Gamex Report: Saturday Night - 4th Post - Blue Moon City, Midgard, Notre Dame, Ticket to Ride

After the Escalation! tournament, I ran one for Blue Moon City. This is fast becoming one of my favorite light games. In fact, I think three copies are now owned in our regular group. Anyway, the tournament was a big success, with lots of players but I had to step in to fill out one of the tables with four players.

In BMC (which has nothing to do with Blue Moon except the artwork and dragon components), players complete the rebuilding of sections of the city by playing cards and placing tokens on spaces. There are bonuses to be awarded for using your cards to move one or more of three dragons to the space on which you are building and bonuses galore for building near other completed cities. The game rewards some level of cooperative play and although the artwork is wild and perhaps a trifle goofy, it is an utterly approachable game that plays very quickly and enjoyably in forty-five minutes. Further, it is one of those games that picks up speed as it goes since the building rewards are better as time goes on. A delightful gateway game and one that I look forward to playing even more this year. I came in second in our game but primarily due to an error on the part of one of the other players. That new player had some challenges playing but most don't.

After BMC, I ran a tournament for Midgard and this is another enjoyable game that I have been showing off at various SoCal stores and events for a while. Think of it as El Grande in forty-five minutes, with a touch of Fairy Tale thrown in plus a couple more fun mechanics that work nicely with the theme. It is an area control game where you want to get majorities in various areas. You start with a Fairy Tale-style draft, so you get to see a good portion of the cards people have and then you use them to deploy your vikings out from the ships and on to the three regions, each of which have three or four provinces. Like El Grande, you have your vikings in your ship and more in a general supply that you need to bring into play. There are three categories of card (Bronze, Silver and Gold) which vary in value but you need a selection of all three. In a fine nod to the theme, vikings that are killed give you victory points and so do those that are deployed into the half of the provinces that are 'doomed' each turn. And heck, the doomed guys are worth another two points! There are also heavens that offer additional bonuses and a set collection mechanic to encourage even-handed placement. Midgard snuck up on me. At first, I thought it was just a fair game but the more I play it, the more I think it is a solid game and good fun.

Later that evening, I had a chance to play Notre Dame again. This time, I played it with three (the previous play had been with five), with all of us on our second play. Bernie, Seth and I powered through the game in under forty-five minutes and had a blast. This time, I managed to pull a victory through a combination of getting the carriage around and help from Notre Dame. The second time around was even better and I'm so happy to say that at least two copies have entered our regular game group's collection. I know Notre Dame will get a lot of play. It was THE hot game of Gamex 2007 and it's a good thing Jay brought a lot of them to sell.

Unfortunately, he forgot to bring Vexation - the TransAmerica/TransEuropa expansion! He did bring a sample but forgot to bring those for sale. Ah, but it and many other great games like Caylus Magna Carta, Jenseits von Theben, and Zooloretto will be in stores very shortly.

After that, I threatened to make everyone play a game of Rocketville! I was going to drop it into the convention's auction but I really had to see if was truly that bad first. While I went through the rules, we played a game of Ticket to Ride with the full complement of cards from the Ticket to Ride: USA 1910 expansion. Our friends Seth and Chris had never played the game before but the lineup of players also included experiences Ticketers Bernie and Mark (the convention's co-owner). Despite my being distracted by reading through the rules of Rocketville (it sounds bad...), I managed to pull a sizable victory because everyone else was fighting for the Northeast and I was lazily building across from Los Angeles to Miami. I managed to get all the way across, with one minor side trip to Chicago, completing three tickets - and then drew two completed tickets.

I pulled out a huge victory, made all the more disturbing for the others since I casually took my turns in the midst of reading about this Richard Garfield monstrosity. No one was willing to play Rocketville at 2 AM. We're getting old, I guess. To bed, then.