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Columns > Unplugged > GenCon 2007 - Boardgames, Boardgames, Boardgames
An alphabetical tour of publishers from Asmodee to Z-Man Games  While there are plenty of collectible card games, video games, and role playing games to play and view on display at GenCon, I come for the boardgames. This year I made a concerted effort to try to play more complete games rather than spend all my time in short overviews of the latest game from each publisher. Thanks to a day of open gaming on Friday sponsored by Jay Tummelson of Rio Grande Games I was able to get well over a half-dozen complete games played and still make my rounds to many publishers, old and new. Rather than bore you with the details of my daily wanderings, here is a quick overview of some of the interesting recent and upcoming games listed alphabetically by publisher. Asmodee Games Based in Canada, Asmodee brings many great French games to North America. I have been waiting for them to import Cash n Guns and it is finally available in English. Players are given a deck of cards and big soft-foam guns. Players simultaneously point their outlandish "guns" at each other and then reveal whether they were shooting "blanks" or bullets in order to try to eliminate your opponents. This bluffing game isn't appropriate for every setting but with the right crowd it can be hilarious. A new game, Mr. Jack also caught my eye. In this two player game one player plays Jack the Ripper and tries to escape off the board. The other player tries to deduce Jack's identity through moving pieces around and asking if Jack is visible (in the light) or not. Each player has some special powers to move and block the characters in the game. It looks to be a nice fast-playing deduction game with a splash of strategic movement. Days of Wonder Not much new to see, as I try to stay up to date with this company's line of quality games. Clearly I'm not the best game prognosticator, as my recent moderate review of Colosseum demonstrates. The game sold out in only two days at the convention. In upcoming news, Days of Wonder plans to release an expansion to the excellent family game Ticket to Ride. The Ticket to Ride: Switzerland Expansion comes with a new map and new train tickets but reuses all the train pieces and cards from the original USA or Europe games. The Swiss map is a welcome addition to the line of train games as it is aimed at games for 2 or 3 players, providing a smaller, tighter game for when there's fewer than four players at the table. Their expansions to the BattleLore fantasy wargame continue to sell extremely well and fans of the game should act quickly if they want to pick up the newest goblin, dwarven, or historical figures to add to their game.
 Fantasy Flight Games Known for their large games full of plastic pieces and their ability to manage movie and videogame tie-ins, Fantasy Flight Games had plenty of new things to show. I've already talked about the new Starcraft boardgame and the World of Warcraft boardgame expansion, but both were getting a lot of attention. Fantasy Flight plans to enter into the miniatures arena with Mutant Chronicles , a new line of collectible miniatures that at 54mm scale are slightly larger than most other miniature lines. This allows them to produce prepainted minis with more impressive detail and paint jobs than can be found in other miniature lines. While I am not usually a fan of collectible gaming, the starter set for the line contains all the unit cards in the game. Players low on cash or particularly frugal could actually play the entire game with substitute miniatures and not have to spend any more on the game. Fantasy Flight hopes the miniatures will be cool enough that players will be willing to buy them to make the game that much more immersive. There are also miniature planes for their WWI airplane card game, Wings of War. While not required for the popular dog-fighting game, they are historically accurate replicas and make the game even friendlier for new players. Abstract game players will be happy to see a nice portable Travel Edition of Ingenious. Players take turns placing double hexagon tiles in order to increase their score in one of six colors. The player who manages to have the highest score in their worst color wins the game. The standard game allows up to 4 players while the new travel edition only plays 2. Wargamers will want to check out Tide of Iron - a huge modular squad based WWII game. The many units can be interchangeably placed on bases allowing each player to bring custom forces into the battle like spotters or heavy weapon specialists. An expansion for desert terrain and units will be released in November. Tannhauser, mentioned before, is a unit-based game set in an alternate timeline similar to the popular Hellboy comic. It focuses on fast play attempting to capitalize on the popularity of first person shooter videogames. The game is played out in various scenarios including team elimination and capture the flag styles of play. One final game to mention is Dust. A sort of advance Risk type of game, similar in some respects to the Axis and Allies line of games, players wage war over over a global map and try to claim more territory to increase their production. Cards are used to bid for turn order as well as other orders and special effects during the game. At 800 tiny plastic pieces it has more pieces than any other Fantasy Flight Game. Hasbro Hasbro, the parent company of Wizards of the Coast, is nevertheless dwarfed by the rest of the Wizards' booth. Despite its corner location, fans of Heroscape easily find their way to the Hasbro section to check out new developments in this fast-playing, inexpensive, and easily accessible miniatures game. The big news for the summer was the release of the Marvel Heroscape set. Using standard Heroscape rules, figures of the Incredible Hulk, Captain America, and Spiderman can square off against villains like Venom and Doctor Doom. In January of '08, an expansion will be released that includes figures from the Fantastic Four, among others. The other big Heroscape news is the release of a new Master Set: Swarm of the Marro. With entirely new figures and plenty of new swamp-themed terrain, this new expansion should please newcomers and old fans alike. Some figures return from previous sets but are now upgraded (and thus cost more points to bring into play) reflecting their growth and experience gained through the continuing Heroscape backstory.
 Looney Labs Known for quirky, friendly games that lean towards silly themes or more abstract thinking games, Looney Labs was showing off a new use for their popular Icehouse pieces. Requiring just a single stack (or "stash") of their colorful pyramidal pieces, the Treehouse game won the best new boardgame of 2006 at the summer Origins convention. In this game, players attempt to be the first to match their three pyramids to a central group of three pyramids. Players take turns rolling a die which allows them to adjust their own formation or the central one. The newest game in the series is Black Ice which also uses the same custom die. It is a two player game where each player tries to deduce the color of pyramids hidden under opaque pyramids in the center of the board. Mayfair Games Publisher of the popular Settlers of Catan among other fine European imports, Mayfair Games was promoting the game Ragmortha with a giant game setup. Each player is a goblin sneaking into a wizard's lair in order to steal back the gold he owes them. Players rush around trying to gain gold and avoid the evil wizard by playing cards on each other. It is one of those silly family games where players can add to the rules making it more of an experience than a game. For example, a player might be required to begin playing while standing on one foot, and another player might not be allowed to say the word "card" anymore. Meanwhile everyone has to tap the table with their elbow whenever the word "turn" is said, and so on... I was able to sit in on a game of Patrician, a nice little strategy game where players use cards to try to take over various cities on the board. Each city contains two spaces to build a tower. Playing a card lets a player place one or two pieces into a specific city. Once all cards of a given city are played it is scored and the majority owner of the higher of the two city towers scores points and the majority owner of the smaller tower scores fewer points. Some cards allow players to place two pieces into a city while others allow a player to make further adjustments on the board. The game plays fast, but seemed a bit hard to control in my first play. I hope to give it another look in the future to see if better planning can help improve my poor initial play. Next time, we'll finish off the alphabet with some of my favorite games at the show
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