Matt Carlson: The Long Tail of Gen Con
The school boardgame club is back in full swing, so I’ve been able to play a few games here and there, but with the new year I’ve focused more on shorter classic games I can teach to the newcomers. Thus I have fewer comments and thoughts on newer games at the moment. Most of my new material came through my Gen Con visit and that has now been sufficiently covered here and elsewhere. I haven’t yet got up the nerve to figure out how to teach and then play Agricola in about an hour and a half.
If you missed it, my BGN photo report was posted just a few days after Gen Con ended. Since that time I’ve written several more articles over at GamingWith Children. If you’re interested at all, check out Gen Con – The Boardgame, Gen Con – The Video Games, and/or Gen Con – The RPG.
With all those articles behind me, I’m written out for the moment. I’ll regroup and see you all in two weeks with thoughts on some of my newer games. To tide you over until then, here’s my very brief thoughts…
Rapscallion - A bidding based card game by Ted Alspach and distributed by FRED Distribution that seems to be harder to explain than it should be, and seemed mediocre at first but is growing on me.
Agricola - I’m a believer. I’m a sucker for farming games, development games, and strong themes. I think it isn’t as “balanced” as Puerto Rico but that may make it a better game for less experienced players (as the game does not favor players who sit to the left of the newest/least experienced player as Puero Rico can). I need to try out the game with different numbers of people, so far its mostly been a full compliment of 4 or 5.
Senji - I like it, but still need to get in another game or two to examine how much staying power the game holds for me.
One last question before I leave. Did anyone attend the large video gamer gathering in the NorthWest called PAX last weekend? I know Wizards of the Coast was there but I’d be curious to find out if there was any significant boardgaming going on. The hosts of the convention (the guys at Penny Arcade) have gone on record as being fans of some of the more popular gateway type games (Carcassonne, etc…) but I wasn’t sure if that filtered down into the gathering or not.
Posted by Matt J. Carlson on Sep 6, 2008 at 03:00 AM in Columnists, Gone Gaming, Matt J. Carlson / 1231
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It sounds like both FFGs were also at PAX. Posted by Lee Fisher on Sep 6, 2008 at 07:51 AM | #
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I was at PAX and played Battlestar Galactica, A Touch of Evil (from the two FFGs) and Revolution! (SJG). I definitely would not consider it a con for boardgamers at this time, although Settlers, Carc, PR, and PowerGrid were being played. They had a nice boardgame library with multiple Agricolas. The critical mass is definitely there for videogames, so during the day the boardgaming areas were pretty empty. It was only at night that things heated up. Posted by Jonathan Franklin on Sep 6, 2008 at 01:03 PM | #
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There definitely was a strong tabletop presence there. They had a separate building for tabletop gaming with one floor reserved for boardgames. The library was pretty extensive and I also saw StarCraft, Puerto Rico, Ca$h and Gun$, Agricola and a few others that I can’t remember being played. There were also Settlers, Carcassonne, Puerto Rico and other tournaments scheduled. I guess they had at least fifty tables that would hold eight players each. Saturday it got so busy that they had to turn people away from the library due to lack of free tables on that. I definitely had fun playing games there. Seemed like a nice crowd. People wandering around to check out all the games being played and asking to join in unstarted games. Not necessarily worth going to strictly for boardgames, though I spent more time playing boardgames than I probably did on the expo floor. :D Posted by Greg Williams on Sep 7, 2008 at 10:48 AM | #
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