Kublacon 2008
I'm back from another Kublacon. It's weird to think that this wonderful con is now something in which I can consider myself being a regular. Going to the con is, in its own fashion, a measure of stability, since most of my life is rather chaotic. Huh.
In the narrative below, games in general are italicized, and games I actually played are also bold-faced.
Friday
Anyway, I made it to the con around 11:30 on friday morning, having brought only about half the games I have in the past with me. I still didn't expect to play even half of them, but at least I didn't try to stuff my car any which way I could on the off chance that I will. The difference? I knew I was going to be meeting with Gino and his crew, who are boardgamers themselves, so other games will be present. Gino also made a great effort to coordinate us for the con, but I screwed it up somewhat at the end by not fully understanding the spreadsheet part about who brings what doubled-up game. End result? two Amun Re's and no Die Macher, which will remain high on my list of unplayed games.
Having reached the hotel relatively early, I got a good spot right next to the stairs in the parking lot, one flight up (level 2). It was such a good spot that I avoided leaving it for the entire con, or at least, intended so. At the end I had to leave for a half hour at some point but more on that later.
I checked in, put my stuff in my room - which was tiny, by the way, I know the Hyatt remodeled and got rid of the larger rooms under the 9th floor, but the new ones are quite likely the smallest I've stayed in for a long while now. Not that I need much room considering I only really use the room as a combination locker/coffin for when I virtually drop dead after too many gaming hours. Went back down and waited for registration to open and anyone I know to arrive. I tried Bill's phone a couple times but it was off; I could not find Gino's or Lori's to see what their plans were, so I figured I'd go see what I can play.
Happily, a game of Carabande was being set up. I've been wanting to try it out for a while now, so I jumped in. I got real lucky on my draw as the seventh player and got car number 1. Skills I've developed as a teenager flicking coins around in a homemade game called "3-coin-soccer" were apparently not forgotten as I raced ahead after the third flick and never looked back. In fact, beyond my absolute first flick ever, in which not knowing the actual way the little Carabande puck interacted with the surface I way overshot (the organizer let us all have one rookie or practice shot that didn't count, so I immediately used that to retry), I did not miss any other shot and never got delayed even once. By the time I completed my lap and won the game the second car was about 20 track lengths behind. It was great fun and now I need to find a way to acquire Carabande (or Pitchcar, which I hear is very similar) since I would like to play much more of it.
Giant Formula DE was starting up, an event I try to hop into every year, so I mosied on over there and promptly rolled a "1" to start last in an 8-player game, thereby eliminating my chances of winning (in a 1-lap game) but giving me a good challenge. At least I didn't get my car flipped over and eliminated on the first turn like I did last year, and by the time I got the checkered flag I was on the podium, ending third, with no more tread on my tires and running on fumes. Quite a surprising and satisfying result.
The others were coming in by then - except Lori who was only getting in Saturday - and it was time for some more serious boardgaming. I then spotted David and Mesha, the Game of Thrones and Colloseum folks from last year. So of course we played Game of Thrones. A 6-player game, and they insisted on playing with every single optional rule from all expansions. My friends, I have never even imagined this game could get this chaotic, let alone played it that way. It was actually quite fun, although we lost Gino midway as he had to leave for a personal event. Brian who has never played the game took his Stark spot which played in my favor as my Greyjoys ended up taking our last two fortresses from him to win.
Ilan showed up in the meantime and we adjourned for dinner at Max's (Matzohball soup for me, of course) before heading back to the Hyatt. we were discussing what to play and everyone got excited about Race for the Galaxy, which I had never played before, but apparently it is the "hot game" of the moment. This thing has a wicked learning curve. The designers apparently did their best to make it self-explanatory by their liberal use of colors and symbols, but because the game does have a large set of rules, they ended up trading in the need to have the rules around for an even worse need to literally learn a new language. I spent the entire first game asking for symbol clarifications and slowing everything up, but beginner's luck carried me through to a surprising win. Funnily enough, I didn't even know how to count my points so had no idea whether I did well or not until the very end.
I spent the second game getting surprised by even more symbols on cards I hadn't seen before, and slowly getting a sense of how to interpret them. I still had no real idea of how to count my points so imagine my shock when I won that one, too. At that point even though I wanted to stop I was coerced into playing again. I was still going slower than everybody else trying to figure out what was going on, but ended up with a respectable 34 points and second place behind Ilan who had a screamer. Having finally lost one, I was allowed to go and browse the flea market which had opened up.
I walked around and suddenly spotted a copy of Ave Caesar, a game I had wanted for a long time. At $20 it was a no brainer, but I did my "hesitant to buy at this price" show that is second nature to anyone growing up in Israel, and ended up getting Duel of Ages and some other game tossed in for a total of $30. I immediately turned around and sold the third one to the guy behind me who showed an interest in it for $5, walking away happily with the other two for a total of $25.
As I came back to the table everyone was debating what to play, and since there were six of us, I suggested we try Ave Caesar. Oh boy. For the next hour and a half I laughed more than I ever remember laughing playing any other game in memory. It was a hoot. Brian was absolutely frigging hilarious, getting on a roll making lemonade out of lemons as he was shut out of any chance of winning. The guy was so humoristically brilliant that I had tears coming out of my eyes at least a couple times. Everyone else got in the mood too, and the game became a tool for wisecracks more so than competition. In the meantime, Gino and Tom were actually fighting to win and the latter managed it at the end with a 1 point edge. I'm not even sure everybody noticed. It was a fantastic time, and Brian instantly became one of my favorite gamers, period.
We went to bed, and Ilan and I chatted for about an hour before falling asleep around 3AM. Parental habits die hard, and I still woke up around 7:30AM, tired but eager to start the first full day at the con.
Saturday
We walked down a bit after 10AM and wandered around looking for what to do when a guy we haven't met before (Peter?) offered to teach us Pillars of the Earth with the expansion set. I had played Pillars before and so has Ilan, so I went around looking for things to buy while the rules were being taught and stumbled upon two games I had been wanting for a long while - Ivanhoe and the Doom expansion set. I happily grabbed both and came back to play. I love Pillars and the expansion certainly has the advantage of allowing 5 or 6 players to play, but I think the game suffers from it. It adds considerable time to the game length, and not much substance, transforming it from a perfectly fun light euro to a light game that is too long and tries too hard to offer too many options. With that said, I managed to utilize France, one of the new features, to my advantage throughout the game, scoring about half of my almost 50 points with her. It is no doubt the most interesting and subtle option offered by the expansion, and a great way to play a "poor" strategy.
We went to grab something to eat and came back down to again play Race for the Galaxy. We played twice and while I finally felt like I could speak the language well enough, I still didn't warm up to it any more. It's kinda similar to San Juan, and although Race is definitely better, I still don't really connect with either game. Nate then offered to teach us Notre Dame, which got me quite excited since it was a game I had bought and still had in shrink waiting to be played. It turned out to be a classic euro in the making, a fun and thematic reactive game of balancing tactical options. I liked it quite a bit. But then things went one better; we were offered to join a game of Indonesia, which I immediately accepted as it has been near the top of my list of "must play" for a while now. I left Ilan and Nate to play some more Race of the Galaxy and raced to the Indonesia table.
I almost fell asleep while listening to the rules, but once the game started... oh boy. I love economic management games, and this one trumps them all. Everything makes sense - even the microwave dinners - but even better, while the mechanics are simple, gameplay is delightfully nuanced. It's an easy game to get into (it should take me less than 20 minutes to explain), but I strongly suspect it is also one that is tough to master. The only real complaint I have is with the artwork on the board. The designers apparently wanted to preserve the geographic accuracy of Indonesia in the presentation, but at what cost! some areas of the board become extremely crowded very quickly whereas others feel empty even with comparable numbers of tokens, names are next to impossible to read, some board locations are difficult to separate, and don't get me started on trying to understand which lines on the board indicate a border and which are only there for artistic license. The board is such a mess that I am surprised it ever made it through playtesting. With all that said, I fell in love with it and will definitely want to play it again. I will also pay good money to anyone who comes up with a better board. Because it plays into all my strengths, I won Indonesia relatively easily while never announcing a single merger.
After that we were looking for something to do and Lori offered to play Last Night on Earth, a new zombie game I hadn't heard about. We corralled a couple of strangers, Bruce and his son, and funnily enough, it turned out Bruce and Lori worked remotely with each other frequently but had never met. The game went smoothly enough and was enjoyable, but I prefer Doom.
We broke for dinner at Knuckles bar, and afterwards we were a little tired and looking for something simple and fun and I suggested Bang, which everyone accepted. The game went well enough but I did such a good job of emulating the deputy that by the time we were down to the Sheriff, his real deputy (Gino), the outlaw (Lori), and myself as the Renegade, she could not accept that I had lied about who I was and killed mine instead of Gino's character. She was then summarily disposed of and the forces of good won. While one might suggest that Lori also went after me because of being married to Gino, having played with both of them enough times in the past I can easily dispel that notion. She just fell for my ruse, like everyone else did. Dang.
We rounded up the night with Ave Caesar again, which did not go as well as the night before. The main reason was that we had too many folks concentrating on winning and not enough concentrating on trash talking. The game simply can't handle too much seriousness. We ran two races and called it a night.
Sunday
Sunday morning rolled by and I went down looking for the gang only to find out they had already started a game of St. Petersburg. I roamed around the dealer room a bit before I saw a game of Ticket to Ride starting; I joined in as the fifth. I spent most of the game trying to force those folks out of their shell a bit, or in Gino's words right behind me "once Barak is done abusing those folks, he can come play something with us". It was my first 5-player game of Ticket to Ride, and I didn't realize the subtle change in timing necessary to win. I ended up being two turns behind the eventual leader when they ended the game, instead of one, thus not allowing me the time to place the last link I needed to complete all my five tickets and win the game. Still, it was a fun game and a nice diversion.
But as soon as it was done I jumped up and turned around because they were starting a game of Thebes, another "must play". It is apparently Gino and Lori's favorite right now, and having now played it I can see why. Thebes can best be described as a neat mix of Tikal, Colloseum and Thurn & Taxis, with a cool timer twist to make things interesting. Digging for treasure can be gut wrenching, especially when you draw all dirt in six pulls, something I managed to do. I enjoyed it a lot and will definitely pull it out often. Brian and I shared a victory on a 47-point tie.
Breaking the group for lunch, we wanted something light and quick and settled on For Sale, playing a few quick rounds. The game again proved itself to be a neat little diversion, taking 5 minutes to explain, 15 minutes to play, with a totally addictive "once more" factor.
Lori then pulled out Succession: Intrigue in the Royal Court, a game I learned last year and which we both played and enjoyed then. I was entirely in favor, but somehow we managed to hit a major rules gap in the first round and it turned into this big argument between Gino, Chris and I, and at the end when Gino left the table we quickly packed everything up so by the time he came back we were figuring out what next to play. It was sad in a way, for I do like Succession and so does Lori. We must try it again sometime.
A couple of people drifted away and Ilan, myself and I think Brian stayed behind to let Chris introduce us to Mordred. He claimed it was the best 4-player game he has ever played, high praise from a designer, so I was quite interested. My impression after the first game was that I could see where he was coming from, as the game has many merits, but I just couldn't connect with it. It's no real surprise considering that the game is pretty much an abstract with a very thin layer of story thrown around it, and I am not a big fan of abstracts.
It was 5PM so I went to see the shuffler sheet for Golden Gate, the LARP session I signed up for. I was pleasantly surprise to see that I got selected as one of the 35 participants, although a bit disappointed that Chris didn't make it. I had made up my mind following last year's fiasco to basically sign up and ignore the overflow signup sheet; if I got in, great, if not, stay and play more board games. Well, since I did make it we had to play something quick and we settled on For Sale, which again went well. The more I play this game the more impressed I am with just how well it holds up to repeated plays in its entire range of 3 to 6 players.
Golden Gate eventually started at 7:30, after a number of delays. It wasn't as good as Lockdown from a couple years back, but it was still quite enjoyable. Then disaster struck. I have been running on very little sleep for several weeks now, and the first two nights of the con did not help matters. Sleep deprivation can do funny things to you, and it hit me at an unfortunate moment. Around 10PM, my Dexcom continuous blood glucose monitor beeped asking for a calibration test. I pulled out my regular meter, performed the test, and tossed the used strip into the garbage can as I was pulling the Dexcom out to connect to the meter for calibration. Or at least, that's what I intended to do. Instead I tossed the actual meter into the garbage.
That would have been embarrassing but not hazardous. However, when I reached into the can to grab it out, I realized to my horror that it was filled with liquid that somebody had poured in there earlier. At the bottom of this pool of - presumably - water 6 inches deep lay my meter, now dead. I ran out of the room to try and salvage it, pulling the battery out and running to my room to try and dry it with the hair dryer. I then left it there and came back to the LARP, but as I made my way back to my room afterwards the sinking feeling in my stomach was confirmed - the meter was gone.
And my Dexcom still needed calibration. The stress of course didn't help, and my blood sugars were going down like crazy. I think I consumed close to 100 grams of quick acting carbs just to try and keep myself from hypoing. But I just couldn't go to sleep, tossing and turning and looking at my Dexcom every few minutes. I wasn't thinking clearly at all, since the solution to this mess was obvious (as I am sure it is to you). In any case, at 4AM it happened; the Dexcom just gave up on not being calibrated and reset the connection to the sensor. I became blind (from a blood sugar monitoring perspective).
It's at times like this that you begin to wonder about your sanity. I was obviously far too tired to be coherent, which led to this happening in the first place. I needed to sleep but couldn't because of the effects it all had on me. And now I lost my ability to monitor my health entirely, and as a brittle diabetic, this is a very, very bad thing.
Then the rather simple solution finally hit me. Technology came to the rescue. The details of what happened next are a bit fuzzy in my memory but examining the evidence later indicated that it would appear that I pulled out my cellphone - which luckily has an unlimited data plan - and googled "24 hour pharmacy in Burlingame CA". I went out of the room (in a t-shirt at a chilly 4:30AM), got into my car, drove to Walgreens, and bought another meter. Took it back to the hotel, waited the requisite two hours for the Dexcom to require post-reset calibration, found out I was more or less at normal (those 100 grams of carbs managed to get me all the way up to 152; scary), and promptly fell asleep. It was about 7:45AM.
Monday
I woke up just before 9AM when my cellphone rang. I was disoriented and didn't pick up, and it took me a few minutes to call my wife back. Then I called Gino and found out he left the con and was driving down with Lori to be with the kids. Lori SMSed me Bill's number but he never picked up the phone; I went downstairs and found them starting a new game of Amun Re, my absolute number 1 game, and since they only had four, added myself in.
I learned that Sam has recently won the Amun Re world championship, which was neat in itself. It didn't surprise me much as he is a very good player in pretty much any game. The game itself was extremely tight, with everybody playing competently. I built a tremendously strong position in the first age which was undermined severely when I couldn't pull a single bonus power card out of 12 cards I added to my hand. Instead I pulled doubles and triples of farmer and 8-gold bonuses and builders. The last turn was a nail-biter, as my commanding lead suddenly shrank when Sam and another guy whose name I never quite caught managed between them to squeeze me out of pyramid majorities on both sides of the board. Brian took my advice about keeping cash for the money bonus to heart, and spent very little in the last turn. The end result? 3 players tied for 39 points, Brian ending last in the low 30's after a 6-point money bonus with 61 gold, and myself with 37 following a second place money bonus with 54 gold. The player whose name I cannot remember won. I could have won the game by simply not explaining to Brian why he should hoard his money instead of spending it fruitlessly as he was planning to do on the last turn. The 12 gold he kept caused the switch between me and him on the money bonus, and the 2 extra points would have given me the win on a tie breaker. Heck, I would have won it if I were ever able to get a bloody bonus card. But I didn't care. The photo-finish ending was very gratifying and proved again why I love this game so much.
I rounded up the con with another highly enjoyable game of Thebes, and like the last game, it ended on a tie (52 points). This time it was Bill and I. I have to say, it is surprising that the game does not include a tie breaker. We invented one anyway, each drawing 5 treasures out of the balanced blue bag in turn and adding them up. I finally got lucky on this rather critical pull and my 9-point combo was a crusher.
And that was that. A wonderful con as always, great fun and for me, just the best way to spend a few days away from the world. The group I had met there last year - Gino, Gene, Bill, Lori and Brian - were just as fantastic, it was great to see Ilan and a couple of the other folks (Tom, Nate, David and Mesha and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few) again, I met a couple new folks, I had a blast playing games I've been wanting to try for ages, and I actually managed to get into the LARP. If only it wasn't for the meter... seems like I am destined to have something highly annoying happen every year. But I can't complain.
Or like they the rounds they make every few hours during the con getting everyone to scream out loud...
KUBLA!
In the narrative below, games in general are italicized, and games I actually played are also bold-faced.
Friday
Anyway, I made it to the con around 11:30 on friday morning, having brought only about half the games I have in the past with me. I still didn't expect to play even half of them, but at least I didn't try to stuff my car any which way I could on the off chance that I will. The difference? I knew I was going to be meeting with Gino and his crew, who are boardgamers themselves, so other games will be present. Gino also made a great effort to coordinate us for the con, but I screwed it up somewhat at the end by not fully understanding the spreadsheet part about who brings what doubled-up game. End result? two Amun Re's and no Die Macher, which will remain high on my list of unplayed games.
Having reached the hotel relatively early, I got a good spot right next to the stairs in the parking lot, one flight up (level 2). It was such a good spot that I avoided leaving it for the entire con, or at least, intended so. At the end I had to leave for a half hour at some point but more on that later.
I checked in, put my stuff in my room - which was tiny, by the way, I know the Hyatt remodeled and got rid of the larger rooms under the 9th floor, but the new ones are quite likely the smallest I've stayed in for a long while now. Not that I need much room considering I only really use the room as a combination locker/coffin for when I virtually drop dead after too many gaming hours. Went back down and waited for registration to open and anyone I know to arrive. I tried Bill's phone a couple times but it was off; I could not find Gino's or Lori's to see what their plans were, so I figured I'd go see what I can play.
Happily, a game of Carabande was being set up. I've been wanting to try it out for a while now, so I jumped in. I got real lucky on my draw as the seventh player and got car number 1. Skills I've developed as a teenager flicking coins around in a homemade game called "3-coin-soccer" were apparently not forgotten as I raced ahead after the third flick and never looked back. In fact, beyond my absolute first flick ever, in which not knowing the actual way the little Carabande puck interacted with the surface I way overshot (the organizer let us all have one rookie or practice shot that didn't count, so I immediately used that to retry), I did not miss any other shot and never got delayed even once. By the time I completed my lap and won the game the second car was about 20 track lengths behind. It was great fun and now I need to find a way to acquire Carabande (or Pitchcar, which I hear is very similar) since I would like to play much more of it.
Giant Formula DE was starting up, an event I try to hop into every year, so I mosied on over there and promptly rolled a "1" to start last in an 8-player game, thereby eliminating my chances of winning (in a 1-lap game) but giving me a good challenge. At least I didn't get my car flipped over and eliminated on the first turn like I did last year, and by the time I got the checkered flag I was on the podium, ending third, with no more tread on my tires and running on fumes. Quite a surprising and satisfying result.
The others were coming in by then - except Lori who was only getting in Saturday - and it was time for some more serious boardgaming. I then spotted David and Mesha, the Game of Thrones and Colloseum folks from last year. So of course we played Game of Thrones. A 6-player game, and they insisted on playing with every single optional rule from all expansions. My friends, I have never even imagined this game could get this chaotic, let alone played it that way. It was actually quite fun, although we lost Gino midway as he had to leave for a personal event. Brian who has never played the game took his Stark spot which played in my favor as my Greyjoys ended up taking our last two fortresses from him to win.
Ilan showed up in the meantime and we adjourned for dinner at Max's (Matzohball soup for me, of course) before heading back to the Hyatt. we were discussing what to play and everyone got excited about Race for the Galaxy, which I had never played before, but apparently it is the "hot game" of the moment. This thing has a wicked learning curve. The designers apparently did their best to make it self-explanatory by their liberal use of colors and symbols, but because the game does have a large set of rules, they ended up trading in the need to have the rules around for an even worse need to literally learn a new language. I spent the entire first game asking for symbol clarifications and slowing everything up, but beginner's luck carried me through to a surprising win. Funnily enough, I didn't even know how to count my points so had no idea whether I did well or not until the very end.
I spent the second game getting surprised by even more symbols on cards I hadn't seen before, and slowly getting a sense of how to interpret them. I still had no real idea of how to count my points so imagine my shock when I won that one, too. At that point even though I wanted to stop I was coerced into playing again. I was still going slower than everybody else trying to figure out what was going on, but ended up with a respectable 34 points and second place behind Ilan who had a screamer. Having finally lost one, I was allowed to go and browse the flea market which had opened up.
I walked around and suddenly spotted a copy of Ave Caesar, a game I had wanted for a long time. At $20 it was a no brainer, but I did my "hesitant to buy at this price" show that is second nature to anyone growing up in Israel, and ended up getting Duel of Ages and some other game tossed in for a total of $30. I immediately turned around and sold the third one to the guy behind me who showed an interest in it for $5, walking away happily with the other two for a total of $25.
As I came back to the table everyone was debating what to play, and since there were six of us, I suggested we try Ave Caesar. Oh boy. For the next hour and a half I laughed more than I ever remember laughing playing any other game in memory. It was a hoot. Brian was absolutely frigging hilarious, getting on a roll making lemonade out of lemons as he was shut out of any chance of winning. The guy was so humoristically brilliant that I had tears coming out of my eyes at least a couple times. Everyone else got in the mood too, and the game became a tool for wisecracks more so than competition. In the meantime, Gino and Tom were actually fighting to win and the latter managed it at the end with a 1 point edge. I'm not even sure everybody noticed. It was a fantastic time, and Brian instantly became one of my favorite gamers, period.
We went to bed, and Ilan and I chatted for about an hour before falling asleep around 3AM. Parental habits die hard, and I still woke up around 7:30AM, tired but eager to start the first full day at the con.
Saturday
We walked down a bit after 10AM and wandered around looking for what to do when a guy we haven't met before (Peter?) offered to teach us Pillars of the Earth with the expansion set. I had played Pillars before and so has Ilan, so I went around looking for things to buy while the rules were being taught and stumbled upon two games I had been wanting for a long while - Ivanhoe and the Doom expansion set. I happily grabbed both and came back to play. I love Pillars and the expansion certainly has the advantage of allowing 5 or 6 players to play, but I think the game suffers from it. It adds considerable time to the game length, and not much substance, transforming it from a perfectly fun light euro to a light game that is too long and tries too hard to offer too many options. With that said, I managed to utilize France, one of the new features, to my advantage throughout the game, scoring about half of my almost 50 points with her. It is no doubt the most interesting and subtle option offered by the expansion, and a great way to play a "poor" strategy.
We went to grab something to eat and came back down to again play Race for the Galaxy. We played twice and while I finally felt like I could speak the language well enough, I still didn't warm up to it any more. It's kinda similar to San Juan, and although Race is definitely better, I still don't really connect with either game. Nate then offered to teach us Notre Dame, which got me quite excited since it was a game I had bought and still had in shrink waiting to be played. It turned out to be a classic euro in the making, a fun and thematic reactive game of balancing tactical options. I liked it quite a bit. But then things went one better; we were offered to join a game of Indonesia, which I immediately accepted as it has been near the top of my list of "must play" for a while now. I left Ilan and Nate to play some more Race of the Galaxy and raced to the Indonesia table.
I almost fell asleep while listening to the rules, but once the game started... oh boy. I love economic management games, and this one trumps them all. Everything makes sense - even the microwave dinners - but even better, while the mechanics are simple, gameplay is delightfully nuanced. It's an easy game to get into (it should take me less than 20 minutes to explain), but I strongly suspect it is also one that is tough to master. The only real complaint I have is with the artwork on the board. The designers apparently wanted to preserve the geographic accuracy of Indonesia in the presentation, but at what cost! some areas of the board become extremely crowded very quickly whereas others feel empty even with comparable numbers of tokens, names are next to impossible to read, some board locations are difficult to separate, and don't get me started on trying to understand which lines on the board indicate a border and which are only there for artistic license. The board is such a mess that I am surprised it ever made it through playtesting. With all that said, I fell in love with it and will definitely want to play it again. I will also pay good money to anyone who comes up with a better board. Because it plays into all my strengths, I won Indonesia relatively easily while never announcing a single merger.
After that we were looking for something to do and Lori offered to play Last Night on Earth, a new zombie game I hadn't heard about. We corralled a couple of strangers, Bruce and his son, and funnily enough, it turned out Bruce and Lori worked remotely with each other frequently but had never met. The game went smoothly enough and was enjoyable, but I prefer Doom.
We broke for dinner at Knuckles bar, and afterwards we were a little tired and looking for something simple and fun and I suggested Bang, which everyone accepted. The game went well enough but I did such a good job of emulating the deputy that by the time we were down to the Sheriff, his real deputy (Gino), the outlaw (Lori), and myself as the Renegade, she could not accept that I had lied about who I was and killed mine instead of Gino's character. She was then summarily disposed of and the forces of good won. While one might suggest that Lori also went after me because of being married to Gino, having played with both of them enough times in the past I can easily dispel that notion. She just fell for my ruse, like everyone else did. Dang.
We rounded up the night with Ave Caesar again, which did not go as well as the night before. The main reason was that we had too many folks concentrating on winning and not enough concentrating on trash talking. The game simply can't handle too much seriousness. We ran two races and called it a night.
Sunday
Sunday morning rolled by and I went down looking for the gang only to find out they had already started a game of St. Petersburg. I roamed around the dealer room a bit before I saw a game of Ticket to Ride starting; I joined in as the fifth. I spent most of the game trying to force those folks out of their shell a bit, or in Gino's words right behind me "once Barak is done abusing those folks, he can come play something with us". It was my first 5-player game of Ticket to Ride, and I didn't realize the subtle change in timing necessary to win. I ended up being two turns behind the eventual leader when they ended the game, instead of one, thus not allowing me the time to place the last link I needed to complete all my five tickets and win the game. Still, it was a fun game and a nice diversion.
But as soon as it was done I jumped up and turned around because they were starting a game of Thebes, another "must play". It is apparently Gino and Lori's favorite right now, and having now played it I can see why. Thebes can best be described as a neat mix of Tikal, Colloseum and Thurn & Taxis, with a cool timer twist to make things interesting. Digging for treasure can be gut wrenching, especially when you draw all dirt in six pulls, something I managed to do. I enjoyed it a lot and will definitely pull it out often. Brian and I shared a victory on a 47-point tie.
Breaking the group for lunch, we wanted something light and quick and settled on For Sale, playing a few quick rounds. The game again proved itself to be a neat little diversion, taking 5 minutes to explain, 15 minutes to play, with a totally addictive "once more" factor.
Lori then pulled out Succession: Intrigue in the Royal Court, a game I learned last year and which we both played and enjoyed then. I was entirely in favor, but somehow we managed to hit a major rules gap in the first round and it turned into this big argument between Gino, Chris and I, and at the end when Gino left the table we quickly packed everything up so by the time he came back we were figuring out what next to play. It was sad in a way, for I do like Succession and so does Lori. We must try it again sometime.
A couple of people drifted away and Ilan, myself and I think Brian stayed behind to let Chris introduce us to Mordred. He claimed it was the best 4-player game he has ever played, high praise from a designer, so I was quite interested. My impression after the first game was that I could see where he was coming from, as the game has many merits, but I just couldn't connect with it. It's no real surprise considering that the game is pretty much an abstract with a very thin layer of story thrown around it, and I am not a big fan of abstracts.
It was 5PM so I went to see the shuffler sheet for Golden Gate, the LARP session I signed up for. I was pleasantly surprise to see that I got selected as one of the 35 participants, although a bit disappointed that Chris didn't make it. I had made up my mind following last year's fiasco to basically sign up and ignore the overflow signup sheet; if I got in, great, if not, stay and play more board games. Well, since I did make it we had to play something quick and we settled on For Sale, which again went well. The more I play this game the more impressed I am with just how well it holds up to repeated plays in its entire range of 3 to 6 players.
Golden Gate eventually started at 7:30, after a number of delays. It wasn't as good as Lockdown from a couple years back, but it was still quite enjoyable. Then disaster struck. I have been running on very little sleep for several weeks now, and the first two nights of the con did not help matters. Sleep deprivation can do funny things to you, and it hit me at an unfortunate moment. Around 10PM, my Dexcom continuous blood glucose monitor beeped asking for a calibration test. I pulled out my regular meter, performed the test, and tossed the used strip into the garbage can as I was pulling the Dexcom out to connect to the meter for calibration. Or at least, that's what I intended to do. Instead I tossed the actual meter into the garbage.
That would have been embarrassing but not hazardous. However, when I reached into the can to grab it out, I realized to my horror that it was filled with liquid that somebody had poured in there earlier. At the bottom of this pool of - presumably - water 6 inches deep lay my meter, now dead. I ran out of the room to try and salvage it, pulling the battery out and running to my room to try and dry it with the hair dryer. I then left it there and came back to the LARP, but as I made my way back to my room afterwards the sinking feeling in my stomach was confirmed - the meter was gone.
And my Dexcom still needed calibration. The stress of course didn't help, and my blood sugars were going down like crazy. I think I consumed close to 100 grams of quick acting carbs just to try and keep myself from hypoing. But I just couldn't go to sleep, tossing and turning and looking at my Dexcom every few minutes. I wasn't thinking clearly at all, since the solution to this mess was obvious (as I am sure it is to you). In any case, at 4AM it happened; the Dexcom just gave up on not being calibrated and reset the connection to the sensor. I became blind (from a blood sugar monitoring perspective).
It's at times like this that you begin to wonder about your sanity. I was obviously far too tired to be coherent, which led to this happening in the first place. I needed to sleep but couldn't because of the effects it all had on me. And now I lost my ability to monitor my health entirely, and as a brittle diabetic, this is a very, very bad thing.
Then the rather simple solution finally hit me. Technology came to the rescue. The details of what happened next are a bit fuzzy in my memory but examining the evidence later indicated that it would appear that I pulled out my cellphone - which luckily has an unlimited data plan - and googled "24 hour pharmacy in Burlingame CA". I went out of the room (in a t-shirt at a chilly 4:30AM), got into my car, drove to Walgreens, and bought another meter. Took it back to the hotel, waited the requisite two hours for the Dexcom to require post-reset calibration, found out I was more or less at normal (those 100 grams of carbs managed to get me all the way up to 152; scary), and promptly fell asleep. It was about 7:45AM.
Monday
I woke up just before 9AM when my cellphone rang. I was disoriented and didn't pick up, and it took me a few minutes to call my wife back. Then I called Gino and found out he left the con and was driving down with Lori to be with the kids. Lori SMSed me Bill's number but he never picked up the phone; I went downstairs and found them starting a new game of Amun Re, my absolute number 1 game, and since they only had four, added myself in.
I learned that Sam has recently won the Amun Re world championship, which was neat in itself. It didn't surprise me much as he is a very good player in pretty much any game. The game itself was extremely tight, with everybody playing competently. I built a tremendously strong position in the first age which was undermined severely when I couldn't pull a single bonus power card out of 12 cards I added to my hand. Instead I pulled doubles and triples of farmer and 8-gold bonuses and builders. The last turn was a nail-biter, as my commanding lead suddenly shrank when Sam and another guy whose name I never quite caught managed between them to squeeze me out of pyramid majorities on both sides of the board. Brian took my advice about keeping cash for the money bonus to heart, and spent very little in the last turn. The end result? 3 players tied for 39 points, Brian ending last in the low 30's after a 6-point money bonus with 61 gold, and myself with 37 following a second place money bonus with 54 gold. The player whose name I cannot remember won. I could have won the game by simply not explaining to Brian why he should hoard his money instead of spending it fruitlessly as he was planning to do on the last turn. The 12 gold he kept caused the switch between me and him on the money bonus, and the 2 extra points would have given me the win on a tie breaker. Heck, I would have won it if I were ever able to get a bloody bonus card. But I didn't care. The photo-finish ending was very gratifying and proved again why I love this game so much.
I rounded up the con with another highly enjoyable game of Thebes, and like the last game, it ended on a tie (52 points). This time it was Bill and I. I have to say, it is surprising that the game does not include a tie breaker. We invented one anyway, each drawing 5 treasures out of the balanced blue bag in turn and adding them up. I finally got lucky on this rather critical pull and my 9-point combo was a crusher.
And that was that. A wonderful con as always, great fun and for me, just the best way to spend a few days away from the world. The group I had met there last year - Gino, Gene, Bill, Lori and Brian - were just as fantastic, it was great to see Ilan and a couple of the other folks (Tom, Nate, David and Mesha and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few) again, I met a couple new folks, I had a blast playing games I've been wanting to try for ages, and I actually managed to get into the LARP. If only it wasn't for the meter... seems like I am destined to have something highly annoying happen every year. But I can't complain.
Or like they the rounds they make every few hours during the con getting everyone to scream out loud...
KUBLA!
posted by Blinkered at 8:10 AM
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