So Fantasy of Flight’s Warhammer game seemed quite interesting. Taking place in the Warhammer fantasy setting rather than the Warhammer 40K Sci-fi setting, the game is played with four players and each player being one of the gods of chaos. Each of the gods is unique and has their own abilities and unique units.

This game has four ways of ending, each acting as their own clock for the game. At the longest, the game goes for seven rounds though.

The first way the game ends is if one of the chaos gods’ ‘Threat dials’ reaching the ‘You win’ phase which is viewed through the viewport on the dial. The dial is advanced as your character reaches different levels of dominance and spreading evil and ruin through the land.

The second way to end the game is by utilizing the fairly standard victory point track. Fifty points is the magic number, but it goes as high as 56 in case of a risk of ties between players.

Third, is to have placed five Ruination cards on five different regions of the game. If this happens, it shows that the majority of the land is in ruins and will soon fall. The Ruination cards are placed when a zone has 12 corruption counters on it. These counters are done by players doing evil things to the land.

The fourth is the way that the players lose the game, up to this point, any three of the previous is a victory for the players. This one is how all players lose. At the beginning of the game you deal seven cards off the ‘Old world’ deck. There are fifty to pick from, meaning it is highly unlikely you’ll ever have the same game again. Through the game, you pull the top card off your stack of seven and place it, progressing the preceding one, and bumping off the eldest active one as needed. Once the seventh card has been pulled and there are no more to pull, at the end of that round, the game ends and the player’s lose.

The demo was largely our teacher telling us how the game went. It has a bit of a high learning curve for my liking, at several points we had to ask him to explain things over or clarify what he meant, but once we understood it went fairly easily. I don’t feel I have a full grasp of the game after the demo, but I feel comfortable enough that if I took it home, I could lead the group around the kitchen table as we embarked on playing the game for real.

I think my biggest issue was with some of the parts I found counter-intuitive. You have three types of units, Cultists are your weakest with no attack ability, only good for spreading your domain and influence. So if you put your strongest creature on a territory with strength two, but your creature’s strength is three, you will still fail to influence the region since this is judged based purely on how many units and/or influence on cards you played into that area.

The game demo really went by too quickly, the game is supposed to go for 60-90 minutes for all four players, and our demo was only a single round of play. I would plan for at least 2 hours if it is your first time playing it though. I think a demo of a second round would have been very beneficial and could have really cemented how I felt about the game.

The minis were disappointing, cheap plastic that were already bent in some cases. The board was big and it didn’t lay flat for us, but was close enough that it didn’t prove to be an issue. Fantasy Flight used their standard half cards for actions and such, and they seemed sturdy enough though they were using the card protectors that they’ve begun selling (I recommend them if your game sees a lot of use, like in stores etc.)

Overall I left the game with a positive feeling, but not overwhelmingly so. I have never been a Warhammer fan, so the IP didn’t hold much sway with me, and the game itself seemed to be innovative in some ways, but it also felt a bit clumsy at some points. Nothing that players can’t overcome, but just not as smooth as I dream of games playing. That being said, there is definitely strategy and tactics involved in the game, and it will provide some very interesting new elements for a game with you and your buddies.

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Pandemic, the game, is a cooperative game for up to four players where each player has a different role that gives them unique skills to fight the diseases as they spread. The game moves along at a brisk pace and is fairly simplistic in its flow with a clear and straight forward process. If you leave a disease untreated it will quickly begin to grow and expand, and get out of control.

It utilizes an excellent mechanic to further the epidemic feel, by forcing you to recycle cards that have already been played, thus forcing the game to continue to focus on the areas where disease is either visible or has been active before.

Secondly the game is easily customized for level of difficulty by deciding how many ‘Epidemic’ cards you’re adding to the game action deck. Four is a moderate difficulty. Five or six are much harder. And with Pandemic: On the Brink there is a sevent epidemic which makes the game near impossible to win, according to our demo leader.

This demo at GenCon was for the expansion though. The expansion is largely just an enhancement with added roles, action cards, the ability for a fifth player to join the game, and most interestingly one of the roles is that of ‘Bioterrorist’ which is the anti-player playing to spread disease and win on his own rather than as part of the cooperative. This is part of the additional challenges included in the expansion. Along with the ‘Legendary’ difficulty of adding the seventh epidemic to the deck, and the mutation challenge that I touch on below.

Mutation did not come up in our demo so I can’t explain a great deal more other than note its existence and that it further complicates the game by making it harder to eradicate and cure all forms of disease.

Overall the game flows much the same as the original. We managed to play a full game with three players in just over the amount of time it took me to play two rounds of Middle-Earth Quest for the demo I played of it.

The bottomline is that if you enjoyed the original Pandemic, then you’ll love the Expansion as it enhances and improves the original game. However the expansion is not going to make people love it if they didn’t like the original I don’t think. For me, it is definitely an item to add to my game shelf though when it hits shelves in September.

As mentioned, Middle-Earth Quest was one of the games I was particularly excited about seeing here at GenCon. In terms of IPs (intellectual properties) there isn’t much that is more rich and vibrant than JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. So many games have attempted to delve into it and yet fall short or veer wildly off course. I am happy to say I don’t think that this game falls into either of those categories.

I sat down slightly late for the demo. A father and son (about 12 years old) were already underway with our teacher, Rick. He quickly brought me up to speed, and I easily fell into the rhythm.

Middle-Earth Quest is your semi-standard cooperative game, the heroes are teamed up against the powerful and omniscient Sauron. However our game is not just in directly fighting Sauron, we also push ourselves to victory by beating various objectives, each character has their own stack of them from which to draw from. This means that the games can end up wildly different each time as you play different characters and the different missions intertwine.

The game does not seek to recreate the story from the movies and the books, but rather weave another one. Each character the players play is a second or perhaps even third tier character. From dwarves to men of Rohan to elves as well.

You have your training cards which are multipurpose for attacking, defending, and providing a basic economy to manage your character’s ability for movement, and the stack of them not in your hand also are used as tracking your character’s life. As you use cards for movement or in combat they are exhausted, and if you stop to rest and regain these cards thus raising your health, you are also allowing Sauron to get ahead by not being active and fighting against him, and so your rest automatically advances Sauron to be closer to victory.

I think my main negative revolves around navigation. The map is quite large and if you aren’t familiar with the mythos or the map of Middle-Earth then you can quickly get lost in the map. Also the process of moving between properties relies on the proper type of terrain or paying the full cost to move. So if you have a route with a tree and a 3 overlayed in the middle of it, you can either play one training card with a tree icon, or pay any three training cards to thus get yourself moved. It is fairly simple, but seems sort of clumsy in practice I think. Also, it doesn’t do a great deal to limit travel, you draw 5 or 6 cards per turn for most characters and so it is more than enough fodder to complete objectives.

Combat was fairly straight forward with me versus Rick, we each pick a training combat card and keep it hidden, then reveal simultaneously. You can either play defensive or be offensive, etc. Again it felt clumsy and drawn out, the game is a long game and the combats can take a little longer than I liked. However it is obvious that down the line combat becomes quite important as you have to fight Saurons minions, from Nazgul all the way to Saruman and the crow flocks.

The map is quite big, requiring a big flat play area. The minis in the game are a high quality plastic that need to be painted. I wish they came pre-painted but the minis are quite detailed and I quickly realized that they could not give them adequate painting in the manufacturing process – so kudos to them for not even trying.

Unfortunately my demo only lasted for two rounds, but I felt fairly well versed in the game (thought not fully, there were a few parts which we did not get to in the demo.) I also left the table quite happy with the game experience overall. Playing with a dad and his son was an excellent look at how different ages handle the game.

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From the brief walk through the Exhibitor’s hall, I’ve got to say I’m really excited. And I can’t wait to share more with you! This looks like it is going to be a record setting attendance for GenCon, if the crowds on Wednesday night are any indication. The halls are already getting uncomfortably packed and I’m sure more people will be streaming into Indianapolis on into the weekend with their destination being this show.

A few of the highlights I can’t wait to sit down and play:

• Pandemic: On the Brink (Z-Man Games) – It looks like a great expansion for a really fun game. I can’t wait to get a chance to play it.
• Middle-Earth Quest (Fantasy Flight Games) – The intellectual property is so rich but has proven to be a mixed bag when it comes to board games and interpretations of it. I have high hopes for this one to be a home-run all the way to Mordor.
• Warhammer: Chaos in the Old World (Fantasy Flight Games) – A very exciting board game about playing a god seeking world domination against a select few other deities. It looks fairly standard in its underlying structure but from what I’ve seen the top layer looks quite tasty and fun to play!
• Warhammer: Invasion LCG (Fantasy Flight Games) – This just looks like a good time. A card game in a box, and some innovative rules to change it up from the countless other card games out there.
• Dominion: Seaside (Rio Grande Games) – An expansion to Dominion, need I say more?

I’m sure I’m going to find countless other treasures and gems hidden in the quagmire of the convention, and when I do I’ll be sure to tell you all about them!