Saturday saw roughly seventy odd gamers turn up at the offices of Alley Cat Games to participate in the company’s first ever con. It also clashed with the start of Standard Showdown season at my FLGS. If I was going to miss taking my Simic deck out for a spin, playing games with Jonathan and trying prototypes was a bloody good alternative.

The day started with Jonathan picking me up at the end of the street I live in. Thanks to roadworks closing off Jonathan’s usual route on to the A1, we ended up on the A14 and a pleasant cross country route to Letchworth that avoided the A1 altogether.

Once we arrived in Letchworth we pulled over in the car park of the local Morrison’s to enter the post code for one of the recommended car parks. Which saw us deciding to sample their breakfast offerings before proceeding to the car park. It’s important to make sure you are fully caffeinated and have a full stomach when playing board games.

After registering at the door, Jonathan and I found a table and played our first game of the day, Hanamikoji. Hanamikoji is a recent addition to my collection, after buying it from a friend and member of Fenland Gamers. Neither of us had played the game before, so this was a learning game.

Hanamikoji is a really nice, quick, two player game. Love the two main mechanics of hand management and area control. Each round you have four actions to take that are used to manage your hand and influence which cards you play. However you only take each action once.

One action for example you have is taking four cards from your hand, splitting them into two piles of two, and your opponent chooses one pile and those cards go in front of the matching card in the middle on their side. The remaining two cards go in front of the matching cards on your side. I love this I split you chose action, and all the decisions involved in that alone.

If you like Bloodbowl Team Manager, which is basically an area control game also. But want something that has a similar core mechanic but plays quicker. Then this is worth a look.

I love the art. It’s very watercolour, pastel shades looking. It has that old traditional Japan look and feel to it.

Jonathan and I won a game a piece.

The next game we got to “play” was one high on Jonathan’s list of games to try, Chocolate Factory.

This was a prototype, the game will hit Kickstarter later in the year. And we only got to play three rounds. Well there were a few people keen on trying it. So it would have been rude to hog the game.

However I was pretty impressed with the mechanics and the way the game played. Jonathan pointed out that the graphic design of this prototype needed tweaking. However it already has been taking into account the tweaks suggested, and the changes were shown to us digitally.

I liked the drafting element at the start of each round that gave you an improvement to your factory, and a round only power and access to selling to a department store.

The moving tiles through the factory and your engine, is a nice touch and piece of theatrics. The ordering of improvements from the drafting is key. It determines activation order.

The competing to sell to the department stores, with points being awarded on whose sold the most to each store at the end of the game, gives a nice competitive touch to the game.

There looks to be a couple of paths to victory, either going for the department stores for points, or completing your private corner shop ones. You could go for a mix of the two.

We thought having a role card with a unique power, similar to the ones used in Marco Polo would be a cool improvement to the game.

Overall this looks like it’s going to be a great, fun, game.

At the end of the third round we went to end game scoring. I came second aka first loser, while Jonathan propped us all up at the bottom.

Ruthless had been a pirate themed game faintly on Jonathan’s radar. So I twisted his arm to try it out. We were there, there was a copy in the game library. It made sense to me.

The copy we played, was unplayed! Jonathan and I had to punch cardboard! After setting up, which we thought the rulebook could be clearer on (it was a little confusing), one of the Alley Cat staff/helpers stepped in to talk us through the game.

As soon as it clicked the game was a deckbuilder, I laughed. Jonathan hates deckbuilders.

As far as deckbuilders go, it’s ok.

The fixed number of rounds was an interesting idea. As was using a semi poker hand mechanic with recruited pirates in front of you to decide points at the end of each. The end of game bonus scoring was ok.

I’m just not sure being ok in this day and age is good enough. The bar for deckbuilders for me is Star Realms/Hero Realms. Price, replay ability, expansions, game play. It ticks all the boxes. Then on the big box deckbuilders, I have Marvel Legendary and Eminent Domain. Which are both really good. Ruthless kind of sits in the middle ground. Unless you really really want to play a pirate themed deckbuilder, I can’t see why you’d get it.

The records will show I won our game.

Jonathan and I both enjoy roll and writes. We have one or two in our collections. So I thought a chance to try Welcome To DinoWorld couldn’t be passed up.

I’m not sure why but the game left me feeling indifferent. Even now while writing this post I still can’t really put my finger on why.

Would tweaking how the dice are used, and who can use which dice help? Maybe.

There was a massive misplay we found out after the game, which potentially might have made a difference.

The actual sheets used in the game are quite pretty. Which at the moment is about the nicest thing I can say about the game.

The roll and write market is getting crowded. Apart from theme I’m not sure this stands out. But is more man in the crowd.

I was first loser, but finished above Jonathan.

We followed up by playing Wingspan with Scott. Unusual for me I went with a new tactic of birds on board, instead of egg spamming. It didn’t quite workout enough to get me the win. But in out tightest scoring game to date, I lost by four points. And Jonathan was beaten into first loser position by a single point. So your deduction skills will tell you Scott won.

We finished off our days gaming with a game of Nusfjord. I really was rusty on this. I had played it once nearly a year ago. So after a brief refresher, we settled into building our fishing communities and fishing fleets.

It looked at the end of the game that Jonathan and I were going to have to share the honours of first place. But under further review I had missed three points from shares that I owned. Which meant I was the winner.

Although we left at 6pm there was another five hours of gaming left for those that had the stamina, and more importantly (most likely) didn’t have a long distance to travel. And to be fair our journey time was just under a couple of hours. So we could have stayed longer I suppose. But I think about eight hours of gaming for us was about right.

Our journey home was uneventful, full of good conversation, and we delivered Scott home safely.

Naturally this post would not be complete without a photo of me in action, and thanks to Jonathan I’m able to avoid disappointing you.

Some thoughts

Despite having a great time. The day did confirm to me that these sort of things (such as Handycon and Airecon) which focus on playing games may not be for me. They reenforced my opinion that you need to be going with a bunch of friends. I didn’t see much mingling going on, it seemed more people playing with people they knew. Which means if that is the case, why don’t you just stay at home and play games with your friends? Or if you are intent on going away for a weekend from your usual haunts, going to a hotel or hostel to play?

Having said that for Jonathan and me this is the ideal one to attend. It’s the gaming equivalent of a day out in London. Next time with a bit more planning maybe we can take more of our friends along with us, and have a Fenland Gamers day out.

Alley Cat Games. Now I will give a caveat for this next statement in that I haven’t played every one of their games, so is based on the ones I have played so far. Which is most of them. I think they should drop the smaller games and concentrate on the big games. In the current market place that we have, games that are good at best just don’t cut it. Publishers need to be putting out great games to stand a chance of standing out from the crowd, get the sales, and be a success. Dice Hospital and my experience of Chocolate Factory meet that criteria. Sadly the smaller games fall into the former, and don’t cut it. The Alley Cat Games crew are a great crew that I want to see succeed and grow. And their strength seems to be the bigger box games. For me those smaller games are not their forte.

But it’s easy for me to say. I’m just an armchair critic. It’s not my money on the line here. And what do I know?

I want to end this rather long post with a big thanks to Alley Cat Games for organising this mini con. For inviting us into their home and being such gracious hosts.

I’d also like to say a big thanks to Jonathan for doing the taxi duties. And being a great gaming buddy throughout the day.