FallCon - A Cornucopia of Gaming

Published in 2008, Pandemic is a type of game where players cooperate with each other to travel around the world and attempt to prevent a world-wide pandemic outbreak!

Pandemic:

• Designed by: Matt Leacock
• Published by: Z-Man Games
• Number of players: 2-4
• Playing time: 45 minutes
• Player ages: 10+

Pandemic is a quick game and allows players to set various levels of difficulties by adding or removing special "epidemic" cards.


At the CDC, you have been informed that there are several outbreaks of four different and deadly diseases. As you watch the screen, you see major cities around the world being infected.

It is your mission to work with your fellow specialists at the CDC to control and find cures for these diseases. Each player will be assigned one of five roles: Medic, Scientist, Researcher, Dispatcher and Operations Expert. Each of these specialized roles provide the player with certain abilities which will be used during the game to fight the outbreaks.

At the beginning of the game, nine random city cards will be drawn.

• Place 3 infection makers on the first three cities
• Place 2 infection markers on the second three cities
• Place 1 infection marker on the last of the three cities

Now the game begins...


Game play of Pandemic is fast as each player performs three steps. First, each player will take up to four actions, then draw two player cards and finally draw a card to indicate a new infected city. A player may use up to four actions among the following choices:

• Move from one city to another
• Build a research station
• Discover a cure
• Treat a disease
• Share knowledge

During the player's actions phase, other members of the team will give suggestions on where to travel and how to best treat diseases. The tension in this game arises when a player draws an "epidemic" card which causes all the cities that were previously drawn to be reshuffled and put on the draw pile.

This means that any city that now was previously infected will be infected again! If there are more than 3 infection cubes in a city, then all adjacent cities will now be infected!


Pandemic is a cooperative board game which means that either all players win or all players lose. If you like games where you have to work with other players to solve problems, then Pandemic is a game that you will enjoy.

The level of interaction in this game is quite high and the game play is easily explained to younger players.

Another bonus of this game, due to its short playing time, is that players will often ask to play another game soon after!

Also, it is fun to try to beat the game on progressively harder levels by increasing the number of "epidemic" cards in play.

Happy gaming!
Thushyanthan

Civilization: The Expansion Project Playtest

Our moderators for our Advanced Civilization Project, Terry Tout and Gabriel Martin, are thinking about shaking things up this year by introducing a variant of Civ to FallCon. This variant comes with a huge map and an expanded technology tree that can accommodate up to 18 players. Gabriel and Terry would both like to trial run the variant and they are hosting a game session from 10am to 6pm on Saturday August 15 at the Sentry Box. Head over to the Calgary Boardgames Meetup Group to RSVP. Let them (and us) know what you think of the variant!

Lodging for Out-of-Town Attendees

We have a ton of people driving in from Edmonton, Medicine Hat & Regina. Heck! We even have someone coming in from Burnaby BC! For those of you planning on coming from out of town, we've come up with the list of closest hotels to the con. In years past, we haven't had enough demand to block book rooms at a hotel. If you'd like us to look into that possibility for next year, please let us know in this forum thread.

Now for those of you looking for more affordable accomodations (as close to free as possible), we figured we could let the local community step up and offer up lodging options. Those of you seeking quarters or those of you offering quarters can state your offers and conditions in this forum thread. My own "suite" is already reserved but should it come available, I'll be sure to post it to the forum.

Planned Open Gaming Sessions

Every year we struggle with what games to add (and remove) from the schedule. It's very difficult to make everyone perfectly happy but our hope is that our expanded open gaming space will allow attendees to play whatever they want even if their favorite game gets the axe (sorry Caylus). That being said we'd like to facilitate some "planned" open gaming sessions via our forums. If you have an interest in playing a specific game, add a post to this thread indicating which game you'd like to play with some proposed times. Interested parties can then reply to your post if they are interested. Our plan is to also have a few sign-up boards at FallCon so that you can plan sessions on the fly as well.

If you have any other ideas, comments, questions that you'd like us to answer publicly on the blog don't hesitate to post comments or contact us. Thanks!

Jasen

Amun Re was published in 2003 and was designed by the prolific game designer, Reiner Knizia. The heart of this game is a unique auction mechanism that puts players in an exciting state of tension!

Amun Re:

• Designed by: Reiner Knizia
• Published by: Rio Grande Games
• Number of players: 3-5
• Playing time: 90 minutes
• Player ages: 12+

The components for the Rio Grande Games version of Amun Re are of high quality. They are functional and serve their purpose.


Each player in Amun Re is a pharoah attempting to build the most pyramids. In order to achieve this, players must acquire provinces and farms, buy building stones and finally build pyramids.

The game is comprised of 6 turns of 5 phases.

The first 3 turns are for the Old Kingdom and the next 3 turns are for the New Kingdom.

At the beginning of each turn is an auction where players acquire provinces. On the second auction, players make a sacrifice to Amun Re for gifts.

Players score points depending on how bountiful provinces are. Use your actions, gold and sacrifices cleverly to establish your presence and win!

Now the game begins...


The game is divided into 6 turns of 5 phases each. The phases are a sequential order of game play. First, provinces are selected for auction. This is an open auction where players know the values and bids of other players.

Auctions are done using the following scale for bidding values: 1-3-6-10-15-etc. Once a province has been won, players then proceed, in the following order, to:

• buy power cards
• buy farmers
• buy building stones

Cost for items follow the same value scale as for the auction. For example, to buy two power cards, a player spends 1 for the first power card and 3 for the second power card for a total of 4.

Next, players make a sacrifice to Amun Re for gifts. Instead of making a sacrifice, players can choose to steal from the temple. The player who has made the largest sacrifice is given a choice of 3 gifts from Amun Re. The second highest sacrifice is given 2 gifts and the third highest sacrifice is given 1 gift.

Gifts are chosen from farmers, power cards and building stones. Finally, players then receive income from their farmers or from their traders. After three turns/three provinces, there is a scoring phase after which all the farmers on the board are removed. Only the pyramids and building stones are left. Now it is time for the New Kingdom!

The New Kingdom turns are similar to the first three turns above. The twist being that some provinces are more valuable than others due to the existence of pyramids and building stones.


Amun Re is a fine example of a board game that uses auction mechanisms to drive game play.

Play is tense, especially during the New Kingdom era where auctions are more heated! As well, there are Power Cards which give players exciting bonuses during the game.

The careful use and play of the Power Cards can determine initial and final strategies.

The game at a glance is pretty simple but repeated plays will reveal nuances. Experienced players will know the relative values of provinces and whether or not to bid on a particular province.

Happy gaming!
Thushyanthan

Howdy folks!

This is the second installment of our first interview series with local gamers, designers and game shop owners. The first series is with members of the

Game Artisans of Canada, a homegrown Alberta group of boardgame designers. They are officially joining us this year at FallCon to showcase a lineup of their best prototypes. All of these games are fairly late in development, there are no raw designs, and some of these games have already been submitted to publishers! Now you have an opportunity to play the game and offer your comments on the game play…before it even goes public!

 

To drum up a little interest in the games and designers, we decided to give them an opportunity to address our FallCon readers through this interview series. There is a chance at the end of these interviews to ask the designers questions of your own; I encourage all of you to take advantage. The designers will be checking in on these interviews and will be responding to your questions and comments. You can also head over to our forums and chat it up there.

This Interview is with Gavan Brown. By day Gavan is a not so mild mannered Graphic Designer and Software Developer. But by night, Gavan is an obsessive, insomniac Game Designer.

 

What are your current favorite three games and why?

1) Metropolys - WAY underrated game. Get it. NOW. I've never felt a greater level of intensity in a game with such simple mechanics.

2) Stone Age - The game that taught me that dice DON'T suck. Stone Age is one of the most innovative dice games I've ever played. It's also one of the most strategic.

3) Plants VS Zombies (for PC) - Games are Games. I'm not a slave to any medium in which the art of game design is offered. Plants VS Zombies is a revolutionary rendition of the tower defense genre, and will have you belly laughing frequently.

How long have you been playing games? Whats your earliest recollection of playing a game?

Games? my whole life. Euro/Modern boardgames? About 6 years. I grew up a hardcore videogamer. Like all children, I remember playing checkers and backgammon against my dad at a very young age. But the first awe-inspiring experience I had with a game was the first time I played Wolfenstein 3D. My keyboard shorted out from the litres of drool leaving my mouth, as I stared with amazement at a game that took you into the eyes of the player. And to top it off, you got to kill Nazi's with a giant machine gun. I remember actually placing my forehead on the 14" CRT monitor, so that the pixilated screen filled up my entire field of vision. No, I did not have a lot of friends, but my mom STILL says that I'm cool.

Have we heard about any of your games yet? What is the status of them?

Probably not, unless I've managed to con you into trying one of my prototypes. My first published game is called JAB:Realtime boxing, and is currently being rigorously playtested (thanks to the Game Artisans), so it can be ready for publication this Christmas. I will be holding a tournament for the game at Fallcon! For more information visit: http://www.playjab.com

How long have you been designing or tinkering with designing a boardgame?

That's an easy one. Just over 3 years ago, during World Cup 2004, also my honeymoon, I spent a large portion of time by the pool jotting ideas down about a soccer boardgame called Slide Tackle. And yes, we ARE still married.

What was the first boardgame you designed? What ever happened to the design?

Slide Tackle was my first serious design, which I dedicated 2 years to. It was in development until about February this year, when I decided that I was going to have to either a) kill myself or b) put the game away until I had some divine inspiration. All of the game's seven completely different renditions were playable. They were all missing that little something... fun. I will pick the game up again eventually and take another crack at it, because as they say, "Germany enjoys 2 things in this world: Soccer and Boardgames". Or was it "Soccer OR Boardgames"?... hmm, I may have to rethink this.

Where do you start the design process?

I think about any system, that inspires competition among humans.

What’s the creative spark that gets you excited about one of your designs?

I've always had this need to create things that people enjoy. Which is probably why I started a Multiplayer Videogame Center in 2002 called SwitchBox. My favorite thing in the world (other than my family), and what drives me to continue this sleep deprived obsession called game design, is having someone TRULY enjoy themselves while playing one of my games. That feeling came was a long time coming for me, when JAB came together.

What are your favorite game mechanics?

Anything I've never experienced prior. Which I guess could be categorized as: any mechanic that is so different, requires the BoardGameGeek administrators to add an entry to their list of mechanics. In other words, not any particular mechanic, but rather an instance of a mechanic that drives boardgame innovation forward.

What themes (if any) are your favorites?

I generally judge a game's theme not by how interesting I find the subject to be, but how well it integrates with the game's mechanics. Generally, when something this rare happens the players truly feel immersed in the game. When coupled with an innovative mechanic, the results are even more incredible. A good example of this in my opinion is Caylus, which really explored worker placement mechanics in a way no other game had before, but also integrated that mechanic perfectly with the theme. When playing Caylus I really feel like I am a part of that little medieval road.

Can you let us in on any designs you are currently working on?

JAB:Realtime Boxing - JAB is an insane real-time strategy boxing card game that melds the exciting action of a fighting video game with the physical interaction and strategy of a card game. JAB gives you direct control over your boxer's fists, providing an experience as close to real boxing as possible, without actually getting punched in the face.

Overboard - Historical economic game set in the north sea, where players try to catch fish before the impending storm rolls in. The game will feature a player driven economy, and a new mechanic that I've developed.

Firefight! - A realtime WWII game, inspired by my first Love: the RTS Videogame genre. Features unit "building", and a paper-rock-scissors damage countering system, multiple fronts and .... Oh ya... and it's real-time!

 

 

Thanks for the interview Gavin, good luck with your new designs and see you soon at FallCon!!

Peace