GenCon Day #1

Today is the first day of the Con. Since I pre-registered, we could walk right in and up to our first Lunch Money game at 10:00. That is a very good thing because Pischner got us very, very lost. Way to go!

But we made it to the game on time, and I just lost the first game to a silly jab from some guy named John. I suck. The second game, we brough in the Sticks & Stones expansion set. Ryan was first out, after having been marked as the Hippie and taking a lot of damage. I then threw a tantrum, ripping out some hair and giving him an atomic wedgie up over his nose; and then another guy named Allex finished him off later with another tantrum. Alan finished me off by smothering a pile of dog crap into my face. I’m not upset, though; he has dog shit on his hands. Allex finally won the game with yet another tantrum against John.

Ryan bought Munchkin, which is a fantastic non-tradable card game. As he likes to say, it’s an RPG without the RP. The game consists of two piles of cards: Doors & Treasures. A player begins his turn by kicking down a door, which means flopping the top Door card onto the table. If it’s a monster he can run away or fight it. If he fights, he gets to loot the monster’s treasure by drawing Treasure cards. Death means that Bad Stuff happens, which can be anything from losing an item to death of your character and the subsequent looting of the corpse by the other players. The goal of the game is for your munchkin to reach character level ten, and other players are free to help or hinder you using any of the cards they have.

The real kicker for Munchkin, though, is that the cards are frickin’ hilarious! If you have ever had the joy of spending a Saturday night locked in a stinky basement with a bunch of stinky gamer-dorks hopped up on Mountain Dew and Magic Missles, then you will immediately appreciate cards such as “Pay for the Pizza - Go up a level,” or “Level 17 Monster the DM Made Up Himself.” And they only get better. My personal favorite was the “…Of Doom” card. I was already wearing the “+4 Awful Socks,” and I played the “…Of Doom” card on them, making my socks the “+6 Awful Socks of Doom.” There was also a fantastic moment where I was about to win the game and everybody did everything in their power to stop me. I still won.

Ryan and I skipped our Plot Twists seminar and Fluxx game so that we could play Munchkin. It’s that good. Or we’re ADD. Or both. Wanna ride bikes?

Tim arrived today, and then destroyed himself on cheap wine. I lost at poker, though, and we had upped the buy-in to $10, too. Dawn made a really good showing and got herself into heads-up with Ryan; but a combination of Ryan’s skill and Dawn’s sleepiness lead to Ryan taking home the $70 pot.