Ubercon VII

[marcmagus]

It's been a week. If I don't write this soon, it won't get written, and I'd rather like to write it. Ubercon was last weekend. I decided to go with a couple of days before the evnet itself. We had a blizzard. I played a lot of great games. More under the cut.



I've decided that I like Ubercon. It's kind of like NonCon's big brother (although I think we've actually been running slightly longer than they). It has that same composition of a lot of gaming, a little bit of lots of other stuff, and a very relaxed, friendly, inclusive atmosphere. You could also sort of describe it as being like a miniature Origins, without the huge industry presence -- again, the very community-like atmosphere.

I drove down on Saturday. I was running a little later than I'd hoped, and I had to make stops to print and photocopy NonCon fliers to bring with (that was the nominal point of the trip), so I didn't actually arrive until about 6pm. Got badge, dropped off most of the fliers, saw a friend I only see at some conventions, stopped for a hug, continued in search of Lab Rabbits. Jumped into (and ultimately won) an ongoing game of Zendo and tried to talk up the "The Looneys are coming to NonCon" thing, leaving some fliers on which I handwrote that announcement (poorly).

Next up was Caylus. I somehow missed the incredible hype when it hit the market, and had in fact only discovered it a couple days before when I was surfing around BSW reading game rules out of pretty significant boredom. The rules looked neat, so I was excited to try it. It's a great game, well worthy of all the attention. I'm not positive that it'll last way up near the top of the rankings for a long time after the shininess falls off and they make enough copies that everybody can get one, but it's a solid, interesting game. Lots of interaction (mostly in the form of getting in another player's way by getting somewhere first, but also some opportunities for causing direct harm/helping/making deals), and lack of a completely obvious optimal strategy are good things about the game. There are a lot of ways to pick up victory (or prestige) points, and it's not always clear which one will get you the best swings against the other players. You get to build buildings, deliver goods to help build the castle, vie for the King's favor, and other neat effects. Plus bribing government officials. Getting to play this twice was definitely one of the highlights of my weekend.

Yes, weekend. I planned to go down for as long as I could stay awake and then head home, dropping off and passing out fliers while I was there. I didn't count on the snow. Also, I was fortunate in being offered a bit of floor to crash on for a few hours. I left Monday morning at around 11 AM. With about 4 hours of sleep between about 6 AM and 10 AM on Sunday. Oh, yeah, and I only had one real meal in that time, Sunday night. But I drank a whole bunch of chocolate milk bottles they were handing out free. It was pretty exciting for my health, but I got into that state where as long as I was still playing games, it was all good.

Also of note, I got to demo a new game (still in playtest?) called Wag the Wolf, where you are media conglomerates competing to get good ratings by predicting the end of the world. It was pretty neat, and I'd definitely play it again, although it probably won't go on my short list of games to buy. Played Amun-Re for the first time, as well as Goa, about which I have a similar opinion. Lost a game of Puerto Rico miserably...I think I need to beef up my game, I used to be good at it. It was a good game, too. Played a quick game of San Juan...good game, but I played merely tolerably. That's ok, I don't know the game well yet. I'm sure I played a bunch of stuff I've forgotten, and I know I showed Jungle Speed to some people.

ETA: I've been reminded of an important game I forgot. I played a game of Keythedral. I'd played it once before with bluemilker and soulchanger and didn't like it much. This was a completely different game. Bluemilker, I think you may need to look over the rules. I'll talk to you about details out of band, if you like. It wasn't the law card thing, that's minor.

Additional to the games, though, I just had some great conversations. I chatted with a few members of the Ubercon ConCom, all of whom were very pleasant to me. When I mentioned that our dates had conflicted last year, they expressed a willingness to work together to make sure it doesn't happen again. I think it would be healthy for our ConComs to work closely together in the future. Some of them had some great suggestions for things we can do to improve our convention.

Also, as an odd but I guess flattering note, when I first showed up a few people immediately said, "Hey, we played Werewolf together at (Origins|GenCon)! Are you going to play tonight?" These people looked vaguely familiar to me after they greeted me, but I'll admit that I never would have picked them out of the gaming crowd as people I knew. I feel a little bad about that, but it's also pretty flattering.

Got a lot of good gaming in, some great conversations, and it seemed that I interested a lot of people in coming up to NonCon. We'll see how that last turns out.

Comments

[mneme]

Sounds like you had fun -- I should make an Ubercon at some point.

I like Goa -- the action mechanic is cool, and the ability to build up different technologies gives you a bunch of different ways to proceed, shoring up your weaknesses by winning the right kinds of auctions, and the auction mechanic is the one I prefer (where the money stays in the game, so you'll be able to win auctions eventually even if you aren't making a lot of money).

Amon Re is ok, but hasn't had the staying power with me. I should play it more than the, oh, 3 times or so I've played it.

I really need to try Caylus. I tried reading the rules, but they weren't up on Brettspielwelt.info or BSW itself at the time, and the image PDFs I got off Board Game Geek were pretty painful, so I gave up 6 pages out of 9. And trying it on BSW is pretty scary, especially given the other difficulties there. (like not wanting to spend 2 hours learning the game online with increasingly frustrated players).

I had more or less the same conslusion about PR myself -- so I read up on the strategy guides and started playing more on bsw, which has improved my game substantially. One thing that was significant was starting to get exactly how different the 3 player game is from the 5, or even 4 player games -- buy Hazienda first in a 5 player game and you're very likely to win, in a 3 player game, well, not so much.

[marcmagus]

The funny thing about the PR is that I did exactly that (get on BSW, play a bunch, get the hang of things) about two years ago. It improved me into a solid game where I had a >50% rating on BSW and won most games with local players. I think something's slipped since then, and it's not just that my average competition is better. I'm doing something differently that just isn't working, and I can't quite put my finger on it (other than making stupid mistakes, I guess).

If you want to try to jump on BSW and play a learning game of Caylus sometime, I'd be happy to give it a try. I don't know how confusing their interface is/isn't by comparison to in-person play, but...I only know one person with a copy and he's not in this state. (Although he says he's coming to NonCon) The rules feel a bit overwhelming, but it actually all comes together rather elegantly.

Goa was pretty cool. I'm not sure how much I love it, but I'd definitely play again.

[mneme]

I've played Goa a dozen and more times. It's pretty solid, though it's never going to be my favorite game.

We should talk about working out a learning Caylus game some time -- that could be fun. And BSW has been writing better interfaces--the current PR and SJ interfaces are excellent -- much better than some of their older ones (I know I keep holding up PoF...but yeah -- PoF) or Settlers (which is playable, just ugly), or even the original PR interface.

I sometimes fall into just what you're talkign about with PR -- it may partially be being better at playing one seat than another. Or not.

[bluemilker.livejournal.com]

Definitely, let me know what was different.

[penguinkraft.livejournal.com]

Caylus was the game I was trying to remember the name of when we talked at Arisia-ish.