After running my events Friday night, Saturday is typically for me and where I stack most of my events. Typically, Saturday is the busiest day in the dealer hall so it works out well. Still… I can’t stay away so I had some time before my 11:00 am event so I went on tour.
The CMON booth revealed their Dice Tower Seminar announcement with the third entry in Eric Lang’s area control series. This time he heads to ancient and mythical Egypt in Ankh: Gods of Egypt.
This will be another sister game to Blood Rage and Rising Sun but this time, you play as one of the Gods looking for worshipers and dominance.
Also at CMON, I took a closer look at the Targaryen faction soon to be released for Song of Ice & Fire Miniatures. First, an unfortunately blurring Dany boldly striding forward.
Then an impressive Khal Drogo. The faction is unique in that the starter is all cavalry units.
As we passed by the Privateer Press booth, we spotted this new “monster” for their Monsterpocalypse reboot. She has a very “Attack of the 50 foot Woman” vibe.
Also wandering around, I spotted this animal horn version of Tafl. I wasn’t sure what they were actually selling at the booth since it didn’t look like they had copies for sale. Still, it was great to see Tafl at the ‘Con again.
As I was checking something else out, Colton pulled me over to check out this odd and darkly humorous game called Grind House from Everything Epic Games. It seemed to be a survivor game where the winner is the one that comes out most alive at the end.
It is narrative based where the players pass through a series of deadly rooms, slowly taking damage and destroying their characters (usually losing limbs or other gruesome affects). I wanted to see more but time was growing short and I needed to get over to my first event.
I’ve been a fan of Epic Duels since a friend showed it to me years ago. Restoration Games has released a revised edition of the game called Unmatched. I wanted to try it out but didn’t want to waste time waiting in the dealer hall for a demo so I signed up for a “Learn and Play” tournament.
I wasn’t sure what the event really was but sat down and found out that it was a full teaching game with a single elimination tournament built in. Only four showed up to our event so this would run pretty quick.
I found the game just as good as I remember Epic Duels being and thought the game changes were a good improvement. I ended up doing well and won both my games to win this small tournament. Both games were tight but that last game was a nail-biter as my Medusa character was down to her last few life points and Sinbad was at his peak though out of cards. It came down Sinbad not quite having enough actions to attack me and dying from attrition.
For my troubles, I got the limited release Bruce Lee solo character expansion. Looks like they hooked me in and I’ll have to pick up some more sets. The prospect has me already spinning my wheels to convert my Epic Duels figures over to the new system.
This was actually the second tournament I won at the Con as I forgot to mention that Thursday I played in The Duke tournament. That went through a grueling 6 games as all my games seemed to go down to the end. The game that won it for me went down so long that I was out of tiles in my bag and could summon no more help. Luckily, I had enough left on the board to finish it out.
Back to Saturday, I ended up ditching the Corvus Belli seminar because I found out that Kwanchai Moriya was doing signings at the Renegade Games room. I grabbed my Catacombs box and headed over.
Kwanchai was a lot of fun to talk to and very gracious. He signed my Catacombs box and we talked about upcoming work, RPGs, and his earlier redesigns on BGG. It was a great time and definitely a highlight of my Con.
Next up was a large scale Thunder Road homebrew variant called Apocalypse Road. The event host had a ton of detail on this great homemade mat. The event actually had the cars doing laps instead of the board replace mechanic of the original game. It was fun but after 2 hours, I had to run and so we didn’t get to stay around to see who won.
I was in the brown Mini Cooper for most of the race until I blew up. I just couldn’t get anywhere as we would get points for kills and points for completing half a lap and I failed miserably at both, usually dying right before a turn that would get me a point.
I ended up going through multiple vehicles in my pathetic attempt to gain the track’s favor. Truly a bad day in the wastes for the Pimp Team.
Later on, I got one last chance to sneak through the dealer hall and check out some things I missed earlier. We stood to watch the Exploding Kittens vending machine and I have a new sense of awe after reading this behind-the-scenes article.
I stopped over again at the Kingdom Death booth to oggle their demo table. As no surprise, I loved the monochromatic board layout.
Some really fantastic ideas forming while getting close and looking at their boards.
We also checked out Parabellum’s Conquest game. This new miniatures game had some pretty amazing boards with a massive diorama.
It’s this kind of crap that gets me in trouble and into too many table top minis games.
It helps to have some topnotch painted minis too.
Or even a famous painted painter painting. Now I need to find my own Bob Ross miniature…
After dinner, we had 4 hours in the BGG Hot Games Room so we took advantage and pulled out some games that looked interesting. First up, I chose Bosk, a game of growing trees and laying leaves. At its heart, this is a two stage area control game. I didn’t find it all that interesting and thought it not worth the time one would need to take to really strategize the perfect move each time.
Then we pulled out the awful Misery Index. We played it for a few minutes and quickly put it away. We were hoping for a darker Timeline but it was just bad.
Next up, we tried Megacity: Oceania. I’d seen this around and didn’t realize it is technically a dexterity game in the middle of the resource gathering and city building.
The goal is to get the foundation and plans for a building, pull resources blindly from a bag and build your building for points. To complete the building, you need to slide it over to the centralized city and connect it in the hex grid. You get more points for making a building taller than any of the current buildings so this can get a little tense.
This did not go well.
I liked the game a lot and may consider picking it up when it gets a wider release.
With only a little bit of time left in the room, I picked up the Robin Hood vs Bigfoot expansion for Unmatched and we put it to the table. Robin Hood schooled me quickly as I overstretched Bigfoot’s capabilities and didn’t realize he doesn’t have a lot of defense cards (or I wasn’t drawing them).
Before we headed back to the hotel, we checked out the painting case for all the award entries. This fantastic entry to the Unit category took silver in the category.
After seeing all the freehand work, I can see why.
This painted Titan won best in show. The artist was one of the main painting seminar hosts as well and said that he spent 150+ hours on it.
We weren’t sure but I think that is all freehand. Colton said that he couldn’t find the decal lines and looking closer, I think it was just an insane amount of freehand.