I’ve gone all out and upgraded the site so i now have more control over how it looks. This can only be a bad thing.
I’ve also moved to a proper (debatable) domain name
http://www.victorgannongames.com
Huzzah!
Vic
Knavecon IV
Knavecon IV begins today
10:00am Castletroy Park Hotel. Let’s game ’til we drop
Huzzah!
Vic
Magic 7
Seven has always been viewed as a special number. A lucky number, a magic number and funny enough it’s also the mostly likely outcome of rolling two dice.
Seven players on the other hand are a different story. There aren’t all that many games (at least in my library) that will entertain seven together for the whole night without dragging the holy hoop out of things with downtime. There are a few alright Battlestar, eclipse (with the add on), seven wonders but the night took it’s own course when two of the gamers drifted off together like teenagers at a disco to play Magic the Gathering
Let’s talk about the first game we played
Resistance
Resistance is a mafia type game (werewolf) but without elimination and untidy ripping out of throats. The game will happily support up to ten
It’s fast it’s simple and it’s great fun. Sometimes it’s really really good other times it’s just really good.
At the start a number of cards with rebels (good guys) or spys (not good guys) are dealt out so no one is quite sure of whom each player is (just like werewolf). In the games we played (resistance is like pastilles it’s impossible to have just one)(game) I wasn’t once a spy but do you think I was believed to be a good empire fearing rebel? NOOOOO. “Typical spy talk”, “Vic’s a spy”, “look at the big spy head on him” no one actually said at any stage.
So the good guys lost every game and the spy’s were failing missions in their sleep. It was a disaster and all because no one believed me, even the new guy. I blame myself insofar as I don’t actually blame myself I just need to change tack and reduce the amount of backstabbing I do so one day people will believe me when I make a deal..,, and I can then quickly backstab them
Definitely a game for ten at Knavecon
Huzzah!
Vic
Electro Shock Treatment
I’ll also be bringing THIS to Brocon. Don’t be worried. It’s not like it’s an electric shock game where there are no winners just people laughing at you. For no reason I can think of it proved very popular at the last Knavecon and I think it will fit in with the Brocon vibe perfectly 🙂
Huzzah!
Vic
A Welcome Break
Well then, I’m off on holidays for two weeks which will give you a welcome break 🙂
Huzzah!
Vic
and THEN my head Melted
If you want to bring on a head ache to avoid school or the draft or whatever Dobble is your man. It is of itself the simplest of all games however it’s frantic and competitive to the point where you want it to stop because Hulk Head Hurt. (Maybe it’s just me and I should get a check up). Anyhoe Dobble is piddly simple. It works as follows BOOM!
Look at the picture I’ve provided first… (not around the picture at the picture)
Each player puts a card in front of them with a number of symbols on it. Dogs, Card, Anchors, Krakens whatever
then the first card on the stack is turned over and it’s a race to shout out which symbol you have on your card that matches the one on the card in the center. ALL cards have one symbol that matches another symbol on every card. yes it’s true. I’ve checked. Go on get the grid paper out and work through it. You see! it’s true all cards related to each other in a family way.
So it’s Snap++. When you get a card you put it down as your play card and another is turned over from the stack and the process repeats. The person or persons (up to 4) who didn’t get a match have a slight advantage insofar as they’ve been staring at their play card longer than the player who just landed the last match.
With about fifty cards in the stack games usually end in five but definitely not longer than ten minutes (unless you’re taking part in a sleep deprivation experiment for a particularly evil group).
There’s a number of variant games in there, who can get rid of their stacks first, who can match with others and so on but the whole sizzle is matching symbols to another card.
To mix it up the symbols are often different sizes and orientations and (for me anyway) the brain has to spin up to full power to be competitive. It’s fast, there is no downtime, it’s frantic, there is no time to talk or think, it’s a very intense game and with four other people doing their damndest to beat you it’s hard work. Certainly not one to play for a long period with adults. It does however work fantastically with kids.
Kids love this game and you can vary the difficulty with them very easily. It’s also cheap (around €15 or so) and very portable. If you have kids and you want to introduce them to gaming, this is a great start, if you have a gaming group that consists of big kids this is a winner too. Personally I have a love hate relationship with this game (I love it, it hates me), not because it’s bad, but because it’s too intense. Quite a statement, I don’t like a kids game because it’s too intense….. To paraphrase every cheesy cop movie. I’m getting too old for this shit 🙂
Huzzah!
Vic
Netrunner
I’m really starting to like Netrunner. That us all. Nothing to see here. Move on
Funny enough I’ve been playing exclusively as corporation. Who’d have though I was a megalomaniac ?
Have the game since Xmas and to be honest it just didn’t beep my jeep when I tried it the first few times. Having played a dozen plus games I’ve cracked and am all in. Not sure it will ever be like the MTG days but it’s damn fine. Top marks to FFG for making this a living rather than a collectable card game. For me anyhoe that war is over
Expect a number amateur and Ill informed posts to follow by and by
Huzzah
Vic
Thursday Child is full of Win – Part 3 (finally)
Who doesn’t want to take over the world? Certainly I do and first against the wall would be those that insist I use the word WHOM at the start of a sentence like this
We got to play Imperial 2030 on Thur night too. For those who haven’t tried this or the earlier version (just plain Imperial) you are missing out. Imperial 2030 is a glorious map based conquer the world type game. Playing it is like being a football manager (without the chewing gum) insofar as you never know when you’ll be given the heave ho and another bungee manger will be appointed in your place. Them’s the breaks. You can be doing a fantastic job of managing Europe and WHAM! someone likes it so much they buy the company.
I’ve spoken before about Imperial, it’s a game that returns to our table again and again, with a good sized group (six) it becomes the ideal desert island game. It also plays out in a relatively short time for such an epic undertaking. It’s quite possible to get a game completed in under three hours and that’s no bad thing.
The mantra of this game which is oft repeated is that you don’t OWN a country….. you invest in it. Anyone who has the largest share in a country is the manager of it and controls it’s armies, production, taxation and pockets any bonuses associated with same. What I love about this game is it’s a valid tactic to allow another player to take ownership of your country and run it better than you can and still profit from the experience. The Ferengi would be proud.
The game is not so much about taking over the world (which is practically impossible), it’s about carving out the biggest empire you can and leeching as much tax money from it as you can before some other keen nation nips in and puts you back in your cage. Do it right and everyone will want to buy shares in your empire, do it too right and they’ll want to muscle in and take over your operation.
There were a few new players to the game on Thur and like me first time around they struggled to get a strategy. Although the mechanics are not that complicated and the tactics are fairly obvious an overall strategy to win the game is stupendously complex. Mine has always been black and white. Do your best. Kill Drax. It’s worked fairly well for me. I came second so maybe my strategy needs a tweek
As players invest in countries and take ownership of them it quite often happens that they wind up controlling two or more countries and some players wind up with none in which case they become Swiss bankers (I’m sure there’s a joke in there somewhere). As a Swiss banker you get to invest more often however it’s a dangerous limbo to inhabit as you no longer get bonuses for taxation when you don’t manage the country. That said you get to invest more, but you don’t get tax bonuses, invest, tax bonuses, invest/tax…. it’s a balancing act. I’ve seen players win purely as swiss bankers but it’s a tricky feat to do
That said owning multiple countries can be a burden, especially if they were two countries that were recently at war and you now have to untangle them and make them both profitable again.
There’s never a dull moment when you play Imperial. When you leave the table your mind is still spinning like a gyroscope trying to figure out how to play it better and THAT’S the measure of a really good game. /cheesy grin and wink
More of that next thur. Hopefully I’ll have learnt the rules for Constonopolis, but there’s a fair chance I won’t
Huzzah!
Vic
Thur Child is Full of Win – Part 2
Does anybody remember Big Trak the toy from the 80s, you gave it a set of instructions to go forward turn left, move back, fire it’s gun and so on then off it went and took you literally? Robo rally is a game of big trak with up to eight players running their big traks around the sitting room bumping into each other knocking each other into lasers and bottomless pits (I suppose every analogy breaks down sooner or later)
Richard Garfield has written some fantastic games in his day, the great Dalmuti, Magic the Gathering, Netrunner, Chess, X and O you name is he’s written it. We got to play RoboRally on Thursday night, it’s an old enough game by the afore mentioned but that’s neither here nor there when it comes to gaming. RoboRally is a fun little game, it’s fast, there’s very little downtime, it scales very well up to eight players and but above all it’s good clean no-one losing an eye fun.
Each person takes a robot (all of which are the same) and has to give it a set of instructions to navigate around the factory BigTrak Style. The factories made up of a grid of square with contain empty spaces and various traps like any good factory should. Hazards like conveyor belts, lasers, rotators, pushers, bottomless pits and so on litter the play area and it’s obvious that the same team that did the safety audit on the Death Star we’re signed up to do the one on this factory.
Each turn the player gives a set of five instructions from a hand of eight. The instructions are pretty straightforward like forward two squares, backwards one, left turn, right turn and so on. Care and consideration has to be taken of your robots current orientation, the obstacles near him and if some other dolt of a droid is going to blunder into you. It gets further complicated with conveyor belts that move you along if you wind up on them so all in all a bit like Kosmonauts if you’ve seen that other great game.
Where it becomes frantic is where you’re trying to issue your orders as quickly as possible before the others do. If you’re the last person and the very fast egg timer runs out than the others get to put whatever instructions they want into your robot. It’s a bit like having a drill instructor or in this case multiple drill instructors shouting at you while you try and strip your rifle but without the pillowcases, bars or soap and full metal jacket ammunition.
There’s a wee random element in there as well as the instructions for each robot get executed based on the priority of the card that you have, some cards that have high numbers some low so what can happen is you have a set of instructions to move forward however before you get to do that another robot has bumped into you and now of course that’s fantastic set of directions you gave your robot earlier all go to pot as you’re no longer going from the same starting point.
At the end of every move your robot fires it’s forward laser and anything in front is going to get the horns. Robots can take damage in the form of counters and as this takes it’s toll, it becomes more difficult to plot a route as certain instructions get locked in and cannot be changed. Not good.
Needless to say nobody in the group draws pleasure from other peoples problems. Seeing someone else’s robot going into a tailspin and damaging themselves even more is a time for great sadness in the group and not at all laughing. Paranoia style you get three lives and your damage resets or shutting your robot down for a full turn will cure you of damage to.
There’s a stack of maps and scenarios for the game along with extra cards for additional weapons and equipment.
The game we played was a simple get to the flag variety where each person had to run over tree flag square one after the other to win the game. Needless to say we only got as far as the second one before we all gave up or were destroyed
The whole thing plays out like an entrance exam to an insane asylum. Getting your orders in first before the other players is a head wrecker, That said if you have a logical brain this is a breeze. I like RoboRally I have one of those brains that’s messed up and lends itself to this sort of thing
With the exception of Kosmonauts I haven’t seen any games even similar to this (I stand to be corrected) it’s unique and very flexible, both in terms of length and difficulty. Even though it’s nearly 20 years old you can still get it. Like the top 100 movies it’s something you have to see (play). I’ll have it at the next Knavecon and will be happy to run through it with you. Just don’t ask me to play, I’ll beat you. Just like I didn’t do on Thur night, there were some other messed up brains at that gathering 😦
More soon
Huzzah!
Vic
Hobby Shack in Wicklow Town to close this month
I’m sad to say that the Hobby Shack in Wicklow town will close for the last time on the 21st of June 😦
Ian who’s run the shop for the last 3 years has decided to close up and move onto pastures new and perhaps get in a bit of gaming.
He’s having a closing down sale so now would be a great time to visit. I’m sorry to see him shut down, he provided a great venue for the local gamers, not least the last chancers.
Best of luck in whatever venue you decide to go onto next and see you Knavecon in August Ian
“Hi all
So this post may come as a bit of a surprise to you but sadly the Hobby Shack will be closing it’s doors on the 21st of this month.
I have not made this decision lightly but it is the right decision for me and the shack.
The last two years have been great and I have enjoyed the time in the shack immensely.
I have a new adventure ahead and I am looking forward to getting my teeth into this.
I wish to thank so many people customers, suppliers and gaming clubs for travelling far and wide. The town of wicklow has been very good to me and a heartfelt thanks to all the business owners for there help and support over the last two years.”
Victor Gannon Games 