AHHHHH....Wingspan Part III

Ah, finally, a win.  Glad it wasn't based on the points of birds only, because that was the one thing I was completely ignoring.  Proof that winning all four end of round events won't necessarily win you the game.  It was close despite that victory. 

Gamehole Con 2021 - Day 3

Starting to feel like a lot of boardgaming yet?  No kidding.

Friday...we're not to the weekend yet.  E and I started our day by heading over to Mickie's Dairy Bar by the Madison campus.  It's a usual stop for us now and Apong picked up on it from my FB feed and headed over not long after us.  Great food - cash only, so come prepared - but huge plates, well prepared, and at great prices.  Not to mention I've never  had an unfriendly waitstaff and this time was no exception.  She went out of her way to talk to us about food and work.

First game of the day was Tournament at Camelot.  It's a trick-taking game with a twist for your primary character, secondary character, and a number of places and artifacts associated with the round table.  We had a bit of a rocky start because the coordinator hadn't played in a while and couldn't remember the difference between what basically was a round and a hand.  It made a BIG difference for play as some things weren't visible until all tricks had been played.

E's particular card combo facilitated drawing more and more specialty cards.  You can see the obvious difference between their hand and mine.

One of the best  parts of the game is that it is fairly easy to manipulate the target as you figure out the rules.  The woman across from me was point free [a good thing, think of getting points as damage] until we got a little more savvy, and then players would use "ties" in the card number/suit to pull the lowest or highest card out of contention, meaning the trick would default to the second highest or second lowest depending on the situation.  Made for some pretty spirited table talk.

This is not us.  Random people playing Cthulhu Wars.   I don't think that 90-120 minute playtime on boardgamegeek is accurate.  They seemed to have been there MUCH longer than that.  I assume they're playing with an expansion as I think the base set only accommodates up to four.  Ah, it does exit in a 6 to 8 and clocks in at at least 120: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/145039/cthulhu-wars-six-eight-player-earth-map.

Some more rando Gameholeconers.  Not sure what they're playing but they were interested in my random photo taking.  There were a couple of tables with lengthy games going on including one the next day with a huge custom Mario Kart type board game.

E and I played games with Kane Klenko, the game designer, for a few sessions.  During this one we played Fuse, a few prototypes, and Cosmic Factory pictured here.  This was a fun game - easy to pick up if you want a family game that's fast: five one minute rounds.  You're using 2x2 cards to make a 3x3 grid and score for areas with orange, areas with green, areas with blue, and continuous asteroids [like a wall in Alhambra].  Your lowest two scores are your end score.

Those cards in the middle are for snatching if you think you have the most points in one of the three planet categories.  Pick up extra points if you're right.  Lose some if you're wrong. I'm obviously going for a green planet play and wall points here.  I'm not sure what E is up to as a strategy.  Or Kane for that matter...their layouts are much less monochromatic than mine.  There are cards that mix it all up by forcing the tile draft to be different, adding black holes [removes cards], and more.

We had a gap, so went to the library to play a round of Wingspan.  I stole Klund's strategy and focused on birds that took other birds.  Even so, with big piles of point cards, E and I had close scores.

We also played Battleline.  Sean, who taught me Power Grid forever ago, also taught me this game.  Love it.  Think three card poker hands [sequential, suits, total] and any "cohort" that wins a column counts toward a win on your part either via a number of wins or sequential wins.  There are some cards for mixing it up [like wilds] and you have to pay attention, because with only one of each card, it may become impossible to win with a column and that means that column is immediately and irrevocably won by your opponent.

While E was off playing other games, I went back to Liberty Station.  My burnt ends grilled cheese from the day before was a bit too much, so I settled for a bowl of burnt end chili.  Top notch. That and a beer were the perfect amount of lunch time food.

Gaymer group.  E didn't make it to an event but bought a pin from them.

It's Apong, and he's involved in nuclear annihilation.  He's playing on the Solvanti system. I had a gap where I could have played, but it felt disappointing going to a gaming convention and playing on a computer.

That said, they all looked like they were having fun whenever I saw folks using the pads.  Honestly, with everyone in the same place, it's just a LAN party.

Mike hosted Shadows Over Camelot.  Not to be confused with the Camelot game earlier.  I had watched a video on this one randomly in the past and was interested.  It's a semi-cooperative where you go on quests alone or together to gain renown for the round table.  But someone is the traitor.

Both Eryn and I felt it suffered a bit because we had younger [e.g. 8?] players and they'd go a little OCD at times trying to make sure all the knights were on the right colored seats, etc.  In the end, we kind of let the person we knew was the traitor slide so he could finish the game by placing the last catapult.  With another group, might be more fun, but I don't think I'd consider it a go to game for replayability if I owned it.

I was Sir Gawain.  My power was drawing two cards at Camelot.

That shirt across from me is the traitor.  At this point in the game, we had five white swords, but you really need 7-8 to try and force a victory.

Way more swords, but there are a LOT of catapults out there, and when there are 12, game over [so really when there are about 11 because the traitor can try and play one on purpose as their "bad event" each turn].

Setup.  I swear I played no less than four games with Picts in them over Gameholecon.  Picts are big.

E went off to play games and prototypes with Kane and Klund.  I, on the other hand, bred peppers and used those peppers to create chili in Scoville.  It was fun...but most of the mechanisms have better implementations in other games.

The trick is walking between the rows like in Children of the Corn to breed better peppers by combining the colors.  Brown peppers are generally gross, but you can sell them, and they are used in recipes.  White and Ghost and Black peppers are better, although you need those other colors for optimal scoring.  

The winner had very few recipes.  You could win by a few other methods.  I put in a good showing by having a lot of smaller points on recipes and on the market cards.  Here's the card for cross referencing pepper colors.  The x was the big one to avoid...everything else had some sort of use.  Downside to the game was constantly referecing the card if you hadn't played it a few times already.

Friday night...bedtime.  I went back, made some chicken at almost 11 p.m. because I'd missed dinner while gaming and E had a brat.  E and Klund got back LATE - they hung with Kane for a long time discussing the pros and cons of the prototypes and discussing possible changes.  Sounded like a better time than Scoville.

Gamehole Con 2021 - Day 1

E and I spent the last five days either at, or traveling to and from, Gamehole Con in Madison, Wisconsin.  My wife doesn't go with us.  In part because she's not as into the board game scene as we are.  In part because it's almost a sausage fest.  In part because there's so much sitting involved.  In part because she was working.  This was our fifth year, although they skipped last year due to covid, so we've been going since E was 12.  That's a long time for something I decided to go to on a lark by looking up a midwest convention on the smaller side that was still well regarded.  It had a bigger impact on Klund when we invited him because we had extra bed space in our hotel room.  He's been going just as long and his life has a lot of board game centric threads to it now.

We rented an Air BnB with Klund, his kid Carson, his other kid K who was there for the weekend, and Apong/FrenchDip.  Proof of vaccination and fully masked at the Con was required [I forgot to take my wrist band off until this morning, although they seemed unnecessary because the lanyard and badge were proof you had at least proved you were vaccinated or tested], or at least the ability to front a convincing lie and forgeries, and most of Madison is even masked up out of doors at times because it's easier to remember your mask that way it seems.  Madison seems much more mask positive then Minneapolis, at least in the burbs where my trip to the grocery store today was a little bit startling given the lack of face covering.

I can not believe how busy this post and the next will be for the first two days out of four, particularly day two.  I think the second day we basically gamed from 8:00 a.m. to 1:30 a.m. not including time to the Alliant Convention Center.  I don't think I've gamed that much since my 20s.  On the way to the Con, we stopped at Norske Nook in Osseo for some lunch.  E's pancake was pretty much like their pancakes always are, big and delicious.  But my omelet and pie seemed a little less exciting than usual [passive aggressive Minnesota talk].  I talked to a local I've exchanged messages with before who said their food has been going downhill lately.  Presumably that's covid related as they have hiring signs up and we didn't see the waitress that was so nice to us last time we were there when my order got messed up [and she was paying enough attention that when we came back through she talked to us about it unprompted].  I hope she retired and wasn't a victim of the flu.

Still...even though it tasted like it had been on the shelf a day extra [same for E's to-go cookie which was dry], my banana cream pie to go was pretty tasty.

And the pies certainly look like something you'd want to eat...

E and I got to Madison about 1:00 p.m. [I picked them up from college, which was a first for a road trip].  It was an uneventful trip other than appreciating the traffic jam on the opposite side of the interstate and the number of dead deer littering the sides of the roads [stay safe Wisconsin night drivers].  We popped into the Steep N Brew in Madison to kill two hours, me by working and proofing my nephew's college paper on Millennial opportunity issues, and E by reading and playing games.  Shout out to Steep N Brew - that glass mug was big and your coffee was great. 

At three we met Klund at the AirBnB.  On the surface of things, very nice.  But it was a little strange.  I'm not going to put the pictures below in any narrative order, but if you look further down you can see it's got this Frank Lloyd Wright vibe on the outside.  Huge place, super long, bedrooms in the middle and off the ends, and a downstairs [only half finished; reminds me of our rental in Richfield].  But start looking under the covers and it's a bit dated and has the patchwork/rental vibe.  That stovetop takes forever to heat up.  I made spaghetti the first night and the gallon pot of water never really came to a full boil, even after an hour.  Klund had time to learn all the rules to Hadrian's Wall while I was working the stove. I'll let the fridge speak for itself. Be careful when you pull on that handle, very careful.  And don't expect to store much in the freezer. You have to use the downstairs fridge for that.

Outside was beautiful, although it was in the 30s and 40s and we were gaming, so we didn't get to take advantage of the porch.  Demerits for half-smoked cigarettes still out there because I did pop out long enough to check it all out.

The front room, which was about half of upstairs, was the nicest part.  Great place to game.  The tv went mostly unused and I think E was the only one who sat on the couch, mostly waiting for me to pack up the last day.

I did turn that fireplace on the second night, but with all of us in the house, it didn't need much additional heat.

The closet situation was downright weird.  Those run almost the length of half the house. I don't think you can see it, but there are even more closets down there at the end.    They were generally full of appliances and extraneous serving dishes and things we never considered as necessary for a gaming weekend.  My bed was to the left.  Klund and E said their beds were comfortable, but mine had some people divots that were extreme and you couldn't really settle into one without sort of rising up in the middle or toward the edges.  Not great, so I'm glad I can sleep anywhere.

Where Klund slept.  This later became the site of Bonsaigate.  Apparently the little jade bonsai tree down in that sunken office is a precious sixteen-year old loved plant and someone picked leaves off of it while we were renting the place.  But in the accusatory photo the owner sent, the blinds are up, and cleaning was there before and after were were, and Kevin never really went down there except to put his stuff at the other end of the table.  No one spent time in that area, let alone went down just to pick leaves off a random plant [I do admit to throwing away the leaves and bugs that fell off the succulent art that hung over the toilet and fell on the tank, although that was natural shedding].  Advice...don't leave your precious bonsai in the AirBnB.  For all we know proximity to the window and the overnight freeze or the cleaners were the problem. As of today, this is an unsettled issue.

The outside of the place.  Very nice, although I wouldn't want to live in that low spot between all the other houses.  Seems like flooding is only a matter of one big rainstorm, particularly with the more frequent storms in the Midwest.  Carsen assured me his ass enhances this photo.

Another photo of outside, right in front of the living room.  You can appreciate how low it is compared to the other house.  That's the same on the other side and on the front driveway.  Maybe a little less on the backside.

And here we are prepped to game, although this is probably an end of weekend picture.  That said, it didn't change much the whole weekend other than a game would migrate from these stacks to the table or a game would migrate from the scratch and dent sale at the Con to this pile.  We brought a lot of games to play beyond what we were scheduled to play at the convention center.  We never did get to the Midgard expansion or Flamme Rouge or most of Klund's games.

Klund did come prepared with social lubrication.  I brought lots of dinner foods, although I also took home a lot of dinner food.  Time was tight at the convention so unless folks wanted a 10 p.m. [or later; I think I ate post-11 p.m. one night] dinner it meant eating out.  Usually that was food trucks at the Con, although I entirely avoided the food trucks this year and ate at Liberty Station [a real meal sat better for me], eggs at the AirBnb, and a very late dinner of chicken or whatever was easiest to make in a hurry. Apong and the others managed to schedule in some gaps to get to downtown for ramen or otherwise, which was a wise, or at least fortunate, bit of planning.

We started our gaming weekend with Spicy, a great game I learned about from Actualol in his video on games that are suited to drinking, although that wasn't our primary intent.  Apong liked it enough he picked up a copy from the scratch and dent bin at the Con.  A great find. Basically the idea is you play a 1/2/3 face down and then everyone lies about the next higher card they play, either suit, number, or both.  You can call someone on number or suit, but only one.  If you get it right, you get the cards and they count toward a win, and the liar gets two cards and starts a new run.  If you get it wrong they get the cards and you draw two and start a new run.  If you exhaust your hand of six, you get a ten point card that counts toward the win, although if you get two of those cards it's an automatic win.  Very interactive.  Beautiful deck of cards and art and the theme of lying big cats having a spicy eating contest is amusing.  Couple of variants exist in the rules, although we haven't played any of those yet.

This is Hadrian's Wall.  Great game, although the bit in the rules about people rewriting history and leaving in slaves is important is a bit dubious.  Klund's observation, and the agreement after a playthrough, was that it didn't matter one bit what those meeples represented.  

Note that the Romans did have slaves at the wall, but for the usual domestic and administrative purposes, not to build the wall itself.  "...the Wall was built by the skilled Roman legionary masons, with thousands of auxiliary soldiers providing the labour and bringing the vital building supplies to the construction area..."  That said, there were agricultural slaves that were shackled ["fettered"] and so it's accurate, just probably unnecessary.  We discussed the exclusion of them from Five Tribes which has a thread on boardgamegeek.  I was unaware of the whole yellow train in Ticket to Ride incident.

After a few seconds you only consider them as their color.  Basically you're selecting where you want to place your effort and everything interacts and drives mini games, although there are whole swaths of the card you may not, or almost not, play.  That double record sheet is daunting at first and copies of it make up like 80% of the game box contents [hefty box because it feels like a ream of paper because...it is], but once you get going you can put in a good showing even if you're not completely sure where to put your effort.

Carsen enjoying Hadrian's Wall.  E wasn't so interested in this one and skipped, but it's not really their board game jam.

Afterwards, Klund and I played Power Grid. Him for the first time.  Me to reacquaint myself with the rules [I don't think I've played since the mid 2000s even though I own a copy.  I almost bought an expansion this year, but the China/Korea map wasn't available].  Despite the fact that our two person run through was suboptimal from a play perspective [you always know what your power selection is likely to trigger / provide for the other player if there are only two of you], it was a good run through in preparation for the next two nights with more players which were a total blast.

Spicy....you'll see me show photos of it in other posts.  It's a default game for me to take along to the brewery or anywhere else because it's fast and works with two people [but is much better with more].

Wonder Woman, Challenge of the Amazons - Round II

Three players against Ares this time.  E almost had us play difficult.  If we had, that three point life total difference would have had us losing by a point.  Instead...we won with a single point to spare.  If the game had ended without defeating him, he'd have taken us down with his next turn.  He already had the points on the board.  We did learn that leaving a couple orange cubes lying around can become a big issue quickly because of how blockades kick in off the enemy cards sometimes.  And we didn't optimize, but the intersection of relics and individual Amazonian powers can make a huge difference (anything that lets Diana use her single movement during planning to hop across the board, for instance).

It was a lot more fun with three people.  Gave it quite a bit of additional discussion and divvying up and determining how to use card interactions and teaming up.

Wonder woman, the Board Game

Whoa...post, right?  This last weekend, Poot and I played Wonder Woman: Challenge of the Amazons, a cooperative board game by Ravensburger.  If you peruse my July reading list you'll see Boardgamegeek videos related to how to play and a full playthrough.  Although that second one has a bit of an error in that every time Ares moves, they're not dropping two orange cubes with him (Servants of War) if there are no Amazonians in his location to corrupt.  That makes a huge difference in the game as it leaves a few points of escalating damage all over the board and more options to get 5+ cubes in a location (which is a 3 point hit against your 20 "life").  The result:  so far against Ares, we've lost, and handily.  I do get the impression we might have an easier time of it with three players instead of two as it would bump up the card interaction, although also the draws for baddies.

There's a great step each round where you all plan together but, and they said this at the end of the video as well, it avoids the Pandemic-style solo game leader/dictator situation by then throwing the planned cards into your hand with some previously hidden cards that might be better than what you were planning.  And when that happens, you're free to simply try to play a better hand based on what you knew your teammates were up to.

There's that, and it's fast.  We finished up our first game in under an hour, even with being new to the game.  Took me longer to watch the playthrough.  And it feels even faster with the discussion portion being pretty spirited and interactive.  

It might have limited replay with three different villains and a couple of ways to escalate the difficulty, but I suspect they'll expand it at some point in the future.  If not, it's still a super easy game to teach a visitor.  You get to coop instead of playing against each other.  And it's a pleasant alternative to a  parallel game like Pandemic.

Gameholecon - March of the Ants

I played March of the Ants at Gameholecon - one of the few I played without anyone else in our party.  I told Eryn and Klund, "I really liked it and had a great time, but I only ever need to play it once."  It has mechanics very much like any other worker placement game.  You have larva, you "harvest" them into your space, and then you play them as ants.  Ants have to be fed.  More ants.  More food. And there are options for collecting food, getting bonuses, expanding territory, etc.  I did like the additional ant evolution options to evolve your ant colony's heads, abdomen, and thorax multiple times - definitely gave it a bit of color.

Here we are, a few turns into exploration with the ants owning some breeding grounds, food production areas, and card generation areas (cards are good for evolution and bumping your attacks among other things).  That green giant is a centipede.  They eat your ants, so you need to maintain a strong enough population to kill them, but when you do you get a nice resource bonus.



Grabbing an exploration tile.


You can see my colony with evolved heads here.  Those were good for attacking and defending.  The two big ants are from an expansion (I think) and we barely got to play them because the game is very limited in turns.  The guy leading the game had a separate turn track he'd made himself in order to play slightly longer games.  It was a surprise how fast the end snuck up on us.  Those worker ants, master ants, whatever they are, give extra bonus options and reinforce your hex presence.


Finally, I simply thought this was funny.  He labeled which bag held which color cubes.  I am 100% certain that was not necessary.

My review.  Great worker placement game.  Didn't need the expansion.  Not too different from other worker placement games, but a great theme.  The evolution is a positive feature.  The constrained length is a positive feature.  The pressure on food versus population versus evolution seems balanced.  But I'd probably play Champions of Midgard (rated 96 overall) for a similar experience instead of buying the ants game unless I had a budding etymologist in my family.

Gameholecon - Eating and Other Things

The first few trips to Gameholecon we ate almost exclusively at the food trucks and on site.  The last two years we've gotten out to eat some better meals and treat it more like a mini vacation.

This is from Mickey's Dairy Bar.  We went there last year too - cash only.  It's incredibly popular.  My pancakes were WAY more than I could eat.

They have this monkey with bananas and this year we were there after Eryn went to Hausu at the Trylon with Peter and Lara, so it had special significance.  Bananas, Bananas, Bananas!


We had sushi the second night.  This is Muramoto Hilldale,which is the upscale mall. The dumpling place next door smelled better, but Eryn was really happy and I'm always happy with the sashimi plate.


The last night we went out for ramen at Morris Ramen right downtown.  We went there last year too.  Hard to find, small place, but delicious.  I had the corn and sausage ramen which is a little midwestern (aka not very spicy) but has a great flavor profile.  Eryn went spicy.  There was s small woman sitting next to us who had hair dyed like my niece and was the same height, but on closer inspection was probably a 40 year old.


And on the way home we went past the Norske Nook in Osseo, WI.  I wanted pork and gravy, but it wasn't lunch time.  And then someone stole my berry pancake.  And so the waitress thought I could have the pork and gravy.  But no.  So I got my blackberry pancake, just after a long wait.  And she gave me my banana pie and Eryn's sugar cookie comped, which was nice but unnecessary.  I was AMAZED that she remembered us from our trip to House on the Rock in the spring.  Hell of a memory on that waitress.  She said she wasn't sure until Eryn ordered her burger.


These next two have nothing at all to do with food.  This is from the True Dungeon.  Not this year - this year's theme was a blue snake woman and a giant demon.  This was in the dungeon last year and Eryn has fond memories of a woman on her phone who was oblivious until the tree grabbed her from behind.  Our team this year was much more inexperienced and we actually failed a puzzle challenge and one of the guys dropped unconscious and I had to revive him with a potion as we had no cleric.

My favorite part was on the puzzle we failed where we handed gems into a crypt in the right order to turn some skulls.  One of the guys didn't realize there were people in the tomb and kept tossing his gems into the holes.  I'm surprised no one got seriously beaned.


And this is the original Greyhawk map they used for inspiration (the Gygaxes are from WI) for the modules.  Chris (from high school) was excited to see this photo when I sent it his direction.  Eryn's excited about making her own map and has my old D&D map out at the moment to see how I handled it back when I was world building (my rules were: only part of one continent so there was lots of space to expand, different land types, countries basically had a theme (Sherfora, horses, Cthulhu-y, Romanesque, Persian, various novels, ruled by Dionysus, Atlantisa) an; d then populated with geographical features appropriately (Sherfora, forest in the middle of a plain that was more English-like; the Cthulhu area had lots of mountains and the borders were determined by how far someone had managed to make it without disappearing; Atlantis, big volcano; Dionysus area lots of dunes and grapes....etc).  It did make it about a million times easier to put a basic framework around any adventure and local color/character building.