Oh yeah and re: booze. That was great fun. When I got together with you guys for WM last month, 4 beers knocked me on my ass. But this con I was able to drink all the time and barely feel it! That's a good thing, right? :/

Also also. Great pictures enr0n! And I think there is a game of Space Fleet missing in there somewhere. I definitely jumped into a game with you guys on Sunday, but I don't remember any details.

When I flew Delta recently we had this video and it was adequately amusing, I suppose.

I always enjoy your rundowns, Aeryk. I like how Kaosball essentially boils down to "as long as you expect this to be a completely abstract experience, 100% divorced from Newtonian physics, it's great!"

I'd love to give Claustrophobia another couple tries. I think we should try and arrange another game day in the WC soon -- especially since we didn't really play anything together at the con except for filler.

King of Tokyo -- I agree, it was fun at first but I'm done with it now. To the sell pile it goes! It was kinda nice to trot out Titan: The Misleading Box Art for old times' sake, but I think that one is destined for next year's Kubla chopping block as well.

Advanced HeroQuest -- if this shit isn't fun, I WILL KILL YOU! Oh shit, now I'm mad. I downloaded the Terror in the Dark rules, so I'm really boning up on the Quest for the Lichemaster. Funnily enough, all the quest monsters are based off of the MB HeroQuest -- chaos warriors, mummies, etc. Strange.

I was glad to see Space Hulk get some more play, especially a non-Torch the Toilet mission.

Enr0n, a couple corrections to your list: a) I soundly thumped Denis at Deadzone. However, both my wins should have asterisks because I was moving a bit faster with my wall-jumpers than I should've. I honestly think I still would've won because neither of my opponents seemed inclined to use overwatch, which I think is how you defend against that shit, but who can say. Anyway, it's a cool game and I'm looking forward to playing again. b) Mike won Starcraft -- surprisingly, not through turtling, but through zerging. (The cool thing about SC is it does not reward turtling, rare for a 4x wargame.)

I would 100% support more RPGing and tournament style events. If we did nothing but play Call of Chulhu that would be fine with me. Generally I enjoy conventions for the big stuff. Little filler games don't really do anything for me.

| Koobla Bits

Photos for those interested (same password as usual, something batman punches the joker into, two words, no space, no caps): http://polychromatic.smugmug.com/Koobla-Con-0514/

The quick list:

Situation 4, Aaron v Mike. Aaron won
Space Fleet, Mike v Eric v Aaron. Mike won.
Situation 4, Mike v Jon. Mike smoked Jon (under the table)
King of Tokyo, all. Mike won
King of Tokyo, all. Mike won
King of Tokyo, all. Eric won
Hobbit, Mike, Jon, Eric, Denis. Heros won
Hobbit, all. Villains won
Blood Bowl Team Manager, Mike, Eric, Denis, Aaron. Eric won
Kaos Ball, Eric (Trolls), Matt (Goblins). Eric won
Kaos Ball, Mike (Amazons), Denis (Ninjas). Mike won
8 minute Empires, Eric, Matt, Jon, Darren. Jon won
King of Tokyo, all plus Matt and Darren. Mike won
Space Bulk, Denis (Marines), Aaron (Genestealers). Aaron won
Aliens, Eric, Denis, Aaron. Marines won
Claustrophobia, Eric (demons), Aaron (condemned). Eric won
Starcraft, Matt, Jon, Mike. ????
Lord of the Rings LCG, Eric, Aaron. Good won
Quarriors, Matt, Jon. Matt won
Deadzone, Matt (Rebels), Jon (Plague). Jon won
Deadzone, Eric (Enforcers), Aaron (Marauders). Eric won
Deadzone, Denis (Enforcers), Eric (Enforcers). Eric won
Deadzone, Jon (Plague), Denis (Enforcers). Denis won
Netrunner, Jon, Denis. Tied
Love Letters, Mike, Eric, Aaron. Aaron won
Space Bulk. Mike (Gene Stealers), Aaron (Terminators). Mission 2. Aaron won
Love Letters, Jon, Eric, Aaron. Mike won
Titan the Arena, all. Aaron won
Formula D, all. Mike won
Chaos in the Old World, Jon (Slaanesh), Mike (Khorne), Denis (Nurgle), Aaron (Tzeentch). Denis won
Chaos in the Old World, Jon (Slaanesh), Mike (Khorne), Denis (Nurgle), Aaron (Tzeentch). Old World won
Love Letters, Jon, Eric, Denis, Aaron. Mike won
King of Tokyo, Jon, Eric, Denis, Aaron. Denis won
Blood Bowl Team Manager, Mike (Undead), Denis (Chaos), Aaron (Skaven). Denis and Aaron tied

* I am missing the Starcraft game info.
** All = Mike, Denis, Eric, Jon and Aaron.

r00d & Pump: Virgin changed the safety video from the animated instructional video to that silly music video about a year ago. My wife thought the video was neat. Me, not so much, so go figure. She tends to be more inline with what popular culture actually watches much more than my crotchety POV.

With regards to Con booze. Damn we drink too much together. It usually takes me a couple of days to right myself. Always Monday and Tuesday I am in a daze. Didn't help that Mike and I drink a bunch more on Sunday night. Id-jits.

D>M>

| Kubla, RPGs, and You

My con gamez played synopsis:

Love letter: always a good time, played it probably 3 or 4 times?

Aliens:  Fought off a TON of bonus bugs and made it through with only the loss of Hudson on like the first turn.  Apone was badass and melee'd aliens off other marines three separate times, the last while carrying an incapacitated Hicks on his back!  This one generated some interest from an early-teen girl that asked what Aliens was, and let us know that the art wasn't very good from the movie that was on the board.  Quit being such a bitch, Hanna Montana.

Claustrophobia: I love this game and wish that I could play it more than once at a time.  It always seems that when it comes out, I need to refresh myself on the (sparce) rules, explain it again, then play, and then pack it up.  I'd like, in all my infinite time, to play like 3 games in a row.  The first scenario is always a bloodbath for the humans but I suspect that after a few plays in a row, some nuances and pacing of the game will be come clear to balance the scales a bit.

LotR LCG: Enron and I had a pretty fun romp through the first mission, again.  Blenron had a preconstructed red deck and I had downloaded a pre-con blue, purple, green deck so it was a nice balance.  The Internet deck was pretty damn cool and showed me that there are a TON of deckbuilding options out there for smart people and I'd like to think I'd get there some day, but for now I will stand on the back of those giants and just capitalize on the decks others make.  Either way, we beat the first mission, despite the ample distractions from Matt and jr0n.  I also think this game suffers from the 'one and done' problem - more games of this in a row would be RAD to understand your decks better, internalize the rules permanently, and to actually play some of the more advanced scenarios.

Formula D:  Fun track that required everyone push it a fair amount.  The way the track was laid out, you couldn't TOTALLY guarantee your next roll would be a safe one, and to a certain extent, to stay in the pack you needed to roll some rather low odds of success, which was fun!  I think we played the track on the back of the first track from Formula De.

Titan - The Areola:  I'm always lukewarm on this one.  It seems fun, then it isn't, then it is, then it gets shelved for 20 years.  The more players there are the more kingmaking and less personal control there is so it becomes less fun, I suppose.  I'd do it again, but would have rather played something else for my second to last game of the con!

Deadzone:  Fun times!  I think I'm finally getting the system down and this time I'm almost certain we played with the doubling/tripling rules correctly!  It was fun to watch all three games happen at once and I liked that we generated a fair amount of interest from outsiders, as well.  In my game, the big story was my melee Enforcer that with some help from some blaze away attempts by his teammate, and a few card plays, cut through 3 opposing Enforcers, including the captain in 'Terminator' armor, like butter - that was fun for me.  It was also fun that the same enforces played the plague on the same terrain the next match and we had some backstory cooked up where the fallen enforcers turned into the plague from the second game!

King of Tokyo: Totally fun, better while drinking, though with the conservative play of Myke, I'm not sure it has legs anymore, or maybe it was always supposed to play like that and we were doing it wrong at first (but having fun)?  Not that healing is bad, but if everyone healed then the game would never end, so as it turns out, the one guy that DOES heal, wins the game while the rest of the gang slug it out.  Dunno, if it comes down to that, then the future of KoT isn't very promising.

The Kings: Fun to watch the whole game with Enron and Myke while playing Love Letter, eating burgs, and drinking 34oz-ers of freedom in Knuckles.  Also fun that they won the game and we had been drinking prior to drinking during the game.

Booze, the Con: Lotta boozin'.  More than I've boozed in a long time.  Fun, but trashed the next morning.  I wonder if that's why I'm sick now or if it was from having a sick person in the room?

Chaos Ball: Fun, after you realize it's not a sports game that can be related to any Earth-based sports game so don't play like it is and that your opponent who has played before (Matt) is intentionally trying to eff with you while you learn the game.  After figuring those two things out, I handed his ass to him and had some fun doing it!  I wanna play again!

Auction, the Game:  Between Matt selling some of my minis (to my surprise) at the fleabag market and the rest of the stuff I put up from auction, I pulled in $450!  Not a bad haul!  And if I never settle up with Enron, it will be like I made almost $650!  All in all, awesome for me!

RPG, the Game:  I didn't play any but now I want to!  Been reading some simple CoC rules and trying to think through what a mini, low-effort to run scenario would look like.  I still like the idea of trying one with the Mythic GM Emulator - a man can dream.

I haven't flown Virgin in at least 5 years, but I REMEMBER that friggen video, or one very similar. Made me uncomfortable then, I can only imagine how well it's aged. I guess it needs to be updated with some Skrillex-type dub-step to make it slightly less-dated.

So I flew in on Virgin Airlines, and the safety info has been replaced by a music video.  First class still gets a real person because, first class.  I don't know how old this is, since I don't usually fly with them.

I think I'm insulted.  What am I?  A seven year old that needs shiny to be given information?  The video looks like it was made by your uncle trying to teach you something by being cool (right Poochie?).  My favorite part is at 1:40.

Seatbelts?  Really?

Oh yeah, gg guys.

Awesome update!

Sounds like a great con, and that seems like a surprising number of games. I feel like I NEVER play that many games, even when I want to. Cool to hear that it was crowded and happening! Wish I was there.

Congrats on the Robinson Crusoe win! That's some hard shit. Was there heavy QBing going on, or were you all savvy enough to know the "optimal move"? I gotta break that game out again. I only got through a couple of partial solo-games.

Did anyone play Coup? That was a big man-con hit.

I had fun! Just got back tonight. Real quick notes:

- I intended to stay there starting Thursday, but Thursday night was more of a (slightly drunken) cameo for me b/c I got a cold. So the real adventure started for me on Friday.
- Convention seemed more crowded this year with open gaming space at a real premium. The flea market looked bananas too. Some of us passed on it this year and we didn't work it.
- Elzar and I dumped our stuff in the auction rather than deal with the flea market. I'm happy enough with the results, and cleared out a lot of shelf and closet space. Big relief.
- No matter how conservative I think I'm being on my food and beverage purchases, I will never consume more than 50% of what I brought at the convention.

Games I remember playing:
- Situation 4 (vs Mike): Weird real-time puzzle strategy game from the '60s? Interesting for sure. I got my butt kicked, would play again.
- King of Tokyo: We played a whole bunch of games of this. Fun filler game.
- Love Letter: Always good.
- Starcraft: Motorbyke, Matt and I played this on Friday. It was rad! Super dense, big-box FFG game with lots and lots of bits, but really satisfying and fun to play. I think we all want to play it again soon so we can build on what we learned.
- Deadzone: So we got three games together and the plan was to have a three round tourney. It was enr0n, me, Aeryk, Pump, Matt, and game group Eric. Instead, enr0n and GG Eric's game went two and a half hours longer than it should have, Matt was so bummed about his crushing defeat (at my hands!) that he went and played another game, and in the end only Pump and I played a second game. Which I won! So I'm the best Deadzone player. It was lots of fun and very pretty.
- Robinson Crusoe: Played this with game group Eric and we actually won! We were stoked.
- Netrunner: Finally got in a game against Denis. I remember why I liked this one back in the '90s now. It was awesome! I really, REALLY want to play this one again. it just struck me as a lot more fun than most other LCG/CCG type games.
- Formula D: Well, I started in last place and moved up to second-to-last, so that's something!
- Chaos in the Old World: We actually played TWO games of this. Both games had some really hard Old World cards come up. In the first, Pump (Nurgle) was left alone, and cleaned everyone's clocks ruining things like crazy. In the second game, we got absolutely Old World card draws so that the various peasants on the board were fucking up our demons and cultists like they were born to it. In the last round Myke was positioned to win, with me and enr0n also having a long shot. In the end I was able to keep Mike from winning, which meant we all lost (the Old World won), which I considered a moral victory.

I'm probably forgetting something. I was really glad to get in a couple burly games, and it was great to see the guys. Wish everyone could have made it!

Give us a mid-con update! What are the hot games for you  guys this weekend? I wish I was there!