Happy 6

KidsSayTheDarndestThings

Jay McKeown is the director of BroCon. A yearly three day cornucopia of board gaming, cosplay, console gaming and all things gaming gaming (yes I said it twice). He’s a Regular at thur night games, is despicably young and has a super power of inhaling rules and being right about them far too often

I caught up with Jay (wasn’t hard) and asked him what makes him happy about gaming and gaming cons

Jay. When did you first start gaming ?

I got into gaming big when the Lord of the Rings movies came out. I started buying the DeAgostini Battles in Earth magazine and that in turn brought me to our LGS for the first time. As I got older Warhammer took over from there, and after several years of that the cheaper options of board games, X-Wing and console gaming took over. Gaming evolution at its finest…sort of.

How did you become involved in Brocon and why do you do it?

In the con’s debut year they wanted to run Warhammer but had nobody knowledgeable in the subject. So I did my thing and invited myself onto the committee and it sort of stuck, and then grew to the point where I am now running the whole show. Running cons it the best and worst thing you can ever do in my opinion, and that’s why I am still here…that and nobody else wants to do it, ha.

What’s your favourite bit ?

Of gaming? Winning…no, really though, it’s that intrigue of seeing where any given game might go. I’m a sucker for the mechanics. Of running a con? The moment it begins and the moment it ends; they each have their charm.

Cosplay is quite a specialist area. What attracted you to it ?

Honestly, it was already there when I showed up. But it is one of the largest parts of the con and shows perfectly just what a con is all about; having a laugh with your friends, everyone else’s opinion be damned. It demonstrates perfectly the sort of comfort zone that nerd events of all kinds have brought about.

What is it that people love about gaming ?

I reckon the escapism of it all. It’s great not to have to worry about real life for a few hours and be at ease.

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You attend a lot of conventions What makes a good games convention?

I am going to echo what many of con regulars have figured out as of late, and that’s having plenty to do. The shininess of the whole spectacle will tide you over for maybe an hour or two, but when you are paying €15-30 for a weekend depending on the con, you want to be entertained from start to finish. And that includes trying to appeal to as many different types of people as possible, not just niche groups.

If your house was burning down what would you save?

Blasphemy inbound, but it would have to be the Playstation. It is the most expensive thing to replace.

If you had a grand only to spend on gamying what wouldn’t you buy ?

I can’t really answer that question for marketing reasons; I may need some sponsorship for the con down the line somewhere. I can tell you what I would buy though; War of the Ring and Forbidden Stars. Best games of the year for me.

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What’s going to be the next big thing in gaming?

Honestly, not a clue, and the whole thing about gaming is the here and now is good enough until that comes.

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More 4X

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I got to play Forbidden Stars last week. It’s been on my list of want to plays for a while and I’m delighted I did. One of my gaming group bought it and it’s a cracker.

There’s a number of mechanics melding into this heady brew. I can see hints of a Game of Thrones BG, Starcraft, Armada, Chaos in the Old World and something all of it’s own.

Each player gets to choose between Chaos (fighty), Eldar (zippy), Orks (tough) and Space Marines (balanced) and after a very nice board setup round have to venture out and recover four objectives tokens that the other three players have gone out of their way to put as far away from your starting positions as human/eldar/ork/choasey possible.

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Players get a mix of smaller ships and ground troops and like any good 4x (well this is more a 3x as you can see all the sectors before you head out) have to spread out and dominate sectors, gain resources, build more stuff and upgrade their tech.

A bit like Game of Thrones players place action tokens on sectors to build there, move there, upgrade their stuff or grab extra resources from. Unlike GOT players can stack multiple orders on a sector and the orders are resolved in reverse order. This MAKES the game. I might decide to build in a sector but another player after me, decides to move there and their order is resolved before mine, so they move in, knock seven bells out of me and take over my stuff at which point my build order kicks off but because I’ve lost my factory I can’t execute it…. It makes the game very tactical and timing and bluffing are key. (all orders are placed face down)

Battles are neatly done. Units produce a number of battle dice which can show either attack, defense or moral icons, these combined with attack cards give results that aren’t just bring more guns and you win dependent. Units act as you would expect from the 40k universe. Chaos are all out attack with little defense, Eldar are good at dodging attacks and so on.

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Attack cards and event cards can be upgraded leading to some very powerful abilities as the game progresses again all race specific and all nicely thematic

Unusually for a 4x game there’s no rules for alliances. Simple because, well, there aren’t any. You don’t have time for such nonsense. It’s kill kill kill and if you have time, kill some more. You’ve got objectives to collect and so does everyone else. The objectives alleviate another issue with some 4x games. There’s very little turtling. Granted you can but you won’t win by staying at home.

Something I have to mention is the build quality. This is a very pretty game. It’s Fantasy Flight so you’d expect as much. Like Imperial Assault it comes in a big box with some lovely (aching to be painted) miniatures (not as much so as Imperial Assult but nice all the same).

Rules are straightforward. You’ll get it pretty quick. One thing I loved about this game was how easy it was to read the position of everything. You need to collect 4 objectives to win. That dude has 3 collected you have none, you’ve losing. Stop him and get your own game in gear.

I spoke about Eclipse recently. This is a very different animal. Whereas Eclipse is more about the economics and upkeep, Forbidden Stars ecomic model is simple and descrete. Get resources, Build stuff, get it out there, try to avoid getting it destroyed.

For what you get the game is relatively fast. we got our first four player done in under four hours, but we were learning bits as we went. Battles do slow things down a little bit but I suspect more play will see subtler actions, more posturing and less fights but on second thoughts I doubt it. One of the things I really like about the game is fighting is a positive. In too many others games, getting into a number of battles rather than avoiding a fight spells disaster. Not so with Forbidden Stars. It’s par for the course. I lost a number of battles but it was by no means the end of me. (As usual my old chum Hubris was the end of me)

I really liked this game. It’s one of the newer Fantasy Flight premium style games which cost a bit more but give you a lot more and are worth the extra investment. If I was to knock the game the only real fault is that it’s a max of four players. I can understand this as the game would drag on with more, but I fully expect to see an expansion just like Chaos in the old World that will add a fifth. You mark my words.

All in all, a fine game, well worth the entrance fee

Again well done Fantasy Flight, keep em coming

Huzzah!

Vic

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First they get the guns,

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Cash and Guns or more password securely correct Ca$h and Gun$ is a reprint of a classic push your luck game called the same thing but with a few less rules.

The game sees you and up to seven chums (so it’s eight player in case math’s is not your thing) standing around a haul of loot and initiating a Mexican stand off each turn to see who gets the pick of the goodies. (unless you live in Mexico in which case it’s just a stand off)

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It goes like THIS

Each player starts with a character with a special ability, maybe they can survive four rather than three shots, maybe they get more points for collecting diamonds and so on. they also get a foam gun. Foam so they don’t pistol whip each other.

Each turn a random spread of loot is laid out with one for everyone and having feasted their beedy gangster eyes upon it, the players secretly choose from their limited stack of bullets, half of which are blanks half of which are the real deal. the Don then shouts GO! (but not too loudly because the kids are asleep) or something suitably gangster and everyone points their gun at someone else and freezes. the Don now gets to change whom one person is aiming at and on the Dons second call players can drop their character down to indicate they are chickening out (wimps). Those left standing get to find out if guns pointed at them contain blanks or live rounds (not ideal) and take appropriate wounds.

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Anyone not chickened out or shot gets to pick in turn from the loot in front of them. Rinse and repeat for a number of rounds. The loot varies from money to paintings and diamonds that are worth more the more you have in your stash at the end. It’s possible to exit early if you get three wounds so caution and guts determine the winners (and of course the money more accurately)

It’s pure party game. I’ve played this a number of times and it’s bigger cousin cash and guns live and it’s good fun. The gun mechanic is elegant the rules simple. It’s pure filler. My only gripe with the game was the absence of the undercover cop rules from the original (which can be easily retrofitted to the game) which made the original a much more interesting and paranoid experience. All in all worth having and really good to introduce non gamers to gaming.

All good

Huzzah!

Vic

0

Bad Planning

wilson

I first played Survive! on a PC way way back and it was called last days of Atlantis or something like that. I liked it. It was good clean water based fun. One of the reasons it faded from my view like retinal afterimage was I had played the computer version and I had played it against bots. Fast forward with suitable sound effects to near present day and I get to play it at the last Knavecon with the expansion making it a six player water polo mosh. It’s a great game. Well ok let’s hold on. It’s at least as good as The Downfall of Pompeii. If you liked that game and it’s game play style you’re in familiar territory for sure.

Survive

It’s the last days of Hanoi and everyone’s partying like it’s 1999. You need to get your best and brighest off the sinking island across shark infested water from the centre slowly shrinking centre island to the welcome corner islands. To help you in your endeavor you have row boats that take three peeps, friendly dolphins and the good old reliable breaststroke. Hindering you, you have Sharks, Krakens, Squids, limited time and worse still other survivors who will happily make a raft from your bloated body to row ashore.

In hindsight it may have been a bit foolhardy to settle an overpopulated unstable island surrounded by monsters. I’m convinced it was all a royal stag party dare that went horribly wrong.

The centre island consists of a random blob spread of hexes that come in three types. Sand which is the first to go, jungle the second lot to sink and rock that stands hero steady like a hob knob dunked in tea to the biter end.

Once the centre island is laid out players take it in turn to place their soon to be hopefully survivors. Each hex can accomodate up to three dudes and the aforementioned dudes have values written under them which in turn are worth points at the end if they survive so it’s key to get the high value guys to shore.

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Players during their turn can move surviors either by boat if they have the most dudes in it or more slowly swim for it. You get a limited amount of movement points per turn and there will never be enough to save all your guys. In addition you get to move the monsters (preferably away from your guys and evil cackle towards other players). Each turn the island shrinks by one tile and once all the tiles have sunk it’s game over, full stop, count your points. (especially tough if you have some high point guys almost home)

The system is very neat and straightforward. There’s no ambiguity on rules. Monsters cover all posibiliteies Sharks can eat surviors in the water but not in boats. Krakens destroy boats and their survivors. Octipi do something something. Dolphins can give your swimmers a three hex boost towards the shore.

Is it fun? hell yeah. Getting your VIPs to land and inducing the monsters to block or destroy a flotilla of other player’s dudes is crush your enemies best. I had a lot of fun playing this game. It’s quick to learn and teach. It’s simple and it’s fast fun. forty minutes to an hour will see you done depending on numbers. There’s little down time because you’re constantly watching other players for where they’re heading to or where they’re directing the monsters

I’m going to make it my business to pick up a copy of this sometime soon. It’s that much fun.

Huzzah!

Vic

0

It Never Sparkled

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Eclipse is not a new game but since another expansion is on the way for it and I recently reacquainted myself with the game let’s have a look at it….

I bought Eclipse a couple of years back when it came out quickly followed by the first expansion Rise of the Ancients. Eclipse is a 4x space game. It features a very clever economic model and it does play out in a respectable time( player numbers and experience dependent).  It’s quick to figure out despite the large amount of counters and tokens even for new players.

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It’s got all you would expect from a 4x game and a good bit more. Research and ship design is a wonderful addition. Players can pimp their rides in a wide variety of ways and there’s no one killer combo. Fancy lightly armored gunned up cruisers? No problem. Hulking Dreadnoughts with massive shields? You got it! Zippy cloaked missile boats? It’s all in there. I love the ship design. Because you’re all grabbing from a limited randomly doled out set of tech blueprints you’ll never be up against the same ship designs as any other player. One of the complaints about the base game was a race to build one shot missile boats that dominated battles. this has been effectively patched by a host of new techs introduced in the expansion. I like when a game company listens to players and does this sort of thing.

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The game we played last night was great there was a wide range of designs. The most interesting was one players cruisers which were heavily stealthed and in their first battle they annihilated a much bigger force of ships who couldn’t draw a bead on them (after that everyone was racing for aiming tech to counter it).

The other star of the show is the economic model. Specifically the control disks. You get a limited amount of these and need to allocate them to Sectors to keep control and Harvest resources from them. The control disks are also spent to take actions. The more you use the bigger your bill at the end of the turn will be in resources. So a bigger empire will become costly to run and less able to act than smaller more agile ones. It’s a stroke of genius.

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Throw in some rules for alliances, traitors, ancient AIs and alien abilities and you have a top TOP game.

I love Eclipse. For me it’s got everything I look for in a 4x game and more to boot. We need to play more of this and we will

Great game well worth the entrance fee

Huzzah!

Vic

0

Flick it like it’s hot

foundation

Ascending Empires is an oddity. It’s a 4x space game with and unusual movement technique…. You flick the pieces to move them. That’s right it subbuteo in space. OK you’re first thoughts are this is dumb until you sit down and play a game. It’s really really good. Play this game if you get a chance. I’ve had it at Knavecons and its proved itself a minor hit.

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The game sees you and up to three chums expanding out from your initial home planet with a growing murder of ships and troops, colonizing and more importantly defending planets which come in four different colors.

It’s like a condensed version of Twilight Imperium, all in, in under two hours. The flicking mechanism is subtle. It’s not Rampage. You won’t end up flicking pieces off the board. It’s way more interesting than that and it works so well. It does add a random element but rarely a game ruiner and I’d take this over dice rolling any day. Well at least in this game.

Depending on what planets you grab you can tech up different paths and getting to the top of any of these gives you near apocalyptic abilities.

Everything you would expect from a space game are in there. Exploring unknown worlds so you can grab resources and build more stuff. Epic space battles. Well the battles tend to be small scale but no less heart stopping. Back stabbing (my group would back stab at snakes and ladders if it could), researching tech so you can lord it over the other cave man like empires.

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Compared to other games of its type this is a fast game. It certainly packs in a lot during it’s playtime. There’s also very little downtime. I can see why they stuck to four players. Any more would drag the game too much so four is bang on.

This is one I’m going to whip out again and again (oh matron) when i need a four player. Its got everything I want and it certainly gets a place in my cold dead hands collection (c). It’s that good

Huzzah!

Vic

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