This was a first time Midcon visit for me, once again helping out
Spirit Games by running some game demos for their stall at the event.
The venue was really quite nice and the staff really friendly, also the committee were really helpful in getting us a table to demo games on when all the main tables when we turned up had already been grabbed.
Unfortunately this was a tad on the small side but we made do for the day, as you can see we had to cram on
Cargo Noir a bit:
The place was pretty packed all day, with plenty of tea & coffee on hand during the day but the bonus was the Hotel puttin on some real ales behind the bar which was very welcome indeed
Started the day off with a game of
Lost Temple which is a really fun little game.
At the start of the game players are dealt one of the 9 character cards, on the bottom right of the cards are symbols showing what that player will start with, a number of gems and possibly a machete, most importantly it shows there starting position on the game board. After this initial placement all the cards are handed back to the start player who is the person at the back of the race.
The cards are shuffled then the start player deals out a number of faceup and/or face down depending on the number of players, then selects a card from the remainder. The rest are handed to the player on his left and so on until everyone has chosen. The start player then announces each character in order and the player who character is called reveals the card, takes a gem from the bank and takes the action of that character. This continues until everyone has taken their turn.
There are certain spaces on the board with chance tokens, these have both positive and negative results on you race to find the lost temple. There is also a chance token that gives someone the start player for next turn which helps mix things up a little. There is also several space of Deep jungle which you need to have a machete to move through otherwise your movement ends on that space.
Each of the characters has a unique ability that helps you in someway on you quest to find the lost temple and a careful choice and use of these characters is essential to doing well.
The character mechanic is similar to Citadels as is the downtime this produces whilst people ponder their selection, though once you are more familiar with the roles this should get a bit faster. Otherwise this is a very different game from Citadels and is good fun to play.
The winner is the first person to land on the Lost Temple (There are two on the board, the first is used with 6-8 players the 2nd for less players)
Played with 3 of us and amazingly I won this (even though it is my own game which normally means I lose
)
Next up was a game of
Undermining
Players compete to extract resources from the mine to either upgrade their UMV or complete contracts to earn Star bucks. In order to achieve this on their turn each player has 7 actions they can take using one of the initial 3 Action Points.
Drill, Drive, Portal, Recharge, Fulfil Contracts, Build, or Unload
Building allows you to upgrade your UMV:
Container - which adds an additional storage to your UMV.
Drill Bit - Increases your drilling by 1 for each Action Point spent.
Rockets - Increases your move by 1 square for each Action point spent.
Reactor - Increases you total action points by one.
Each UMV has 5 slots (4 slots in a 5 player game) in which to place these upgrades
If you managed to drill an Alien Tech token when you take the unload action you take a card from the deck. You can use this alien tech at ny point on your turn and they give you various bonuses to aid your mining efforts. These include extra dilling, extra movement, unload anywhere, teleport and extra battery charge all of which enhance you ability to plunder the resources on the mine.
The game turns play very quickly and there is a lot of competitive play available here as everyone attempts to get to all the good "stuff". You can go for early wins buy completing contracts for the higher payouts or go for upgrades early to enable you to dig more, deeper and faster.
Scoring
You count up all your star bucks, you get 1 for each resource you have left in your warehouse/cargo and you also get a sliding scale of points awarded for how many upgrades you managed to build and you also get 1 point for each unused alien tech card.
First Game: Nick:35, Sal:30 and Me:28
Second Game: Me:34, Luke:31 and Caz:27
Lastly we played
Cargo Noir, as mentioned above we had to cram this on a bit! This is a lovely game by
Days of Wonder.
Each players represent a family of smugglers the aim is to amass the most Victory points (in the form of cards representing various assets - Dive Bars, Yachts, Night Clubs etc). To purchase the VP cards each player must place their ships in a port and bid for the goods available there, if they are successful they get all the goods. To win a bid you must be the only player left bidding in that port at the start of your turn otherwise you either have to increase your bid or withdraw. In order to purchase cards you trade in your goods, upto 9 of the same or upto 9 different, you earn differing amounts depending on which option.
The amount of cargo you can hold is limited at the start but you can buy VP cards that increase your storage, as well as VP cards that increase your fleet and a final one that allows you to gain coins when you withdraw from a bid.
Finally there is the port of Macao where there is a Casino where your ships earn $2 or the port where for each ship placed you can swap a trade good with any located face up or take one at random from the bag.
This is a quick game to learn and is quick to play whilst providing for a bit of strategic play. Really fun little game, not deep but a challenge none the less.
Caz:150, Luke:90 and Me:65
On the Sunday we returned for another full day of gaming and started the day off with a game of
Belfort:
This is a truly beautiful game with lots going on and that feeling that you needed to have done something more on your last turn
. A worker placement style game but where the ultimate goal is area control to score points. There is plenty of choices to be made here and the game is a lot of fun and usually generates quite a lot of jokes around the table.
Paul won this, with Me, Caz and Nick coming joint 2nd
We had another game of Undermining today with just the two of us, which proved quite interesting and still fun. Caz:53, Me:39
Finally we rounded off the day with a game of
The Speicherstadt this is a really great game that I always enjoy playing and/or Teaching. This has gotten a lot of plays at our Wednesday Night sessions at
Spirit Games.
Ian:31, Caz:26, Chris:25 and Me:17
On the whole this was a really good event with helpful organisers and venue staff, the only dissapointment was that people were putting tables together to get more space (not necessarily a problem) but often this was not truly needed and others, like us, were struggling to find table space. I hope at the next event the organisers watch out for this a bit more and help by persuading people to free up tables when they are not really needed so more people can setup and play games.
Below is a Slideshow of images I took on the day or you can visit my
Google+ MidCon 2012 Album
