Steph and I slept in and walked the kitties Sunday morning. They were super cute.
We got to Kublacon a little after noon, and caught the end of James’ lecture on Kickstarter. We then got to play both of the games that were from the Suburbia group, and I liked them both(Subdivision and Castles of mad king ludwig). We also attended James’ talk on randomness in games, and it was quite good. It made me think about how agency relates to games.
I had a really good time at the convention, learning a good number of new games. There was one card game that was very simple, but very deep in strategy. I really enjoyed playing it. The game Java that was very similar to Tikal was way too complex. I enjoyed listening to James’ lectures, and they had a lot of information I didn’t already know. The one on probabilities I already knew most of, but that was to be expected. I’m really looking forward to his lectures on Kickastarter and randomness.
We were able to convince James Ernest to come to games night, and I got to play Seasons with him. We didn’t do very well, and he had the good point that it was hard to pick up since there was no real world basis to start the understanding of the game from. I then played a round of Tzolk’in with Adam, Candice, and Nick. Adam was able to get the 40 point monument in the first quarter of the game, but he sacrificed a lot of his momentum to get it. I got a lot of techs very quickly and then used that to build a ton of buildings. It worked out really well with the building upgrades and resource upgrades. I was able to win by one point over Adam in the end, 94 to 93. James broke out several of his games and played them with the others, and I think that he enjoyed coming by.
Sunday, I took a train to the city to hang out with Nick. I showed up about an hour late, but was the second person there. We hung out for a good while. A few others came over, and we played a round of Ticket to Ride. It worked out really well for me, since everyone else was concentrated in another part of the board. I was having a really good time, and made a total of 138 points, completely destroying all the other players.
We played a good number of games Thursday, and I played all of mine with Chris and Jeff. It went surprisingly well, and we didn’t get into too much analysis paralysis. The first game I got out front with some really strategic plays and stayed there. I was also able to get a massive last turn that put me way out front. Chris got second by one point, just barely nudging out Jeff.
In dungeon dice, I was nice at one point and that came back to get me. I should have just been mean and let them take damage, but oh well. I enjoyed it, but it was a little short. There wasn’t time to build up a character and enjoy the abilities, because the game only goes to 4 points. It also doesn’t make sense to go past that since the monsters don’t get harder as your character gets better. I like the mechanics, but it seemed to be missing something in depth.
As always I liked playing Gauntlet of Fools. That is one game that never seems to get old. We played two rounds with Paul winning the first, then Chris and I tied on the second.
I explained and played some games with people, and I think it went decently well. I tried to help with strategy in suburbia but I still won by a ton. I didn’t describe strategy as much in Race for the Galaxy, since it is a much more complicated game. I did describe the strategy I was going to take, which is one I haven’t really done before. It was a good time and I got to play with Cynthia and one of her friends.
Sunday we went to the Songkran festival in San Jose, and met there Jeremy, Nick, Wit, and Riley. The food was pretty good, and the Thai ice tea from the temple was delicious. There wasn’t much else to do there, so we ended up sitting in the beer garden for a bit, while not liking the music. The speakers were bad and the singing voices weren’t particularly good either. We then went back to beachhead and played primordial soup. It was a decent game, but there was a lot of uncertainty about what to do exactly.
Michael, Andrew, Kevin, Adam, and I did a draft of only rare and epic rare cards. This went surprisingly well, although I didn’t win many games. I was a little to middling on the mana curve, with some really nice 6 drops, but not much in the way of smaller support, mana fixing, or game enders. I had six sphinxes, and they worked well when I could get them out. The most epic game was me and Adam, where he got up to 121 life, and I was able to make him take out all of his permanents, giving me a huge advantage which I closed by stealing one of his planeswalkers. Using the planeswalker I set his life at 10, effectively dealing 111 damage in one action.
I met up with Steph, Jeremy, Lindsey, and others at Pho Vi Hoa. I biked over and it turned out to be a pretty nice day. I got there early and was able to cool down after the ride. We waited a while for everyone to show up, and got a table for the pho, it was super tasty. After Pho, we went back to Beachhead to play a game. We chose Puerto Rico to play, with Candice joining Jeremy, Steph, and I. The game went well, and I got an early lead. The early lead made people look to me to figure out how to not let me get points. I was one turn off from winning, but the game ended earlier than expected. Steph took it with me in second. Jeremy was in a close third.
It's an Exciting World 