GAME NIGHT: GEN CON GOODIES

Hello! We've been recovering from our Gen Con 50 adventures and playing some new games!  Our haul this year was pretty diverse, ranging from 2-payer and family games all the way to heavier euro-style games.  These included Fox in the Forest and Atlas: Enchanted Lands from Renegade Game Studios, both of which have already hit the table.

Professor Evil and the Citadel of Time

  Also seeing some play time this past weekend were Gamewright's Go Nuts for Donuts  and, our number one pick from the con, Professor Evil and The Citadel of Time from Funforge and Passport Game Studios.

Haspelknecht: The Story of Early Coal Mining

On the heavy side, Saturday night's selection was Haspelknecht from Capstone Games. The seemingly bland theme of early coal mining is deceptive as this is a pretty fun, thinky action point / worker placement game.  We also picked up the expansion as well as the sequel, The Ruhr: A Story of Coal Trade.  It was, "a package deal".


Two deck-builders in our queue to play are the latest offerings from Stone Blade Entertainment,  Ascension: Valley of the Ancients, and Atlas Games' new Witches of the Revolution.  We're looking forward to trying these out soon.

Other acquisitions of note are Cities of Splendor, the long awaited expansion(s) for the 2014/2015 smash hit, Five Tribes: Whims of the Sultan, yet another expansion for yet another hit game, and Santorini, a fun abstract game from Roxley.  The Star Trek Ascendancy expansions were finally, FINALLY released (and were purchased).  These included the Cardassian and Ferengi factions and expands the game to 4 or 5 players.

Stop Thief!

And last, but certainly not least are:

Bunny Kingdom from iello

Tesla vs. Edison: Duel from Artana

Indulgence from the excellent folks
at Restoration Games

Codenames Duet from CGE and...

Word Slam from KOSMOS

GEN CON 50: A COMMUTER'S JOURNEY

Well, Gen Con 50 has come and gone and we wanted to leave you with a few impressions on our visit.

The convention, as always, was quite the spectacle with record, sell-out attendance and 24 hour event schedules.  Lucas Oil Stadium became a showcase for a Gen Con historical display covering aspects of the convention's 50 year history.  The stadium also hosted tournaments as well as True Dungeon.  The main exhibit hall once again housed hundreds of vendors from all over the world, and the rest of the convention center, as well as adjoining hotels, were utilized for events, tournaments and additional gaming areas.  Georgia Street was closed off again for food trucks, events and entertainment.

Lucas Oil Stadium

It was a bittersweet year for us as we did not win the hotel lottery and had to commute to Indy on a couple of the days.  Fortunately, though, we're within reasonable driving distance so it wasn't too bad.  Still, having to miss out on the 'night life' and evening events was kind of sad.  At any rate, the overall experience was still worth it.

We were able to snag most of the items on our wishlists and see most of the vendors and industry personalities that we enjoy.  Currently, Indianapolis is slated to have Gen Con through 2021 with next year's dates falling on August 2nd through the 5th.

See you next year!

The Ruhr from Capstone Games

Replica of entrance to 1st Gen Con

The Force is strong at this convention

? ? ?

A few goodies!

GEN CON 50

Greetings!  It's that time of year again.  Time for all good tabletop game enthusiasts to head to North America's (and depending on who you ask, the world's) biggest convention for their beloved hobby.  From its humble beginnings fifty years ago to its massive sell-out crowds today, Gen Con has been the high point of the convention season.  Over 500 new board game titles have been announced to be available for sale or for demo at this year's convention so there should be something for everyone.  We'd like to take this opportunity to mention but a humble few that are on our short list that have us excited.

Number one is Professor Evil and the Citadel of Time from Passport Game Studios.  We had an opportunity to demo this at Origins and it was a blast.  A co-operative game, players infiltrate Professor Evil's citadel to re-acquire artifacts he has stolen throughout time before he locks them away forever.  You have to disable traps and avoid the Professor at every turn while trying to access various artifacts scattered about the lair.

2-4 Players

30-45 Minutes

Ages 8+

Next, Cities of Splendor from Space Cowboys, the highly anticipated expansions (4 in the box) for the critically acclaimed game.  The expansions include: The Cities, replaces the noble tiles with city tiles that have objectives; The Trading Posts, introduce bonuses for development cards; The Orient, adds three new decks to the originals at each level of development; and The Strongholds, which allows additional options for reserving cards.

Requires base game to play
2-4 players   30 Minutes   10+






In Ascension: Valley of the Ancients, the new stand-alone expansion from Stone Blade Entertainment, players compete for control of three different temples.  As with most Ascension expansions, new mechanics and card play are introduced to add more variety to the game.  This has been one of our favorite deck-builders.

2-4 Players   30-45 Minustes   12+

....And another deck-builder will be debuting at Gen Con this year.  Atlas Games will be launching Witches of the Revolution, a cooperative game where users pool their card resources to overcome challenges and eliminate the big bosses to make sure the forces of evil are kept at bay and the American Revolution succeeds!  We checked out a demo at Origins and it was a lot of fun.

So that's all for now.  Hopefully, we'll be able snag these and report back with some reviews later.  Until then, all you Gen Con 50 attendees, happy hunting!

Origins 2017

Origins is this week!  We'll be packing up the family truckster and heading there on Thursday so I thought I would take the opportunity to list a few items that are on our radar to check out.

Number 1 for me is far and away Century: Spice Road from Plan B Games. This has been described as Splendor with more depth and strategy.



CMON has quite a few games we're wanting to look at as well.  Lorenzo il Magnifico comes from the same designers of Grand Austria Hotel and looks to be a good worker-placement game.  Also, the recently released Ethnos is an area control, hand-management game that's been getting lots of buzz.  We'll be spending a bit of time at the CMON booth checking out these and other new and recent releases.




Stronghold Games once again has a good lineup with releases like Not Alone and Fields of Green.  We're hoping to get demos on both of those with intent to buy.

We're also excited to see a new offering from a company that hails from our neck of the woods.  Happy Harpy Games will be giving demos of their new game, Robot Rise! , ahead of their August 1st Kickstarter campaign.  Can't wait to see how it plays!

...And these are but a very few of the games we'll be checking out this week.  We'll try to keep our twitter feed up-to-date with all of the cool things we see.  Stay tuned...

@whatsingame

GAME NIGHT: NEW YEAR, NEW GAMES

Greetings!  After taking a loooong holiday break, we're back.  And, just because we haven't been posting, it doesn't mean we haven't been playing.  Most recently, we've managed to get some newly acquired games to the table.

First up, Stronghold Games' release of Coal Baron: The Great Card Game. This is the little brother of the the Coal Baron board game and has some familiar elements to it as well as plenty of brand new mechanics, and did I mention a whole lot of cards!

Next, the family got together for Menu Masters from Calliope Games.  This is part of their Titans Series games and is from designers Zach and Jordan Weisman.  Get the ingredients you need to fulfill menu orders and try to get the most points doing it. Yummy!

Finally, we entered the dark realm of H.P. Lovecraft with the new release from Passport Games Studios, Kingsport Festival: The Card Game.  Much like the board game, players are the cultists trying to summon the ancient ones but this time you're using your arcane resources to acquire cards to build a powerful deck to help you summon more monsters and defeat those pesky investigators.  It's for 3-5 players and takes about 30 minutes.