Spent Wed thru Sat at a small gathering that created last year when a small con was cancelled. After last years event was seen as a resounding success, he arranged this years and I think this minicon is here to stay. Its certainly a vast improvement over the old con. Total attendance was in the low 20s I think.
I have no doubt other "cons" of this type have sprung up during the pandemic while larger ones weren't held and I think many will continue regardless.
Games played, in no particular order:
WAR OF THE RING x3 . Played Michael Kiefte twice, switching sides. My Fellowship achieved the fairly rare feat of moving all the way to Mordor without being revealed. I entered with a large cast of Companions and even though several died to protect the hobbits, I was able to dunk the ring fairly easily . When we switched sides, Michael's movement while not quite as successful nevertheless saw him reach Mordor fairly unscathed but crucially he was neither able to crown Aragorn or get Gandalf the White - and their crucial extra Action dice. So my military campaign was able to progress fairly well for awhile, but his Mordor Track progress stalled at the worst time, allowing me to crush the last FP Stronghold needed for victory. My game against Jeromey's Shadow player saw about average Fellowship progress down towards Mordor. I split off Strider to get crowned in Dol Amroth , which was done while a horde of Corsairs appeared in the harbor. While the city fell making Aragorn's reign rather short, his and Boromir's presence resulted in the Shadow Army taking a long time to subdue the city and too weak to even contest Pelargir, which late in the game welcomed some Elvish reinforcements . Jeromey launched an attack on the northerm areas and got Dale and Woodland Realm along with Lorien but was cowed by the large Dwarven army in Erebor . However the hobbits in Mordor made steady progress and dunked the Ring before the Shadow military machine could capture one more VP as it ravaged Rohan.
A STUDY IN EMERALD x2 . A classic that I have not played enough ( once last year , then a seven year drought til my most recent play ). In one 5 player game I was a Loyalist, where my Pinkertons managed to find enough double agents to foil some other players while I hid some Old Ones and acquired two Agents that had War Track increases. In back to back turns, I played both Agents together to bump the War Track by 4 each time . Coupled with emptying the last card in two cities ( 4 War Track ) this was enough to trigger the game end as the highest Loyalist. My Cthulu masters were very pleased. My second, 4 player game as a Restorationist was less successful. While I again found some useful double agents via the Pinkertons ( claiming one and forcing Sherlock Holmes to reveal as a Restorationist ) my deck was rather weak esp compared to the other players . The unusual thing was that the board was almost entirely taken over both city control wise . All four players were in the high teens ( with 22 VP needed to trigger game end ) . Additionally, every monster was either hidden or destroyed other than the three low value ones along the bottom row . As it turned out there were three Loyalists and only one Restorationist. Seeing as how I was the weakest of the three "good guys" I made a high risk play to kill off another Royal ( ie monster ) while holding two Madness counters already. Alas my mind couldn't take the shock of blowing up my fourth Cthulu and I went insane, triggering game end and because one of us was below the long Loyalist, he ( Micheal Kiefte ) won.
While this is definitely one of Wallace's best games, being one of his earlier ones it has a pretty shitty rulebook. There are some good concise summary sheets on BGG here:
boardgamegeek.com/filepage/102703/study-emerald-player-aid-card
. For Michael it was his first game, but seeing as how he won he seemed to make out OK. While the graphics are very thematic, UX wise they could be a lot better in places. I am not sure why in the day and age shit titles can be reprinted, this game ( with essentially free IP ) is OOP . I won't even acknowledge the vastly inferior watered down 2nd edition.
CHARIOTEER . This was recently released and I had not played before. In short, its a set collection mechanic where each turn you played card(s) where your chariot moves distance equal to the number of icons with matching numbers. So if your cards have 3 Green 6s, you move 9. Icon color denotes type - black for better cornering, Green has higher numbers, Red results in damage to other chariots, and Orange repairs damage with lower movement. If you manage to play 6 matching icons, you draw a random bonus tile you can use on later turns.
In short this game fell very flat for me. I started near the back and except for one stretch stayed there most of the game. Other than a few Whip icons ( which I never drew ) players in last are in for a beatdown it seems. If a player has a good hand, they get another tile which helps them stay ahead. Damage hits EVERY player, which not only makes little sense thematically , further hinders the backmarkers. It does have the virtue of being easy to teach, and being relatively short - probably takes 90 minutes at most.
DUNE IMPERIUM W/IMMORTALITY and
IX expansions. Taught one new player and we were off. This was a weird game in that after the first Tleixau card was bought, the remaining cards available to buy were lame so that row was ignored the rest of the game. The one card was "Twisted Mentat" which allows you to recall an agent, sort of a poor mans Kwisatz Haderach. I got it and the first Swordmaster so in several turns I got four actions. Coupled with Ilban ( draw a card when going to green spaces ) I had good card draw synergy. However a weak Imperium row meant few cards got bought even after several players nuked it to refresh it. In the end my lone card granting Diplomatic Access was not enough to offset my card draw engine and I came in second at 8 VP at game end.
JOHN COMPANY 2nd Edition. My first play of the new version at a table of experienced 2E players. I knew I was along for the ride but was fine with that as I was trying to get refreshed on the game. Thematically and at its core, its the same game as before. But the changes, too long to list here, while mostly subtle in nature make it a much better game IMO. As a whole, the company is less likely to fail than before. And Deregulation ( where players can go into business for themselves ) is not as herky jerky and the indys do not totally shut off trade routes - in fact the Company can still trade first and even if the indys go first the company still gets half the value instead of none. If you didn't like 1E this isn't going to change.
As for the game itself, I came in predictably last but enjoyed the experience. I did run the company for a few turns in the late game despite having a low share count; I was seen as the least likely to threaten anyone. My final score could have been a lot better had my Chairman retired with his decent bankroll but he enjoyed the job enough to foil three Retirement rolls. Highlight of the game was Jeff Burdett's private firm blowing back to back 5 die shipping attempts ( 1.7% chance ) resulting in the firms collapse and several of his and Jeromey's board members going to Debtors Prison. Jeromey was able to absorb this but fell short to Jen's Power strategy, where her end of game position on Shipyards and Workshops netted her the 8VP difference between 1st and 2nd place.
ROOT. Hadn't played in awhile and not nearly enough FtF. My Woodland Alliance spent most of the game as the nail being hammered back down despite my attempts to point out that doing so only let the Eeyrie accumulate a massive Decree. In fact he never went into Turmoil and predictably he won by a fair margin. Stupid Cats and Vagabond.....the Vagabond esp was encouraging attacks on me; he was never attacked and was close to winning as well. Fuck the trash panda......Nevertheless its a good game that doesn't overstay its welcome and I look forward to future plays.
NEMESIS LOCKDOWN 5 player. After a brief rules summary for the people with only base game experience we were off. My Sentry got his Quest item fairly early, a Battle suit that made him immune to both Fire and Slime. It took almost half the game to fulfill his objective, which was to grab an alien Egg and bring it home. It was the second to last revealed room all the way on the lower level. Other players were having similar success with their own quests; I think everyone pick objectives that didn't rely on other characters dying. That proved our downfall as the Main gate allowing escape into the Bunker remained closed. Worse, the spread of fire went unchecked as players either got a fire proof suit or just ran from fire. The escape pods started firing and soon it was time for people to leave as options were running out. Unfortunatly the Self Destruct initiation room was also on the lowest level, too far to get to the bunker barring a risky move bar crawling thru the air vents and risking an alien attack. I don't think I've ever seen game go as long as ours ( about ten turns ) without a single player dying . That soon changed as the event drawn late in the game resulted in insufficient Fire markers and we all went down in a glorious firestorm. This game never fails to generate a good narrative and fun time. For instance Jeromey's Xenobiologist made lots of noise as he went Leroy Jenkins all over the place but rarely encountered an actual alien; when he finally did his Knowledge and Probe arm made short work of it. He also killed the Queen in an airlock. He was rewarded with a fiery death along with the rest of us.
WAR OF THE RING CARD GAME. I had only played this 2P once, this time was 4P and as I suspected, this is where the game truly shines. Whereas the WotR board game was principally designed 2P with multi player tacked on, this was clearly designed the other way around. I had the Dunedain and Elves . Early game both Shadow players got their card draws increased and we got some early VP . However them drawing more cards gave them more options than we did; I didn't get Elrond and Aragorn til about round 4. I also got Galadriel so I could peek at my top draw deck card before deciding to trash it. Thematically the game is very well done - the Free people can draw cards and sometimes force the Shadow to discard whereas the Shadow player forces discards and TRASHES, which depending on timing can really hurt the FP. Some FP characters are effectively bulletproof ( Frodo ) but by the end of the game, my total available deck was like 8 cards ( out of a starting 31 ) . Our Free Peoples made a go of it but came up short by 4 VP I think .
I don't see playing this 2P again. Hell 2P WotR games for experienced players clock in under 2 hours at least for me and the non hoopleheads I play outside WBC, LOL.
UNFATHOMABLE. This is the Cthulu themed BSG re-skin. I had heard good things about it but had not played it. If you've played BSG its a VERY easy and fast transition to learn. The game is supplied with EXCELLENT player aid cards for each player and after a short briefing for my benefit ( everyone else had played before ) were off . As it turned out both monster loyalty cards were in the initial deal. So when Jeromey made his evil intentions clear on a Skill check, I followed suit by using my characters magic ring to force multiple re-rolls to fail, burning their cards and making my intentions known as well. We were doing so well early on - driving all four resources down to half or less before the mid game - that I thought the humans were doomed. However this game seems to allow them to hang on a bit longer and in the end they managed to eke out a win.
The game mechanically is a bit cleaned up from BSG and in short from a pure mechical sense flows better. The theme while not as immersive as BSG is pretty decent and the Crisis event card readings can be pretty funny. The UX is also improved as well. Def worth checking out if you like BSG. I'll definitely play again.