Convention Report: Gencon 2006: August 12, 2006 - Part 2 (Day 3)

By Rick Thornquist
August 12, 2006

Here’s part two of my report on the third day of Gencon 2006.  After my game of Marvel Heroes I headed back to the hotel to pound out yesterday’s report, which took quite a while - I didn’t finish it until mid-afternoon.  I then headed back to the convention center where I got a chance to visit with some more game companies and play some more games.  I visited with 3am Games, Twilight Creations, Asmodée and Rio Grande Games and got to play Easter Island and Iliad.  Here we go!

3am Games
My first publisher visit was with 3am Games.  They were showing their line of games including their newest card game - It’s Good to Be the King, which is in stores now.  The game was designed by Ben Shanks, who was on hand to demo the game. 

It’s Good to Be the King includes two decks of cards.  The court deck is a deck of characters - some examples are the Knight, the Herald, Fool, the Friar, and the Dog - plus some special action cards.  The other deck is called the chartulary deck.  Players are dealt a hand of court cards to start.

Each round starts with a trading phase (where players can trade court cards) and then a chartulary card is revealed that shows the ranking of the characters.  For example, in one round the ranking could be Friar, Knight, Herald, Dog, Friar, etc.  Players then in turn play sets of court cards, each player playing a set of more cards than the previous player or cards with a higher rank.  You can also place special action cards.  When everyone has passed, the round ends and whoever has the highest ranking set gets the most points, second gets less, and so on.  After seven rounds whoever has the most points wins.

I also got another peek at their upcoming board game Nazca, also designed by Shanks.  I am hoping to get in a game, or at least a demo, of the game tomorrow.  3am is shooting to release Nazca next year.

Don Bessinger of 3am let me in on their next game in line, to be titled Mummy Factory.  This is another Ben Shanks design.  This is a card game which is about building the most valuable mummys.  This should be a Spring 2007 release.

Twilight Creations
My next stop was Twilight Creations where I got to chat with Kerry Breitenstein.  Twilight was also showing their line of games including their newest board game Easter Island (I played the game - see below).  That game is shipping to distributors and should be in game stores shortly.

Their next releases will be the Bag o’ Zombies!!! Babes, scheduled for October, the Knizia game Mmm… Brains! to be released in December and Zombietown, which is shooting for a January / February 2007 release (hmmm… do we sense a common theme in these games?).

Kerry told me that Hidden Conflict 2 has been put on hold for now.

Easter Island
While at the Twilight Creations booth I got a chance to sit down and play a game of their newest release Easter Island.  The game was designed by Roberto Fraga and Odet L´Homer.  This is a two player game that is for ages 8 and up and plays in 30-40 minutes (though the game I played was much more like 15 minutes - we moved fast).

The board shows a 5x5 grid and at each end of each row and column there is a yellow spot (see the picture below).  Each player gets a set of Easter Island statues and to set up, the players take turns placing until there are three of each player’s statues on the board.  Each player starts with a set of sun tokens.

On your turn, you have two actions and there are five different actions you can take - place a new statue, move a statue (in a line as far as you want, but you can’t jump over other statues), rotate a statue, place a sun or reveal a sun.  The suns are placed in the yellows spots at the ends of the rows and columns.

When a sun is revealed, it shines along it’s row or column.  If the ray hit a statue in the front or back, that statue is removed from the game.  If it gets hit in the side, the ray gets deflected out the front of the statue and continues, perhaps to hit another statue to remove it or get deflected again.  The ray keeps going until it hits and removes a statue (if the ray goes off the board, the last statue to deflect the ray gets removed).  Players play until a player has only one statue left - the other player wins the game.

The game is basically a two player abstract, easy to learn, but a bit of a brain burner to play.  For the kind of game that it is, I thought it worked quite well.  The statue components are very nice indeed.  Those looking for a two player abstract with a bit of thinking involved should check out Easter Island. 

Asmodée
My next stop was Asmodée where I got a chance to meet Steve Edline, who is the newest addition to the Asmodée group.  Designer Christophe Boelinger was also on hand to show their line of Dungeon Twister games including the newest Dungeon Twister: 3/4 Players expansion.

They had intended to be selling their newest game Iliad, but unfortunately the games they received from the manufacturer had a number of the card backs misprinted.  This was very unfortunate as they ended up with a pile of unsellable games.  They did demo the game, though, and interesting enough there were some people who actually insisted on buying the game, even with the misprints, after a demo because they liked it so much.  Steve told me that the game has to now be completely reprinted and shipped again - sadly, this means the game now won’t be available until October.

Some of their other upcoming games:  Mission: Red Planet is due in Early September.  Dungeon Twister: Forces of Darkness is set for November.  A number of other titles have been cancelled for now, the ‘Big Box Game’ that I reported on at the GAMA Trade Show, Renaissance and Sharur: Evolutions.  The Age of Gods (the English version of L’Age des Dieux) has been moved to 2007.

Asmodée’s big new game being introduced here at Gencon was their upcoming miniatures game Hell Dorado.  Co-designer Geoffrey Picard was on hand and he showed me the game.  Now I don’t ordinarily cover miniatures games, but I thought I’d give you a quick overview of this one.

Hell Dorado is basically a miniatures wargame.  It takes place during the 30 Years War when the gates of hell opened up.  Now in most games the demons would come out to take control of the Earth but in Hell Dorado, the opposite happens - religious fanatics descend into hell to conquer it.

The game is meant to be easy to set up and play - a game can be played in an hour.  The miniatures are metal and unpainted - I saw a bunch of them and they were extraordinary.  The game will be initially sold in four started boxes - one of each faction.  The game is to be introduced at the French Gencon in April 2007 and should be available in the Spring of 2007.

Oh, and a note about Formula De.  Steve is working very hard to get the game reprinted - they are in discussions with the designers at this point to decide how to do this.  Be assured that Steve would like nothing better than to have Formula De back on store shelves!

After checking out Asmodée, I wandered over to the media guests area.  This is where they have the celebrities who will chat with you and sign autographs (I think, for a price).  Jamie Bamber from Battlestar Galactica was there along with others that were somewhat less interesting to me.  Of most interest to me were Grant Imahara and Kari Byron of Mythbusters, one of my favorite shows.  I didn’t actually go to talk to them, but seeing cutie Kari in person, even from a distance, made my day.

Immortal Eyes Games
I then made a quick stop at Immortal Eyes Games.  They were showing the two games they introduced at Origins - Pecking Order and Conquest of Pangea, plus their newest game - Terra Nova (which I played at Origins).

Rio Grande Games
My next victim was Jay Tummelson of Rio Grande Games.  Jay had a big booth with lots of tables to demo his games.  He didn’t have any new releases since Origins, so he was demoing his newer games like the El Grande Decennial Edition, Thurn and Taxis, Toppo, and many more.

You can see the Rio Grande release schedule on the Gone Cardboard portion of this site and it’s mostly on target, but I did get a few clarifications from Jay.  Most of the games I have marked as Fall 2006 (Essen)? will indeed be at Essen.  One game that remains a question mark is the ‘Friedemann Friese Dungeon Game’ - that may not make it to Essen.  One more release that Rio Grande has planned for Essen is Medici vs Strozzi - the two player Medici game. 

Oh, and Jay will be doing two Hans im Gluck games that are scheduled for Essen - one is the Lutz Stepponat game with the German title Kabale und Hiebe and the other is the Marcel-André Casasola-Merkle game Taluva (you can find more on these games in our Essen Preview).

Jay is hoping for the ‘Saint Petersburg Expansion’ for Fall of this year.  The new version of Medici game should make an appearance before the end of the year.

About Industria… this one has been quite a soap opera.  Jay originally received multilingual versions of the game from Queen but they had a board that was in German.  Jay found this unacceptable and didn’t sell them, hoping that Queen could fix them up.  It seems that’s not going to happen, so Jay is simply going to sell his games with the German board. The game is playable, though having the board in German isn’t too great.

After I finished with Rio Grande Games, the exhibit hall was closing.  I wandered around the convention center a bit, mostly people watching.  Gencon is know for people wearing costumes and while I did see a number of them - some quite elaborate - there seemed to be less costumes this year than last year. In previous years there was always pile of Klingons - this year I don’t think I saw any.

Another thing Gencon is known for is t-shirts.  Wearing t-shirts with goofy messages seems to be a very common thing.  I’ve seen many very funny shirts - of course, many of them would only be funny to the geek set.  My favorite of the show so far was a girl wearing a t-shirt that said:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
All your base
Are belong to you

(If you don’t understand that, I’m not too surprised - it is very much a geek thing)

Iliad
I then headed back to my room to do some work before heading to the Hyatt hotel for some gaming.  I got together with some of the regular gaming crowd there - Dale Yu, Valerie Putman, Ted Cheatham, Brian Yu, John Palagyi and Tyler Putman.  We played three games including Iliad, It’s Good to be the King, and Ted’s design Silk Road (which I reported on the first day).  I am going to give you a report on Iliad, but I’m running late for my first appointment of the day so I’m going to have to save that for tomorrow’s report.

Stay tuned!

Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version
	3am Games
	Twilight Creations
	Easter Island box
	Easter Island game
	Easter Island piece close-up
	Asmodée
	The boys of Asmodée - Steve Edline, Geoffrey Picard, Christophe Arnoult, and Dungeon Twister designer Christophe Boelinger
	Dungeon Twister with the 3/4 Players expansion
	Hell Dorado with some special terrain
	A painted Hell Dorado figure
	Immortal Eyes Games
	Terrra Nova
	Part of the Rio Grande Games booth

© 2006 Rick Thornquist

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