Wednesday, August 19, 2009

I'm doing science and I'm still alive.

Okay, so maybe I'm not doing science. But I am still alive. I haven't updated this blog in about 8 months, due in part to the fact that there is no one there to read it (I never advertised it's presence anywhere) and partly due to my lack of motivation. I'm great at talking myself out of things, after all.

Part of Fantasy Flight Games' booth at Gen Con.

Anyhow, I just got back from my annual journey to Gen Con a few days ago. I return to work tomorrow. These are 2 somewhat depressing pieces of data. I did have a great time, however. Most of my usual group wasn't able to go this year, but the new guys I went with had a good time. We had a stranger I found online in our room to help offset hotel costs (which didn't end up being high in the end.) He was a little odd, but didn't kill, rape or rob us so I consider the experiment a success.

I spent a good bit of cash, and got a huge amount of product to pack into the already-crowded van for the ride home. CoolStuffInc, my online retailer of choice, had a booth there as well. They had a selection of "ding & dent" board games being sold below their already low prices due to very minor box damage. I bought Steam, Pack & Stack, Age of Empires III and In the Year of the Dragon from them. I got to meet the owner of CoolStuffInc as well, which was cool.

Speaking of meeting people, I met Zev Shlasinger (owner of Z-Man games,) Jason Hill (creator of Last Night on Earth,) and Jay Tummelson (owner of Rio Grande Games.) Rio Grande Games had a room set up where people could play demos of their games all weekend. Jay was looking at board game prototypes all weekend. My goal is to have a prototype to show him by next year. GAME ON.

A table of reasonably intelligent people failing to win a cooperative board game.

We also picked up On the Brink, the expansion for Pandemic. My friends and I have played 6 games of it over the last couple of days and have lost 6 times. We also played some Dominion at the con; if there was a hot game this year, Dominion was it. I saw many people walking around with newly purchased copies of the game and Intrigue (it's expansion.) It's a non-collectible card game that may appeal to recovering Magic the Gathering junkies.

All in all it was a good time. On the way home everyone was talking about plans for coming back next year. Tonight I'll take some new games to the hobby shop for our weekly game night. Tomorrow I'll be back at the job I hate but am lucky to have in this failing economy.

We also saw a guy that looked just like Walter from the Big Lebowski:

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nice post. I forgot about this blog of your since it has been awhile since you've posted.

After playing some of the games you got, I had to go and purchase them from my FLGS (which won the The Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award - http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci_eisners_spirit.shtml).

I also got back onto BoardGameGeek.com and started looking at games again.

August 28, 2009 at 7:08 PM  
Blogger Mr_Nuts said...

Glad to hear it! Which games did you get? If it's anywhere near you in Florida, I cannot recommend CoolStuffInc highly enough as a board game retailer.

Jimbob and I played Pandemic again this past Wednesday night and (finally) won a very close game.

August 29, 2009 at 7:53 AM  

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