Lunacon report
This year's Lunacon was interesting. They were still renovating the hotel up to and during the convention, and the signage for the "Hilton D'Isaster" was definitely one of the highlights (especially since the hotel didn't take the signs down). We picked up cyberangel_ and her beau (who seems like a great guy) at Logan and drove down Thursday night. wren13 helped set up at the art show, and I tooled around upper NJ (inclunding investigating my first Ikea) for the afternoon, returning in time to introduce wren13 to Stephen Hickman, an artist she should definitely woo to Arisia!
There were some fine parties, some fine panels (esp. the Battlestar Galactica panel), and a packed game room - very convenient space right off the lower lobby, where the dealer's room, art show, registration, and the restaurant were located.
It was a good chance to catch up with zahraa, zyxvut, c1, and wen_spencer (who I hardly ever get to talk to while she's sitting down - at cons, she seems as overcommitted as wren13 is! I guess in her case, that comes from being an actual writer.
I got to meet Jim Butcher, and had him sign the audiobooks for Storm Front, Grave Peril, and Fool Moon (read by James Marsters, who played Spike on Angel), and found out SciFi is working on a movie - sign me up!
I got to meet cinterbyr, who I think I had managed not to stumble across before, and several other cool people who, afaik, are lj-less.
Food was kind of hit and miss, and one miss was the meal at the hotel restaurant. $20 for a one-pass buffet? Even when they dropped the price to $14, it was only a fair deal at best, as the food was highly mediocre. The rooms were pretty nice though, and the bed was perhaps the most comfortable I've been in a hotel bed in many years. And the hotel was incredibly dry, even for a hotel in the winter - wow!
Lunacon and Arisia always battle in my mind for my favorite cons, and even though the hotel situation was suboptimal, I still had a great time.
I played two games of Alhambra, a new game for me. In Alhambra, you are each building the famous Spanish city/palace/fortress. You purchase tiles to assemble your palace, and score based on who has the most of each of the 6 colors of tiles, and the length of your longest contiguous outer wall. In my first game, I finished a distant 3rd (of 3). In the second, everything went right for me, and I finished a distant 1st (of 3).
I learned to play Jambo, a two player trading game. "Jambo! is the friendly greeting Swahili traders offered their customers in Central Africa before colonization. The Players are traders in this day, competing to be the first to earn 60 gold coins by selling tea, hide, fruits, salt, silk, and trinkets. The game is played with cards which represent goods, people (which can help you or hinder your opponent), and animals (which add a bit of spice to the game). Players take turns with up to 5 actions per turn until one player reaches the goal and wins the game." This looks pretty interesting, but we usually got more players before I got to play far into a game.
zyxvut taught us Loco!, a fast and zany game (TM) of guessing what your opponents are trying to do. While the rules are simple, I can't quite figure out how to quickly explain it. A light game, but there is definitely a lot more strategy than a game like Fluxx, for example.
We also had a very competitive game of Puerto Rico, one of my favorite games. I ended up in second (final scores 44, 42, and 39 iirc). I thought at the beginning of the game that I was going with a building strategy, with a coffee plant, but ended up doing all my work by shipping, and I might have taken it all if I had realized where my game was going just a couple turns sooner.
There were some fine parties, some fine panels (esp. the Battlestar Galactica panel), and a packed game room - very convenient space right off the lower lobby, where the dealer's room, art show, registration, and the restaurant were located.
It was a good chance to catch up with zahraa, zyxvut, c1, and wen_spencer (who I hardly ever get to talk to while she's sitting down - at cons, she seems as overcommitted as wren13 is! I guess in her case, that comes from being an actual writer.
I got to meet Jim Butcher, and had him sign the audiobooks for Storm Front, Grave Peril, and Fool Moon (read by James Marsters, who played Spike on Angel), and found out SciFi is working on a movie - sign me up!
I got to meet cinterbyr, who I think I had managed not to stumble across before, and several other cool people who, afaik, are lj-less.
Food was kind of hit and miss, and one miss was the meal at the hotel restaurant. $20 for a one-pass buffet? Even when they dropped the price to $14, it was only a fair deal at best, as the food was highly mediocre. The rooms were pretty nice though, and the bed was perhaps the most comfortable I've been in a hotel bed in many years. And the hotel was incredibly dry, even for a hotel in the winter - wow!
Lunacon and Arisia always battle in my mind for my favorite cons, and even though the hotel situation was suboptimal, I still had a great time.
I played two games of Alhambra, a new game for me. In Alhambra, you are each building the famous Spanish city/palace/fortress. You purchase tiles to assemble your palace, and score based on who has the most of each of the 6 colors of tiles, and the length of your longest contiguous outer wall. In my first game, I finished a distant 3rd (of 3). In the second, everything went right for me, and I finished a distant 1st (of 3).
I learned to play Jambo, a two player trading game. "Jambo! is the friendly greeting Swahili traders offered their customers in Central Africa before colonization. The Players are traders in this day, competing to be the first to earn 60 gold coins by selling tea, hide, fruits, salt, silk, and trinkets. The game is played with cards which represent goods, people (which can help you or hinder your opponent), and animals (which add a bit of spice to the game). Players take turns with up to 5 actions per turn until one player reaches the goal and wins the game." This looks pretty interesting, but we usually got more players before I got to play far into a game.
zyxvut taught us Loco!, a fast and zany game (TM) of guessing what your opponents are trying to do. While the rules are simple, I can't quite figure out how to quickly explain it. A light game, but there is definitely a lot more strategy than a game like Fluxx, for example.
We also had a very competitive game of Puerto Rico, one of my favorite games. I ended up in second (final scores 44, 42, and 39 iirc). I thought at the beginning of the game that I was going with a building strategy, with a coffee plant, but ended up doing all my work by shipping, and I might have taken it all if I had realized where my game was going just a couple turns sooner.