Gen Con Day 1

It's funny, I was getting ready to title this article as "Gen Con Day 2" as it's been my second day here...but today actually marked the first official day of the convention!

Today, I was able to get a round a bit more and spend some time at a variety of other booths. First on my trip was Calliope Games (booth 1901)!

Ship Shape, which has probably turned into my favorite game thus far, is a fun drafting, tile laying game that is quite unique. Each person has a pirate ship hold, made up of a 9x9 grid. You draw tiles that have certain areas of the grid missing from the tile and you are tasked with laying them on your storage hold so that as you look down onto the hold, whatever the top visible icon can be seen is what you score. Couple that with some fun drafting rules and you have a fun filler game that plays in about 30-40 minutes.

White at the Calliope booth I was able to also demo SpyMasters which was a bit of a welcome surprise for me. It is a "I pick-you choose" game in which you are agents trying to solve different missions around the board. It had a "Pandemic"-y feel to it only in that you had actions to take place that your cards you choose help to determine. You're tasked with moving around the board and completing missions. This was quite a fun game that surprised me.

My next stop took me by the Funko demo room (141). Ever since Origins, I had heard quite a bit of buzz regarding the new Funkoverse system. There were several 4 character and 2 character sets (combinable) available for sale. Two DC sets, two Harry Potter sets along with a Golden Girls set and a Rick and Morty set were all available. Each sported the Funko figures that have become quite popular but the games sported some unique gaming qualities that were really intriguing.

Each turn, you select one of your characters and perform two actions. Each character has access to basic actions like moving and challenges as well as several unique abilities that may be performed only by spending ability tokens. Funkoverse uses an innovative "cooldown" system — the more powerful the ability, the longer it will take for the ability token to become available again — so players have to spend their ability tokens wisely. Each character in Funkoverse is unique, so players are encouraged to try out different combinations of characters and items in order to discover their favorite synergies and powerful strategies for all four game scenarios.

There are already new packs in the works scheduled to be released next year. There's plenty available now to provide tons of fun and this game will definitely appeal to young and old alike. Having 9 children myself, I'm real anxious to get this to the table to get some quality time spent with the family!

Yet another stop took me to the USAopoly (The OP) booth (137). New this year and getting quite a bit of hype was their Die Hard game. However, what excited me quite a bit were several upcoming games they were demoing - namely Harry Potter: Death Eaters Rising and a Toy Story deck-building game. For those familiar with Thanos Rising, you'll see many similarities with this game however this game ramps it up a bit with Voldemort interacting more with the Death Eaters and making it quite a bit more difficult. This, too, is a cooperative game that is sure to appeal to any Harry Potter fans.

A game that I was most excited about was the Toy Story: Obstacles and Adventures. This game is the spiritual successor to Harry Potter: Hogwart's Battle in that it will be a deck-builder with similar evolving additions/boxes to the game over time.

Keep your eyes peeled for more Gen Con fun!!