8th Annual IndyCon Recap and Game Impressions

by sean johnson

It is really great to live in the greater Indianapolis area. Gen Con is in our backyard, and so is IndyCon. The two cons are very different. IndyCon is like a gaming meetup that last for three days with 150 people. The event is purposely limited to that number to keep it small. This was my seventh IndyCon, and it is neat because at this point there are people who I really only see at that event each year. Over the course of the weekend I recorded 30 game plays, including thirteen new to me games. This is a record of what I played and my thoughts on some of the new games we played. We had a lot of fun playing, and we hope you enjoy reading this.

Friday

We arrived Friday morning, and my wife had said the first thing that she wanted to do was play Memoir '44. Specifically, she wanted to play an Overlord scenario. We could not find anyone else who wanted to play, so we went at it alone. We played the Rats in a Factory scenario from Memoir '44: Sword of Stalingrad. My wife played the Germans and I played the Russians. This was a brutal scenario, that captures the fighting for every inch feel of Stalingrad. On my right, where one of the factory complexes was located, my wife really pounded me and knocked me out hex by hex. I was able to use a combat card to get a sniper unit on that flank, which proved hard to kill, and really helped me out. She pushed to far though trying to get to an exit and I was able to push back and cause a lot of damage. In the middle things were very quiet for most of the game. For the most part, every time my wife moved to attack I was able to rebuff it from my defensive position. On my left at the tractor factory there was a lot of fierce fighting. Whenever I lost a unit, my wife lost one in turn. A big armor push finally started to give me an advantage on this flank, and I followed it up with a Behind Enemy Lines card that allowed me to get a unit to the exit hex. I won the game 18 to 13.

While I drove to get lunch, my wife played a game of Qwixx which she really enjoyed. We then joined our friends John, Brian, and Kathy to play Roll for the Galaxy. They had not played before, so we were happy to teach them. None of them were huge fans of Race for the Galaxy, but they all liked this game. Of course, my wife won this one.

Next we played Lords of Scotland. This is one of the games that my wife and I have not played for two-plus years, so we wanted to get it played. We will have a full write up about that soon.

My wife then left to go shopping, and I played Impulse. This was my first time I played this game. I really enjoy Glory to Rome by the same designer. I am not sure how I felt about this game. Carl Chudyk seems to have an instinctive way of figuring out really interesting ways for cards to interact. However the graphic design, themeing, and overall component quality was terrible. The only thing that made this a space game was because the game said it was. The complete lack of anything that was evocative of the theme, really made this game a bit of a disconnect for me. I did not hate the game, but I will also not be rushing to play it again.

Next, John wanted to play Nations: The Dice Game. I was initially excited to play the game, but my excitement waned. This is a competent game. All of the moving pieces work together just fine. Mechanically this game is good. However, it was not much fun. The game was kind of boring. There was no excitement, no tension, no feeling of risk. The game managed to make rolling dice an un-exciting activity. That is a feat, but I am not sure if it is a good one.

After Nations the Dice Game, we played Doodle Quest. This is a decent kids game. It is not really my thing, and I can totally see how it could work well with certain groups. I do not see this being a game we would get though as a family game, at least not right now. My wife and I both thought that our son would find it more frustrating than fun.

After that, we played a quick game of Click Clack Lumberjack because Kathy and John are on a quest to play 100 games this year, and games with quick play times help. John and Brian left to get food, and Kathy taught Abigail and I Splendor. This was a game that I was extremely excited to play, especially given the fact it just won the Golden Geek for game of the year. We both thought the game was decent, but we both were a little underwhelmed. Building up to get the higher point cards was fun, and the game has a good sense of progress to it. However, I felt like there was not much to it. Kathy, who taught the game to us, commented she was not sure how much replayability this game has because it feels like after so many plays, it can be learned how to optimize. After that, every play might get kind of samey. Clearly, none of us have played the game to that point, so it was just conjecture. However, my wife and I thought there might be something to her point.

We then played Loopin' Louie, because again Kathy is on the quest for 100 games, and any game counts. IndyCon offers play to win games, and one of the games they had available was Roar-a-Saurus, and we gave it a try. This is a game of monsters fighting each other played in real time. The fighting is done by frantically rolling dice, players try to get sets of three. One set, hit the player to the left, the other hits the player to the right, one hits everyone, and the final option is heal one wound. When a player takes four hits they are out, and the last player standing gets a victor token. Essentially the first to four victor tokens is the winner. We thought the game was cute and kind of fun. However, there are no real decisions to be made. We played this twice during the night, and by the second game it kind of wore out its welcome for us.

We next played Dragon Slayer because it was also a play to win game. This is a quick playing "push your luck" dice game that is in the same vein of several games that have come out recently. This one has a dragon hunting theme, where players have to roll a set of a dragon and a weapon before losing to many dice to fire attacks. If a player stops they score points, if they push their luck and bust they get nothing. Other players can challenge them to goad them to continue. None of us liked this game at all. It just was boring to play, and not fun.

Because it was also play to win, and super quick we played a quick game of Coup. Kathy crushed me. We finished up this session of quick playing games by playing Red7. I had played the game previously, and I thought my wife might like the game. She said it was fun, she would play again, but it was not a game she wanted to own.

One of the games that I was most wanting to play at IndyCon was Empires of the Void. On Friday night the game made it to the table. . We played a four player game with John, Brian, and Tom who I met for the first time this year. I was able to use the Mystics of Siri special ability to grab cards from the discard to great effect. I ignored going for star cruisers, and instead quickly outfitted my Diplomats with extra speed and fighters. From there I expanded fairly aggressively. I overstretched a bit and Tom put me back in my place before turtling up. I did not have star cruisers, but I had access to several special ships including firebugs, tempests, and moths. Tom and Brian both found their momentum stalling out a bit because of failed diplomatic rolls. Towards the last half of the game, John and I found ourselves engaged in a war, I ended up netting a bit more out of the fight and then used the Tempests tractor beam to secure my borders. On the last turn I made a play for the galactic capitol held by John, and this was the right move because I only beat him by a couple of points. It has been way too long since I last played this game, but I think it is truly wonderful and an absolute blast to play.

We ended the night by playing Pandemic: The Cure. We have written about it before, that we do not care much for co-op games. However, my wife does like Pandemic and dice games so we wanted to try this one. Yeah, we still do not like co-op games. It did not help that we got hosed by particularly bad dice rolls, but I did not care for this game. I do not see how it delivers a better or more unique Pandemic experience. I have heard podcast comments about how this decreases the alpha player that tends to happen in Pandemic, but I felt like we talked about what we should do in this game as much as we would in the board version. I think I prefer the spatial element of the board more. I suppose this game does make the misery of losing a co-op game a shorter experience, but there is that.

When I left on Friday, I picked up our math trade games. We picked up Batman: Arkham City Escape (with a box that is too big!), Canalis, Fresco, Omen: A Reign of War, and an extra copy of Berserk: War of the Realms so I can fiddle with deck building. Of those, I am most excited about Omen, and I can not wait to play it again.

Saturday
Due to a commitment I had (coaching youth soccer) I could not get to IndyCon until late morning. Even though we ended Friday with a co-op game we started Saturday with one as well. One of the play to win games was Kings of Israel. I really wanted to play this game strictly because of its biblical theme. I felt like we started off really well getting three of the seven altars needed really fast. However, things turned south really quick. Later in the day we actually won the game when they did the play to win drawing, so we will do one of our reviews on it soon.

Late Friday night, Julia (one of the people we only see at IndyCon) had asked my wife if she could teach Copycat. It was late, so she declined but we did play Saturday afternoon. We also played with someone else whose name is escaping me. Julia focused on points almost exclusively. She was the leader for most of the game, but she was not able to buy bigger point cards and she fell behind towards the end. The other guy went with a guard draw strategy, and he did get tons of points the last couple of turns but he had fallen too far behind. My wife and I were really close. On turn ten I bought and eight point card, but I had to get it into my hand. I managed to do so and double it, which gave me enough points to sneak in front of my wife for the win.

After that game, my wife wanted to take some time to rest and enjoy the peace of being kid free, and while she did that I got to play Federation Commander. I got to play against Adam West. He played the Klingons and I played the Federation. I commanded the USS Koch (in honor of IndyCon's host), and I do not remember the name of Adam's ship but he said it was "Kill Sean" in Klingon. We played a scenario where I had to rescue colonists from a planet, and he had to blow me up. My ship got hammered, but I was able to maneuver enough so that each time I took the full brunt of his fire it hit a different shield. I only got points in this scenario for rescues, and if he crippled my ship I knew he would be getting sixty some points. There were 10 groups to rescue at 10 points each. I got eight off, and ran for it. I took more hits to my shields on the way out, but I managed to escape and get the win.

Afterwards, Adam and I found a couple to teach us the The Palaces of Carrara. The game has a very strong euro game feel to it, but it also has several unique mechanisms to it. I ended up pursuing a losing strategy, but I enjoyed the game and I would play it again.

After that game my wife and I played a quick game of Among the Stars because it is one of our 10x10 games. I completely ignored military and I was able to get several points from yellow and green worlds. My wife did a great job though of setting up end game points, and at the end she blew past me.

After we ate we played a couple of quick games to fill time before the raffle drawing. We played 10 Days in the USA. It had been a while since we played one of these games, and she wanted to play it to determine how close to being able to play these games are son is. She won, and I still greatly dislike this whole game series. We also played We Didn't Playtest This At All because it is also on our list of games we have not played for 2+ years.

For the size of the convention, IndyCon does a HUGE game raffle giving away dozens and dozens of games. Every year, we have managed to win something. As already mentioned, we won Kings of Israel. My wife also won Rattlebones. For the third year in a row, I managed to win a Gamecrafter gift certificate. I will use this to try to find some undiscovered gem.

After this, we played a game of The Castles of Burgundy with Brian Preston and his son. It was a big highlight for me, that he said he was interested in playing this game in part because of our blog post. Brian and I both managed to get a lot of points from the farms and sets of animals. He collected pigs and I got cows. Brian's son got a lot of the bonus points for completing all areas of one color. However, he ignored the farms and I think that hurt him. My wife focused on the building spaces. I felt really confident that I was going to win this game, but she had some good end game bonuses from yellow tiles (my yellow tiles gave in game effects) and that pushed her in front of me for the win.

After Castles of Burgundy, I was able to jump into A Study in Emerald. I am very glad I did, because this was probably the best "new to me" game I tried. I played with my friend Adam, Barry (another person I only really see at IndyCon) and I met Brian and Steve from St. Louis. This game really delivers on the whole deckbuilding 2.0 concept. It uses deckbuilding as a mechanic in a much larger game. This is a bit of an area control game, and it does a great job of having too much to do and never enough to do it all. What I loved most about this game is the unique victory conditions. Everyone is secretly on a team, but there is only one winner. At the end of the game, the team of whoever is in last can not win. So if the lead player by points is on the same team as the last player then the lead player can not win, and the winner is the highest scoring player of the other team. This is exactly what happened in this game. Brian and I were both close to winning. However, I had nudged the end game points for my team up just enough on my turn. He did not recalculate that, and ended the game. When teams were revealed, my fellow team mate who was in last got the end game points which was enough to put him just ahead of Adam who was on the opposite team, which gave me the win.

Something my wife and I have not done for years is go to some late night restaurant together. This is because of kids, and it is generally irresponsible to drag them to someplace at 1 in the morning. However, we did not have kids this weekend so we acted like we were in our mid 20's again. We found a Hot Box Pizza that was open and ordered bread sticks, while playing Rattlebones. Again, we will soon write up a full review. Due to Day light savings time, it was entirely too late when we got back to the hotel.

Sunday
My wife wanted to sleep in a bit more than I did, so once I got up I met back up with Brian and Steve who I met the previous night and played a quick game of Roll for the Galaxy. We played this game with Chris. I went with a heavy development strategy. It worked and I won, but not by much.

Troy then joined us for a game of Evolution. This was my first time playing this game, and I liked it more than I thought I would. Some of my friends played this at Gen Con and they hated it, so I kind of avoided it. I found this game fun though. It was neat to build and develop a species over the course of the game. I jumped out to an early lead. However, everyone else had played the game before and they set up some combos that worked much better than what I did. In the last couple of turns I kind of stalled out. I am not sure if this is a game I have to have, but I liked it and I will gladly play it again.

While I was playing Evolution, my wife played Splendor as a two player game because she wanted to see how that would work. The person she was playing with, Chris, and Phil, joined us for Thunder Alley. I really like this game, but my wife only likes it with higher player counts. This makes someplace like IndyCon the perfect place to play. This was a bit of a weird game, because in the middle we had three distinct packs really spread out. A yellow brought us all together though. There was a second yellow right before the finish line. I think this really messed me up, because my cars were positioned well before the line up, but due to turn order I got kind of hung out to dry.

At this point we had to go get our kids. We loved IndyCon this year, and we were so glad we got to attend.