This past Saturday I drove to Decatur, Illinois, to attend Heroicon, a small convention supporting Games For Troops, an Illinois non-profit delivering board, card, and other games to the men and women of the US Armed Forces.
I was supposed to drive over with my friend Luau Lou, but he had to back out a few days before, so it was a solo mission. On the plus side it meant I didn’t have to leave so early in the morning, as the game I was scheduled to run was in the afternoon. I arrived about 2 hours before my game so I checked out the vendors and got my wife some dice earrings for Mother’s Day.
While in the vendors area I was invited by designer Keun Ahn to play his game Shadows: Heroes & Monsters, a PvPvE (Player vs Player vs Environment) CCG that recently completed it’s crowdfunding campaign. At first I thought it would be a little fiddly due to the number of counters and stats to keep track of, but after a few rounds I got the basics. I even managed a pretty great feint, causing Keun to prepare for an attack that never came, for the win.
I was a little apprehensive about my Mutant Crawl Classics game as I only had one person signed up. Fortunately the player’s father had an open slot so he joined us for a round of Museum at the End of Time. Since it was just the two of them I gave them each 6 zero-level characters; in the end, only 5 left the museum. They really enjoyed the game (both were new to DCC/MCC).
Afterwards they invited me to try Dungeon Draft, a clever card drafting game with a fantasy theme. It went a little slow because several of us were playing for the first time, but I can see it being a nice filler game.
All things considered I had a good time and, while attendance seemed very low, I wouldn’t say no to attending Heroicon for a day again!