Gen Con Day 1

So the Dice Tower kicked Day 1 off with a bang. For those not familiar with the early mornings of the convention, the doors open to exhibitors at 8am followed, on day 1, to the VIPs at 9am. 10 o'clock welcomes the masses. Mysterium, from Asmodee, seemed to be the big hit- having sold out before 9:20. One of the big hits was the display of upcoming Mice & Mystics product line games - Tail Feathers. Jerry Hawthorne, designer, was demoing the unique tilt mechanism used for the flying birds. In this sky and land battle game the birds will actually have removable "flyer" minis. Tail Feathers will hopefully be released sometime around, if not at, Essen. One of my favorite parts of the day was getting to meet the folks over at NSKN. I got to meet with Agnieszka Kopera and Andrei Novac (Designer and Artist along with founders of NSKN) to get a look at the HUGE BOX expansion to Exodus entitled Edge of Extinction. It's a GORGEOUS expansion to an already wonderful game. You can watch Tom's review of the revised edition of the base game here. And if that wasn't already exciting enough, I got a sneak peak at only 1 of 2 copies of Mistfall - a cooperative adventure game hopefully due out at Essen. It's got some top-notch components and features some beautiful artwork - tons of cards!!     Portal Games had quite a few releases this year including Rattle, Battle, & Loot - a fun, light-hearted pirate-themed game. Also available was the drafting game Tides of Time and the Imperial Settlers expansion Atlanteans. Sure to be a hit, from Pretzel Games, is Flick 'em Up. In this scenario-driven game, you use dexterity to flick (shoot) opponents and move around the board. An expansion has already been announced that will add ramps and horses. You can watch Tom Vasel's review here.   Another fun stop was to the Chip Theory Games booth where they had, on display, their Hoplomachus line of products. I got to tell you, the chips are of a VERY high quality and the game play is quite fun. They had their, recently successful Kickstarter project, Origins on display. If you're at the convention, don't forget to visit the Dice Tower booth. Although located at the very back of the hall, it's definitely been flooded with traffic. You can meet and greet the entire gang first thing in the morning(s). Stop by and pick up any of the various promos on display along with dice towers, t-shirts, play-mats, and tons of other memorabilia.