Let's take the wayback machine to last Friday.
1. I started the day with hepcat playing
Folklore, a Kickstarter adventure board game with a touch of horror and RPG. My character was a stabby lady mage, while hepcat played the exorcist. We were joined by a madman and an hunter wielding a crossbow. The adventure was rather straight forward -- mysterious wolves, a hostile town and a quest to find a missing priest somewhere in the dangerous north. After quelling the rabble in the tavern with our fists, we realized that taking the roads would be the long way. Instead, we risked a shortcut across the river on the border and braved many skirmishes. It seemed our exorcist was more adept at angering mobs than motivating them to depart in peace. Along the way, we learned that wolves apparently hide in the tall grass not the forest, and searching must happen during combat or never. Motivated by this arbitrary rule, we located a two handed cleaver and decided that it made sense to give to our only mildly insane madman who could stand toe to toe with the enemy. Or 2 spaces away now that he had extra reach, which left hepcat and me as the party front line.
Having explored the farm, we tiptoed through a graveyard on our way into a dungeon. There, we faced off against a lycanthrope determined to devour the ring hepcat had discovered. Unfortunately, he was wearing it because that's what you do when you find a mysterious ring. Behind the lycanthrope were two mages with our priest immobilized during a ritual. The hunter and madman charged the mages in an attempt to solve our quest, leaving hepcat and me alone. It wouldn't have been so bad if we could hit more often. Combined, I think we rolled under 20% about fourteen times on the percentile dice. When either of us did hit, we did amazing damage with magic/holy water.
Eventually, the choice came down to whether I would help rescue the priest or save hepcat. So hepcat died and turned into a ghost, increasing his effectiveness in battle and making him officially the Anti-Exorcist.
With our team able to finally work together, the dice finally cooperated and we quickly put down the lycanthrope.
I'm not a big fan of % RPG systems, and the loot is quite stingy. I'd almost rather have skirmishes than place down a map to play out the tactical fight. It also faces a lot of competition but luckily hepcat back this on Kickstarter, not me.
2.
Paranoia followed across the street. The players were all Star Trek characters in an adventure to Rescue High Programmer J.J. Abrams from the evil Rommies (aka Romulans, Rahm Emanuels and Rommney). Since secrecy was necessary, we were sent on a televised Nancy Grace survivor-style game show through the Star Wars universe. The mission was incredibly fun, with an amazing GM and 3 of my favorite players from the past few years at Origins. One of them became Captain Picard and was Captain Janeway, so we teamed up immediately as the "Loyal Captains." I played the role of patsy quite well as the #2 Emergency Backup Captain (of course). The other guys were "Pointy Ears" and "Weasely" who easily slipped into the role of annoying know-it-alls. Other players were Feelies (Troi) and Bones (the Doctors), and Pointy Head (Wharf) and Scotty (the Redshirts). Klingon security guards were more than happy to administer serious punishment for slight infractions.
We engaged in an Episode One podrace (crashing an Escape Pod just shy of the finish line), a round of ghostbusting Pokemon Go style (Godzilla, King Kong, Staypuff and Apache Chief), a rounding chant of Sci-Fi karaoke (when I found it nearly impossible to sing "Glory Hail Computer" to the Next Generation theme song, but at least didn't work in a line revealing our HIGHLY SECRET MISSION on live telecast), 80-90s charades (with the assistance of Newt from Aliens, Peppermint Patty and other cartoon characters), and other mischief. We even tested experimental equipment -- the best being the GENESIS device, which unleashed the Snake from the Tree of Knowledge (Old School!) who heckled stupid decisions by players and GM alike for the rest of the game -- an incredible running gag for the rest of the game.
Eventually we found our way to wander through Dagobah where we discovered the lost High Programmer Lucas who claimed to be merely lost, not exiled. His offer to join the Dark Side was to make us Stars in the next big Alpha Complex Movie. Apparently, it was the young 20 year old playing Bones who had his childhood ruined by the Star Wars prequels and dug deep into the bowels of his hatred for George Lucas to unleash a spellbinding torrent of movie criticism on his failings.
The true enemy turned out to be the rodents -- not the Rodents of Unusual Size in a call-back to Princess Bride who devoured poor George just after he suggested that the Force resided inside everyone. When we discovered the Power of Imagination, we faced Mickey Mouse himself, sorcerer's apprentice style. The new offer was to become Gods of Alpha Complex if we would only join the Disney Empire and overthrow the Computer. They were bound to win, but we would save the lawyers some work. Janeway never liked rodents, so it was time to throw down with the stars of the Disney pantheon--Janeway vs. Elsa from Frozen, Weasley vs. Maleficent (who became his new mommie and turned him), Spock vs. Hades (who ended up getting pulled by Mickey after getting taunted into making non-PC jokes), Picard vs. Gaston (who retreated when Picard started to read Shakespeare from a book), Bones vs. Baymax (who declared a medical competition), Troi vs. Mary Poppins (who was done in by the worst English accent ever), Wharf vs. Mulan, and Scotty vs. (don't remember). Very beautifully run, and well play tested. Definitely the best session of Paranoia I've ever been in over 25 years, and I consider myself a pretty damn good GM.
3.
Tyrants of the Underdark followed. Hepcat wasn't impressed with this at Origins, as the theme matters only if you enjoy the D&D lore about dark elves. He apparently never channeled his inner Drizz't. The board is clean, but leaves much to be desired in graphic detail. The card quality is terrible, you have to sleeve them. The art is very nice, featuring drow, spiders and dragons.
It's basically Ascension with area control. That was about the extent of the rules explanation we received, so we dove right into the game. You score points for key territories totally controlled each turn, based on the cards in your deck (or upgraded out of your deck for extra points), on territories controlled at the end of the game, and enemy units killed. There is a fixed number of units to play, and you need those units to extend your presence and control territory. 1 Fight to place a unit, 3 Fight to eliminate a unit, and certain powers let you place/replace units anywhere. Gold (aka webs) buys better cards, and you get +1 for each city where you have majority control. There is a mechanic to upgrade cards out of your deck, and to place/remove spies anywhere on the board. Spies are excellent ways to deny other players total control of an area, and to jump over routes to directly take over control of territory.
It plays quick and adds more options to Ascension. But I'm not sure it's a better game. There is such a premium on efficiency in using your units that it makes sense to skip over the connecting routes to directly contest control of cities and zones where you score points. There's no benefit to controlling routes, except as a buffer and ending the game by using all of your units. But once your enemies start placing spies into your cities and zones in the late game so they can assassinate or replace your units, you'll want them! Maybe it's great once all the players know the strategies, but I'd rather just dive into Ascension or Star Realms for deck building and then break out a more tactical area control game.
4. The night ended with an unofficial
X-Wing tournament for 4 hours. We ran 3 hour-long games of Last Man Standing with 4 players on a game mat. 60 points with a maximum of 2 ships. I flew 2 TIE Defenders (Delta Squadron), one with the TIE x7 title (1 evade when moving speed 3-5) and one with the TIE/D title and Flechette Cannon (attack with secondary for 1 damage + 1 stress, then attack with primary weapons). Getting a K-turn plus an evade was just evil, and everyone focused to eliminate the extra firepower from my Flechette cannon. Throwing down that stress was very helpful. What was not helpful was every 10 minutes, we had to roll for damage on each surviving ship. But my goal was to get experience flying with new players, since my brother-in-law and sister know me well enough to anticipate my maneuvers at Octocon.
The first match was against 2 Y-Wings, a VT-49 Decimator and a Ghost painted like Rainbow Dash (seriously). The Decimator went down quickly because it always took hits. I ended up flying beautifully in the aftermath, flying just in front of and between the other players to maximize maneuverability and firepower to eliminate one player (the Y-Wings). I then survived to the end (2 points) trying to down the Ghost.
The second match was against a set of TIE Defenders (x7s), and a Shadowcaster + Khiraz flown by a competitive player who was very annoyed at facing two players with TIE Defenders. He flew the Khiraz right in front of me, so I shot it up and then misread his Shadowcaster's move (it being an unfamiliar new ship) and decided to keep flying in formation with my TIE Defenders to avoid getting picked off. That kept me out of the fight until the end, when I flew in to finish off the Shadow Caster with 5 damage. Slow ships with 0-1 evade have problems against close range when I was able to roll up to 9 damage (1 from the Flechette, 3 attack + 1 for range x2 ships) a turn. I was down to my last ship at the end, so I scored another 2 points.
That put me into the Second Table, where I faced off against the same TIE Defender team again, this time opposing a fully loaded IG-88 and a TIE Advanced and TIE Defender pair. Knowing our capabilities, the other TIE Defender decided to play it safe and avoid risks by spinning K-turns for the first 2 turns. The other 2 players went straight for each other, and the IG-88 dropped a bomb to strip both TIE's shields. As they raced away from each other, I flew in to score two quick kills to eliminate the TIEs. That put me in the crosshairs of IG-88 who was able to manipulate dice to do automatic damage and evades. The other TIE Defender came in to take advantage of the scrum. It was hairy, and I ended up breaking formation to escape and that left me with reduced firepower. The inability to use my 3 evade dice was frustrating, but I held on long enough to get eliminated only in the last 60 seconds. That netted me 1 more point (2 points, minus 1 for losing all my ships), giving up 2 points to IG-88. The other TIE Defender and my victim didn't eliminate anyone, leaving them 0 points.
With some very nice flying, I was feeling very good before ranks were announced. My 5 points in the tournament were enough to rank #5 out of 48 (or something). The IG-88 who defeated me was ranked #3. One of the players at the top table must have died quickly to drop a few ranks. I won two extra homebrew custom cards and two tokens, and had one of my most fun days at GenCon.
I even spent some time exploring in the Dealer Hall, finding a chibi series at Impact Miniatures based on the old D&D Cartoon characters.