(no subject)
I'm sitting outside the ballroom at the Lancaster Host Hotel, surrounded by my fellow participants in this year's World Boardgaming Champonships. This is my 9th or 10th WBC (I missed two years because I went to Worldcon instead), and it's an amazing event -- the boardgaming equivalent of the Scrabble National Championships. We came down a bit early because Jim was playing in the 1830 pre-con on the weekend (1830 is a railroad game involving buying stock in railroads and operating them). He made it to the semi-finals, but didn't go further --the competition is really fierce.
My first big tournament (Empire Builder) starts tonight, but I've been playing a variety of pickup games and prototypes. I can't talk about the prototypes (that's a big no-no because of intellectual property issues), but the piciup games have included Priests of Ra (same mechanics as the original Ra but with different tiles and scoring) and Cable Car, which is a streetcar route building game with a stock market component. I also played in one heat of the Through the Ages tournament, and got massacred - but it helped me get a better understanding of the game, which I had only played a few times before.
Lancaster, of course, is in the heart of Amish country, and although we don't spend a lot of time outside the hotel, we always get a feeling for the fascinating mix between Amish and non-Amish residents. Horse-drawn buggies coexist with cars on even the busiest streets, and the kocal stores sell everything from traditional Amish crafts to Amish romance novels. In Amish country, the smorgasbord is king, and we went to one of our favourites -- Miller's -- for dinner the other night. An interesting place to be.
I only wish the latter half of WBC didn't coincide with the National Scrabble Championships, being held in Dallas starting later this week. I've still been keeping up my Scrabble while I'm here thanks to Facebook...with a little help from Elizabeth, Sue, Ross, Dean,Tasia, Diane and others.
More to come....