BayCon 2008, Exeter UK

Saturday

Saturday Morning in the main games room.

I had just arrived, however the Convention started on the Thursday, at around mid-day. This was the 22nd Baycon, this figure could be amended later, as no one, not even the organizers seemed to be sure as to how many there had been, however they were sure that it was March.
While I was hovering around the games library carrying my copy of Race for the Galaxy, I managed to get a few people into a game, whom I must have taught successfully, as I was soundly beaten. Next game on the table was a monster, Britannia.

The game was explained, and while pretty straight forward, there are a lot of exceptions, and it does take a long time, I was the Reds, who consist of the Brigantes, The Irish, the Saxons and the Norsemen. The inital Roman Invasion was swift, and got all the way to into Scotland, surprisingly, ignoring the welsh. Who managed to stick out the whole game only ever losing Cornwall and Powys to the Irish and the Saxons. After the first scoring in Turn 5, we broke for lunch. Then the after noon was taken up by many more invasions and territories changing hands, except Wales. The Danes, Norweigans and finally the Normans, all invaded and took their toll on my Saxons, who after a brief reign as King, were eliminated. Harold was killed by William the Conquerer, not at Hastings, but in Bristol. At the end of the game, I only had 1 lone Norseman unit way up north, in the Outer Hebrides. The winner, was Green, the Welsh helped with a huge amount of points, as no-one really tried to get them out of Wales, so were scoring over 20 points every scoring round, for welsh lands alone. The game lasted 6 and a half hours. I enjoyed the game, but it is very long, so I cant see myself getting many more games of this played, but am glad I tried it.

I took a well deserved rest after that marathon, and when I returned to the main room, one of the guys who was in the game of Britannia, was setting up a copy of Antler Island.

This newest game by the Fragor brothers has the players take part in the stag rut on a Scottish island. Each player plays a stag interested in food, fighting and, of course, the opposite sex. The object of the game is to be the stag who has "rutted" witth the most "doeples" and can only win the game if you have challenged another stag in combat, and won.
As usual, there are cutesy playing pieces. You can eat food, move around the island, "Rut" with a doe, and grow your antlers. When you move into a space with another players stag, you must fight, you both sacrifice and amount of collected food tokens, and add that figure to the number of antler pieces you have, the winner gets an "Ive-won-a-fight-so-I-can-win-the-game" chit, the looser get moved away to any space on the island. Its quite a straight forward game, not too many options, however as we found out, don't use all your food in a fight, or the next stag will get you, I was that next stag, and I won this game with 13 Ruts, and the biggest antlers. Then we packed up and had quick game of Race for the Galaxy.

Then I met up with my friend, Steve Kearon, so we got a third player Mike Oakes, and setup for a game of Amyitis.
I had been wanting another game of this ever since our first game (also a 3 player game with Steve teaching) when we (he) got the scoring wrong. Steve was scoring the temples victory points every turn, as an income, rather than as it should have been, as a one-off score per temple. As a result of this corrected points scoring, and proper rules, the scores were a lot closer, Steve won this time, but only by a difference of 5 poins to my second place, rather than the huge gap that there was in the first game.
I do like this game, as there are lots of ways to score points, not just from your own actions, but by careful irrigation, and lots of actions to consider, not just your own, but of the other players too. Even passing, if you choose to pass, and take no further action in a turn, as long as someone continues to take turns, you will earn 1 extra Talant every round. This game finished in around 1 hour and 45 mins. Then we met up with 2 more attendes, Neil Palfreyman and Anthony Simons, I had recognised the names from boardgamegeek., I had even read Anthony's blog. As it was getting late we decided on something "light".

Union Pacific was the game we eventually settled on. It is a train themed stockmarket game, where you can choose to increase the value of different train companies or lay down stocks in those companies so then when a scoring round occurs, you will actually score points. You only score points for share cards you lay on the table, not for the ones still in your hand. There was a slight delay in starting the game, (trains are always late) as the translated rules had a different starting hand than the official german rulebook. So after a small consultation, extra cards were dealt out and we were finally off. I liked this game, its not too overwhelming, but as the scoring is somewhat random, in that as you are working your way through the shares deck, a scoring card could be revealed and score immediately. This isn't too bad, but at the end of our game, with the share deck almost depleted, we go a scoring round, then just 2 card draws later, the final scoring round, only one played managed to get any shares down between the 2 final scoring rounds. Anthony won with Neil a close second. It was now 1.30am, oh and the clocks went forward too, so it was close to 3am when my first day finished.

Sunday

Next Moring after breakfast, I was wandering the game room looking for a game, so got invited into a game of Age of Empires III. It was a 4 player game, 2 of which had not played before. We removed one of the "capital building" tokens before we started, as the it was deemed to be too powerful. Conquest of the Aztecs, which gets the player an instant 20 gold, it was thought to be unbalanced. I thought it was a close game...until the end scoring, when I got second place with 91 points and the winner streaked ahead to finish on over 130. I had missed a few opportunities for getting cash early in the game, so instead tried for a conquest strategy, but as you can see from the photo the ships and trade goods (bottom right) belonging to the winner were enough to take him to victory. The last game of the day was another Race for the Galaxy, which was interupted half way through, for Baycon's award ceremony. Where prizes and trophies were awarded for best players over the entire con. Dr. Reiner Knizia once again praised the quality of the hotel and staff (hehe!), as well as awarding the winners with thier trophies. The main sponsor was JKLM Games, so I could hardly leave without buying at least one game, so I picked up a copy of Wits and Wagers, and interesting combination of a trivia game and the thrill of casino gambling, where you win by betting anyones answer.
This was my first Baycon, and I enjoyed it very much. As you can see, I had trouble remembering everyones names that I played with and met, so if you recognise being in the games ive listed, let me know, and i'll correct it and add your names where they should be.

Poprad Stag Weekend

On March 8th 2008, I few out to Slovakia with my Brother-in-Law, Chris, and his friends for his Stag weekend of Skiing and drinking. It was an early flight, 8.30am, from Luton Airport. Its classed as Luton London, despite being over 30 miles from the M25. When we landed, i was surprised to find the temperature similar to when we left the UK...and not much snow on the ground - not a good sign for a skiing trip.

A Short trip from the Airport to Poprad, and to our hotel, the Satel Hotel. A nice 3star in the city center. It was around 12 mid-day so we tried to contact the ski hire at the hotel, but they only open from 8am to 11am and 4pm to 7pm. So we decided to search for a bar. also some of us needed some local currency.
The town was very quiet, not many shops open at all, we all thought this very strange. "Like being in 28 Days later", someone commented. There was 12 of us in total, but 4 had arrived a few days earlier for an extended skiing trip, so the 8 of us that arrived that day eventually found a bar and in we went.
You know that scene from every western movie, when the hero or villain walks into the saloon, and the music stops, and every one looks at him? Thats what it seemed like as we went in. There were plenty of tables, so we picked a corner table and set about translating the menu. "Pivo" it turned out was "Beer" so, armed with this knowledge and hand signals, Richard went to the bar. Soon 8 large beers arrived, and, as they only cost 25SK each (about 50p!) we had another.....and another.
It was about time to get back to the hotel, and meet up with the others, and arrange our first night out with the stag, Chris, present. We set off back to the hotel to get ready.



After everyone arrived in the lobby bar, we went back to the rooms and Chris was introduced to his evenings atire.
Then it was out to the town and some food, we chose "Cafe Crazy", for some real brick oven cooked pizza (and beers).
Then we went to a nightclub, a the door they tried to charge us the equivelant of £12, each! Until we realized that that they were saying that would be the price for everyone, so in we went. The Black lights inside worked a treat on our t-shirts. There were more beers and shots in the dark. Dancing was had by some, but thats where my night ended, about 1.30am, not too drunk, but very tired, as most of us had been up since 4am the previous day.

My mum

This was just a quick post from my new phone, A Sony Ericsson K770i, which is able to send pictures straight to a blog. It resizes the pictures and posts in one go. Pretty neat.

I took this last week when my wife and I visited.