CabinCon 2022 - Part X

CabinCon 2022 - Part X 

If you made it this far with me, then I thank you.

No crying face like Tobey Maguire-crying face!

We're here, y'all. We're at the end. This is the final CabinCon 2022 recap post, thus closing the books on another excellent weekend of gaming in a cabin in the mountains. I can't remember who it was that wanted to get Dune: Imperium to the table, but I was happy to ride along! I knew there were a couple of Dune games out, but I honestly didn't know the first thing about the differences between them. So I walked into Dune: Imperium completely fresh.

For anyone else who doesn't know the game, it's a 1-4 player game that features worker placement and deck-building mechanics. I got kind of hung up enough on the first part that I lost track of the second part. That is to say that I kind of forgot to buy cards that would help my deck instead of just doing cool stuff for a turn or two. But I'm getting ahead of myself - first, we had to pick our Houses. Suf went with House Harkonnen, Ryan chose House Atreides, Josh selected House Richese, and I wound up with House Thorvald. I say "wound up with" because I know I picked last because I didn't have a particular investment one way or the other, so I can't remember if I selected Thorvald or just chose randomly. I'm pretty sure I thought the faction ability was cool and chose Thorvald intentionally.

Normally, when playing a new game, I try not to split my fire too much. That is to say, I try not to do too many things at once. I try and focus on one or two things that I think should be useful and let it unfold from there. Sometimes I lose because my strategy is too focused (and often on something less relevant than I originally assessed), but oftentimes, this works out decently because I don't know enough about the game to really implement an effective multi-pronged strategy. But in this case, I lost sight of the fact that this was also a deck-builder; I wasn't as focused on ways to cycle through my hand/deck as I should have been, and that ended up costing me. I was trying to get Spice (often at the expense of water, which wasn't terrific), gain favor with both the Spacing Guild and the Fremen, and buying up the wrong cards for my deck. Don't get me wrong - they were cool! But I was sort of buying individual cards early on instead of considering how they'd contribute to the shape of my deck as a whole. And, again, I wasn't focused nearly enough on cycling. Also, there are costs to use some of the spaces on the board. So if I forgot about that, my entire plan would unravel, because the actions I'd taken up to that moment were reliant on me using that space. So I was also prioritizing my workers poorly in the early game. 

I worked hard to get my Swordmaster (an extra worker) on turn 3, as it felt like I was quickly falling behind in the number of things I could accomplish each turn. I don't know that I would've noticed, but Josh had taken the Mentat twice and Suf got his Swordmaster in the second turn. Meanwhile, Ryan was doing a very good job of synergizing his bonuses. I did draw into a Private Army Intrigue card, which snagged me a key win that advanced 2 Influence of my choice. That got me up to 2 on the Fremen track and 4 on the Spacing Guild track. This increased my VP to 5 (our goal was 10 VP to end the game), which tied me with Ryan, who had been running away with the game up to this point. I didn't know if I'd done something that I could build on or if it was just a one-time VP burst, but for the moment, I was right there. After a little more time spent jockeying for position on the VP track, Josh brought down the hammer: he played Shifting Alliances for an Influence swing of two points, thus stealing the Emperor's Influence token from me (which, by the way, I felt very secure in holding), which dropped me down to 7 VP.

In a game where VP are few and valuable, this was absolutely devastating. The plans I'd concocted to win had counted on me holding that VP. Without it, I couldn't see a feasible path forward to 10. Insult to injury? Josh used the Emperor's Influence token to fuel Firm Grip, which bumped him up on a different Influence track, scoring a VP from that as well. Oof. Anyway, at this point, Josh's machine was chugging along beautifully and it was clear he'd be running the show from here on out. Ryan caught him at the end of the game by winning a Conflict card that netted him 2 VP and then playing Plans Within Plans for 1 more VP! It was really impressive! So Josh and Ryan both ended the game with 10 VP! But Josh had 7 Spice, thus winning the tiebreaker and the game. I ended with 8 VP and I can't remember where Suf ended. Apparently, I didn't think to write it down. I'm pretty sure I was still sour over that two point swing Josh landed, effectively ending my run to 10 VP.

After we wrapped this up, we decided to play some light games. I had to leave in the morning and had a 9 or so hour drive ahead of me, so I didn't want to stay up too late. Or rather, I did want to stay up too late, but needed to be responsible. After all, if I'm driving tired, I can't exactly hope to live and game another day, can I? So I requested some Archer Love Letter and that's what we played! I'm pretty sure Mike went to bed because he was working the next day and Ryan had previously stated that he doesn't generally enjoy these kinds of bluffing/social deduction games. So it was just Johnny, Suf, Drew, Josh, and me sitting down for this game. As always, it was great fun and with some luck, I snagged 4 dolphin tokens first.

And that should've been the weekend for me! The end of CabinCon! But as was pointed out to me the next morning, we only needed to play 1 more game before our previous Games Played record was broken. I really wanted to hit the road, but I was convinced by my friends that we should break the record just before I left. So Drew, Suf, Johnny, and myself sat down to play a quick game of 5 Minute Dungeon. Though I normally don't like timed games all that much because they stress me out, 5 Minute Dungeon feels like the stakes are low enough that I'm good with it. Plus, it's cooperative, so that helps too. Real-time games like Set are games I enjoy watching, but not so much playing. In 5 Minute Dungeon, each player takes on a role as well as a deck of cards, and we venture through a dungeon together! The dungeon's challenges are represented by a deck of cards that are based on whichever boss monster awaits us at the end of the dungeon. We just played against the basic opponent, the Baby Barbarian. We basically throw cards at problems until they go away. So we did! I took the Gladiator, Johnny took the Paladin, Drew had the Ninja, and Suf chose the Wizard. We won with 4 seconds left, so that was a pretty satisfying way to win and a fitting way to break our previous record of total games played! Of course, the rest of the guys would pile on over the course of the next 24 hours to add to that total, but I just wouldn't be there for it.

And that's it! CabinCon 2022 was over for me. It was a terrific time with extraordinary people, some very good food, and some really fun games. I hope that in reading this, you were inspired to play some new titles or put together your own retreat with your own friends. It's not for everyone, but I do so love spending my vacation time this way. And of course, I'm already quietly planning for CabinCon 2023, and I know I'm not alone. Thanks to my amazing friends, and don't forget to check their RP group out at the link below!

**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!

https://mobile.twitter.com/ValinwoodHeroes/status/1417585561817260038