The WGR presents Level Up! Level 2! an RPG event on April 19th

The Windsor Gaming Resource embarks on a new season of its RPG events with LEVEL UP! Level 2

April 19th the WGR will be hosting a day long RPG experience. The great folks at The Green Bean Windsor Star News Cafe have offered us some great gaming space from 12pm until 11pm. That's a whole lotta gaming!

Marvel Heroic Roleplaying from last year.

We will be following the same format as the 2013 Level Up! event. There will be two different sittings. an early sitting starting at 12 noon and a late sitting at 6pm. Each will have a variety of RPG games you can choose to play in. Each individual session should run between 4-5 hours. Doing the math you can see that there will be a 1 hour gap between sittings to give our GMs a break and give time for everyone to grab some food.

Right now the games that will be featured at this event include: Agents of Oblivion, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, All for One, Accursed, Pathfinder and Star Wars: Edge of the Empire.

We will be taking sign ups for the each individual game. The number of slots will vary by game and details of this will be found on the facebook event page. Unless otherwise stated by the GMs in question no experience with the particular game is needed.

Iron Kingdoms from 2013

We had such a great time of it last year, we want to make it even better this time! If you know people that aren’t part of the WGR and are into RPGs, TELL THEM ABOUT THIS! The more folks know about it, the more diverse the group and the more games get played!!

This is an awesome opportunity for non-roleplaying game players to experience this wonderful gaming hobby. It's also the perfect chance for RPG fans to try out a new system.

Facebook Event Page for Level Up! Level 2 - https://www.facebook.com/events/1470464569838730/

The Green Bean Windsor Star Cafe is located at:

300 Ouellette Ave - 3rd Floor

Windsor ON N9A 7B4

International Tabletop Day comes to Windsor on April 5th

It's that time of year again. Time for International Tabletop Day! The biggest tabletop gaming day of the year.

This is the second year for this awesome event. It's put on by +Wil Wheaton and the folks at the Geek & Sundry YouTube Chanel. Last year there were 3123 different gaming event scheduled in over 64 different countries. Here in North America every single Canadian province had multiple Tabletop Day events and every US State had at least one event.  It's looking like 2014 is going to be even bigger and the Windsor Gaming Resource and Hugin & Munin are happy to be a part of that, by bringing Tabletop Day back to Windsor.

To quote the Tabletop Day website:

International TableTop Day is a celebration for all the fans of tabletop gaming. A single day where the whole world is brought together in a common purpose of spending time together and having fun.

Last year the event was hosted at Hugin & Munin and the place was packed. More people stopped in than we could count and we had so many games going on that people were playing on the floor and on the dice counter. Due to this, we've decided to move the event to the Green Bean Windsor Star News Cafe downtown. Hugin & Munin is still hosting but at a much bigger more comfortable venue. The Windsor Star News Cafe hosts the Windsor Gaming Resource Games & Grub events every month and has proved to be an awesome venue. 

Wil Wheaton and I at least years event.

The local Windsor Tabletop Day event starts at noon on April 5th and will go until 11pm at night. You can find the Windsor Star News Cafe at 300 Ouellette Ave - 3rd floor. The location where the Palace Theater used to be. There will be all kinds of games going on all day so feel free to stop in when you can.

We invite gamers to bring in their favourite games to play. In addition we will have a selection of games on hand for people to play. Like all Windsor Gaming Resource events, there's always people there willing to teach you the games they love, so there's no experience necessary. It's also worth noting that this is an all ages event. Board games are for everyone, all ages.

The swag from last year.

In addition to lots of free open gaming, there will also be some awesome swag. What you see there on the left is all of the swag that was given out last year. 

This event is a big deal and lots of publishers realize this and will be sending promotional material. Sponsors this year include Board Game Geek, Calliope, DriveThruRPG, Fantasy Flight, Fireside Games, Rio Grande Games, Tasty Minstrel Games, Asmodee, Days of Wonder, Mayfair, Indie Boards & Cards, Steve Jackson Games, AEG, Atlas Games and Blue Orange Games.

Hope to see you downtown on the 5th!

Otontin: Warriors of the Last Empire a push your luck diplomacy game

I was contacted by Andrew Chia of Red Tin Bot back in December of 2013. Red Tin Bot is a game company that's just starting up in Singapore and Otontin is their first board game. Andrew offered up a review copy of the game for me to bring out to Windsor Gaming Resource events.

Otontin: Warriors of the Lost Empire  is a slightly confused game. On their boardgamegeek page you see:

"Otontin is a volatile card game for 3-8 players, aged 10 and up."

Yet over on the Red Tin Bot website you see:

"Otontin: Warriors of the Lost Empire is dice game for 3-8 players that plays in 30 minutes."

So which is it? I would say it's mainly a push your luck dice game. Added to that is a bunch of diplomacy leading to a war phase in which actions are chosen by playing cards. Since everyone has the same cards though I wouldn't really call this a card game. Those cards could be replaced by tokens, chits or pretty much anything else.

The theme of Otontin is that of ancient Aztec cities battling over control of cocoa beans. Each player builds up their forces and uses these forces to attack the other cities or defend their own. Diplomacy is a big part of the game as players can set up alliances as well as make deals with their cocoa beans. The game is played to a set number of beans with a quick game being 10 and a long game being 20. The player with the most cocoa beans in their city the turn after someone hits one of these milestones is the winner.