A few weeks ago the inaugural Shepparcon took place, a board game convention in my humble town, and was a smashing success. It was a lot of fun to be a part of the organising committee, and while my contributions were limited, the rest of the crew did a fantastic job. We had close to 90 people come through over the course of the weekend, and much gaming was had by all. The event may well be the subject of a future post, but suffice to say I had a blast. Some of the standout games I managed to play included Eye for an Eye (a prototype of the highest quality), Santorini, and Red 7.
Eye for an Eye is, in some ways, a bizarre game. It's a real-time miniatures game - something I would have considered impossible, but the frantic rolling of action dice, the placement of the dice, and the spending of said dice to move, attack, defend and perform other actions was a huge amount of fun. Ben Boersma, the designer, is an Australian with several other games to his name. Eye for an Eye is set in his Occulite universe, and is an absolute blast to play. A game that conceptually I thought could not possibly work, Eye for an Eye is, instead, a raucous roller coaster of silly fun. I will certainly be getting a copy when it makes its way into production. If you're interested, you can get the print and play version here.
Santorini is a lovely looking game that ran quickly, had a simple rules set and was easy to play, for those reasons it was highly enjoyable. Some might argue it is very much a poster child of form over function, but the nice pieces really do make the game that little bit more fun.
Red 7 is a strange card game, at the end of every one of your turns you need to be winning, and you do that by playing cards in front of you to match the rule, or by modifying the rule (or both). It's one of those games where every turn you survive you feel like you've managed to do something clever, it was an excellent game, and one I'll be chasing up.
All in all Shepparcon was a success, and we're very much looking forward to what next year will bring. I'm sure the Con is going to grow, and it will be fantastic to be a part of that.
On the podcast front I have been decidedly slack, it's been tough to coordinate a recording time, but finally we have a new episode up (and plans to record another very soon). The latest episode of the On Minis Games podcast can be found here. We talk about Drop Fleet Commander, Drop Zone Commander, Kings of War, and a multitude of Kickstarters.
Lastly, I have been making slow plans to get my RPG group back playing, for a while our games centered around testing adventures for the upcoming Infinity RPG, and I want to take a break from that and try something different. My shelves are over stocked with a variety of games I either haven't played in a long time or ever, so it was to those I went looking. Being the vacillating type, I am still swinging between two options, but I think I have managed to sort out in my mind what I want to run.
I think we'll play through a few short campaigns of 3-5 adventures each, across a couple of different game systems. To begin with I think we'll run with Symbaroum, which is a dark and strange fantasy setting with gorgeous art. The setting is excellent (and very evocative), and the game system seems interesting enough - so we might kick off with that.
The other game I am looking at is Heavy Gear. Heavy Gear is an old favourite of mine, so I am most definitely looking forward to playing it again. I have the second edition rules set, as well as the third edition SilCore set. After some research I think we'll run with the second edition rules, though we may pull a few tweaks from the SilCore rules as well. We'll see how we go!
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