GamesReport: 23-Jun-12 QCon19-Day 2

Welcome to the second of KoffeeKlub's daily QCon GameReports. If you haven't already caught the Friday GameReport you can check it out here.

Saturday @ QCon19

Clements once again was our friend and provided our early morning caffeine shot as we settled down in the board gaming area - so what to play?

Undecided, we opened with a quick game of Zombie Dice before moving on to Bohnanza, a light(ish) German bean trading card game from AMIGO Spiel.  (1997)

Beans, not cowboys!

Bohnanza is a game about trading, planting and harvesting different beans in order to make more money than your fellow players. Oddly, unlike most card games, you cannot alter the order of your hand except through trading cards away and immediately planting the cards that you receive from the trade. 

Beans of the same type must be planted together and beans yield different returns based on their value (depends on how frequent they are in the deck). 

Beans with no name?

Players are challenged early in the game as their two bean fields are quickly planted, so good hand management and effective trading are both key to your success.

Overall, Bohnanza should not to be taken too seriously. I have the German version of the game and much fun can be had during trading as players create their own English names for the different bean types...

...the Boxing bean, the Fire bean, the Shit bean and the Puke bean... we've heard most of the "translations" already :) 


Our morning closed with a second failed attempt to beat Pandemic. There was much discussion about what we could do differently next time... ...my inner voice was screaming - "drop these clowns and play it solo!"

Lunch was pizza and more Zombie Dice at the Parlour across from the student's union building.

Original, still the best?

After that we went our separate ways for the afternoon session, AndyA demoed Guards! Guards! for the Blackspindle guys and I headed down to the role-playing area for the Al Darragh Memorial Cup: Call of Cthulhu - A Shadow over Belfast. I thoroughly enjoyed the session, but find myself preferring the Trail of Cthulhu system ahead of Chaosium's original Call of Cthulhu. Multiple percentile rolls for plot-driving clues can be frustrating and Trail handles that sort of thing so much better.

We dined at The Other Place for our evening meal. It sounds vaguely supernatural, but actual offers fairly plain fare. Ideal for hungry gamers! 

Thunderstone Hooo!

Promises of a Pub Quiz and much alcohol drifted into more gaming as Swami kindly hosted Thunderstone, another AEG game. 

Thunderstone, similar in many ways to Dominion, is a fantasy deck-building game. "Fight the evils of the dungeon to prove your worth. Gain powerful weaponry and level into new and mighty hero classes. Claim the best cards and survive to take the Thunderstone."

I struggled a little to come up with the right card combos, but I did like the theme of the game more than I do with Dominion. Dominion may still be the stronger game and I'm not sure that you could justify having both in your collection, certainly worth a second look though.

Finally we made it to the bar and spent the rest of the evening drinking and playing pool. Home for 2am...

What state will we be in on Sunday for our Game of Thrones showpiece?

Find out in Sunday's GamesReport coming soon to a blog near you.