After Action Report – Board Game Night @ Action Comics and Games, August 29, 2013

I am in the Las Vegas area this week so I decided to take a look at what board game events are like here.  On Thursday, I attended Board Game Night at Action Comics and Games, a store in Henderson, Nevada just south of Las Vegas.

There were 10 – 15 people at the event with 2 - 3 games being played at any one time.  The games that were being played were older games and the players were definitely more comfortable playing the games they already knew instead of trying new ones.  This surprised me since it was a fairly young crowd.

The gaming space took up 75% of the store space.  The store space was laid out in what appears to be the current trend of having the gaming space in the center of the store with the merchandise surrounding it on the outside.  There were plenty of tables that are laid out to be efficient for playing Magic and other collectible card games, which works good enough for board games as well.  The tablecloths that they were using could use a wash but otherwise the gaming area was clean enough.

I was able to play two games at the event one was completely new and the other I had not played since starting this blog.

The first game I played was the new one.  It was called A Dog’s Life.  The theme is centered on the players taking the roles of stray dogs that are roaming the town trying to find bones to bury in their home lot.  They also need to get food to eat to keep alive and avoid getting caught by the dog catcher.

The rules of the game are simple.  Each dog has a number of actions that they may take during their turn.  They may use those actions to move a space, look through a garbage can, pick up or deliver a newspaper, beg for food at a restaurant, drink water from a fountain, piddle on a lamppost, or bury a bone.  At the end of their turn the player must move the dog catcher the number of spaced that they roll on a die.  If the dog catcher ends his movement on a space where a dog is there is a chance that the dog will go to the dog pound where they will stay until they escape.  At the start of the game the players determine the number of bones that need to be collected to win and the first one to get that number of bones buried in their home space wins.

The game started well for me.  I was able to find a bone in the second trash can I looked in and get it back to my home lot and buries fairly quickly.  I also manage to get the player who got their first bone faster than me caught by the dog catcher.  I then realized that there was a greater chance to be able to get a bone if I delivered newspapers, so I started to move to the center of the board to pick up newspapers checking out trashcans along the way.  Then I got lucky and one of the players got picked up by the dog catcher a move away from where I was and was forced to give up two bones.  I rushed over there to pick up one of the bones which was a move away from my home space.  The next turn I won the game.

The second game was Small World.  In Small World, the players run races of creatures that invade the area of the world to take over areas of the world as their own.  They come into conflict with other groups that were present before and take the land from them.  The player will eventually put the race they are playing into decline when they believe they have played it out and choose a new race to play and start the invasion process over again.

The players get victory points for the number of spaces their races, both active and in decline, control.  The player with the most victory points wins the game.

I started out the game with Bivouacking Amazons and take a decent number of territories including 3 mountain areas and set up my bivouacs in such a way that it discouraged other players from going after me.  During the second turn I knock out another player’s entire position that he just put into decline.  The following turn I put the Amazons into decline.  The next race I picked up was Diplomatic Wizards.  I used them to break up another player’s high scoring area, but I still wound up getting most of my points from the Amazons.  I put the Wizards in decline after two turns and my last race same out to the board.  Again I was able to do a little damage to the other players that I thought were in the lead.  Unfortunately it was not enough to improve my situation and I ended the game in fourth place out of five players.

The night turned out well.  I was able to represent the OC in this Vegas event with one win.  The only drawback was that the store the event was held at closed a 9pm, which only gave us 3 hours of play time compared to the 4 hours I am normally used to at the week night events that I normally attend.  I will have to go back to this event again the next time I am in the Las Vegas area.

With all of that said here are my stats for this event

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	Avg.
A Dog's Life	1	1	-	-	-	-	-		1.00
Small World	1	-	-	-	1	-	-		4.00
Totals	2	1	-	-	1	-	-	-	2.50