Midcon Gaming
Nov. 5th, 2018 01:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
This past weekend was Midcon in Derby, where I played two new games.
Steampunk Rally is a race game where you draft cards to build your racing machine and collect dice in order to power it. You then progress as far as you can along the track without accumulating too much damage, which forces you to remove parts from your machine. It's very silly and lots of fun, but also quite complicated. There is also a rule that says if you explode (ie lose every part of your machine) you regenerate a space behind the person in last place. An amusing turn of events meant that Dave and I were both very far behind and exploded on the last turn, which meant we actually teleported over the finish line, as everyone else had crossed it that turn. We were still last, but at least we finished the race! I wouldn't mind playing this again, in order to get more to grips with the mechanics and improve my machine building and maintenance.
Ora & Labora is a worker placement and resource gathering game which involves building a settlement and producing commodities and artifacts in order to get points. There was a lot of understand and remember to begin with and I had a familiar experience of playing a complex game for the first time. For the first half, I played instinctively and struggled to understand what was going on. About halfway through, it started clicking together in my head and I made a plan of what else I wanted to achieve by the end, and then managed to implement my plan fully. So, I was pretty satisfied with my gameplay and I had enjoyed the experience more and more as the game went on. When I discovered I had also won, I was extremely surprised, as I had thought my ambitions for my settlement were quite modest compared to what my opponents had been doing. But hey! Another game that would benefit from more familiarity, so I would welcome the opportunity to give it another go.
Steampunk Rally is a race game where you draft cards to build your racing machine and collect dice in order to power it. You then progress as far as you can along the track without accumulating too much damage, which forces you to remove parts from your machine. It's very silly and lots of fun, but also quite complicated. There is also a rule that says if you explode (ie lose every part of your machine) you regenerate a space behind the person in last place. An amusing turn of events meant that Dave and I were both very far behind and exploded on the last turn, which meant we actually teleported over the finish line, as everyone else had crossed it that turn. We were still last, but at least we finished the race! I wouldn't mind playing this again, in order to get more to grips with the mechanics and improve my machine building and maintenance.
Ora & Labora is a worker placement and resource gathering game which involves building a settlement and producing commodities and artifacts in order to get points. There was a lot of understand and remember to begin with and I had a familiar experience of playing a complex game for the first time. For the first half, I played instinctively and struggled to understand what was going on. About halfway through, it started clicking together in my head and I made a plan of what else I wanted to achieve by the end, and then managed to implement my plan fully. So, I was pretty satisfied with my gameplay and I had enjoyed the experience more and more as the game went on. When I discovered I had also won, I was extremely surprised, as I had thought my ambitions for my settlement were quite modest compared to what my opponents had been doing. But hey! Another game that would benefit from more familiarity, so I would welcome the opportunity to give it another go.