Last weekend was Madicon the college gaming con (run by SFFG, my college gaming club) I’ve been going to since 1997.  I’ve missed two (thanks to grad school in Texas) since then, so you could say I’ve been a few times.

This year, I passed on playing in any mini tournaments so I’d have more time and flexibility.  I like mini gaming, but even a three-round tournament pretty much eats your entire day.  This was the smart move, since it meant I got to get in a lot of tabletop and board gaming.

Friday

I’ve had a WFRP 2E bug that’s been picking up steam for a bit, and Madicon was a great opportunity to act on it.  I’ve got a larger post to make about what worked and didn’t work with the game (probably not here), but everyone seemed to have a good time and that’s what counts.  I like the system and I’m obviously invested in the setting.  I’ve been steadily picking up the books over the past few months: I still have a few holes in the collection, but it’s mostly complete.

Saturday

I got in a game of Thunderstone (Dragonspire to be precise), which I’d been eyeballing for quite some time.  Although we had some speed issues, I liked the game enough to order the newest core set (Advance: Towers of Ruin).

Then I got pulled into trying the Resident Evil deckbuilding game, which impressed me less.  Different modes of play sound interesting, but I couldn’t get past the abominable graphic design of the thing.  Evocative design is good: design that makes your components that hard to read is terrible.

We got in a few games of Elder Sign, which was fun but so very, very, very hard.  We were crushed thoroughly both times.  I like the game, but I’d advise people to avoid the mobile game which I find to be too unbelievably difficult.

Ended the day with our third annual Madicon Dark Heresy game.  Not much to say about it besides that this image pretty much sums up our party:

Sunday

Didn’t see anything besides a test run of the new Marvel Heroic Roleplaying game, which I liked a lot.  I think the system did a good job of emulating the source and there are a lot of clever little things built into it.  I hope I see some more of it.