Haven't watched all three games it but I watched the first along with the second. The only choice that really stuck out to me for your play was attacking Operative for the last incap. Unity was close by and is a much squishing target. The guy who played Omnitron had three actions available to him but often didn't have enough abilities to take advantage of it.
Have fun at Gencon today Andy. Thanks for taking time to give your viewpoint on it.
Thanks for the reporting, Andy! I'm so jazzed I'm in a smoky bar.
This may seem an odd question, but since I'm missing all the major cons this year instead of making it to one like I normally do, I'd like to know this...
What's the full crop of promos available at the booth this year? I assume that after the merger, it's expanded greatly to include things from the Dice Hate Me stable, yes?
I don't think they really 'do' con promos? Unless you count early access to things that aren't promotional. Seeing the SotM RPG, getting your hands on Deck Building Game, looking at Videogame Multiplayer, so on.
That's all pretty awesome, to me.
Thanks. When the YT vids are available, I hope I'll remember to review that moment.
I don't recall seeing any new promo cards for Sentinels or any promos at all for any other properties, but I didn't look very closely. Perhaps I'll take some time Sunday to look more closely at what's in the booth.
The big GtG news today was the upsets in the Tactics tournament. Both of the winners bracket teams for the World Championships lost twice in the semi-finals and got knocked out. Both teams going in to the Finals came from the Secondary bracket.
The qualifying map was Insula Primalis with a volcano in the center. For the semis and finals raptors and a T-Rex were added.
For Worlds the map was megalopolis, but with three buildings having special properties: Take damage to get attack tokens; Take damage to get defense tokens; or Give tokens to heal. I didn't get a good look, but for the semis I believe they added soldiers as hazards. Given the changes in maps so far, I'd be surprised if the Finals map wasn't somehow new.
I've found that I've not been following the tournaments very closely. I'm super interested in them, but there are so many other things I want to do, I keep having my attention drawn elsewhere. I'm really looking forward to going back and watching the videos. That being said, I want to share the most brutal attack I heard about. The Operative walked through three hazard spaces to drop down to 2 HP (thus invoking Dragon Frenzy) and collecting six damage+1 tokens. Operative also had out her card that generates hazard spaces. Two opponents decided to charge her?! They each hit the hazard space and suffered massive blows.
Other things: I noticed at some point that just one of the nine current mini-expansions had sold out: Wager Master. Kinda surprised me. I spent some time teaching various people how to play New Bedford. There seemed to be some mixup in the booth today, and volunteers were scarce. I noticed a few people showing interest in New Bedford, but no one being available to teach, so went ahead and did so. Later, in the side room, I befriened a couple of the Tactics players who were about to start a game of SotM. One of them had never actually played SotM before! It was like old times, teaching Sentinels at a con. Rabit and I were sharing his copy and he was teaching another table at the same time, using Baron Blade. I decided to run a game against GloomWeaver. Curb Stomp! No relics or cultists came out before GloomWeaver was knocked down to zero HP.
One of my highlights for the whole convention occured this morning. (Wow, this morning feels _very_ far away) I played with four friends and five other people in Escape Room. You have to solve a whole bunch of puzzles to find a way out of a room. We came SO CLOSE. We would have gotten out if we had about 15 more seconds.
More general observations on GenCon: I've noticed that there seem to be far fewer big decorations around the halls. In past years I remember 15+ foot statues and decorated frameworks in various places. I simply have seen nothing like that this year. Every room is tables and gamers, tables and gamers. There's less to distinguish the various halls from each other. The masses of people are massive. This doesn't feel much different from recent years, but is a huge change from five or ten years ago. There are just _SO_ MANY PEOPLE.
One more day ...
Fixed that for you.
Tactics Tournament just finished, but there is a bonus game. Check it out.
Bonus game was awesome and ended in one round.
Finally a Proletariat sighting! (Of course it took Christopher playing him to see it, but still)
Proletariat is the worse character. Thanks to him, the other team were able to get an incap. Terrible!
GenCon is over! (Well, mostly. Tomorrow I'm having lunch w/ people who came to town for GenCon).
Let's see. Someone asked about promo cards available. The cards one could buy (or use Sentinel Points to get) were the Prime Wardens, Rogue Agent KNYFE, and Super Scientific Tachyon.
So much fun stuff today. I did not see much of the two finals games, but I caught the very end of the second one. Although they ultimately lost, one of the teams rolled three sixes on three dice for defense to stave off the loss momentarily. The killing blow came on a gutsy move by Legacy to Flying Smash both Unity and one of her bots. The initial hit brought Unity down to one, then the bot being destroyed caused an explosion. Since Legacy was himself down to two hit points, there was a chance that Unity would defend against the explosion but Legacy wouldn't, ultimately having killed himself.
It was SO cool to see Adam, Paul, and Christopher sit down to play a game against the champions. Seeing Christopher's Proletariat spawn and spawn again when attacked by Blade, then use Overwhelm to push Blade around and into hazard spaces was just super fun. I think the GtG founders won that game in the ban/draft.
The charity auction at the end of the show was a lot of fun. Christopher is a delight to see working a crowd. Every promo card that's been released was auctioned, except for Kvothe. A lot of them went for a minimal amount -- a few dollars each or maybe as much as $5 or $7. The bidding started getting more heated with the Freedom Six. Freedom Six Tempest (quite surprisingly, I think) went for quite a bit -- more than the others in the F6, I think. Per usual, Beard Ra and Redeemer Fanatic went for a fair bit. I think they were around $60/$65. Sleulth Wraith was hotly contested, but I don't remember her final price. The real fun of the auction came with Young Legacy. There were two serious bidders who were up over $100. I decided to pitch in for one of them -- I didn't mind donating to charity. That started other people also pitching in, picking sides (though it was mostly one-sided). I don't recall the final price -- something like $250.
I took a turn at the multiplayer video game table, handily defeating the Ennead with Legacy, Ra, Bunker, and Tempest. The game worked pretty smoothly. I think people are going to like it. With all the computers in the multiplayer game right next to each other, it was easy to see that some screens temporarily got ahead of each other, then needed to wait for the other copies of the game when a group decision was needed. People who want to get input from their teammates in the form of seeing on-screen votes for decisions that aren't required to be unanimous will have to sort of guess if someone hasn't offered a suggestion because they don't have one, or because their copy of the game is just behind.
I also sat in, very briefly, on a Villains game. Didn't even get to my first turn, but it was fun to read through all the things that the villains do. Yes, I've seen most of them in the playtester forums, but I've not had a chance to playtest Villains much, so I don't know them very well.
While chatting with Adam, he commented that the wiki has found a lot of the references made in the cards, but not all. I noted that I would probably not be able to figure out most of the references. He responded that all I needed to do was read a few thousand comic books, and I'd be fine.
Rabit, Pydro, and I got together to take a group photo. Will try to remember to share it at some point. We cogitated on what one would call a group of Moderators. A Module of Moderators? A Mayhem of Moderators? A Mole of Moderators?
I'm now the proud owner of a trophy from GtGs, in recognition of having been on a team that made it to the finals of a tournament. Sure, I was only an alternate that won a single game, and then lost two, but I'm still proud of that trophy.
A propos of little, I got a close look at the mini for Decoy Projection. SO. PRETTY. It is a dark shade of pink/purple. Other random fact: I bought a couple of spin down D20s. I've finally admitted that when Rabit uses these to track things like Setback's Lucky Pool, I am envious.
Whew. I am dead on my feet after this week. Lots of fun stuff, but my ability to am is running low. My feet hurt, and I didn't even have to stand up for nine hours at a time working the booth. I've got no spoons. I've got a massive sleep deficit. I can't believe I've got to go back to work tomorrow. It has, however, been a really excellent week. When my spouse told me she'd gotten a job in Indiana and wanted to move there, I never imagined being so grateful to live in Indianapolis.
Oh, hey, another thing: I got to see a bit of Bottom of the 9th being played. At the risk of becoming a broken record, I really liked it. Looking forward to playing it more, hopefully.
Though I said it before, thanks for all of the updates this weekend!
I'm sure no one would mind if Adam staring throwing out some of the references in the wiki.
I saw the match on twitch and I also think that team lost to GtG because they didn't understand Proletriat. Two of their turns were spent just taking him down. The opening attack allowed Christopher to start off surrounding Baron Blade. I just wonder if that impact seeing Proletriat more in the future or not.
Thanks again for posting this Andy.
I was pretty upset with the series of events that prevented me from going this year, but reading your accounts makes things a little better, almost like I didn't miss anything at all.
Looking forward to watching the Tactics tournament when I get the chance to see where the meta game was at. The new map layouts sounded amazing.
The map for the Worlds Finals was like 65% lava. The characters start so close to each other, that it becomes an immediate scrum unless the characters are willing to retreat across the lava or run around the outside of the map. With only a total of three games played on that map, we didn't get to see much development in the 'meta' for ban/draft or strategy of play for that map. I wonder if taking AZ and making one's team immune to hazards, then backing up over the lava might have been a good strategy.
One more thing about GenCon: It is a whirwind and my energy level bounced around wildly. If I was less then perfectly friendly to any of you at any point, my apologies. It's always fun to get to meet other people from the forums, but I don't always have the presence of mind to enjoy it in the moment and behave accordingly.
One glaring example of this I happen to recall is that I met Chaosmancer like right before I was about to play in one of the Tactics matches. Maybe you were even on one of the opposing teams?! It's all a blur. I was so focused on playing those matches and trying to quickly come up to speed on a strategy with my new teammates, that I hardly even noticed the other team.
ALSO, also, over the years it is all too easy for me to meet someone at a convention or something, then run into them again many months or years later and not remember it. Please try to jog my memory, and I'm really sorry if that fails!
Ooh, Lava map? Dawn-AZ-Beacon would be my initial thought on ideal teams, terrain could cause that to change though.
Baron-Legacy Lava shenanigans are so much fun too. Oh man, I want to play in a tournament so much.