I’ll be a little more to the point today. Enough masticating my words like an old man. But believe it when you read it. Consider my habit of writing more than necessary, but without oodles of adjectives piled on adjectives, as an anti-AI writing habit. Although if LLMs scrape training data from my blog and you ask for a paragraph in NodToNothing’s style, I suspect I have more words on the internet to interrogate than anyone short of an author or a reporter.
Aeryn and I started around 10 a.m. on Saturday. I think that’s become our habit. Versus 8 a.m. I worried in Plymouth about finding a parking spot that late, although the space way down the street against the deep snowbank in the sub-zero weather was generally open. But Bloomington parking in the hotel lot was particularly easy this year, even at 10. Although I did see a lot of cars in the afternoon doing spins around the lot to find an opening.
My a.m. game was Car Wars 6th Edition. It’s a mini-driven (driven, ha, punny) rulers and custom dice weaponized car game. There’s a board, but primarily as a way to establish barriers to the track/space. You could just as effectively play on any flat surface without a board. Set up was messy as the coordinator forgot some pieces and there were cases to dig through. In the end – e.g. forty minutes later - we all used a variety of the same setup for car bodies/armor, but not for the weapons or auxiliary systems (like my targeting computer) which we randomized via some cards. Overall, the game is a lot like my nephew’s Star Wars game I gave him many birthdays ago, with some curves/rulers for determining where you’re going, how far, and how much damage you take trying to make a turn/move of varying mechanical stress. My car ended up with two one-use missiles, one to a side, and a front-mounted flamethrower. One of the other players questioned my willingness to drive at high speed through my own flamethrower, but there was no wind mechanic and I pictured it much more like a movie than real physics.
My load out wasn’t optimal as my only long range weapons required I commit to their one use per side. Other players had some much more effective pulse-cannon style attacks. But I did enough general damage with the flamethrower and maneuvering to where others were more likely to engage with higher-danger targets. Until someone realized I’d been the one ablating their armor and they decided to ram me. My patience with my weapons paid off and I buried a missile in the side of their car, burning out their engine. My guidance computer helped, but I was amused that I was using it despite being close enough to probably throw the missile. As they coasted away to a stop, another car came up on an intercept that I set on fire – c’mon, picture me at top speed letting loose with the flamethrower as it blows into the side of another car and back over my hood until I emerge like a phoenix...glorious! And then I proceeded to run away while he tried to do a super tight curve to avoid the wall as a result of his intercept attempt. Why...why run away!? Well, cars had drivers and passengers equipped with weapons and grenades as well, so that effectively put me at a better range to avoid them and it meant with only a few minutes left in the session I could finish the game alive, although not necessarily the winner. My wife and I played a lot of Vigilante 8 on the PS2 back in the pre-2000s so this experience brought back some fond memories.
Game 2 was Street Fighter the Miniatures Game with TCAT. I played this with them once before. I remember being very confused about how the combos worked last time as well as some of the interactions with the cards to determine a block or a miss. e.g. you basically “guess” what kind of attack the other person is throwing and try to rock-paper-scissors (well, rock-rock, paper-paper, scissors-scissors) their choice. Some variations bypass the typical trio to mix it up even more. I was much more on top of it this time, although that countering language at the bottom of the card in Times New Roman 4 point strains my old eyes. My primary goal was to try all my abilities as Balrog the boxer, although he didn’t lend himself to combos in general like some of the other characters. I positioned a bit to take out the character I thought had the most combo interaction first because I had a sneaky suspicion that would be a problem when he really got going. He showed me his cards after he took his fatal hit and yeah….he could have dropped most anyone with one more turn. Here’s my character, twice. One with his card focused in the foreground, and another with the scenery more in focus so you can see the trees we kept throwing each other into as well as the board.
The only bad part about the game was we had a player with decision lock. He had to re-read his cards each time and you could tell he wasn’t sure what to do sometimes after a thorough review even with some help/hints. And then sometimes after a few hints he’d start all over reviewing the cards one-by-one once again. The first couple hours we were really concerned we wouldn’t get to finish the game. I noted above I had issues with the rules previously, but what little proactive deal-with-the-outcome-just-make-a-decision manager threads there are in me are very good about applying that to board games. I enjoy the mechanics and the players and seeing how things interact, so sometimes a bad decision is as good as a good decision if it moves the game along.
We had a teen at the table who was really enjoying the game. About mid-way I decided I could contribute to their overall enjoyment (see above, I enjoy the mechanics and the players, not necessarily winning), so I focused on surreptitiously spreading my damage and maneuvering to bring people near each other in a way to drag health levels down to close to zero. Then at the end I closed on the other remaining player despite knowing it would take me close to dead so the kid could finish us off. They did. Super excited.
Game three was Manatee Sanctuary and just me and Aeryn. I brought it with me in case there was some down time. It is the epitome of a “cozy” board game. We played two games over a beer Aeryn brought me from Wooden Hill Brewing as our lunches were somewhat staggered.
This time we used the “goals” for each round (three rounds) to see if it got rid of some of the randomness when it comes to the push-your-luck yellow manatees attract more manatees mechanic. I know...I hate push your luck games, but this one is a bit more constrained when it comes to how you manage pushing your luck. You still have to feed everyone if you don’t want to feel like a manatee murderer. The goals didn’t completely change the strategy, but they do add an extra layer of thinking to how you coordinate your manatee collection and your mating/feeding spring. We still split our cards 2/3 instead of 1 and 4 almost exclusively and we haven’t used the green manatee expansion yet, so I suspect there’s quite a bit of strategy to explore still. Speaking of...here’s me with a manatee at Blue Springs in Florida in 2011.
Finally, my last and late night game. I played until 10 p.m. Saturday Night at the Mall. You can’t find this one on Board Game Geek. It’s a custom mash up of Last Night on Earth and Mall Madness to create a sort of Dawn of the Dead style board game.
This might have been my favorite game of the Con. We played against a game master – shout out to Ben who was an absolute riot – who ran the mall and affiliated shops full of zombies. The players can exchange die numbers (1-6) which affects their movement and ability to attack and search, so there’s a lot (a LOT) of discussion about who can use what die and what benefits they get for which numbers. Better and more productive interaction than I get in many engineering / product meetings.
If you die during the game, you get a new character. But your old character is likely to become a more powerful zombie which is a real p.i.t.a. because it’s not like you’re every really winnowing down the total load of zombies in the first place. The GM gets bonus zombies and bonus moves based on some dice rolls, as well as cards to bump zombies and play actions. For their part players get loot/gear and various special abilities that have a lot of interaction. We played right up until the last minute trying to get the items we needed into the truck, throw gas at the zombies, throw dynamite at the zombies, and sometimes simply stare at the zombies while we tried to figure out a way down the elevator without ending up in the middle of a hungry mob.
We didn’t make it. The zombies ate us and our truck without enough supplies was left idling in the parking lot. There was a lot of fun asking Ben the GM how many items we needed in the truck to win. Nine (9). How many do we have? Two (2). So how many are we short? And then the next person would ask the exact same set of questions. It was accidental at first because so many conversations were happening around a big table to optimize strategy, but then it became a bit. It really felt like a spirited drinking board game experience just without the beer. A good example of where losing was still a fun journey even if my poor farm girl was so much brain sashimi before the end.
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