CabinCon 2022 - Part I
Look, I'm not an outdoors guy. But this is basically how I felt upon arriving at the cabin and retreating from the rest of the world to the mountains.
Here we go, y'all! The beginning of my annual CabinCon recap. For anyone unfamiliar, go check out my seven part recap of last year's event here. But basically, some friends of mine gather in a family cabin in the wilds of North Carolina to eat, play games, and just enjoy good company. And for the past several years, they've been gracious enough to invite me to this glorious retreat. So I can't say enough how grateful I am to them for including me, as this was my third CabinCon, but it's the seventh for the rest of them.
To that end, it's worth noting that while this is a weekend for marathoning games, we also take time to just enjoy the company of good friends. So the challenge of "how many games can we play?" is tempered by whether or not we're having fun as well as not stressing too much over whether or not we're on pace to beat our previous records of Games Brought and Games Played. (As a quick note, last year, we brought in the neighborhood of 80 and played 43) Could we just ram through game after game? I'm sure we could! But I'm sure it would also result in grumpiness and less conversation, and then it's just work, so what the hell are we doing?
Anyway, it's my preferred way to go: keep playing, but take natural breaks. For instance, everyone else is staying one day longer than I am. It was my last night in the cabin and we still had a lot we wanted to get through. But it was my night to cook and over the past decade or so, cooking for other people has become a way I can express affection for them. So I made some Maui-style ribs (courtesy of this outstanding cookbook, for those of you who are interested in excellent food!), mashed potatoes, and steamed broccoli. And we ended up taking our time with the meal and talking about the state of American education. Not everyone's idea of a good time, I'm sure, but it is definitely mine. And while I've absolutely been party to planning more simple and quicker meals so as to have more continuous gaming time, I think it's a matter of striking a balance. I just don't want Doritos and fast food all weekend anymore. I've got the tools, knowledge, and resources to do better than that. I love my friends and value our time together, so why not indulge in some good home cooking?
Anyway! What to expect from this recap: I'll share some of the titles we played, how the games developed and ended, what moments stuck out for me, and perhaps some insight I gained along the way as a gamer, an aspiring game designer, and as a person. We don't game in a vacuum, y'all, so I think context matters hugely - the people with whom we're playing a game, where we're playing it, and at what point in our lives. Don't worry: I'm not planning on going TOO deep, y'all. Just including some stuff that I think is relevant to the gaming experience.
This year, we had 7 players and brought over 100 games. Some folks had to work remotely for a day or two, and there are only so many games that seat seven that hold our interest. So we also knew we'd spend some time splitting up the group for different titles, as per usual. We did manage to play 44 games before I left on my return trip to STL, so we'll have a new record by the end of the weekend! But let's rewind to the beginning, shall we?
We know it's not the last time, but let's just pretend so I get to use this GIF, yeah?
What I Packed
- Plague and Pestilence
- Batman Love Letter
- Cartographers
- Twilight Imperium
- Eldritch Horror
- Villainous
- Ecos: First Continent
- Nemesis*
- Quacks of Quedlinburg
- Boss Monster
- Root*
- Beyond the Sun+
- Five Tribes
- Now or Never*
- Dominant Species+
- Oath: Chronicles of Empire & Exile
- Planet Unknown+
- Power Grid
- Subterra
- Oceans
- Rising Sun*
- X-Wing
- Star Wars Armada
- Pax Pamir
- Kanban EV+
So, you know, just a couple of games. I figured I was driving, so who cares how much space the games took up? I knew we wouldn't even get to half of them, but we try to be flexible over the course of the weekend, so having options helps with that. Sometimes, it's all 7 of us trying to get to the table. Sometimes it's just 2 people figuring out what to do so the other 5 can play something else. Or someone is cooking, so we're playing with 6. So I tried to get a good spread of games with different player counts. I also tried to bring games with different themes, weights, and mechanics. There were only a couple of these I really wanted to play (I marked those titles with asterisks), but there were a bunch I really wanted to show to everyone else (I marked those with +). Planet Unknown is a great example of that. I've played it a couple of times recently, it's easy to get to the table, and so my only reason for bringing it (besides the fact that I enjoy playing it whenever I have the chance) is to show it to other people because I like introducing people to new or different games.
Cabin Con 7: Respect the Stack, y'all.
As it turned out, the first game I played upon arrival was a game I own and brought last year, but which we never got to and I didn't bother bringing this year. To my delight, Drew had gone out and purchased his own copy of Abomination: Heir of Frankenstein! I had showed him all the components last year and talked up the game because I really enjoy my worker placement games. And while Abomination doesn't really do anything new, the theme is, I think, great fun and it's a solid example of a worker placement game. So that's game 1 for me!
Abomination: Heir of Frankenstein
So while I think this game plays best at 3 or 4, I think it plays decently at 2, so Drew and I got started, since Suf had to spend the day working remotely and we were still waiting on everyone else to arrive. I'm a lunatic and had spend the previous night driving out east so I wouldn't miss out on any gaming time. I was rewarded with an early game of Abomination. Worth every minute, mile, and soda I consumed to stay awake! I took an unusually aggressive approach to the game in the first round, spending it murdering and losing Humanity (I was at -5 by the end of the first round which...isn't great). But that murdering had left me just a little parts hungry due to some poor planning, and so my second turn was basically all about collecting parts just so I wouldn't lose all of the blood I'd gotten in the first round.
For those of you just tuning in without having played Abomination before, I assure you, I'm not out of my mind. The premise of the game is that Frankenstein's monster is seeking a bride, and is coercing scientists to build her for him. Each player is a scientist roped into this, and so we send Scientist and Assistant minis to different areas of the board to collect body parts, build them into a creation, and then animate said creation. I've written about this game before (here) and I was happy to play it again! Basically, though, the body parts and blood that you collect degrade over time, so players are on a bit of a clock as to building the body. Blood becomes useless much faster than body parts, so by murdering a person for fresh parts in the first round, I kinda hadn't done myself any favors. By the end of the second round, I was completely out of materials and kind of in the position where I needed to "start over" in terms of parts collection. The one advantage I was sitting on was going first until Drew stole the first turn marker from me going into round 4. But after that, I got it back and sort of never let him have it again. By the time he considered going for it in subsequent rounds, I always managed to beat him to that action space right before he went.
That said, he had ways of frustrating me, too - a timely event card, "King's Mercy," was drawn at the top of the fifth round. It stopped our first (and only!) public execution while also netting him some sweet benefits, like increased Humanity and a new Scientist he could place! The Humanity gain was big, as he was trying to beat me to 10 so he could score the bonus objective (the other three bonus objectives were to have the most francs at the end of the game, be the first to have 6 monster parts on the table, and be the first to have 2 alive monster parts. That said, I ended up having a pretty big sixth round because I had a ton of raw materials I could use to finish building a body, score that "6 monster parts" bonus objective, and then charge my Leyden Jars so I could Flip the Switch and animate them. At this point, it behooves me to point out that I got ridiculously lucky with my animation rolls. Drew? Not so much. He had some pretty garbage luck. By the beginning of round 10, I had 3 animated parts while Drew had only taken damage and lost Humanity. It looked like a landslide until we hit the end of the game and scored everything! I thought I very clearly had hi dead to rights, as I was sitting on a decent points advantage and knew I had a couple of bonus objectives already. Ultimately, I ended up winning 175-168 because Drew had a much bigger Humanity score than me, as well as superior animated parts. Different parts score differently at the end, and while he used inferior components to build his monster, he animated more valuable parts than I did. Great way to kick off the weekend!
**Also, if anyone reading this is interested in this most excellent group of adventurers and their exploits, you should check out their Twitter! They're the Champions of Valinwood!
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