The Opinionated Gamers

At one point today, this was my chair for a game. Ok, in several games. It used to be like this frequently, but it hasn’t been in many years. It’s not that I was relegated to the corner or wasn’t participating, rather I had so much nervous energy that I couldn’t sit down. I needed room to pace and stretch my legs. A lunge or two and some squats. But we’ll get back to it.

First, uh, here’s an OpinionatedEaters break. This was one of the tables for breakfast: three kinds of casseroles, and three flavors of cinnamon rolls. Delicious. There will be more tomorrow, and, well, to be frank, I’m going to have some more when I finish drafting this.

I started the day playing a game of Kansas Tornadoes. There were two things specific to this con about this: the map was designed for the con and is one of the take home maps, but also we’re playing on the XL set that the crew here has.

At the start of each round, a few tornadoes start up on the board and then twist through 4 additional hexes, in a generally NE direction. The black tokens mark the damage. To build where there is damage you must pay to clear it. To use track with damage, you must pay to clear it. You cannot deliver from or through a city with damage. This damage can only be removed by delivering a cube of the corresponding color to that city (and you can keep that token for 2 points at the end of the game.) There is also a special action that allows some ability to forecast a tornado and clear debris.

I’ll never forget the first time I learned of Age of Steam. I had moved back to the Cincinnati area after discovering modern board games elsewhere, and at a public game night, Mike brought two games: Age of Steam and Reef Encounter.

It was the first time I had met up with this group, and I ended up playing Reef Encounter , but it was the look of Mike’s AoS box that sticks with me. It was so worn. So loved. The number of times he must have taken that box off the shelf to play it or to take it somewhere else to play it. Wow, I thought. That game must be incredible –though I wouldn’t play it for another 10 years.

I didn’t know anything about it that night, and I wouldn’t understand what it meant to play the system until I enjoyed a game of Steam with Mike a few years later and watched him lay his track in knots.

Age of Steam Con was an easy decision for me this year after reading Chris’ recap last year, but it was even easier when I saw a few things on the con website: the map drawer; “homemade cinnamon rolls” are listed on the breakfast agenda each day; and, of course, I love themed game nights, but even more so themed game days and themed game cons.

I don’t imagine anyone wanted to read an Age-of-Steam-Con-Anticipation post, but I’ll let you in on a secret: I’m writing this weeks before the con: I. Can. Not. Wait.