DiceConWest 2008

I still made it to this year's DiceConWest, where I took these pictures.

Ivanhoe. Here's Donald, Natasha and Andy in the heat of our medieval tournament.

Wings of War. And here we are at peril in our flying tinderboxes over the trenches...

Dakka! Dakka! Dakka! Complete with Andy's nifty WoW planes.

A family at war! Donald next decided to introduce Natasha to Memoir'44, a game where she'd've felt quite at home (she did, in fact, win, I seem to recall).

Here are some other sights from the day.

Ellis and Gordon at play.

Pandemic. A new release, this game (@BGG) seemed to be something of a favourite on the day.

A game of Battlelore under way.

A DoW Ticket to Ride game.

Twilight Struggle. This card-driven game of Cold War conflict was an unexpected hit for GMT back in 2005. It had long since sold out its first print run by the time that the positive buzz across the web had brought it to my attention. I made sure to look out for the reprint, which meant that I was also looking out for a game at DiceConWest. In the end Alan Poulter, webmaster over at Web-Grognards, was pleased to show me the ropes.

I'm not going properly to review Twilight Struggle here, but that long and painful first game with Alan was certainly a highlight of my DiceConWest 2008. I'm no stranger to long game sessions at all; and Descent means that I'm not unfamiliar with long games either these days; but that game of TI reintroduced me to a brain-burning intensity I'd quite forgotten. I lost of course, going down to an instant victory on VP in the very last turn, but such fun it was!