Welcome back, Nerd Lifers, for the final installment of the Gen Con wrap up. There are a few more hot games from this years convention yet to look at.
Wyrd Miniatures
Wyrd Miniatures set up some amazing displays featuring their Malifaux and Warmachine/Hordes miniatures. I am a huge fan of their giant statue of the Whiskey Golem, a fixture that has become a big draw to their booth.
Boss Monster 2
The makers of Boss Monster 2 used a cool new display to promote the sequel to last years smash hit, Boss Monster! This standalone expansion adds more ways to mess with your competitors in a game that was beginning to grow stale due to it’s lack of player involvement. A strong improvement to a very good card game!
Rattlebones
I finally got a chance to try Rio Grande’s novel roll and move game, Rattlebones. This game had very little interest for me going into it due to my dislike of roll and move games. The dice components with changeable faces seemed a bit too gimmicky to me going into playing this. I could not have been more wrong. The ability to modify your dice in this game with all kinds of different abilities added a surprising amount of strategy to a game where you basically move around in a circle and hope to land on spots that gain you points. I probably wouldn’t purchase this but it is absolutely worth playing this charming game once or twice!
Legendary Encounters: Predator
Upper Deck went all out and made an amazing jungle base of operations to celebrate the launch of their newest addition to the Legendary: Encounters game system Predator. This game has remarkable versatility. The game can play through the 1st or second movie story lines as the humans against the predators or you can turn the tables and play as the predators against the humans. If you own Legendary Encounters: Alien you can combine that with this game. When you do that options of playing as humans vs Predators and Aliens or Predators vs Aliens becomes available. No other game gives you that kind of versatility that actually works out to be a great game. One of my favorites!
Stone of Fate
Another big surprise from the convention was Stones of Fate from Cosmic Wombat games. This game won a game of the year award from the smart people over at Mensa this year and it makes sense why. This game is simple to learn but requires a good deal of brain power and strategy to play well. In this game you will have a face down tableau of tarot cards of various point values and victory conditions. You have to use your memory to play your stones of fate in the right positions on these cards in order to win the game. I was not expecting to like this game as much as I did before idly trying out while waiting for another game but it blew me away and became an insta-buy for me.
Campaign Trail
Campaign Trail, another game from my new favorite small publisher, Cosmic Wombat games, was another surprisingly enjoyable game. I’m usually not a big fan of cube pushing games with dry themes but the amazing balance and quick play of this game strongly appealed to me. Don’t turn your back on this game due to the dry theme. Never have I played a game that offered so much different strategy and methods of play in such a simple to learn game. I only had to read the manual once and I was ready to plunge into this deep game. The balance in this game is an amazing achievement by the designers! Each game had several lead changes and stayed very close between all players and each victory was achieved narrowly and by a brilliant play. I anxiously await the arrival of Campaign Trail on kickstarter and I will be releasing a full review of it along with a gameplay video soon!
Takenoko: Chibis
Asmodee released an expansion to one of their most popular games, Takenoko, at Gen Con this year! As a huge fan of the original I absolutely had to have it. This expansion adds a female panda that can mate with the panda from the existing game which creates all kinds of baby pandas which brings mass pandamonium to this fun casual game. Takenoko: Chibis adds a few more tiles to the game. Some of which are a tile that can grow all three colors of bamboo, a new water feature that can help make irrigating your garden much easier, as well as a cabin for your poor overworked farmer. This expansion adds just enough to keep the game accessible to new players as well as add some new mechanics to freshen up the game for veteran players.
THE HAUL!
I can’t finish the Gen Con wrap up without showing off my haul from the convention! Yes that’s Mall Madness on the bottom, don’t judge.
I hope you enjoyed learning about the cool new games that were on display at the convention this year and I can’t wait to release some in depth reviews of some of them so you can get a better idea of whether or not they are right for you!