GATEWAY 2014 BLOG
Another holiday weekend, another board game convention. 3 times a year, at the LAX Hilton, there is a Strategicon convention. 4 days of nothing but board games (also war games, miniatures, RPGs,CCGs and a small video game section but who gives a crap). Just kidding. But I'm basically playing board games for 4 days straight. Here is the run-through of my con:
FRIDAY or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Enjoy Bomb Squad
3:00 Yabba Dabba Do, I'm leaving work and off to the con. Just have to run some errands and I'm there. I park about 3/4ths of a mile away from the hotel. I decide since I have free Uber credits and it would only cost me 4 dollars of that to Uber over. Uber driver was nice, told him I was headed to a board game convention. He make- a 5 stars. #harmontownreference
5:00: I arrive at the con. I check stuff out for about an hour. Check out the dealer room, see if there is anything going on in open gaming. Awkwardly hang around the start of the first Terra Mystica qualifiers. Nobody is playing Darklings, which is a surprise. It's a tournament, play an overpowered race if given a chance! Grab some chicken fingers at the con's own snack stand. I'm not paying 6 dollars for a hot dog! I have one rule in life, I don't pay more than 2 dollars for a hot dog. Ever.
6:00 Tokaido: My first event of the con. Tokaido is an easy, relaxing game. The theme is you are a tourist in Japan on the East Sea Road. Gameplay is basically you move your piece to an area that gets you something (souvenirs, nice views, money, encounters, temples, etc.) and the furthest back person is the next to go (so if you walk to far ahead, you won't have a turn for a while). Spoiler Alert: It will appear in my next Top 50 post. This game went alright, taught some new people the game. I finished 3rd with a heavy temple strategy because I had the dude who everytime you go to the temple, you place a coin there for free.
Boardgame Geek link: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/123540/tokaido
7:00 7 Wonders Expansion tourney: This is the reason I didn't play Friday's qualifier for Terra Mystica. That and I didn't want to spend half my con just playing that and Castles. This 7 Wonders expansions tourney was super interesting. Leaders and Cities together is enough fun ( because Cities doesn't get a lot of play) but the dude running it had a huge stack of leader boards. 5/7 boards were ones I have never seen or heard of. They were all fan boards. Mine gave me the ability to give 2 loss tokens per military loss, plus one point per shield end game. So obviously I have to do a military strategy. The leaders drafting section is where my game fell apart. I stupidly pass a leader which turns loss tokens into shields to the person next to me. The person next to me has a leader board in which he starts with 3 loss tokens!!! Even if you read this with no knowledge of this game, you can already derive that that's like the worst move in board game history. So I struggle to tie him in military for the first two ages. I get 15 points on my last wonder but I'm nowhere close to 1st or 2nd. That play basically cost me 12-14 points, which might have been enough to get me into the next round. I will for sure play this next con.
9:00 Bomb Squad
It was suggested to me that I try Bomb Squad. It has similar mechanics to Hanabi, in which you cannot see your cards and it is a co-op. As a team you are a robot trying to deactivate bombs. You have to play cards that move the robot along a board and cards that deactivate bombs and open doors. As with Hanabi, you can only say one kind of clue, like these cards are move or these cards are red. The difference is you only have 15 minutes and have unlimited clues. So you can tell someone every card they have in their hand in theory. Whether that is a good idea, I don't know. You also play cards face down, so the person playing it doesn't know if it was the correct card played, you have to also go on other cards people played. Then there is battery, and that is where discards come in. You have to discard for battery. If you do not have enough, the robot cannot do their actions. So efficiency is important in this game. It's fun, fast paced and stressful. But a good stress.
10:00 Bruges
It's a Feld, so I was there. Just an event though. I did a heavy canal strategy, which I usually do not do. One card forced my hand as it basically gave me one free canal each round. I got that in the second round, so I easily got to the end of both canals for 23 points total (7+6 for canal end bonus, 6 points for mid canal bonus, 4 point furthest on canal bonus). A card that got me to get rid of 2 threat markers for an action instead of just 1 also gained me 10 points. I ended up with 52 points and the win. 1st place ribbon, baby!
SATURDAY: I played a Green 5 to the judge
9:00AM Castles of Burgundy qualifier
I have finished 3rd in the Castles tourneys at the last two cons. Both castles finals were one of the few final tables that I thought I played well in, instead of doing my usual choke sessions. So I was feeling confident about this one. But I don't know, I scored the second lowest I have ever scored, 201. I thought I was playing fine but I think my problem was taking too many actions on getting workers. It seemed like I was burning through workers the whole game, because my dumb dice were not close enough to have them do what I wanted them to do. Plus the fact I did not have mines for most of the game. The others took the mines in the first few rounds before I had a chance to get them. So I had no silverlings flow going, which cost me chances to get tiles. You might say my opponents were playing "mine" game with me, which I usually wouldn't "mine" but this is a tourney. I wanted to get to the finals to play against David Mines and have those 20 dealer dollars be "mine".
12:00PM Hanabi Race
My gaming crew seems to basically play two games half the time, this and Terra Mystica. My friend AJ decided to run a speed Hanabi event. The rules are regular Hanabi rules. You have 15 minutes, you can restart anytime you want, just time keeps on going. So if you have a bad first draw, just restart. There is also a judge looking out for "cheating". First rule break is free but then escalates each time. I played a green 5 ( i.e. a 5 dollar bill, if you didn't get the joke) before the match to Patricia the judge so she let me slide. Not really though. Our team of Chris, Steve, Sam and myself won with 24 on rainbows. We were in the zone the second go through but we broke the rules on rainbows ( which is an automatic restart) accidently. So we had to start over with only 7 minutes left. Very fun event and hope to see it become a tourney soon.
1:00 PM Fleet ( Open Gaming)
I've heard good things about Fleet and decided to try it. I liked it, it's a pretty good card game. I should do more open gaming in which I try new games from the library. But I also love the competition of the tourneys. There's just so much to do it's hard fulfilling both. New goal for next con, play more new stuff I cannot elsewhere.
3:00 PM Love Letter tourney
I like Love Letter, it's a nice short filler game. I had a maybe 10 year old girl at the table. My reaction with kids at the table is, that's cool they are trying to hang with the adults. But some of these kids know their shit. The first round was super close, it came down to the last cube as we were all tied at 4.
4:00PM Game Show: I've got a secret
I like the game show guys. They put on a good show. Press your Luck, Remote Control among others are highlights of some of the cons. I loved it when they had a 24 hour marathon and hope they do it again, even though I barely slept that night. Well one of them is getting married, and this seemed to be a show that set up the wedding that was coming after. I would have stayed for the wedding, but I didn't want to have to leave in the middle, so I left before. I pretty much just hung around the con until 7PM when I ran 7 Blunders
7:00 7 Blunders
I was going to run 8 hours of games this con. It was going to be a 7 Blunders tourney, a 7 Blunders: Leaders event, and a Waterdeep expansion event. However, two things happened. One, I forgot to sign up events until last minute. Two, there was too much on the schedule I wanted to do. 7 Blunders is a favorite of mine. I decided to run 7 Blunders as I want to spread the game out. If someone plays in my tourney and then teaches the game to their group then I've done my part. I lot of the players hadn't heard of the variant and were interested. I got 28 players to come out for it. I think it's because 7 Wonders is super popular ( the mega tourney on Monday gets 50 players) and the novelty of low score variant gets the lookieloos. The game works amazingly well as a low score variant. There are so few rule changes to make it work. It's the same game but an entire new game. I could go on, but it will be in the later post on the top 50. So I ran the event, and since I run the event, I'm last priority for a seat. 12 minutes after 7 we are about to start. There are 27 people so I fill the last slot at the 4th table. But then some guy shows up, and even though he's 13 minutes late, I don't have the heart to not accept him. I want the game to spread, the more the merrier. But then this guy ( the same guy I sat next to in the 7 Wonders expansion tourney, who I helped throughout that game as he had only played 7 Wonders once before) offered his seat to me. I declined but he insisted because I had been a help to him before. So I was in. I had the Halicarnassus wonder, which allows you to go through the discard. I like to build resources in this game as they are not worth points and as in regular 7 Wonders, I like to have access to get any of the cards Age III. Most people assume trading in for 3 but not having a legal play is the way to go, but chasing that can get you into hot water and make you build cards that are bad for you. The Halicarnassus wonder can be good depending on the discard pile. At the end of Age II I was at 0 points between the cards with points and my negative military. In age III I use my wonder 3 times. I got really lucky there was somehow 2 resource cards in the discard pile. 2 zero point plays and a military card that netted me none as well! That wonder couldn't of went better. I had a score of 13 which is the lowest score I have ever seen. The next lowest ever was 14 once then a 17 and an 18 I once had. I had half the score of 2nd place. So I thought I had good momentum going into the finals but I finished 4th with a bad score of 42. Just as well as I'm not eligible for dealer dollars. Got the tourney bumped up to a medium because of player count. Very happy with how this turned out.
9:00 Terra Mystica qualifiers
Like I said, this is the one game ( besides Hanabi) that gets more play in our group than any other. I would say on average at least one of us is involved in some Terra Mystica game 3 times a week. Not to be cocky, but we are usually the best people at the game at the con. Last con we had I think 7 of the 10 semi finalists. However, none of got first or second for that matter. It's my fault for letting that dude have Mermaids. He got all 8 dwellings out in the first round! So we were dead set on having one of us take the crown. So this opening round I had Ehren at my table. Ehren, a good friend but a formidable opponent at Terra Mystica. Luckily, he already qualifies because he won the tourney before so I would get in if I placed 2nd to him. Darklings gets around to me. I told myself before, just play Darklings unless it's a horrible setup for them. I know what to do with them, and how to win with them. It was a semi decent setup for them so I picked them. 5th round was dwelling bonus and 6th round was trading post bonus. I had it set up so I would be able to play 5 dwellings in the 5th round and 3-4 trading posts in the last round. I scored around 30 points each of those rounds to give me the win with 142. Off to the next round!
11:30 Game Show - Remote Control
Out of all the game show things, Remote Control maybe my favorite. It's basically all pop culture questions and it is a fun format. I meet up with Sam, Deb and Patricia there. Me and Sam and some other dude get picked to play. Sam's a worthy opponent, he knows some shit but was no match for me when I get a Simpsons, Seinfeld and a How I Met Your Mother category. Nobody would have had a chance with that draw. I also dominated sports by not even knowing who was in the NBA finals. I dunno, Lebron James? is somehow the right answer. I win 5000 fake dollars, so I bought the three of them a fake dinner. I could have bought the entire room a fake dinner, but I'm a cheapass.
SUNDAY: SEAN JUICE
10:00AM TERRA MYSTICA SEMIS
That guy who got 8 dwellings out with mermaids at the last con and won was in the semis. When I was walking in the con with Deb and Chris we saw the guy in front of the hotel, just staring at a Terra Mystica board. We were like he's studying the board! Or was he just trying to skyke us out? This guy knows his shit. He knows every best placement for every race for every setup. If any of us were to lose, it would be to this guy. There were two tables in the semis. Me, Ehren, Peter and this guy ( name was TJ) were one table. The other table was Chris, AJ, John and some other dude. We had good odds, but TJ is a formidable opponent. They put out the setup. It went 1st round: stronghold/sanctuary bonus 2nd round shovel bonus 3rd round town bonus, 4th round SH/SA bonus 5th and 6th both trading post bonus. Horrible setup for my two best races, Halflings and Darklings.
Ehren had 1st pick, Peter 2nd, me 3rd, TJ 4th. This missing tiles were three power +1 shipping, six coins, and 4 coins cult bump. So TJ starts saying 3 races are good with this setup. I figure one might be Alcamists because money will be tight with the missing tiles. Wasn't sure what the other two were yet. Ehren picked Giants, who are usually weak, but he has won with them before. Peter picked Alcamists. So I'm thinking of my race. Darklings are out and I wouldn't have picked them anyway due to no dwelling bonus rounds and a too early digging round. Halflings aren't that strong but I know how to play them well. TJ had mentioned they had already taken two of the races that he would considering strong here. So I kind of also didn't want him to get a race he thinks he dominate with. Didn't want to do the same thing I did last con and pass him the race he dominated in. So I'm considering the Swarmlings because of the two late TP bonus. The only thing I'm worried about is the costs as Swarmlings everything costs more. I decide to go with it. Turns out that was the third race TJ was talking about. He was then at a loss of what to pick. He went with Engineers. Everything went well for me in this game. I built my stronghold, which gives me free Trading posts each round. Early one of my starting swellings had its route blocked so I abandoned it much like I did the day before with Darklings ( I only had one town that game, I decided to concentrate on other stuff). But this time I felt like I needed two towns, there isn't enough points with swarmlings without it. So I decided I had to bridge from my original dwelling then ship to get dwellings down for the other town ( and use the ability to build TP each round, as there were no neighbors in that section). 3rd round I was lucky to get a bridge to complete my first town. Grabbed shipping just because it got me 3 extra points as I had the shipping VP title. 4th round I just set myself up to have a huge last two rounds. Built a bunch of trading posts at 6 points each, not to mention grabbing a TP bonus tile, a second town, and the shipping bonus which I upped my shipping to 3 for 9 points plus, 3 shipping ended up getting me a last dwelling to scoop 2nd longest road. I think I played my best this round, and on a race I'm only ok with. I ended up winning with 139 and advancing. Peter got 2nd and advanced and two former champions ( Ehren, TJ) were out.
Now leading up to this, I wasn't even sure I would play a final table. I was super pumped up to try Feld's latest Aquashphere at 2PM. But looking at the lineup of people and the momentum ( and also the fact I had yet to earn a dealer dollar) I decided to play!
1:00 TERRA MYSTICA FINALS
It was a stacked final table. The final table couldn't of been better if it was written. Me, Peter, John and AJ. Some backstory first. You see, Peter and John have this back and forth friendly rivalry in which each proclaims that they are "world champ" whenever they beat each other. So AJ once posted a poll on Facebook asking who the world champ was. And surprise surprise, the vote came down 2 votes Peter, 2 votes John, and 3 votes me! So obviously, that makes me the "People's champ". So the two world champs, the peoples champ and the guy who brought them all together with game nights at his place. It's a storybook final table if I ever seen one. It would also settle who the real champ is. Of course, if AJ wins, nothing is settled, and he can rest easy knowing he beat 3 "champs". This round was different. John B. (GM) decided to use the pre selected race auction rules. He also put it to a vote if we wanted to use the not released expansion races. I voted yes because I would of liked a chance to use Shapeshifters, who are more overpowered than the Darklings! AJ also votes yes, but John and Peter vote no. It comes down to a terrain flip. Base races it is! The race choices were Darklings, Halflings, Giants and Dwaves. I knew I was going to at least bid VPs to get Darklings, but knew I could get Halflings if I lose a bid. I ended up getting Darklings for 6 VPs which I think is good value. I played well, but I was power straved the whole game as my only neighbor was Peter and he didn't go to the spots I thought he would with Dwarves until late. I still made a lot of points on dwellings and stuff. But my power did not move once in 30 minutes which is weird. It gave me free reign over the one section of the board to terraform a bunch, as I had good priest income. I was doing pretty good. But sometime during the last round, I had realized that I didn't think I could top John even if I got longest road. Peter was out of it by then, so my new goal was just to beat AJ for 2nd. I have been to 16 final tables and never placed higher than 3rd, so at least getting second would be huge for me. For most of the last round I thought I had 2nd sewn up. AJ was unable to build the 3rd town he wanted as he was a few coins short. He needed to build a trading post but had no neighbors to get it cheaper in the area the potential town would be. Until... John just trying to lay more dwellings down for longest and points placed one near AJ, not even realizing it would effect anything. All of sudden ( I missed it too), AJ was able to build a town. A town that got him 9 points plus 5 points for town bonus. Not only that it got him a priest to use that was able to get him from 2 points on the blue track to 8 points! So a 20 point swing!! Which was more than enough to take him from 3rd to 1st. Moved John down to 2nd and me to 3rd. Getting longest road wasn't enough to get me out of 3rd and my streak of no top 2's stayed going.
3:30-5:00 SEAN JUICE
I brought some of what people called "Sean Juice" to the con with me Saturday and Sunday. As I had Terra to think about, I hadn't drank any, but the end result of Terra drove me to drink it, lol. Honestly, it was a great fun, no tension final and I was happy whoever won it, which is nice.
5:00 Dominion Expansions
I was interested to try out some expansions I have not played. Well first game, I got Seaside, which I just played the other week. The game was pretty annoying as the Pirate Ships made everyone lose their coppers, so people barely had money ever. Go it dragged on since it was harder to buy providences. People had combos that were basically I play my whole deck every turn which is always annoying to me. Game dragged on for like an hour and half and after I was like screw this, I'm doing something else this is killing my buzz.
7:00 PM Feedback Forum
Feedback forum is a great way to learn how conventions are run and you get to voice you ways to improve the con. If we can get work to get the con to be better each con, it only helps our enjoyment. So I am glad to voice my opinion and sit through a forum for the betterment of the con. Who am I kidding, it's for the FREE PIZZA!!! So I get there, there's no pizza. I'm like ok. They are bringing out at the end so there is no one who comes in for free za and then bounces. That's cool. But it's the end of the forum and they were basically like "oh, we aren't doing free pizza anymore" WTF. I have a new topic of discussion, "I want my f-ing pizza!"
8:00 PM Game Show: The Weakest Link
So I joined a game of The Weakest Link. The first two rounds I was statistically the strongest player both rounds. The third round I messed up and got two wrong. Whatever, my past performance should get me through this vote. Everyone voted me out! I think they were just using me getting two wrong as an excuse to get their threat to win out. It's pretty much the only reason. People from the audience came up to me later and were like "they shouldn't have voted you out". Ok, only on person did, but still.
9:00 PM Lords of Waterdeep
Lords of Waterdeep used to be my favorite game, I've kind of got worn out on it. I still enjoy it. I am the self proclaimed best Lords player in LA so I have to play this. I have never won a Lords tourney. I made the final table twice, but blew it at the finals twice for a 3rd and 4th. So, I needed to live up to my moniker. I actually had only played Lords once in the past 4 months, so I thought I would be a bit rusty. But my first game went really well. I was the Commerce/Skullduggery Lord. I completed a 2 points per Commerce quest first. Then went on a chain where I would complete a skullduggery quest that got me money to complete a commerce quest which got me black cubes ( rouges) to complete a Skullduggery quest. So I got out to an early lead and got two Mandys played on me, the last one cost me 12 points, but it wasn;t enough and I won. I was on to the finals to possibly blow it again.
So I'm at the final table with AJ ( who tore up this con. Terra Mystica and Takenoko wins among others) and three other dudes. One of the other dudes seems to know his shit and other two just seem there by having a good first game. I get the choice between the lord having 5 per quest over 10 or 3 for just any quest. I choose the 5 point one, but I think I might have chosen the 3 point had I looked at my starting Intrigue cards. When I did look at them I noticed something great. The OPEN LORD card!!!! It was like the heavens dropped down this card into my hand! Now I don't believe in God per say as someone who is in Heaven looking down upon us. But this had to be divine intervention. The Open Lord card basically keep you from getting attack cards played on you. It is super OP to have, especially at the start of the game. I also don't have to worry about hatas raining down Mandys on me. So I decide I'm going to go for my quest in my starting hand which will give me 3 buildings for free. However, it took me a while to get the resources for it and when I did it, the building weren't good enough. I think that is only a good value card if there are like a bunch of 6-8 cost buildings when you use it. I felt I wasted it on 4 cost buildings. So I was just going to try and get easy 10-15 point quests and a lot of them to get my bonus. But then I decide to go for the 40 point Warfare as I had built a building which produces 4 orange or black for 2 coins and the 4 Orange place 2 and 4 black place 2 building were in builders hall, possibly to get built by the guy who I knew had to be builder lord. I knew if those buildings came in play I could get that and the skullduggery 40 point quest I picked up the next turn. I knew it would take me most of the rest of the game getting them because of the purple and white costs involved with them. I had set up a move with the Ambassador to make certain I was able to get both 4 cube buildings one at the start of round 7 which would give me enough time to complete another quest after the two 40 point ones. Because the thing is, completing both 40's would only get my score to around 123, which IMO is not enough to win in a Undermountian expansion game. I knew I had to have one more 10+ quest. AJ then played a bribe agent to take the ambassador away, and I was crestfallen. Until we noticed bribe agent is actually an attack card! So nevermind! I don't know what comes over me, but I was a nervous wreck for the last two rounds. I knew I was close, but even though everyone at the table seemed certain I would win, I wasn't sure. I thought for sure the one guy was near me in points and would have more lord points. I needed to get one extra quest after the two 40s or I felt I would be in 3rd. Again. I don't know, when I'm tense I feel like I'm actually like an asshole. I get up from the table and pace a lot. I stormed off over the ambassador move thinking "oh no, I wasn't a move when moves are super tight for me to win". I feel I talk to much and worry and become annoying and obnoxious. Anyone there think I was being obnoxious with my actions? It was all nerves. I set goals for myself, and I have failed at this goal 16 times and it meant a lot to me. Especially since 3/4 of the time I felt I blew it instead of just not getting enough to win but playing my best. Especially when it came down to last move. There was only 1 place ( that I saw, there was actually 2) to get a white cube on the board and I needed one white cube to win the game in my estimation. I needed it to get a 10 point quest. 4 people had to go before it was my last turn. In my mind if one person went on the ?/orangeblack spot , I could not get it. I would be third and might have to wait months to place first in a tourney. So I walked away from the board, I could not look at the board. I said let me know when its my turn. I didn't;t want to hear people telling someone to go to that spot. I got back and one more person was left to place. This guy took for fucking ever to place his last guy. He was in 5th place. I wanted to yell out, just place the guy already. Jesus Christ, its not going to matter. In my mind it was one spot he couldn't go to. So I pace around some more, as I am wont to do. Finally he places a guy, not on that spot. I place my guy right away on the white spot so there is no way he has a change to redo his move. I mean I didn't have to worry as the spot that you trade in two cubes for 3 also nets me one white cube. But where is the tension in that story? I complete that quest and it is enough to win me the game! After 2 years of cons and 17 final tables I finally did it. I had won a tournament! And in the game that got me into Euros and really cemented me in the hobby. The game in which I had lost heartbreakingly at before, the game I'm known for being good at and loving. It couldn't have been better that this was the one I won.
MONDAY: I've never had this many dealer dollars!
9:00AM 7 Wonders MEGA
I finished at the final table of the MEGA at the last two cons. I had Giza wonder 5 out of 6 times during that span. I lost Orccon's final table because I did not plan well and didn't have access to build the last two parts of the Giza Wonder. The next con I lost a close one where I finished in 4th despite being only 5 points behind the leader. I had some mo' after the Waterdeep win so I was feeling good. But nope, I was out in the first round. All the planning in the world doesn't matter when you are never given good cards to play. I usually have to miss half the auction because I'm in the finals. Looks like I'm making that one time.
With an hour to spare, the guy who ran the 7 Wonders expansion tourney asked me if I wanted to play a game of 7 Blunders. My plan for 7 Blunders had worked. It is catching on, catching on enough people are playing pickup games of it! Hopefully it spreads, it feels nice to maybe have given something back to the gaming community. I won that pickup match with a score of 26, no 13 but still good.
11AM Auction and Dealer Room
The auction is always fun, I usually end up buying a few games I can get for 3 or less dollars. They usually are party type games like True Colors. However, this time I have 29 dealer dollars!! I can get an actual game! But there was nothing really too exciting there. I decide to go to the dealer room to see if I can get any deals. I ended up getting Bora Bora and 7 Wonders Leaders for 55 dollars. 29 of which I used dealer dollars for. So in my mind, 15 per game after dealer dollars I would have to spend anyway.
1AM - 7PM Winding down
So played some games of Hanabi with Sam and Patricia then we bounced from the convention area as it was waaaaay to cold there. We then decided to go to a Thai place after the longest game of the expansion to " What are we playing next", "Where are we eating next?" It was great Thai food, great company and a great end to an awesome weekend of gaming. I'm sad I have to wait until February to do it again.
No comments:
Post a Comment