MattCon 4: Live Free or Con Hard
Just wrapped up another MattCon, and another amazing weekend of gaming. We had our typical gaming group (me, Jenni, Greg, and Frank), and Chris actually flew in from Seattle to participate, which was unbelievably awesome. Great times were had pretty much from Friday evening through Sunday late afternoon. I'm trying to get things down while the memories are still fresh, though I'm having a bit of trouble keeping my eyelids open at this point.
We kicked things off on Friday night with a game of Machi Koro, which is quickly becoming a favorite among our group because there's a lot of strategy, a fair amount of luck, and an elegant system in a game that takes about a half hour to play. Chris not only won, he outright dominated with like 50 money left over after winning the game. He ended the game by building a tax office and immediately rolling well enough to steal half of everyone else's money three times in a row.
We moved on by playing a round of Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective. This was our eighth case, meaning only two left until we complete the game. This one was tough, but interesting. There were five murders we had to solve, and we got all five right in terms of whodunnit, but we were slightly off base on two of the motives. Ultimately we came out with 60 points, which is a moral victory at least. We also managed to solve everything without ever visiting the home of the most recent victim, which was Sherlock's first stop and, as Holmes explained in his post-case briefing: "It was replete with clues."
We finished off the night with the beginning of a session of Mortal Coil, but I'll circle back to that and write about the RPGs all at once.
On Saturday, Chris and I started things off by playing Marvel Dice Masters. I pulled out the win with one hit point left, which was nice. Then the two of us played a deathmatch version of Tash Kalar, where the goal is to kill a bunch of your opponents' pieces rather than to complete tasks. In the end, your score is based on the number of pieces you've killed of the opponent you killed less of, meaning that if I killed seven of Chris' guys and six of Greg's, my score would be six. I really enjoyed the deathmatch variant - it was well balanced and we got to see almost everything in each deck. In the end, Greg won after the second tiebreaker with me. Then we played a quick game of Hey, That's My Fish! which Chris won, though the final score was 26 to 25 to 24 to 23.
After that, I think Byron arrived and we played two games of One Night Ultimate Werewolf, which is a great game that solves the problem with regular Werewolf, in that you don't have people getting eliminated and sitting out of a half-hour long game. The different roles in the game interact well, and sometimes you get to practice ninja skills by switching roles around while everyone has their eyes closed. I also like the fact that in each game, there are several roles that don't get used, so it's possible to have no werewolves in the game. There's also an app you can download which gives out the instructions so none of the players has to do it, which is cool (though I gave myself away unintentionally one time by moving over the phone and messing with the volume). Both times we played, the villagers won - first, Frank admitted that he had been a werewolf, but claimed that Chris switched roles with him, but Chris claimed to have switched with Byron instead. Ultimately the town believed Chris and correctly killed Frank. Second, I was the troublemaker, who switches two other people. I switched Frank and Jenni. Frank had been the drunk, who switches randomly with a card in the middle of the table, and so he used that power even though he wasn't actually the drunk anymore. Everyone knew I had been the troublemaker due to my blunder, so I told them who I'd switched, and Jenni admitted that she had been a werewolf originally. We equivocated for a short time about whether there was another werewolf, after which Jenni basically reminded us that she knew who the other werewolf was (since at the beginning she had been a werewolf and got to look around), and once we told he it was now in her interest to tell us, she told us it was Greg.
After that, we finished off Mortal Coil, which again I'll get back to. After that we played a new game that Chris had brought along called Camel Up, which I enjoyed. It's a game about betting on a camel race which has some strategy with a bit of luck. It really does get pretty intense, and we had a wild finish with an unexpected camel taking the win. Greg won the game with a balanced strategy, though I was only one point back. After that we played Sheriff of Nottingham, which I always love. Greg won that one as well without any contraband, which is impressive. He got lucky with some sets of cards and had a lot of people open his bags wrongly, and did a good job of picking out people who were lying. I came in a close second, which made me happy as to date I haven't done really well at the game.
After that was Sushi Go!, which Jenni won. Finally we played Cards Against Humanity, which was notable in that the random card we throw in won the game and the final haiku. Also, "Yo mama's so fat, she: Oil!"
We kicked things off on Friday night with a game of Machi Koro, which is quickly becoming a favorite among our group because there's a lot of strategy, a fair amount of luck, and an elegant system in a game that takes about a half hour to play. Chris not only won, he outright dominated with like 50 money left over after winning the game. He ended the game by building a tax office and immediately rolling well enough to steal half of everyone else's money three times in a row.
We moved on by playing a round of Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective. This was our eighth case, meaning only two left until we complete the game. This one was tough, but interesting. There were five murders we had to solve, and we got all five right in terms of whodunnit, but we were slightly off base on two of the motives. Ultimately we came out with 60 points, which is a moral victory at least. We also managed to solve everything without ever visiting the home of the most recent victim, which was Sherlock's first stop and, as Holmes explained in his post-case briefing: "It was replete with clues."
We finished off the night with the beginning of a session of Mortal Coil, but I'll circle back to that and write about the RPGs all at once.
On Saturday, Chris and I started things off by playing Marvel Dice Masters. I pulled out the win with one hit point left, which was nice. Then the two of us played a deathmatch version of Tash Kalar, where the goal is to kill a bunch of your opponents' pieces rather than to complete tasks. In the end, your score is based on the number of pieces you've killed of the opponent you killed less of, meaning that if I killed seven of Chris' guys and six of Greg's, my score would be six. I really enjoyed the deathmatch variant - it was well balanced and we got to see almost everything in each deck. In the end, Greg won after the second tiebreaker with me. Then we played a quick game of Hey, That's My Fish! which Chris won, though the final score was 26 to 25 to 24 to 23.
After that, I think Byron arrived and we played two games of One Night Ultimate Werewolf, which is a great game that solves the problem with regular Werewolf, in that you don't have people getting eliminated and sitting out of a half-hour long game. The different roles in the game interact well, and sometimes you get to practice ninja skills by switching roles around while everyone has their eyes closed. I also like the fact that in each game, there are several roles that don't get used, so it's possible to have no werewolves in the game. There's also an app you can download which gives out the instructions so none of the players has to do it, which is cool (though I gave myself away unintentionally one time by moving over the phone and messing with the volume). Both times we played, the villagers won - first, Frank admitted that he had been a werewolf, but claimed that Chris switched roles with him, but Chris claimed to have switched with Byron instead. Ultimately the town believed Chris and correctly killed Frank. Second, I was the troublemaker, who switches two other people. I switched Frank and Jenni. Frank had been the drunk, who switches randomly with a card in the middle of the table, and so he used that power even though he wasn't actually the drunk anymore. Everyone knew I had been the troublemaker due to my blunder, so I told them who I'd switched, and Jenni admitted that she had been a werewolf originally. We equivocated for a short time about whether there was another werewolf, after which Jenni basically reminded us that she knew who the other werewolf was (since at the beginning she had been a werewolf and got to look around), and once we told he it was now in her interest to tell us, she told us it was Greg.
After that, we finished off Mortal Coil, which again I'll get back to. After that we played a new game that Chris had brought along called Camel Up, which I enjoyed. It's a game about betting on a camel race which has some strategy with a bit of luck. It really does get pretty intense, and we had a wild finish with an unexpected camel taking the win. Greg won the game with a balanced strategy, though I was only one point back. After that we played Sheriff of Nottingham, which I always love. Greg won that one as well without any contraband, which is impressive. He got lucky with some sets of cards and had a lot of people open his bags wrongly, and did a good job of picking out people who were lying. I came in a close second, which made me happy as to date I haven't done really well at the game.
After that was Sushi Go!, which Jenni won. Finally we played Cards Against Humanity, which was notable in that the random card we throw in won the game and the final haiku. Also, "Yo mama's so fat, she: Oil!"