- The industry is down, but not as bad as everyone thinks. #1 reason why? Pochemon had 400+ for the their Nationals.
- Out of all the new games that I saw, I thought the two best, innovation wise were Zatchbell and YMG's Battleground Fantasy Warfare.
- Zatchbell - just the sheer innovation of not having a deck of cards is pretty freaking cool. I didn't get a full demo, but it looks pretty cool in terms of the way it plays. And the ability to decide which card you wanna play vs. how many resources you wanna generate is similar to the operational aspects of the twilight pool.
- YMG's Battleground Fantasy Warfare - It's minitures without the figures. The armies are on cards, so there is no broken figures to deal with or having to lug around a large amount of metal. As far as I know, the rules are similar so the gameplay is the same. The way that Rob sold it to me was genious as well. "All the fun you get from playing the minitures for a fraction of the cost." They are sold at two points of purchase, one starter with about 50 or so cards (about 20 gameplay cards and the rest are armies) and then a second PoP has the stuff to customize your army. It seemed pretty good to me.
- Just about everyone that I interacted with for our games had a great time. The prize support was off the heezy, hopefully the word will spread and GenCon will be large as well.
- I love just sitting around talking shop with designers from other companies. I dont' get to do that all that much now (as I am the only in house designer). Talking stuff like what size sheets they use, what foil treatment is used, the decision not to have the product draftable, etc. I love talking shop, especially design theory.
- Another thing that is fun is sitting there watching a game and designing out loud. On two seperate occasions I sat down and started talking with the players around there about the current game/metagame. And we would discuss some possible card texts and go over why one thing would be ok, but something similar would not be based on cost/faction guidelines/design matrix/etc. Plus the players love it and it gets them involved.
- I loved seeing Chuck. Since knowing him, I have learned a great deal about life from Chuck Kallenbach. I wish there was enough time/space here to go into detail.
- Having a great 4 person team running the booth/tournament hall was good idea. All 4 people worked hard and it ran smooth. Not sure why there was upwards of 10 people needed in the past. I realize that attendance isn't what it once was, but still, with the volunteers, it would have been alright. And the booth got set up in about 4 hours total, with no anal retentive bastard telling me I was doing it all wrong.
- Overall, i had fun. I love hanging out with the players and listening to them talk about things and digesting all they have to say about anything game related. I love rubbing elbows with my peers. I didn't get to do it as much as I would have liked, but it was enough and I was happy. And above all, I met William Hung who was playing Pochemon next to us and then came over and watched some of our games on Sunday. All in all, it was fun .
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6 comments:
Glad I could help a bit over the weekend, looking forward to the big one.
Hung seemed like a nice guy! He was in line behind me for coffee.
I love talking with other designers about shop talk too. That's basically what my seminar with Garfield and Eckhard was, great fun.
We have two Zatchbell sets, and it is weird. Personally, I don't like the lack of shuffling and the fact that you don't play the cards to the table, but that's just me.
In the 70s was another kind of cardboard miniatures game called "System 7," and it was a colossal (but attractive) failure. Cards might make the difference, though, good idea.
I liked chillaxin' with the Girard. He is mad cool. He's like Smacky the frog (IM me at foxndanaX and I'll explain)
I think if my name was Will Hung, I'd start to speak in an Australian accent.
Look at Marcus getting all pithy. Rarely does a one line comment force us to reread a sentence out loud.
I was going to get a pic with Hung (for my wife of course) but he was eating lunch with his mom, and they looked so cozy I didn't bother.....
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