CabinCon 2022 - Part VII
The rest of our evening after Nemesis was fairly light. We played Resistance: Avalon next.
For anyone who is unfamiliar with this game, it's all about social deduction. We played with 7, so two of us were servants of Mordred and the remaining players were loyal to King Arthur. One of those loyal to Arthur was Merlin. The player with the Merlin designation knows which players serve Mordred and can influence the game just like any other player. But they need to be very careful with their perfect knowledge, because at the end of the game, if the bad guys correctly identify Merlin, they assassinate him and win the game regardless of how the rest of the game went. Suf and I were the servants of Mordred, which was real dangerous for us. I'm not great at bluffing as one of the bad guys in any social deduction game (give me a script and I'll act the hell out of it, but tell me to improv this nonsense and I should really just surrender from the start...) and Suf is regularly a suspect in any social deduction game just because he's an agent of chaos. Sometimes the chaos he creates is intentional and orchestrated. Other times, he just sows it by acting without looking at what he's doing. It's kind of bonkers, because if the majority of other people behaved this way, it would be irritating to no end. But Suf's charisma is such that it just really works for him.
For anyone who is unfamiliar with this game, it's all about social deduction. We played with 7, so two of us were servants of Mordred and the remaining players were loyal to King Arthur. One of those loyal to Arthur was Merlin. The player with the Merlin designation knows which players serve Mordred and can influence the game just like any other player. But they need to be very careful with their perfect knowledge, because at the end of the game, if the bad guys correctly identify Merlin, they assassinate him and win the game regardless of how the rest of the game went. Suf and I were the servants of Mordred, which was real dangerous for us. I'm not great at bluffing as one of the bad guys in any social deduction game (give me a script and I'll act the hell out of it, but tell me to improv this nonsense and I should really just surrender from the start...) and Suf is regularly a suspect in any social deduction game just because he's an agent of chaos. Sometimes the chaos he creates is intentional and orchestrated. Other times, he just sows it by acting without looking at what he's doing. It's kind of bonkers, because if the majority of other people behaved this way, it would be irritating to no end. But Suf's charisma is such that it just really works for him.
Seriously. Back in college, our friend Adam West (not that Adam West, but still an excellent Adam West!) ran a roleplaying campaign in which we played ourselves as we (mis)adventured through a variety of realms in which we were granted powers. But our base characters were just us as we are in reality. Adam had us build our own characters, but asked that we be as honest as possible about ourselves when picking up attributes, skills, and especially boons (or whatever they were called in Savage Worlds, as I haven't used that system in probably about fifteen years). Suf asked if he could take "Charismatic" and before he could even finish the question, everyone around the table shouted "YES," because there was simply no question. For the sake of posterity, it is worth noting that I was assigned "Bellcurve Charisma." It wasn't as big a bonus to my rolls as Suf's buff because as Adam described my charm: "At first, you're extremely charming! Then it gets pretty annoying. But after awhile, you get used to it and it becomes charming again."
To be fair, this is far more complimentary than other things I've been told about myself, so I took the boost to my checks. What? I'm not too proud to take an edge when it's given to me! (Oh holy hell, that's what boons are called in Savage Worlds! They're called Edges! W00t!!!)
Anyway, it was risky because I'm bad at bluffing and Suf is always a suspect, regardless of the game we're playing. That said, I was also pretty confident early on that Mike was Merlin. I can hear you asking, "Why, Chris?" Well, because the first one to get thrown under the bus in any social deduction game we play is Mike. I don't know why. Josh and Suf are the most dangerous players at the table in any given situation, but Mike is always the first one to be accused of something during our table talk. It's such a thing at our table that I've become accustomed to Mike quickly pointing out he's always the first suspect and that it's bullshit. That...didn't happen in this game. Oh, Mike was definitely accused of being a bad guy in the first or second round! But he didn't get defensive; he just kind of shrugged it off while trying to analyze options. I decided that if it was a bluff to misdirect us from the real Merlin, it was a helluva bluff and I couldn't even be mad about it if he suckered me into assassinating the wrong player if Suf and I lost.
The first quest was successful (which it nearly always is, so it didn't give us much information), but then the second and third quests both failed. At this point, the group seemed to have mostly sussed out that it was me and Suf, but we only needed one more quest to break our way in order to win. Then neither of us were included in the fourth quest, it succeeded, and the players seemed really certain about Suf and I being servants of Mordred. But we weren't stressed about it, and I was confident that Suf and I were on the same page with regards to Mike being Merlin. So at this point, even if the final quest is successful (which it will be, since Suf and I are not invited to go on the quest), we can end the game by assassinating Merlin and winning. In fact, that's definitely what's about to happen...
...except then the final quest failed and the bad guys won.
Which, what?
Everyone around the table was absolutely flabbergasted because they were certain the bad guys were me and Suf. And they were right! Except Johnny had accidentally played the wrong card, causing the quest to fail and handing the game to the servants of Mordred. At which point, things got a little nuts as everyone started talking about how lucky we were only to have Suf throw it back in their faces that Johnny had managed to actually ruin our moment of triumph because we were going to lose the game on quests, but win when we assassinated Merlin, whom we knew to be Mike. Which, yeah, it turns out we were right. This game was worth a damn lot of laughs. It's not one I would play often at all just because social deduction games are rarely my jam, but it was fun for what it was and honestly, these games are a lot more fun with this group of misfits.
At this point, I'm pretty sure that Johnny, Mike, Josh and Drew went outside to play Spikeball. So Suf, Ryan, and I sat down to play Oceans.
I hadn't gotten to play this one yet, so I was happy to finally cross it off my Unplayed List! Also, the last time I had played Evolution (Oceans' predecessor), it was a two player game with Suf and he just annihilated me. I got behind and couldn't catch up because he just kept eating whatever species I put out there. It was brutal. Oceans is, I think, a stronger design. It's still a hand management and hidden VP game, just like Evolution. But in the case of Oceans, there's open drafting. And that combined with the fact that a player can't lose a species on someone else's turn (specifically to predation) just makes all the difference. Sure, players can still fall behind and other players can create species that hunt the species of other players, effectively stealing VP from them. But no player is starting from scratch during their turn unless they couldn't find food on their own turn. Even if another player eats the last fish off of my species board, the species does not become extinct until the end of my turn. So I can always do something to try and save it. That isn't always advisable, but it's an option, and that's a far cry from the design space Evolution occupies. It was a lot of fun! Moved a bit slowly at first as we reviewed rules and options, but it's a good time! I'm glad we got this one to the table. It felt like more to manage because players couldn't just eliminate the species of other players, so every turn felt productive rather than having any of those "starting over" turns. That said, I felt like I was pretty comfortably in the lead for the game and didn't really have any doubt I'd won by the end, though Ryan made a really good run at it with a good round or two of feeding.
I hadn't gotten to play this one yet, so I was happy to finally cross it off my Unplayed List! Also, the last time I had played Evolution (Oceans' predecessor), it was a two player game with Suf and he just annihilated me. I got behind and couldn't catch up because he just kept eating whatever species I put out there. It was brutal. Oceans is, I think, a stronger design. It's still a hand management and hidden VP game, just like Evolution. But in the case of Oceans, there's open drafting. And that combined with the fact that a player can't lose a species on someone else's turn (specifically to predation) just makes all the difference. Sure, players can still fall behind and other players can create species that hunt the species of other players, effectively stealing VP from them. But no player is starting from scratch during their turn unless they couldn't find food on their own turn. Even if another player eats the last fish off of my species board, the species does not become extinct until the end of my turn. So I can always do something to try and save it. That isn't always advisable, but it's an option, and that's a far cry from the design space Evolution occupies. It was a lot of fun! Moved a bit slowly at first as we reviewed rules and options, but it's a good time! I'm glad we got this one to the table. It felt like more to manage because players couldn't just eliminate the species of other players, so every turn felt productive rather than having any of those "starting over" turns. That said, I felt like I was pretty comfortably in the lead for the game and didn't really have any doubt I'd won by the end, though Ryan made a really good run at it with a good round or two of feeding.
We counted up all of our fish and Ryan beat me by nearly ten points! The final score stood thus:
- Ryan: 57
- Chris: 48
- Suf: 32
It was brilliant! Honestly, I never even saw him coming. Suf was pulling some shenanigans on his end, so I was keeping an eye on his ability to steal food from Ryan and myself. But I felt as though both of them were chasing me throughout the game, so I was confident that I was fine. But one of Ryan's species boards had Gentle Giant on it, granting it a huge feeding capacity and it had a ton of food in reserve for the end of the game. It was a fantastic play and I just never saw him coming. It's a cool design and I'm looking forward to playing it again! The Deep cards (advanced traits that players can assign to their species after a certain threshold in the game has been reached) are especially inspired, offering some of the weirdest art and bonuses they could come up with, so full credit to them. The mechanics are strong, but the Deep cards really make this game.
At this point, we got into Diplomacy at a separate table upstairs, which Josh has been wanting to do for several years now. But that's for a different post! So I'll just close this part of my CabinCon recap with Skull and Pitch Car (which is always a morning activity, as the track gets set up while people are drinking coffee/tea, catching up, and having breakfast). Skull is just a delightful bluffing game. It's really short, the rules are simple, and the art is stunning.
See? Beautiful, right?
It's a simple game in which the winner is the last player with any discs in their hand. The first game was three of us (pretty sure it was me, Ryan, and Suf again, but I'm not certain) while the other guys were playing something else or chatting or something. Watching golf maybe? Man, I don't remember. I was busy playing games; I don't know what other people are doing! Anyway, I won the first one, then our player count increased to five players and Suf took that one from me in a one on one showdown. He just totally outplayed me because he crunched the numbers and knew how to keep me from even bluffing my way to a win. There's honestly not much for me to recap about Skull because I can't think of much in the way of memorable moments. But I will never say no to Skull. I first played it at CabinCon two years ago and bought my own copy as soon as I got home, and I've been introducing it to everyone I can think of. Great game.
That was the end of the night for me, but man was I looking forward to Pitch Car the next morning. It was going to be my last day at the cabin, so I knew it was the last chance to play a couple of things. Pitch Car was one of them. Krokinole was another. So the next morning, I woke up to a mostly complete Pitch Car track on the breakfast bar. We always start with a smaller practice track before getting into something a little tougher and more complex. It's a dexterity game: build the track and flick little discs representing cars around the track. Nothing complicated or ingenious about it; it's just a lot of fun with all 7 of us on the track at once. It's not always a foregone conclusion that Drew will win Pitch Car, but he's always in contention. CabinCon 2022 was no different. I was actually a frontrunner for once after a big lucky bounce! Well, frontrunner for second, anyway. Drew won on the practice track and it wasn't even close. But I ended up coming in third because I got greedy and tried to make the jump after crossing the finish line. What made it greedy was that I didn't actually need to do it to come in second and I tried to do it all in one flick. Whoops. So I had to settle for third. Still better than I normally do!
Again: thanks to Mike for these photos!
After we finished the practice race, we tore down the track and started on building the track for the "real race." I don't honestly remember how it came about, but every track we build has at least one jump in it. And the jump is more daunting the second time than the first time. But for whatever reason, I mentioned to Mike that we had the other card table if we really wanted to mess with some bigger jumps. I swear I saw Mike's eyes light up before he grabbed the card table and got to work. Y'all, this next track was mostly Mike's brainchild. And it was glorious.
Yeah, we got matching CabinCon shirts. Big whoop. Wanna fight about it?
FEAST YOUR EYES ON ITS GLORY.
Those jumps were monsters. The second was more manageable, but that first one was a bear. Just gauging the jump off the starting line was real tough. If I'm not mistaken, we had to complete two laps before winning. Ryan and Johnny got stuck there while a couple of us lapped them. They just couldn't get their cars to make the jump and then land on the track on the other side (if a car doesn't finish movement on the track, it goes back to where it started). By the end of the game, there basically would've been enough wreckage in the chasm below the jumps to build a battalion of tanks. Once again, Drew came in first. This time, I decided against being cute and took second place. Pitch Car is not a game I'll buy just because I personally don't make room for it and I'm not particularly creative when it comes to setting up the track. But I look forward to it at the cabin every single year because it makes for a lot of laughs as well as a lot of pretty gasp-inspiring moments when something bounces just the right way to be impressive. The traffic jams on some of those turns can be pretty funny too.
After Pitch Car was cleaned up, it was time to get into some Krokinole. After being introduced to it last year and the fantastic time we all had either playing or commentating, it was absolutely going to be a highlight of this year. Read up on what I wrote about it last year here, because when we broke it out, I kind of had an experience with it I just wasn't expecting. And it makes a lot more sense in the context of last year's experience. Just 7 games left to cover in my recap of CabinCon 2022; stick with us, folks!
**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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