Gen Con 2011 Play Report Part 2–With Bonus Swag!

This is a quick wrap-up of the games I played with a brief section on game purchases made at Gen Con 2011.

After the terrible Terrorwerks experience we engaged in World War 1 aerial combat in the Fantasy Flight area. The “Wings of War” furball pitted 28 players against each other in a last-man-standing format.  I made it to the half-way point before elimination and Stuart was in the top five before crashing. Sadly, as is the case with this format, one of the players made it to the top five by cowardice. Rather than engage anyone he flitted about on the edge of the battle, carefully avoiding any conflicts.  I prefer the total kills method of determining a winner. The decision by the Fantasy Flight volunteer to remove the special actions on the cards meant the two-seater planes had nearly 360 degree arcs of fire with no chance of losing their gunner. A minor gripe really, but annoying. FF no longer supports the game, so we kept our planes after we died. Overall a fun experience, but next year I am not sure there are any official games planned with the recent financial issues with Nexus Games. Shame, it is a great game.

 

Gen Con ended with the “Flying Dutchman” of games, the nearly mythical “Leviathans” from Catalyst Game Labs. Leviathan demos first appeared two years ago at the GAMA Trade Show with promises of an imminent release. I played another demo with no miniatures at Gen Con 2010 and decided to try it again this year. Finally, at Gen Con 2011, there are miniatures! Yes, I played with production models and they were of good quality. Leviathans is a hex-based miniature combat game with flying battleships launching broadsides at each other in an alternate world of 1910.  “Battletech” players will recognize the mechanics, with some modifications to use odd d12 dice. Some of the dice are d4/d6/d8, but still had 12 sides.  Yes, it means some of the dice have duplicate numbers (the d8 has two “7”s). When asked, the demo leader promised this was intentional.  Still struck me as a bit odd when real dice with the correct numbers and sides are so readily available.  Rather than a “Warhammer” miniature format, this is closer to the Fantasy Flight board games with elaborate miniatures.  I am not sure the market will embrace it, but the production quality and game play were quite good.

 

That ended my gaming for the weekend, but I did shop a bit  and I thought it worth a mention. I know you will not believe me, but I spent barely $100.00 on game swag! Yes, it is true. Not sure how I resisted the siren call of the massive array of games, but I did. In brief, here is what I picked up.

 

Savage Mojo and Cubicle Seven produce a line of quality dry/wet erase maps and I got a great ship/sunken ship map called “Ship Shape” from their “Gamescapes” line.  Art is great and it includes three decks of the ship. One one side floating, the other a shattered hulk near a beach.  A steal at $12.00

 

The World’s Greatest Screen” is a four-fold vinyl  GM setup to hold up to 8 portrait pages of information from Hammerdog Games. I wanted one for years, but never got around to picking it up.  I need to put something together for my Nightbane game. $29.95.

 

Arcanis: The World of Shattered Empires from Paradigm Concepts is the only game book I purchased.  This is one of my favorite RPG worlds, mostly due to the strong story and the direct impact the Living Arcanis campaign had on the world’s history.  A probably contender for the best RPG product next year for the Origins/Ennie awards.

 

That is it for games and purchases, but I have one more post left in me with my overall thoughts on Gen Con 2011 and  announcements from a couple of major game companies.  Back soon!

 

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

 

 

 

 

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trask

Trask is a long-time gamer, world traveler and history buff. He hopes that his scribblings will both inform and advance gaming as a hobby.

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