On Saturday, I attended the second Epic Game Day. The free event is 12-hours of gaming hosted at AFK Tavern in Everett, Washington (just a little bit north of Seattle). The games are mostly divided into three 4-hour time slots and you’re able to reserve a spot in one game in advance and then sign up for any games with openings the day of the event. If you’re in the Seattle area and like gaming, then its definitely worth attending.
The events for this Epic Game Day were mostly either board games or role-playing games – Castle Ravenloft, Descent, Talisman, D&D, Pathfinder, Shadowrun, etc. In addition there was a You Don’t Know Jack trivia tournament, a Mini-Master Magic tournament, and video games to play. I ended up picking the Leverage game for my reserved spot because I’ve heard some pretty good reviews of the game system.
Castle Ravenloft
I got to AFK Tavern around noon and signed up to play a game of Castle Ravenloft. Turn out seemed low for the first time slot (noon-4:00), and for a while it seemed like it might have been just me and the game’s organizer. Luckily, we ended up getting joined by three more players and had a full party. Despite a rough start (taking a spear trap before even leaving the start tile), we managed to complete our quest and prevent a villager’s transformation into a vampire.
As a bonus for playing in the game, we all got a promo card for the game. I hadn’t even known that there were promo cards before. The Gray Hag card that I got uses the same miniature as the Howling Hag villain from the game, but goes into the normal monster deck.
Mini-Master
After watching the next game of Castle Ravenloft for a little while, I ended up joining the Mini-Master Magic tournament because I still had some free time before Leverage was scheduled. For Mini-Master, your deck consists of a single booster pack and 15 basic lands (see Pack Wars here). I ended up with a somewhat frustrating deck because most of my useful cards required two mana of the same color which can take a while to get when the 30-card deck only has 3 of each basic land. I did end up with some useful cards though and managed to win 2 out of the 3 matches that I played.
Leverage
From 4:00-8:00, I played in a game of Leverage as Gordon the Grifter. We were asked to help out a college kid who was being sued by a major sci-fi movie producer for a video he posted on the internet. After a bit of digging including trips to Thailand and China, we uncovered the reason behind the law suit – the media company was taking shortcuts in the manufacturing of its toys by using toxic paint. After gathering evidence, we confronted the producer and got him to publicly apologize for the manufacturing shortcuts and drop the lawsuit.
The game was fun and Logan Bonner, our GM, did a great job, but I think the system would definitely work smoother in games where the players have some more experience with the system. Out of the four players, none of us had played or even read the rules before sitting down. There were some mechanics, like flashbacks, that seemed like they could be really fun but we didn’t really end up using them much and I feel like that was probably a result of us just being new to the system.
Now it’s time to start looking forward to Epic Game Day 3.
Scott's Game Room 