GamesReport: 24-Jun-12 QCon19-Day 3

Sunday @ QCon19

Thanks to Starbucks for keeping us awake on Sunday

Sunday morning came early and truth be told this convention seemed to be over in the blink of a eye. This was due no doubt to the fact that we filled every available moment playing games, and I don't recall any QCON that I got more games in. This came at a cost however and convention fatigue slowed us down in the first session of Sunday. Thankfully Starbucks helped us out with some welcome espresso and we arrived at the Queens University Students Union building on time and ready if out raring to go.

Game of Thrones

Witness the Blockade of Pyke

After we had publicised that we were going to play Fantasy Flight's second edition version of the excellent Game of Thrones boardgame we got a lot of interest and I think that all the six available slot were filled early on Saturday. As it turned out two of these people had not the stamina of the more experienced convention attendees amongst us and they were shamefully no shows. The two available seats were soon filled however and the game got underway with random selection of Houses.

 Koffeeklub regular AndyA took his customary Baratheon position and GaryG and myself swapped our previous positions with Stark and Lannister respectively. Separating the two Gary's was Chris taking the dangerous Greyjoy House and to the south of the seven kingdom John and Colin (like myself of tabletopnorth extraction) took the Tyrell and Martel Houses respectively.

I started aggressively seeking to take Greyjoy out of the game early and give myself a little breathing room. My assault was interrupted when a sizeable Tyrell army arrived at my southern border forcing me to divert a army I had planned to strike at Chris to make a point with John that such incursion would not be tolerated. This led to a swift and bloody exchange that left John and my armies decimated and both of us hamstrung and effectively out of the running for most of the game.

I became a whipping boy for the rest of the game and with all the attention off the north and east Stark and Baratheon were able to build their strength. It was Colin's first game and he squared off admirably with the slightly more experienced John, and drew AndyA into the conflict as well. When it became clear that Stark had been allowed too much rope and GaryG had built his armies well attentioned turned to the north in the mid game. Gary saw the threat and made his move attacking Greyjoy and Baratheon and for a couple of turns it looked as if Stark had it in the bag. However he was way over-stretched and this allowed my Lannister to sweep north and take Winterfell. The last battle was between Stark and Baratheon with the Lannisters winning should the Baratheon's lose. Ironically the Greyjoy support in the battle give the well deserved win to AndyA.

AndyA was a worthy  victor

A not so worthy GaryB

Watch this space for a KoffeeKlub review of this fantastic board game coming soon

Ticket to Ride

After lunch and yet another Starbucks coffee we had a stab at Ticket to Ride. AndyA and GaryG were familiar with the rules of this simple but involving game, but it didn't take long for me to pick it up. I suspect that Gary and AndyA took it easy on me at one point in the game when I had signal posted my intended route across America and there was an opportunity to block me haflway which would have ruined my game. In the end I won quite handily which is good for I badly needed the coffee beans for the Koffeeklub league.

Trev had been keen to play this game all weekend but couldnt make it for the Sunday. We will definately bring this game soon to a Sunday night Koffeeklub meeting.

Another Pandemic

We will defeat you ... oh yes!

We had another crack at Pandemic to finish off the convention and yet again we were defeated by the four mega-virii. We are starting to think that GaryG needs to go away and play this game solo for a while. He definately is holding us back and badly needs practice to up his game. ;)

Seriously though I like that this is a very challenging collaborative game and in that it reminds me of Arkham Horror before we got the beating of that game. I believe that we are going to give this game another attempt next Sunday.

Convention Round-up

I really enjoyed this years convention. It was huge in terms of numbers and all credit to the QCON organisers for another fantastically well managed event. It did feel that we were shoe-horned in to the SU building this year though and there are indications that we have outgrown this venue. It seems likely that the gamers will be pushed out to outlying buildings and I fear that this will further diversify the gaming and non-gaming portions of QCON. I have every confidence though that next years organising committee will resolve this problem.

One thing is for sure we will be there and I for one cannot wait

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.

GamesReport: 22-Jun-12 QCon19-Day 1

It's taken me a few days to recover and catch up on my sleep, but as QCon closes for another year, the KoffeeKlub look back on an epic weekend of top notch gaming!

Friday @ QCon19

Zombie Dice

Coffees in hand we found ourselves a quiet little space in the corner for a few rounds of Zombie Dice, a recent purchase for Mr Bingers, having played it last weekend during the TTN event at Nerdtopia.

Zombie Dice is a light press-your-luck style game similar to the older Pass The Pigs or Can't Stop in that you are trying to advance your score (eat brains in this case) before your luck runs out and you lose what progress you've already made (getting shot three times). It ranks quite poorly on the geek but still served us well at QCon as an opener and a few times over the weekend as we waited for our food to arrive during lunch/dinner breaks.

Next up, having seen quite a few plays at our regular KoffeeKlub meetings, was Bluff (aka Liars Dice or the dice game played in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest).

Bluff goes all the way up to eleven!

We had pulled together two full sets and wanted to open with a Mega game to get our QCon off to a good start. People were slow to join us in the beginning, but cries of "World Record Muff!" seemed to do the trick and eventually we went all the way up to eleven!

Trying to predict how many 4s there were with 50+ dice being rolled proved tricky, so we followed our record-breaking match with a couple of six-player tournament games.

Great craic all round!

Tensions rise during the Bluff Final!

Trev - our dealer

Our first meaty game for the evening was AEG's Nightfall hosted for us by Trev from his own private collection. In Nightfall you take control of various vampires, werewolves, and ghouls and try to deal damage to your opponents in the form of wound cards which then clog-up their deck.

Vampires and Werewolves and Ghouls

I always enjoy this one, especially when we play with one of the expansions, it can be tough to learn for newbies though and we had a couple with us for this game.





Ideally players need a game or two before they really begin to understand what to look for in the card-combos.

Bah!

Our final offering for the evening was Pandemic, a co-operative game where the players are highly skilled CDC specialists working as a team to stop several virulent diseases as they sweep across the world. We'd played this one recently and failed in our efforts to save mankind... Would QCon be the turning point? ...hell no...... In fact we would fail in multiple attempts throughout the weekend to beat the game.

My only purchase at QCon was the expansion to Pandemic, On The Brink. We've provisionally agreed not to play this until we've beaten the base game first. Hmm...



All-in-all a great opening to QCon19 for the KoffeeKlub. By close on Friday we were tired, but still looking forward to a great weekend of gaming.

Watch out for Saturday's GameReport coming soon to the KoffeeKlub blog.

Koffeeklub @ QCON19

We've all been at Q-Con before. The good ones the bad ones and the downright average ones, but we keep coming back for more. What's that about?

> Love it or hate it, Q-Con is Ireland's flagship gaming event and represents an opportunity to meet up with old gaming friends from the past and perhaps to re-live the good old days by playing a game or two of Call of Cthulhu. 

> Q-Con is a weekend pass...it's a slice of freedom...it's too much coffee...it's too little sleep...it's a new set of dice...it's a drink...or maybe it's two drinks...best of all though...it's tomorrow!!

This year @ Q-Con we'll be hosting a number of board, card and dice games, so we invite you to join us if you can.

Friday evening - Bluff event.

Saturday morning - Open board gaming session from around 11am until 2pm
Saturday afternoon - we'll be joining the Call of Cthulhu tournament from 3pm until 6pm
Saturday evening - At the Q-Con quiz

Sunday morning - Our big Game of Thrones (2nd Ed) game from around 11am until 2pm
Sunday afternoon - Open board gaming session from around 3pm until close at 6pm

If you want to join in please check out the registration desk or Table Top North's regular Q-Con stand. Our open gaming will offer up games such as Nightfall, Pandemic and A Few Acres of Snow.

Koffeeklub will be at Q-Con, hopefully you'll be there too!

QCON19 Koffeeklub Pre-Convention Report

Look Chris is excited too!

So the Koffeeklub is going to QCON this year. I'm actually quite excited about the convention this year. I am one of a dwindling band of those who remember the early QCONs and I was a fairly active member of the Dragonslayers club in those days. I missed the first convention as I was studying in Bournemouth University at the time but I have been at The convention every year since. QCON is a unique convention that I had a hand in building and I am very proud of it. The current Dragonslayers society have really upped their game though and the convention is now huge, kudos to them.

The Koffeeklub will be running a couple of games at the Con. We hope to share our passion for the game of Bluff and run a little mini-tournament as a participation game, also we will be bringing A Game Of Thrones board game to run for a session. Love this game. No idea which sessions we are going to schedule these events though. If you want to join in either return here to the Koffeeklub blog or check at the registration desk at the convention on Friday.

We hope to meet up with the Loaded Dice Club from Enniskillen at the weekend too. It will be good to have a drink or two and get to know the other board game club in the Province. Maybe play a few games too.

Anyways bring it on. My fellow koffeeklubbers and I will be blogging from the convention so drop by and see what we get up too