Gamicon, Day Two

Well, last night wansn't incredible. I played three games I'd played before, with people I already knew. I was still optimistic for today, though, when I crawled out of bed at 6:40 in order to make it to the 8 AM slot for El Grande. When I arrived, I was happy to see that the game wasn't full. Unfortunately, the only takers were myself and GM Patrick Johanns. Patrick and I sat and chatted for a couple minutes while I finished my breakfast banana and worked on the massive mocha I had purchased at the Java House. While we were sitting there, a couple people came into the room to run Risk 2210. However, there was nobody waiting to play in their game, and with the mildest coercion they joined us.

I have been hoping to get to try this game for some time, and so I was raring to go. Patrick went through the rules thoroughly, and we were off to Spain. We played the shortened version, with only 6 rounds, so everything went really quick. One thing I thought was a bit of a disadvantage was getting stuck on a low-scoring region. Through the course of the game, it can cost you several points. I really liked the feel of intersecting choices in this game, and how decisions you make can come back quickly to pay off in subsequent turns... or to hurt you. I mest up the Castillo once, and it probably cost me second place, and four points off the leader... I don't have too many comments for this play. Christine and Andrew were very nice people to game with. Everyone made nice moves at one point of another, and Christine roared into second in the midgame with a repositioning of a scoring over-tile, and movement of the king, along with benefiting from my Castillo mistake. Patrick outclassed us all, though, with intelligent play throughout. I look forward to playing again.

I ran into the auction, hoping for the used/out-of-print games I wished the dealers had, but it was pretty disappointing. Mainly, a bunch of roleplaying books, with not much else laying around. I ditched and went back to gaming.

After stopping off in the dealer area to say hi to Jerod and Spud, I went back into the board game room. Patrick's brother Tim had showed up, as had Dan Chapman, so the four of us and Andrew sat down to Alhambra. This is another new play for me. It's not a game I've been overly enthusiastic to play, but I have wanted to try it. It was just a little similar to Palazzo, with the different currencies and building. I went into Towers early, and led the scoring for the first two rounds. Then, the buildings that came up got on a bad streek for me, with two other people getting into Towers, and me getting spread out. The second scoring round came early, too, so there was a lot of time for people to catch up and pass me. Tim worked a couple early shortages, like Mezzanines and Chambers, into three strong first place positions, and first place. Patrick caught up with me and passed me on the strength of his many Towers, and his long, long, wall.

I had to split for a while, to take care of some business at the school. After getting lunch and seeing to preparations for tomorrow's tournament (today's!), I headed back home to chat with Kristin a little and rest. A little napping and a little reorganization of the game bag, and I was on my way back to the con.

I had to sit around for a little while when I got there, as everyone was already in on games. I decided to pass the time browsing the Power Grid rules, a game I wanted to play very much. I watched Erin, Eric, Gare, and Justin Green play a couple games of Rumis. It seemed they had a lot of fun, except maybe Gare, who went from winning the first one to being out in the second round of the second game. After they put that away, we got a five player game of Modern Art going. I predicted I would be terrible in my first play, and boy did I back it up. I made a couple of really poor decisions, including bidding on the wrong thing and offering the wrong thing for auction. In the end, I finished well in last place. I did like the game, and there was a lot of snappy banter to go with it, which made it extra fun. I'm afraid I'm just not really into the auction mechanic.

I decided to wait for Dan and Ziggy to finish their Puerto Rico game in order to get Power Grid going. The others were waiting for Chris to finish his game, to start Caylus. While we were waiting, Eric and I got in most of a round of Fjords, and I chatted with Justin about Durham, where he's just moved from and I'm moving to in July. The games ended quickly, though, and we were soon back on the cardboard.

Power Grid felt like a little bit of a headlong plunge, to me. I was in last place after turn one, and from there I went into the lead for most of the rest of the game, only losing the lead in the last couple turns. I messed up one turn as we thought there was one more city needed to trigger phase two, and I hadn't wanted to rush ahead, so hadn't bothered to buy a new power plant, when I could have powered more cities. This cost me a little. Bigger, though, were the good plants I let go for cheap, thinking I would get a better one from the other row, only to have a poor, cheap plant in it's place. Also, I messed up in the final round of plant purchasing. Worried that there was little coal on the table, and many people using it, I felt that I should purchase an alternative plant to ensure that I could power 14 cities. This wasn't a horrible idea, really, but I ended up paying way too much for the plant, and it probably cost me the game. In the end, Koch, Ziggy, and I got to 14 powered cities on the same turn, and Koch won on mony by almost twenty. However, I payed 60 for my plant, and my resources only would have cost around 20... Well, we live and learn.

After Power Grid, I was pretty gamed out, so I cam home to write this and hit the sack. I was really happy with my day. The only problem now is which game to buy next (it would be El Grande, but the reprint isn't scheduled until April). Overall, 4 new games in one day isn't bad at all. I could have played a little better, but it was still lots of fun.