Note:  My photos for BGG.CON are being hosted at Flickr.  You can find them here.

 

I woke up this morning with massive convention hangover.  I didn't get to bed last night until 3am, and that was after a full day of brain-numbing thinking games.  (well, and Carabande)  This morning I decided to let myself sleep in for a while, and made it back over to the hotel around 10:30.  I had a scheduled game of A Game of Thrones starting sometime mid-to-late morning, but everyone decided since it was getting close to lunchtime we would hold off and start up right after lunch.  So we decided to play a quick game of Pirate's Cove.

 

I sat down with Eran, Blake, Dave M. and Mike (all fellow gamers from Dallas).  Eran had played once before, but it apparently had been a long time.  He tried to skim the rules to extract the important parts, but we wound up missing some things and were confused through the early part of the game.  The poor understanding of the rules on top of the random and cheese-laden gameplay did nothing for me.  This was definitely the worst game of the con so far.  I love a good pirate theme as much as the next guy, but I'll steer clear of this one.

 

 

Final Scores:

Blake 48, Dave 43, Eran 35, Jeff 30, Mike 24

 

This was the main event for Friday.  I've been looking forward to playing this game, being a big fan of George R. R. Martin's series.  When I sat down, I asked the group to see who else had read the books.  Surprisingly enough, none of them had!  It was a shame that the fantastic theme of this game was wasted on the group.  The players would refer to the houses by their colors rather than their family name, so rather than hearing "Lannister is invading Baratheon at King's Landing", it was "Red is attacking Yellow here (point)".  I would have enjoyed the game a lot more with other AGoT fans, being able to compare and contrast the game to the book.  Sigh.

 

We had six players with the Clash of Kings expansion.  We randomly drew cards for houses.  Imagine my excitement when I pulled Stark!  Was I the envy of the table, playing the part of the heroes of Martin's masterpiece of epic fantasy?  Hell, no.  I was white.  The players were:

 

Me (Jeff):  Stark (white)

Mike A:  Baratheon (yellow)

Eran:  Martell (orange)

Blake:  Tyrell (green)

David:  Lannister (red)

Mike T:  Greyjoy (black)

 

I've heard this game described as a "euro wargame".  I certainly think it plays that way.  The wooden bits give it that euro feel, and the simple mechanics and lack of overly-complex rules make it a fair comparison.  The board gets a little crowded when army sizes get larger and the order tokens get placed all over the board.  But the game flows very smoothly, and after a few turns everyone felt very comfortable with the mechanics.

 

Our game started off bloodily, with Tyrell attacking Lannister on the very first turn.  Upheaval in the court happened right away, and since a couple of players hadn't consolidated power on the first turn, things were already imbalanced.  On turn 3, Martell moved in to attack the Tyrell lands which would start a bloody battle in the southlands that would last the entire game.  The two spilt more blood on each others lands than the rest of the board combined.  Baratheon silently took control of several regions in the middle of the map, and also took over naval dominance which would be the bane of the Starks for many a turn.

 

 

Turns 4 and 5 had a lot of territory grabbing and border skirmishes in the South, with the North in relative peace thanks to a non-aggression pact between the Iron Islands and Winterfell.  However, on turn 6 it became apparent that Greyjoy's unchecked power left him only 1 city away from instant victory.  It fell on the shoulders of the Starks to drive them out.  I attacked Moat Cailin with 3 knights and drove Greyjoy out.  Unfortunately, Baratheon also had taken a 5th city on this turn, with a supporting boat ready to transport troops up the Eastern coastline and take a Stark castle.  Recognizing this, I activated my boats and had to play my largest leader card to win the battle, finally regaining naval dominance in the Northeast and stopping a second player from winning this turn.

 

 

In turn 7 I overextended myself and got my main attacking army of 3 knights separated from my homeland.  This would prove to be a costly error, as they could never make it back past the Neck to defend the North.  In turns 7 and 8 I was forced to play defensively, issuing orders to defend and not taking any new territory.  This allowed Greyjoy to position his troops exactly how he wanted them.  Unfortunately, Lannister had a treaty with Greyjoy and seemed unwilling to help stop him from winning.

 

In turn 9, with two players (Greyjoy and Baratheon) both poised to win their 6th city this turn, the random event cards turned over to reveal mustering and bidding

cards.  Lannister, rather than stopping Greyjoy and letting Martell try to stop Baratheon, chose to invade Baratheon for himself.  Greyjoy continued to move his troops into perfect position, eventually transporting enough units by sea to invade Winterfell from the North and take his 6th and final city.

 

I am glad I finally got to play a full game of AGoT.  The game was a lot of fun, though I really do wish I could have shared the experience with some Martin fans.  It also ran very long, clocking in at 4 hours.  In hindsight, I wish I would have played 2-3 shorter games that I haven't played before.  But hey, there's always Saturday and Sunday!

 

Winner:  Mike A (Greyjoy)

 

Early in the day I dropped by the Havoc booth to buy my copy from Chris Brooks.  I didn't get a chance to play until later that night, just before the game show event.  We played a quick game where I took second place.  I don't have much to say about Havoc.  Everyone at the con thinks it is a great filler game.  I spotted lots of copies, and several people in Dallas have already purchased it.  I can already tell it will have a lot of staying power.  It's simple, it's quick, and it uses a familiar mechanic (poker hands) to resolve combat.  I think it will hit the table a lot in the coming months.  Nice job, Sunriver!

 

Final Scores:

Game 1:  Dave M. 29, Jeff 22, Thomas 8, Mike 7, David R. 4

Game 2:  Jared 26, Jeff 24, John 20, Jim 19, David 19

Game 3:  Jeff 36, David 30, Jim 27, John 21

 

Our first game of Havoc ran a little late, but at 8pm there was a game show put on near the vendor's area.  The crowd was split into 26 teams of 4 people with each team taking a letter of the alphabet and coming up with a creative team name based on the letter.  The crowd then participated in a game show being run via laptop & projector at the front of the room.  The game was played in 3 rounds, with each round having a different type of puzzle.  In the first round, the screen would show 4 pictures, which when identified and put together would form a person's name.  (for instance, Elijah Wood + Dee Snyder + Weird Al + a picture of an Inn = Woody Allen)  The pictures would be numbered and the crowd would have 30 seconds to put the numbers in the correct order to score.  Using the honor system, the teams would then be awarded points.

 

 

The second and third rounds had similar picture-puzzles, with most of the clues being very crossword-like.  At the end of the game, the top two teams won some prizes (gift certificates & t-shirts).  The event went over well with the crowd, mostly due to the fantastic technical presentation.  I'm not sure who put the program together, but they did a fantastic job.  They could have benefited from a louder PA system, but it worked.

 

Final game show scores:

Weaselpenis Circus:  4000

Deathmonkeys:  3550

Hellions:  3000

Meeeeeeeples!:  2800

Genial Guys:  2750

 

Tomorrow morning at 9 am is the flea market.  It's nearly 1:30 now, which means I need to be up in about 6 hours if I want to make it there a little early to see if there are any good deals.  I'm tempted just to sleep in, but I'd be kicking myself if it turns out to be a big deal.  My fear is that there will be way more buyers looking for bargains than sellers.  Hopefully I won't be losing sleep for nothing!

 

Tomorrow I want to get in Hammer of the Scots, Caylus, and at least one game from my "I've always wanted to play that" list.  (Taj Mahal anyone?)  I'm off to bed.