Saturday Nuke Con Round Up

Ahoy,

I got to spend all day Saturday at Nuke-Con and had a great time. I had signed up to play La Havre and Dominion early at the con. I've been interested in both of these games for some time, but never had chance to play them. Unfortunately, the guy running these games never showed which was the only downside to the day's activities. Luckily I brought Pandemic (with its expansion) and Race for the Galaxy with me. I played two games of the base Pandemic with a nice guy named Jim since he was suppose to play in the La Havre game as well. We cleaned up pretty well on easy, but lost to the game on medium, with the role combination that we ran being the real stickler.

Around 10ish, the time I was suppose to be playing Dominion, Steve volunteered to sit out of the Flames of War tournament as they had an odd number, so we picked up the Pandemic and added the Viral Strains into the deck for a few games then the Mutant Strain for a few more, and finally both on the final game. We had a few players come and go as we played, what was most likely 6 or 7 games. Good times were had by all as we saved the earth about 50% of the time.

At 2pm, I had signed up to play in Bob's White Line Nightmare home brew using the Savage Worlds engine. It was a 'Car Wars' like game where the players had to race around Council Bluffs and got $500 for hitting designated wickets and $100 for every zombie killed. I played 'Big Sam' an obese, but lovable driver of an armored PT Cruiser with a rocket launcher on the roof. It was a fun game, with the mechanics dragging the game just a tad. By 5pm, of the five players, only one had a working car and was racing around backwards trying to not get swarmed by the Zombies. One was just getting pulled out of his pickup, another had wrecked his sports car going too fast around a curve, and myself and one over were racing on foot to the safety zone. Although I ended the game with the lowest cash prizes (my wickets kept being randomly selected at opposite ends of the table... A mechanic I think needs to me adjusted as others got three wickets right in a row), I had a great time... Just wish Sam could run a bit faster. ;)

At 6pm to about 8pm I ran Race for the Galaxy, and unlike other board game runners, I showed! :) First game was with two younger players that had both played before. They had a pretty solid understanding of the game, with only a few minor reminders (like grey planets do not produce goods). The older of the two kids took the first game by 3 VP over mine. The second game Steve joined in as did a new guy Daniel that had just picked up the game, read the rules and played the 2-player vs. his wife. Daniel did a good job of picking up the parts he missed when you just learn via reading and was soon on his way. I won the game with 47 VP with a brown planet build strategy having both of the <6> brown cards allowing me to double dip the planets.

Afterwards, Steve and I broke out his copy of Agricola and played three games of 1v1. Steve won the first two by health margins and I won the third by a few points. I really liked this game a lot. It falls into that pleasantly complex category, especially when we added in the occupations and the minor improvements as those really changed the complexion of the game and your strategic options.

We finished up around midnight, and I packed up my stuff and hit the road. It was a very pleasant day of gaming and I can't wait for next year!

jp

(=| KABOOM! |=)