Our Team + Games In The Booth + Old Friends

Our team this year is probably the best team we've ever had in the booth. Most of the team knows most of the games, with two exceptions:

Stephanie and I demo Dungeon Twister.  I demo Gosu.

I also think that, game-wise, we have the strongest booth we've ever had.  Sobek is going over extremely well (as it should - it's a very fun game). Double Agent is getting mixed reviews, which is a shame. Trust me on this: Play it at least twice. The more you know the cards, the better this game is.

We have most of the games I'd expected (and a few more). And some pre-production prototypes for Ghost Stories: Black Secret, Claustrophobia: De Profundis, Dixit Odyssey, Le Donjon de Naheulbeuk (English title to follow), and Takenoko.  I'm excited about all of these games.

Ghost Stories: Black Secret lets one player take the role of Wu Feng (the villain). It reminds me of the Sauron expansion from the Lord of the Rings co-operative game that came out ... a decade ago?

Claustrophobia: De Profundis is just good. It's more of the same, and adds a few new twists and wrinkles to the mis.

Naheulbeuk was a hair-pulling frustrating exercise in translation. It was three months of beating my head into a wall. But the finished product looks to be a lot of fun. It's more a party game than a gamer's game, but it looks like a fun party game. It's based on a French audio drama that is somewhere between The Order of the Stick and Knights of the Dinner Table. A completely inept party of adventurers is bumbling through a dungeon trying to recover an ancient artifact in order to fulfill a prophecy.  Players will have to overcome a variety of challenge types - minigames which test your dexterity, memory, endurance, and ability to spell. And it's had almost zero press. No-one knew it was coming except us.

Takenoko is a game where you are tyring to meet specific goals by building, irrigating, and cultivating a garden. And trying to keep the Giant Panda from completely destroying it.

Dixit Odyssey is ... well ... 84 more cards, and better components than before - the rabbits don't fall as easily, and the scoring track has been improved, as has the voting mechanism.

I"ve met a couple of people I have been e-mailing with. I always feel bad when someone says, "We've been e-mailing back and forth about Dungeon Twister," because I e-mail back and forth with a LOT of people about Dungeon Twister. I can remember Mike Dougan (even though I had to e-mail Geoff to remember what his name was), but most of the rest of you are blurs - sorry.

I have also gotten to see some old friends - David Miller from Purple Pawn seems to always stop by when I'm mid demo. He's one of the nicest guys to deal with, and I always feel bad that I don't have more time to talk to him. I did manage to play a couple of games with him last year on Wednesday.

My old friend Mark Kinney from All Games Considered also dropped by. Again: I wish I'd had more time to talk. Partly so he had info for his podcast and partly because I've known Mark since before I was heavily into board games (I used to be more roleplayer than boardgamer).

Todd and Kris are two of our Werewolves of Miller's Hollow regulars. I think we've been playing Werewolves together for ... five years, now. Todd and I also found a bit of time to talk professional wrestling on Wednesday before we made it into the dealer's room for setup.

We're at the half-way mark. Actually a bit past it, as Thursday is long and Sunday is short. This is the point where - every year - I start doubting my sanity in being here. Because my feet are blistered, my back is sore, and I haven't had a good night's sleep since Monday night.

Then I remember that it's GenCon.

... and I need to get going. I have work to do. :)