player game each person was given 7 cards they got to discard 2 and place 5 down perpendicualar to their goal card to form the obstacle course they had to navigate. During the collection phase 48 terrain cards were placed face down on the table and the youngest player would call out ZigZag and everyone would start turning over cards looking for terrain cards that would advance their person through their obstacle course. As soon as someone would get stuck or thought they had the cards they needed to reach their goal would yell stop and then advance their person through the obstacle course. Important to note that during the collection phase you could not look through your face down collected terrain tiles so you had to keep track in your head where you were on your course to know what tiles to collect. There were 8 different type of tiles(blue and white checked tile, tan and brown tile, meadow, sand, cobblestone, field, water and dirt) You would repeat the collection phase until someone reached their goal and in this case Mark won this game.

Lastly we played Red Dragon Inn(previously explained in a prior monthly game day) and Blair won this game. Blair and Becky then packed out to leave and I cleaned up the food.

GenCon 2009

17 August, 2009 (10:49) | GenCon Indy | By: tkloha

So Mark decided to take Wednesday off on sick leave because I wasn’t feeling well. We left the house at 11:15 am and after a stop at the bank and a stop in Fort Wayne for lunch we got into Indy around 5pm. We checked into out hotel, and then walked over to the convention center to pick up our badges, to get the kids kid badges and to get our swag. The swag was very sad this year there was a dice and a booster pack of Magic cards and that was it. Then we went to Champs in Circle Center Mall for dinner, then back to the hotel to go to the pool and then to bed.

Thursday morning we ordered room service from the hotel from breakfast and after getting the bill thought better of it.  Then we all got dressed/showered and walked over to the convention center to find where our games were. Mark was in 500 reception playing Catan Geographies: Germany by Mayfair and I was in the Wabash Ballroom playing Secrets of the Sea by Playroom Entertainment. For some odd reason they put Playroom Entertainments games in a ballroom full of miniatures it was weird and somewhat annoying. Secrets of the Sea is a kids game that after I played it was a little bit too old for Abby but the people I played with(a dad and his 2 boys) I had played with previously during an OtB(Out of the Box) game in previous years. The dad was explaining that this was the first year he had brought both boys(age 10 and 8 ) because the 10yr old had bought his own badge.(impressive for a 10yr old to save up $65 to spend I thought) A note kids 8 and under don’t need a badge if they won’t be playing in games but if they do play games you have to buy them a badge. Secrets of the Sea was only an hour time slot and the game only took like 30 minutes. So I took a break and grabbed a coffee before coming back for a 11am Killer Bunnies Start Deck game. Killer Bunnies went with 7 people: 3 people new to the game, 2 somewhat familiar with the game and 2 a little rusty. The 3 new people to the game were a dad and his 2 boys(seeing a pattern here?), the one guy familiar with the game was quite abrasive and overly competitive and we promptly ganged up on him and he never say another bunny for the rest of the game. The dad ended up winning the game. During my Killer Bunnies game Mark’s Catan Georgraphies game ended and he came to Wasbash to learn Portobello Market.(I’ll see if I can get him to log on and write game reviews on the games he played in) My Killer Bunnies ended and Mark’s game was still going so I delved into the dealer’s hall for 30 minutes and then we went to Chick-Filet<sp> at the food court in the Circle Centre Mall.

Mark and I then played Ticket to Ride Dice by Days of Wonder. It very much simplified the game and in our thoughts made the game more playable for kids and made the game a quicker game. The dice replaced the gathering of train cards so it did away with having to collect certain color sets in order to claim certain routes. The dice had a single track on two sides, a double track on two sides, a “wild” red engine on one side, and a blue station on another side and there were 5 dice. On your turn you rolled the dice and then you could claim anywhere from a 1 track to 5 track route. Also if you had 2 leftover dice you didn’t use(they did not have to match) you could take a single or double track token to use at a later time. The station side of the dice allowed you to look at new route tickets and the number of stations you got determined the number of route tickets you could look at it(1-5). The set also came with 3 black dice that you used if you were playing Marklin, 1910 or Europe. Mark ended up winning this game.

Ticket to Ride Dice ran long so going into Pirate’s Cove(another Days of Wonder game) we made a few people unhappy because we had tickets and the GM had already let generics sit(though we had been telling them since Ticket to Ride dice practically started that we would be there for Pirate’s Cove but more than likely late)So after 2 people got up grumbling we sat down at different tables to learn the game. Well the GM had already given the jist of the game so the people at my table kindly caught me up and we started. It was quite a delightful game I though. You were a pirate and you had a ship that had 4 stats: sails, hull, crew and cannons. You started off with a base number of 4 in all stats and started with like 6 coins that you could use to make upgrades to your stats right off the bat. All ships started off in Pirate’s Cove and then you could decide to go to one of 6 islands to plunder. There were 4 items you could plunder; gold(to use to purchase upgrade or tavern cards), victory points, treasure chests and tavern cards. Treasure chests you held in  your hull(your hull stat determined how many treasure chests you could carry before you needed to go to treasure island to turn them in for victory points) Tavern cards came in varities: parrots, volley cards, battle cards and other fun cards. On  your turn you had a dial you decided which island you wanted to go to secretly based on the face up plunder card, then everyone would flip over their dial and move their ship. If more than one ship landed at a particular island a battle ensued. The ship with the highest sail number would shoot first. Your cannon stat determined the number of d6 you rolled to do damage and before you rolled you declared what you were shooting at(sails, crew, cannon or hull) Your crew number and cannon number need to be equal or you can only shoot as many cannons as you could crew. You played 9 rounds and the person with the most victory points won.

Then we went to dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory with Jay and family. The fams and kids went back to the hotel to go to the pool and my mom and I headed back to the convention center to squeeze in one more game. I played in Cutthroat Caverns with my friend Sharon from Texas and my mom played in Redneck Life. I liked Cutthroat Caverns even though the GM didn’t know the game very well, the other 4 players at the table seemed to know what they were doing and that was day 1!

Friday morning Mark volunteered to walk over to Chick-Filet and get breakfast meanwhile we ordered an order of pancakes from room service for the girls to split. I showered while the girls slept and while Mark went out and got breakfast. Then I ate breakfast while Mark showered then we walked to the Starbucks in the Westin and headed to our first game Candamir: The First Settlers. Loved the game after we finally tracked down a GM that knew the game and could teach us. You picked a character each character had 5 stats; endurance, strength, charamisa, prowness and agility. The board was split into two; the village side and the wildnerness side. You had 4 movement(unless another player did something to lower your endurance) your movement was determined by a deck of cards. On each movement card you could go North, East, South or West, but in each movement direction you could run into a bear, a wolf, help candimir, gather a herb, run into a ? or sometimes their would be nothing. Next to the bear, wolf, and help candimir would be a stat and a number for example their would be a prowness symbol and the number 6, which meant that you would look at your character card next to prowness and then roll a die 6 to see if you could beat the wolfs 6, if you could you were awarded with a fur. On the wilderness side were face down hex tiles that had rewards on the back. Rewards were resources, herbs, experience, goats and cows. The resources were used to make swords, window coverings and chests. The herbs were used to make either a healing potion, mead or an elixir which you could use to boost your prowness, agility, strength or charisma. You got victory points for creating swords, window coverings and chests to give to the villagers. You also got victory points for giving goats and cows to the villagers. The first person to get 3 items a villager wanted also got a victory point(similiar to longest road etc). On the wilderness side there was also a mine, a fur camp, and a lumberyard you could visit and collect 1 resource. The game ended when 1 person hit 10 victory points(which were represented by 10 wooden colored cubes you were given at the beginning of the game)

We then went to lunch at the Old Spaghetti Facoty with Sharon and Mark and Angie who Sharon and I knew from a mudd we both play on. I then went to go play in a Wits and Wagers tournament. In Wits and Wagers a trivia question is read and then you write down a guess to the answer on a colored wipey board and place it face down on the board(which is a felt mat) everyones guesses are then arranged on the mat from highest to lowest. The mat resembles a football field with 7 rectangles with odds written on the edge. Ranged from 5 to 1, to 2 to 1. Then you take your 2 colored tokens and bet on which one you think is the winner, the answer is read and the bets are paid out. The person at the end of the game with the most chips wins! I came in dead last at my table and Mark was just starting Railroad Tycoon so as I was heading to the dealer’s hall to wander I received a call from Jay saying he and the family was heading that way and then I bumped into Alex, Mike and Mike’s Little Brother. I wandered the dealer’s hall to my next game.

My next game was Word on the Street by OtB. In Word on the Street there 5 columns and the middle column were most of the alphabet minus vowels and the letter Z. Players were split into 2 teams. On your turn you had 30 seconds to come up with a word that answered the topic and then move the letters in the word you selected one column to your side of the board. The goal was to move as many letters off the board onto your teams side. The first team to get 8 letter tiles off the board to your side won. I thorougly enjoyed this game but my teammates were a little lack luster and didn’t stay around for the consolation rounds so I was kind bummed. Next I played ABridged which I had played before and came in second and won a $5 gift certificate.  Then we went to a resturant called Bucca di Beppo with Sharon, her husband Mike and Sharon’s sister and brother-in-law. Bucca was a delicious Italian family style resturant. We all shared a family salad, Mark got lasagna and my mom and I shared a delicious Spicy Rosa Shrimp dish. Then for dessert we got a sampler dessert platter of tiramisu, triple chocolate cake, cheesecake and a apple tartlet. My mom went to go play Trailer Wars and Sharon, Mike and I played in Red Neck Life. Hilarous game just like the Game of Life but redneck style. The person at the end of the game with the most teeth won! Thus endth day 2.

Day 3 Mark volunteered to go to Einstein Brothers for breakfast and the girls had room service pancakes again. Mark was supposed to play in Age of Napolean by Mayfair but it was only a 2 player game and the second player never showed instead he played Struggle for Rome. I played in Catan Geographies: Germany. Delightful game where are given 10 town halls which represent your victory points. The board is pre-set and there are 4 cards with 3 starting cities on them that are dealt out randomly. In this game you earned victory points by building townhalls in cities, largest army, longest road and monuments. For building the monument you got rewards like resources and development cards. Then we went to lunch.

That afternoon Mark and I played in 3 new OtB games 7ate9, Super Circles, and Letter Roll. 7ate9 was a speed game. The cards had number 1-10 on them and in the corner would be a + or – 1, 2, or 3. So if a 1 +1 card was laid on the table you laid a 2 on it. The first person to get rid of all their cards won. Super Circles was another speed game. The cards had 4 colored rings on it and you had to match A ring, so if I played a pink one, the next person to play a card to match a colored ring could do any other ring other than 1. Mark came in second in this game. Lastly we played in Letter Roll in Letter Roll there were 7 dice; 2 “easy”, 3 “medium”, and 2 “hard” dice. The level of difficult had to do with the letters on the dice and the dice were all 20 siders. The roller would pick 4 dice, roll them and then the person to the left of the roller would take 1 out. All the players would then have 2 minutes to come up with as many words that had the 3 letters in it somewhere. Once the 2 minutes were over the roller would start reading off the words they got and crossing off any word that someone else came up with. Normally with 5 players you would go around till everyone had rolled twice but we only had time to go around once. That was the last game of the con for me.

We then went on a shopping spree where we bought matching Cookie Monster shirts for Mark and the girls, I got a shirt that showed a little dragon and a pile of books that said, So many books, so little time. Then I hit the Marget Weiss/Tracey Hickman booth and bought 6 books(2 hardcovers and 4 paperbacks) the 2 hard covers were by Tracey and Laura Hickman so I had Tracey sign them and had my picture taken with him, and I had my picture taken with Maraget Weiss(I’ll post pics on facebook). Then we purchased Catan Geographies:Germany, Letter Roll, Redneck Life and the expansion for my mom and then the girls each got 1 stuffed animal. Then we went to the Weber’s Grill with the Blob, then onto a PodCasters meet and greet, then I went back to the convention hall to walk my mom back to the hotel. Thus endth day 3.

Day 4 last day :( Mark got Einstein Brothers for us for breakfast and the girls ate room service pancakes. We packed up the room, then I went over to the Marriot to tape a Blobcast.

July Monthly Game Day

17 July, 2009 (23:09) | Uncategorized | By: tkloha

So we had Becky, Blair, Grant, Jay, Mary, Roman and Lily over. The kids played well together and we played 3 games. 2 brand new to us and one it had been long enough we had to read over the rules.

The first game we played was Chez Geek with the expansions Slack Attack and Block Party. It was alot of fun and it was a quick game. In Chez Geek you are dealt an occupation. On your occupation card is the total slack you must acquire to win, how much income you earn and how much free time you have on your turn. On your turn you take you income, then you can call people, do activitys(cards in the deck will say activity on them) or go shopping. In your hand you will have people cards and some people you call into your room are beneficial and then their are non-beneficial people you can call into other people’s rooms. To call a person you roll a d6 and on a roll of 1 or 2 the person was not home and your discard that card. You can call as many people as you want. The amount of free time determines how many activities you can do. Shopping is considered an activity and by shopping we mean playing cards out of your hand that are labeled things. Your income comes into play here because the things will have costs and the costs must be equal or lesser than your income. Important to note you can’t “save” up your income if you don’t use your income on one turn it goes away at the end of your turn. Chez Geek is a Steve Jackson Game.

The second games we played was called Bohnanza. It was a bean planting game. I really enjoyed the game play where cards went into the back of “hand” and could not be moved unless you traded them away, donated them to charity or planted them. You only had 2 fields to plant beans in and the beans had to be the same variety to plant. At the beginning of your turn you could plant 2 beans from your hand if you wished, then you had to turn over 2 cards from the draw deck and you had to immediately plant those as well. If the cards you turned over did not matched what you already had planted you could harvest your field or trade with other players. When you harvested your field you had to have a minimum number of beans planted in order to earn gold, most cards were 3 or 4 beans but some were 2. The game ended once you went threw the draw deck 3 times. It sounded like it would take a long time but as the more beans were planted and the gold coins earned the less cards there were to cycle through. It was an enjoyable game. Bohnanza is a Rio Grande Game.

We then paused while I made Mexican Rice, Spanish Rice, and ground turkey tacos. Dinner was eaten, Jay and Mary had to go and then Becky, Blair, myself and Mark played Red Dragon Inn which Becky already did a write up on.

New Game: Frag Gold Edition

15 July, 2009 (04:25) | Uncategorized | By: breamy

Steve Jackson Games recently re-released Frag the sun don t lie marcus miller as a “Gold Edition”.  Frag is a board game version of the classic first person shooter computer games.  You create a character by assigning points to Health, Speed and Accuracy, then run around the game board picking up weapons and power-ups, and shooting at the other players.

Frag Gold edition keeps the game play the same as the original version, but all of the components of the game have been improved.  The original Frag came with a 2 sided paper map, the map in the new edition is heavy card stock (still double sided).  The character  pieces were thin card stock in the original, and are now plastic figures.  Paper character sheets that had to be photo copied in the original, are now heavy card stock that can be written on with dry-erase markers (1 marker included in the game).

I wish they would have re-deisgned a few parts of the game to reduce the number of counters needed, but that is pretty minor.  Overall the game play is great, this edition is a big improvement from the original game.

Frag Gold Edition is a bit more expensive ($50 vs $35 for the old version) but with the improvement in the quality of the components, I think it’s worth it.

Frag Gold Edition
MSRP: $49.95
Number of Players: 2-6
Playing Time: 1 hour
Suggested Age: 12+
SKU: SJG 1901

Available from CagedGorilla.com

Red Dragon Inn

14 July, 2009 (17:56) | Uncategorized | By: breamy

We got a copy Red Dragon Inn while we were at Origins last month, and finally had a chance to play last weekend.  In the game, you play an adventurer who’s done adventuring for the day and is kicking back and relaxing at the local tavern.  The original game has a fighter, a wizard, a cleric and a thief. The object of the game is to be the last one to pass out from drinking to much, and not run out of money.

Each player gets a deck of cards for their character which all have slightly different cards/abilities.  Play goes around the table, and each turn you can play an action card (like starting a round of gambling), and then you buy a drink for one of your friends, and drink one of your drinks.  Most drinks increase your alcohol content (if it goes over your fortitude, you pass out), so it’s good to give them to the other players, and not so great to drink them yourself.  There are a bunch of sometimes and anytime cards that affect play as well, lowering other players fortitude, helping you avoid drinking, stealing gold, etc.

The game played quickly, and was a lot of fun.  It would be VERY easy to turn it into a real drinking game, and it’s easy enough to play that you could play even if you had a few drinks in you.

The original game is only for 4 players, but they’ve come out with a sequel – Red Dragon Inn 2

(clever name, I know) which is the same game but with 4 different characters, so they can be combined for an 8 player game.

It’s easy to learn, fun to play, and pretty quick (it took us about 20 minutes).  It’s a game about drinking and gambling – how could it not be a good game?

-Blair
CagedGorilla.com

March Monthly Game Day and Gaming with Non-gamers

23 June, 2009 (08:52) | Uncategorized | By: tkloha

.!.

So this past weekend I got to game two days in a row. Friday night we had some people over from our church’s 20/30’s group and we played euchre and then toward the end of the night we played an amusing game called, “Would You Rather”. We didn’t actually “play” the game more so we would just read the card and then everyone would go around the table and say what they would rather have and why. An example of one of the cards was, “Would you rather have a giraffes neck or an elephants trunk.”

Saturday we had Becky, Blair, Jay, Mary and all their kids over. We started off playing an old game called Scotland Yard. Mark had played it as a kid and his older brother happened to have a copy. The object of the game was for the detectives to capture Mr. X. The detectives had a limited amount of transportation tiles(taxi, bus and underground) and Mr. X’s beginning location and moves were hidden from us except at certain points of the game when he would surface. The game ended when either someone landed on the same “stop” where Mr. X was or if any one detective ran out of transportation tiles. I really enjoyed the cat and mouse of it and in the end Jay who choose to play Mr. X won the game because we ran out of transportation tiles before we managed to catch him.

Next we played Station Master by Mayfair which was a game none of us had played before. I really enjoyed the game it reminded a little of Gold Digger by Out of the Box but way more complex. You scored points by placing carriages on locomotives and placing passengers on the locomotive as well. Each locomotive had a number on it and the number represented the number of passengers as well as carriages the locomotive could carry. The locomotive would leave the station as soon as it reached it’s limit of carriages. The passenger tokens had either a 1, 2, or 3 on them but they are placed face down on the locomotive. The carriages also had values on them ranging from +6 to -4. When a locomotive would leave the station the locomotive would be scored by taking the total of the carriages(which unfortunately could sometimes by negative) and multiplying it by the number of passengers you had on the locomotive. So if for example the locomotive was worth 4 and you had your 3 point passenger token on it you would score 12. It didn’t matter whether you had 1 or 2 tokens on a given locomotive it was just the total of the tokens multiplied by the total of the carriages. I came in dead last catching on to the strategy of the game a little late and making the mistake of getting on the same locomotives the leader was on so everyone kept putting negative point carriages on the train. Mark won this game.

We then stopped while I made dinner(spaghetti, meatballs and garlic texas toast). After dinner we played a game by Cheese Weasel Games called Pit Fighter. It was like a combination of FRAG and MtG if you can believe that. In the game there were characters and each character had a deck of actions, equipment and weapons. In the beginning of the game you got 100 gold worth of weapons/equipment/actions. During the game you made money by doing damage to other characters and you had a hand of 5 cards that consisted of the rest of the deck of weapons/equipment/actions some characters had spells as well. The first person to die ended the game or the first person to score 1000 gold won. Mark ended up killing Becky and won the game because he had the most gold.

New Member

9 June, 2009 (15:46) | Members | By: elindsay

.!.

We’ve added a new member. Dan Tillberg is his name. He joined us recently following U-Con. Check out his bio in our members section. See his spiffy marketing head shot!

Dan will be attending Origins so look for his events. We’ll be posting our Origins’ events list soon on the board.robbie williams – the ego has landed download

Gamercon

4 June, 2009 (09:36) | Conventions | By: tkloha

Super tiny convention but it was very fun. None of our games went on Friday so we used the first time slot to check into our hotel room which was conveniently located right across the hallway from the ballroom the convention was located in. Dan’s event didn’t go either so he played in Rich’s. The second time slot we drummed up one of the exhibitors and let him take a trip down memory lane by playing a game of Robo Rally with him. He hadn’t played in YEARS(talking 20 here folks) so he thoroughly enjoyed how they changed the game. Rich’s event went and Dan’s vampire game went as well.

Saturday, our morning slot didn’t go(Rich’s did though) but we did play in another event that was going which was Ticket to Ride

The newcomer guy (his name was Dan too but to alleviate the confusion he is gonna keep getting referred to as the newcomer guy) to the table who had never played won. Next we broke for lunch and then we played a game of Kingsburg again the guy who had never played the game before won. Then for Mark’s 2:30(Rich’s 2:30 went) scheduled game of Munchkin Quest we all decided to play his game. Mark and another guy at the table tied for 1st they were both level 10 and he agreed to help him beat the monster after Mark had beefed up the monster and we decided we wanted to end the game so we could move on to the 7pm slot. One of the players early on in the game got killed and handled it very ungracefully and after awhile of sulking at the table and frequently wandering away he came back to the table and said he wanted to quit. So the game continued on with 5 people.  During Munchkin Quest

Dan and his wife rolled out the goodies to celebrate Mark and Dan’s birthday. So during Munchkin Quest we ate pizza and pasta salad, drank soda and then we paused to sing Happy Birthday and cut the cookie cake. After Munchkin Quest finished up we were packing up our games and there were 4 guys hanging around that asked if us we were going. We had had plans to hang with Dan and Rich but because of the weather Dan and his family decided to take off and Rich’s game was still going so we decided to help the convention out and run a impromptu game of Settlers of Catan we had 6 player and I shockingly enough won the game. Meanwhile Rich’s 2:30 game ended and he drummed up some players and played a game of Smarty Party.

Saturday evening/night Moline got 3-5 inches of snow and because we had a 6 hour drive(7 hours if you count the time change not in our favor). So Sunday morning we did breakfast with Rich’s family and decided to check out of our room, pack up the car and just get going. Our sunday morning game had no players which made our decision to take off easy.