Gameholecon 2022 - Day 3 and 4

Aeryn and I have a tradition of going to Mickie's Dairy for breakfast every Gameholecon.  This year there was a big game scheduled for Sunday.  Can you tell?  There are a LOT of people in red in this photo you can't see.  It's like an iceberg.  They got rid of the banana monkey.  That was the first thing we noticed.  You can see it in an old set of GHC photos.

 

Aeryn and I played One Night Ultimate Werewolf on Sunday morning.  Definitely a younger crowd, although the guy to my left was roughly my age.  But the three people to the right you can't see are closer in age to those you can.  We played....thirteen games.  I think they played even more after we left to find a bathroom and some food.  With all those roles, it was a little tough at times.  Once there was some confusion about who was outing who as the werewolf and I commented to Aeryn, "I think they're just not certain about the rules in this case."  I was right.  In their defense, I got the doppelganger wrong when I played that role.  I acted like I truly believed I was who I'd taken a peek at when it was my turn to snoop around.

  

 

We hung out at the game library for a while and played Santorini.  Aeryn mopped the floor with my twice.  I am definitely out of practice.  I could see the loss coming and still couldn't rally.

   

 Aeryn played The Quacks of Quedlinberg and had a good time.

   

I played Munchkin Panic while Aeryn was at lunch.  I don't think this is a great game.  I prefer the standard Castle Panic, whereas this one is much more competitive.  Although you still have an everyone loses condition.  There's a card where you can kill a castle section yourself for victory points.  Three people availed themselves of it.  So mean.  Not that it mattered - I'm pretty sure we would have lost anyway, although it might have bought us a few turns.  Once those two hits to kill monsters get inside the castle, you don't have the advantage of the castle killing them off organically.  I enjoyed playing with the couple on the right.  Competitive, but really fun.  The guy to the left of me kept getting louder and louder and yelling more directions as it became obvious we were going to lose.  Him...not so much.  I do like the mix of castle cards and treasure cards in Munchkin Panic.  That's a nice change.

   

There's always a scratch and dent area at the sales tables.  It wasn't as good this year.  Although this copy of Kitsune of Foxes and Fools was still there from last year.  If everyone pays attention to boardgamegeek reviews, it will still be there when the apocalypse assures there are no more Gameholecons.  The Power Grid maps guy who has been there every year we've gone wasn't there this year.  Last year I attempted to buy a Power Grid map for Korea, but it's the only one that's sold out everywhere.  Now I'll never get a copy.  I did find Aeryn a copy of Doctor Who: The Card Game with the Twelfth Doctor expansion at half price.  I knew it wasn't supposed to be a good game, but I trust Aeryn will modify it to make it something more interesting.

  

Troyes was my favorite game of the con. I picked up a spot at the table last minute because I had a gap where I'd found Aeryn a game, but not myself.  I think those last minute adds have always been some of my favorites.  After a rocky start figuring it out, I got in the groove.  I like the mechanism where you can steal dice from other players [effectively their workers, soldiers, scholars] to use for your own sets.  There's a good mix of communal events costing everyone resources that make you have to weigh your choices about what you can live with.  Reminds me a little of Champions of Midgard in that respect, but the player interactions are taken up a notch, which I really appreciated.  I'd give it an 8/10, although part of that might have been playing a full set of four with a good group of gamers. I ordered myself a copy of this one.

   

 

We did get some gaming in at the house, so it wasn't only for sleeping.  Not as much fun without Ming there, but we made due.  Wingspan with Klund and Koleman and Aeryn.  I did not fare as well as the night before.  Lots of cards, but a brutal time trying to get food even with all the options.  Aeryn's better at this game then I am: lots of time playing it on Board Game Arena and Steam.

   

 

Me and Aeryn playing Calico.  I like Azul: Queen's Garden better, and they're somewhat similar, but it's definitely fun. I bought it for my wife from a game store over on Minnehaha Ave and we've played it once.  Aeryn and I played three times over two nights.  The last time we played with the full set of objectives rather than on learner mode.  You're trying to place tiles on your quilt with patterns and colors and then match those patterns and colors to the objective tiles. You can overlap patterns and colors and each objective can get extra points for both conditions.  Enough of a pattern in a row, attract a cat.  Enough colors near each other, attach a button. Get all the buttons, get a rainbow button.  That's pretty much the whole game.  Makes my head hurt.  Aeryn is very good at it.

   

 

More Calico.  Aeryn's Flumph isn't playing.  We went to two design events on Saturday and Sunday, per the last post.  "Monster Creation" and "Worldbuilding".  I was disappointed there were no women on the panel, but they were interesting.  My takeaway from Monster Creation...if you're doing it professionally, there's a lot more math involved to standardize the monster against the system then I would have imagined.  My take away from worldbuilding...sometimes the weird unanswered questions are really useful.  One panelist mentioned a story where knights threw something away they didn't want to be found dead with before going into battle.  A knight throwing something aside is mentioned.  But never what.  It creates a thread someone else can fill.  Even the author said he didn't know what had been thrown away.

 

Klund, Koleman, and me playing Roam.  My last game of the event [the next morning was one of the seminars, although we've played games before we leave before].  I love Roam...a fast game with a placement mechanism a little like Tetris with the players having different vantages on the board.  I was probably a bit too sleepy to be playing at that point.

The next day, we left for home and stopped at Osseo, Wisconsin for pie.  There's a brand new board game shop on main street, Boards and Bricks.  An amazing array of games.  Aeryn found a copy of Ticket to Ride Japan [and Italy] and got a discount.  Really excited because the roommate loves Japan and loves Ticket to Ride.  The bullet trains make it extra classy.

Overall: not my best Gameholecon.  I think I needed more new games, tbh.  But I learned a few I really liked, had a lot of fun with Aeryn, and didn't have a bad experience at any point, and I'm not sure I can say that about past Cons.  After all, play enough games, and you'll get a bad table.  It's like work teams in some ways, but concentrated.  A lot of different cultures in miniature in a short period of time.  I did like the relaxed pace.  I definitely didn't feel rushed.  And, props for bringing an apple and orange so I could eat some fruit.  A good lesson for future gaming events.

Gameholecon 2022 - Day 1 and 2

Last year Aeryn and I got a great start on GHC2021 and left early on Thursday.  This year, Aeryn had a midterm that was inescapable and didn't finish until almost 6:30 p.m.  So by the time we were all packed up and finished with dinner at Blue Door, we weren't on our way until 7:30 p.m.  Madison is roughly a four hour trip, so we rolled in just before midnight.  I know there are sometimes games that are running that late, but we were knackered after the drive in the dark.  So it was straight to bed at the Air BnB.  Klund did the house procurement again, which generally means we're going to have something with a bit of character.  He did not disappoint.  It almost looked handmade.  I swear I wouldn't want to be particularly heavy if I was on that upper floor.  The wood was slot planks.  What you usually think of as finishing for a ceiling, not the full floor surface.  There's a sauna tucked up there behind the fireplace and projector televisions in the bedrooms.  But we didn't really use any of that because GHC chews up most of your time playing, not enjoying the accommodation extras.  Even in the hotels near the convention, most folks seem to be holed up in an RPG room rather than spending time in their rooms and you can almost always find a game already underway when you walk through in the morning.  Or that never ended.  Gamehole is generally too much gaming for just lounging about, even if this year was shortened for us in that department.

On to some gaming on Friday.  Aeryn had an 8:00 a.m. Kokopelli, a game they said they really liked and would definitely play again now that they've got one under their belt and know the strategy.  Me....I went for a walk. It didn't come into play as much this year as last year, but I've discovered if I manage to sneak in a few long walks, so I hit the 10000+ step range, I can game a lot longer and a lot better.  My mind just strategizes a bit better under those conditions.  I roused myself at about 5:30 a.m. each day to ensure I walked the neighborhood and got a good base going. There was a nice arboretum nearby, but it wasn't much fun in the dark.

 

My first game was Khora: Rise of an Empire.  I enjoyed it. I think I'd drop it firmly in the 7/10 rating.  Some good mechanics: you're basically trying to increase your culture, military, and religion [I'm definitely wrong in the nomenclature] capabilities which you use to increase the amount/reserve of each of those you have in separate pools.  You can then spend those 'collections' on grabbing achievements and collecting three similar tokens that allow you to increase your base or buy cards for effects/objectives.  The objectives give benefits of their own as well as potentially allowing you to earn a victory point multiplier end of game.  

Each turn you're rolling two dice [three if you get the right level] and then playing two of six action cards that are equal to or lower then your die rolls, although you can spend citizens to bridge the number gap.  There's one of the random aspects that I wasn't particularly keen on.  Bad rolls make it a bit of an uphill battle. And bad cards with lots of stipulations/costs can make your cards worth considerably less use than another player's cards.  It took me a few turns to realize as a player with more military than anyone else at the table I could leverage that to create a battle/attrition/restock loop to really start driving points.  But late in the game, when I could have paid for a level for my troops, and then increased a level for free by increasing my overall empire footprint, I reversed my action order and cost myself a level because I couldn't afford it as a second action, only a first.  It was definitely a matter of playing the actions in the wrong order and if I had played the game before, I think I'd have been experienced enough not to do that mistake.  I actually made two major action mistakes. I don't think I'd have beat our coach without them, she didn't make any missteps that I could see and had a much more well-balanced board, but I think I'd have been within a few points.

 

While I was at Khora, Aeryn was at Qwirkle. I was excited looking over because a table of no dudes is rare.  But apparently it was way too loud for Aeryn.  There was a lot of screaming of QWIRKLE that was headache inducing.  I think that's the best part about a slightly more 'complicated' game - everyone is spending all their time thinking and not making noise.  That blue thing in the foreground with seven legs, one of them placed a bit sus, is a Flumph from Dungeons and Dragons.  Cool fact, on Saturday we met the guy who created the Flumph, and the guy who created Forgotten Realms.  Dungeons and Dragons and roleplaying aren't a big part of our Gameholecon experience - almost no part of it at all since our disasterous experience at our first GHC, although we've had a session most Wednesdays since Covid lockdown - but we've been to some talks to learn from RPG and board game creators and hear how the industry works.

 

Fleet was a good game, although I wish the table covering had been blue like the ocean instead of red.  We played with an expansion that let us play six players at the table, and I suspect that's the absolute optimal number.  It made it much more interesting.  Not slow with that count though, as we could really do some things at the same time [like launch boats and play captains].  In general, you're bidding on fishing charters [worth victory points] and using those charters to launch matching boats, put captains on those boats, and using abilities on the charters to process your fish for money, keep them for points, or process them for additional cards in hand, which is a BIG driver [as captains can be face down cards, but that costs you a card].  Additionally, cards double as cash, so every action that takes a card out of your hand costs you.  There are some specialty charters for retiring captains for points, getting extra fish points, leaving boats at the marina for points, and more.  This is my hand.  I won by a point.  My tactic was cheap fishing - cod - and lots of it including even turning my wildcard boats into cod boats.  There were a couple of processing charters to make sure I could generate lots of cash and cards.  Toward the end, I knew the guy to my left was going to overtake me, so it became an issue of fishing out the ocean [cubes in box] to end the game early.  There are some other bits and pieces: there are boats with captains built in, but limitations, you can only have four fish on a boat, you get achievement points for first boat full of fish of a certain type, you can 'pass' and get some free money or victory points, etc.  I enjoyed this more than Khora.  Easily my second favorite game of the weekend at the Con tables.

 

Aeryn and I have always done a True Dungeon run.  We are so all about the single run that we don't even bother to parse our existing tokens for the game.  We just use what we have in that run and rely on the charity of strangers.  We are perpetual noobs.  Our team this year was wonderful.  Truly a joy.  We had an older experienced guy, a dad and his daughter on their second run in two days and two runs ever, and....the Fung Brothers.  The Fung bros are the sash-wearing, play a lot, probably drive their hobby on token sales and swaps, and there to have fun with others types.  You can picture them.  They looked exactly like the long haired hero or villain twin pair from a Shaw Brothers production. I don't particularly know if fighting long-haired twins exist in a particular Shaw Brothers movie, but once you think about it, you're pretty sure they must exist [LOL....yep, The Proud Twins....it exists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXHv2Qm8mwY].

I played a Dwarf Fighter this year and the Fungs leveled me up, gave me extra treasure draws, and made sure I had a better then average weapon and ranged weapon.  The hand weapon was a +3 turkey leg.  I liked the imagery.  Although I failed to get any crits outside of the practice zone.  Palpable hits, just not crits, would would have been optimal with my character.

The dwarf fighter has a taunt skill to haul attention away from weaker characters and I played it up a bit this year, accusing one enemy of having a smaller than average sword, another of not singing as well as a rubber duck [Aeryn told me 'that's mean'], and even mocking the animatronic/robotic monster by mimicking it. I told everyone to imagine I was a real dwarf because the effect was funnier than I could achieve at six foot two.  Aeryn played a druid, which involves memorizing lots of leaves.  I'm so glad no one makes me play spell casters.  We had an excellent run and in one of the puzzle areas the two teenagers [Aeryn and the other guy's daughter] powered through the math involved in a heart beat.  I think the more experienced guy with us actually felt a bit vestigial when they solved it so fast without the rest of us and took an action before we reasoned it out that hurt us so he could participate. But it didn't hurt much, and he was super nice when I bumped into him the rest of the con.  If I had to guess, he felt more I'm-old left out than I'm-masculine or I'm-experienced-at-this left out.  I know I did and I think I contributed the "those must be equivalent so you know where to start" observation first.

I will share one image that does not matter and creates no spoilers, a scroll from Nine Toes Tom.  I sent a photo to my dad to ask if he knows him because Dad only has nine fingers.  It certainly seems like Nine Toes Tom and Nine Fingers John would run in the same Nineteen [or less] Digits Guild.

 

Lunch was at Liberty nearby and this is actually a photo I took last year.  But it looked exactly the same.  I approve of their brisket chili and a beer for roughly what I'd spend at a food truck without the beer.  Aeryn leveraged my experience this year and ran over there to have fish and chips which seemed to be a big step up as far as they were concerned.  If you sit at the counter and sort of have your order and credit card ready, I think the turnaround time is all of half an hour so you can fit the walk and food between gaming events.

This cow statue, Miss Madison, is near the convention center. I passed it on one of those walks I mentioned.  I'm not sure why the marital status of the cow is a necessary detail.  Maybe Wisconsinites just gotta know.

 

Aeryn hung out with some of the LARPers and was excited about the win-a-match/win-ice-cream challenge, as they've attended and worked at Cardboard Camp since they were little.  They made sure the rules were obvious for people like me who are just flailers [sorry, I didn't take the challenge, so there's no video of me getting whacked over and over by an expert].

 

 Aeryn got to pick the competitor and he was gooooood.  Really good.  I think he was literally trying to wear Aeryn out dragging that match on and staying out of range.  The match lasted for what seemed like more than fifteen minutes.  And as someone who fenced for a few classes in community ed when he was first at the U of MN, that is exhausting.  It still stands out as one of the most tiring things I've ever done.  Aeryn lost, but it was really fun to watch.  Lot of banter.

   

 If you click into this one, it's a video of a very small portion of the match.

  

We had a shared Tumblin' Dice game end of day, but bailed.  The kid running it was related to the Quirkle lady and we've played with their family before.  It can be loud and confusing. Not a good end to a day if you're a bit worn out from a long drive the night before. Instead, we bugged out and headed over to the capitol square area [or whatever shape the capitol area is in Madison] for sushi and ramen.  Usually we go to Morris Ramen over there, but decided to try something different.  Probably a good move.  Morris was visible from Umami and had a crowd outside.  Not surprising.  Even when we went sort of out of band in previous years, it was pretty full.  I had the Shoyu chicken ramen with a spice bomb, that got hotter and hotter the deeper in the bowl I went, and Aeryn had a sushi bowl where the sashimi sat on the rice.  Good way to finish the day.  We headed back to the AirBnB to play some Wingspan and Calico while Klund and offspring hung with Kane at the Con.  But I'll post pictures of that tomorrow.

Gamehole Con 2021 - Day 5

And we made it.  Day 5 of Gamehole Con.  Which was really just a morning at Gamehole Con and a lot of travel.  We had an 8 a.m. game of Arkham Horror, the Living Card Game.  We showed up at 7:45 after packing up and everyone else was there so we got an early start, which was good, because we defeated the boss pretty much on the 10:00 a.m. deadline.

Great game. Cooperative.  Reminiscent of Betrayal at House on the Hill, but in a way I think Klund would like.  Living Card Games add expansions of characters, scenarios, and more, and it definitely felt more cooperative in nature than BaHotH...BHH? I thought the cards worked really well together as well as the special abilities, and it didn't take long to figure out I could swap fear against me for damage against a monster [mostly ghouls in this scenario] in a good way and use my mental power as a better attack system, particularly once I could cycle a few spells with a clever sidekick.  Others on the team were WAY better at searching than I was. If I'd been alone, I'd still be sifting around in the bookshelves and floor boards.

Bit of a fun story telling mechanism as well.  Some of that was left to the characters - e.g. my character was a waitress and someone [team decision] owned the house, so why did a waitress own the house?  That was actually a very important decision point at the end of the scenario, and you do experience-up as you move between scenarios.

Kudos to our game coordinator, although they just shut down the 2021 event list, so I can't thank him by name.  He was very prepared - walked us through it to the point we could play alone when he had to make a bathroom run, to the extent we even knew where to place additional doom and whether we had to wait for him to get back to trigger an event.  Additionally, he provided a very nice write up of the round sequence, actions, and even which versions of the game you should buy if you want to pick it up yourself.  He did highlight that the REVISED Core Set supports four players and the old set does not, so if you're shopping used, it's definitely something to watch for depending on the number you intend to play with when avoiding Cthulhu-y monsters.

Finally, these are two places we did NOT go, even though E and I stopped in the Dells to find lunch.  We wanted to eat at Denny's [the Denny's that's not part of the chain, although the one that is part of the chain is also there], but there were literally people out the door and down the sidewalk.  I don't think Dells seasons is officially over, which is....[checks the temperature outside, brrrr]...amazing.  We went to the Moose almost next door instead.

I seriously can't quite fathom who goes to the Totally 80's place just to take social media photos.  I must be getting old, because that sounds like something an old person would rail against.  It has no appeal for me whatsoever and that video looks boring.  How do you sell that as a business model?

 

The Mustard Museum....way more tempting.  They seem serious about their museum.  It's free.  And you can shop mustards by country, awards, recipes, and more.  Quite the set up.  Unless you're anti-condiment for the most part, like me.  They even purport to be America's Mustard College, fight song and all.

So that wraps it up.  I dropped E off at college and spent Sunday evening and all of Monday cleaning up and catching up with the things I'd left behind to go boardgaming.  Wonderful trip, and well worth almost 2% of my year, timewise.   Didn't realize how much I'd missed it with covid canceling it last year.

Gamehole Con 2021 - Day 4

Day four was our semi-relaxed day.  The plan was for us to finish up ramen and the rest of the group to finish up Indian food and meet up at the Air BnB for some outside-of-GHC gaming.

E and I started the day by doing a long stint at True Dungeon "Weird Magic".  I think I've mentioned it in the past, but True Dungeon is a bit like a fantasy themed distributed escape room with a running story and experience and equipment.  Equipment is random depending on the tokens you get.  As a n00b this can be tough because if you land on an experienced team they'll want to try fighting at a higher difficulty to pull more treasure.  On the flip side, they can loan you equipment that levels you up, gets you more treasure, etc.  That was the kind of team we were on this time.  They did a great job of explaining it better than any team we've ever been with before. They even explained the "ghost" to us that no one explained last year as a friend who was ill and couldn't attend, but they could run him through on his pre-purchased ticket and use his tokens so he'd collect treasure.  

One of the guys amusingly explained to us that there were limits to ghosts as some obsessives had taken to running a dungeon with themselves and nine ghosts for a while to maximize their treasure [at an expense].  No photos because I don't want to ruin it for anyone.  The surprise of the story and the rooms is most of the fun.  This year's theme was sort of a cyberpunk witch  thing.  We did fail at one room where we had to align colored blocks by changing their colors in a machine with glowing lights on top....boom.  Damage.  But at least it doesn't eliminate you from the game.  E loves playing the thief...each class does something slightly different.  Pushes hockey pucks for damage, traces shapes to find clues or treasure, identifies symbols [oof, memorization] to cast spells, throws two hockey pucks, and more.

We played Space Invaders with Kane.  It's a branded version of Flip Ships, so it wasn't new for me or for E.  Also, a very fast game so we finished up early and found some lunch.  This is a GREAT game if you're looking for something party friendly.  Ms Klenko was there as well - just out of frame.

Some vendor hall photos.  E threatening me with a LARP-ing weapon. 

Kitsune, for sale.  A game E, and Klund, and I hate above almost all others.  We had a HORRIBLE time playing it several years ago and I made it worse by knowingly forcing an extra hour of play when it could have been over just to troll E and Klund.

I had to ask Apong if this was racist.

I own a Xeno game - an expansion for Axis and Allies - but this is downright weird.

Eryn came away with some loot.  Breast cancer suppotive Ticket to Ride trains, as well as Ticket to Ride Europe and Ticket to Ride India from the scratch and dent which was a holiday ask, so it was like Christmas early.  A cool pin, dice [including some not shown here that bend light like fiber optic cables - enough so that I initially thought they glowed], and a few bonus cards from Kane for Fuse.

 

Celtica was our last on-site game of the day.  Very old Ravensburger game with an ironic puzzle component where you build amulets.  Get a handful of colored wizard cards.  Move the wizards on the board any spaces that are all or part of your cards.  Some spaces good.  Some bad. Some draw another card.  We played two games and play was much better on the second game once players started taking some chances to score an extra card in a color to get past a bad space. It won a 2007 children's game award, so that'll give you an idea of the complexity.

 

Beer, local, spotted cow. I think Commuter was the other option in the gaming hall.  It might have been cheaper to keep a whole six pack in the car, but I saved most of my drinking for the AirBnB.  I don't like feeling tired while gaming with new players.  The little spider dude was already at our table.  I think that might be Eryn's third smoothie in three days.  The coffee/ice cream/smoothie stand is probably the best sustenance at Gamehole Con.

 

Back side of the beholder.  I sent it to my wife and channeled Michael Scott's "That's what she said."  Childish, but I felt it was a particularly fun use of the meme.

We had dinner at Morris Ramen.  Apong went a few times after we gave him the name/location.  Maybe my favorite place in Madison.  Young crowd and absolutely wonderful food.  We had the spicy ramen.  Can't recommend it enough.

Back at the house, we sat down for a five person game of Power Grid.  That might be the best number.  Boardgamegeek does say 4-5.  Apong added that red wall across the bottom to make sure we didn't stray into unusable German territory.

Klund won this one with some spirited bidding on ecologically responsible power.

We played minimal hands of The Crew, but enough to understand the basics.  The goal is to have different players take different tricks, in specific orders, etc, cooperatively.  I'm not sure I can play with just my wife, but if we have the neighbors over I'll get it out as it gets incrementally [hand to hand] more difficult over fifty round and the general idea is easy enough to pick up in a few minutes.

And we finished off the night with a game of Cosmic Factory as E now has their own.  We reserved a few minutes for packing and cleaning so that 8:00 a.m. games didn't mean getting up at 6:30 to check out. I think I took home about 80 percent of the food I brought with me.  Definitely overkill.

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.