Tag: convention

Arizona Game Fair 2019: Meeting Vital Lacerda

Arizona Game Fair 2019: Meeting Vital Lacerda

Arizona Game Fair took place recently at the Mesa Convention Center, and I can’t even begin to tell you how awesome the convention was! Now in its third year, the con had over 1,200 attendees. That’s pretty fantastic! Convention founder Andrew Long said the first year had over 300 gamers and the second had 785. I am constantly in awe at how wonderful the Arizona gaming community is.

The convention was one I had been excited about for many, many months. For starters, I never thought I’d ever in a million years meet the designer of one of my absolute favorite games, Lisboa: Vital Lacerda himself! I mean, dude is from Portugal and attends a lot of overseas conventions, which I obviously don’t attend. And they say never meet your heroes because they’re sure to disappoint, but, my friends, I was not disappointed at all. Lacerda is passionate about gaming, friendly, humble and just lovely to be around. He is all about making sure gamers have a good time playing his heavy, intricate games.

It was so freaking hard not to fangirl scream every two seconds when Vital Lacerda was teaching his game. You should all be proud of me, folks!

I arrived Friday afternoon at the convention after working a half day, and I had scheduled a game at 3 p.m. with Chris, Julie, Ken and me to learn On Mars, Lacerda’s upcoming game.

Here we are playing it cool as Vital Lacerda teaches us On Mars.

On Mars is by far his heaviest game, in which astronauts are trying to settle the red planet. This game is nothing like Terraforming Mars, other than the location of the game. Players are collecting resources to explore Mars, build buildings, improve their technologies and gathering scientists. There’s an added element of moving back and forth between the space station and on Mars – for free on the rocket ship that moves as the game progresses or using one of your ships, which can be expensive – which then enables you to take any action on that side of the board. The actions in itself are not hard; the challenge is figuring out how to make your actions work together, in a puzzly interconnectivity that is Lacerda’s signature style. I cannot wait for this game to come out!

I naturally had to bring out the giant tweezers for On Mars. I am so excited for this game!

Chris and I then ordered some Vital LaCider from @CiderCorp and attended a Q&A on Lacerda, with the wonderful special guest Suzanne hosting the panel. She asked some really cool questions about what it’s like to be a game designer all the way to what his favorite pie is. My favorite part of the conversation was when Lacerda said that he’s always learning about new stuff about designing games and that he doesn’t feel like a game designer completely yet. I beg to differ, sir!

I live-tweeted some of the conversation. You can read the whole thread below:

After the panel, there was a Hungry Hungry Hippos tournament. My blue hippo was defective, and I got knocked out in the first round. I did not win one of these cool meeple trophies. Womp womp.

Everyone’s getting ready to chomp down some marbles!

There were plenty of tournaments at all game levels happening throughout the convention, as well as a contest for miniatures painting.

Here’s Andrew, Lord of the Board, sitting with some of the cool meeple trophies for the tournaments.

On Saturday, Chris and I hit the ground running with a 6-player game of Flamme Rouge. These guys placed some chocolate eggs on the track so that we passed them, we got a candy treat.

Benjamin and Steve both run g3gamenight in the northwest Valley, while Scott and Mike live down in Tucson.

In Flamme Rouge, players simultaneously draw four cards and pick one to play for both of their cyclists, their Rouleur and Sprinteur, and you go through the course dealing with inclines and other areas, while utilizing slipstream and avoiding exhaustion if you’re in the front of the pack. I started out strong, but my cyclists lost steam halfway through the game. Super fun!

Flamme Rouge is a fun simultaneous-card-selection and deckbuildng game!

Next up, we played Imhotep. My buddy Mark loves to 3D print things to deluxify his games, and it was really satisfying dropping cubes into these structures. He found these files on Thingiverse.

These structures hold all the giant cubes. I probably should’ve taken a better photo from the side so you can see how they all stack up. Next time!

I then taught a game of Teotihuacan, which meant I busted out my giant tweezers. I’ve taught this game a few times, and I finally feel like I got the hang of this teaching this beast. We ended the game by building the pyramid, and Chris nearly lapped all of us. The worst.

We finished our pyramid, which ended the game a few rounds early.

We then played a quick game of Catch the Moon, which is always a hit with gamers!

Catch the Moon is another great filler that always looks great on table.

Afterwards, I joined 10-player game of Welcome To. I’m pretty bad at this game, but it was still fun to game with all these cool peeps.

My Welcome To neighborhood wasn’t well developed. People trigger those objectives so fast!

Chris and I got asked on Friday to take some photos in costume for a live game on Saturday of The Usual Suspects, hosted by the Game State Show. The suspects’ photos were all lined up in the hallway after their show. Who looks the most suspicious and is guilty? Indeed it is not I.

Look at all these suspicious people! I do love having giant mugshots at home now.

I then took a break to get ready for one of my favorite things to do at a convention: run a ginormous game of Sidereal Confluence. I was able to gather 9 players for this game, which uses ALL THE ALIEN FACTIONS. I had never run a game this large before, but luckily, a few had played it before I had some help in answering questions. There’s a trajectory at the start of the game where I start explaining the rules and then I get a lot of puzzled looks about this game, which makes me worry that I’ve accidentally dragged folks into a 2-hour grudge match, but then once the first round gets underway, things start sorta clicking and people embrace the absurdity of the game, and we just all start yelling at each other for cubes.

Here are all nine players for Sidereal Confluence. Everyone is still pretty relaxed since we haven’t started yet, except GloryHoundd and me, who are already uber excited.

Luckily, we were seated in the far end of the convention floor, as we were all pretty loud, and lots of folks stopped by to see what the game was all about. And they’d see me standing with giant tweezers in hand counting down which players can take a colony they’ve successfully bid on. One person said it sounded like a craps table was happening on the convention floor. That is exactly what it look like – yelling, people throwing cubes, and hands going everywhere on a giant table with a million cards on it.

Sidereal Confluence is such a table hog!

We ended the night talking with Ferdinand of Cardboard Stacker and playing Filipino Fruit Market, which is a unique area-control, trick-taking card game with fruit.

This game by Peer Sylvester is a neat twist on trick taking. I wish it was widely available!

On Sunday, we began the day playing Passing Through Petra, which is a neat puzzly tile/trading game from J. Alex Kevern, who has designed crunchy one-hour games like Gold West and Sentient. Traders travel on a caravan through the desert, and you can welcome various traders into your market and facilitate trade with people who have the goods they want. But filling your market happens in a specific order, so timing your market with the appropriate tiles at the right time for maximum trades is just delightful. I just wish the caravan on the board wasn’t so fiddly though.

I enjoyed the puzzly aspect of Passing Through Petra but not the fiddly caravan mechanism.

I then taught a game of Mexica, which is always a hit with people and has such table presence that people stop by to take a look at the game.

I love how Mexica gets all kinds of mean!

I ended Arizona Game Fair chilling with Kevin Russ and Suzanne, and we played a first games. First up was Krass Kariert.

Chris, Kevin, Suzanne and I all hung out until it was about closing time on Sunday.

Krass Kariert is a quick fun card game in which you’re trying to beat what’s already played, through a simple hierarchy of singles, pairs, runs and triples. But you cannot rearrange your cards! If you need to play a pair, they have to be sitting next to each other. But as you pull cards from your hand, naturally, the gap closes, and you can find new combinations with the cards remaining. Super fun!

Krass Kariert is a fun quick card game from Amigo where everyone wins except the last player to clear their cards.

We of course played some roll-and-writes, too! I did spectacularly horrible in Metro X, but won Cartographer! Suzanne said there’s a bunch of roll-and-writes out there, and it’s all a matter of finding one that you resonate with. I guess I do better with placing tetris tiles and completing objective ones than filling numbers on subway routes.

Cartographer is a puzzle style roll-and-write set in the Roll Player world. It has four objectives for each game, with two scoring during each of the four seasons.

Lastly, there was a special tribute at the entrance for my buddy Tom Wells who had passed away recently at an all-too-young age of 50. I had fond memories playing Arkwright and The Colonists with him in previous conventions, as well as gaming with him on the occasional Saturday morning. His badge was hanging up all weekend.

We’ll miss you, Tom. I still can’t believe you’re gone.

And just like that, three games of gaming came and went. The chill atmosphere, friendly volunteers and wide open space made the convention a pleasure to attend. There were also vendors there such as Eagle-Gryphon Games and Gamelyn Games, as well as wood workers and artists. The convention also had a designated women’s space, which is pretty fantastic, and a separate area for RPGs. There was plenty to do for all the different types of gamers!

There was a lovely space for female gamers who were more comfortable away from the main convention floor, and lots of games scheduled in the space, too.

Thanks again Arizona Game Fair for having me as a guest. I can’t wait to see what’s in store next year. And folks, save the date for next year’s convention: March 20-22, 2020. Hope to see here! We’ve got sunny skies, perfect for outside gaming, and giant cactus!

Chris and I visited the Desert Botanical Gardens after the convention. Fun times!


ZapCon Arcade and Pinball Convention

ZapCon Arcade and Pinball Convention

Last weekend, some friends and I went to the sixth-annual ZapCon Arcade and Pinball Convention at the Mesa Convention Center. It was my first time attending, though they had been telling me for years that I should come check it out. And it did not disappoint!

More conventiongoers playing lots of pinball. This guy is patiently waiting for his turn at the game.

My memories of playing pinball growing up were limited to hanging out in the arcade at the mall with friends or at the local pizza place after sporting events. And I’ve been to a few of the barcades that have sprung up in the Phoenix area in the past few years, but if I’m being honest, I don’t have that big of a connection to those kinds of machines like other folks. Nonetheless, I still went to check this out — and it ended up being so much fun!

Badges for the weekend were $40, or $30 for Saturday and $20 for Sunday. Kids’ badges were at half price. The convention was held in Building C at the Mesa Convention Center, its biggest building, and it was just endless rows and rows of vintage arcade games and pinball games.

Ms. Pac-Man and Donkey Kong! Where’s Billy Mitchell?

The whole hall was dimly lit so that you can see the games clearly, and the convention was packed, but not too packed that it made you feel uncomfortable. People politely waited in line behind a person playing the machine they wanted to play. I even saw a bunch of parents carrying stools so that their little ones could see the screen. I wouldn’t have even thought of that!

The convention had a bunch of tournaments scheduled, which had cash prizes. There was also Pingolf. It’s like golf but with pinball games! Nine machines sat in one corner of the hall for “Pingolf” in which you play all machines and rack up your score like golf. There was a label on each machine, which showed your target score, and you played until you hit that number. If you go through all four of your balls and don’t hit that score, you check the sheet to see where your score fell into the number of strokes, and write your scores for that machine, just like a hole in golf. I ended up getting 56 for the nine machines. It was a lot of fun trying to get to those scores and frustrating when you fell super flat!

Five people get to play as one team in a 10-player game of Killer Queen.

One of the big super video-game machines was Killer Queen, which plays 10 people simultaneously. The Gold and Blue teams battle each other on screen, trying to achieve one of three victory conditions: killing the Queen Bee, moving the snail to their side, or filling your team’s hide with berries. It’s super fun, especially when your team wins! I personally just liked jumping onto the snail and moving that sucker to your goal.

Atari! I’ve never actually played on this; my first video-game console was the original Nintendo.

Outside the main convention floor was the Retro Living Room. In here were retro video-game consoles hooked up to old TVs, where you can sit back on a couch or lounge on a bean-bag chair and play some games from your childhood. Or you can try your hand at giant Super Mario 3! And they were selling beer in this room, so it totally felt chill and loungey.

Giant Nintendo! I saw people playing Super Mario 3 and Contra. Can you imagine up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-start on this sucker?

On Saturday night, Minibosses performed in the Retro Living Room. They’re a local band who plays 8-bit video-game scores, and their most-famous song is Metroid. I’ve been going to their shows for over a decade, and it totally made me fell old when it seems like some of their kids are now part of the band. I had a great time listening to them.

Another cool thing about the convention was that there were food trucks hanging out outside of the building. They seemed to rotate every few hours, so that was pretty cool having food options on site. Or you could just drive off to a local restaurant, which there are plenty of in and around Mesa.

It’s Axl Rose and Guns N’ Roses, one degree from Kevin Bacon in Apollo 13.

Overall, I had no idea how the hours would fly by playing pinball over the course of two days. I learned that I don’t like gun-trigger pinball starts (which show sup in games like Jurassic Park and Guns ‘N’ Roses — yep, those guys), and I’m not a fan of the digital screen either, which I played a game of Archer on. It was dizzying to me. My favorite pinball machine I discovered there was the Adam West Batman one. If only I had $7,000 to buy it!

Holy Batman! I was obsessed with this show growing up. I could tell you which actors plays all the villains.

My friends and I also discussed the recent dethroning of Billy Mitchell, villain extraordinaire and “record holder” of “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters” and one booth even had these Game Over T-shirts. I was greatly amused by them. Overall it was a good time, and I’m glad I went!

Game Over, Billy Mitchell! Go Team Steve Weibe!