Last night I had a last minute stream at 8:30 central time over on Malts and Meeples. Part of that time was spent talking about conventions and play some Village Green. GenCon just released their event list and while you can’t sign up for anything yet, you can look and see what you might want to sign up for. So I spent a bit of time looking through that yesterday figuring out what I was interested in.

Plus then Village Green with some solo play. A game that I would probably give an 8 as a multi-player game but a 6 as a solo game. At least with how the solo is in the book. I mess around with it a little to see if I can make it more interesting for myself. And I think I found a way that I like to play it better.

The Game – Village Green

Village Green is a fairly interesting little game where you are competing for the best green between a number of villages. Think about the subplot to Hot Fuzz almost. But instead of everything being done for the greater good, you are picking cards to fill out your green. They might have trees, a pond, a gazebo, and generally they have flowers as well.

With those, you create a 3×3 grid. And on the edge of that, both for columns and rows, you add in cards to score for that column or row. It makes creating your green a very interesting puzzle. You need to think about scoring in both directions, kind of like Criss Cross. And while Village Green feels like it should be more interesting solo, I found that it was actually less.

GenCon Events

I think it is an interesting topic to talk about. And in particular, I like to talk to new attendees about going there. One of the best pieces of advice that I received when I went was not to over schedule. And I didn’t, but I also wish that I scheduled less than I did. I think we average two things each day, maybe one day with three. So 9 or so total events, and it was great to do them, but by the end, so maybe it was 10, we skipped one.

Why, because it’s so much fun to do the games that are on the floor. Some of them might be prototypes, a lot of them are games that you can buy at GenCon from companies. It’s more interesting than picking out specific events with a few exceptions.

This year, I looked for events that are going to be unique. If it is playing a game I can likely play elsewhere, I am not going to do it. So instead, I looked for the kick-off events for a few games, Sagrada Legacy and The Batman: Everybody Lies. Plus then playtesting for prototype games. Now, those prototype games might not be great, but it is something I can’t play elsewhere.

Maybe I’ll find that I want to schedule more events while I’m there. And by then it’ll be too late, but I suspect the wandering around the dealer hall, hitting up a ton of different dealers to get demos of games, that is going to be more interesting than finding a 3 hour RPG to play some morning.

The Drink

Just an old fashioned again. This time with Blackstrap bitters. They have kind of a molasses and spice flavor to them. It’s nice, a little bit sweet as well. Definitely a good one to drink.

Upcoming Streams

Well, I am going to be streaming on Wednesday. I am not sure what I want to play for sure. It might be some more Paper Dungeons roll and write and I can continue through the story on stream. I do want get to a bigger game, I just haven’t learned another yet. I could maybe play through a scenario of Perdition’s Mouth, but it is a very large game on the table so you wouldn’t able to see everything.

Maybe I’ll pull out Under Falling Skies, we’ll have to see. But that could be a good, lighter, campaign to get to the table quickly here, while I take the time to learn a bigger game. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

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