Just a quick reminder that Tad and Craig's Excellent Party 15: The Elder Party will be held, as usual, on Labor Day weekend this year (Friday, August 29 - Monday, September 1, 2009). For all the details, download the flyer.
Archive for the “Conventions” CategoryI woke up early, packed everything into the car, checked out of the hotel, had breakfast and got over to the convention with a few minutes to spare.
After that was the drive back to Sterling, which was tedious, but uneventful. All in all, I had a great time this year (better than last year) and I'm already making plans to be there in 2009. Saturday started out like Friday: I lost consistently, but enjoyed myself. After playing Puerto Rico, Eric, Cathy, and I made a pilgrimage to the Wilbur Chocolate Factory in Lititz, PA. What we didn't know was that the entire town of Lititz was shut down for some sort of craft festival. We eventually made it to the Wilbur factory store, where we stocked up on chocolate and sweets, but it was cutting things close. The Manifest Destiny heat was pretty miserable -- I was stuck playing with people who bitched, moaned, threatened, and cajoled about every single decision someone made. The leader frequently whined about being targeted by the other players. This dragged out a 3 hour game to being only 2/3 done at the 4 hour mark. Shudder! Finally, and 9pm, there were the RoboRally semi-finals, which were the highlight of the day. The game was close and hard-fought, with lots of robot interaction. Three of the players from my board advanced to the finals, including myself.
While I did pretty awful today, I still enjoyed myself, which is the important thing. I spent a lot of time with Eric and Cathy Raymond, and Ken Burnside, playing Race for the Galaxy and commiserating about how badly we were losing games that we should have been winning.
We ended up playing more Race for the Galaxy, followed by a trip to Starbucks for hot chocolate. I met up with Eric and Cathy Raymond after Power Grid, and we ended up playing a couple of rounds of Race for the Galaxy so that I could improve, and so that Ken Burnside could learn. After that we went out for dinner.
I got rid of the migraine, eventually, but only got a couple of hours of sleep. At 6am I gave up and decided to go get breakfast and hit a supermarket. After a short nap, I headed over to the conference center, where I met up with Eric and Cathy Raymond.
At one point during the day, I was able to purchase a copy of Race for the Galaxy. Hooray! I drove up from Sterling this afternoon. Traffic was good, until I got to York. The US-30 bridge over the Susquehanna River is restricted to 1 lane in each direction, sigh. By the time I got to my hotel, I had a raging headache, which eventually turned into a migraine.
Went back to the hotel and crashed.
The World Boardgaming Championships is a gaming convention, held yearly since 1999 by the Boardgame Players Association. This convention replaced AvalonCon which had been run from 1991 to 1998 by Avalon Hill. Last year I showed up without much pre-planning, and without any goals beyond (1) play games, (2) have fun. This year I decided in advance which tournaments I wanted to try to win, and actively practiced those games at Ludus and other gaming opportunities. Noteably, I decided to skip Age of Renaissance, which I like to play, but (1) takes too much time, and (2) is not one of my strongest games. Most of the tournaments are structured with several qualifying heats (enter as many times as you like, must win one or more), followed by single-elimination semi-finals and finals. Others are strictly single-elimination rounds, played until there's a single winner. Since there are 100+ tournaments running over the course of 6 days, there's a lot of overlap. Consequently, my performance in some of the early heats will dictate my schedule for the following days. In particular, Sunday morning there are 4 different final rounds that I might be eligible for, depending upon how well I do throughout the week. More or less in order, I'll be participating in these tournaments: This year the World Boardgaming Championships will be held in Lancaster, PA, on August 5-10, 2008. I will be going again this year, with the intent to participate in these tournaments:
There's some scheduling overlap between these tournaments, so if I'm good/lucky enough to get to the semi-finals/finals, I might have to drop one in favor of another. Last year I wasn't that lucky, but I've improved with Power Grid (some) and Puerto Rico (significantly), and stand a strong chance of being competitive. One consequence of this is that I need to play these games frequently over the next two months, particularly the more strategic games. I also need to play a wider variety of opponents, so that I can cope with different strategies. Towards that end, I'm going to try to schedule some all-day-Saturday gaming sessions before August. Next weekend (March 28-30) will see me at Enlightenment XI, a weekend-long convention devoted to Age of Renaissance and Manifest Destiny. In order to get in the spirit of things, Carrie and I went over to Vienna to play a game of Manifest Destiny. In theory, I was going to play, and Carrie was going to watch and learn. When we got there, Bill Crenshaw (the game designer) and Greg Stripes (a former champion) badgered Carrie to play, so that there would be 4 players. Reluctantly, she agreed, and play commenced. I have played Manifest Destiny once, and Carrie had never played before, so neither of us knew the rules, much less the strategy. At the end of the game, Carrie had won, followed by Bill, myself, and Greg. At this point Carrie announced that, having beaten the game designer and the reigning(?) champion, she was going to resign, undefeated, from playing Manifest Destiny. Karl Musser runs the A lot of the Ludans have been going to BGD for a long time; today was my first time. I got there somewhat after noon, and things were already in swing. Grayhawk, B, and F were there, as were Brian and Lije. A couple of people were running a snacks table as a 'please donate' for a kid who's doing an exchange trip to Europe next year. There was a square of tables set up for an RPG, with more than a dozen people playing. Everyone there was involved in a game, and the tables were all full, so I setup another table and sat down. While I was doing that, Bruce and Cheryl appeared. Within moments, it seemed, I was teaching Cheryl and two other people to play Ticket To Ride. I didn't win, but everyone had fun, so I count it a success. After a short break I pulled out Power Grid and ended up playing a 4-player game on the USA map with Grayhawk and two new players: Ethan and Mary Ann. After a slow start (4 plant the first turn, but nothing worth bidding on for turns 2 and 3), I acquired the 15, 25 and 30 plants, and eventually added the 40 plant. I won by powering 17 cities, when no one else could power more than 16. Somewhere in there, Tony and Dana appeared, followed by Sallie and Dave. Brian and Lije had recently purchased Khronos so we sat down and learned to play with Tony and Dana. I ended up going first, and everyone else learned from my mistakes ... <grin> Still, it was an interesting game and I'll probably buy it. Brian spent a lot of time teaching people to play Race for the Galaxy, and we played two games. I did better in the first game than in the second, but still lost both games -- not unexpected. I'll probably buy this one as well. By this point, it was getting late so we helped strike tables and clean up. While we were playing Khronos, some folks borrowed my Power Grid set. They ended up being the last game, and it ended around 11:30, so there was a mad rush to clean that up before the Brunswick Police kicked us out. I'll probably keep going back, schedule permitting. I got a lot of comments about the Flying Buffalo Box Bands that I use on some of my games to keep them from opening up at inconvenient times. They're available in small, medium, and large, and they're reasonably priced: 6 for $5. If you haven't seen them, they're 4-way rubber bands that slip over all 4 edges of a game box at once. EDIT: Corrected -- The full up BGD is annual, not monthly. March 28–30, 2008, Days Hotel, Timonium, MD Age of Renaissance and Manifest Destiny The Boardgame Players' Association is pleased to announce the 11th annual meeting of its Age of Renaissance mini-con gaming conference. Coming off its smallest attendance ever in 2007, Enlightenment will go to a new format in its effort to draw a minimum of 25 players or host its farewell performance in 2008. Manifest Destiny will join the program as two four-round events are held in three full days of gaming. Only one of the eight rounds will conflict on Friday evening—giving players a choice as to which event they want to play the extra round. Note that it will be possible, but more difficult, to win both events since each tournament allows players to drop one of four scores. The Age of Renaissance action begins Friday night at 7 PM and continues with two more rounds on Saturday at 9 AM and 6:30 PM. A fourth round will be played Sunday morning. The winner for the weekend will be that player with the highest total for any three of the four rounds. Only the Friday 7 PM slot conflicts and forces players to make a choice which of the two events they'll play for all four rounds. Enlightenment uses a unique scoring system that keeps most players in contention for a prize throughout the weekend rather than being eliminated by a poor showing or relegated to the "losers' table". Every player scores points as a percentage of the winner's score. This provides a real incentive to play against the leader to prevent run-away victories. In subsequent rounds, players are grouped according to their finish in the previous game ... with all Round 1 winners paired in Round 2, all second-place players together, and so on. The winners compete with each other—earning a bonus point for each other table's winner in that round they best by posting a wider margin of victory. Slow play is discouraged by penalizing all scores in games that take more than five hours. This scoring mechanism has resulted in nearly all Renaissance games finishing in under five hours, with some ending in less than four. Some updates on EuroQuest V:
So if you're not doing anything for Veteran's Day weekend, come to Timonium and play games! The Boardgame Players Association and Games Club of Maryland proudly present A European-Style Gaming Conference featuring a new Veteran's Day Friday - Monday format November, 9 - 12, 2007 Days Hotel 9615 Deereco Road Timonium, Maryland 21090
A couple of weeks ago, I ran across a mention of the World Boardgaming Championships, to be held in Lancaster, PA, during the first week of August. After a little investigation, I decided to go and see if it was interesting. Overall, I found it quite enjoyable, and will probably return next year. Read the rest of this entry » |
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