Everything Is Fine

Category: Tabletop Games

Posts about board/card games

  • Gen Con 2026 was fine – Part III – Extracurriculars (feat. TORNADO)

    Third (and probably final, but we’ll see) post about this year’s Gen Con. First is here. Second is here.

    In addition to the travel and the various “sanctioned” events, there’s also just other stuff that goes on at Gen Con. This year, though, I didn’t really get up to much of that.

    There’s the exhibit hall, where most of the vendors are. I did buy a couple of games: I bought Hell of a Deal by Smirk and Dagger. (Haven’t played it yet.) I bought Jibber Jabble by AllPlay. (It was $9. I had played it the previous evening with some folks and it was a riot. It’s a tremendously stupid game that you should try.) I picked up my pre-ordered expansion for Lunar Rush (a game that debuted at Gen Con 2024 that I didn’t bother with, then I bought used at the consignment store in 2025).

    I also sold a Riftbound card. I don’t really play Riftbound, but I still would like to, and I opened a valuable card earlier this year at a pre-rift event. I got a good amount of cash for it that I’ll probably just gamble with. It’s fine.

    Otherwise, I didn’t do a ton in the hall. I walked around a little, but nothing jumped out at me as exciting or anything. I did see a demo of a game that had some neat mechanics and really cool looking components, but then they said it was a future kickstarter (not like on kickstarter now and they’re demoing to get backers – something they’re going to put on kickstarter eventually). Whatever. Then I turned around and realized I was right by the booth that had the Laundry Files RPG books. I didn’t buy them, but it was neat to just sort of stumble on them like that. I almost bought them. The Deluxe Edition of The Gang sold out every day.

    I didn’t go into the consignment store at all. I was pretty booked with events during store hours most days, and it’s pretty out of the way. Oh well.

    I did go to the auction briefly. Well, I meant to go briefly. I wanted to get food on Saturday and it was raining very hard outside, so instead I took a skywalk to the auction. It was TOVA, after all, when all the weird shit goes up for sale. Then, while I was there, Indianapolis got a Tornado Warning. (Yeah, a Warning, meaning OH SHIT TORNADO.)

    This warning didn’t exactly mean “THERE IS A TORNADO COMING NOW” but there were very ominous signs on radar bearing down right on center city Indianapolis, so taking some shelter was still probably a good idea. There were parts of the convention center where it rained inside, and some hotels, restaurants, and parking garages started flooding. (That’s why my garage being aboveground was fortuitous.)

    The ballroom hosting the auction, while not downstairs, was away from windows and could be sealed off from the corridors and stuff, and so due to the volume of people, it was deemed the safest place to be. So not only did the auction proceed, but people in the hallways and other nearby rooms were brought in. MANDATORY AUCTION TIME. I joked that now TOVA means Tornado Outside? Visit Auction!

    Anyway, it was fine. And not just because of the bit, but it actually was fine. There was little to no actual tornado (I believe an EF0 was confirmed elsewhere in the city) and as far as I know, no convention casualties occurred. (I’m sure there are people dealing with car insurance due to flooded garages and stuff, but that stuff happens.)

    Another Gen Con in the books – different from the 12 others I’ve attended but also kinda the same. New stuff but also nothing new. The most excitement probably occurred for me during an evening game of Hot Streak. Just a bunch of nerds around a table screaming for a hot dog and a bear racing each other. (Oh, and every time I got to spring something weird on the Call of Cthulhu players. Looking forward to doing that again.)

    The games were fine. The events were fine. The tornado was fine. Buc-ee’s was fine. Gen Con was fine. Next year will be number 60. Wanna guess how that’ll be?

  • Gen Con 2026 was fine – Part II – The Events

    The second post of approximately three about Gen Con 2026. First is here if you haven’t seen it: https://everythingisfine.fyi/2026/08/11/gen-con-2026-was-fine-part-i-the-trip/

    So what did I actually do at Gen Con this year? Somehow simultaneously a lot and also nothing. Here’s a quick rundown of official stuff I did:

    • Franchi$e – an upcoming sports management deckbuilder (it was billed as a deckbuilder, but it’s not – the designer has since updated the tagline for when their funding goes live). It was an entertaining enough game. I’m probably not going to buy it, but I had a good time playing it and would play it with friends if they had a copy. (It had a lot of Lords of Baseball in it, which I liked a lot when I first tried it, and like a little less now but it’s still enjoyable and I’ve hardly played it.)
    • Above and Below: Haunted – It’s the old worker placement/adventuring game Above and Below, but a sequel of sorts with ghosts. Enjoyable to play. Would play it again, but not a lot, but it has more variability in it than the original.
    • Kinfire Delve – I’d actually played this before (Chris Grace taught me how to play at Clocktower Con 2025, so I’m kind of a big deal) so I decided to jump into a session of it where you could win prizes completing in-game challenges. I ended up playing with a family. We were able to beat the hardest boss in the game and complete all the challenges we set out to do, except for the ones based on completing the game quickly. (I think we would have won a grand prize if we would have finished in 45 minutes; we took closer to an hour.) Good game – I’ve thought about buying it, and I still might in the future.
    • Mighty Shot! – A silly little game that tries to play kind of like a MOBA in that you summon minions and march them up a board to damage your opponent, and your opponent uses abilities to try to kill them. (And vice versa.) The core gimmick is that, to kill minions, you flick pucks at a target printed on a special playmat. (The target kind of looks like a curling house; flicking the pucks felt very Crokinole-like.) It was surprisingly complicated, but started coming together pretty quickly. I wouldn’t buy it, but I’d play it more.
    • Surviving the GAME: Was billed as a sort of tactical shooter deckbuilder. Host never showed; game never happened.
    • Laundry Files RPG Session: I like the Charles Stross novel series, and none of the Call of Cthulhu sessions being run by the group I usually look for sounded interesting, so I went for this instead. It was a very basic scenario, but it showcased how the system works and was a good illustration of the novels’ universe as an RPG. I’ll look into sessions in the future. Maybe I’ll buy the books, but I already have enough RPG books for games I’ll never actually play.
    • True Dungeon: A friend needed some people to fill out a group, so I tagged along. I did True Dungeon once before, and it was fine. This time, it was also fine. They’ve shortened the runs from seven rooms to five in order to lower the ticket prices. Five isn’t really long enough, but I’ll certainly never pay the hundred-and-whatever dollars the seven room version costs. (Honestly, I wouldn’t pay the eighty-whatever for the five room one, either.) Entertaining, but I can find lots of things that are entertaining for that kind of money. Maybe a board game? I wonder if I can get any of those somewhere?

    This year I also did something I’ve never done before at Gen Con – I GMed two games. First, a session of the Root RPG, where the adventure is meant to parallel the novel Mossflower in the Redwall series. (I knew little to nothing about the Root RPT, Redwall, or Mossflower going in.) It was a good time; the players seemed to enjoy the adventure and it went better than I would have thought. Second (and last – these two events were my actual first and last events of the con), a Call of Cthulhu adventure taking place in a dilapidated, haunted, eldritch Appalachian folklore-based theme park. I had a blast here, and I think my players did, too. Lots of great moments, both from the story itself and the way the players interacted with it. Both were good times. Would GM again.

    No stage combat classes, though. And no mega games, or burlesque shows, or Blood on the Clocktower. (Since my con friends generally don’t want to play, I should start getting into the random hallway games, but weird strangers…)

    And the vibes were good. Last year, I had a fantastic time in events, but moving from thing to thing felt like a drag. This year, the events were fine to good. Nothing mind-blowing, but still always enjoyable, and moving around the space felt pleasant.

  • Gen Con 2026 was fine – Part I – The Trip

    Gen Con was last weekend! So why am I just writing about it now? Because I couldn’t be bothered. When you have lukewarm takes like these, sometimes you just aren’t that interested in vomiting them forth for approximately zero people to read.

    Anyway, this will be a series of posts (approximately three) about Gen Con 2026 – the travel, the events, the shenanigans, etc. This one will mainly cover the travel.

    Travel to Gen Con is boring. At least, it’s boring when you drive from the Midatlantic, because you just get on Interstate 70 and then nothing happens. (Depending on where you get on Interstate 70, you might go through Breezewood!) There were a few notable things, though (or notable lack of things for the first one):

    Nobody’s transmission exploded! I mean, I’m sure somebody’s did, but it wasn’t mine or the one of anyone else I know. That meant that once I was actually on the road, it was smooth sailing. The only stop was near Ohio Valley Mall in Ohio for gas and food, and then to wonderful downtown Indianapolis.

    Downtown Indianapolis is fine, but there is a lot of construction going on there at the moment. Specifically, the block in front of the Sheraton hotel is under construction, as well as various blocks nearby around the city. This meant that I could not put my car in front of the building to unload it, and also that it took roughly 20 minutes to circle around the block to pull into the parking garage because the streets are all one way and the garage is on the wrong side of the hotel to be able to pull in after stopping at the front door. (I did not park in the hotel’s garage, granted – they charge $55 per day for that and the convention affords better uses of money.)

    But once the car was unloaded and stowed, I didn’t need to bother with it again until the end of the convention. It was safely indoors and above ground (which all became relevant on Saturday) and was waiting for me to load it back up and make the trip the other direction.

    As for the hotel – the Indianapolis Sheraton is fine. I’ve now stayed there at least three times for Gen Con and while it’s farther from everything than I’d like, it’s near some good food and walking from there to the con helped me find Jack’s Donuts, which is quite good. (And water didn’t pour in to their downstairs conference rooms. Or at least, if it didn’t, I wasn’t aware of it. Water did pour in other places though – more on that later.)

    I’ve said this before, but not on here – the drive from the east coast (and specifically the Midatlantic) to the Midwest has one big hurdle – the Appalachian Mountains. There are only so many routes across them. From Northern Virginia, you can drive up to Frederick, Maryland and get right on I-70, or you can drive out west on I-66, then pick up I-81 and take that up to I-70. You can either just take I-70, diverting up into Pennsylvania (to Breezewood!) then paying like $9 for the Turnpike, then a segment of the interstate that is specifically described as not up to interstate standards, and then getting into West Virginia and onward. On the other hand, you can divert from I-70 onto I-68, which is a straight shot right across Maryland, passing the future site of Noah’s Ark (that broke ground 50 years ago, but they’re gonna finish it!)… right up until it just sort of terminates in Morgantown, West Virginia. You can take US-40 to get from 68 to 70, climbing the mountains through Uniontown, or you can get on I-79 in Morgantown, spending a significant portion of time going north instead of west toward the destination.

    Anyway, all that’s to say that the eastern end of the trip has a lot of hurdles. It’s a lot of slow going and not a lot of progress. It looks lovely, though. Going to Gen Con, that’s the beginning of the trip. You get some scenic views and crummy roads and a lot of up and down (I’m a little surprised my transmission hasn’t exploded, considering it’s already basically defective) but convention energy gets you going and you make it over the mountains and it’s a nice time. Going from Gen Con, however… ugh. You drive from Indiana, which is flat and boring, into and through Ohio, which is flat and boring, and then when you’re kind of tired and sort of almost home, then you have to deal with all the mountain bullshit.

    So yeah, the trip to and from Gen Con was fine. And there’s a Buc-ee’s along the way now!

  • Magic: the Gathering – Final Fantasy is Fine

    Two weeks ago (three if you count the prerelease, which I guess you might as well), Wizards of the Coast released the latest Magic: the Gathering expansion set: Final Fantasy. These cards feature famous characters, places, and events from the history of the video game series (Or at least, I think so; I’ve never played any of them. Maybe there are games that aren’t represented.) and due to that, demand is through the roof. This is bigger than a few years ago with the Lord of the Rings set, which itself was way bigger than the crossovers with Warhammer, Doctor Who, Fallout, and whatever other ones have been done lately.

    In a lot of ways, it’s good. People who have never played Magic are being drawn to the game, which is usually great. (Not every person getting into the game is great, but in general, more Magic players is better, in my opinion.)

    And what is the Final Fantasy series? It’s a bunch of epic stories, featuring culturally iconic characters drawn beautifully that’s been around since 1987. It’s made for a trading card game. (Yes, there actually was a Final Fantasy trading card game. Wait, is a trading card game. It’s still around, and just had its own expansion release in March.)

    Anyway, as far as Magic settings go, it’s a good one. I like it a lot more than Aetherdrift (“Your favorite Magic characters driving cars”) and Outlaws at Thunder Junction (“Your favorite Magic characters wearing cowboy hats”). Having 16 mainline games to pick and choose from means only the most important stuff gets in. I played one prerelease and a few drafts on Arena, and I like the cards. The set is fun to play, which I guess would be the main objective of producing it.

    (Here’s me playing one of those drafts lately.)

    However, there’s more going on here than just a Magic expansion that has Cloud and Sephiroth in it. Magic also has years of characters, stories, and art. Right now, the most popular format that people play is Commander, which allows you to use (for the most part) any card from Magic’s history, and now, alongside all of that history of characters like Jace Beleren, Ajani Goldmane, Liliana Vess, and Chandra Nalaar (not to mention characters that haven’t been the face of the game, like Jaya Ballard, the Phyrexian praetors, and the leaders of the Ravnican Guilds), we’ve also got various Doctors Who, Gandalf, Aerith, and coming soon, Spider-Man and Avatar Aang.

    Basically, sitting at a table of Magic players is like watching a game of Fortnite. Oh shit, is that Doctor Octopus?! Attacking Gimli?! Wielding Excalibur?! (Yeah, there was an Assassins Creed set, too.)

    I mean, it’s still Magic. You tap lands to cast spells, and attack your opponent with creatures and try to reduce their life total to 0. These “Universes Beyond” sets as Wizards calls them, in that sense, aren’t that different from any other, especially if, like me, you play each set in a self-contained way in sealed or draft events. Mechanically, it doesn’t matter if the card has Spider-Man on it since the rules text and the character are independent of each other.

    Fun side note there – that’s actually a snag Wizards has with the upcoming Spider-Man set. They got the license from Marvel to print characters on trading cards, but they did not get the license from Marvel to put the characters in a digital card game, so the Spider-Man cards will not be “printed” into Magic Arena or Magic: the Gathering Online. Instead, a different set where all the cards are mechanically identical but “in universe” for Magic will be there.

    So then why aren’t they just doing that for every set? (Not “having different characters on the cards between paper and digital,” that’s stupid as hell. I mean just having Magic characters and setting on all the cards.) Why pay Square, Marvel, Games Workshop, or whoever owns the IP for Doctor Who (the BBC?) for licensing when Wizards could (and in at least one case, still has to) just use their own IP on the cards. (And they could even cross over with their own IP, like they did with Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate, or with Hasbro’s other properties like they did with Transformers.)

    And it’s not even just Magic being “Fortnite-ified”. Beavis and Butthead are being added to Call of Duty. Freddy and Jason were in Mortal Kombat. The Ninja Turtles were added to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. Everything crosses over with everything. Hell, not only is every game like Fortnite by just jamming every celebrity or IP into it they can find, Magic specifically printed cards with Fortnite elements on them. (They were reprints reskinned as Fortnite stuff, so “Smuggler’s Copter” became “Battle Bus”; “Wrath of God” became “Shrinking Storm”; etc.)

    And that’s what’s wrong with M:tG FF – it’s an effort to sell Magic cards to people who wouldn’t want them. It’s an effort to sell Magic cards to people who likely won’t ever play Magic again six weeks from now when the next expansion comes out. It’s an effort to keep selling us IPs we’ve already seen and experienced instead of coming up new ones. And it’s only going to keep happening more.

    But man, the cards are fun. I’m gonna play some more.

    It’s fine.

  • All Board Games are Fine

    In the various texts around the site, I mention that one of the categories of things I frequently describe as “fine” is board games. There are a few reasons for that.

    The primary is that there are too many. Ones that truly delight are few and far between, and when they do, they’re board games. They’re good for a few hours of entertainment at a time. If you play them regularly, like I do, then hundreds, if not thousands of them stack up.

    Boardgamegeek.com gives the following guidance for their rating system:

    10 - Outstanding. Always want to play and expect this will never change. 9 - Excellent game. Always want to play it. 8 - Very good game. I like to play. Probably I'll suggest it and will never turn down a game. 7 - Good game, usually willing to play. 6 - Ok game, some fun or challenge at least, will play sporadically if in the right mood. 5 - Average game, slightly boring, take it or leave it. 4 - Not so good, it doesn't get me but could be talked into it on occasion. 3 - Likely won't play this again although could be convinced. Bad. 2 - Extremely annoying game, won't play this ever again. 1 - Defies description of a game. You won't catch me dead playing this. Clearly broken.

    Given that system, I don’t think I’ve ever played a 10. I’m not sure I could even call something a 9 on this scale. “Always want to play” is hard – there are thousands of games. I would be willing to play most of them, but moods change.

    Of the games I own, the “best” ones top out at 8. I like them. I’ll suggest them or ask if I should bring them, or if people ask me to bring them, I will do so. I would put John Company: Second Edition at 8, but it’s heavy. The weight isn’t for most crowds, and the subject matter definitely isn’t, either. More accessibly, I might call Kutna Hora an 8. That’s more likely to make it to the table because it’s lighter, and also, everyone I’ve played it with has liked it, too.

    7 and 6 are “most” games. Obviously not the actual majority of games, but of the “hobbyist” board games I’ve played and play regularly, “I would play this again” is usually my reaction. (I frequently don’t actually play again, though, because in a friend group that collectively owns thousands of games and continually acquires new ones, there’s always something I’ve never seen before that turns up.) All the classics are probably here; Catan, Carcassone, Power Grid, etc.

    Some fall to 5. In my personal ratings on BGG, things like Codaand Hex Hex are 5s. (Interestingly enough, the site-wide ratings for both are closer to 6.)

    Below that, games become “bad”. But take a look at the descriptions. 4 is “not good … but could be talked into it on occasion.” Now, I can be talked into a lot of games. I’d put the bad party games here, like Cards Against Humanity. I’d probably also put Munchkin (generally regarded as a very bad game) here, too. I’ll almost never “want” to play it, but if the right people ask (or I’m drunk enough), sure.

    3 is “likely won’t play” but “could be convinced” and then closed with just “Bad.” Given that descriptor, I’d probably put Monopoly here (assuming we’re playing rules as written, so it eventually does end). Everyone hates Monopoly. It’s bad. F-tier. But it still rates a 3 out of 10. (That’s not to say a 3 out of 10 is remotely good.)

    In my life, I have played exactly one game that I would actually say was “completely annoying” and that I “won’t play this ever again”. In fact, I like to tell people about it, because I had significantly higher expectations for it. It’s Firefly: the Game. We played it less than once. (We didn’t finish it.) And on BGG, the current site-wide rating is… SEVEN POINT FOUR?! The average gamer is usually willing to play this? I will just about always suggest against it. Often when it’s not even brought up.

    Anyway, rather than get into specific games, my main point is that, on that scale, where 10 is the platonic ideal of a game; one you always want to play and don’t think that will ever change (meaning you’ll never supersede it with newer, which is hard when dozens, if not hundreds of new games come out yearly), “good” goes down to 7, and “yeah, I guess I would play this sometimes” goes down to THREE.

    So yeah, there are too many games. A few are great. Many are good. Some are bad. They’re all fine.

  • Booking hotels for Gen Con is fine.

    Every year around this time, the Gen Con housing portal opens up. Some years ago, they changed the system so that instead of just first-come first-served at Noon on Sunday, every badgeholder is assigned a time somewhere between Noon and whenever all the times are done. The “best” rooms are still gone by 1, and the rest generally not much later than that, but that’s what happens at a convention of 70,000 attendees.

    I’ve been attending Gen Con since 2012, and while I’ve had several hotel rooms that were farther than I’d have liked, or booked under unusual arrangements, but I’ve always had one. It’s always possible to stay somewhere, and usually relatively close by. This year is no exception.

    Actually, this year I got what I generally consider my favorite hotel, where all my con friends hang out. The room will be a little cramped, but should be fine for crashing at night.

    Now, just to wait the 5 months until the con.