Orccon 2009 Live Blog: Q&A, Hurry'Cup and Hogwarts House Cup Challenge

I'm happy to say it is sunny and gorgeous here today. I promised Michael the 'sun-kissed hills' described in his game California and today, despite forecasts of storms, we get to make good on that. Not that we got out of the hotel at all…

The day started with some good demos. Supernova was enjoyed by some folks, even though the game didn't end up working particularly for me. Then the Roll Through The Ages madness! I demonstrated the game three times in a row because there were so many people lined up to play it. The excitement over the game was palpable – nearly every person said they wanted to buy it (notably – one very slow game was played where all four players kept the game going slowly by focusing solely on infrastructure – had two naysayers). I also managed to get in a Ticket to Ride Dice Game expansion demo for five that left two very excited players that thought the Dice expansion improved the game. Although I cannot agree with that assessment, I do like the Dice expansion quite a bit – particularly with boards we play less frequently (like Switzerland and Europe).

The Michael Schacht Q&A session was enjoyable. We had plenty of good questions and once I give the recording a polish, it will be up. I'm also doing a follow-up with Michael as well but as we finished up, we encountered the squad from MyNerdGirl.com. Apparently this is a social networking-style site and I'm hoping to post our brief conversation with their two representatives along with a second podcast with some additional questions I had for Michael that didn't get into the Q&A – hopefully including a preview of Zooloretto Exotic, Valdora and The Golden City.

The most amazing part of the day – the raucous response to Antoine Bauza's Hurry'Cup. We had a full complement of six for this party-style race game and a great time was had by all. This is a race game from Asmodee that has a personal speed element (i.e., you grab pawns to find out how quickly you will move). One player actually left the table mid-game to run to the dealer room to buy it because he'd noticed that there were not a lot of them available. I think I got a few action shots from the insane diving for the good pawn each. We had a nice crowd, too, and lots of interest for another demo tomorrow.

Right now, I'm running a demo of Andrew Parks' Hogwarts House Cup Challenge for a bunch of Harry Potter-mad folks. There are quite a few people here and I think a second game will be starting just after this one. This was meant to be my last demo of the day but if the players are there, I guess I'm teaching it again. The game is a family adventure game where you wander the grounds of Hogwarts in search of points for the Gryffindor house. Your encounters add to the glory of Gryffindor but also that of your own character – so although the House wins, there is an individual winner, too.