Well, it's been almost two weeks now and finally I'm getting around to posting my review of all the crazy gaming goodness at MACE 2007.  I'll give a brief rundown of the different games I played and what I thought about them, but if you want a little more information, I decided to experiment with a couple of audio podcasts with some more in-depth impressions of the wekend.  In general, I'll segregate my comments into Boardgaming and RPG-related comments, mainly for those of you that don't do too much crossover.  So, on with the...

Boardgaming - 

MACE Boardgaming Review (15.2 MB, 16m39s)

Overall, boardgaming definitely seems to be on the increase at MACE.  There were tons of boardgame sessions, and this year saw the first try at developing a MACE library of games that could be checked out from the registration area.  I dedicated 3 of the 7 sessions to boardgames, and managed to get in five different games. 

Warrior Knights (2006 FF edition) - Warrior Knights is one of my favorite games, and I wanted to kick off the weekend by running a nice, big session of it.  I had two people pre-registered, and hoped that we could pick up a few more.  Unfortunately, only one person showed up to play.  I guess that starting such a heavy game first thing wasn't really a good idea after all, especially when people tend to kind of wander into the con all through the first session.  Anyway, the other player was Pete Cornwell, who owned the game but had never been able to get it to the table.  So, we decided to go ahead and give it a shot as a 2-player, mainly to show him how it all worked.  

I didn't have very high expectations for how it would go, but in the end I have to say that I was very impressed with how well the game performed even with so few players.  Obviously, the political and diplomatic aspects of the game were lacking some, but all the mechanics and phases still maintained the same basic feel and quality that they have with more people.  I'm not saying that I'd prefer to play it 2-player, but I would definitely consider it a viable option from now on.

Duel in the Dark - Since my Warrior Knights game didn't take as long as I'd planned, I had some time to wander around and check out some other games in progress.  I stumbled on a group of people playing Duel in the Dark, and when it was over I had the chance to give it a shot as well.  I had heard some mixed reviews of the game, but after one play I definitely have a very positive impression of it.  The board and all the bits are just gorgeous, and I think that the flow of play itself was very nice.  While I'm sure that actually knowing what you're doing would help to reduce setup time, it did seem like I spent just as long setting up the German defenses as we did actually playing.  I think this is a great concept, though, and would like to give it a few more tries to see if it might be something I'd like to own.  Thanks to Scott Smith for taking the time with me!

Struggle of Empires -  Another of my favorite games, organized by Mike Wyant from Spindale, NC.  We ended up with 6 players of various experience levels, and spent the first 30 minutes or so getting everybody refreshed on the rules.  It was an absolute epic "struggle" lasting 4 and a half hours and still not being quite done.  Technically, we could have moved to one of the side rooms when they were closing down the main area, but we figured it would be too much trouble to break it all down and set it back up being that it was already 1am.  In the end, I pulled out a 2 point victory with my friend Britt's "Passive Industry" strategy.

On Sunday, I had planned to run a game of Shogun (the new Golden-Geek-winning Queen version), but I only had one player (my buddy Jim Clark) show up.  We ended up joining my brother Tony and nephew Alex for...

Monsters Menace America -  Briefly stated, this game way exceeded my expectations.  Yeah, there's lots of luck and it ends in a big dice-fest, but I thought it captured the theme really well and was a hoot to play.  It's not any super-duper, deep gaming experience, but it was a lot of fun.

Commands & Colors: Ancients -  At this point, Jim and I gave up the idea of playing Shogun and instead pulled out his copy of C&C: Ancients.  I have pretty extensive experience with BattleLore and a little with Memoir '44, and this is just another great example of the C&C system.  There were a few things that I liked better about this game and a few things I like better about BattleLore, but they are so completely the same game that I think it's pretty silly to really split hairs between them.  The versatility of theme and Lore system of BattleLore make it still the king of the system to me.  But I still really enjoyed this game and wouldn't turn down a game of it.   

Historically, MACE has definitely been more of a role-playing con, but (just like the hobby game industry  as a whole) is currently making a strong move towards being more boardgame-centered.  Ron McClung (the uber gaming maestro for MACE) and I talked some about trying to overcome local boardgamers preconceived prejudice against MACE, and I plan to do whatever I can to help people see that a change really is going on.  There were over 70 boardgaming events offered this year alone, as well as the open-gaming library that we got started.  The biggest thing that can keep this change going is to get more boardgamers to participate, and I hope that maybe some of you reading this might be able to join us next year.      

Oh, I almost forgot!  I also managed to get in a few hands of Tichu throughout the weekend, but never had time to really play a whole game.  I really need to play more Tichu...