Winter Stabcon 2014

So that was Winter Stabcon 2014 and jolly good it was to.

Now need to remember what I played so I can review it....

Nexus Ops - a sort of fast paced tactical game of violence (seriously it's all about the violence) in pursuit of vps.  Good game - I liked the general feeling of mayhem and violence that emerged.   With 12 vp's to win one person went from last (2vps) to winning in one turn by holding back his scoring cards and burning them.  Not sure if that was a  bug or a feature.....

A Study In Emerald - I generally like Martin Wallace games - in fact I own more of his games then any other designers (it helps he produces a lot of games).  This was one I was very interested in - since the art was done by friends of mine and it's based on a great story by Neil Gaimain A study in Emerald.  I'm not 100% sold - it's a rather odd game - and I suspect people have to have played it multiple times to get it.  It certainly came with a horrible data dump of rules leaving you going 'huh?' a lot - and no obvious first moves to ease you into the game.  Played it twice but I'm still not sure......

Caverna - Agriculla with dwarves. Its so cute.  But despite it being ace - and I think better then Agriculla I'm not sure if it offered anything new.

Glass Road Unlike this game by the same man - which is a master piece of good UI design and swift game play.  Normally his games take hours - but he's managed to pour all of the game play into a much smaller pot and remove all of the fiddling about.  Only downside - it's a very expensive game for what you get.  It's £10 cheaper then Caverna but with caverna you get a ton of wooden bits and quality boards.  Talking with people in the know it was about £10/£15 more then we'd expect from what is in the box.  On the other hand I played it three times over the convention.......

a brief history of the world is only brief in comparison to the older longer version.  But it was good and fun - although there is a slight oddity. You get one historical empire an epoch - and the person doing worse picks first.  And not all empires are equal - so the Roman are really strong.  This leads to the position where you kind of want to go into the final round doing badly and certainly not first......

las vegas A very simply and lovely dice rolling game.  With a hunk of luck - a hunk of skill - and a lot of messing other people (and sometimes your self) up.

village A very lovely game of medieval life in a village - including the fact that your often trying to work people to death....... I keep thinking "I should get this".

ad astra sold to me as settlers in space without the random - it's really is.  However the removal of the random actually makes things feel more chaotic.  So in settlers you role dice - in Ad Astra everybody puts in 3 action cards but they affect everybody.  But I had no idea what people would do - so it was utter chaos.........

And of course story telling games (did not work so well this time - not sure why) and games oh I poo cat that broke people.  It turns the phrase "mother fucking batman" becomes very literal very quickly........

I got a cheque to buy Caverna for my birthday - but it's delayed hitting the shelves and now I'm wandering if glass road would be a better buy if I was going to buy something.  If it's a little more expensive - but it's a present it's still a good buy.