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Bobby Warren
United States
Glendale
Arizona
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GenCon was both a blessing and a curse. It was a curse because Mike left town for a long weekend and that meant missing on some quality gaming time. It was a blessing because Mike went and brought back a bunch of new games to play.
For the month, I played 20 different games a total of 44 times and five expansions a total of 18 times (not counting the Thunderstone expansions). Seven of the games were new to me and none of the expansions were (though I did play with three mini/promo expansions for the first time, but I don't log those).
So here are the games I played with some thoughts on them.
Blood Bowl: Team Manager
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: New to me
Mike grabbed one of the copies at GenCon and after playing it I kind of wished he had picked up a second for me. It was a fun take on managing a Blood Bowl team over a season. My Orcs lost to Mike's Chaos.
Now I need to find a way to bribe the referees so I can prevent my players from being ejected just for playing hard!
Elder Sign
Times Played: 3
Last Month Played: New to me
Arkham Horror as a dice game! Yes, there are a lot of dice rolled in Arkham Horror, but that is a game driven by dice, and this is a dice game!
Like the original, each player gets a character with stamina and sanity and special abilities and faces a single great old one. But instead of a map of Arkham which the players move around, there are six adventure cards which have goals to meet by matching symbols. Players can help each other by being on the same adventure. Completing the adventure will give rewards and failing them will give penalties. Sometime an adventure to another world will appear (in addition to the current six), and finishing them is much the same as finishing the basic adventures.
There are also common items, unique items, spells, and allies which are available to all the players. It seems that all the characters, GOOs, and allies are the same ones as in the Arkham Horror box.
Two of the three games I played ended by collecting enough elder signs to prevent the GOO from breaching dimensions, and the third was won by battling the GOO at the end of the game. It was a fun time all three games.
I will be getting this one and I might just end up selling or trading my copy of Arkham Horror and expansions because this scratches the same itch.
Eminent Domain
Times Played: 4
Last Month Played: New to me
It's a decent game from Tasty Men..., ummm, Minstrel games. The company with the unfortunate name which is really gross when mispronounced. The cover is also not very appealing as a tool for selling the game. The art is nice, but kind of boring as a game cover.
I can't see myself buying this because there just isn't enough to it to get me to want me to bring it out over Thunderstone, Dominion, or Race for the Galaxy.
(Apparently my original post was wrong. See below.) I'd also be extremely irritated by not being able to get the nine Prestige and Utopian Planets. Promos should be generally accessible and not really change the game. I feel these do change the game because adding them to the planet deck messes with the general distribution of the cards. I made some Survey draws of three and four cards which were made of a majority of these cards when I was fishing for one of the three basic word types so I could research some the better cards, so seeing these was disappointing.
The best companies for producing and making promos available are AEG and Gary Games. More companies should follow their models. [edit: It looks like TMG might be following the model, time will tell.]
I do hope the game is successful, and the company also is successful since they have some fairly local ties.
So to sum it up: Play, yes. Buy, no. Say company name when drinking, definitely not!
Finstere Flure
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: 10/10
As the first half of the game was ending, we had had a lot of people caught by the monster and were still fairly clumped together. I decided to try to make it so no one would win the game because it would just be good 'ol chaotic fun. With any other game, this would be considered bad form, but when explaining the game both Michael and I say the true goal is not winning, but causing the most damage possible.
So we had tokens being eliminated left and right and three of the five of us were eliminated from being able to win. On the last turn we played, if the monster would have moved one more space it would have stopped Greg from winning and been in a great position to eliminate both him and Jeff. But, alas, the monster did move one less space than I hoped he would and Greg managed to win the game.
Gears of War: The Board Game
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: New to me
It's a sci-fi dungeon crawl. I was not in the best of moods to learn this when we played and not that thrilled by it. It felt like more of the same from 20 years ago, but I'd play it again.
To tell you how out of it I am, I didn't know what Gears of War was. I thought it was an updated release of Heavy Gear.
Infinite City
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: 10/10
We hadn't played this in a while and I thought it was a good game to play while waiting for others to show up. It was and it did turn out to be a good game to play at the beginning of the day and ended just as Greg arrived.
King of Tokyo
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: 7/11
More monstrous king of the hill.
Rumor has it that it should be in stores in September and I already have the King of Tokyo Promo Cards, thanks to the BGG.
London
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: 5/11
I started with a good selection of cards and decided to try building out a large city with many card slots, while building as many city districts as possible.
During the game I was able to get two Omnibuses and two City Lights which I didn't have to cover up, thus creating both an influx of cash for the whole game and a way to reduce poverty as needed. The cards didn't come up well for Nico and Michael and I pretty much ran away with the game. I'll have to try the strategy again and see if I can make it work on a consistent basis.
Malifaux
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: 3/05
Kyle wanted to start playing miniatures, so he met Mike and I up at Mike's place. I played the first game against Kyle with my Neverborn force led by Lilith against the gremlin force Kyle decided to try out which was led by Som'er Teeth Jones.
He learned that letting Lilith or the mature nephilim into hand to hand combat with your figures would end badly for you most of the time.
His second set of forces which fought Mike's Freikorps forces turned out to be more thought out and I suspect Kyle will be a tough opponent when we play in the future. Plus I now want to build by Freikorps figures after seeing them in play.
I currently have a sealed Showgirls box for trade if anyone is interested. 
Nightfall
Times Played: 4
Last Month Played: 5/11
Expansion Played: Martial Law.
Twice with two players, once with three, and once with four. It was enough for me to decide to trade the game. I still like it, but not enough to bring it along to play.
Power Grid
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: 6/11
We played with five players on the Central Europe map and we saw something which almost never happens. The winner was someone who was in first place from the beginning of the game until the end, never falling out being the first player from the second turn on.
Quarriors!
Times Played: 5
Last Month Played: New to me
It's like Magic: The Gathering: The Dice Game, where everyone has the same creatures and spells to choose from. I think it is a lot of fun, but don't know how long it will stay playable without expansions.
The box is annoying because it is tin and an odd shape. The stamping on some of the dice could have been clearer and they might have benefited from being just a little larger. Plus the stupid "qu" words throughout the game are irritating. Man, I'm a curmudgeon!
The promos for this are not necessary to have. They add three creatures which get shuffled into the mix and might come up. Maybe they'll be included when the cardboard box version is (hopefully) released?
Race for the Galaxy
Times Played: 9
Last Month Played: 6/11
Expansion Played: The Gathering Storm.
One sitting of three three-player games, and one sitting with five two-player and one three-player game, with just the first expansion added to the base game.
Rattus
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: 6/11
Expansion Played: Pied Piper.
It was a three-player game with the characters randomized, choosing the first of each type drawn. The BGG promo was in the mix, but it wasn't drawn. I think it would be fun to play with it once or twice, but he power is kind of silly and I can't see playing with it all that often.
Rune Age
Times Played: 3
Last Month Played: New to me
It's a deck building game with limited resources and it is scenario driven. I don't think there is a lot of long-term replayability in the game because there are only four scenarios and also very limited resources which can be bought each game.
Each player has their own sets of four force cards to buy from and there are three money cards and three common cards which either player can buy. With two players there are only three of each non-money card common available. The game focuses on building up your forces and then attacking the threat, some random city cards which are available for the game, or the other player. The cards available for the races do not change, so each race is static and the purchase choice for each scenario is always the same.
Mike and I played a competitive scenario the first time and then a couple games of the cooperative scenario.
In the end, I was not that impressed by the game, but would play it because it is not a bad game, but it is just not more than an average game. Maybe expansion will make it more replayable?
Sentinels of the Multiverse
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: New to me
It's a fun, cooperative card game which should have lots of replayability since it comes with 10 different player decks, each player gets one to play against one of the four villains in one of the four locations.
The art goes well with the game, but the box is pretty useless. It's not much of a complaint when you look at some of the other card games out there and the boxes they came in. Hopefully, this will be in stores soon and not just available from the company's web site.
Snow Tails
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: 6/11
I played it slow and steady and ended up winning. Woo-hoo!
Tanto Cuore
Times Played: 3
Last Month Played: 7/11
Expansion Played: Dokidoki Vacation (x3)
More dirty, dirty maids.
Thunderstone
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: 7/11
Expansions Played: All the available ones were in the mix for all the games.
Just one game, which is one more than 7 Wonders and Dominion combined.
Thurn and Taxis
Times Played: 1
Last Month Played: 12/10
It's been a while since I played this. I never felt like the cards were becoming available as I wanted them to arrive. I must have done a pretty good job of adapting because I managed to both end the game and win, even though I had several houses not on the board when it ended.
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