I believe it's announced as being the same weekend as the last couple years - i.e., straddling April Fool's. I'm starting to look ahead at my schedule for that weekend because one thing that's a maybe on my son's Christmas list is tickets to Weird Al's smaller concert with comedian Emo Phillips, which is that Friday night. I'd originally been planning to leave Friday AM and come help with stuff all weekend.
Indy folks, when y'all return from Unplugged, should we start to consider what/how much we want to run/demo?
I don't plan to run anything this year. May not actually attend. There's just too much else going on!
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
Unfortunately, that's my situation also...![frown frown](https://greaterthangames.com/sites/all/libraries/ckeditor/plugins/smiley/images/confused_smile.gif)
"See, this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety. Breaks the heart." - Mal
Unicode U+24BD gets us Ⓗ. (Thanks, Godai!)
Will either of you be at the Indianapolis Comic Con? Just had my parents offer to help pay for costs for me to go, since my birthday is at the end of April.
My wife and I will be attending WYC, but I'm not sure I'll have time to run much of anything. I don't know how much we'll be able to lean on our normal babysitter that weekend. But hopefully I can be there a bit longer than I was last year (just 3-4 hours for one day - I stayed at home with the 6-month-old while my wife got out of the house).
You two have an excuse.
I need to look more into the Indiana Comic-com stuff, since I learned Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom) is supposed to be there. Might split my time.
Unfortunately, no -- sorry!
Really just have too much going on in other areas...
"See, this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety. Breaks the heart." - Mal
Unicode U+24BD gets us Ⓗ. (Thanks, Godai!)
Understood. It seemed like the last couple years, your time at WYC was taking away from other things you needed to be doing.
It just means that, if I decide to go, I won't try to schedule in even just some time to hang out with any of you. (We you around when Andy and I figured out that I briefly knew Mrs. Andy electronically years back?)
This year Indianapolis Comic Con and Whos Yer Con are the same weekend.
Typically, I have enjoyed seeing actors at Indianapolis Comic Con, but haven't been keen to pay for the privilege, so have volunteered with Whos Yer Gamers to help run the games library in exchange for a pass, so I could also see the celebs. With ICC and WYC the same weekend, I seriously doubt WYG will run the library at ICC, so I doubt I will attend.
I think it's very likely that I _WILL_ attend WYC, but I have not thought about how long I'll spend there or what, exactly I'll do. There's a decent chance that I will volunteer to help in the library there, particularly because I know and like the people responsible for the library.
As for Mrs. Andy, I think you mean Dr. Mrs. Andy.
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
I'll keep you possibly being at WYC in mind as I decide whether/what to do.
And yes, I'm aware that she's Dr. Mrs. Andy. :)
Well, looks like I'll be at WYC after all. I will be running a Tactics intro for tweens and teens on Sat & Sun. Doubt I'll be there much more than that, but we'll see. (I'm out of town the week before for work, so really need to deal with stuff at home that weekend.)
"See, this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety. Breaks the heart." - Mal
Unicode U+24BD gets us Ⓗ. (Thanks, Godai!)
I plan to attend on Saturday only. Friday I'll be at a Passover Seder. Sunday I'll be doing other things.
There are a couple of board game events I hope to get into (too late to reserve in advance), but if I have downtime I'll walk around to see if anyone's playing Sentinels or other GtG products and say hello if I find y'all.
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
My wife will definitely be there for some parts of Friday and Saturday. I'm still working on trying to schedule an electrician to take care of some house issues (currently working on selling my place, still staying in the Indy area), so my schedule is unclear, but I will be on the lookout! I hope to participate in Friday's Dominion tournament if I can squeeze in the time...
The Dominion tournament sounded fun, but 6 PM to midnight when I have a toddler at home wasn't going to happen. My wife and I had a babysitter over for a few hours, so we and a couple of her friends parked in the open gaming room and checked out stuff from the library for about 3 hours.
We played:
- Lazer Ryderz, which was a lot more fun than I expected; we'll be sure to try that one again tomorrow for the "play to win" contest. Both of my wife's friends enjoyed this one, too, and the victory came down to the last move.
- Bad Medicine, which... well, let's just say I enjoy Gil Hova's other games a lot more. I'm not very good at off-the-cuff creative/comedic party games, though, so I'm sure other folks would enjoy it more than I did.
- New York Slice, a ... pizza area control game? I needed more time with that one than we had, but it seemed like it might not be a great game for two players. We have an entire Kallax cube full of food-themed games, but I'm not sure this one will be joining it.
I saw Rabit demoing Spirit Island a couple tables over, but I didn't get the chance to say hello or watch Spirit Island.
I forgot we also tried King of New York. I don't know if it was a function of the rules or just bad luck, but our game only lasted 4 rounds as my wife:
- Won the roll for who went first
- Immediately rolled to get the Superstar card and moved into Manhattan
- Got an extra turn for 4 energy cubes on round 2
- Neither of the other two players ever got Superstar away from her, so stars we rolled meant nothing while stars she rolled turned into VP.
Sorry I missed you, bolnerap!
Yeah, got in a demo of Spirit Island yesterday before I had to leave. Went well, with the person who hadn't played before deciding to go buy it. :-D
Got back this morning later than I hoped, but was able to get in another SI demo. Now I'm at Nic's getting ready to run a game of Tactics for tweens/teens as an intro to tactical miniature games. :-)
If you're here, check out the charity auction going on in the vendor hall. Great stuff for a good cause!
"See, this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety. Breaks the heart." - Mal
Unicode U+24BD gets us Ⓗ. (Thanks, Godai!)
Sorry I missed you, bolnerap!
Yeah, got in a demo of Spirit Island yesterday before I had to leave. Went well, with the person who hadn't played before deciding to go buy it. :-D
Got back this morning later than I hoped, but was able to get in another SI demo. Now I'm at Nic's getting ready to run a game of Tactics for tweens/teens as an intro to tactical miniature games. :-)
If you're here, check out the charity auction going on in the vendor hall. Great stuff for a good cause!
"See, this is another sign of your tragic space dementia, all paranoid and crotchety. Breaks the heart." - Mal
Unicode U+24BD gets us Ⓗ. (Thanks, Godai!)
We went back to the convention from 1:00 - 6:00 today. Since we didn't get a babysitter lined up, I mostly spent the time with my daughter, though I did observe some stuff and played one round of King of Tokyo with my wife's friends. They liked that a lot more than King of New York - KOT is still quite a bit of luck, but it's a lot more straightforward.
My wife and her friends played a round of Healthy Heart Hospital, thanks in large part to a volunteer whose name I did not catch. He was a jolly fellow in his 60s and walked them through a couple of phases of the game to make sure they knew how to play. (My wife did a learn-to-play session at Gen Con last year but never followed up past that; the others were all new to the game.) They ended up stopping about halfway through the game and playing other stuff. The four of us all enjoy playing cooperative games when we get together for game days, but something about the morbid/skeevy nature of the mechanics put the girls off. (In HHH, one of the loss conditions is that so many people have died at your hospital that you've either run out of settlement money or run out of places to put the bodies.) I did enjoy the mechanics, from what I saw - it was a risk-based blind draw system similar to that found in Pandemic: The Cure, where you are aware of what's left in the draw bag because you have perfect information about what's already been pulled from said bag, and you can make informed decisions about the odds of success of various actions and choose accordingly. Obviously there's still luck involved, but that level of risk mitigation appeals to me a lot (says the guy who mains Visionary in Sentinels, to no one's surprise). But I didn't actually PLAY it, so I can't speak to how well it works.
My wife took the kiddo for a bit so I could do a quick round of King of Tokyo, then I took the kiddo back and wandered a bit because she is a toddler and hates sitting in the same spot for too long. As I carried my daughter around, we ran into both arenson9 and Rabit, and I made time to chat with them both for a bit. Andy was talking to a lady in the library room, explaining Spirit Island, and I listened in. I keep hearing how good it is, but keep getting scared off by the stated playtime of 90-120 minutes. Andy assured me that it didn't take that long as a solo or 2-player game, and since that's mostly how I would be experiencing it, my interest was re-piqued. I'm about to be in a life situation for a couple of months where 2-player gaming will be a common thing, so maybe, just maybe, I'll finally bite on Spirit Island. Still won't make a good game for work lunches though, and that's kind of a bummer when that's my most commonly available time to play.
After I tired my daughter out by letting her run around the dealer room and up and down some ramps, I went back to the open gaming room and watched some newbies take on a round of Pandemic (stopping to watch solely because two of them were wearing paraphernalia from the college I went to). I sat silently until they asked a rules question - since I've played the stuffing out of Pandemic, I was able to answer it, then I resumed just watching. By the time the rest of my party was ready to go, they'd cured 3 diseases with 0 outbreaks, so it was looking pretty good.
Oh, and my party played another food game while I wasn't around - something called Donut Drive-Through. I didn't get the chance to look at it, but since there were only a couple dozen cards and 8 tokens, I imagine it was a short little game. Something tells me my wife is going to add to the food game shelf soon...
I made a geek list for what I played and/or taught at the con. Lots of GtG games, but by no means all.
Hi. My name's Andy. Feel free to call me Andy, since, ya know, that's my name. (he/him/his)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If not now, when? If I am for myself alone, what am I? -- Hillel
So, after it transpired that there wasn't a semi-formal slate of GtG stuff happening, my schedule ended up being a slot of the Sentinel Comics RPG that was scheduled on the "Grow a Gamer" (tween) track for Saturday morning, a slot of Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle also scheduled on the Grow-a-Gamer track on Sunday morning, and filling in the rest with D&D Adventurer's League. Both things I ran ended up with more adults playing than kids, but everybody seemed to enjoy themselves.
I was, perhaps predictably, up too late on Saturday night playing in the Epic, and still have a bit of a residual headache from the combination of dehydration & subpar eating choices.