Let’s hope so, anyway. I caught a wicked cold halfway through the con and it’s still messing with me. Don’t sleep with your head too close to the AC, kids.
Series Archer Delayed
I don’t know if any of the rest of you remember back when AEG put up this enigmatic web teaser for a spies-and-conspiracies game called Series Archer… anyway, I talked briefly with John Zinser at the con and he says the Warlord CCG is doing so well that they’re putting off Series Archer until November or March 2002, so it can get the attention it deserves. He also disabused me of my notion, and God only knows where I got the idea, that Series Archer is a card game – it’s actually a fast-playing RPG.
SnarfQuest: The Card Game First Look
The Agents of Gaming folks have done quite a job packaging this game. Every $10 deck comes with a Snarf lead, or one of the other characters – a different lead to match each different card-border color. The deck is the same in every color, but each player can own a different color deck for when you collaboratively construct the play deck. That’s right, it’s a one-big-deck game, but everybody can have their own say as to what goes in. The stone soup theory. The basic rules reminded Allan a little of the Tomb Raider CCG, which I haven’t seen. The leads are part of the game, as the cards form a storyline and Snarf moves around on it. Cards never go into your hand, but instead go into the storyline, and you control Snarf on your turn, trying to claim the good cards for yourself and send clunkers to your enemy. Cards can block your movement in the storyline until someone activates them, some of them have global effects… ultimately, you’re trying to score the most Treasure cards. We definitely look forward to playing this one, although our Elmore-signed cards may be going into cold storage with Allan’s old issues of Dragon if he has anything to say about it.
Lemmings: The Migration Playtest
Before leaving the con, I actually managed to play one of the umpteen little card games I picked up, and it was this Cheapass-style joint from d20ers Vengeance Games that got the treatment. We played with the full allotment of six players, trying to be the last one in the game with any surviving lemmings. Some of the cards are very, very funny, but on the whole it felt a little bit soulless and random. To begin, I just kind of picked somebody to poke first, and then it was poke-poke-poke-poke-poke until somebody won. If you don’t have the cards in your hand to deal with a given problem, you’re pretty much screwed. So, lots and lots of luck in the game and not much skill. “Deep” is definitely not the word I’d use to describe this game, but when all is said and done, I’d probably play it again. It’s only five bucks, so if the thought of rescuing a few stampeding lemmings with an overzealous crossing guard appeals to you, this is your kind of cheap thrill.