The GenCon gaming convention was once again held in the Indianapolis Convention Center this past August. I’ve already reported on some of the role playing news so I thought I’d give an update on the state of the boardgaming industry. As usual, most big name publishers and many smaller ones set up shop in the main dealer hall to show off their newest and upcoming games. Games of all sorts were on display, but many of the games that made the biggest splash at the convention fell into one of three categories: cooperative games, where players primarily cooperate to defeat the game; deck building games, where players expand and refine a deck of cards as they use that same deck in play; and civilization building games, where players attempt to build up a small civilization and all that includes.

Co-Op Games:
Cooperative games are have traditionally been quite rare in the field of boardgames. For a long time, the Lord of the Rings (published by Fantasy Flight Games) game was the only highly rated cooperative boardgame around. This changed a few years back with the very successful publication of Pandemic (put out by Z-Man Games). Since that time, there have been more and more cooperative games appearing on store shelves. At GenCon I was able to look over four different takes on the cooperative genre. The first game, Castle Panic, was by a small publisher by the name of Fireside Games. Despite the company’s small size, I was impressed by the quality components they were able to put together for the game. It isn’t chock full of plastic components but it does have a nice set of cardboard tokens, playing cards, and even some little stands that are used to form a little circle of castle walls in the center of the board. In the game, players take turns playing cards to try to eliminate monsters that appear and try to move from outer rings towards the inner rings and breach the castle walls. This game is only semi-cooperative since players score points for killing monsters and not for simply wounding them. This means the game can sometimes develop into a matter of leaving monsters for the last possible moment rather than only wounding a monster and setting up another player to steal the kill. However, don’t get too careless because if the monsters eventually breach the walls, it generally spells game over and everyone automatically loses.

The next cooperative game I checked out was Defenders of the Realm (by Eagle Games). In this game, four boss monsters start at the edge of the board and work their way inwards to the home city of the players. Players wander the game board, preventing the monsters’ minions from tainting the land and completing quests. When players feel powerful enough (have collected enough colored cards) they can challenge one of the leaders to (hopefully) defeat them. Players win by defeating all four leaders but lose if too many lands are tainted (by having more than 4 minions on a location), too many of any one color minion appearing on the board, too many minions in the home city, or having a leader enter the home city. The game has a strong theme and story arc, as everyone initially wanders around and tries to gather power before challenging any of the bosses. However, spend too much time preparing and the boss monsters (or their multiplying minions) will overrun the board. The game accelerates its pace as more and more boss monsters are killed off, so once the third boss is eliminated the players need to hurry up and defeat the fourth and last monster quickly. I think the game will appeal to those who like a bit of story in their game and those who like rolling a few dice (nearly all combat and most quests involve the luck of the dice). The possible downsides of the game include its length (our first learning game came in at nearly 2 hours – that should drop but will still be well over an hour) and the luck of the dice and cards. While enough dice are rolled for luck to even out in the course of a game, having some bad rolls at critical junctures (such as a leader battle) can have a big effect on a party’s success.

One of the biggest booths at the show was Wizards of the Coast’s booth (makers of both Magic: the Gathering as well as Dungeons and Dragons). Their newest entry into the field of boardgames is Castle Ravenloft. This is a 1 to 5 player cooperative game (yes, you can play solo although you would often simply control multiple heroes at once) that could be described as an extremely simplified exploration boardgame version of Dungeons and Dragons. To play, each player is assigned one of five hero characters and a specific scenario is chosen out of a scenario book (there are half a dozen or so to choose from, with a few more scenarios available on the Wizards’ web site). The heroes then explore the Castle by flipping over new terrain tiles and fighting the monsters and challenges that appear. Combat is dice based using a 20 sided dice – using an easy to learn process that would be extremely familiar to anyone who’s tried out the D&D role playing game. Defeat monsters and you earn experience and treasure that can be used to help your character. Experience can be used to “level up” your hero in special situations or to avoid particularly bad encounter cards. Each hero has a set number of hit points and if they take too much damage they fall unconscious. If any of the heroes fall unconscious a total of three times, they automatically lose the game. The victory conditions, any special defeat conditions, and some other conditional rules vary from scenario to scenario keeping the overall game varied. Since the convention I’ve managed to play a solo game or two and was very pleased at how quickly the game can move along. Many exploration/quest games of this sort can quickly bog down into minutia and Castle Ravenloft seems to have avoided most of this problem.

The final cooperative game I came across was a complete surprise. It seems that Wizkids (makers of the popular Heroclix line of plastic superhero miniatures games) is putting together a cooperative game around the newly revamped Star Trek license. The players represent the Federation who have arrived at a planet they are trying to convince to join. At the same time, Klingons are stirring up trouble above the planet (harrying the poor Enterprise) and on the planet itself (trying to start a civil war.) Players must keep the Enterprise safe, staff off civil war, and help the population recover from their devastating self-inflicted ecological disasters. The game provides various missions to accomplish and the successful completion of one mission opens up the opportunity to perform new ones. If a mission is a big success, it may open up avenues that wouldn’t otherwise be available. Each goal (fix the ecology, stop the civil war, get the planet to join the Federation) is tracked separately so players can get an effective score at the end of the game and succeed well or just scrape by. Time itself is a resource in the game that must be carefully guarded. A large Klingon fleet is on its way and if things aren’t resolved by the time they arrive, it’s game over for the poor Enterprise crew. As a fan of cooperative games and all things on the geeky side, I’m easily up for giving this game a spin when it comes out. It looks to have a number of good things going for it, so we’ll have to see how they all come together.

Deck Building Games:
It isn’t too often new genres of games appear, but about two years ago, the (non-collectible) card game Dominion (from Rio Grande Games) came on the scene winning buckets of awards. Game designers were quick to realize the possibilities in this style of game and several new games in the genre were shown at GenCon this year. In Dominion, players start with a deck of basic cards consisting of money and points. Players draw from their deck and use the money cards (which are discarded but not consumed) to buy new cards, adding them to their deck. Over time, a player’s deck gets more and more powerful (buy purchasing better money cards or special action cards). However, at the end of the game players add up all the point cards in their deck (and discards) to see who won the game. Since point cards are not useful during the game (they clog up your hand of cards), players must judge carefully when they will switch from making improvements in their deck of cards to purchasing the high value point cards (and thus clogging up their deck of cards with “useless” point cards). The heart of the game revolves around the action cards. Each game has 10 different types of action cards available for purchase which grant players the ability to draw more cards, gain coins, buy extra cards, or even attack your opponents (cause them to discard cards or give them cards worth negative points!) Since the basic game comes with 25 different action cards, and only 10 are used in any specific game, the game seldom plays out the same way twice. If that isn’t enough, several expansions have been released for the game for anyone that has played the 25 basic game cards to death.

The big news for Dominion fans at GenCon was the first opportunity to purchase the newest expansion, Dominion: Prosperity. This expansion subscribes to the bigger is better model of game design. In Prosperity, you’ll find ways to make more money as well as opportunities to spend that newfound wealth on new expensive cards. At the heart of the expansion are two new basic cards. One (Colony) card is worth a whopping 10 victory points for the princely cost of 10 coins. The second new card (Platinum) is worth 5 coins in your hand but costs a hefty 9 coins to purchase. To help players afford such high priced cards, the included action cards have several different ways for players to make serious amounts of money. I’ve managed to play the new expansion a few times and it is poised to become my favorite expansion so far. It manages to Super-Size the game and gives players the feeling of even bigger wins without unbalancing or over-complicating the game.

Dominion is not the only deck-building game with an expansion featured at GenCon. Thunderstone from Alderac Entertainment Group had an expansion available titled Wrath of the Elements. Thunderstone takes the idea of building a deck of cards like Dominion but adds in a fantasy dungeon-crawling theme. On their turn, players can go shopping for cards in the “town” or use their hand of cards to battle one of three revealed monsters. Defeating monsters earns victory points as well as experience points which can also be used to upgrade special hero cards into more powerful versions. Much of the game revolves around pairing up hero cards with appropriate weapon or spell cards to form a team powerful enough to defeat the more expensive (and thus more valuable) monster cards. The new expansion provides new cards to use in the town area, new monster sets to battle, and new types of heroes to upgrade. A few new elements are added into the mix, such as a set of monsters that are worth more points the more you defeat as well as traps that can surprise an unwary adventurer. Thunderstone tends to be a bit longer game than Dominion, but it is a hit with players who tend to like a bit more theme to their game.

The hottest deck building game at GenCon is arguably Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer by Gary Games. As with most deck-building games, two to four players start with some basic cards and then slowly purchase cards and score points throughout the game. The two main resources in the game are runes and power. Runes are used to purchase cards from a tableau (only six cards are available for purchase at any one time) and power is used to defeat monsters on the tableau. Defeating monsters awards points to a player but often also awards some sort of special ability – like an attack on your opponent. While I didn’t get a chance to play an entire game myself, I saw some very good and bad points. Superficially, I really like the plastic crystals used to keep track of victory points won during the game. The card art also has a nice style with rich tones. It seemed that most of the cards seemed easy to read. By limiting the number of available cards at any one time (and a few other changes), Ascension plays a bit faster than many other deck building games. On the other hand, limiting available cards adds yet another random factor to the mix. I saw one game played out where the winner was clearly dominating with a huge pile of construct cards that all played off each other. The losing player was struggling and a bit frustrated since any time a monster appeared that would help clear out the enemy constructs, his opponent would defeat the monster first. So, players must deal with the luck of the draw in the tableau as well as what they draw into their hand. The game has a single deck of cards that is used in every game. This makes for a quick setup, but could hurt its longevity when compared to other deck building games. This is slightly counterbalanced by many fewer duplicate cards used in any given game, but is the sort of thing that will vary depending on players’ preferences.

The final deck building game I noticed at the convention was Blood Bowl: Team Manager from Fantasy Flight Games. There wasn’t much information yet, since the game will be coming out later this fall, but it should be for 2-4 players and use the Blood Bowl (a sort of violent, fantasy themed football game) setting so players can recreate an entire season in the course of a single game.

Civilization Building Games:
I’m a big fan of civilization building games (think Sid Meier’s Civilization on the computer) and so I’m always on the lookout for new titles that may capture that spirit in a boardgame. On the lighter end of things, small publisher Asmadi Games was showing off Innovation. This is a fast playing (about 30 minutes) game made of 105 unique cards representing different technologies and developments. Players can progress in five different areas, playing newer technology cards (there are 10 “ages”) on top of previous developments. Each technology card gives the player a benefit but also displays three icons. When a player uses one of their special abilities, any other player with at least as many icons of that type may also perform the special ability. While the game isn’t going to display quite the depth and complexity you would find in a computer Civ-type game, it appears to package a large amount of strategy and depth into just a few cards and a small time commitment.

Looking forward, there are two other civ games on the horizon. Fantasy Flight Games is producing a new Sid Meier’s Civilization: The Board Game. This was designed by Kevin Wilson and is yet another attempt to get this great computer game, derived from a boardgame, back into a boardgame. This is not a short game, playable in 2 to 3 hours, but it is attempting to remain playable in a single evening. Players explore land tiles, build up a military and/or an economy and can achieve victory through military, cultural, economic, or technological efforts. I’m always drawn to the customization of technology so I was glad to see each player has the same deck of technology options. Technology is built in a pyramid style, with two level 1’s required before level 2 can be built. So, to get to the game-ending level 5 technology, a player has to build five 1’s, four 2’s, three 3’s, and two 4’s. Since there are far more than 16 technology cards in the deck, each player can customize how their “tech pyramid” turns out. I’ve been impressed with several of Kevin Wilson’s titles so am hoping that this one will at least due justice to the never-ending Holy Grail quest of a Civ-like boardgame.

The final civ game I’ll mention is 7 Wonders, releasing in the US from Asmodee. In this game, 3 to 7 players simultaneously (yes, there is no your turn/my turn in this game) play through three ages of development in about 30 minutes. Each age has a card draft (you look at a set of cards, choose one, and pass the others on to your neighbor) to start and then players play some of the selected cards to develop their civilization. I’m always a fan of technology paths to victory, but there are many ways to score points. Building some buildings allows a player to build a second generation one for free, but since there are only one (or two in larger games) of each building, players have to work within the limits of the card draft. Much of the player interaction is through one’s neighbors (to the right and left) so the game can occasionally favor the player(s) sitting next to the “weakest” player at the table. However, the way all the cards interact in the game look to offer a lot of fun, deep decisions in a simple to understand and fast playing game. The game in prototype form has already started to receive rave reviews in boardgaming circles so this game is definitely one to watch later this fall when it finally releases. If it manages to be streamlined enough to be easy to grasp for first time players, it would be icing on the cake.

If the above rundown isn’t enough detail for you, feel free to check out part I and part II of my photo review of GenCon over at BoardgameNews.com.

Tags: Misc, Unplugged