DAY TWO:Total Con, Where the Geeky Things Are.

By Tuna Farrell 

 



 

This is the second installment in a series of posts dedicated to our adventure at Total Con. Tuna secretly kept a detailed journal of the events and items of interest and we have decided it is important for us to not only share these bits of geekery with other folks but also to save them for posterity here.

Feb. 21st The vendor room wasn’t ready to open yesterday so we take some time to wander around in there. We see a lot of games we’d love to try but they’re not available to demo in the convention hall. Bummer. Still, lots of cool things that tempt us with their shiny cellophane wrappings and brightly painted images.

Quarriors set up

It’s day two of the convention and it is starting to fill up; there are definitely more people here than yesterday; though open tables are still pretty easy to find. We manage to get a copy of Quarriors from the library (the game Marvel Dice Masters is sort of based on) so we give that a go. Being familiar with the game mechanics we picked it up really quickly and it was pretty fun. A random guy walks by the table and offers to sell us his copy of Quarriors for “cheap”. Of course he keeps raising the price, which sort of aggravates me. I decide that as long as a new copy isn’t outrageously expensive I’ll buy a new one rather than give this guy my money.

It’s the principle of the thing.

Takenoko Deluxe.

We spend some time relaxing and just wandering around looking at what people are playing seeing if something catches our eye. We see a deluxe version of Takenoko (a Japanese import game that involves a panda eating bamboo. Yeah I know but It’s cooler than you might think) being played. I really liked the preview I saw of this on “Table Top”, however, I find the deluxe version a bit of a put off because the pieces are so huge. It’s beautifully made, really good quality game pieces. But all the pieces are 4-5 times bigger than the regular set, and the die that comes with the game is bigger than a softball. Plus it costs $300. I might buy the regular set, but not this collector’s edition.

Can't Stop, no seriously you Can't!

Next we play a game called “Can’t Stop”, a game from Mike’s childhood. It involves dice, a slotted board, and colored traffic cones. Yup, traffic cones. You advance your traffic cones across the board in order to be the first to the end. Believe it or not, it was fun. Not complicated, there was some real strategy involved, it was over fairly quickly, but it was pretty fun.

ApocalypZe, eh we tried.

A bit later we decide to try one of the developer games (ApocalypZe), a zombie based card game, with various survivor factions. It was .. okay. It felt overly complicated and didn’t seem to flow very naturally from one play to the next. They had obviously put a lot of effort into it and the artwork on the cards was very well done, but we probably won’t be picking this one up.

Eric Summerer of Dice Tower, with Flip Florey and Cris M.

The people from Dice Tower were doing a live recording of their show here at the con, and Mike wanted to attend. I was going along just because it was something to do and Al figured he’d show up and leave after a few minutes. I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed the show, and Al was even more surprised that he stayed and liked it as well. They had guests from several different gaming pod casts (Flip the Table, Not Just Another Pod Cast, and Cardboard Jungle). The Flip the Table guys are actually from Bangor Maine. This is probably as close to celebrity that I will ever actually get, so of course I am getting star struck being in such proximity to “famous” people; especially as this is a small con and we keep running into these guys everywhere.

The Pod Cast hosts talk about new games that they have played (Marvel Dice Masters gets a mention), games that they hope to play, and just general board/card game stuff. One new game they discuss is called “Doom That Came to Atlantic City” sounds pretty cool. It’s a reverse version of Monopoly. You start with a full city and then you have to summon the Elder Gods to destroy it. I’m looking forward to that one let me tell you.

They record two episodes, and at the end, perform a short skit about syndicated radio host Dr. Judy who gives dating advice and advises a female caller that her instincts that her boyfriend is cheating on her are spot on. What adult man plays board games all day?

*e-hem*

We also got some swag at the pod cast. Mike got some official Dice Tower Dice, and Al and I got some throwaway card games. Yay! Free stuff!

What's he Building in There? A win for Al that's what.

Not knowing what else to do, we decided to take one of the games we brought with us down to the game floor to play. “What’s He Building In There?” is a game I haven’t tried yet, though Mike and Al both have. In this game you are a mad scientist building a doomsday device and an escape vehicle. You have to place workers and your scientist on the board each turn to gather the materials you need to build both your device and escape. Another awesome game, even though I didn’t complete my doomsday device (I forgot my refined glass!).

Side note: There was a woman there selling cupcakes and cookies. Cookies had written on it “Bribe” to bribe your GM, or Health or Mana; cupcakes had little frosting dragons or frosting hands reaching up from inside. She also had a great business model. Roll a twenty sided dice. On a twenty you got a free cupcake, on a 17-19 you got .50 off, on a roll of one you had to buy two cupcakes. I told her “You picked the right audience for this".

I rolled a 10, Mike rolled a 17. They were pretty good cupcakes.

After several hours at Total Con I have made an observation. A majority of the people here are men over 40, in excess of 220-240 lbs. bearded, and wearing glasses.

…..

This makes me distinctly uncomfortable.

Mike and I had signed up for a con run game of Zombicide. We play this a lot amongst ourselves but we wanted to try it with a different group. Al signed up for an old Avalon Hill strategy game called Panzer Blitz while we did this.

Eight Minute Empire.

Al goes off to his game, and we head to the assigned table … no Zombicide. There’s a mother/son there waiting also, but no one is there to run the game. Mike and I decide to try out a game from the open cabinet called “Eight Minute Empire” while we wait to see if anyone shows up. Turns out the game is somewhat miss named. It took longer to play than eight minutes; though the rules only took about eight minutes to learn so maybe not.

So, no one shows up; Al finishes his game. Nothing much going on so Al decides to head up to the room with a promise/threat that he’ll come back later to check on us. Mike and I decide to wander around for a bit just to stretch our legs and hopefully our imaginations. We see one of the guys from the pod cast with a bunch of Zombicide stuff sitting out and we go over and say hello. After talking with him for a few minutes he asks us if we want to play a game. Sure!

Mega Zombicide layout with all the boards.

While he’s setting up he mentions that he had a scheduled game that no one showed up to. Turns out he had changed the assigned table because the original table wasn’t big enough and nobody updated the change on any of the lists. We had even asked one of the guys at the desk earlier and they told us the wrong table! We could have started playing over an hour ago.

Stupid convention people.

Mike our new "Star" makes his move while Tuna looks on.

So, the game itself is a custom made scenario created by combining all three Zombicide sets into one gigantic map, with a few house rules thrown into the mix. It wasn’t bad, but aside from a few small things it was too easy and didn’t pace as well as a regular game would have. The only bad thing? One of the players was some teenaged kid who was a total spaz. It wasn’t too bad in the beginning but as the game wore on he began to get on almost everyone’s nerves. He was actually taking turns for other players at some point, because he was too much of a spaz to wait for them.

For me, he was the only bad part of the convention (the hotel I consider a separate problem).

The game also lasted until 12:30 in the morning and lack of sleep might have made me a bit grumpy.

 

Later

Tuna