There are always game conventions on Memorial Day weekend. Seems that way, at least. Down here in Southern California there's one, and up in the Bay Area there's one, too. I'm not really one for game cons, though, not anymore. I guess they serve their purpose, but I also think they're somewhat dated. Pulling a bunch of gamers into one place for a weekend is great, but charging upwards of $35 for the event is excessive. I like the Games Day model much better. That's essentially an at-cost game event, while traditional cons are a for-profit event. Nothing wrong with making a profit, but too much of a big con revolves around the local retailers and their dealers' room. Just setting up a stand with lots of stuff I don't want to buy isn't of any value to me. Twenty years ago I salivated over the dealers' room because I couldn't find that material elsewhere. Now with the Internet, games and game information is readily available from my the convenience of my own home.
(As an aside, I think Batty's Best Game Fest is a much better convention format for game retailers in the 21st century.)
Despite my feelings against traditional game conventions, last year I went to Kublacon and Gencon SoCal (not to mention Essen, but that's something else entirely). For the latter I wanted to help out, and the former offered a rare chance to see Knizia in person. This year Kublacon didn't have the same sort of boardgame celebrity, but it still sounds like it's becoming the go-to boardgame event on the West Coast. I think the momentum gained from last year's Knizia appearance has a lot to do with that. Put another way, I think the folks behind Kublacon are showing savvy and leadership.
Nonetheless, I didn't make it this year. I might make it next year, but my odds are no better than 50-50. Those 3-day weekends are just hard. When the kids are out of school, it's tough to break away.
This year I stayed home, but that doesn't mean I didn't play games. I got in several good ones--some with the kids, some with my adult friends. All in all, I played Axis & Allies:D-Day, La Citta, Flusspiraten, Cluzzle, and Mechwarrior.
A&A:D-Day came about when Ryan & Greg from the Santa Clarita Boardgamers were free on Friday night. My wife was out of town, the kids were enjoying a "movie night" on the VCR (Dr. Doolittle 2), while the three of us played the game. Although it took longer than I'd normally like, it will obviously speed up on later plays. We went with all of the optional Fortune and Tactics cards, and never really rolled all of the combat dice at once for the quickest simultaneous combat. (I need to add one more color of dice to make it easier still.) Also, this was a 3-player game which adds some to the length as the Allied players confer. Lots of fun, though. The grognards will lose all respect for me when I say it, but this is the sort of game I was hoping Breakout Normandy would be. Sure, it's got "juvenile" plastic pieces and dicey combat, but it's also clearly got a respectable overall combat model. I think there's some strategic subtlety to the use of Allied airpower, too. Most of all, this is a game I can play with my son. Moreoever, I might be able to get my father (not a gamer at all, but with a keen interest in D-Day) to try. I'd love to take the Germans against my father as the Americans, and brother (or son) as the British. I'll see if I can make that happen at Thanksgiving this year.
Wonder of wonders, the next afternoon saw my wife still gone (visiting a friend for the weekend, rebuilding my Gathering-depleted store of marital brownie points!), and both my kids off to play with friends. Quick! Call up Ryan to see if he wants to play a game! Ryan was available on such short notice (it pays for gamer-parents to have some childless friends with open schedules!). Knowing I wanted to try it this way, Ryan suggested 2-player La Citta. I'm a fan of this game in spite of its length and fiddliness. With only two players, the length certainly comes down, but I did miss some of the multiplayer dynamics. I guess I prefer four players, but not if someone is new. That's because the game can be punishing to newbie mistakes. Even now that I know how to warn when those are coming (the 8-citizen/no waterworks limit being the most prevalent), it still can be rough. A learning curve is okay in a game, but La Citta's 2+ hour length is too long for a new player to play out a losing position. It's such a great game when everyone knows what they're doing, though (and 3 can play it in 90 minutes).
I got to try Flusspiraten again, this time with its intended audience--young kids. Well, kid. My 7yo daughter played with me, and even then it underwhelmed. It's such a fun little toy/contraption, it just needs a little more game to go with it. Cheap to buy and small to store, I'll keep it and perhaps try to think of some better game or scoring options.
Cluzzle was a big hit. This is sort of a distillation of Tueber's Barbarossa down to its core--making clay sculptures with the right level of ambiguity, together with a streamlined clue & scoring system. The only trouble is that most people have even more fun making the best clay scupltures they can. Well, that's among family/nongamers. Get a crowd of gamers together and I bet they'll see the scoring system for what it is: make your clay sculpture guessable but not easy. Not if you want to win the game! The cards that tell you what to sculpt are well-done, having a range of choices from the easy nouns (e.g. whale) to the difficult ones (e.g. Paris) to the exceptionally tricky verbs and adjectives. This means players of all skills (such as kids & adults) can draw from the same stack of cards and find something to sculpt.
Sam had been asking, almost begging me to play Mechwarrior again. What a turnaround, for my kid to have to convince me to play a game! Okay, a click-miniatures game isn't the sort of boardgame (even wargame) I normally prefer, but this is fine. He really gets into it, and I get to teach him some basic Sun Tzu principles about concentration of force. :-) Afterward he was fired up enough to buy another starter (we split the cost). Then I made the possible mistake of showing him there were computer games for Mechwarrior. We downloaded an old MW4 demo, and bought through ebay an even older MW3 game+expansion. Maybe I've lost him from the game table, but I don't think so. Also, it helps dissuade him from wanting an XBox (which has a Mechwarrior game available, unlike his Nintendo Gamecube.)