Anyone attending Game Days in MD? (May 2-5)

Game Days is in Timonium, MD, this week. May 2 - May 5.

I'll be bringing:

Fading Glory
Lord of the Rings Dice Building Game
Descent 2nd Edition
Random Steam/Age of Steam maps
Random Columbia block games
Middle Earth Quest

There are lots of games that I'd love to try: Goblins Inc., Legends of Andor, Nuns on the Run, Robinson Crusoe, Sentinels of the Multiverse, Marvel Legendary, etc.

Is anyone going? KingPut and I have a game of Angola scheduled, I think, but I don't have anything else on my calendar.

I'm supposed to be the 4th in that Angola game. Pretty much planning on that game and drinking King Put's beer. That's my schedule....

One of the Angola players had to drop out. We're looking for a replacement, but if that doesn't work out we can always play a nice 3-player game: Friedrich, etc.

This was already posted in "What Games Are You Playing?" Figured it made sense to post it here as well...

Game Days 2013 just finished up. Great time all around, including gaming with KingPut, Joel, Rob, and many others.

Thankfully, I avoided playing games that suck. At least a 90% success rate this time around.

Games played:

Old favorites: Age of Industry, Middle Earth Quest, Flash Duel, Pandemic, Ghost Stories, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Leaping Lemmings, Ubongo, Lord of the Rings coop board game (w/ Friends and Foes expansion).

Recent favorites: Battle Beyond Space, Descent 2nd Edition, Zooloretto Dice Game, Martian Dice, Fading Glory (x2).

New to me, would play again: Attraction, Steam expansion maps (Mid-Atlantic, Belgium), Marvel Legendary, Hanabi (x7), Star Wars LCG (not bad, not great).

New to me, will avoid from now on: Africana, Nefarious, Rialto, Sentinels of the Multiverse.

Quick comments:

Hanabi: An abstract, number-based game of cooperative deduction and inference. As terrible as that sounds, it's actually pretty good. For now, it presses all the right buttons. It's sleek, clean, thoughtful, and inexpensive, and it takes only 5 minutes to explain and 20-30 minutes to play. Best of all, loudmouth players (like me) are forbidden from giving advice to their teammates during the game.

Sentinels of the Multiverse: Most card effects revolve around statistical modifiers and random unpreventable damage. Also, there's a lot of squinting at card text, then repeating it to everyone at the table. It's what I imagine a book club meeting would be like if no one bothered to read the assigned book ahead of time, and the attendees decided that it would a good idea to read the entire book out loud. You know, for fun. I was livid when I discovered that I wasn't allowed to exit the game when my superhero was incapacitated. After being knocked out, I was forced to twitch dully on the sidewalk and perform actions that did nothing to substantially move the game forward. Please, JUST LET ME DIE ALREADY.

Rialto: Reiner Knizia finally sold his board game sweatshop to Stefan Feld, and now Stefan's army of malnourished women and children pore over discarded prototypes and previously-published designs and generate 1-2 medium-weight Eurogames per year. These hapless souls did better work under Knizia, but that's because Reiner let them out into the sunshine once per week for inspiration and a small dose of Vitamin D.

Marvel Legendary: Compared to Sentinels, Legendary wins out in all categories. It has quicker turns, better decisions, some rudimentary strategizing, and a cooler commercial license. Even though deckbuilding is now a tired and overused mechanic, it does provide a sound structural support for what might otherwise be a dull Marvel superhero game. I don't see any "serious" gamers jettisoning Dominion and rushing out to purchase Legendary, but there are 1001 families that would rather have this box under the holiday tree than the Big D. And if there's one thing that I've never been accused of, it's being serious.

Highlights:

Barely winning the Lord of the Rings coop game with Pippin's final die roll. (Into Mount Doom it goes.) A hard-won quest, followed by a hearty celebration.

As Sauron, beating down the heroes of Middle Earth in a very tight game.

The Sentinels of the Multiverse game finally ending.

(Now looking forward to WBC in August...)

Hey - I'm planning to be at WBC for a little bit this year (Fri - Sun)!

Also, I will be looking for a place to crash for cash if anyone's got a spot for me.

Ska_baron wrote: Hey - I'm planning to be at WBC for a little bit this year (Fri - Sun)!

Also, I will be looking for a place to crash for cash if anyone's got a spot for me.

OK, cool. I'll ask around about the room situation.

wkover wrote: One of the Angola players had to drop out. We're looking for a replacement, but if that doesn't work out we can always play a nice 3-player game: Friedrich, etc.

Apologies for the last-minute no-show. Unanticipated (and unrelated to my intended absence) domestic apocalypse fucked my weekend from stem to stern...

As for WBC, I've got the full week off from work and am now hunting a room. Wife has already made plans for my absence....

After bailing on Game Days (sorry ) I'm coming with my tail between my legs to find a room for the Friday-Sat-Sun of WBC also.

Call the Host Inn, as they have rooms available over the phone that don't appear on the web site. Often the web site shows all rooms sold out but a call magically makes one appear.

Dogmatix wrote: Apologies for the last-minute no-show.

No problem. Sorry to hear about the problems back home.

I plan on playing at least 3 games of Maria before WBC so that I can be up on the rules by then, and we can probably squeeze in a game of Angola as well.