A 20 mile journey of considerable proportions

As the duly-appointed (by way of headbutt roshambo) boardgaming specialist of the HGP, I spent the 2.5 day weekend in Doraville, GA (a small town-district within the Atlanta metropolitan area) for the 14th installment of Ward Batty’s Atlanta Game Fest. For those not familiar, AGF is an opportunity for board and card gamers from around the southeastern region of the US to gather and “fill their belly” with gaming goodness. These days, local gatherings can dry up or find difficulty in arranging meetings to play some of the longer-duration games, or just find enough people to agree on a particular game, so AGF serves a worthy purpose as a “tribal festival” of sorts, letting BG enthusiasts find community where they would usually find it in short supply.

The convention hotel

This year moved the location of the Fest from the Doubletree Hotel in the North Druid Hills district of Atlanta to the Holiday Inn in Doraville (about 10 miles northward, at the intersection of two interstates). In all honesty, boardgamers ask for little except a semi-private room with plenty of tables that is well air-conditioned and has chairs that don’t numb your butt. In this regard, I was completely satisfied. While there was a small amount of spillover into less well-furnished rooms, the core of the gathering stayed in one place and chattered away as sounds of shuffling, dice-rolling and wooden cube jiggling filled the room. The staff seemed to be very accommodating to our needs, and I hope they see fit to let us return next year (although with the number of attendees, we may have to seek a slightly larger space, which is good problem to have!)

What to do between games

I experienced occasional bouts of burnout during the weekend, no doubt brought on by the occasional rules-reading that gave me a brain swelling (I’m talking about Khronos, specifically), and the need to hydrate after consuming the caffeine necessary to extend one’s awareness into the wee hours. When you’re not deep into a game, it’s fun to walk around and see what others play, and also take a moment to re-connect to the outside world (i.e. the internet) and check on things. It’s also fun to eavesdrop on the convention down the hall – the one that has people stomping and jumping about, and some guy shouting words of encouragment and psychobabble, and culminates in an awkward, stumbling clapping-along to 70′s folk rock. I think it had something to do with private boarding schools.

Grabbing food at this kind of convention seems to be exactly that – grab n’ go, so as to minimize the amount of time you’re away from the tables, either in a game or looking for one. Dinner seems to be the one meal that most set aside as the time for not being a gamer; I had a plethora of sashimi at a Korean-run sushi restaurant on Saturday that ended up giving me more in appetizers (and free desk calendars?) than in the meal, which is definitely an impressive gesture. A tad pricey, but considering the Flea Market took place earlier that day (see below), I was feeling frisky.

“Ask Me About Late Night Cosmic Encounter”

Anyone who saw me at AGF knew immediately that I had something of an agenda there for a particular game. Not apologizing for it at all. What blew my mind, however, was that I wasn’t the only one who had that sentiment. I managed to get in about 10 total games of CE over the entire weekend, often teaching 1-2 new people with each game. I find sharing the game a joy much like performing music for an audience, or telling crude jokes with my friends over beers. It was the communion of the experience that made me such a blithering Cosmic idiot for the entire convention. (Oh, and I’m apologizing right now for the “If you’re reading this…” sign I wore. That’s what lack of sleep and caffeine overload does – it makes you an arrogant ass. it also makes you post strange mumblings to the Fantasy Flight forums.) Playing and teaching consecutive games also was a bit of prepwork for when I run my Cosmic Encounter tournament @ MomoCon in March (more on that in a subsequent post once I have details).

The Flea Market (“c’mon, you got to haggle!”)

I cannot stress how important this aspect of the weekend was to a number of people. It gives everyone a chance to lug in their massive collections and engage in some friendly trading and commerce (something we usually do inside of a boardgame rather than with them). While I have lots of boardgames, I’m by no means a collector – I try to keep my inventory limited to just games I like to play and could expect others to get into. So, occasionally I’ll come across something that seems neat and buy it on impulse, or get a gift from someone who knows “I like boardgames” but doesn’t know the vagueness in that assessment.

After lugging in my three Sterilite tubs-worth of “to be traded/sold” games, the entire hotel lobby area was a cacophony of fast-talk and hands grasping money. Only in an alleyway in pulp-comic Arabia would you see such a sight as owners hawked and negotiated (a skill they obviously learned playing marketplace games, no doubt). In the end, I managed to sell an entire tubs-worth of games and end up with enough extra cash to not only cover my food bill for the next week and a half, but also pick up a few old (Samurai Swords) and new (Dominion) games as well. Plus, those who care about my bachelor nature would be happy to know I’ve freed up just a little more space in my apartment as a result.

New-ish Games I saw played frequently:

  • Agricola – this one made its sleeper debut at last year’s AGF, and since then everyone was trampling each other’s face to get their hands on it. This year, there was not a moment in the weekend where no one was playing it. I personally didn’t get in on one of the games (see aforementioned agenda), but would gladly play at a weekly gathering if asked.
  • Le Havre – this is Uwe Rosenberg’s new simulation-style game, and could be considered the spiritual successor to Agricola in many ways. I’m kicking myself in the ass that I didn’t set aside time to play this one, but it ran a close second to Agricola in the amount of time that I saw at least one group playing it. As an added bonus, it’s already in English so the “stickiness” of playing with a translated copy isn’t there; it may have to end up in my collection before long.
  • Cosmic Encounter – I like Cosmic Encounter. A lot. I was an impetus in getting this game played at AGF to a good degree. I’ll shut up now as I’m certain some of you are sick of hearing it. :)
  • Android – I saw several instances of this being played on Friday night and Saturday afternoon. I’ve played it myself a few times (not yet with the HGP though, which we should remedy soon), and I’ve only scratched the surface of its complex narrative-based gameplay. It is a bit of a polarizing game, though; it’s either loved or hated, which I can explain fairly easily – while the presentation and length are remarkably indicative of an Ameritrash game, the mechanics are fairly Euro, a hybrid of sorts. As for whether the 3-4 hour play time is worth the payoff at the end, that’s a question that can only be answered after several sessions.
  • Battlestar Galactica – It’s co-op (a trend that’s about to eat itself), but it’s also competitive, and injects a bit of “Are You Are A Werewolf” into the proceedings. I need to play this a bit more, both with people I know and people who are strangers, to see if I do any better/worse at reading people (apparently, I suck at it).

Overall impressions

AGF is great for bringing a bunch of new people together and getting them to play boardgames. It’s nothing flashy or exotic, but no one’s expecting that. We as boardgamers want the essentials – a comfortable space to sit down at a table with a snack and a beverage, and think/calculate a bit while we shoot the breeze over a pleasurable brain-bending endeavor (or several of them).  I came away from AGF having met quite a few new people, extended the hand of fellowship (and the card of “here’s our podcast, give us a listen!”), and shared my love of boardgaming with people others of the same ilk.

Oh, and ate a lot of Japanese/Chinese/Korean food. Tasty.

When 2010 breaks out of its shell, be sure to make the trip and say hello to myself and the others involved in the HGP…and challenge us to a game. I’ll even let you pick Yellow and go first.

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