Con of the North: Day 2 of 3

Saturday I hosted a few games at Con of the North.  This is Roam by Ryan Laukat.  He does Above and Below, Sleeping Gods, Near and Far, and a bunch of others.  All of them good.  But this is one of my favorites because it's easy to teach, uses the same nice art, and is more of a bar game at heart.  You're playing Tetris with your roster of characters who each have a unique pattern.  By using those patterns you fill up the cards which "wakes up" another character who had succumbed to a sleeping sickness plaguing the land.  They bring a new pattern. Mix in some artifacts that do particular things, a bidding mechanism for ties trying to control a card, and a coin mechanism/s, and you're pretty much ready to go.  One of the best parts is the way your patterns work depends entirely on where you sit and, unless you have an artifact that's good for a 90 degree turn [and only 90] your pattern is not the same as another player's pattern.  I warned the guy sitting near me that he had to be spatially acute to play from that angle.  With four players, it takes roughly an hour.

The first game they all sort of figured out WHY you'd want the various artifacts and how to force a bid in their favor.  The second game...much more cuthroat with the artifacts.  The guy on the right side of the photo used his to early flip his characters giving him a bit of a coin generation edge because character flipping flips the artifacts as well.  He actually did well both games and, in the first one really shafted the person to the south who was ready to win when he basically slid her off her landscape and put her in limbo for a few turns that let someone else grab an edge.

I played Final Strike which some folks are trying to get Kickstarted.  With four of us we played teams.  It's based on the idea that the last person to hit an RPG critter before it dies is the one who gets the experience.  Reminded me of my D and D days with Bob and folks in Monti and Chicago.  So you're timing your hits to make sure you get the glory for being the last strike....or, um....final strike I guess.  The strategy is expanded because some baddies can only be hit by certain weapons or people unless it's peripheral [cleave] damage.  You can upgrade your weapons using other cards that allow you to pick an adjacent card from the tableau.  Might be left right/up down.  Might be diagonal.  Might be all directions.  Depends on the smithing you do.  Other cards trigger on play or reshuffle or let you discard and cycle faster.   It was a lot of fun with teams, but not a game I'm going to back.  It's similar to others I've played.  Although I could definitely see hauling it along to Arbeiter or something.

I bought a game.  Shores of Tripoli.  I would have preferred Votes for Women by the same company, but both were on my list as historical-based games and it was on sale at the Con.  My understanding is it's more of a learning event than a playing event in some respects.  Even reading the rules I learned all sorts of things I didn't know about that historical event/s.  Amusingly, I was reading the rules at the local bar between games and, when I left, the guy next to me who'd been giving me side eye for an hour asked if it was a book or a puzzle.  I said it was a board game about the events and he got truly excited and knew something about the time period and what happened.  I probably created a board gaming convert at the counter at Red Robin.

The other game I hosted was Obsession.  I set aside four hours because I wasn't sure how long four players would take including set up and teaching, including a bit of tactics I wanted to make sure they all had.  I'm glad I did, because it took the guys playing Space Hulk before us an extra 10-15 minutes to clear out.

That's Aeryn to the right helping me coordinate as there was time before their next game started.  They seemed to have a great time.  That guy to the north really got an engine going, cycling prestige for more prestige and gentry.  The guy to his right had an exceptional cycle going as well.  The guy to his left, not so much, but he did much better than he expected and made more goal points than the rest of them together.  The fourth player just couldn't quite catch a break/groove although she did just fine.  She just couldn't create an angle for herself.

Servants went quick.  I was expecting someone to steal someone else's at some point, but it never came to that.

I used my new coins for the first time.  They're from Viticulture.  Obsession comes with 100 pound and 500 pound coins [worth 7000 and 35000 USD given inflation].  These give me 1, 2, and 5 so they're a nice match, and even have the pound sign on them.

My last game of the day was Trans Europa.  It's a bit of a proto Ticket to Ride.  You get dealt a hand of cities and you try to attach them, trying to use other players' rails to do your heavy lifting  I won, although I will say my last hand of cities was pretty optimal and I knew I wouldn't have to play as much as the others and they'd hook up one end for me.

Aeryn and folks got a round of Blood on the Clocktower going ad hoc.  They had something like 16 people there to play, maybe more.  It was pretty raucous when I finally found them downstairs.

They're over there in the corner, although some of them are milling around. I have no idea how that near table managed to play/concentrate with a group of 16 engaged in a social deduction game.  Good on them for their ability to stay focused.

While Aeryn was finishing up, I hit the hotel bar for a drink and some fries.  A UPS Tech guy who traveled sat next to me and struck up a conversation with the waitress.  They were a fun pair.  I'd been explaining the convention to her [apparently no one else had] and him and talked local Minnesota beer.  He wanted to try one and I noted Furious was on tap but he wouldn't like it.  He had a pint and exclaimed, "This is what they drink in Minnesota?" I said I'd warned him - I find Furious isn't always for out of towners.  One of my favorite interactions was when he told the waitress she reminded him of his daughter, and she said she was older.  He nailed her age precisely and she sighed and said, "Yeah...old enough to start turning gray.  Like my mom says.  It's never your head first."  Good humor to close out a good day of gaming.

Obsession

My latest gaming obsession is accurately called Obsession. I read about it a post about good games to play solo.  I don't play solo as much as that implies, but I do have a selection of games I can go to if no one will play with me [Street Masters, The 7th Continent: Classic Edition, Paperback Adventures which is taking a backseat to Obsession, and several others]. However, I've played almost exclusively with others since my wife picked it up for my birthday.  This was one of the few birthdays where I said, "I want that.  You can get it here.  They confirmed they'll be getting a shipment so you can lock one down in advance as well as pick up the expansions I want at the same time."  Not ironically, probably one of my most used birthday presents so far, and not one I had to give away because it didn't fit.  I even signed up to host a session at a local board gaming convention, although I'm not approved yet.  I may have been too late to host and get a table.  That's ok...I'll just haul it along and play a pick up game or by myself if I can't find another event.

I taught Aeryn to play.  I taught Kyle to play last weekend.  And Aeryn and I taught our neighbor to play.  For as complex as it looks, you can get someone going in about 15 minutes and they'll even be able to formulate a bit of strategy at that point.

The basics: you're improving your manor in order to attract the local heirs by playing to their druthers.  You can do this by building various rooms and spaces for events, and then using those rooms to host events for gentry and distinguished guests.  Initially, you're limited by your reputation to which of your rooms/events you can use and which guests will attend, but as the game progresses you can increase your reputation to host more prestigious events and more prestigious guests. So there's a balance between the rooms/events you acquire, the guests you accumulate, the money you accumulate to buy new rooms/events, when you do these things [you get to influence the heirs quarterly by focusing on a room/event theme], and how you deploy your little fleet of servants to accommodate the needs of guests [do you need valets and footmen or maids to host the event and particular guests, do you have enough, and are the ones you used in the previous turn still too tired...even in the Austen era overclocking your workers wasn't cool...hear that Elon?].

There are some objective cards as well that you gain and lose, but those can be really tricky to target.  Once during the game there's a National Holiday where you can ignore reputation [so if you're really lagging at your manor you can try to score that one big fancy dinner party for the hoi polloi as long as you manage your staff in advance] and you can swap your reputation to try and tweak your position.  Each family has a slightly different ability such as an extra room, extra staff, or extra money to give them some character.

Aeryn and I have played the standard game a few times.  Then played the Jane Austen variation where you hide the theme for the quarter [which should make for a more balanced room set, but as you can see in the photo above, Aeryn doubled down on a theme].  And played the extended version where you play for 20 rounds instead of 16 and the National Holiday really seems to sneak up on you and isn't as critical because everyone is targeting larger rooms with the longer runway.

I also have the Upstairs/Downstairs expansion although we haven't played it yet.  It adds a family and a few new servant types.  The nice thing about it is that the servants allow you to modify or trigger existing effects.  So they don't completely rewrite the game, they just allow you more levers to target your strategy [e.g. a bit more money on an event, a bit less money on a buy, a way to wipe the board of the rooms for sale, etc].

Truly one of my favorites, particularly given how easy it is to bring someone new into the game.  There's a lot of local color to really give it some character and you can really feel the frustration when you invite a rich but uncultured American heiress to your event at the cost of your local standing [and victory points], despite how much you need her to motivate your manor economy.

I should add.  I have played the solo version exactly once [yesterday] and the automata crushed me. The general gist of solo play is the solo character has particular points for each room type each quarter.  You can't beat them all, so you have to focus on the themes it is weak at.  That might be at odds with how you're trying to build money, servants, etc.  The automata player steals a tile or wipes the board every turn, making long term planning pretty difficult, particularly as it has a penchant/preference for stealing the high value monuments before you can put together the cash/pounds. If it beats you in a quarter, it adds the victory points to its base total.  If you feel like a challenge, you add the monument points it scavenges to its total.  When I totaled up the challenging value, the "easy' automata beat me 167 to 104.  But I learned some strategy so we shall meet again.