Maricopa Con 2015
Last weekend I went to Maricopa Con at the Mesa Convention Center. It was my first time going, and despite the mild funk that set in halfway through the day (it is summer in Arizona where temps hit 113), I had a lot of fun gaming.
I’m also fortunate to have gone with a friend, so I wasn’t wandering aimlessly trying to awkwardly jump into games. I’ve done that before when I went solo to BGG Con, but it’s easier when you’ve got tables upon tables to scour. Maricopa Con consisted of one large ballroom and a smaller room (which ended up being more pleasant and chilly).
The first game I joined in was The Battle of Kemble’s Cascade. What a freakin’ clunky name for a board game! Note, I’m not a video gamer by any means, so this may be some reference I’m not getting. Anyway, this was a neat game that played out like a old-school 8-bit video game. You are pilots trying to destroy asteroids and defeat alien life form, while gaining power to buy equipment and upgrade your aircraft. The coolest part of this game is that if you’re at the bottom row at the end of the round, the game pushes you forward, and a new row of cards is dealt out at the top. If you don’t plan your moves correctly, you’ll run into threats or asteroids and suffer hit points. And like with any old-school video game, a big boss comes out at the end. Hopefully, your aircraft has been upgraded so you can help defeat it. The person with the most points after defeating the big boss wins the game. Also, the cover art is pretty kick ass!
Next up was Scoville, which I brought with me. Maricopa Con doesn’t actually have a board-game library so I brought Scoville and Specter Ops (which didn’t get played) with me. I’ve been playing this game a lot recently, and actually kickstarted the expansion, so it was easy to teach the game to new players. I ended up coming in second. Womp womp.
The next game I played was Scribe’s Arena. It’s a word-guessing game like Hangman but players can play cards that have spells and interrupts like Magic to assist them in guessing. It’s an interesting concept and actually got my mind grapes moving in a different direction than usual in board gaming, but it ended up being a little too long with trying to secure victory. Each player has 3 words that others have to guess. A player cannot move onto the next word until the previous word has been revealed. You get victory points based on correct letter guesses, but lose points when your word is guessed. So unless you can guess back to back words quickly, you end up moving back on the victory point track. And then it ends up being who can guess the third word first.
The last game I played was Castles of Mad King Ludwig. My castle wasn’t very efficiently placed, and I probably overspent on some of the rooms. I also should’ve built more rooms that gave me bonus cards. The winner of this game was the friend I went to the con with, and she had a bunch of the end-game bonus scoring cards.
I ended up leaving Maricopa Con around 5:45 p.m. as I had a birthday dinner to attend. I believe it continued until way later in the night and all through Sunday. I couldn’t attend on Sunday as I had to work. It was an interesting experience, and I ran into some familiar faces from local gaming groups I don’t normally attend. There were also some craft and board-game vendors that lined the wall of the ballroom. I ended up buying some silver chain-link earrings from a local artist. All in all, I would probably go back next year; hopefully it’ll be bigger and the AC would be cranked up just a bit higher.