ToonCon 2020 - Part 2 - Saturday

Originally I planned to do FOUR posts for ToonCon - one for each of the games I ran, and then another for ALL THE OTHER STUFF. But, as I mentioned in Part 1, I skipped out on the first two games I signed up for on Saturday - needing time to rest and recover and do a bit more prep for the other two games I was running... which didn't leave much else to report on, so... Saturday.

I had signed up for Wingspan Saturday morning. I've never played and thought it might be interesting to try... but then didn't.  I'd also singed up for Stone Age at noon, which I have played and it is fun and we don't own a copy, so I only ever play it at ToonCon, but skipped out on that as well. Amanda didn't sign up for anything in the morning as she was taking Keira to two dance classes and teaches a couple of yoga classes concurrently. When she got back, I figured we would both head back to the Convention for the second afternoon game: Architects of the West Kingdom.

I'd never even heard of Architects of the West Kingdom before seeing it in the schedule. Amanda and I both signed up for it. Three of the games going on in this time slot were actually longer games that had started earlier (at noon) and the other two were Puerto Rico, which we own, and Orleans, which Other Tim owns and was suggesting we get together and play with him and his new lady-friend... so... Architects of the West Kingdom...

That didn't happen.

I'm not sure how we ended up so late... but we didn't get there in time




So Amanda and I sat down and did a quick run through of the first introductory scenario for Hellboy!

After that was the ToonCon Game Auction.




The ToonCon Auction is always a good time. They go through a few hundred games in two hours. Unlike a regular auction, they simply give a brief description of the game and call out the starting bid and anyone interested in paying that much holds up their bidding stick. Then they start calling out higher amounts. Depending on how many hands go up they might start with different increments - one or two dollars if there are only a few, five if there are more, ten if there are a lot. If the amount called out is more than you're willing to pay, you take your hand down. As the number of bidder decrease, the increments decrease. When only one bidder is left, they pay the last amount called. It is a fast-paced, exciting affair - and it's easy to get a little carried away!

Because it is easy to get carried away, I always spend some time looking over the games before hand (on the Friday evening) - and do some checking of prices (to see how much they sell for new and used) and make a list of what I'm going to bid on and the absolute MAXIMUM I'm willing to bid and I stick to that! There wasn't a LOT that I was interested in this year - as I said I'm mostly interested in divesting myself of games, rather than acquiring any more! Still... There were a few (ten, actually, out of over 250 games in the auction) that looked interesting enough that, if I could pick them up cheap...



I stuck to my max bids (with one exception) and picked up five on my list... and then there were three that Amanda said "ooh, that sounds fun - BID ON IT!" and we ended up with three more, that NO ONE else bid on - and one had a larger starting bid that almost all of my max bids fir all the other items on my list! (It was Fauna - they described it as 'By Friedemann Friese, the guy who did Power Grid" and Amanda was like, "Oooh! I like Power Grid, BID ON THAT!" and as I raised by bidding stick I said, "yeah, but he's also they guy that did Fearsome Floors" and Amanda said "Oh, never mind then..." but by that time we'd won the auction... because no one else bid on it... yeah...

On the plus side, even with Amanda's three impulse buys, we still came home with fewer games than we sold in the Auction. On the downside, we spent way more than we got for the ones that I sold... Ah, well...



After the Auction I ran Hellboy: the Board Game for four fun players. From left to right, there was Nicole, and Jon (who played in my Blackstone Fortress game, the previous evening), Larissa and Dana.



I ran them through the basic starter scenario. Larissa played Abe Sapien, Jon played Rodger, Nicole played Johan Kraus and Dana played Hellboy!



It's a pretty easy game and they seemed super into it and picked it up really quickly. The Giant Frog Monster was swiftly defeated!



After that we tried out on of the other scenarios - looking for another BPRD agent that's gone missing. Nicole decided to switch things up and try out Liz Sherman.



Frogs got beat down, clues were inspected, they even dealt with a poltergeist.



Liz got to set things on fire...



Rodger's base matched the flooring.



In this one they faced Rasputin's GHOST - which is a bit trickier to deal with! Liz kind of kept him busy while Rodger punched out frogs and Abe and Hellboy got the Agent they were sent to rescue out of there. Huzzah! Everyone seemed to have a pretty good time and I had a lot of fun playing with them.



While I was running the Hellboy game, Amanda was playing Terraforming Mars.

I looked in between our first and second game and she'd actually put some greenery on the planet surface - so unlike Amanda! She usually just puts a PILE of green and blue cards into play and largely ignores the planet surface. Apparently she had 11 green tiles out by the end of the game... but no cities... and came in dead last. Apparently she had fun, though, so...


Coming Soon to Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog:

ToonCon Part 3 - Sunday