Gen Con and So Much Other Stuff (August 2023 newsletter)

Hey folks! Sorry about the late newsletter but holy cow have I had a busy month. Honestly it might have been the busiest month I’ve ever had, so there’s a lot to cover. First off was Gen Con, which was a blast and a half, which was surprising because, If I’m being honest, Gen Con isn’t one of my favorite cons. Because it focuses so much on the selling of games and less so on the playing of them, I tend to enjoy myself a lot less there than others like PAX Unplugged or Dice Tower West. That being said, I managed to actually play a lot of games and film a lot of stuff too.

The filming was all for Above Board, which has been putting out some delightful con coverage, so please check that out if you haven’t already. I even got to do a live comedy show with them, which, despite having a few hiccups that got fixed pretty last minute, was a ton of fun to put on. Above is a backstage shot of the end of the show where they interviewed Clark Gregg, Utkarsh Ambudkar, and Chris Parnell. I got to talk to Chris a little bit after the show and he was super nice! In the following days the Above Board crew shot a bunch of sketches and the ones I’m in should start coming out this week.

Of course, if the games are of greater interest, I’ve got plenty of that to share. One thing I was pleasantly surprised by was Star Wars Unlimited, their new CCG. It got a little overshadowed by Lorcana (which I didn’t get a chance to try out, unfortunately), but I actually really liked how it played. It has a good economy mechanic whereby you can sacrifice cards to become energy (or whatever their version of mana is called) for the rest of the game. It really gave you a lot more agency in the ramping of your economy, and while the rest of it was pretty standard MTG style gaming, that one shift is a pretty solid upgrade. Now, I don’t think I’ll be playing it because I don’t much care for the CCG model, but if you’re into that kind of thing, it’s worth a look.

One of the hottest games of the con was Sky Team, which I managed to catch a demo of right before the hall closed on the last day. If you don’t know, this is a two-player co-op game about landing a plane. You’ve got a pilot and co-pilot with different responsibilities, all of which are accomplished by taking turns placing dice one at time. You can’t really communicate while playing though, which leads to a pretty interesting puzzle. There are a ton of different airports to land in, which all provided a slightly different gameplay experience and I’d love to try some of them out. We only did the beginner level, which was a lot of fun, but I’d see it going a little stale if that was all it was. Luckily, it looks like there’s plenty to keep it fresh.

I can’t say too much about Ticket to Ride Legacy because we only played the first game of it and…you know…legacy games change, but there did seem to be a lot of promise. Minor differences are that they reward you for building your own color routes now, there are event cards now, and the goal is more about ending the game with as few trains left as possible, rather than trying to build the bigger segments over the smaller ones. It seems like the board gets built out like puzzle pieces though, which will probably change over the course of the campaign, so that’s neat. As Pandemic Legacy showed, perhaps the best way to make a legacy game is to start with a solid foundation and work from there. And I heard that at the end you’ll have a full board to play Ticket to Ride on, so if you like the base game a lot, it seems pretty cool.

Probably my favorite game of the convention wasn’t even a new game, it was just new to me. Powerline seems like a pretty straightforward game about using a shared dice pool to fill out routes connecting power stations to cities. The routes have a series of numbers that you can fill by matching the numbers rolled, however the dice are placed in a set order, and that must be maintained, meaning that sometimes you can use a lot of them, but sometimes you really can’t without making some sacrifices. By the end of it, your limited options become maddening, but it's ok because pretty much everyone is in the same boat with you. It’s a multiplayer solitaire game for sure, but if that’s ok by you, I highly recommend checking it out.

And the last one I want to mention isn’t anywhere close to published yet, but it’s something to keep an eye out for. Whisperstone is a light TTRPG with these cool physical components that make playing the game much more visually accessible. To the point where you almost don’t even need to learn any rules because as long as things fit together, you can use them. Different classes have different notches that armor and weapons can fit into, and they usually can work with anyone, but for example, if you’re a wizard, armor will have to be placed in a specific slot and it won’t leave you with much space for anything else, whereas a fighter could handle it no problem because it fits into a much more convenient space. It’s still in development, but I’m very excited for the potential of this one.

So that was Gen Con, and it was so much fun, if a bit exhausting. However I was really happy to spend it with my new castmates, as well as my usual content creator friends. Good folks, the lot of them. 

After that, of course, I had to buckle down to finish my Deliverance video, which went up just a few days ago. And while this game does have a religious background, so long as that’s not an immediate dealbreaker for you, I definitely think it can be enjoyed by anyone who likes a good dungeon crawl. I made the tutorial as well as a runthrough over on Rahdo, so take a look if you haven’t already.

And then I finished the month with something I didn’t expect at all. Above Board has a series called Extreme Board Gaming, where they try to play a game under, well, extreme conditions. The first one had them playing a few games while skydiving (or trying anyway), and while that’s pretty impressive, this next one is going to completely blow it away. You know how Chip Theory’s games are supposed to be waterproof since they’re just poker chips and neoprene mats? We put this to the test by playing Too Many Bones in the Bahamas on a sunken ship while surrounded by sharks. Well, I didn’t. I had to stay on the boat while the certified divers got to go down, but I’ve seen the footage of it and it’s pretty incredible. That should go live later this month and I can’t wait for people to see it!

Of course, even after all that I don’t get to rest on my laurels. I’m already back at it, preparing the John Company 2e video, and it looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me once again. Thank you all for suggesting that because I really do think it’s the kind of game that needs a good tutorial and there’s not much out there that’s particularly user-friendly, so hopefully I can change that. I’ll be putting out a new suggestions post real soon for what game I teach next, so get your ideas ready for that. In the meantime, if any of you were at Gen Con (or anywhere) and played something interesting, why don’t you tell us about it!