paulygcon3: pauly3con (17th - 19th November 2017)

paulyg wrote:Shogun - One of the best games I played all weekend, I think. On the face of it, it appears to be a Risk-style war-game but it's actually significantly deeper than that. The amount of fighting that you can do is limited, and expansion has its costs. You really have to pick your battles and get your timing right. The way you have to fully plan your turn in advance, without knowing what anyone else will do or fully what order things will happen in, is excellent. Really, really keen to play some more games of this.

I'd be happy to play that again.

paulyg wrote:Illimat - A game in the style of a classic card game with a touch of the occult. I like this, but no-one that I played with seemed to enjoy it much. I will hope to find other people to play it with!

I'd quite like to try Illimat - maybe on Sunday?

paulyg wrote:Homo Sapiens (Samuel's prototype) - Extremely promising prototype, which I enjoyed playing very much (even though my huts kept getting attacked by the local wildlife). Samuel can no doubt explain it to anyone interested much better, but I really liked the core mechanic (of pointing and blocking) and found it really unique.

Thanks Paul! That's very kind of you to say, it means a lot to know that I'm designing something that isn't terrible and that people are enjoying playing.

paulyg wrote:Pretense - We played this throughout the weekend and I think it was ok! It's a social meta game where each person is given a role with an objective that they need to complete to steal a role card off somebody else. I did rubbish and didn't manage to legitimately steal cards, but I think it added some fun, some notable 'incidents' and some running jokes through the weekend without being too intrusive on the playing of actual games. I'm really interested in what other people thought of this.

I did rubbish at Pretense too (never managed to take any cards and lost mine quite quickly both days) but still enjoyed it. I was worried at first that it might disrupt the playing of games quite a lot, if people were actively/overtly trying to avoid losing cards, but actually that didn't happen at all. I felt it added a little something extra, but without detracting from the event at all, and as you said created notable incidents and running jokes which I felt only made the weekend more enjoyable. Maybe need a rule to prevent people taking cards in the first few minutes though (*cough*Kes*cough*), a couple of people lost cards very quickly which meant they were never really in the game that day.

More generally, I thoroughly enjoyed the weekend, can't think of anything that could have been better. You and Kat were wonderful hosts, I totally agree with Dave in that regard. Will definitely be back next year!