Book Review: Batman '66 Vol. 1 by Jeff Parker et al.

Batman '66 Volume 1 written by Jeff Parker with various artists

In an interesting creative (and let's be honest, marketing) stroke, DC Comics started a series of Batman comics styled after the 1960s television series. The art follows the bright and colorful aesthetics of the show and the ridiculous fight scene. The humor is corny and the dialogue is just like the characters from the show. The comics don't replicate the death traps and cliffhanger endings that were a staple of the show, which I kinda missed. The humor in the comics also adds in some wry commentary about the show (at one point, Batman and Robin knock out Catwoman so they can take her to the Batcave, when she wakes up she asks where Robin was sitting in the Batmobile if all three of them were in the front seat--no answer is given). The stories show a sensibility for the history of Batman since the show, e.g. Joker escapes from an asylum by using Red Hood. The book has a mixture of old and new. While entertaining, it isn't enough in the '66 style or in the modern commentary style to make it really great. Just so-so.

Gen Con 2015 Games I Saw

Con attendees can't possibly play every game at the convention because there are far too many. Some were quite eye-catching, though.

Flick 'Em Up is a dexterity game set in the Old West and the demo booth was quite popular thanks to the set up. Players shoot their pieces at other players' pieces to win. They gave out hats to wear!

Flick 'Em Up, pardner

Fleet Admirals is a prototype game where players have a basic ship that they upgrade with weapons, equipment, and crew as they fight other ships and go on adventures. I heard the elevator pitch for the game and decided to pass on trying it out.

Fleet Admirals

The Pathfinder Adventure Card Game has a nice mat available to help organize the myriad decks players use. I thought it would be useful but we don't play the game enough to justify a purchase.

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game mat

I also briefly tried the new Pathfinder Adventure Card Game app but the user interface was not intuitive enough to make me stay for more than three or four minutes. The app isn't available yet so maybe they will do some more adjustments before publishing.

App version of the game

Paizo, makers of Pathfinder, had a large ballroom dedicated to the RPG version of the game, which was very busy the whole time.

Paizo's Pathfinder RPG room

New Pathfinder characters

I saw a Death Star trench in the X-Wing area of one of the demo halls. It looked very impressive.

Ready to attack the Death Star?

Many of the miniatures-based games had amazing sets. Most of them I had no idea what game they were for but still admired them from afar.

Sallower game with at least ten players!

Poster for a miniatures game

The set of the game

A train yard

Towers

A small village

A bigger village

The two villages together

Castle ruins

The con also had plenty of oversized games to play, including Catan, Downfall of Pompeii, Robo Rally, and King of Tokyo.

Mega-Catan

Medium-large Catan

Downfall of Pompeii

Super Robo Rally

King of Tokyo

If Gen Con were twice as long, you'd still not run out of things to do and see!

Gen Con 2015 Seminars and Workshops

Gen Con has a long list of seminars, workshops, meetings, and other get togethers that allow attendees to zero in on their favorite part of the hobby. Some focus on role playing as a player or as a campaign designer; others focus on crafting and painting models and miniatures for all sorts of games; others concentrate on game design, development, and distribution; still others focus on writing skills, tips, techniques, and advice for publishing. I attended a few seminars, here's a sampling:

• Pathfinder Card Game Developments--a panel including the game's designer discussed the soon-to-be-releases Mummy's Mask adventure with its new system for selling those items collected during an adventure that you really don't need. They also talked about an online/app version of the game that is close to completion and was available at their booth in the exhibit hall. It was an interesting presentation but I realized I am not into the game as much as the other people in the room.
• Medieval Food and Cooking--medieval cooking expert Daniel Myers discussed various myths and truths about food from the period of 800AD to 1500AD in Europe (his definition of medieval). He said that English cuisine was quite good until they learned to boil things! He debunked a lot of myths, especially the "they used spices to cover up the flavor of spoiled meat." He said the medieval people would leave the meat on the hoof as long as possible and only kill an animal if it was going to be eaten immediately. Butchers could only sell meat the day they butchered it, unless they killed it in the evening. Then they had to sell it before noon the next day. Also, spices were expensive relative to today, so it would be much cheaper to just kill another animal than to eat rancid meat and use lots of spices to cover up the flavor. He said they ate any meat they could catch, so they had a much more varied diet than we do. He also talked about vegetables, the fancy feasts they put on, how the church's dietary restrictions impacted the diet, and lots more. The point of the seminar was to let writers have more accurate depictions of food and eating in their books, shows, and games. The presentation was great.
• Teaching Through Games--Christopher Harris, a former teacher and now school library administrator, talked about using games in education, especially for home schooling. While most games are good at practicing critical thinking, just playing games won't really be educational. Games need to be tweaked to bring out the instructional content available. For example, Evolution by North Star Games can teach about biology, ecosystems, and Darwinian principles. One way to adapt it for teaching is to take out the carnivores and see how that changes the ecosystem. Without natural predators, herbivores survive and thrive for a few rounds but, soon enough, food production doesn't keep pace with animal reproduction and mass starvation happens. This result can help students understand why limited hunting by humans can have a positive impact on the environment. Harris also had a great definition for games: The voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles. Games can often be delightfully unnecessary as players discover new and varied ways to overcome difficult obstacles through intelligent play. Harris has a line of books about games in education for secondary schools and is working right now on elementary and pre-K resources. The seminar was excellent and well worth the time.
• Ghost Stories--a panel of ghost hunting experts were supposed to tell us about various hauntings in Indianapolis. I was expecting a sort of ghost walk without the walking. Unfortunately, they followed a slide show for a bit which discussed some hauntings in Chicago, then they switched over to telling some of their own experiences and asking the audience for their experiences. The presentation was disorganized and they weren't the dramatic story tellers I am used to on ghost walks. They were very low key and were just as interested in hearing from the audience as in telling their own stories. The highlight came when a train at the nearby station came in, causing a rumbling noise that some people thought was some sort of psychic phenomena. Overall, I found the presentation disappointing.

On the other hand, the hotel where the Ghost Stories seminar was held has amazing architecture. The reason the train rumbled the seminar room is because the hotel is built into the downtown train station. Visitors can see the steel girders and even stay in rooms that are train cars!

Crowne Plaza attached to the convention center with an above-street walkway

Coming into the hotel from the convention center

Train car with rooms and a statue

A better shot of the statue

Hotel lobby looks like a train station

Workshops included teaching about painting miniatures. I saw an amazing case full of miniatures that were in some sort of competition.

The Phoenix and the Gorgon (if you couldn't guess)

Red dragon about to get the drop on Cthulu

Futuristic battle minis

Futuristic marine minis

Ancient Spartan warriors

Not sure what era these guys are from

Another workshop had people crafting foam weapons. Then, they had a small arena to test out the weapons!

Battle area

More of the battle area

Gen Con 2015 Fundraisers

Gen Con has some large events that are fundraisers for local charities. This year's charity is The Julian Center. I saw a couple of the events in action.

The first event was a fellow trying to make a world record for the largest balloon sculpture (or possible the most balloons). I don't know if he made the record, but he did make a gigantic red dragon.

Massive balloon sculpture

On Sunday at noon they let people pay to slay the creature. Unfortunately, I was in the middle of a Dice Masters Rainbow Draft and missed the actual slaying of the creature.

An on-going fundraiser was Cardhalla XVII. Cardhalla is where old, unused, unloved, unwanted cards go to their fate. People come and fold cards and put them together to create card houses, sculptures, etc. People continue working on it throughout the con.

Cardhalla on Friday

High view on Saturday morning

High view Saturday afternoon

Saturday night at 10 the organizers start auctioning off who will get the first shot at knocking down the card houses. After the first person has a go, everyone is encouraged to throw their loose change into the structures to destroy the houses, sculptures, etc. Towards the end of the destruction, some houses would not fall. Someone rushed in and plowed right through them like Juggernaut smashing through a wall.

Cardhalla's ragnarok

A few bits left

Sunday morning--no sign of Cardhalla left

They raised about $5900, their highest amount ever.

The convention had a used game auction where people could donate and/or buy old games. The auction seemed to be going the whole time. I never stopped in since I had severe baggage limitations on my flight. Any great deals I got would be lost if I had to pay $50 for a carryon or $100 to check something. I did peek in from time to time.

Charity Auction

I missed some of the events, like the "Wig'n'Stache V: Monsters vs. Heroes" and "Star Trek: Five Year Mission" because I was busy with other things. Sounds like lots of fun.

Gen Con 2015 Games I Tried Part II

Continuing the list of games I tried at Gen Con 2015 (see Part I here)...

New York 1901 is a city-building game where players put up the best skyscrapers to earn the most points. Downtown Manhattan is divided into various colored regions. Each player takes turns drawing plots of land and either building on that land or putting a worker on the lot to reserve it for constructing larger buildings later. Each player has their own set of buildings. The players can also build some speciality buildings (including the Woolworth Building!) for extra points. The game is similar to Ticket to Ride with a bit more complexity, but not too much. So much fun, I've already put this on my Amazon wish list!

New York 1901 in progress

Paradox is a successful Kickstarter game where players try to collect the past, present, and future of various worlds that are in jeopardy from a space storm called the Quake. Players chose planet cards from a tableau and place them on their time track. The past worlds have more turns to be saved than the present or future. Then, players try to gain energy by playing a Bejeweled-style side game with a five-by-five matrix of colored and symboled disks. With enough energy, the cards can be secured. Meanwhile, the Quake is going around the circular track of planets, damaging each one it lands on. A damaged world scores fewer points at the end of the game. With all these different things going on, you'd think the game would be confusing and frustrating. Somehow it isn't. I found it enjoyable but probably wouldn't buy it. The art on the cards is fun, showing the past, present, and future of various planets.

Paradox play area with the circle of planets and two-row tableau next to it

My matrix, planets, and time track

Slightly closer look at the planet track

Zombies!!! the Card Game is a stripped-down version of the popular Zombies!!! board game. Two to six players divide a deck of cards equally, then draw three cards from their deck as a hand and discard three cards as bullets to use against zombies. On a player's turn, the top card of their individual draw deck is put in the middle of the table. The card has a location and number of zombies on the back. The player rolls a die for each zombie and kills the zombie an a 4, 5, or 6. If a lower number is rolled, bullets can be used to increase the number. If the player can't kill all the zombies, that player has to pick up the middle deck and add it to their draw pile! The cards in the player's hand have special powers or actions that can help the player or harm other players. The game is okay with some fun interaction. I won the first game we played and won a copy of Bowling for Zombies!!!, which I've brought home.

The cover and some cards from the Amazon link

Set Dice is like the Set card game, where players need to find sets of three matching cards, but now each player rolls five dice and tries to add them to a Scrabble-like board. The game is an interesting variant of Set but I found it much harder.

Another Amazon capture--I must have been out of picture taking mode for a while!

Karma is a light card game where players have three cards dealt face down in front of them and six cards dealt to their hand. Each player then places the three highest cards (cards range in number from one to sixteen) onto the three face down cards. The first player then plays their lowest card. Subsequent players must match the number or go higher. If the number is matched, all the cards in that discard pile are taken out of play. Once a player cannot play an equal or higher card, that person collects the whole discard pile into their hand. The object is to run out of cards. Once the hand cards are gone, the player has to play the face up cards in front of them. Once those cards are gone, the player plays the face down cards, hoping they will equal or be higher than the current card. The game moves quickly and some cards don't have numbers but special actions (like "make another player pick up the discard pile"), so a bit of variety is thrown in. The game comes in a small restaurant-size container for two to four players, or a regular deck size for two to six players. I bought the restaurant size.

Karma mini-round, easily fits in a pocket or purse

I played a Dice Masters Rainbow Draft with the Age of Ultron booster packs but only got one rare card. I also lost pretty quickly, "earning" the participation prize--two standard cards with special art.

Rainbow draft (note how I am not in the picture!)

Participation/consolation prizes--I already have both these characters, luckily!

Nuns on the Run was the final game I played at the con. It's a game of hide and seek in a convent. A bunch of novices sneak out of their cells on secret missions (like taking a forbidden book from the library or getting a drink from the liquor cabinet). Players keep track of where they go on a small card. The abbess and the prioress (a.k.a. the seekers) chase after them along certain paths. If the seekers are ever in a position to see a novice or are close enough to hear a novice, they get clues where the naughty nuns might be going and can deviate from their path. The game is fun and not too complicated. According to the people I played with, it is a lot better than Scotland Yard.

Nuns on the Run

I did a final demo of the game Ortus Regni, Latin for "Birth of the Kingdom." It's a card game where each player is an earl from Anglo-Saxon England trying to build up their position so that they can claim to be ruler of England. They start with a deck of cards and draw five for their initial hand. Cards can be played either face down as a tower to add defense or face up as whatever place, person, or action it shows. Places included castles, fields (to support armies), churches, and market towns. People include vassels (to be used for combat or intrigue), soldiers, and monks (to be used as emissaries). Actions include political intrigue, where a player may try to steal land or resources from another player. After a few rounds, it is possible that the Vikings will show up and cause havoc for one of the players. The game looks interesting (and the demo room was well decorated) and is available for PC/Mac and soon from stores (though of course it was available for purchase at the con). I didn't buy it but may download it, especially if an app version comes.

Ortis Regni demo room

Banner outside the room

The room was fairly empty because I arrived around 3:40 (the convention closed at 4 p.m.). My demo  was short but intriguing.



Paradox is available for pre-oder from here, with the expected shipping date of December 2015.









Information and download for Ortis Regni is available here.