I headed up to Phoenix Friday night to check out Hexacon. Mostly RPGs and big tabletop games which I'm not a big fan of. They had a Console room which was pretty much Halo, but I spent my time in the Card/Board game room where I played a game of 8/7 Central with my friend Chris. Frankly I think the game is much more fun 3 player than 2 player. I saw Donovan and 2 of his friends and we showed them 8/7c as well. The three of them played a game of it with Chris and I 'helping'.
Saturday morning I stopped in again and just hung out with Ray Powers for the most part while he ran his Magic drafts. He had a prototype of his MILF Hunter card game which looks cute, and he showed me some stuff on his computer about a CCG he's working on (I don't think I'm allowed to say anything about that). I also found some miniatures that are perfect for All For One in the dealer room.
I saw Wayne demoing his Spare Brains Games. Played a game of Cowboy Shooter with him and some other guy. I liked some of his mechanics and ideas, but I'd definitely do several things differently if it were up to me.
Then I went to a frisbee tournament from about 4 til 10:30, the actual reason I went to Phonix last weekend- Hexacon was a bonus. It was a hat draw tournament which means random teams (evenly distributed skill level). My team won, and I threw at least 7 of our 13 scores in the finals. But I digress...
After the tournament I decided to swing back by the con to see if anyone was there that I knew... Donovan was in the card/board game room again with 2 friends (one same as yesterday, one other). Also Jason and Wayne were playing Baloon Cup in the Open Gaming room, but they must have left after their game because I couldn't find them again later. They did say that Baloon Cup was excellent.
Donovan and co. had a Gernman card game called 66 Nimth or something like that- you place numbered cards in one of 4 rows and if you place the 6th card in the row you have to take the other 5... you want to take the fewest points possible. I liked it a lot, wish I remembered the name...
Donovan also brought his prototype, The Game Game, and we played that (well, three of us did, one guy had to leave). I liked it a lot too, although I think there's a 'rich get richer' type of problem. We talked about his auction mechanism and some other mechanics that might be better.
Finally we played a game of All For One with the latest and greatest rules. It went allright and the comments were much different than other groups'. Donovan pays a lot of attention to who might publish a game, and his observation was that if A41 were simplified a little he could see it being published by Ravensburger, or if it were a little MORE complex then he could see Days of Wonder putting it out. DoW would really do the game justice, so I guess it needs a little more complexity :)
Then it was 5am and I had a long drive back to Tucson, so that ended my Hexacon experience.
- Seth
