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Saturday, 16 August 2014

Gencon Day#2

Day 2 consists of much less queuing up and a lot more demo playing. Which ideally is the way I like it.

So with most of the highly sought-after convention exclusives gone, there wasn't much incentive for me to queue up for stuff anymore so I ended up taking in quite a few demos. 

So one of the first things we did was go to a demo for the Naruto Deck Building Game by Cryptozoic. I know I said we bought the game on the first day but we haven't had a chance to play it yet so we decided the easiest way to learn the rules was just to go through a demo. The game itself was pretty easy and fun to play, with the power level seemingly a bit lower than DC DBG and more similar to Street Fighter DBG by the same publisher; Cryptozoic. Ended up winning the demo with 3 other people. It's a pretty decent game and I would probably recommend it if you like the deck building games by Cryptozoic. 

I also managed to hit up the Mantic booth for a demo of Mars Attack. It was a close battle but my ruthlessness in killing off my opponents early on in the beginning meant my opponent was powerless to stop me from scoring the final 2 victory points I needed to win. Interesting game that was much like deadzone except much faster. In fact, I may actually prefer this to Deadzone because it's faster and the melee system doesn't seem as broken. The key difference is that people in MA only have 1 wound and 1 life instead of the varying stages of wounded that DZ has. 

Had a game of Myth as well. It was okay although there were quite a few times when the demo-giver really really could have explained things a bit clearer. Like oh, if your action slots are all filled out, then you can not play interrupts. Like dude, how is that intuitive? It kind of explains why I've been hearing stuff about how their rulebook was poorly structured and unless someone personally explains to you how to play, you won't get it immediately. Considering it was one of the game designers who gave me the demo and he didn't really explain it in a totally concise manner, I can see how the rulebook would turn out that way. 

Then there was a bit more wandering about the exhibition hall to look at stuff that were being sold by the smaller vendors. Before I wandered off into getting a demo of the MLP: CCG game. Yes, that's right, I got a demo of the My Little Pony CCG. 

The weird thing is that the demo is totally scripted. The decks are constructed so that you draw the same cards every game and the guy basically runs you through his script that ends with both players getting a tie. I wanted to make a move that would have decisively allowed me to win the game but apparently that wasn't allowed -_-. The game itself is decent enough to play since it's basically a CCG with MLP trappings but the demo experience was just weird. My recommendation is that demos not be that scripted. It kind of puts people off. 

Then there was Sheriff of Nottingham, which was a new game. I'm going to have to say this is a pretty fun game although I'm not really sure how it would work per se with my group of friends. I think I kinda exasperated my demo-giver because I would constantly call 'bluff' on their efforts but it was all in good fun. Long story short, players take turns being the Sheriff and other players take turns trying to smuggle goods past him. I actually wanted to get this but it was sold out when I got back to the exhibition hall. Ended up 2nd out of a 5 player game. 

We also ended up trying Red Dragon Inn. I had played the game a long time before but my gf hadn't so we were trying it to see if she liked it. It was a demo of 4 players and I ended up winning with pooky. Apparently psychotic rabbits are dangerous. The gist of the game is that you're a bunch of adventurers relaxing in a tavern after your latest dungeon crawl and you're trying to see who is the last one to survive the night. If you become inebriated/drunk, you're KOed. If you lose all your money, you're KOed. There's a fair amount of backstabbing and treachery in the game so I like it. It was pretty fun but we were still trying to get Sheriff so we didn't buy it immediately. 

Then there was Dark Gothic; another deck building game by Flying Frog games. Ironically, this was pretty interesting as a demo since it required several different resources instead of just one universal resource to recruit/buy cards. It was a bit like Legendary but with 3 resources instead. The only real issue I had with it is the power scale, it becomes insanely hard to get any form of traction in the game.

And by that time, it was 5. Just where did the day go? Well, at least it was a lot better than spending all my time in queues and me and my gf both had fun. 

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