GenCon: The Stuff To Get Post

Updated with Martian Dice from Tasty Minstrel Games.

This year at GenCon I will be demoing games for Fantasy Flight Games, which is sort of my not-so-sneaky way of getting to play with and check out several of the FFG games they have to offer this year.

Top of the list is The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game. A major draw of this game is it is designed for two-player right out of the box. Actually, that is a primary consideration of any game that I purchase: I don’t just play games on game days or at conventions or with large groups. When the wife and I want to play a game, we need something that will work for two players. I have too many games that require at least three players, so games with two player options are first in line for my wallet. (A note for attendees at GenCon — pick up Android at the FFG booth. It plays great with two players.)

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BattleTech DMG: Quick Update

I put together a sample deck and ran through it once with the wife. The gameplay feels right, but the cards need to be adjusted to make it seem like an actual game. I’ve made a few changes, mainly reducing the number of different cards and increasing the amount of the cards that remain in the game, adjusting the costs and the benefits of some cards, and adding heat to the game. Fire that Heavy PPC? Generate 3 Heat. The more heat your ‘Mech builds up, the smaller your hand size. Start discarding cards to remove heat. Too much heat? You’re a sitting duck.

I’ll have a quick playtest again on Monday and get some nicer cards printed up on Tuesday, then I’ll hopefully see you in Indianapolis on Wednesday!

Update to the update: Printed out new test cards and ran a quick two-player game with the wife again. Much better than the first playtest. The Heat mechanic worked out well. I think this may scale up to a four-player game, but I’ll probably only have the two-player version ready for my GenCon demo. Nice!