Here's a special treat for you - A report by Dana on our recent day spent at the Marmalade Dog game fest in Kalamazoo, MI:
Greetings all, hope everyone had a good weekend, I know we had a great time down at Marmdog. A quick report :
Despite a much smaller con than previous years (probably half as big as last year), there were plenty of board game and things going on. We arrived early (9:30 ish) and did a quick recon of the room before getting down to some games.
Fire and Axe : Ben and I started out by playing a Viking settlement type game with a demo-er. Interesting game where you trade, pillage and settle Europe. I focused on trade and settling while Ben went after the trophy for “Bloodiest Axe”. I pulled out a strong victory, but we both enjoyed the game. It did seem a bit long coming in at 2 hours, though repeated play would probably reduce that to 90 minutes. (Why can’t people come up with good/quick demo versions?) Winner: Me. My Rank : 8/10 (Ben gave it a 7 due to length.)
Evo : Pete and his kids showed up and we tried out a Mayfair game for the kids. The player’s all start with one dinosaur and begin shifting around a Catan-like board looking for a comfortable terrain while reproducing. Every round, you get points for the number of your dinosaurs and then spend them on evolution tiles in hopes of surviving better until a time track runs out. The constantly changing climate can easily wipe out massive numbers of dinos. The biggest factor here was careful timing of “special” cards which allow you to really warp the game. Examples including “Tough babies” (you can attack with your newborn babies), climate cards (that change the climate or your ability to survive it) and others. The kids really seemed to like the fact that as you purchase evolution cards, they get placed upon a picture of your species in increasingly improbable fashion (like Danny’s six legged dino or another that I saw with a tail half a mile long). Ben liked it enough to play another game with another father/son team that was there. Winner : Ben and I tied and then Ben won his second game. Rank 7/10 (Ben gave it a 10).
SPANC: Bill, Karen, Pete and I tried out Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls. With really hot, fun art by Phil Folgio! What’s not to like? Well, the game play mostly. The guy teaching us was pretty awful too, but it was the gameplay that I really disliked. You get 4 catgirls at random with 4 stats. Four challenges come up each round and you pick one catgirl to give the challenges a try. Roll on a couple dice to get under your stats (with “Toys” giving you bonuses to stats). Defeating challenges (particularly all 4 before anyone else can) gives you Toys and loot and Poolboys (who are Loot and Toy). I miss Xenophile, a game with really hot artwork and an actual fun gameplay. Winner : Me. My Rank : 3/10
Pandemic : Pete had to go soon, but we tried out a couple games of Pandemic before he left. Five deadly viruses are spreading across the globe and you have to work as a team to defeat them. Fast and fun game. Every round, you act to stop the diseases and then reveal two additional cities where viruses pop up. One of the most interesting aspects was that at four points in the game, the discard pile of cities where the virus appears reshuffles and then gets placed back on top of the draw pile. So, the same cities keep coming up until you can cure that particular disease. First game we thought we were winning until we suddenly realized we lost and then realized we’d actually won a few turns earlier. Second game, we lost by a turn or two. I think this one’s a winner, even though we kept losing. My Rank 8.5/10
Cleopatra’s Palace [Cleopatra and the Society of Architects - SIC] : Pete left, so Bill, Karen and I decided to play a quick game while waiting for Lisa to finish her RPG game. I am a huge cheapass fan. Fancy pieces are fine, but I prefer good game play. Still, we tried out Cleopatra’s Palace which has a very nice setup with big plastic pieces to resemble columns, sphinxes mosaics and obelisks. It’s a basic collect cards and build stuff game. We were actually talking about how boring it was DURING the game. One interesting aspect is you can build more easily if you’re willing to accept a little corruption and every time you build, there’s a chance that a sacrifice must be made (giving up victory points but the person who gives up the most victory points reduces his # of corruption tokens). I easily built the most due to a reckless willingness to corrupt myself thinking that I’d just outbid my rivals and reduce that corruption. Never happened. So I went into the end with as much corruption as a New York City politician. Which means that at the end of the game, I get fed to crocodiles before calculating the winner. I had a 40 point lead in victory points, but those crocodiles were not impressed. Winner Karen. My Rank : 5/10.
Pitstop : No idea. Ben played this game and said it was very good.
[Is is referring to Pitchcar Mini]
We picked up a little dinner and then played a tabletop 7th Sea game set in Florida while Ben watched a movie on the DVD player we brought. More crocodiles! A couple of my tweaks seem to work out pretty well. Florida works out as a nice setting.
Bill and Karen took off, but we hung out for a little while and shopped (Four boxes of Crimson Sky for $1!?). Talked to Eric (Squirrel boy). Won 12 sets of Heroclix for $7 at the charity auction. Then home again, home again. Overall, it was a fun little con.
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