Originally posted: November 28, 2009 I’ve already written about how Ken Tee and I brought Arctic Storm out of thaw at GMT Weekend West last month, but for the sake of the historical record, I shouldn’t let it drop there. As satisfying as it was to rack up that particular victory, it wasn’t the only noteworthy thing that happened that weekend, either to me or in general. My first game of the weekend was actually a partial-completed go at The Kaiser’s Pirates, Jim Day’s WWI-themed card game. The game had gotten enthusiastic reviews, and it sounded like a good introductory-level game that I could recommend to friends. So when Jim Jones found me just arrived and kicking around and uninvolved in a game, that seemed as good an option as any.  could feel our collective energy level drop fairly quickly as we worked our way through the rules (only Phil could claim to have played before). Perhaps I’m judging the game a little harshly just because it wasn’t what I expected, but, well... it wasn’t what I expected.
I had a more energizing experience playing Fantasy Flight’s acclaimed Battlestar Galactica boardgame, which did live up to billing. The setting aside — looking at it purely from a mechanical point of view — the consequences and benefits (which are mainly the absence of negative consequences) of the major decisions that the players have to make seem to be finely balanced, so that almost every one is a bit of a poser. Combine  It’s always energizing when Chad and Kai Jensen bring their designs to a convention, but you had to know something was up when they brought Dominant Species and Urban Sprawl (nee Metropolis) back for return engagements. And indeed, both of those titles debuted on the P500 List last week, so I will have more to say about them in a subsequent post. I playtested Urban Sprawl and for now, I will say only that I preferred the old title to the new, but prefer the revised game to the previous version.
As always, Gene Billingsley gave a brief talk on Saturday morning — his semi-annual State of GMT Games address to some of the hardest-core of the company’s hardcore fans. I actually missed about the first half of the talk, having gotten a late start out of the Sequoia Inn that morning, but the current recession seemed to hang heavily, more so than in his last talk, in April. The gist of it — at least, the part of it for which I was present — was that GMT remains on sound financial footing, but that insecurity among the regular customer base may be cutting into their willingness to commit to P500 pre-orders, which are crucial to GMT’s business model. GMT has also become more conservative in their decisions about what to print and reprint (understandably so); my reading of this is that those who are waiting for reprints of Arctic Storm or Wilderness War should not hold their breaths.  is. |
Home > 2009 Archive >
