What I Played at Gen Con: FarmerLenny Edition

Gen Con is billed as "the best four days in gaming," and it must be true, or they couldn't put it on the sign. Okay, I'm not sure how to empirically verify the statement, but my experience at least comes close to validating the claim.

I promised in today's news post that I would discuss the new games I played at Gen Con this year. I don't plan to discuss the people I met (who were great) or tell the story of how these games came to be; I'm just going to give you the skinny on the games and how I thought about them after my play(s). (I'll note whether my play was a full game or a demo game.) The first paragraph is a game overview if you want a (very quick) rules summary; the second paragraph is my impressions. These are in alphabetical order. If you want to skip to the games I liked best, you might want to check the entries for Gravwell, Impulse, Spyrium, and Rialto. Also, sorry; I was too busy playing to take pictures. I realize this is text heavy; I trust interested readers will persevere.

[Note: Futurewolfie posted his Gen Con wrap-up here. It's more about the events at Gen Con and less about the games and fills in the details I left out.]

News Bits: 3/11/2013

News, news, news. Here it is:

The Wall Street Journal examines Days of Wonder [Link] The Wall Street Journal ran a piece about Days of Wonder last week. It's an interesting window into one of the giants of board gaming. It speaks of their intentionality behind releasing only one major game per year. Are board games mainstream now that they've appeared in the WSJ as well?