HeavyCon VII Recap

I went up to HeavyCon VII.

First off — Thanks to Edward & the rest of Heavy Cardboard guys running it. I dislike larger conventions, so much so that this was the first new game convention I’ve been to in fifteen (?) years. Small, cozy, full of people with similar interests. I mostly played older, bigger games but there were a few new and/or smaller games (mainly to fill gaps).

As to the games — I played three (new to me) 18xx games and generally liked them all, although nits could be picked.

I also ran a teaching game of Magic Realm (although a few of the people had played before, but none regularly, I believe). I remember an article with Richard Hamblen where he said something like “If you gave a player a broken magic item combo in an RPG, everyone would call it pure favoritism, but if it happens in a board game and its rare but by-the-rules, then it’s fair and that makes it amazing and awesome.” So the fact that Mrs. Tao stomped everyone as the Woods Girl is awesome. She plans on retiring undefeated. Also, having spent a full week reviewing the rules and aids and teaching the game, I now think I know about 85% of the rules (as opposed to 75% I knew when I was playing).

I got in two games of Arcs (the single game version, not the 3-linked game version). Both were relatively late after a long day. Cole Wehrle might be the most interesting game designer working these days; but this feels like a design I admire more than like. This probably deserves a full write-up; perhaps later.

But the most epic game I’ve played was the old Eon Dune game. I recently had a screed against fairness and said that games were remembered as stories … well, multiple moments had everyone in the table broken from laughter. It took much longer than I would have liked, but it was worth it.

Update — I’ve linked to session reports below.

Games Played:

• 1822 PNW
• 1880 China
• 18EU (Minor powers variant)
• Arcs (2)
• Dune
• Feierabend
• Fuji Flush
• Magic Realm — Eric’s Session Report
• Pastiche: Birth of a Masterpiece
• Space Empires 4x
• SpaceCorp
• Stationfall
• Titan (the shortest game of the con, probably ~15-20 min, not counting some of the games of Jump Drive) — Eric’s Session Report