GenCon 2008

Gaming conventions are crazy, both in concept and in practice. Imagine gathering together thousands of people who enjoy board games, war games, card games, fantasy role-playing, and even some online gaming folks into one large event. You see a lot of weird things and people and have a lot of fun just browsing around and people watching. The two big gaming conventions that occur near Cincinnati are Origins, in Columbus, and GenCon in Indianapolis. Earlier this year, I spent two action packed days at Origins playing as many games as I could squeeze in. Because of this fact, I didn’t expect that I would go to GenCon. For one, Parker had just arrived and because of this fact, I had no time to get myself up to Indianapolis. So, I was resigned to the fact that Origins would be my convention of choice, this year. That works for me. Then, I heard on The Spiel (one of my board gaming podcasts) that they were going to be holding a “Spiel-a-Thon” event at GenCon. It would be a fund raising event where you can go and meet the podcasters and play lots of game and possibly win a few. I figured I had to make my way up to the event and play a few games and meet the Dave and Stephen from The Spiel.

So, I skipped out of work a little bit early on the Friday of the event and made my way to Indianapolis. When I got to GenCon I quickly made my way into the main hall where all the vendors are located. This is the main feature of GenCon. The convention center is huge and there were literally hundreds of booths of a wide spectrum of the gaming world. The place was so expansive, it was impossible to see everything in the short amount of time that I had, but I saw many different booths and vendors, including super heroes, dice vendors, Japanese graphic novels, war paraphernalia, the latest miniature games, a $9500 wooden gaming table, Guitar Hero contests, and the latest in MMORPGs. Somehow, I missed the Fantasy Flight Games section where they were testing the new Battlestar Galactica game out. I’ve heard this is a pretty good game. Oh, well.

So, after a few frantic hours in the main vendor hall, I made my way over to the Rio Grande Gaming room where the Spiel-a-thon was being held. Once there, I meet Dave and Stephen from the The Spiel and recorded a sound bite for their show. They also had a huge 5 foot dice tower that was to be used throughout the day. They also had a prize table with about 50 different games that would be raffled off that day in order to raise money for their charity. The grand prize in the raffle was Risk: Black Ops, but they had many other good games they were giving away. I will go ahead and spoil the ending and tell you that I did not win anything. No problem, I was there to play some games.

They way the Spiel-a-thon worked was people just looked around and found a game that was not being played and sat down. Within a few seconds someone would join you and the group would teach the game to themselves, or have someone else teach it. I was able to play three different games over the course of 5 hours. I had a really good time, even though I didn’t win the raffle. I’m thinking I might have to go back next year. Just don’t tell my wife.

Here are some quick reviews of the games I played:
Utopia
This is a game about placing your different types of workers around a large map. If you formed specific combinations of workers you could build small buildings, build large monuments, change the value of buildings, get more workers, or move workers around. It took us a while to get the hang of the rules, but about halfway through the game, we kind of knew what we were doing. I usually like worker placement games, but this one didn’t feel very smooth. The game just didn’t grab me as one I would want to play over and over. Also, the monuments and the buildings looked too much alike.

Nefertiti
I can tell there is a really good, deep auction game here. On your turn, you simply place one of your markers on a bid space. That is it. You have a number of things to balance in this game. You have to make sure you don’t run out of bid markers, or run out of money, and you need to make sure you collect cards that other people have (this will decrease their value), and corner the market on items that you have to raise the price. This is a really good “gamers” game that, for some reason, I am only marginally interested in playing again. For some reason, it just wasn’t very exciting. I did like it, though.

Dominion
Dominion is a pre-release game from Rio Grande Games that will include over 500 cards. This card game you only use about 50 cards in a game. The 500 cards are there so that two games that you play will never be the same. The game is a very quick and simple cards game. You start with 10 cards in your deck. Some are action cards and some are coin cards. On your turn, you draw 5 cards and play up to one action cards and you can buy one card with any coins in your hand. So, the cards you can buy are more actions cards, more coin cards, or victory point cards. When you are done, you throw all the cards in your hand and the new cards into your own discard pile. Then you draw 5 more and wait for your turn to do it again. When you run out of cards to draw, you shuffle your own discard pile back into your draw deck. This way, your deck of cards starts to grow and you start getting better and better cards in your deck. Eventually, you’ll get enough coin cards so you can buy some victory point cards. You don’t want to do this too early or they will take up space in your deck and be useless until the end of the game. The game plays very fast and is a lot of fun trying different strategies in a short 10-15 minute game. The only problem that I see is that Dominion has very little player interaction. In fact, with the cards I played with, there was only one card you could buy that affected the other players. Despite this fact, I could sit there and play game after game and have a great time.