Unpub 9--Day 2

See my first day at Unpub 9 here!

For my second day at Unpub 9, I tried out another set of fun games.

1. Coin Pusher Battleground is a two- to four-player game mimicking the classic carnival/arcade game where players stick in quarters hoping to knock over a huge pile of quarters. This game works a bit differently. Each player has a zone on a raised surface where they can add their coins (in this case, poker chips). The first coin has their champion on it. Subsequent coins have regular soldiers. The object is to knock off the other player's champion (in a three- or four-player game, only one champion needs to be knocked off to win the game). A player scores one point for every soldier knocked off and five points for a champion knocked off. The set-up seems easy but, as anyone who played coin pusher games in arcades will attest, mechanically things don't work out the way that you expect them to. Often, the force of coins is distributed in unanticipated patterns, making the game exciting and tense. I played twice--a two-player game and a four-player game. I won neither but had a great time with both.

Early on, the blue champion looks like he is in trouble

Later, the blue champion made a comeback!

2. The Monte Carlo Heist Challenge is a card game where players try to steal valuable loot. One player rolls six dice and they are sorted according to number, each die being a piece of loot. Players use their cards to gain the items. Each player has a deck of numbers from zero to six, along with a police officer and a "lay low" card. A first card is played face down and revealed simultaneously. The result gives players an idea what the others are going for. Each player then plays a second card face down. The new number will be added to the first number and the player will get that number's loot....Unless another player has the same total, then neither player gets the loot and they each have to discard one of the cards. Also unless another player played a number card and the police card, in which case they called the cops, resulting in the non-cop player losing both cards and the cop player losing one of his cards (the number or the cop). If the "lay low" card is played, the player doesn't get any valuables except for a card from the discard pile. If a player is the only one with a total matching a number, that player gets the die (or dice) and loses both cards. The numbers on the dice are victory points.

Monte Carlo Heist in progress

Some of the cards

The game is played over two rounds, the heist and the getaway.  Once all the treasures are gone, scores are recorded and the dice are rolled again for the second round. The trick is players don't get their discarded cards back, so the getaway is even tighter and more difficult.

I liked this game but wasn't wowed. I thought players didn't have enough low numbered cards to make combinations, making it hard to score the higher numbers, especially in the second round. The art is great for a prototype and the game does play quickly, so those are definite pluses.

3. Running Iron is a cooperative train heist game. Two to five players try to rob all the gold out of a safe on a train. A player rolls one die to determine if a sheriff comes toward that player or one of the neighboring players. The the player rolls six custom dice Yahtzee-style (i.e. with two re-rolls). Any die that comes up with the train symbol is locked and can't be re-rolled. Other sides have a horseshoe, a gold bar, two bullets, one bullet and a star, and two stars. When rolling is done, if there are more trains than horseshoes, the train moves forward on the track. If there are more horseshoes than trains, the horse (which represents the players) moves forward on the track. If they are equal, nothing moves. Gold bars let the player take a gold out of the safe, though multiple bar symbols are needed to get a gold out. Bullets help drive back the sheriff. Stars give reputation tokens that are used as money to buy special abilities for individual characters or items to benefit the whole group (though the special abilities often help other players too).

Each player is a different character with different abilities. I was Buck the Barkeep, so I could give out tankards to players that let them have an extra re-roll, including the trains. I only got to give out tankards when I rolled sets of trains and horseshoes. So I didn't see a lot of other action but I did help out others. Also, I could always give myself a tankard. Other players had different and interesting abilities.

The game just starting

To win, players have to get all the gold out of the safe, not get hauled into jail by the sheriff, and have the horse out ahead of the train. We pulled out a win. The game moves quickly and the player discussion on who should do what was very friendly. This was my favorite game of the convention.

4. Plan Bee is a two- to four-player abstract game where players collect pollen for their beehive. The mechanic is based on the waggle-dance that bees do in the hive to communicate with each other. Each player has one bee on the central hive. It moves either clockwise or counter-clockwise to a new arrow. The second bee moves in the direction of the new arrow as many spaces as the waggle-dancing bee moved. The movement is hard to describe but it becomes intuitive pretty quickly during play.

PlanBee set up

In mid-game

Pollen is collected from flowers outside the hive, so as the second bee moves, it picks up pollen. That pollen is added to the player's individual hive card. At the beginning of the game, players each get two scoring cards. One card they keep for personal scoring. The other card is placed face-up and everyone scores from those cards. The scores come from collecting pollen colors or from creating patterns of colors (sets of two or three, filling columns or rows, etc.) in the personal beehive. After someone collects twelve pollen, the round finishes and the game ends.

I liked this game a lot. The waggle-dance theme is fun and original, giving a dry abstract game an interesting theme. The mechanics of moving require a bit of thought, as does the placement of pollen in the hive, but those actions didn't cause any analysis paralysis in our game.

I looked at a few other games that I didn't get to play. One big game was Kingdoms Lawn Game, which involved tossing out targets that were they fired upon using wooden balls. It looked fun.

Playing the lawn game indoors

Genetically Modified Lemmings was some game where marbles were climbing up a tower. I didn't get to play this but it definitely has table presence!

Marble tower game

A hall with vendors had some games and game crafting equipment for sale. I was impressed with the Carroll County Cake Swap game and bought it since it was locally published (in Frederick, Maryland) and has a cake-making theme like our favorite reality TV show The Great British Bake Off. A review of that is sure to show up soon on the blog.

Unpub was fun to visit and hopefully I will get to do it again next year!

Unpub 9--Day 1

I finally made it back to Unpub. Unpub is a conference where game designers bring their prototype games to be playtested by total strangers. I went as a playtester and tried out a lot of fun games that are so new they haven't even been published! Hopefully some will make it into print.

Unpub 9 playtesting room

I signed up as a Registered Playtester and received a bag of swag, including coupons for local restaurants. I would have used them but I was driving back and forth. The conference is held just north of Baltimore, so it was a forty-minute drive for me.

Swag and Bag

I played a lot of awesome games. Here's the list...

1. Compass is a two-player abstract game where players vie for dominance on a five-by-five board (the official version is seven-by-seven but the designer made it smaller for faster playtest play). Each player has a hand of three cards drawn from their own deck. On a turn the player places one card and draws a new card. The cards have an octagon in the middle with one, two, three, or four arrows pointing to the sides or corners. The placement rules for the cards are simple. After the first two cards are down, any card must line up on a side with another of the player's cards and one of the player's cards must have an arrow pointing to that spot. The trick is the player can play on top of one of the other player's cards if the new card has fewer arrows than the replaced card. Play continues until one player can no longer legally play a card. Then the cards are counted and whoever has the most cards showing wins.

Compass

This game has the essential elements of an abstract game. The rules are simple. The components are clear. It feels a bit mathy in a good way. Even though I was not very good at it, I liked it and would definitely play it again.

2. Fields of Battle is a sniper-versus-sniper game. Each player has a three by six grid of tokens where the sniper is hiding. Each turn a player either takes a shot at the other player (with only six rounds of ammo, it's good to be patient) or moves one of the items on the board. Wind tokens let the player swap orthogonally; rabbit tokens let the player swap diagonally; squirrels make a circular movement; snakes move in a line. The one tree on the board can't move (naturally). The player has to do two things: (1) position his sniper well to keep him hidden but able to shoot his enemy and (2) figure out where the other sniper is in the other field.

Fields of Battle

I found the game challenging. The layout is compact and got very restrictive very quickly. The tokens are set randomly with the allowance that each player moves their tree to a new spot, hopefully making a useful swap with another token. The components, even though home-made, worked really well.

3. Road Trip is all the fun of playing the license plate game without the hassle of actually having to go on a road trip. Two to four players take turns moving around a board collecting plates and marking them off a dry-erase map of the United States (which also includes a bit of Mexico and Canada). Some of the plates are "wildlife" plates that move the player up the wildlife track, scoring points for every two wildlife plates. The map is divided into sections. Players get points for completing sections. The main way to score points is with cards that are used to identify sections that will score. The assigning of scores to sections makes the strategy much more complicated.

Road Trip's prototype box

Game set-up

My final map

The theme of the game is fun. The board changes each turn so the route from start to finish is always different. Some spots on the route have two plates rather than one, which may be too overpowered in the beginning of the game. Collecting lots of plates early on can give a lead that can look insurmountable. Without playing the game more times, I don't know whether that really is the case or not, but it sure felt like it from one play.

4. BattleHawk is a flicking game where two or four players face off against each other for dominance in a quadrant of space. Acheiving dominance can happen in three ways. First, one side can wipe out all the enemy's ships. Second, one side can take over the five satellites in the quadrant. Third, one side can capture the other's flag and take it back to their home base. Players have to choose moves carefully and plan for a winning strategy. The ships are fun shapes (like a crescent, a football, a squid, etc.) and are able to either tag up at the satellites to take them over or shoot at enemies to destroy them. Firing weapons involves flicking other items, discs or cylinders, in a variety of ways.

The write-up

The game

This game is a lot of fun. The theme is light and it has enough variety to let each game be a unique experience. The various victory conditions reward different playing styles and abilities.

I finished my Friday night playing at this point. As I was walking out, I stopped by the Panda Game Manufacturing table where they had an awesome miniatures landscape set up.

Landscape

They were also giving away boxes of component samples. The stuff is high quality and packaged very nicely. I was surprised they were giving out such nice items but the audience at Unpub is more likely to be their customers, so it makes sense.

Chest of goodies

More on day two in the next post!

Euro Quest 2015

Euro Quest is a Euro-game conference sponsored by the Games Club of Maryland. They've held the con for thirteen years and draw 300 to 400 attendees. The convention is a mixture of tournaments and open play opportunities. Some of the organizers go to the Spiel at Essen, the major board game expo held in Germany, and pick up the latest (and hottest) releases. Some of the games are even given away as door prizes. I didn't win any but I had fun playing all sorts of games.

Euro Quest 2015

The first thing I did was go to the UnPub Game Demo room. These games are still under development. Designers playtest their games to get feedback. I tried out Empire, an auction and trading game from Stephenson Brothers Games. Players vie for dominance in a time of colonial expansion. But dominance is a tricky thing to manage. Populations grow but need both goods to keep them happy (thereby amassing support) and industry to keep them busy (thereby amassing more goods). Goods can also be sold for money, which players need to fund their exploration. Exploration brings new people, goods, industry, and wealth, but often in different proportions (and usually not all four at once). If populations are idle or the empire can't pay for its bonds (yeah, there's debt too), revolt cards are earned. The game is tense and quick. Players can either start out with the same resources in the basic game or bid to be one of the great empires of the 16th and 17th century (e.g. Great Britain, France, Prussia). Those empires all have different starting resources and have special powers. Players can also trade whatever they have. At the end of the game, whoever has the most support after subtracting any revolt cards is the winner.

Empire set up

I enjoyed the game even though I didn't do very well in it.

One Euro game I tried was really Euro. By that I mean it was from Italy. Given the content of the game, it will probably never be published in the United States. The game is The Producer: 1940-1944. In it, players are studio heads in 1940s Hollywood. They want to make movies, which means recruiting actors and directors, buying scripts, building the studio lot, and maybe even dealing with the Mafia. The game features actual movies (like Casablanca or The Philadelphia Story) and real actors and directors (like Cary Grant, Bela Lugosi, Orson Welles, Katherine Hepburn, Vivien Leigh, etc.) with art and photos that probably are under license to somebody in America. So the game probably couldn't get published here without a lot of legal permissions (which is probably impossible) or making it totally generic (which would take a lot of the fun). The game is a worker-placement style game where the studio execs can hire new people or building new buildings (like extra sets or a make-up department or an orchestra) or try to garner Academy influence through CBS Radio (another copyright violation!). Or, of course, they can make a moving picture once all the resources are in place. After making a picture, they get a certain amount of money based on the audience they can draw. A picture with more stars can get more money. At the end of each round (i.e. each year), the Academy Awards are held and each studio puts forward candidates for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actor/Actress. Victory points are given for these awards (as well as for building up the studio). At the end of the game, additional points are given for the variety of genres for all the pictures made. The game is a lot of fun just from mixing up directors and actors in pictures. It also has lots of flavorful bits, e.g. one spot to put a worker is the "cocktail party" where the player can hire an available person at half price; another spot is the "casting director" where the player can hire up to three people but at full price. The game does run a bit long.

The Producer: 1940-1944

I tried out Too Many Cinderellas, a light card game where each player tries to convince the prince that one of the people in their hand is the true Cinderella. Each card has a person with a variety of attributes (like hair color, personal likes, and age) and a rumor which says that the true Cinderella doesn't have a certain attribute. Players are dealt four cards and they play two of them as rumors, keeping the other two as possible candidates. Each player can put a "No" token on a rumor when it is played to make it untrue, though each player has only one such token so they can only dispel one rumor. After all the card are played, players check their remaining two to see if they are still possible (i.e. any of the attributes on that card have not been rumored wrong). If more than one player has a viable candidate, the card with the lowest number wins. The game looks interesting, but I just read through the rules while I was waiting to play in a competition.

Many different games had tournaments running. I thought I'd try out Splendor, which is a new game about trading gems to gain victory points. I played with three other people. In a tense game, I managed to purchase a five point value card that was the last card I needed to get one of the nobles who gave me three additional points. That eight point swing brought me to fourteen points, just shy of the fifteen needed to end the game. Other players gathered resources for one more round but I was able to buy a two point card, which gave me the win with sixteen points! The victory meant I had a chance to move on to the semi-finals the next day since I was tied with nine other people for thirteenth place. Only sixteen people compete in the semifinals, so something would have to go my way.

The rankings after the final heat

Me in the middle

The next day, it did work out--not everyone showed up (maybe they were sleeping in or stuck in another competition) so I was a semi-finalist. I played okay but came in fourth (out of four), so I did not advance to the final round. Maybe next year.

I played Castles of Mad King Ludwig with three random strangers. Players are builders in the kingdom of Mad King Ludwig, who wants to have many splendid castles in his kingdom. But he also wants some odd attributes for those castles, represented by some randomly drawn objectives. Players also draw some personal, secret objectives that will give them bonus points at game end. During the game, players take turns building rooms onto their castle from a set. The cost of each room is assigned by the player who is, for that turn, the Master Builder. Each other player gets to buy rooms before the Master Builder, so the MB can't just make a favorite room the cheapest. Once everyone has bought rooms, the Master Builder token moves clockwise and new rooms are drawn to replace the ones built. The game is a little chaotic, though the anarchy looks less random with more experience playing the game. Even if a player doesn't win, there is the satisfaction of making a castle. It has a whimsical charm, if only because it's your own creation.

The Voyages of Marco Polo is a worker placement game where players build trade centers on the route from Venice to Beijing. trade various resources to fulfill contracts, get other resources, and gain victory points. The game was supposed to be under two hours but with a bunch of new people (me included) it was closer to three hours. I enjoyed it (except at the end when one or two players had analysis paralysis for their last few moves) and would play it again. But I am not going to buy it since I already own a couple of games that are similar weight and time length.

The convention had one store selling new games and a used game store where attendees could sell their old, unwanted games. I didn't put anything up for sale, but snagged the expansion for Castellan (so now we can play with four players) and one of the Mystery Rummy series games, Jekyll and Hyde.

Might have been a store selling Castellan

The convention was a lot of fun and I may bring my oldest son next year.

Unpub 5

Unpub is a game convention where designers of unpublished games can have them playtested by the random strangers who show up for the convention. The designers pay a fee to have a table at the convention, the playtesters get in for free. Since this year's Unpub (the fifth one) was held at the Baltimore Convention Center (which is about 20 minutes away from our home) I decided to be a random stranger and try out some games so new they haven't hit the shelves in any stores yet.

The game floor

The first game I tried was a light card game called Mail Order Mutants. Five wealthy, anonymous buyers want custom animals, like a Flying Komodo Squirrel or a Deadly Fire Newt. Players are mad scientists mixing various animal DNAs (insect, lizard, fish, mammal, avian) to meet the orders. Different cards from the gene pool have either individual or sets of DNA. Each scientist can draw from a pool of already formed bits or draw new DNA or splice together the critters they already have in order to match the buyers' orders.

Mail Order Mutants in action

I enjoyed the game. Putting just the right combination together is tougher than it initially seems, so there's a thinky bit to the game. But it's not so thinky that you have to plan moves and moves ahead in order to do well. The custom animals have different point values based on how many different DNA components go into them. It's a fun, quick card game.

Next, I tried Bad Medicine, a party game where players work in teams of two to pitch pharmaceuticals to the other players. Play starts with a symptom or side effect, like Violent, Uncontrollable Twitching. Player one on the team is dealt six cards and has to formulate the drug. He comes up with a name for the drug (a combination of three of the cards), characteristics of the drug (two cards), and a side effect of the drug (one card). Each card has a syllable on the top for the name (like FLOR or ZAN), one or two words in the middle of the card for characteristics (like NERVE ENDINGS or FUR), and a side effect on the bottom (like CAUSES BONES TO BECOME MAGNETIC). Player one puts the cards in an order they think best. Player two then flips up the cards and pitches the drug to the other players, describing how it cures the symptom and why the side effect isn't so bad. After the pitches are made, everyone votes on the best drug (not their own). Points are awarded one per vote and the side effect of the winning drug is the new symptom to be cured by the next drug. Roles rotate so the formulator becomes a pitchman and the pitchman becomes a formulator for a different player. After four rounds, whichever individual player scores the most points wins.

Bad Medicine table

I liked the game well enough but it is not my style of game. Players have to be in the right mood for it to work well. Our table did fine but I could see this also dragging with the wrong people or in the wrong setting. The game is light-hearted and moves quickly.

Next I played Cattle Car, a two-player game where two ranches compete to get the most cattle to market. Each player starts with equal hands of cards--three farm hands who take the cattle into town, Ma and Pa who can bring new cattle to the ranch from the Bone Yard, and a Cattle Call that will bring all the cattle back from town to the ranch (rather than getting discarded to the Bone Yard). Players move cattle into town and then either move the cattle onto the current train or use the cattle to buy townsfolk to add to their hand. Cattle on the train are victory points but sometimes the trains get filled up or there are no trains at the station. The townsfolk give special abilities, like the Cowboy who can move five cows directly into town or the Salt Cart which can send opponent's cows to the Bone Yard before they even get a chance to go to town. The townsfolk cost one to three cows based on how powerful their powers are. Players take several rounds to get as many cows shipped as possible.

I enjoyed the game but a bunch of the cards weren't as valuable to me. One townfolk, the Station Manager, lets a player look at the next three train cards, which didn't seem that strategically important to me (but maybe with more experience its relevance would be clearer). The game is fairly new in the development process and is on it's way to being even better.

Next was Santa's Workshop, a worker placement game much like Lords of Waterdeep. Each player has a set of elves who work at the Northpole in Santa's Workshop, building toys during the last twelve days leading to Christmas. The elves can collect resources (like fabric, wood, metal, plastic, or coal), feed reindeer for bonuses, craft presents, select new presents to build, or go to the classroom to get better at building presents or collecting resources. Each player also has a mine cart to store coal. Players get points for building various toys, like a boomerang or a bb gun or a drum or a paint set or etc. More complicated toys require more resources but give more points. Every fourth day there's a "Santa's Review" where whoever built the most toys gets a bonus. The second most also gets a smaller bonus. It's a race to build the most valuable toys in the shortest amount of time.

Santa's Workshop

I liked the game a lot (probably better than Lords of Waterdeep) but the designer said that the theme is going to be a hard sell. He talked with a published designer who thought that publishers will probably shy away from a game that looks like a kids' game that will be priced in the $30-40 range. Parents probably won't spend that much money on a game and regular gamers may be turned off by the theme. That's a shame because it is a wonderful game where the theme and mechanics mesh nicely and it plays with enough simplicity for older kids but enough complexity to satisfy older gamers.

My final game for the day was Pass the Paint, a card drafting game where players are apprentices to Renaissance artists. Players start with six card, each having one color on it (either a primary color (yellow, red, blue), white, a secondary color (orange, green, purple, pink, light blue), brown, or black). They pick one card to put down in front of them and pass the rest of the cards to a neighbor. Everyone reveals their choice and then chooses from the five cards passed to them. Play proceeds until all the cards are gone. Players are also dealt four commission cards, each with an individual Renaissance painting and certain color icons needed to score that painting at the end of the game. Instead of playing a color, a player could discard the color card to get an additional commission. A second round is played with a deck that has more secondary colors than primary. The game also includes end of game goals (such as having the most cards of primary colors or the most completed commissions) or palette goals (have six particular colors in front of them). Victory points are tallied at the end for sets of colors, commissions completed, and special goals achieved.

Pass the Paint in action

The game appears to be simple but has a lot more subtlety to it. In addition to teaching about color mixing (a player can't play the green color until he has blue and yellow already in front), the Renaissance art is a nice selection from major painters with their names and the names of the paintings on the card. Playing is an interesting balance of trying to get extra victory points from the goals and the commissions. I liked this one a lot.

I packed a meager lunch so I'd have more time to play and not bother with leaving the convention center to get food. I had a bottle of water, an apple, and two slices of bread. I finished the water and apple but the "nothing" sandwich didn't get finished.

Lunch leftovers

I did get a medicine bottle full of M&Ms at the Bad Medicine demo table, of which I ate half. I also got some free swag (mostly promo card for already published games) just for participating.

Brochure and free swag

In addition to providing direct feedback to the designers after playing, the convention had some tablets set up for playtesters to give additional feedback. Every couple of hours, they'd randomly select a name from those providing feedback and the winner got to choose from some games donated by various companies. I didn't win any of that but was happy to provide feedback.

It was a great experience and I hope they will have the convention in Baltimore again next year!