Intro
Lam Doan Gen Con Game Award: Scout 🏅
Gamernauts 🧑🚀
Joe, Ryan, Bgregg, Nadine, Hysam, Lam, David, Aikie, Mark, Jacki
Lesson learned from this Gen Con:
- Book VRBO and avoid Airbnb due to last minute cancellations
- When events are available, plan with the group on which group events to purchase
- Avoid the event of the library at Lucas Oil Stadium, they lack new games
- Research on anticipated new games and book events for a longer game play than a short demo
- On the day/time event tickets are on sale, log in and purchase what's in the cart so that the tickets won't get booked.
- On the morning of Gen Con, strive to get there 60 minutes earlier than target arrival time due to unexpected hurdles
- Park on Meridian/Georgia in the open lot. The parking employee works late, so it's safe to park outside. They give the best price for the distance from entrance.
Board Games
Legend
- 💰 - Bought/will buy
- 🥳 - Fun but won't buy
12 Rivers 🥳
In this game, players place their dams onto the board in turn order. Once everyone is done, the gate locking the marbles is released. When your dam catches multiple marbles, the respective player choose which marble to collect and remove their dam so that the next dam can catch marbles. The marbles are used to fulfill your victory point card. This marble/dam mechanic is new and interesting, but the game play could improve.
Durian 💰
Durian is like liar's dice, a hot potato game and with less probability/math. It's exciting, full of laughter, and suitable for a party game.
Endeavor Deep Sea 🥳/💰 (undecided)
Endeavor Deep Sea is an engine building game where your boats and submarines explore the sea to gather more resources. Each player has 4 track markers that determines your actions and how to improve your engine. The game isn't forgiving if you have a bad engine which was my case when I demoed the game. However, I still had fun.
Hard To Get 💰
Great cooperative party game like codenames. There is a 4x4 set of cards and one of them is the right answer. The guessers need to cross out 15 cards, leaving the correct answer visible. The clue giver will give hints over the course of 5 rounds where in each round, the clue giver reveals a card that contains 2 cards in which they have to choose 1. With that hint, the guesser needs to cross out at least 1 card.
The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth 🥳
This game is like 7Wonders Duel, but with the Lord of the Rings twist. It's fun and interesting, but I already have 7Wonders Duel which doesn't make sense for me to stack similar games. Had I not have 7Wonders Duel, then I would have gotten this game.
Raas: A Dance of Love 💰
The theme of this game is about Indian dancing which translates sticks and dress for items on the player board. This game is a tableau builder where each player chooses one of the set of spinning wheel to collect a set of items to build onto their board. Based on the combination of items on their board, it could increase the player's victory points. Based on which spinning wheel the players choose will dictate how many times the each wheels spin. Too many combinations to iterate through, different ways to score points, and beautiful art. Jacki loved this game!
Scout 💰
Shedding game that is very balanced even if you start off with a bad hand. All cards are double sided with different numbers. Each player cannot rearrange the order of their hand and must choose one orientation, the hand that is right side up or the hand that is upside down. The leading player will play an active hand of a straight (12, 789, etc) or a set (single, pair, trips, etc) and then the next player needs to either beat it with a higher hand or Scout (draw an edge card from the active hand and give that player a point). When one player sheds all of their cards, players with remaining cards lose 1 point for each card in their hand. On the last night of Gen Con, we stayed up until 2am playing instead of going to bed by midnight, that's how fun it is!
SETI 🥳/💰 (undecided)
The idea is that each player is searching for extraterrestrial life by landing their probe on planets/moons. This game is a hand management game and exploring the galaxy through different sets of actions. There is an engine and efficiency component to it where each player plays until they've exhausted their resources and then pass. The game is very unforgiving where if a player doesn't have a good vision of how they intend to play their hand, then the player will pass early. It's fun when you're doing well and not so fun when you're doing bad.
Suna Valo 💰
A 2 player game - during a player's turn, they have to set 3 cards onto the market and place resources on there to sell for the opposing player. The player must pick 1 card either on the opponent or theirs, and if they pick theirs, then they just get their resources back. When a card is chosen, it is placed onto their tableau in the respective colored column and then all cards of that color get activated. The cards can either could gain resources or enable spending resources on different action areas to trade in for victory points or moving up the research tree. It's a very fun game play and it would have been nice to support more players.
Tetris 💰
Tetris game where we can screw over other players by targeting players and dropping a piece of our choice in any area of the vertical board.
Tianxia 💰
Each colony is building buildings in specific regions while preparing to defend against invaders of the respective regions. If you and your opponent have buildings in the same region, then it's recommended to partner up and defend that area well. Worker placement game, research track, resource management, small engine component, and building buildings in different region. This really grew on Jacki!
Zenith 🥳
2 player games where there are 5 different colored tokens in the middle of the board. Each player is trying to collect the colored tokens by playing cards to pull those towards them. A card indicates which colors to pull and by how many steps, with an action ability. There is a research tree that requires players to pay to move up the track and gain bonuses. To win, a player needs to get 3 of the same colored tokens, 4 completely different colored tokens, or 5 of any tokens. Cool and fun game, but didn't make the cut.
Other
Burgeezy 🍔
Hands down the best vegan joint I've ever been to. If I didn't know this place was vegan, I would have thought that the burger had meat. I've eaten here 3 times during this trip. I've tried the pineapple express, BBQ Bacon, Jr. House cheezeburger, Philly Burger, and the Crispy Chick'n. The Philly Burger and Crispy Chick'n is the best!
Wifey eats burger 👱🏽♀️🍔
Cripsy Chick'n 🐔
Philly Cheesesteak Burgeezy 🧀🍔
Game designer of Wingspan
Elizabeth Hargrave designed the board game Wingspan. When someone mentioned who she is, I immediately asked for a picture with the celebrity!
Art
Magic The Gathering 🖼️
Cool portraits 🖼️
Stained Glass 🖼️
