[Matt C usually writes our Gen Con recap, and I will defer the bulk of the coverage to him… But, here are some thoughts from my 26 hours in Indianapolis this year. Look for the more detailed reports from Matt C in the coming weeks!]

Well I finally arrived here in indianapolis, found my parking garage, and of course the first thing that happens is.. I get to wait in a line. No matter what people say, the most common thing to see at Gen Con is a line.   This year, I think lines are going to be a big thing – there are signs all over the sidewalk proclaiming that Gen Con is completely sold out this year…

Luckily my first line was pretty short, and seven or eight minutes later, I’m the proud owner of my press badge. It couldn’t happen too soon, as I now have 15 minutes to hoof it across downtown to my first event, the Asmodee new release event. 

If you have never been to Gen Con before, the most amazing thing about it is the sheer size. It is centered around the convention center, but it literally happens everywhere in a five block radius around the convention center. Every local hotel has ballrooms dedicated to the convention. And it is not uncommon to have a 10 minute or sometimes even longer walk to get between locations.

When making my schedule, I try my best to schedule meetings that are somewhat near each other, but it is difficult to do. I think my longest commute will be about 20 minutes this year, I have one meeting at the far end of the dealer Hall followed by a meeting at one of the Suites in the football stadium. Everything is nicely connected with underground tunnels and whatnot, but it’s still a good 20 minutes to get from point A to point B on this trip.

At the Asmodee event, many of their publishers were there at a table with the new offerings on display.  Some games meant for release this show, some still upcoming…

First game was Tree society from Next Move. It’s a tableau building, but honestly I was sold as soon as I saw the designers were Dunstan and Gilbert.  Here, you sell fruits, then take bonus actions based on what you sold.  There is plenty of room for synergistic actions.

Altered is the much anticipated TCG, described as non combative. It’s more of a race vs your opponents.  The very first cards for sale will be at Gen Con with some organized play.  Their intent is to have new sets every 4 mos. The Base set is pretty large with ~500 cards in the box

Meadow adventure book is a neat set of expansion/extensions to the base game.  There are 6 different scenarios in the book.  All of the necessary extra bits are included with the book.

Inori is a worker placement game with beautiful art. Place your worker somewhere on the cards – allowing you to activate abilities, earn points, or obtain favor tokens. At the end of a season, a card with all spaces occupied gains bonus points and is replaced, creating new opportunities.If it fills up, people there get a bonus. Cards rotate each round regardless, but bonuses only come to cards that are filled.

Lego monkey island is fun building game where each round you get to place Lego bits to build a structure that is higher and higher. You score points for the number of bridges you are able to place on your turn, the catch is that you always have to start building at ground level. You use the points that you score to buy cards which provide both instant and recurring income. They also have Victory points on them, designated as bananas, of course. You only have four slots for cards on your board, and once it is full you must cover up an existing card with the new one that you buy. So there is a little bit of engine building going on here as well. The game continues until the supply of Lego bits is completely used up.

It was in the event and provided a nice chance to get a look at games without too much of a crowd. Some of the new games there have already been reviewed here on our blog such as the Mandalorian, Star Wars Bounty Hunters, Forest Shuffle, River of Gold, Harmonies, etc..

Then it was time to figure out the hotel situation. One of the great things about Indianapolis is that so many of the hotels are connected via the skywalk. It was raining a little bit, but we didn’t get wet as we were able to stay inside the whole time. After a quick dinner break, time for more gaming events. The next event was the Hachette gathering. A nice chance to play their games in a fairly quiet room. One of the issues with big conventions like this is that sometimes it’s hard to find a place to actually play a game.  I’m pretty excited to have my own copies of Nekojima and Middle Ages to play with now.  We did give Kinfire Delve another whirl – and it was still liked by all… 

Mattel has a new anniversary version of Ghost Fightin’ Treasure Hunters coming out – which includes a new mode of play… You still have the regular cooperative version, but now there is also an all-vs-one mode which is neet.  Too bad this cool table isn’t able to fit in the box though.

Pegasus USA has a number of new games including three small Witness boxes, each with eight cases. Some of them are new and some of them are borrowed from the original. A nice change in the new version is that the cases are now linked in each box. So thematically each little box has eight related cases.  They also have Intarsia which is a new game from Michael Kiesling.  I”m really looking forward to trying this game out.  Not sure I’ve played another game where the theme is building a parquet floor.

AMIGO is showing 3 Chapters – a really interesting card game.  The 3 chapters are:. Drafting, playing a trick taking game, then scoring your own hand.  There are plenty of different things to consider when drafting and playing your cards.  The game is coming out at Essen in German, with the English version to follow soon thereafter.

I will say that The Op has the best meeting space in the show. They built an elevated booth which is surprisingly quiet and you get an amazing view.   They have slowly but surely been making inroads into the hobby market, and the buzz around Gnome Hollow was pretty strong.  I hope to get a copy of this in the next week or two to try it out.  It appears that Gnome Hollow will be sold in some mass market stores this fall (Target/B+N).  They also had Flip 7, which uses a Pairs deck with some special action cards   Finally, I did get a teaser of Tea witches for next year – a game from the Flamecraft team 

Shin megami tensei is coming to Kickstarter in September.  It uses an apparently popular Japanese video game ip. Lots of sculpted miniatures here, as well as cards that appear to give the game an RPG feel – you will often be faced with choices on the cards like video game dialog – and then you make your choice – end up flipping up a new card which tells you the ramifications of your decision.

A nice walk outside to a meeting with Flat River Games.  Their big push is for Babylon from Geek Attitude Games.  In this game, you are building a 3D Hanging Garden of Babylon. Some set collection, some tile drafting, lots of building   You draft tiles which help provide you with building blocks.  You then use those tiles as the flat surfaces of your garden.  There are icons on the tiles which then let you build other features of the garden (fountains, bridges, staircases, statues, etc.)  You then score for the height of the feature  At the end of the game, you score visually based on what you see looking down from above   A pretty neat spatial puzzle game.

Minos from board & dice is going to be their Spiel 2024 release. Quite a complex game here, looking at 2+ hours I’m pretty sure.  It’s a game with action programming using dice.  You choose dice from a pool and then put them on your chosen action track.  The catch here is that the dice get organized in value order, so you’re not quite sure where you’ll end up on that action tract.. Lower valued dice will get a stronger action from the row, but higher valued dice will get you track bumps that can pay off later in the game. This is from the same designer as Dice Hospital.

Brotherwise Games has a lot of things going on with lots of Brandon Sanderson stuff. Stormlight Rpg to launch soon.  Adulthood is an in house effort being designed by one of the owners.  It is meant to be more of a mass market title and will be in big box shops. Here, you spend Time and Energy to generate Money, Happiness, and positive Impact. Choose a Career, seek out Experiences, find a Partner, and try to spend time on Wellness while dealing with unexpected Life Events. Featuring the art of Tim Brierly, Adulthood highlights the joys and absurdity of everyday life.  Dungeon kart is Mario kart the board game with boss monster ip.   Finally, they are also getting ready for Mistborn the deck building game, a John D Clair design. A more combat focused, using the magic system of the story. Non collectible 

Games in short supply is another hallmark of the show. The Gang from Kosmos was limited to 50 copies per day. The Kinfire Delve games also appeared to be limited. If I heard it correctly, there are twelve copies a day of Tir Na Nog per day at Grand Gamers Guild… Slay the Spire at Matagot sold out in like twenty minutes with a line looping around the booth. These short supplies make for an especially frenzied time right around 10am when the gates open and there is a mad rush of people sprinting to the booths to get in line for one of these games with limited supply.

Finally, I’ll let you decide whether WEM was just happy to see me or if he’s just super excited to get his hands on the massive playmat for Pagan: Fate of Roanoke at the Capstone booth!

OK, time to get back to the real world… And hopefully I’ll have time to write a bit more about the show this weekend – but if not, Matt C will give a full report soon!

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor