Gencon 2010: Reviews of the Games I Played

I didn’t get to do nearly enough gaming this year, and that’s doubly true when it comes to actual role-playing, but I wanted to do a quick recap of the games that I did get a chance to play. I won’t spend much time talking about mechanics and the like, this is more of a “here’s what I played and here’s what I thought.” Where applicable, I’ll link out to product pages and the like.

Dominion

I got to play this thanks to Necronomitron (Nick) picking his copy up on the dealer floor this year.

Dominion was my introduction to “deck building” games. I was, of course, familiar with the concept of playing a deck against other decks (Magic, et al), but this is the first game that I’ve ever played where building your deck is the bulk of gameplay rather than what you have to do before playing. You start out with the same initial deck as the other players, and through purchasing various cards from a central collection, you try to amass more victory points by the end of the game than your opponents.

It’s not a bad game, but I don’t see myself playing it very often. It just doesn’t have enough player interaction to really get me into it. I’m told that expansions make it more fun, but another game that I played this ‘con was essential “Dominion made way more fun,” so I don’t see myself picking this one up.

I had fun playing with the guys I played it with. That said, I certainly wouldn’t seek it out, and I’d probably opt for another game given a choice.

Dominion on Board Game Geek

Chris’ Battletech Game

This year, Chris ran another completely awesome game of Battletech!

The scenario was pretty cool this year. I played as part of the Militia, whose job it was to protect a power plant from the Grenadiers that wanted it for military purposes and the local Farmers that wanted it for their own. I had control of a Rifleman mech and…um, another mech that I can’t remember the make of because it doesn’t sound as awesome as Rifleman. Our side also had control over a weapons emplacement on top of the main power plant building.

I managed to score first blood and FIRST KILL on one of my first few attacks! Granted, they got to use a “get out of death free” card (each team had one, they just had to use theirs first!), but I still got credit for it. Awesome!

Play continued for several rounds, and we were still doing pretty well when I had to take off to do some more video coverage and get to another event. I’m going to assume that we won, because we were awesome!

As usual, Chris runs a ridiculously fun game! If you ever get a chance, play in his Battletech games.

If you aren’t familiar with it: Battletech

True Dungeon

This event sells out in the first few hours of registration, so I just assume that I’m not going to get to do it. Add that it costs $40, and it gets even harder to get in. But this year, a couple of super, super awesome guys (friends of Fear the Boot) gave the hosts and the TOFtBCHs free run-throughs as gifts. AWESOME!

True Dungeon is effectively a quick-pickup fantasy LARP. You get tokens that represent treasure, armor, weapons, spells, potions and the like, and use these to “equip” your character. Combat is done using a sort of shuffleboard attack mechanic, and there are puzzles to solve. We ran the more puzzle-based side. I’m pleased with how well we did, even though we didn’t manage to solve a couple of the puzzles. (Well, I did solve one of them, but nobody listened to me. Oh well.)

All in all, a great time. I can absolutely see myself sitting online waiting for registration to start so I can get in next year.

True Dungeon Website

Dan’s Star Trek Game

This game was completely awesome. Basically, two teams of five commanded a ship per team. I played on the Federation side, and the other side was a Romulan bird of prey.

Each team was made up of a Captain, Engineer, Helmsman, Weapons Officer, and Science Officer. Each team member had a console representing their responsibilities and capabilities on the ship. The captain has a view of all of the consoles during the game, but everyone else is limited to their own “duties.”

The Engineer had the tough job of assigning “power” to the other consoles. Power is necessary to perform the various functions of each officer. The helm uses power to maneuver the ship, the weapons console to power and fire the weapons, and the science console to power the shields. The game proceeds in turns of three phases, with the engineer assigning power at the beginning of the turn. So it’s very tactical and very exciting! Each phase, your crew has 10 seconds to confer over strategy. The rest of the time, you just have to rely on each officer to do their job to the best of their ability given the brief planning session and orders of your captain.

So. Damn. Awesome!

And yes, our Federation vessel, the U.S.S. Wolf, managed to drop our away team, stay in orbit, pick up our away team, and leave the sector before the Romulans could blow us into tiny bits! We are awesome!

The game is out of print, but if you’re interest you can Google “Fasa Star Trek box set” or “Star Trek Starship Tactical Combat Simulator.” Apparently it costs quite a bit when you can find it. I’ll be looking for a set!

Thunderstone

I ended up getting in on a PUG of this in the Board Game Library with Johnny G., Arlie, and Pat. Great crew to game with.

This. This game fixes everything that makes Dominion boring. First, it slaps a fantasy adventure theme on the deck building mechanic. That alone makes me like it more than the pseudo-medieval land-control theme that Dominion uses. Secondly, you get your victory points from killing monsters, which go into your deck. Unlike land cards in Dominion though, which serve no purposes other than to clog up your deck, monsters are worth gold when you draw them on your turn, and some of them give you other abilities when you play them.

So yeah, basically, Thunderstone is a really fun deck building game that blows Dominion out of the water. I’ll be getting a copy of this at some point.

Thunderstone on Board Game Geek

Blowback

Bought and run by Ed Sawyer (Ender_Melchior on the Fear the Boot forums), Blowback is essentially Burn Notice the RPG. You play spies that have been burned, trying to figure out the why and who of your being burned. Adding to the draw of the game, though, is that you can also play “civilians” that have a stake in the life of the former spy. The game is played in “phases,” and the longer term campaign play is comprised largely of maintaining relationships with people in your life. Being a former spy comes with stress, being burned adds to that stress, and that stress affects relationships in your life. So you want to find out why you were burned and by whom, but you don’t want to wreck your entire life doing it.

Pretty interesting stuff! It was being sold by Indie Press Revolution at their booth.

Although we only did a quick one shot in a system that’s meant for longer term play, I can definitely see this being a really, really fun game. The only complaints I really have (and remember, I don’t have a ton of experience with it and haven’t read the whole book) are based in it being a small-press product that is in need of a good editor. It really came across as an overpriced printed PDF from somebody that had a really great idea but not a lot of experience turning that idea into a complete, playable game. At the price point (I think Ed said he paid almost $30 for it), I don’t think I’ll be picking it up, but I might see what the price of the PDF version is, and after waiting for it to get some updates, I might pick that up.

And actually, in looking for links to give you, I find that the PDF is very reasonably priced, and can be picked up here:

Blowback PDF

I also found out that yes, the author is aware that it needs a good run by an editor. You can read her comments about that and about how it was made and put out for ~$1,000 at the Two Scooters Press blog. I plan to bookmark it and give it some more reading, myself.

So there you have it. Those are the games I got to play at Gencon 2010. If you have any questions about any of them, throw them in the comments and I’ll try to answer them for you.

Thanks for reading!

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Tags: Battletech, Gaming, GenCon, Gencon 2010, Star Trek