After GameX Report, sort of…

Yes the con ended two days ago and I am now posting news, I am a bad, bad man I know…

Well as I said in the comment on my last post I didn’t play any of the games I listed I wanted to play Everything sort got crazy and wanted to make sure everyone else was having a good con so I only got to play 6 games the entire time I was at the convention.

However I had some great games, first of Jay Tummelson the owner of Rio Grande Games introduced me to:

Thurn & Taxis: for Power & Glory which was fun, I admit I am not very good at linking sets games but I still had a good time. You build post office routes in Germany using cards to build sets that you then have to make sure you have enough horse cards to put down and complete a route. The longer the route the more points you score, there is also scoring for different colors areas, and something else I cannot remember now. I didn’t do very well but as I said it was fun.

While manning the board game HQ I got to squeeze in a game of:

Always a great game, we played scenario 4 as the Americans, who are trying to pry a German unit out a large rectangular building on the far side of the map. I know what any attack / defend scenarios usually tip in the defenders favor so I knew it would be tough. I had a few things going for me however, I was the only with artillery which ended up softening up the German defenses more than once, and bad card draws on the German players part (sorry Patrick). I decided to try to roll up the left flank on a road that had a wall and hedge between me and the Germans to try to distract him. I then had another unit try to rush head long into the building using the hedges as cover as they moved. I kinda worked but it really came down to some good card draws I my part and bad ones on the Germans part, which is honestly what the game is all about.

On the last day I got to play 2 games of:

Which I got throughly trounced in (good job by the way Mark). I played both games as the Soviets and the first game lost on turn 4, all of my card draws for this game we the worst I have ever seen (guess I need to play more games of this to change that). Over half my hand on any given turn was American 1 Operation cards and my opponent kept playing Red Scare / Purge on me to boot. The second game we played all the way to the last turn, I still made a lot of mistakes but Mark was very gracious and kept giving me tips which helped a lot. I almost won the game on turn 3 I was at 18 points as the Soviets and tried to play ABM Treaty to get the last 2 points to win but by then I was loosing ground and the US easily won the dice roll after that the momentum swung way over to the US favor and I could never get it back.

Now you may be asking yourself, “Hey! that is only 4 games!” The other 2 with role-playing games which I want to put in a separate post which I am going to start on shorty, so don’t panic.

All in all it was a great con, we have another coming up in a short 3 months Gateway (August 31st through September 3rd 2007). So you have another chance to join the fun if you missed this one.

TTFN.

Games I am wanting to play in May

With the convention coming up this weekend I am gathering a list of board games I want to play. I will re-post this list after the con next week and let you know what I played, what I didn’t, and session reports and impressions. Since I just find out Tide of Iron isn’t shipping till June 1st I have had to re-think my list:

Solider Kings by Avalanche Press: I don’t know what it is exactly, this isn’t my favorite era of history. But I have had this game for a long while and and never played it. I just read a review on BoardGameGeek and I think the similarity with Diplomacy and Game of Thrones has me intrigued. That and spreading the Seven Years conflict to the whole world has me wondering if I should check out more of this era of history.  There is some hope that I can find a group of 5-8 players who are willing to try this one, I don’t think playing with less than 4 sounds like a good idea from what I have read so far.

Pacific Victory by Columbia Games: I am on a big Pacific Theater of Operations (PTO) during WWII kick. I guess I have just had enough European Theater of Operations (ETO) games for awhile. With Tide of Iron* coming out and all the Combat Commander: Europe, and Shifting Sands I have been playing I guess I just wanted a change. I love other block games Columbia has published so I am really looking forward to this one. I am hoping it will show up at my door today so I can get the stickers put on and everything organized for the con this weekend. I am also hoping to find someone at the con to who will play this with me so I can learn it.

Empire of the Sun by GMT Games: Again for my PTO kick. I got this game a month or two ago and still haven’t got to play it. I read the first half of the rules and they seem good to me, not to complex but with enough options and possibilities to make game play really interesting. I am hoping to find someone on at the con this weekend to teach me how to play. I am looking forward to possibility of that happening and just want to see if I can play Japan and take over the Pacific Rim

Axis & Allies Pacific by Avalon Hill: I have not kept any secrets with my friends that I have no love for Axis & Allies. I owned the original when it came out was never impressed with it, and was glad to be rid of it. I thought the game was too overly simplistic (I had picked up Rise and Decline of the Third Reich at about the same time so you can see my point) and all the luck with dice rolling drove me a little nuts. But as I said I am on a PTO kick and I wanted a simpler game to play, I also read the information on BoardGameGeek and everyone was commenting on how this game was the best of the series. I am older now and do not crave the complexity in my games I did in my youth so I purchased this game. Some other friends of mine have played it at a game day at Gameology but I haven’t had a chance yet. So I am hopping to try for a game this weekend, but if I am running out of time this one may fall by the wayside.

Gettysburg: Badges of Courage by Columbia Games: I had some how lost some piece to this game, so with my order of Pacific Victory I got replacement pieces for this game as well.  I love the Civil War, I love Columbia block games, and I played this game a year or two back and just loved it (even though I got squashed as the Union).  So I am going to sell this one every time some says at the con “I don’t know what do you want to play.”  I think if I am persistent enough I can play this one.

Barbarossa to Berlin by GMT Games: Yes I know I said I am on a PTO kick but lets be realistic here I not going to got ETO cold turkey! I have spoken to Patrick the other Co-Chair of GameX and we going to do our best to bust this game out at the con this weekend while we are manning the board game registration desk. So if it takes us a minute to get your question please forgive us

Well those are my top picks to try to squeeze into this weekend. It will be interesting to see how many of them I actually get to.

*I only put links for items once in a post

Welcome to BaseStats Blog

Well here I go, tumbling head over heels into the BlogSphere.

The purpose of this Blog is to talk about my hobby, games. PC games, board games, war games, card games, role-playing games, I play them all and have no idea how I have time to do it all. I will post my discoveries, games session reports, and game ideas here. I will do my best to make nice meaty posts that are worth someone’s time to read. There is nothing I hate more than going to a Blog and seeing someone’s on sentence posts about some personal issue that no one but the poster and a few friends understand.

As for the name of my Blog I choose BaseStats (in the URL) for it’s I am hoping obvious reference to Role-Playing Games (here after to referred to as RPG’s). Will Work for Games I am hoping will show my willingness to keep this Blog update and interesting, you need to tell me how I am doing on that.

Well I think this will suffice to for a introduction to the Blog, please feel free to leave general Blog comments off this post.

And with not further adieu…

GameX Convention This Weekend May 25th through May 28th 2007

I have been asked by the chair of board gaming for Stategicon family of conventions (OrcCon, GameX, and Gateway are the names of the individual conventions) to co-chair over board gaming for this and future conventions. It is coming up this weekend and I am about to jump out of my skin with excitement.

We are working on all the last minute details and I am driving up tomorrow to set up the rooms. We are not going to have the ballroom where boardgames are usually held so we are doing our best to make things as convenient and comfortable as we can but it is going to be a challenge.

My greatest fear is we are going to have a huge turn out because of the good buzz the last con in February got and we going to have space issues. I am hoping everyone is patient with us, but we will have to see what happens.

For more information on the con please goto: http://www.strategicon.net/