Gen Con Demos

I am not going to go through everything in writing as well. I will do a Top 10 games to demo, probably tomorrow. But today, let’s just talk about strategies for demoing because there are a lot of ways and places you can demo games.

Demo Events

Firstly, you can do official demos. Some companies don’t do demos at their booths, notably with that is Chip Theory Games. In some cases it’s because the games will take too long, again see Chip Theory Games, so you need to sign up for official demos. The upside is that while you’re still in a noisy hall, you aren’t as likely to have as many people around you who are having a separate conversation. So a good way to learn those heavier games. Downside is, it often costs.

Hall Demos

Next, you often find demos at booths in the dealer hall. A ton of them have tables setup and they do demos of different levels. I say different levels because some companies, you get to play the whole game. Other companies, you get to play one round. Other companies, they show you small pieces of how the game works.

Two of those, I personally like. I don’t like it when I just get told about the game as a demo. That doesn’t really help me know how the game is played. The other two, I like both of them. I prefer playing a whole game, when I can. But that depends on the game that is being played. Obviously a three hour game is not going to work to demo at a table in the dealer hall, in full anyways.

So with those games a round or two makes a lot more sense. It allows you to get through a game quickly and get to experience it to know what the game is going to feel like. Certain games, Asking for Trobils and Meadow for example, last year had short demos. But it was enough to know what the game was like, you get to experience all the mechanisms through playing a few rounds or through fewer scoring cards.

New Game Purchases

The last way, and this just happens randomly, is if someone bought the game. Two examples of that for me last year with Mythic Mischief and Ready, Set, Bet. Both of them good games, one of them better for me. But it’s a good way with hot games to get to try them if someone else has bought them. Because some games are just hard to demo.

Upcoming Streams

So as we get closer to Gen Con the schedule is going to be more Gen Con focused. Next Wednesday at 8 PM Central we’ll have a larger list of games to buy for the first time at Gen Con. So join me with that next Wednesday.

Then on Monday it’ll be a normal board game stream. What is the game that I’ll play solo, I’m not sure. Generally that is done at the last minute. So I won’t even guess, but not likely a new game that I’ve learned as I’m saving my new game knowledge for Gen Con.

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Games to Buy at Gen Con 2022

There are always a ton of games that come out at Gen Con and the Board Game Geek list tends to be pretty accurate, though not fully. I know the first year I was at Gen Con in 2019, there were some issues with it. Games that maybe weren’t supposed to be on there, Blueprint for example, made it onto the list somehow. But that was a few years ago at this point so I am hoping that it has been fixed up.

One of the really useful things about this list is trying to guess the hot games. There is always something every year that sells really quickly. So it is trying to guess what that might be. Games like Final Girl I’m sure will go fast with whatever supply Van Ryder Games has. Or something like Mission Catastrophe or Oathsworn which are getting buzz recently. My Father’s Work is the one that I am most interested in. But, the games that go fast, you don’t really need to run for. Most will be available later.

So is it worth diving into the mad rush at the beginning. Because that is part of what happens at Gen Con, when the dealer hall opens people are packed at the doors. I tend to think that it is not worth it. It’s a massive of humanity and while I love a good crowd, a crowd where everyone has very specific objectives, less so. Mainly because the feeling of that type of crowd is different. Plus, like I said, you will be able to find most if not all of the games later.

What would be your must buy game from the GeekPreview list?

Upcoming Streams

So, as I said in the last post, I have a week off coming up here. I stream on Monday and then on Wednesday, I am driving out to Gen Con. I might see about doing some short content or record some videos on my phone, but we’ll see.

Monday, though, I will stream and it’ll be a chill solo game play. Unless something happens, like Oathsworn shows up in which case I’ll do an unboxing. But most likely I’ll be playing Black Sonata. This is a solo hidden movement game that is a lot of fun to play and try and figure out the pattern as to where the dark lady of Shakespeare’s fancy is going and who she is.

Then the following Wednesday, so about a week and a half after, I’ll do a video either kicking off playing Stars of Akarios or showing off the games that were picked up at Gen Con. That Gen Con haul video, though, most likely will be the following Monday.

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2019 Schedule Compared to 2022 Schedule

So, let’s talk a bit about why it is a very light schedule. The main reason is the dealer hall. In the dealer hall there are a ton of games that you can demo, for free. Now, I don’t have an issue paying for events. And I wish I had found a couple more events that interested me. But this year it was a bit lighter, like I said, for games coming in. I had hoped for at least one more on my schedule or even two, but some of the playtests were already full.

Gen Con 2022 Schedule

So I have three events on the schedule, My plan for the first day is to just wander around checking things out. There is the initial mad rush of people going in, but some of the gaming areas and things going on are going to be less busy.

The Dice Tower Gen Con Live

Normally I like my events to be playing games. But often times when you’re wandering around for a while, it is nice to have a chance to sit down and just relax. I enjoy the content that the Dice Tower puts out, and I’m not sure what will be at this event. But it is going to be a Top 10 list of some sort, from the looks of it, so that should be fun.

I know in previous years it has been an event where games were announced or things like that. But you can see here, that during the Summer Spectacular, a lot of that already happened. But a live Top 10 list should be a grand old time. When they do them at a con, I always hope they are recorded and I have a good laugh.

The Batman: Everybody Lies Launch Party

This is a game that I didn’t pre-order, but I wanted to. Mainly because I am trying to be patient and get games more when I can play them. Right now I have a fair amount of this game system sitting on the shelf. The Batman: Everybody Lies is a game based off of the Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game system. Players use a website and cards, and deduction to figure out a crime in that game.

The Batman: Everybody Lies, from Portal Games, is a game set in Batman’s world with that same system. So it is a game that I definitely want to play. I don’t know what this launch event will really be. Looks like maybe tackling the first scenario, which is fun with Ignacy Trzewiczek, president of Portal Games, hosting the event.

Legendary: Marvel – Win-A-Box

Finally, this is a game that I don’t even love. But I picked a slot for it on Sunday because it is a cheap event. But also because on Sunday, last time, no one showed up besides myself and my friend. That meant that we were guaranteed to go home with a box and he collects or has been, a lot of the Marvel Legendary stuff. So, I figured I’d do that again. And I might be the one who doesn’t show up, we will see. But the game is fine and I can sit down and generally play it well, it’s just too long for me.

Final Thoughts

I wish I had another event, I have one for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, which means I will have a lot of time to demo. But an early or mid morning game on Thursday would be a lot of fun. However, unless I can find a game with electronic ticketing, which you can’t filter by, that is unlikely to happen. But I am browsing now.

But, like I said before, one of the best parts for me of GenCon is finding games to demo. Sitting down, playing a few rounds or a whole game of something is a blast. It is where I found out about Homebrewers, Deranged: Zona The Secret of Chernobyl and more in 2019. It is also where I found some games that were certainly not my speed.

Are you going to Gen Con 2022? Let me know, walk the halls with me and find some games to demo.

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So, one thing that I’d do differently, but I was glad that I did this time, was that we stayed at my friends parents place so we didn’t have to pay for a room, that saved a good chunk of change. The downside to it, was that their place was an hour and fifteen away from our parking spot. So that was a lot of driving at times. Now, if I were to do it again, I would maybe see about doing, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights at a hotel, but keep our same driving schedule of getting there on Wednesday and going back on Monday. That way my friend would be able to see his parents, but being closer to the convention would be really nice.

The other thing that I’d do differently is be a bit pickier on games. Now, I think basically all the games that we played in were great, and that it was a good number of games, I think we ended up doing six events in total, but we skipped one game on Sunday to get into a demo of another game. That was a great call, since as interesting as the Harry Potter miniatures game sounded, the price point was too high, so we likely wouldn’t have started playing it even if we loved it. Instead, we got to demo a game that we both decided we wanted after playing it.

That really takes me to one of the big highlights. There are so many games there, and we spent a ton of our time wandering the dealer floor and looking at games, getting games explained to us, and best of all, getting games demoed. There are so many games that if you didn’t want to, you wouldn’t have to do any organized events. We got to demo God of War, Deranged, Last Hour, Homebrewer, Bottom of the 9th, and so many more, and I’ll be touching on some of them in future articles. In fact, it took us a day and a half just to walk around what we thought was all of the dealer space, only to find that we had missed some and then remember that we had skipped some bigger booths to start because they were too busy when we went by them the first time.

Oh, and the events, the events that we went to were great. Marc Gunn performing Hobbit drinking songs was a fun and goofy old time. There was the North American Championships for Ice Cool (I was a semi-finalist), and that was a blast, most of the people were there to just have fun with it, so everyone was having fun. The best event was playtesting the Alpha version of Role Player Adventures. It’s a RPG-Lite sort of game, where it’s more about some dice manipulation, but we had a great group to play test with and we made some silly decisions and had a lot of fun with it.

There is so much to talk about, and I did pick up a number of things, so let me give a fast rundown of what I picked up:

1. Cowboy Bebop Boardgame Boogie – I like Cowboy Bebop a lot, and the game looked fun
2. Albion’s Legacy – Got this one for free with Cowboy Bebop, and it’s a big box game which is interesting.
3. Hats – Good simple card game with a lot of interesting and challenging choices. You kind of have to forget what you know about card games to get your brain wrapped around this one.
4. Cat Cafe – Cat Cafe is a roll and write, but it’s actually more complex than you’d think for the theme. Definitely a fun one with the time I played it.
5. Loup Garou – A choose your own adventure book, really, but you have a character sheet, so there’s a game element to it.
6. Detective: City of Angels – Big box detective game. In it, one person is the “chisel”, person giving clues, but they don’t want anyone to solve the case, but if they lie all the time, people will know that too. And all the detectives are racing to a solution.
7. The Grimm Masquerade – Which of the fairy tale characters are sitting around the table and trying to collect their item of choice? Can you call them out before they succeed, or maybe bust them with the item that they don’t want. Seems like a fun and interactive social deduction game with an actual game there.
8. Deception: Murder in Hong Kong & Expansion – Not a new game, but my favorite social deduction game.
9. Tokyo Highway & Expansion – Not a new game either, but hard to find, it’s a pretty looking wood game where you are building out roads and trying to be the first to place your cars.
10. Welcome To… Fallout and Spring Expansions
11. Sagrada Expansion

Oof, I have a lot of board games to get through. So I want to talk more about games that I demoed in a future articles, games that we paid for and played, including a Dresden Files skinned Savage World game, and more. There’s a lot to unpack and a lot of fun was had, and I definitely want to go again next year.

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