Airecon 2019

Overall, I had a delightful Airecon 5. Airecon is the annual board and tabletop rpg convention held in March in the Harrogate Conference Centre. This was my third visit (it's virtually on my doorstep so it would be daft not to go).

This year, for the first time, I didn't go alone. Megan came with me, as did my brother and Jack his son. They all enjoyed themselves, and Megan decided to come back on the Sunday with me.

Here's how our convention played out.

Saturday

We started with Arrr, a playtest of a game of pirates digging up treasure. This involved getting our meeples to the buried treasure, rotating sections of the board to get paths to line up. There were some rules about stealing other player's treasure, but these seemed a bit complicated (a few too many exceptions involved) and when we started playing the complexity of just getting my meeples to my treasure meant I couldn't handle the stealing rules. I said this, Phil agreed, and we decided to ignore stealing for this game.

Arrr

Maybe stealing works once you've figured out the movement, but as a race game it was fine. (But I won, so maybe my view is coloured by that.)

Over at the Asmodee section of the game we decided to try Dice Forge. We were taken through the rules by one of the demo team, and had a very enjoyable game. Dice Forge features six-sided dice with interchangeable faces that you upgrade - it's a bit like a deckbuilder but you only have 12 cards. It plays quick and I like rolling dice. I won this as well.

Thumbs up for Dice Forge

After Dice Forge we wandered around the stalls a bit, I caught up with a few people that I knew, and then we grabbed something to eat from one of the several food outlets.

After that I went to find Megan (who was dropped off by Mrs H) while Phil and Jack played a few other games. When we came back, Phil and Jack were deep in a game so Megan and I played Wibbel, playtested a bee game (a bit too random - Megan had a great theme suggestion though), and played a huge version of Tsuro using carpet tiles (fun mainly for the physicality of it).

Phil and Jack then joined us to play Hey That's My Fish with the players as the playing pieces. We played a team game (kids v adults), and the team aspect was very interesting in trying to agree who should move each turn. Happily for all, it turned out to be a tie.

Hey! That's My Fish!

We then headed back to the Asmodee demo section to try Pandemic: The Fall of Rome, which we lost heavily. We followed that up with Four Elements (a four player flicking game similar to carrom) before having a final game of Dice Forge (which Phil decided to buy).

Sunday

My original plan for Sunday was to go on my own and play a tabletop RPG. (My even earlier plan was to run some tabletop, but I wasn't organised enough for that.) However, Megan had such a nice time on Saturday that she wanted to come with me. I'd booked myself in on a game, but it had no free spaces so instead we found a game with a couple of free spaces and played that instead.

Our characters - we were all playing women.

I checked with the GM that it was suitable for a 12-year old, and we started playing. The game was a Victorian Fate Accelerated investigation into mysterious goings on at an archaeological dig in Egypt. Unfortunately the game was very slow and I could tell Megan was bored (I wasn't that excited myself). Worse, I don't think we could ever have worked out what was going on from the clues we were given (even the grown-ups, let alone Megan).

A couple of things would have improved it:

• Fewer players: When we joined, we had four players total. That's a good number for a tabletop RPG, it means that everyone gets plenty of limelight. Unfortunately, we were joined by two more players, making us six. Unless you're playing Hillfolk (or another game designed for lots of players), or you're an exceptional GM, six players is really too many.
• Replace the first scene with shared history: Although the game was set in Victorian Egypt, the first scene was set at our lodgings in London and basically consisted of us being hired to investigate mysterious goings-on. We were never going to say no, but dutifully we played this out over 30 pointless minutes. Instead, we could have started in Cairo and replaced the hiring section with some character building and shared history.
• Provide context with the clues: In an ideal scenario, we would have pieced together the clues, understood what was going on, and developed a plan to stop it. Unfortunately while we were finding clues, as players we didn't understand what we were seeing. As a result, all we did was poke the scenery and reacted to what turned up. If we'd understood what the clues meant, maybe we could have been more proactive. While the GM did bring the final scene forward, I'm pretty sure the mystery was unsolvable. The denouement featured a previously unknown NPC and some mad science, which I certainly didn't see coming.

Sorry for the rant. I set high standards for convention games as I don't like disappointing players (and I don't like to be a disappointed player).

Adding a cat to the wall of cats

Lunch followed the RPG, and then designer Jon Hodgson demoed Bang and Twang, a very lightweight card game that was a fun but probably needed a few more beers to properly enjoy.

Megan and I then played Assembly, a cooperative game that we narrowly lost (we would have won it on our next turn). We finished Sunday with The River, a worker placement game that I came joint first in.

The River

Sunday at Airecon was noticeably quieter than Saturday, and speaking to one of the traders they said that it felt like everyone was just passing through the trade stands on Sunday, unlike Saturday where they would stop and browse. I couldn't disagree, as I'd done exactly that!

So that was Airecon 5, and we are all looking forward to Airecon 6 next year.