My best friend and my godson came over recently, and we got to play Ark Nova. Emyry played as many attack animals as he could. Josh was trying to learn the game, and I was teaching and trying to make sure everyone had fun. I also, you know, got some good cards together, zipped forward on the appeal track, and ended up with my first ever positive Ark Nova score!
I got to see TONS of new games at GAMA. Barely got to play anything, but man, there are so many cool things coming out!
Holotype is basically Wingspan, but with Dinosaurs. Brought that in immediately. There's JAQ - Journey, Adventure, Quest. A quick play RPGish experience. BOOoop is a Halloween style Boop game, coming soon. A handful of fun party style games. And there were TONS of amazing RPG accessories. The amount of dice and dice related items coming into the store now is absolutely unparalleled.
But the big winner was Lorecana. This is going to be a new TCG from Ravensberger based on Disney characters. I got a little bit of hands on experience with the game. Also learned that the lead designer is Ryan Miller, one of our old regulars. I had no doubt that the game was going to be a huge hit, but with Ryan's name on it I doubled our orders.
One of my retailer friends (Lynn from The GameBoard in Sheboygan WI) brought me a copy of We're Doomed, and we got to play that a few times just for fun. We have yet to get a single seat on the ship, but that hasn't stopped us from enjoying the crap out of the game.
Every year I attend the Gathering of Friends. It's an invitation only board game convention started by Alan Moon, designer of Ticket to Ride and a million other games. I get to play games and talk to designers from all over the world, and I get to try out prototypes of new games coming out soon. My favorite by far was Path of Civilization. A civilization building game starting from the stone age and working up to modern times. Plays in about two hours. Just about all the gameplay is simultaneous, with a really clever tiebreaking system in case two people want to buy the same card at the same time. Expect this on our shelves around October / November time.
The other prototype game I fell in love with is a cooperative version of Texas Hold 'Em. This is a fairly simple idea that grabbed me like no other coop game ever has, and it's been living rent free in my head for the last week.
Now I'm at the GAMA trade show, where again I get to see all the awesome new games coming soon! Look for me to spend another ridiculous amount of money on dice, but also stay tuned for any other products I get super excited about!
