I had a great time yesterday at Con of the North. I got to see some friends I hadn't seen in a while. I met a whole slew of new people who are fun to game with and I got to try out tons of new games. What follows is the run down.
The first game I played was called Glory to Rome (BoardGameGeek link.) Allison Kickstarted a copy of the new edition of this for my birthday last September. I had a couple of production issues so it hasn't arrived yet and I have been wanting to play it for quite some time. So it was a perfect little game to start the Con with. I really enjoyed it and found it very interesting. I did poorly and got doubled up in points by the winner but am looking forward to playing it again and many times in the future with my own copy.
The next game was Container (BoardGameGeek link.) This is a game I've been wanting to play for a long time. It is a game about producing and shipping goods on the open sea. It is unique in that it is a purely economic game wherein the players set all the prices for anything. One of the large criticisms of the games is that it can come to a grinding halt if the players just price everything incorrectly and don't buy each other's stuff. Thankfully we didn't have that problem in our group and the game was pretty outstanding. For the second game in a row I was trounced pretty soundly but I really enjoyed it.
After Container was Belfort (BoardGameGeek link.) This is a pretty new game about a group of dwarves, elves, and gnomes building a city together and trying to have majority control of different sections of the city. It combines a bunch of different mechanisms I like and I was enjoying myself when I took the picture but by the end of the game it had gotten too same-y and took too long. It was neat, and I can see why it has gotten some of the hype on BoardGameGeek that it's got, but my main complaint is that it just dragged by the end of the game and there weren't enough interesting decisions. As opposed to Container where every decision was important and often agonizing at the same time.
Next up was Walnut Grove (BoardGameGeek link.) As I noted with my picture this game was brutal at the beginning. Now granted, none of us had played and we were just learning and we didn't understand the ramifications of the decisions we were making in the first turn or two, but it was still pretty unforgiving. It is about life in the olden days of the town of Walnut Grove and farming your land, storing you goods in a barn, and using those goods in town to hire more people or buy more structures for your farm. By the end it made a lot more sense to everyone and we were all enjoying it. I actually ended up winning and would love to try this one again. And yes, Walnut Grove is a city in Minnesota. It is home to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum.
Before dinner we played a game called Dragon Rampage (BoardGameGeek link.) This is basically a Yahtzee variant where a party of adventurers has awakened a dragon who starts chasing them out of his cave. You either want to be the first one out of the cave or you want to kill the dragon and hit it the most times. It has lots of randomness and opportunities to screw your neighbor. It takes the right attitude and group to enjoy this game. My side of the table was having a great time. Sadly, the other side was not. The dice were just not working for a couple of people and it really affected what they could do (which ended up not being much) in the game.
After visiting the delicious taco bar we headed back up stairs to start Coney Island (BoardGameGeek link.) This game is about what you probably think it is. You're building up an amusement park area by sending out your promoters and trying to build the biggest attractions. It was fairly interesting but similar to some other games I've played that I think I'd rather play. I'd try it again if a bunch of other people wanted to, but it was only okay.
The last game of the night was Last Will (BoardGameGeek link.) As I noted below, it is basically Brewster's Millions (which is one of my favorite movies from growing up in the 80's) the game. You have all this money that you have to piddle away in order to be worthy of inheriting your rich uncle's real fortune. So you expensive manors and let them become dilapidated and sell them for pennies on the dollar. You take your horse on a boat ride just for the extravagance of it. You throw fancy balls which cost millions of dollars and have nothing to show for it afterward. I came in last (which seemed to be a theme of the day) but had a great time playing (which thankfully was another theme of the day.) I really liked this one and it was a perfect end to my first day at Con of the North.
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