TempleCon 2012

I'm back from TempleCon 2012, and it was yet another successful and fun year at the Con.

I should have prepped this blog post while I was there, but I'll try to remember what happened...

I arrived Friday evening, earlier than I expected.

I hadn't been planning to play the Friday VTES tournament, but after finding my way down the secret elevator to where the VTES room was, I noticed that the group was small, and I didn't really know what else was going on, so I sat down with my Chaundice deck (unmodified and un-looked-at for a year) and played 2 rounds.

It didn't get me anywhere in the tourney, but I didn't expect it to. I had some fun playing VTES for the first time in awhile, and that was OK.

Afterwards, we played some other games -- I think this was when we got a game or 2 of 7 Wonders in. Great fun.

I still had very little clue where I was going to sleep -- next year I will spring for a room and beg for roommates instead of the other way around -- but thankfully I got a sofa in a fellow player's room to crash on for a few hours, and then got up, my usual early self.

I'm a very early riser, and that doesn't mix too well with a convention like this. In the morning it was kind of quiet, and after trekking across the street to Dunkin's, I camped out around the boardgame room until it opened.

I was invited to a game of Diplomacy... but passed. That's not exactly a pickup game :)

I sat around in the boardgame room wondering what to do. And then some guys got out the library copy of BSG and were puzzlingly looking at the components.

I couldn't resist.

Long story short, I sat down to play with these strangers; a 4 player game with some Pegasus and some Exodus components.

I was Admiral Helo, with President Baltar, Tyrol, and CAG Boomer around the table.

Interestingly, the Exodus loyalty rules left the Sympathizer card as the "extra"; Baltar was on his own as the lone Cylon (as he usually is).

He didn't even need to Reveal; Boomer was brigged, I was brigged, and Tyrol was frakked. We resigned when there wasn't much we could do.

By the time that game ended, Round 1 of the VTES Qualifier was well underway. So I got in at Round 2.

Unfortunately, my Round 2 was not really much of a round. My predator was Ben Peal, with Kevin Mergen's Una deck (40+ Freak Drives), and I basically got a chance to take 1 action all game before I got smushed.

Round 3 was a little bit better. My deck got to Do Something. But I still ended up with zero VPs (or maybe I squeezed out one, I honestly forget; will update this entry after I see Matt's report).

Somewhere during the tournament, I tried out the game "Atlantis", and I actually won. Not sure it's a game I'd pick up, but it was interesting..

And then that night, there were *two* games of BSG.

In the first (7 player!) game, I was Starbuck and became a Cylon at the sleeper phase, sitting next to Prescott as Leoben. Cally (Tony) was the other Cylon. We won due to a forced march of Centurions, one of the classics.

Prescott didn't meet his goal (he wasn't in the brig and hadn't been executed), and that actually led to a question (can you Infiltrate directly into the Brig?) which we ruled as "no" but I haven't looked up an official answer.

In the second game (5 of us), I was in a silly mood so I chose Ellen Tigh.
Once again we had a lone Cylon (Matt M, but I don't remember which character he was), but we agreed beforehand to use the house rule "if the last card in the loyalty deck is a Cylon, lose 1 of each resource", which I may continue to use.

This was a pretty brutal game and the resources dwindled down into nothing. A third Cylon victory.

At about 2am, I had a floor to sleep on in Kevin+Pete+Matt's room, and we found Kevin very drunk and awake in bed. A short conversation about the backstory of Huang, Blood Cultist (he was apparently a Subway employee who liked to play Mario Kart), and I got about 2 hours of uncomfortable floor-sleep (see my earlier comment about a hotel room for next year).

Once again I was an early riser. But Sunday, the VTES draft started at 11, so there wasn't much time to do anything between room-opening time and VTES time. I could have skipped VTES but I was feeling like hanging out with those guys.

This gave me the idea that maybe next year, I will volunteer with TempleCon as an "early morning gaming liaison", to keep the boardgame room open and running for the morning people like me.

In the actual draft -- where we got Free Cards -- we played 2 rounds with no final; the Sunday draft usually fizzles out like this.

I drafted a halfway decent Lasombra deck out of a bunch of random packs.

I was happy that, in both rounds, I got to use Paulo's ability on the first turn of the game (move 1 blood from him to an uncontrolled Lasombra when he comes out).

In the first round, a combination of Pentex Subversion and Consignment to Duat locked me down after a strong start (draftferiors make dom/obt even better!), and I died without a VP.

In the second round, my stealth-weenie predator (Ira) "allowed me" to get 1VP before he obliterated me.

Overall it was fun.

And I gave away most of my free cards, knowing full well that I'd otherwise probably just be selling them which isn't fair.

Hoping to get back to the con next year, whether I play VTES or not (I don't think I'll be building any new decks, either way ...)

BONUS FACT: Throughout several plays of 7 Wonders during the weekend, I happened to notice that one of the cards looked 'marked'. There was some sort of grey blob on the back of the card.

When I got home, I posted something on boardgamegeek about card replacing, and I got contacted directly by the North American publisher of the game. A replacement is on its way. Cool!

Also, this morning (I'm home from work for unrelated reasons), I went through my set of BSG. To my surprise, it's still complete! Not a single lost bit or card!

Anyway, see you next year at TempleCon!

Windows 7 problem solved (?)

I know this is mostly a gaming blog, but I really wanted a place to make something publicly searchable, for people experiencing the painful issue that recently happened with my wife's Toshiba laptop.

I have been working on this problem since 4pm yesterday; it is now 10:30am, I haven't slept, and I'm fairly confident that I found the answer.

The symptom:

Her machine was acting strangely and slowly...

So what do I do, but go over to Windows Update and see if I can install a patch.

I saw Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) had not been installed yet, so the genius that I am I chose to install it.

Boy was that a bad idea.

The machine wouldn't boot; it got caught with some Fatal Errors failing to install some patch.

I tried rebooting to a recovery partition. I tried running the standard Restore tools; they did not work. I tried 'sfc /scannow', and it said it couldn't fix everything. Obviously I also did not have a good Restore Point to go back to.

Rebooting, I got either "Fatal Error C0000034", or some other Fatal Error number, or the machine would simply stall at the "Starting Windows" screen and then go black after about 20 minutes.

This was so frustrating...

Eventually I must have found the magic search terms.

After booting with a Linux LiveUSB and backing up the whole drive to a server, I finally found THIS:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-system/fatal-error-c0000034-on-boot-after-service-pack-1/5f7127e8-9887-4f01-aaa5-9729b69544b7

It involves what is basically a System Restore of registry entries back to the very original state.

Somehow, this "just worked"! The machine booted, it's happy (so far) and all of the programs and data are intact (so far).

I still don't really understand how it fixed things without breaking other things...

...and I'll be damned if I try going back to Windows Update any time soon; my wife is graduating at the end of this semester and needs a working laptop during that time.

So maybe in June or July we will find our install discs and reinstall from scratch just in case. But for now, so far so good.

If there is any other detail (or failure) that I need to add, I will post it in the comments. Please read.

I hope that people of the future get some use out of this post. Please comment if you found your solution here.

I leave you with the wisdom of XKCD:

http://xkcd.com/979/

TempleCon..!

I should mention TempleCon here, if I haven't already)

I'm going to it. February 3-5. (still not sure where I'm sleeping, at least on Friday night)

I've been at TempleCon every year since its inception, and have played in the major VTES tournaments there.

But I haven't played VTES since last TempleCon, and I did preregister for a "full-priced, not secret-VTES-code" badge.

While I'm planning to participate in VTES -- at least the Saturday tournament -- I also want to get some boardgaming in.

Obviously, it isn't the best venue to bring Risk Legacy to (...or is it? we might have 3 or 4 of our original 5 there hmm), and I probably don't want to play in anyone else's Legacy game if they've opened up stuff I haven't seen yet.

But I will definitely be up for games of Dominion, 7 Wonders, Cosmic, random-game-I-haven't-played-yet... with strangers or with friends.

Who reads my blog and is going to TempleCon -- for VTES or otherwise?

7 Wonders for 7 Players

Happy (belated) New Year, Team Grr!

Over the Holiday Season, one of my gifts was the game "7 Wonders". I've been waiting to play it for weeks.

At the most recent PlayGamesWithJosh™ meeting, we were scheduled for 5 people, in which case we were going to continue our Risk Legacy game.. but then a 6th piped in, and a really-last-minute 7th.

Aha! 7 Wonders takes up to 7 players. Perfect!

Some of us were passingly familiar with the rules but hadn't really played; most of us hadn't played before at all.

Just around 7:45pm:

We assigned one person in charge of the rules (I'm a terrible game teacher), went over them a little bit, and decided to just start playing. We used all 7 wonders (obviously) on their "A" sides.

As soon as we had our first hands of cards, there was an immediate screech to a halt, questions popping up everywhere about what symbols meant what, how things interacted, etc etc.

Oh crap, this game is going to take all night!

Not so..

A few rounds in, a few mistakes made, we started getting the hang of things (except Science).

We finished the first game in under an hour, even with our slowdowns (including the inevitable part of the Third Age where everyone has to look up symbols again) and the arrival of pizza.

Then the Rules Guy actually explained how Science was scored, and that made a bit of a difference.

So, we went on to Game 2, wherein we would start with a fresh understanding of the game.

Of course, some of us decided to go more heavily into Science in Game 2 (especially me), and it showed.

After Game 2, "wow, that went fast."

We played a third game, this time with everyone using Side B.

This game really flowed well, and felt solid.

I can't wait to play again.

Specific personal opinions:
I like the fact that you can "do your own thing", but still have to be aware of what the guys on your left and right are doing. What resources they have, how much military they've got, and (to some extent) "hate-drafting" (taking a card just so the guy to your left/right doesn't get it).

I like the fact that it is a FAST game with SEVEN players. Damn, dude. A 7-player game of BSG could take 6 hours :)

I like the fact that the meanings of the icons are intuitive, after you've seen a few. The colors, the arrows, the numbers, you could easily see a new card and immediately know exactly what it does.

The rulebook could use some work. When questions came up in the game, we eventually did find the answers in the rulebook, but they weren't always where you expected, and sometimes were in "aside statements". (Like whether you could build 2 buildings of the same name, or whether you could build multiple parts of your Wonder in the same Age, for instance).

But 7 Wonders gets a GRRRRRR (that's good) on the arbitrary Ossian Rating Scale :)

Plans for next time:
I think I'll try to make "starting player packs", a ziplock baggie with 3 coins and 2 of each positive military point, to make setup faster. (Unfortunately there aren't nearly enough "-1" chips to give everyone the potential maximum of 6 for their own pool).

Need to figure out a smooth way to randomize "side A/side B". It doesn't seem like it would work really well to rely on the facing of the Wonder cards; I don't know how to fairly randomize that. Some ideas out there?

One burning question:
Why is Science listed before Guilds in the rulebook, but after Guilds on the scoresheet?

Also:
Should the game get exercised several times before buying the Leaders expansion, or is it worth diving straight in?

Any other commentary?

A Cosmic Encounter and a Chaotic Old World

Last night's "Play Games With Josh" happened, with 4 players...

Due to the fact that I got the latest expansion for Chanukah, we decided to drag out Cosmic Encounter for the first time in awhile.

It was Ghoul vs. Fungus vs. Filth (me) vs. Remora...

We played with all of the "Optional Stuff" except for Technology (I'm not sure I really like Tech anyway).. the Hazard Deck came up with some very interesting effects; the very first Hazard that came up created a permanent alliance between the Fungus and the Ghoul, which led to some danger in the Ghoul almost winning.

There was one very strange interaction where a card (I forget which) caused players to temporary swap powers for the encounter, but then the Fungus played the Sorcerer flare, which caused permanent swappage, and by the wording of the rules (and experience with VTES's situations of temporary control effects and permanent control effects happening simultaneously), we figured that the effects basically canceled each other out.

The Filth's power came in useful as a game-balancer; I attacked a planet in Remora's system which also contained a Ghoul ship, when those two aliens were tied at 4 foreign colonies apiece.. The Ghoul actually allied with me so that he could keep his total of 4, because when I won the encounter, the Ghouls on the planet had to go to other colonies. Pretty cool.

In the end, there was an anticlimactic Shared Victory between me and the Remora, based upon us both agreeing to play Negotiate cards and swapping colonies.

I think Shared Victories are one thing that make the game "iffy". I might try to play with a house rule that you can't share a victory except where an alien power/flare allows it, to avoid silliness like this, or like the game where 4 people shared a victory before the 5th player got a turn. But I'm not sure how to mediate it. Will have to think about a variant, or see if anyone in the N-year-history of the game has similar feelings and came up with something.

After that, instead of playing 7 Wonders (my other Chanukah gift game) or Risk Legacy or anything, we played Chaos in the Old World (Matt's copy).

We used the alternative cards from the Horned Rat expansion, but not the Horned Rat god.

This was my third time playing Chaos.

I was Slaanesh, and I had yet another lukewarm experience with this game that everyone seems to love.

I got into a situation that, by no apparent misplaying of my own, I had already fallen too far behind by turn 3 or so. I could not possibly win. A combination of dice not in my favor, the regions with Nobles getting ruined quickly because they were otherwise popular, etc.

Granted, Slaanesh has a very hard time of getting dial-ticks, and maybe it was my mistake for trying that strategy, but I really felt helpless again.

I still don't rate Chaos very highly, but I'm still not ready to completely give up on it. Maybe it's one of those games that takes several plays to "get", and maybe there is a way to come back from behind that I don't see yet.

Not trying to be such a Negative Nelly with this post .. it just turned out that way :)

The Legacy Begins...

(Warning: minor spoilers ahead)
On Wednesday, December 7th, 2011, a group of 5 brave factions began to shape Earth #6730

We played the first 2 games of Risk Legacy with my set, and here's a brief report on how it broke down:

First, the first 5 of us all signed the board:

Then we chose our factions, along with the special ability that would accompany this faction forever:

Max chose the Saharan Republic, giving them the ability to Maneuver in the middle of their turn.

I chose the Enclave of the Bear, choosing the ability to obliterate a country when rolling triples and defeating at least one defender.

Tree took Imperial Balkania, with the ability to round up instead of down when recruiting troops.

Shaun took Khan Industries, with the ability to spawn an extra troop in each of his HQs each turn.

Finally, Kevin chose Die Mechaniker, whose starting HQ will always be fortified when defending.

Some joy was taken in ripping up the unused special ability stickers:

To choose the initial extra coinage on territories, we chose randomly: 8 territories with $1 extra, and 2 territories with $2 extra. I won't give an entire list here, but Europe definitely seemed to be strongly represented by this randomness.

The first game played a lot like Risk (!). Except that, instead of being a race for cards, it was actually won by a blitz that took 2 HQs.

Throughout the first game, all 5 of us laid down our Scars, starting with this one in Greenland (note that we placed this first sticker incorrectly -- completely covering the X instead of beneath it --but we'll live):

More shots from later in the game:

In the end of Game 1, it was Tree and his Balkanians that reigned Triumphant, settling in their new city of DunTree:

3 other minor cities were founded (including my contribution, "Nilbog" in Venezuela), and one territory gained an extra coin.

The second game went much more quickly, now that we understood the flow of the rules and such. Also, since we had all played our Scars in the first game, there was only one left in the box which meant nobody gets any.

We ended up taking the same factions, coincidentally, although we started in very different areas.

I started the Enclave of the Bear in Central America, and Shaun started in South America and decided to bunch up most of his troops in Venezuela.

Due to my special ability, and my general strategies in such games, I decided to try and wipe him out on Turn 1.

Unfortunately, that would not be the case.

Long story short, with "help" from Max, my faction ended up being Eliminated from the game.

WARNING: This is where there may be actual spoilers

We opened up the "Eliminated Player" packet:

.. unlocking Comeback Powers, and now the Enclave of the Bear is "Stealthy".

We also unlocked the Mercenary Scars. If our next game is with 3 or 4 players, then they'll see play; otherwise they'll have to wait, with only 4 Scars available.

Kevin founded his Major City of Mordor, and a few more Minor Cities were founded (although I wasn't able to do anything at endgame, other than take a look at my spiffy new power).

And thus ended Game 2.

Game 3 might happen this Wednesday, I hope for a quicker turnaround time on a session report...

The Legacy will begin..

As soon as I figure out how to write about this game without majorly spoiling parts of it, this blog is going to pick up on games content again.

The game has arrived at my house, and it looks beautiful so far, even though I've barely seen a small fraction of it.

I plan to take a LOT of pictures of how the game evolves, and take some pretty good notes..

Can't wait!