Stabcon Play test

So the 2013 winter Stabcon has been and gone and it's been the the traditional mess of games, drinking, terrible breakfasts, and lack of sleep.  Seriously it is a fabulous convention and I would do my best to convince everybody I know who likes board games to go.  Maybe it's my use of the term 'Broken on the Stabcon' that does it?  So what did I play?
Aye Dark Overlord made me laugh like a drain and involved the most outright unpleasant story we have ever done.
cards against humanity  remains a Stabcon late night favorite as more people encounter just how fucked up fucked up apples to apples can be.  Any game which generates the phrase "I can't believe I pulled out Anal beads and only came second" has a lot going for it in my book....
I brought and played a copy of ugg-tect which caused large numbers of people to look at us strangely as we bashed each other with inflatable clubs and grunted
Somebody showed me how to play space alert which as promised delivered insane miscommunications and cock for hilarious results and I'm now looking forward to getting my copy of the unplayed shelves.
Article 27 was excellent and involves lost of shouting and negotiations and gavel banging. 
struggle of empires which was probably the heaviest game I played that weekend as Prussia rampaged around the European Theatre but only coming second to Russia's massive international empire in the sun.
Spartacus a game of blood & treachery which for a board game linked to a TV show is cracking even if it did drag to the end as we all tried and failed to win but were massively knocked back in the process and I think it needs a house rule that if anybody gets to 12 influence the game will end that round no matter what else is done.
I finally played discworld ankh morpork and found it very good and certainly managed to feel discworld in a really good way -the secret victory conditions certainly worked.
Go Goblin Go was a nice enough race game but I'm not sure I'd play it again - even if it is funny you expend rocks to move your goblin by pelting them from the seats.
guildhall  was a nice little card game that seemed confusing - but soon made sense and involved a certain amount of opportunistic dickery which I'm very fond off.
Article 27 was excellent and involves lost of shouting and negotiations and gavel banging - no really it comes with it's own gavel.

I seem to have a bit of a blank spot on Friday night as I only seem to recall playing struggles and cards against humanity.  Did that really take up 10 hours?

I've got a production based blog post brewing following several conversations at Stabcon but that can wait till I'm more human.

Something very unexpected happened at Stabcon while I was play testing Giant Stone Head - a total stranger stopped by the table - looked at stuff - and suddenly went "I've read your blog!".  Turns out he was googling for Stabcon and this blog popped up.  That was odd - somebody I don't know reading these ramblings.

The play test went well - 4 person - about 2 hours although there was a lot of faffing - 5 turns.  It went a little odd as two players decided to simply beat each other to death rather then go after victory points which meant I rather ran away with it - despite saying things like "by taking this card I've put a giant target on my back".  But that felt like player decision making rather then rules oddness.  I mean if I decide to spend my entire game of Agricula making pretty patterns with fences rather then getting victory points there is not a lot a designer can do about that.

On reflection I saw two possible areas of concern  The first is running out of space for Giant Stone Heads really can knacker you - especially since at the moment you don't get anything.  I can see a simple fix for that - if you are unable to place any giant stone heads you get a card for each giant stone head you are unable to place.  It does not happen that often but if somebody is in a stuck situation.  The second was that with a hand size of 7 the build card that gives you 8 cards seems very poor.  I can see two possible options - the first is to raise the hand limit - the second would keep the hand limit the same but increase the number of cards to 9.  The best 7 out of 9 cards is more attractive then 7 out of 8.

I suspect the first change will go in - not sure about the second needs some consideration.