Podcast

Some of the characters spotted at GenCon

Back in August I attended GenCon 2011. I planned on creating a blog post about it, but never managed to get one made. I have plenty of photos show and stories to tell about GenCon, but too much time has gone by that I feel I've missed that bus, but this post does have a GenCon connection. That is why it is mentioned here.

This was my first trip to GenCon. It was me and two of my friends that made the drive together to Indianapolis. One of my friends is a veteran of GenCon and had connections to get us hotel rooms. The only catch was that we would be rooming with people we had never met. I worried that we would get the socially awkward gamer that only leaves mom's basement to attend GenCon. There were plenty of those people there, but luckily none of them were our roommates.

Our roommates happened to be a quartet of guys from the Ottawa, Canada area. Three of them you could tell right of way were firm friends. The fourth was well liked, but always did his own thing. In getting to know our new friends we found out they do a gaming podcast called The Accidental Survivors.

After many conversations about RPG's such as Warhammer and Dungeons and Dragons, we were asked to participate in their podcast. At first it sounded like it would just be to interview us about GenCon. It ended up being that we participated in an actual podcast. The actual podcast can be found here.

I had a great time recording the podcast over Skype with the Accidental Survivors. At the end we were asked if we would like to continue on with the podcast. It was so much fun how could I turn that down.

So far, the podcast has dealt mostly with role playing games such as the aforementioned Warhammer and Dungeons and Dragons. I am more of a board game guy and I know little about role playing games. Fortunately there is talk about adding board games to the list. That would be great.

The second podcast I have participated in was recorded last week and was posted last night. You can find it here. We interviewed Howard Andrew Jones. Howard is an author and an editor at Black Gate. Howard gives some good advice for writers trying to get published. I hope you give it a listen.

Doing this podcast has been a lot of fun and I hope it continues for a long time.

It Has Become a Sickness

A few years back some friends introduced me to the board game Battlestar Galactica. We play it a few times and had a great time. The humans lost most of the time, but we still had fun anyway. I so much fun that I was always ready at a moments notice to play again.

Then Queentuffy and I decided to host some game nights at our house. We had a few games lying around like Apples to Apples and some trivia games. The game nights were huge successes and I started adding to our collection.

I recently found a game group that meets every two weeks and started playing board games with them. They have introduced me to games I had never heard of, but after playing I had to own. Plus I'm always on the prowl to find a game to introduce them to. Which is not easy as these guys are serious gamers and have extensive collections.

I have also been going to thrift shops and garage sales hoping to score the rare find of a good condition game that I want to play. I've picked up a few games going this route.

The bottom line is that in a few short years I have gone from a few household standard games to a pretty big collection. I know it is small in comparison to serious gamers, but I am proud of the collection I have grown.

I didn't know how many I had until I was adding it to Board Game Geek website. I have 54 games as of this writing. You can see my collection here. The problem is I still have a wishlist a mile long. I guess it is good to have goals.

Gen Con

Last year I made a promise to myself that I will attend one of the big geek conferences. I chose to go to Gen Con this year. It is from August 4th to the 7th in Indianapolis. I am pumped. I love to play board games and Gen Con is a board gamers wet dream. I have purchased my four day pass and I'm ready to go.

Lucky for me I will be attending with a veteran of the Con. There will be a trio of us driving from KC. The veteran and two noobs. I plan on being overwhelmed by all there is to see and do. I plan on being sleep deprived, but very happy. I plan on spending too much money and taking a lot of pictures. I will post them here when we return.

This will be my first con of any type. I'm sure there will be things I wish I did or didn't do, but that goes with the territory. My goal is to have a great time and leave the real world behind if only for 4 days.

Humans Win

I love to play board games. You could say I'm a board game geek. Its okay. I don't mind. When I was a kid growing up in Las Vegas, the older kids in the neighborhood introduced me to Risk. I love that game. It brings back some great memories.

We own enough board games that the closet can't hold them all. I purchased a few more this last week. Now we have to find a bigger hiding place or a bigger house. Either way, I'm not going to stop acquiring games I like. My next purchase may be Battlestar Galactica.

My friend Banky introduce me to the game. The first couple of times I played I didn't think the game was all that fun. The Cylons kept kicking our butts early into the game. Banky kept telling me the game takes about 3 to 4 hours to play, but up to this point we averaged about an hour.

The game play is simple. At the beginning each person is given a loyalty card. Only you can see your card. This card tells you whether you are a cylon or human. If you are a cylon, you get to keep your identity secret as long as you desire and sabotage the humans efforts.

At the end of each player's turn a Crisis card is drawn. These cards live up to their name - Crisis. To pass a crisis each player plays skill cards that have numerical value. The skill cards are color coded and the cards that count must be of the correct color. This is where the Cylons can interfere. They can play cards of the wrong color and that subtracts from the total. If you don't get at least the numerical value required, you fail the crisis and some penalties will be incurred.

For the humans to win, they need to complete enough "jumps" to total 8 plus one final "jump." The Cylons have a few ways to win. They can inflict too much damage to the Galactica, run the humans out of either population, morale, fuel, or fuel, or have a boarding party reach the end of their trek.

With so many ways for a Cylon victory it is tough for the humans to win. In fact, I have never played when the humans win until last night. The humans finally pulled off the upset. It was touch and go for a bit. We humans were down to the minimum fuel supply. We drew the card that increased the fuel and we went about kicking Cylon bootie. The trick is to extend this into a winning streak. The odds are against us humans, but I think we are up to the challenge.