I have recently discovered a phenomenon that has opened up a whole new world of game design for me: print-and-play games. I had no idea such things existed! But there are tons of them. Heck, there is a podcast by a guy with a soothing British accent devoted solely to reviewing print-and-play games.
Nearly all of these games are free to download. The few exceptions are things like rules for miniature war games. They might charge you a few bucks for the fifty-page pdf document that explains how to play the game.
Anyway, print-and-play games are exactly what they sound like: you download the pdf, print it out, cut out and assemble the pieces, and you're ready to play! Admittedly, this is more time and effort than it takes to prepare a game off the shelf. You can't just buy it, take it home, and play it. But on the plus side, it's free. So there's that.
Another potential downside to print-and-play games, though, is the fact that they're self-produced. This is not an inherently bad thing. There are many game designers out there who have developed and produced fine games. But games published professionally have to get past a "gate keeper." A professional saw the game and was willing to spend money--a lot of money--to produce and sell the game. This same professional has probably seen dozens or hundreds of OTHER games that were rejected for various reasons.
Print-and-play games do not have to get past any gate keeper. There is no one to stand up and say, "Actually, this game isn't very good because of X, Y, and Z. You may want to work on these issues." Which is not to say that they're bad. It's just that they MIGHT be bad.
Still, being able to acquire a new game to play for the low-low price of some ink, card stock paper, and an hour or two cutting and assembling seems like a pretty darn good deal to me.
Boardgamegeek.com has an entire section devoted to print-and-play games. Some of the more popular ones include Aether Captains (a dice-based game of zeppelin combat in a steampunk world), BattleCON (although only four of the dozen or so characters are available in the free print-and-play version), Pocket Civ, Elemental Clash, TactDecks, and Zombie in My Pocket (which, in fact, became so popular that Cambridge Game Factory decided to help the designer fine-tune it for multiplayer and publish it professionally).
Having discovered this amazing new world of design space, I have begun work on two of my own print-and-play games. Neither is terribly good, but I think they're interesting and unique. I'll probably discuss them in further detail when they've been developed further. For now, I'll say that one is called Dream Shift, and involves battling nightmares in a constantly shifting dream world in order to symbolically overcome your fears, guilt, grief, and loneliness. The other game, which is similar mechanically to Dream Shift, is called Dungeon Shift. It's a fairly standard dungeon crawler for one player, wherein the player must utilize the tools and weapons he or she finds to traverse through a dungeon full of pits, traps, locked doors, and monsters great and small.
I am really excited about both games, and am considering making a whole line of print-and-play games using the shift mechanic, with various tweaks. I am also really intrigued by the whole print-and-play genre of games, and anticipate buying a rotary paper cutter of some sort in the semi-near future to facilitate fast, even cutting of various cards, tiles, and tokens.
Whee! Free games!
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Thursday, March 17, 2011
BattleCON!
Sounds like a good name for a game convention, right? It's actually the title of an interesting fighting game that may or may not be coming out this year. (I think it's short for Battle Connection.)
The game is based on good ol' 2D fighting games like Smash Bros. (which is technically 3D, but the mechanics of the game only utilize 2D space), Mortal Combat, Soul Caliber, etc.
Each player fights with a chosen character and that character's corresponding pre-constructed deck. Attacks and defensive moves are made by creating "attack pairs." Each character has his or her own unique style, which, combined with basic moves such as Strike or Drive, create a move. Each character can combine at least three unique styles with the seven basic moves to create a wide variety of attacks and blocks.
(I was totally going to copy and paste a cool image from the BattleCON website, but it doesn't want to load. Sigh.)
I'd go into more detail about the game, but an excellent write-up can already be found here.
What I really wanted to talk about was the fact that the game might NOT get published. That would make me very sad. The designer is producing the game himself, and has already calculated the cost required. He has a print company lined up to produce the cards and such, he just needs to be able to pay them! Here's where you can help. KickStarter.com provides ordinary people like you and I the chance to pledge money to projects such as this. Those who pledge thirty dollars or more will receive a copy of BattleCON, as well as one of three promotional characters who will not initially be available in stores. Which basically means you're preordering the game. Those who pledge forty dollars or more will receive BattleCON and all three promotional characters. Which basically means you're preordering the deluxe edition of the game. There are additional prizes for larger pledges.
You don't have to pay the money right away, and if the project does not reach its goal of $6000 by April 21, you don't have to pay anything at all. If the project does reach the target amount, then your Amazon account will be charged and you will be sent prizes according to the amount you pledged.
More information about BattleCON and its KickStarter project can be found here.
Help support the cause! Let's make this cool fighting game a reality!
The game is based on good ol' 2D fighting games like Smash Bros. (which is technically 3D, but the mechanics of the game only utilize 2D space), Mortal Combat, Soul Caliber, etc.
Each player fights with a chosen character and that character's corresponding pre-constructed deck. Attacks and defensive moves are made by creating "attack pairs." Each character has his or her own unique style, which, combined with basic moves such as Strike or Drive, create a move. Each character can combine at least three unique styles with the seven basic moves to create a wide variety of attacks and blocks.
(I was totally going to copy and paste a cool image from the BattleCON website, but it doesn't want to load. Sigh.)
I'd go into more detail about the game, but an excellent write-up can already be found here.
What I really wanted to talk about was the fact that the game might NOT get published. That would make me very sad. The designer is producing the game himself, and has already calculated the cost required. He has a print company lined up to produce the cards and such, he just needs to be able to pay them! Here's where you can help. KickStarter.com provides ordinary people like you and I the chance to pledge money to projects such as this. Those who pledge thirty dollars or more will receive a copy of BattleCON, as well as one of three promotional characters who will not initially be available in stores. Which basically means you're preordering the game. Those who pledge forty dollars or more will receive BattleCON and all three promotional characters. Which basically means you're preordering the deluxe edition of the game. There are additional prizes for larger pledges.
You don't have to pay the money right away, and if the project does not reach its goal of $6000 by April 21, you don't have to pay anything at all. If the project does reach the target amount, then your Amazon account will be charged and you will be sent prizes according to the amount you pledged.
More information about BattleCON and its KickStarter project can be found here.
Help support the cause! Let's make this cool fighting game a reality!
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Fantasy Flight Games' Living Card Game Model
For many years, I was addicted to Magic: The Gathering. I'm not ashamed to admit it. I'm no longer addicted, although I do occasionally through together a deck on Magic: The Gathering Online if I want to kill some time.
One of the frustrating things about Magic was that it's an incredible money sink. Roughly eight-hundred new cards are released every year. I'm not a collector, so I never tried to acquire a copy of every single card, but if I had, it would have been extremely expensive. No, I approached the game not as a collector, nor even as a gamer, but as a deck-builder. I enjoyed creating new and interesting decks. I liked tuning and tweaking decks until they were just right. The problem was that I would finish a deck and move right on to the next one. I wanted to build something else. The pleasure for me was more in the creation of decks, less in the playing of them.
I discovered, after ripping open far more booster packs than I'd care to admit, that there was a way to play the game designed specifically for people such as me. It's called drafting. Each player is given three booster packs of fifteen random cards each--eleven commons, three uncommons, and a rare card. Each player opens their first pack, selects one card from the pack, and passes the remaining fourteen cards to the player on his or her left. He or she then takes the fourteen cards passed from the player on his or her right, selects one of those cards to keep, and passes the remaining thirteen cards to the player on his or her left. This continues until the pack is depleted. Each player then opens his or her second pack and repeats the process, except everyone passes to the right. The third pack is passed to the left. Each player ends up with forty-five cards. Using those cards, plus any number of basic land card, each player creates a forty-card deck and plays each other.
This was an amazing revelation for me. I could go into a game store every week, build a new deck, and play it right then and there! Unfortunately, this really drained my wallet. I won't say how much money I've spent on Magic cards over the years, but it was a lot. Way too much.
So I gradually weaned myself from the game. I still find it enjoyable, but I cannot afford to keep it as a hobby. It is too expensive for me, both in time and money.
Most people will eventually fall away from collectible card games because of the expense. One of the major contributing factors to this expense is that collectible card games come in random booster packs. Consumers never know exactly which cards they will get. This makes certain cards--particularly the tournament-level rare cards--extremely difficult to acquire. Players who participate in Magic tournaments today could spend four- or five-hundred dollars or more to assemble their decks. One card that sees a great deal of use is called Jace, the Mind Sculptor. A single copy of this card retails for around one-hundred dollars, and most of the decks that use it will run the maximum of four copies in the deck. That's just for four cards of a (typically) sixty card tournament deck.
That's quite the money sink.
Fantasy Flight Games seems to have caught on to this dilemma. They currently have three games that follow the Living Card Game model. (Those games are: A Game of Thrones, Call of Cthulhu, and Warhammer: Invasion, based on George R. R. Martin's book series, H.P. Lovecraft's mythos, and Games Workshop's fantasy world, respectively. An LCG based on The Lord of the Rings is set to be released this year.) Instead of releasing randomized packs, new sets are released in their entirety. Every single card is bundled together in a single pack. No more hunting through booster boxes, hoping for the right cards. No more competing over rare cards. Every card, all in one purchase.
This may not be exciting for collectors, who love the thrill of the hunt. A Living Card Game is too easy for them. There is nothing to chase after. But for gamers and deck-builders, this is fantastic. Everyone has easy access to the same cards. How those cards are put together, then, as well as the skill in using those decks, will make the difference between victory and defeat. I have lost many a Magic game because my opponent had a deeper wallet. He could spend money to acquire the most powerful and ridiculous cards, while I struggled to put together something remotely competitive. This is not a problem with LCGs. Everyone is on an equal playing field.
I didn't like Mr. Martin's fantasy series, so A Game of Thrones is not for me. The Warhammer fantasy setting is not nearly as interesting to me as the Warhammer 40,000 science fiction setting, so I probably won't try Warhammer: Invasion. The Lord of the Rings game might be intriguing, but it's not out, yet. But Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos is very intriguing to me. Admittedly, most of the actual stories were pretty terrible. But the mythos behind them is fascinating, and I would love to explore that world further. Subsequently, I have purchased some Call of Cthulhu LCG products.
One thing I noticed was that the Call of Cthulhu Core Set, which is supposedly the jumping off point for beginning players, was not a good product for beginners. For one thing, although a maximum of three copies of a given card is allowed in a deck, only a single copy of each card is included. This means that the game designers were able to squeeze in many different cards, and therefore introduce new players to a wide variety of concepts. This also means that players do not get a clear idea of how to build a good, streamlined deck. Players must either assemble sub-par decks consisting entirely of singletons, or purchase three copies of the Core Set. That's a high initial cost to get into the game.
The Core Set does provide a decent rule book to introduce players to the complex game. It does a very good job of explaining all the basic mechanics of the game and how gameplay work. It does not, however, do a very good job explaining tactics or deck-building.
All told, I would say that this game is very difficult to get into unless you are already familiar with other collectible card games. The Core Set provides cards, a game board, and tokens with which to play the game. It contains a rule book that explains how the game works. It does not, unfortunately, provide new players with tactical or deck-building advice, or even very much internal guidance within the cards themselves. (There is, for example, a subset of cards that give bonuses to Cultists, but there are only three or four such cards--not enough to build a deck around.)
Thankfully, FFG apparently noticed some of the problems of the Core Set. The set remains the same, but newer Call of Cthulhu LCG packs (called Asylum Packs) now come with a full three copies of each new card. This helps facilitate efficient deck-building, which I can approve of. New Asylum Packs are released every month, each containing three copies of twenty new unique cards. They tend to retail for ten to twelve dollars a piece, which isn't bad at all.
Currently, I haven't found anyone to play the game with me, which is slightly frustrating. My wife does not wish to learn the game, and I can't blame her, because this game is at least as complicated as Magic. She prefers simpler games, which is fine. I haven't managed to hook any of my friends, yet, and the game hasn't taken off at my friendly local game store. I'm sure it's only a matter of time. For now, though, I am not in an arms race to create decks that smash all my opponents, which means that I haven't purchased a lot of product. I have made it known at the game shop that I am interested in supporting a monthly Call of Cthulhu game night, though, and apparently I am no the only one that has expressed such interest. Hopefully within the next few months I will have a regular group of people with whom to play. Until then, I'll be playing it solitaire--which, let me tell you, is also not the best way to learn a new game. Maybe someone should suggest a starter pack of two ready-to-use decks to Fantasy Flight Games?
I do like that the game provides the thrill of opening new cards, finding interesting and powerful card combinations, building fun and unique decks, and playing intense strategic games against opponents. I also like that this game is much easier on my wallet than any other trading card game I've seen. Having only played the game against myself--and with subpar decks--I can't say for sure whether it's the best thing since television shows on DVD. I've had fun, though, so far, and hope to continue to explore the world of Cthulhu, Miskatonic University, Yog-Sothoth, and the Order of the Silver Twilight.
One of the frustrating things about Magic was that it's an incredible money sink. Roughly eight-hundred new cards are released every year. I'm not a collector, so I never tried to acquire a copy of every single card, but if I had, it would have been extremely expensive. No, I approached the game not as a collector, nor even as a gamer, but as a deck-builder. I enjoyed creating new and interesting decks. I liked tuning and tweaking decks until they were just right. The problem was that I would finish a deck and move right on to the next one. I wanted to build something else. The pleasure for me was more in the creation of decks, less in the playing of them.
I discovered, after ripping open far more booster packs than I'd care to admit, that there was a way to play the game designed specifically for people such as me. It's called drafting. Each player is given three booster packs of fifteen random cards each--eleven commons, three uncommons, and a rare card. Each player opens their first pack, selects one card from the pack, and passes the remaining fourteen cards to the player on his or her left. He or she then takes the fourteen cards passed from the player on his or her right, selects one of those cards to keep, and passes the remaining thirteen cards to the player on his or her left. This continues until the pack is depleted. Each player then opens his or her second pack and repeats the process, except everyone passes to the right. The third pack is passed to the left. Each player ends up with forty-five cards. Using those cards, plus any number of basic land card, each player creates a forty-card deck and plays each other.
This was an amazing revelation for me. I could go into a game store every week, build a new deck, and play it right then and there! Unfortunately, this really drained my wallet. I won't say how much money I've spent on Magic cards over the years, but it was a lot. Way too much.
So I gradually weaned myself from the game. I still find it enjoyable, but I cannot afford to keep it as a hobby. It is too expensive for me, both in time and money.
Most people will eventually fall away from collectible card games because of the expense. One of the major contributing factors to this expense is that collectible card games come in random booster packs. Consumers never know exactly which cards they will get. This makes certain cards--particularly the tournament-level rare cards--extremely difficult to acquire. Players who participate in Magic tournaments today could spend four- or five-hundred dollars or more to assemble their decks. One card that sees a great deal of use is called Jace, the Mind Sculptor. A single copy of this card retails for around one-hundred dollars, and most of the decks that use it will run the maximum of four copies in the deck. That's just for four cards of a (typically) sixty card tournament deck.
That's quite the money sink.
Fantasy Flight Games seems to have caught on to this dilemma. They currently have three games that follow the Living Card Game model. (Those games are: A Game of Thrones, Call of Cthulhu, and Warhammer: Invasion, based on George R. R. Martin's book series, H.P. Lovecraft's mythos, and Games Workshop's fantasy world, respectively. An LCG based on The Lord of the Rings is set to be released this year.) Instead of releasing randomized packs, new sets are released in their entirety. Every single card is bundled together in a single pack. No more hunting through booster boxes, hoping for the right cards. No more competing over rare cards. Every card, all in one purchase.
This may not be exciting for collectors, who love the thrill of the hunt. A Living Card Game is too easy for them. There is nothing to chase after. But for gamers and deck-builders, this is fantastic. Everyone has easy access to the same cards. How those cards are put together, then, as well as the skill in using those decks, will make the difference between victory and defeat. I have lost many a Magic game because my opponent had a deeper wallet. He could spend money to acquire the most powerful and ridiculous cards, while I struggled to put together something remotely competitive. This is not a problem with LCGs. Everyone is on an equal playing field.
I didn't like Mr. Martin's fantasy series, so A Game of Thrones is not for me. The Warhammer fantasy setting is not nearly as interesting to me as the Warhammer 40,000 science fiction setting, so I probably won't try Warhammer: Invasion. The Lord of the Rings game might be intriguing, but it's not out, yet. But Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos is very intriguing to me. Admittedly, most of the actual stories were pretty terrible. But the mythos behind them is fascinating, and I would love to explore that world further. Subsequently, I have purchased some Call of Cthulhu LCG products.
One thing I noticed was that the Call of Cthulhu Core Set, which is supposedly the jumping off point for beginning players, was not a good product for beginners. For one thing, although a maximum of three copies of a given card is allowed in a deck, only a single copy of each card is included. This means that the game designers were able to squeeze in many different cards, and therefore introduce new players to a wide variety of concepts. This also means that players do not get a clear idea of how to build a good, streamlined deck. Players must either assemble sub-par decks consisting entirely of singletons, or purchase three copies of the Core Set. That's a high initial cost to get into the game.
The Core Set does provide a decent rule book to introduce players to the complex game. It does a very good job of explaining all the basic mechanics of the game and how gameplay work. It does not, however, do a very good job explaining tactics or deck-building.
All told, I would say that this game is very difficult to get into unless you are already familiar with other collectible card games. The Core Set provides cards, a game board, and tokens with which to play the game. It contains a rule book that explains how the game works. It does not, unfortunately, provide new players with tactical or deck-building advice, or even very much internal guidance within the cards themselves. (There is, for example, a subset of cards that give bonuses to Cultists, but there are only three or four such cards--not enough to build a deck around.)
Thankfully, FFG apparently noticed some of the problems of the Core Set. The set remains the same, but newer Call of Cthulhu LCG packs (called Asylum Packs) now come with a full three copies of each new card. This helps facilitate efficient deck-building, which I can approve of. New Asylum Packs are released every month, each containing three copies of twenty new unique cards. They tend to retail for ten to twelve dollars a piece, which isn't bad at all.
Currently, I haven't found anyone to play the game with me, which is slightly frustrating. My wife does not wish to learn the game, and I can't blame her, because this game is at least as complicated as Magic. She prefers simpler games, which is fine. I haven't managed to hook any of my friends, yet, and the game hasn't taken off at my friendly local game store. I'm sure it's only a matter of time. For now, though, I am not in an arms race to create decks that smash all my opponents, which means that I haven't purchased a lot of product. I have made it known at the game shop that I am interested in supporting a monthly Call of Cthulhu game night, though, and apparently I am no the only one that has expressed such interest. Hopefully within the next few months I will have a regular group of people with whom to play. Until then, I'll be playing it solitaire--which, let me tell you, is also not the best way to learn a new game. Maybe someone should suggest a starter pack of two ready-to-use decks to Fantasy Flight Games?
I do like that the game provides the thrill of opening new cards, finding interesting and powerful card combinations, building fun and unique decks, and playing intense strategic games against opponents. I also like that this game is much easier on my wallet than any other trading card game I've seen. Having only played the game against myself--and with subpar decks--I can't say for sure whether it's the best thing since television shows on DVD. I've had fun, though, so far, and hope to continue to explore the world of Cthulhu, Miskatonic University, Yog-Sothoth, and the Order of the Silver Twilight.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Shoot Many Robots!
Demiurge Studios is preparing to release their first original IP, a video titled Shoot Many Robots. I'd say the title is pretty self-explanatory.
As a way to promote their new (and very entertaining-looking) game, they're holding a contest called Design Many Robots. You can find more information here.
If I had any sketching skills at all, I'd totally jump on this. Sadly, art is not one of my strong suits. Sigh.
Anyway, I thought I'd help spread the word. If you have the skills and if your design is chosen, you can have your robot included in the first expansion of Shoot Many Robots!
As a way to promote their new (and very entertaining-looking) game, they're holding a contest called Design Many Robots. You can find more information here.
If I had any sketching skills at all, I'd totally jump on this. Sadly, art is not one of my strong suits. Sigh.
Anyway, I thought I'd help spread the word. If you have the skills and if your design is chosen, you can have your robot included in the first expansion of Shoot Many Robots!
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Game Design Challenge
I recently started following a blog called Inspiration to Publication, all about two game designers and their quest to publish their games. They've already had moderate success, and their newest game, Train of Thought, looks to become a "new classic." I know it's an oxymoron, but apparently that's what you call such things.
Anyway, one older post, they provided a game design challenge for budding game designers. They gave it just after a post about where inspiration comes from. The challenge was to come up with a game concept drawing inspiration from five different categories: theme, mechanic, title, genre, and components.
I thought I'd take them up on their challenge, so here are my ideas.
Theme: Using small robots to prevent a mine from completely caving in
This would be a cooperative board game with a lot of randomization. The players are miners who have become trapped by a cave-in, and need to use their remote-controlled robots to move to different areas of the board and prevent various disasters--flooding, cave-ins, damaged power cables, etc. A disaster deck would pile on the tension while players try to coordinate their efforts and free themselves from the cave.
Mechanic: Multiplayer card game where cards flip when players change sides/roles
This is a sci fi/horror themed game for three to ten players. One player starts as the Host with a Host deck and goes around infecting the other players. All other players start as humans, with Human decks. Their cards are split down the middle width-wise, and when they become infected, they turn the cards over and use the Infected side to help the Host.
Title: Counting Coup
A chess-like game on a six-by-six board where pieces represent Native American warriors attempting to gain the most coup by showing their bravery using different maneuvers and tactics. Certain moves are very risky but earn a great deal of coup, while others are safer but earn less coup. The player with the most coup at the end of the game wins.
Genre: Party game
A card-based version of musical chairs. Players each have a starting hand of four cards, except for one player who begins an extra card. Players must rapidly exchange cards on a one-to-one basis until someone has a complete matching set of four cards. That player wins bonus points, but cannot have a starting hand of five for the rest of the game. Each player gains points for having a pair or three of a kind. But watch out! The player with the Dud card gets no points that round! Play continues until all players have had a starting hand of five cards.
Component(s): Rubber bands
I have a few ideas for using rubber bands in a game. The one I like the best is a building game. Players take turns rolling a D3 (a six-sided die with two 1s, two 2s, and two 3s) and balancing that many blocks on top of each other. Then each player takes a turn shooting a rubber band at a particular stack to try and knock it down. They must shoot from the opposite side of the board, and their hand cannot be over the board when they shoot. The first player to successfully stack five blocks atop each other wins.
Anyway, one older post, they provided a game design challenge for budding game designers. They gave it just after a post about where inspiration comes from. The challenge was to come up with a game concept drawing inspiration from five different categories: theme, mechanic, title, genre, and components.
I thought I'd take them up on their challenge, so here are my ideas.
Theme: Using small robots to prevent a mine from completely caving in
This would be a cooperative board game with a lot of randomization. The players are miners who have become trapped by a cave-in, and need to use their remote-controlled robots to move to different areas of the board and prevent various disasters--flooding, cave-ins, damaged power cables, etc. A disaster deck would pile on the tension while players try to coordinate their efforts and free themselves from the cave.
Mechanic: Multiplayer card game where cards flip when players change sides/roles
This is a sci fi/horror themed game for three to ten players. One player starts as the Host with a Host deck and goes around infecting the other players. All other players start as humans, with Human decks. Their cards are split down the middle width-wise, and when they become infected, they turn the cards over and use the Infected side to help the Host.
Title: Counting Coup
A chess-like game on a six-by-six board where pieces represent Native American warriors attempting to gain the most coup by showing their bravery using different maneuvers and tactics. Certain moves are very risky but earn a great deal of coup, while others are safer but earn less coup. The player with the most coup at the end of the game wins.
Genre: Party game
A card-based version of musical chairs. Players each have a starting hand of four cards, except for one player who begins an extra card. Players must rapidly exchange cards on a one-to-one basis until someone has a complete matching set of four cards. That player wins bonus points, but cannot have a starting hand of five for the rest of the game. Each player gains points for having a pair or three of a kind. But watch out! The player with the Dud card gets no points that round! Play continues until all players have had a starting hand of five cards.
Component(s): Rubber bands
I have a few ideas for using rubber bands in a game. The one I like the best is a building game. Players take turns rolling a D3 (a six-sided die with two 1s, two 2s, and two 3s) and balancing that many blocks on top of each other. Then each player takes a turn shooting a rubber band at a particular stack to try and knock it down. They must shoot from the opposite side of the board, and their hand cannot be over the board when they shoot. The first player to successfully stack five blocks atop each other wins.
Monday, February 21, 2011
SaltCon! Part Two
SaltCon touts itself as a family-oriented game convention, which is cool, I guess. What this meant for Cassie and I was that the con didn't open until 10 am or so on Saturday. We slept in and had a killer breakfast at the hotel's buffet. We had planned to visit the Hogle Zoo while we were in Salt Lake City, but alas, the weather was pretty terrible. So after breakfast (and a brief nap to take the edge off of our respective food comas--we ate a lot of food), we headed to the convention.
There was another Munchkin tournament in just a few minutes, so we signed up. This time, it would be Munchkin Fu, the Kung Fu movie-themed Munchkin game. Neither of us had played that particular version before, but we figured the basic rules would be the same, and indeed they were. The only major difference is that Munchkin Fu has Styles and Classes, rather than Races and Classes. I never did get an interesting style, but my wife got one with a really long name that game her a +3 Bonus for each empty Hand. This was important later, when some of the players tried to stop her from reaching Level 10 and winning the game by stealing the weapon she held in her hand, not realizing that the +3 Bonus from the weapon wouldn't actually go away, thanks to her Style.
There were six players in the tournament: myself; my wife, Cassie; three people who were blood relatives of some form or another; and a fat guy who was friends with the three relatives. I got the feeling that they all wanted someone they knew to win, because then they could all take home the prize (the copy of Munchkin Fu that we were playing) and play it with each other. So it felt a bit like it was four players versus two. Hence why I didn't feel bad when I helped my wife win.
Here's how it went down. Cassie shot to Level 9 fairly quickly, and had a good assortment of equipment to give her a lot of power in combat. The guy across from me--the nephew of the guy in the opposite corner from me, a teenager supposedly playing Munchkin for the first time--had managed to reach Level 9 on his last turn and was banking on winning the game his next turn. He just had to stop my wife from winning, first. He thought he had it in the bag. When she kicked open the door and revealed a dinky Level 1 monster, he threw down some kind of magic mirror that would have made the monster disappear. Fortunately for Cassie (and me), the guy's uncle also threw down a Wandering Monster card with a small Level 8 monster. His nephew tried to tell him that he didn't need to do so, but he said he'd already played it, so it stayed. I'm not sure why he did that, but it worked out.
What this meant was that Cassie still had a monster that she could kill to reach Level 10 and win. So everyone threw down everything they could to try and stop her. One person stole her dagger. Another destroyed her armor. Another pumped up the power of the monster a bit. It still wasn't enough until the nephew, the other guy at Level 9, used a card he'd probably been hoping to save for himself to make the monster even bigger, just enough to tie with my wife's combat strength. So I finally got involved. I tossed down a potion that made my wife even more powerful.
No one else had anything to change the combat, so my wife killed the monster, reached level 10, and won the game. Everyone else was at least a little disappointed, but the guy who had played the Wandering Monster did the most grumbling. Not sure I really understand that. It was his fault that she was able to win that turn. I'm convinced that she would have won the next turn, regardless; I had stockpiled a bunch of cards to stock people from being able to win, and was pretty confident that they wouldn't be able to stop her a second time.
Anyway, we got to take home the Munchkin Fu game as a prize. So that made game number two that we received without having to pay for it.
After that we hit up the Opportunity Games table to try out Karnaxis for the first time. A young man we'd met yesterday while playing Munchkin--Taylor, I think--joined us, as well as the designer's wife. I believe her name was Morgan. The designer was Andrew, although I remember that better because it's on the Karnaxis box. Andrew set the game up and explained the rules, then acted as banker so we could concentrate on learning the game rather than doing lots of arithmetic.
It's a straight-forward enough game in some ways, but there are a lot of options at every turn, and each decisions can have great consequences. For example, I hesitated to take out a loan to start a business until the fifth turn, while Taylor and Morgan did so two or three turns earlier, and subsequently were able to grow their respective businesses significantly more than I was. Additionally, the two of them managed to make a killing on the stock market. So they kind of creamed my wife and I. Kudos to my wife, though. She didn't bother starting a business or investing in the stock market. She just put herself through school and got a job, and still finished the game with more money than me. And apparently this was one of the few times when trying a new game for the first time didn't stress her out, so you know it's good.
See the game here or here.
We were both pretty worn out by then, so we decided to do one more game and call it a day. We selected Forbidden Island
from the game library and snagged a fellow named Daniel to play it with us. It's a quick cooperative game where players take on the roles of explorers trying to snatch priceless artifacts from a sinking island. The island is represented by sixteen tiles. Players are represented by wooden tokens. There is a deck of cards, each card corresponding to an island tile. Each turn, a player is able to perform up to three actions. These actions could be to move one space (horizontally or vertically, but not diagonally), to "shore up" an island tile, to give artifact cards to a player on the same tile, or to gain an artifact. After those three actions, the player draws cards from the artifact card deck.
Then, a certain number of cards are revealed from the top of the location deck. (The number of revealed cards is equal to the water level, which in our game started out at two and quickly rose to three.) The tiles that match the revealed location cards are then either flipped over (the opposite side having the same picture and title, but in muted blue tones) or removed from the island completely, if they have already been turned over. This represents that part of the island becoming partially submerged and then completely flooded. Shoring up a location means flipping back to its normal state, which can buy the players some time. Mixed in with the artifact deck are cards that cause the water level to rise, so as the game progresses, the island floods even faster.
The goal of the game is for players to acquire four cards of a given artifact, reach a location that has an icon that matches that artifact (there are only two locations per artifact), then use an action to discard the four cards and gain the artifact. Once all four artifacts have been acquired, players have to reach the helicopter pad and escape the island.
Each player has a different special ability that helps them. For example, I was an Engineer. I could shore up two tiles per action instead of just one, which came in handy. I went around shoring up the important locations--the ones that had the artifact icons on them--while Cassie and Daniel were lucky enough to rapidly draw the cards necessary to acquire three of the artifacts, after trading some cards back and forth. They snatched up those artifacts while I grabbed the fourth, then we booked it to the helicopter pad. With planning and luck (and, admittedly, forgetting to begin flooding the island until the second turn) we were able to beat the game together.
It was fast-paced, exciting, and a lot of fun. And I hear that the game is pretty inexpensive. Daniel looked it up on his fancy-pants iBerry or BlackPhone or whatever and found that Walmart sells it for twelve bucks or something. Cassie and I may have to pick up a copy.
Before we left, I managed to find a guy willing to trade some of his board game he'd brought for some Magic cards. I'd brought a whole bunch of them, since I'm trying to get rid of them, and I knew I'd be surrounded by gamers. The guy wanted to get back into Magic so he could play with his kids. I gave him enough cards to start two or three decks. He gave me Ticket to Ride, the one with the German map. Cassie enjoyed it when we played it at my brother's house last Christmas.
That made the third game that we didn't have to pay money for. Even accounting for the used condition of two of the games, we're looking at something like seventy-five dollars worth of games for nothing. Well, not NOTHING. Tickets for two people for two days cost us sixty dollars. Still, I feel like it was totally worth it, and fortunately, my wife agrees.
There was another Munchkin tournament in just a few minutes, so we signed up. This time, it would be Munchkin Fu, the Kung Fu movie-themed Munchkin game. Neither of us had played that particular version before, but we figured the basic rules would be the same, and indeed they were. The only major difference is that Munchkin Fu has Styles and Classes, rather than Races and Classes. I never did get an interesting style, but my wife got one with a really long name that game her a +3 Bonus for each empty Hand. This was important later, when some of the players tried to stop her from reaching Level 10 and winning the game by stealing the weapon she held in her hand, not realizing that the +3 Bonus from the weapon wouldn't actually go away, thanks to her Style.
There were six players in the tournament: myself; my wife, Cassie; three people who were blood relatives of some form or another; and a fat guy who was friends with the three relatives. I got the feeling that they all wanted someone they knew to win, because then they could all take home the prize (the copy of Munchkin Fu that we were playing) and play it with each other. So it felt a bit like it was four players versus two. Hence why I didn't feel bad when I helped my wife win.
Here's how it went down. Cassie shot to Level 9 fairly quickly, and had a good assortment of equipment to give her a lot of power in combat. The guy across from me--the nephew of the guy in the opposite corner from me, a teenager supposedly playing Munchkin for the first time--had managed to reach Level 9 on his last turn and was banking on winning the game his next turn. He just had to stop my wife from winning, first. He thought he had it in the bag. When she kicked open the door and revealed a dinky Level 1 monster, he threw down some kind of magic mirror that would have made the monster disappear. Fortunately for Cassie (and me), the guy's uncle also threw down a Wandering Monster card with a small Level 8 monster. His nephew tried to tell him that he didn't need to do so, but he said he'd already played it, so it stayed. I'm not sure why he did that, but it worked out.
What this meant was that Cassie still had a monster that she could kill to reach Level 10 and win. So everyone threw down everything they could to try and stop her. One person stole her dagger. Another destroyed her armor. Another pumped up the power of the monster a bit. It still wasn't enough until the nephew, the other guy at Level 9, used a card he'd probably been hoping to save for himself to make the monster even bigger, just enough to tie with my wife's combat strength. So I finally got involved. I tossed down a potion that made my wife even more powerful.
No one else had anything to change the combat, so my wife killed the monster, reached level 10, and won the game. Everyone else was at least a little disappointed, but the guy who had played the Wandering Monster did the most grumbling. Not sure I really understand that. It was his fault that she was able to win that turn. I'm convinced that she would have won the next turn, regardless; I had stockpiled a bunch of cards to stock people from being able to win, and was pretty confident that they wouldn't be able to stop her a second time.
Anyway, we got to take home the Munchkin Fu game as a prize. So that made game number two that we received without having to pay for it.
After that we hit up the Opportunity Games table to try out Karnaxis for the first time. A young man we'd met yesterday while playing Munchkin--Taylor, I think--joined us, as well as the designer's wife. I believe her name was Morgan. The designer was Andrew, although I remember that better because it's on the Karnaxis box. Andrew set the game up and explained the rules, then acted as banker so we could concentrate on learning the game rather than doing lots of arithmetic.
It's a straight-forward enough game in some ways, but there are a lot of options at every turn, and each decisions can have great consequences. For example, I hesitated to take out a loan to start a business until the fifth turn, while Taylor and Morgan did so two or three turns earlier, and subsequently were able to grow their respective businesses significantly more than I was. Additionally, the two of them managed to make a killing on the stock market. So they kind of creamed my wife and I. Kudos to my wife, though. She didn't bother starting a business or investing in the stock market. She just put herself through school and got a job, and still finished the game with more money than me. And apparently this was one of the few times when trying a new game for the first time didn't stress her out, so you know it's good.
See the game here or here.
We were both pretty worn out by then, so we decided to do one more game and call it a day. We selected Forbidden Island
from the game library and snagged a fellow named Daniel to play it with us. It's a quick cooperative game where players take on the roles of explorers trying to snatch priceless artifacts from a sinking island. The island is represented by sixteen tiles. Players are represented by wooden tokens. There is a deck of cards, each card corresponding to an island tile. Each turn, a player is able to perform up to three actions. These actions could be to move one space (horizontally or vertically, but not diagonally), to "shore up" an island tile, to give artifact cards to a player on the same tile, or to gain an artifact. After those three actions, the player draws cards from the artifact card deck.Then, a certain number of cards are revealed from the top of the location deck. (The number of revealed cards is equal to the water level, which in our game started out at two and quickly rose to three.) The tiles that match the revealed location cards are then either flipped over (the opposite side having the same picture and title, but in muted blue tones) or removed from the island completely, if they have already been turned over. This represents that part of the island becoming partially submerged and then completely flooded. Shoring up a location means flipping back to its normal state, which can buy the players some time. Mixed in with the artifact deck are cards that cause the water level to rise, so as the game progresses, the island floods even faster.
The goal of the game is for players to acquire four cards of a given artifact, reach a location that has an icon that matches that artifact (there are only two locations per artifact), then use an action to discard the four cards and gain the artifact. Once all four artifacts have been acquired, players have to reach the helicopter pad and escape the island.
Each player has a different special ability that helps them. For example, I was an Engineer. I could shore up two tiles per action instead of just one, which came in handy. I went around shoring up the important locations--the ones that had the artifact icons on them--while Cassie and Daniel were lucky enough to rapidly draw the cards necessary to acquire three of the artifacts, after trading some cards back and forth. They snatched up those artifacts while I grabbed the fourth, then we booked it to the helicopter pad. With planning and luck (and, admittedly, forgetting to begin flooding the island until the second turn) we were able to beat the game together.
It was fast-paced, exciting, and a lot of fun. And I hear that the game is pretty inexpensive. Daniel looked it up on his fancy-pants iBerry or BlackPhone or whatever and found that Walmart sells it for twelve bucks or something. Cassie and I may have to pick up a copy.
Before we left, I managed to find a guy willing to trade some of his board game he'd brought for some Magic cards. I'd brought a whole bunch of them, since I'm trying to get rid of them, and I knew I'd be surrounded by gamers. The guy wanted to get back into Magic so he could play with his kids. I gave him enough cards to start two or three decks. He gave me Ticket to Ride, the one with the German map. Cassie enjoyed it when we played it at my brother's house last Christmas.
That made the third game that we didn't have to pay money for. Even accounting for the used condition of two of the games, we're looking at something like seventy-five dollars worth of games for nothing. Well, not NOTHING. Tickets for two people for two days cost us sixty dollars. Still, I feel like it was totally worth it, and fortunately, my wife agrees.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
SaltCon! Part One
This weekend, my wife and I attended SaltCon, a board game convention in Salt Lake City. It was our first convention of any kind, so we weren't completely sure what to expect. It ended up being a lot of fun, and we walked away with three board games, none of which we had to pay for.
They had a game library set up with over three hundred board games available. The first game we tried was Dominion: Alchemy, the only expansion we haven't tried. Another gamer, a fellow Dominion fan, joined us. We played with five Actions cards from the base set and five from Alchemy. I can't say I found it terribly interesting, to be honest. Most of the Action cards require Potions to purchase. I'd be okay with that if Potions were costed at, say, three coins or less, but four? For a card that doesn't do anything except help me purchase four of the available Action cards? Those Action cards had better be good!
But they really weren't. The guy who joined us, Ben, picked up a whole bunch of copies of Familiar, which is "+1 Card, +1 Action, Each other player gains a Curse." My wife tried Herbalist, which is "+1 Buy, +1 Coin," and has an ability that basically allows you to float a Treasure card on top of your library. When you place Herbalist in your discard pile, you can place a Treasure card you have in play on the top of your library. There really weren't any Alchemy cards on the table that I thought were interesting, so I went with a Mine/Remodel strategy, hoping to use Mine to turn my Coppers and Silvers into Gold and purchase as many Provinces as possible. Towards the end of the game, I used Remodel to turn my Golds in Provinces. I was also able to use Remodel to get rid of five or six of the Curse cards that Ben was so happy to put into my deck. I still had nine Curses by the end of the game, though, which allowed Ben to edge me out by a few points for the win. I was kind of annoyed; my wife and I tend to avoid aggressive strategies, in general, and Curses in particular. It's just not fun to have a deck full of cards that do nothing but prevent one from winning. At least twice that game, I draw a hand of a Victory card, three Curses, and a Treasure card. What can you do with that?
Anyway, I didn't really see much in Alchemy that would encourage me to purchase it. It doesn't innovate, at all, beyond making the Action cards more difficult to purchase. Dominion: Intrigue made Victory cards more relevant and interesting. Dominion: Seaside played with time with Duration cards. Dominion: Prosperity pushed the power level with Platinum and Colony, and a lot of high-priced Action cards. Dominion: Alchemy just doesn't do anything interesting or unexpected.
My opinion of the expansion probably wasn't helped by the weird feeling my wife and I goy from Ben. My initial thought was "child molester." When my wife mentioned it to me later, away from Ben, she suggested rapist. Either way, there was something off about that guy.
Anyway, we next joined a Munchkin tournament. It was fun, but obnoxiously, the guy who won did so by playing a card that stole the monster I was fighting (to go from level 7 to level 9, I think) and caused it to fight him, instead. He was at level 8, so defeating this big monster would win him the game. He couldn't actually defeat it, himself, though, so he convinced a girl to help him out. She was at level 9, and was an Elf, which meant that she would also go to level 10 by helping him. They both won. I didn't mind losing, and I didn't mind them winning. I was just annoyed that I didn't even get to kill that big monster and go to level 9 before losing. It was like my second-place finish was stolen from me, or something. Anyway, I was annoyed. Still, the Steve Jackson Games guy handed out a bunch of little prizes, including a cute little stuffed toy that my wife and I took home.
At about this time we discovered that my wife's name had been drawn to receive a door prize. We were presented with a copy of Karnaxis, a modern economics game. The designer and his family were there, demoing the game and selling it at a discount price. We had chatted with them earlier and had planned to try their game at some point. I had already decided that I wanted to buy it if it ended up being fun, but then we got a free copy. So, we didn't have to buy it, which was cool. We didn't have a chance to play it that day, though. That would have to wait until the next day.
View the game here.
After picking up the game, we then played Small World for the first time. We played with gentleman whose name I cannot recall, other than it sounded French. He had only played once or twice, before, but thankfully we had a volunteer from the con help us out and explain the game to us. It was a lot of fun. The idea is to draft from the available races and use them to take over as many sections of the map as possible. At the end of his or her turn, the player receives coins for each section he or she controls. The coins count as victory points, although they can also be used to draft the best races. Cassie was lucky enough to smash face with Trolls. Those things are really tough to move once they set up their defenses. She ended up winning by a few points. It was a lot of fun. We may have to pick up a copy.
The last game we played that day was called The Resistance. Apparently it's a lot like Werewolves, which I've heard of, but never played. It's for five to ten players. Each player is dealt a character card which they do not reveal; it tells them whether they are loyal to the resistance, or a spy. All players then cover their eyes, and the spies are allowed to reveal themselves to each other. Then, the resistance attempts five missions to bring down the oppressive regime. Players take turns being the fearless leader. The leader selects several other players to join him or her on the mission. The exact number of players on the mission varies depending on the total numbers of players and on the mission. All players then vote on whether or not they accept the assignments for the team. (If the traitors know that a traitor is on the team, they will vote to accept the team. If the loyal resistance members are certain that a traitor is on the team, they will vote no, although it's difficult for them to know for certain, so they will usually accept the team.) On a majority, the team is accepted.
Then, each team member on the mission hands the leader a face-down card, either a red card or a blue card. These are shuffled so that no one is certain who put in which card. All the cards are then revealed. If there is even on red card, the mission failed. Otherwise, the mission is a success. The players must try to determine who the traitors are before it is too late. If they succeed in three missions, they win. If three missions are failed, the traitors win. It's a fun and interesting game, and really very quick, but it can get very "yelly" as suspicions are thrown about. "You're a traitor! You must be!" "That's ridiculous! You're only accusing me to throw suspicion off of yourself!"
I was a traitor, which of course my wife knew almost immediately, because she can read me like a trashy magazine. Thankfully, not everyone else was as sure. I was on the first mission, along with the leader (I think his name was Daniel) and one other person. I can't remember her name. One of the traitors had a temporary special ability that turn that allowed him to peek at someone's character card, and he used it on the female on the team. He promptly and loudly accused her of being a traitor. Then, I slipped a red card into the mission to fail it, so everyone assumed that she really was a traitor. It threw suspicion off of me quite superbly. Subsequently, I managed to get onto the second mission and fail it without anyone being sure if I was a traitor.
We almost had the game in the bag, but we got unlucky with the third mission. One of the traitors--the only one that at this point everyone was 95% certain was a traitor--was the leader that turn. He failed to accurately predict what the NEXT leader would do, and so he chose his team poorly and revealed that certain players were definitely NOT traitors. Thus, the resistance was able to complete the third, fourth, and fifth missions and steal the game.
Still, it was a lot of fun, if a little too stressful for my wife.
We then left for a dinner appointment and to check into our hotel. We hit up the con the next day, as well, but that's a post for another day.
They had a game library set up with over three hundred board games available. The first game we tried was Dominion: Alchemy, the only expansion we haven't tried. Another gamer, a fellow Dominion fan, joined us. We played with five Actions cards from the base set and five from Alchemy. I can't say I found it terribly interesting, to be honest. Most of the Action cards require Potions to purchase. I'd be okay with that if Potions were costed at, say, three coins or less, but four? For a card that doesn't do anything except help me purchase four of the available Action cards? Those Action cards had better be good!
But they really weren't. The guy who joined us, Ben, picked up a whole bunch of copies of Familiar, which is "+1 Card, +1 Action, Each other player gains a Curse." My wife tried Herbalist, which is "+1 Buy, +1 Coin," and has an ability that basically allows you to float a Treasure card on top of your library. When you place Herbalist in your discard pile, you can place a Treasure card you have in play on the top of your library. There really weren't any Alchemy cards on the table that I thought were interesting, so I went with a Mine/Remodel strategy, hoping to use Mine to turn my Coppers and Silvers into Gold and purchase as many Provinces as possible. Towards the end of the game, I used Remodel to turn my Golds in Provinces. I was also able to use Remodel to get rid of five or six of the Curse cards that Ben was so happy to put into my deck. I still had nine Curses by the end of the game, though, which allowed Ben to edge me out by a few points for the win. I was kind of annoyed; my wife and I tend to avoid aggressive strategies, in general, and Curses in particular. It's just not fun to have a deck full of cards that do nothing but prevent one from winning. At least twice that game, I draw a hand of a Victory card, three Curses, and a Treasure card. What can you do with that?
Anyway, I didn't really see much in Alchemy that would encourage me to purchase it. It doesn't innovate, at all, beyond making the Action cards more difficult to purchase. Dominion: Intrigue made Victory cards more relevant and interesting. Dominion: Seaside played with time with Duration cards. Dominion: Prosperity pushed the power level with Platinum and Colony, and a lot of high-priced Action cards. Dominion: Alchemy just doesn't do anything interesting or unexpected.
My opinion of the expansion probably wasn't helped by the weird feeling my wife and I goy from Ben. My initial thought was "child molester." When my wife mentioned it to me later, away from Ben, she suggested rapist. Either way, there was something off about that guy.
Anyway, we next joined a Munchkin tournament. It was fun, but obnoxiously, the guy who won did so by playing a card that stole the monster I was fighting (to go from level 7 to level 9, I think) and caused it to fight him, instead. He was at level 8, so defeating this big monster would win him the game. He couldn't actually defeat it, himself, though, so he convinced a girl to help him out. She was at level 9, and was an Elf, which meant that she would also go to level 10 by helping him. They both won. I didn't mind losing, and I didn't mind them winning. I was just annoyed that I didn't even get to kill that big monster and go to level 9 before losing. It was like my second-place finish was stolen from me, or something. Anyway, I was annoyed. Still, the Steve Jackson Games guy handed out a bunch of little prizes, including a cute little stuffed toy that my wife and I took home.
At about this time we discovered that my wife's name had been drawn to receive a door prize. We were presented with a copy of Karnaxis, a modern economics game. The designer and his family were there, demoing the game and selling it at a discount price. We had chatted with them earlier and had planned to try their game at some point. I had already decided that I wanted to buy it if it ended up being fun, but then we got a free copy. So, we didn't have to buy it, which was cool. We didn't have a chance to play it that day, though. That would have to wait until the next day.
View the game here.
After picking up the game, we then played Small World for the first time. We played with gentleman whose name I cannot recall, other than it sounded French. He had only played once or twice, before, but thankfully we had a volunteer from the con help us out and explain the game to us. It was a lot of fun. The idea is to draft from the available races and use them to take over as many sections of the map as possible. At the end of his or her turn, the player receives coins for each section he or she controls. The coins count as victory points, although they can also be used to draft the best races. Cassie was lucky enough to smash face with Trolls. Those things are really tough to move once they set up their defenses. She ended up winning by a few points. It was a lot of fun. We may have to pick up a copy.
The last game we played that day was called The Resistance. Apparently it's a lot like Werewolves, which I've heard of, but never played. It's for five to ten players. Each player is dealt a character card which they do not reveal; it tells them whether they are loyal to the resistance, or a spy. All players then cover their eyes, and the spies are allowed to reveal themselves to each other. Then, the resistance attempts five missions to bring down the oppressive regime. Players take turns being the fearless leader. The leader selects several other players to join him or her on the mission. The exact number of players on the mission varies depending on the total numbers of players and on the mission. All players then vote on whether or not they accept the assignments for the team. (If the traitors know that a traitor is on the team, they will vote to accept the team. If the loyal resistance members are certain that a traitor is on the team, they will vote no, although it's difficult for them to know for certain, so they will usually accept the team.) On a majority, the team is accepted.
Then, each team member on the mission hands the leader a face-down card, either a red card or a blue card. These are shuffled so that no one is certain who put in which card. All the cards are then revealed. If there is even on red card, the mission failed. Otherwise, the mission is a success. The players must try to determine who the traitors are before it is too late. If they succeed in three missions, they win. If three missions are failed, the traitors win. It's a fun and interesting game, and really very quick, but it can get very "yelly" as suspicions are thrown about. "You're a traitor! You must be!" "That's ridiculous! You're only accusing me to throw suspicion off of yourself!"
I was a traitor, which of course my wife knew almost immediately, because she can read me like a trashy magazine. Thankfully, not everyone else was as sure. I was on the first mission, along with the leader (I think his name was Daniel) and one other person. I can't remember her name. One of the traitors had a temporary special ability that turn that allowed him to peek at someone's character card, and he used it on the female on the team. He promptly and loudly accused her of being a traitor. Then, I slipped a red card into the mission to fail it, so everyone assumed that she really was a traitor. It threw suspicion off of me quite superbly. Subsequently, I managed to get onto the second mission and fail it without anyone being sure if I was a traitor.
We almost had the game in the bag, but we got unlucky with the third mission. One of the traitors--the only one that at this point everyone was 95% certain was a traitor--was the leader that turn. He failed to accurately predict what the NEXT leader would do, and so he chose his team poorly and revealed that certain players were definitely NOT traitors. Thus, the resistance was able to complete the third, fourth, and fifth missions and steal the game.
Still, it was a lot of fun, if a little too stressful for my wife.
We then left for a dinner appointment and to check into our hotel. We hit up the con the next day, as well, but that's a post for another day.
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