Is it Friday already? It looks like my time with you is almost up, and so much I didn’t get to talk about! I could probably go one for another entire week or two about everything that Gencon had to offer, but I suppose all good things must come to an end eventually. Before I wrap up, though, let me drop a couple more game recommendations on you, especially for the multiplayer/casual aficionados.
If you like multiplayer Grand Melee, allow me to recommend Kung Fu Fighting or En Garde!, both by Slugfest Games. Both games use the same principles in pitting multiple players against each other in a fight to the finish. Despite similar mechanics – Weapons and Attacks combine to get past an opponent’s Blocks and reduce their life points (either Poise or Chi) to zero – each captures the flavor of its content very well. KFF employs the use of Stances as well as Weapons to modify your attacks, but En Garde has cards that allow you to spend your Poise for better plays. If you’re looking for a fast-paced showdown, both are excellent, so pick your favorite based on the flavor each one brings to the table.
If Emperor is more your style, you may cotton on to Days of Wonder’s Shadows Over Camelot. DoW makes a lot of high-quality products, and they had Shadows on display at Gencon. It’s a very involved board game that involves a lot of working together as the players try to accomplish Arthurian quests before Camelot succumbs to terrible, faceless evil. Each player has to do one evil deed on his or her turn before making a play to save the castle, and the endgame turns into a big balancing act, with each Knight trying to help rescue Excalibur or slay the dragon without leaving the capitol to be swarmed under by Saxon invaders. There are too many dynamics to describe here, as the game is as involved as it is intense, but anyone who would rather work with his friends that try to beat them up will like this one a lot.
Finally, for the DC10 fiends (although this applies to the Grand Melee’ers as well), I’ll direct you to my favorite game of the Con, an old classic in a new box, Roborally, retooled by Avalon Hill (owned by Wizards of the Coast). If you enjoyed the old ‘Rally, you’ll be right at home in the new one, and any newcomers should enjoy it as well. This game, like many DC10 stacks, is completely unpredictable – you may set up your turn to get exactly where you need to go, but find that you’ve been pushed off your path by an opponent halfway through the turn. Now you’ve ended up halfway across the board in the path of a laser and are getting blown to hell and back! That might not sound like a good time, but that’s practically the point of the game: nothing happens as you expect, and total chaos is the rule. Winning seems secondary to watching derailed ‘bots ride around on conveyer belts and tip into chasms. The entire experience is a blast, and I recommend it to anyone and everyone.
Now that I’ve got those off my chest, I’ll take these last moments to talk a little more about the one game I didn’t play at Gencon: Magic. (This is, after all, a Magic website, so I do hope you won’t mind.) I’ve referenced our common obsession often enough this week, and more times than not it’s been to show how a different game doesn’t quite live up to its standards. This is because those standards are incredibly high. Magic is a paragon of long-term game success, both in a business sense and for the gameplay.
The cards we play with each day represent a remarkable achievement in the gaming industry – probably half the products I saw in Indianapolis will be sunk by April, but Magic has stuck around for over twelve years. Even if you don’t like a particular set or design choice (and I’ve been fairly vocal with my opinions on that matter), the game itself as it stands today is just awesome. The rules have been refined down through the years, and with Ninth Edition’s switch to Auras, the game is as streamlined as it has ever been. Good thing, too, because a game that used interrupts alongside instants and burying as code for a special type of destroying probably wouldn’t survive in today’s CCG market.
I guess the point is that Magic is still as much the king of collectable card games as it’s ever been, which bodes well for those of us playing it. The designers are doing good things and they’re not kidding when they say that Magic will be around for years to come. The rules changes we’ve seen in recent years have prepared the game for a long life, and long after the other games I’ve told you about this week have started gathering dust on your shelf, you’ll still be playing this one.
Or at least, I will. If you don’t make it, it’ll be your loss.
It’s been a fun week, and I hope this did something for you – helped you choose a new game to try, gave you an idea for a new game of your own, or just helped you think about this one in a different way. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled programming.
Signing off,
Andy Clautice
andy dot clautice at gmail dot com