The Final Day of GenCon

August 23, 2013

Well, so the final day started off a little less than awesome because nobody showed up for the full game demo of Forge War. Admittedly, it might have been a poorly thought-out time slot, since it was pretty much ALL OF SUNDAY, and if you're coming on Sunday, you probably want to do more than play a single board game. Typically people want to do their shopping on the last day, and my event time lined up exactly with the times the exhibition hall was open. Live and learn! The upside is that I, too, got to do lots of other stuff with my Sunday rather than demo a game I was sufficiently tired of demoing anyway. Behold the final list of awesome GenCon things! 1. Demoing The New Science (finally): The New Science was a game Adrian and I had been eyeing all weekend. Worker placement with a nerdy theme of researching, experimenting and publishing on various scientific topics. Awesome! I first demoed this without him, but the women I was playing with got bored and left 2 turns in, so I didn't really walk away with much except how to play the game. I brought Adrian back later, though, and we had a go at the full game with just the two of us. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite good enough to justify a purchase. While the mechanic of stealing other people's research was interesting, I felt like the overall strategy of the game was a bit shallow. They wasn't enough diversity of action, so you ended up doing the same thing turn after turn. I think the fact that we played a 2-player game hurt the experience, as well, as there was only one publish action, which really stagnated the flow of the game. Anyway, still had a good time. 2. Watching a demo guy try to explain the My Little Pony CCG to a 5-year-old: I approached the My Little Pony CCG demo area with the idea that this might be something that my hot wife and I could play together. She's not a fan of complex systems, but surely this game targeted at young girls would be something she could handle, right? Well, it turned out to be like any other CCG, complex mechanics and all, which was a sad disappointment. Watching some guy try and fail to explain the complex mechanics to their target audience, however, brought me some joy-filled schadenfreude at least. Seriously, what were they thinking with this? Bronies maybe? 3. Talking briefly with a visibly exhausted Patrick Rothfuss: PATRICK ROTHFUSS! Yay! He was pale and didn't even bother to stand up for a picture, but it's all totally good. I can understand that he must have had a super-exhausting weekend, so I didn't bother him too much. We talked for a little bit and he at least made a little face for the picture. Plus I didn't even buy anything in the booth, so I was clearly just a freeloading jerk. 4. Lugging Adrian's massive purchases out the the car to watch him try and fit them in his suitcases: Adrian ended up getting the anniversary edition of Galaxy Trucker, which was bigger and heavier than any game I have ever seen, plus Nothing Personal and some other game they were giving away for free with it. He did eventually get it all in his suitcases after some Tetris-like maneuvering. 5. Having time to take Adrian to the airport: This guy had come and increased the enjoyability of my GenCon experience many-fold, so I was happy to take him to the airport to send him on his way back to California to share Seasons and Galaxy Trucker with his family. Until next year (maybe)! 6. Returning to reality: And then I went home, after neglecting the real world and my hot wife for, like, a whole week. We went out to Hu Hot and I stuffed myself with stir fry, because I hadn't eaten a real meal in all that time, either. It was great.

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