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Snoozefest Goes A Gathering 2006
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My wife and I met Alan Moon at Origins last year – they had a “play with the designer” series of sessions, and we played Oasis with him and cyberkev2000. Heck of a nice guy that Alan is, he (some time later) invited my wife to the Gathering; she kindly took me along . So, this is our first trip here, and this GL lists the games I’ve played, along with various ramblings. We got to Columbus late Thursday night (6Apr). The hotel shuttle picked us (and MikS) up at the airport; we arrived around midnight – no gaming that day! The next morning, however, things started to get going.
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Posted Tue Oct 24, 2006 3:23 pm
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This had been one of the hits at Essen, that we had never gotten around to actually playing. Mik taught 4 of us (all new to the game) how to play this game.
It’s an exploration, area-control game: the board is built of hexes arranged in a pattern according to the #players, with all tiles face-down except each player’s starting area. Each tile is an atoll consisting of 3 islands with various configurations of tobacco plants (source of money), settlement areas (where you breed to bring new pieces into play), harbors (the type of which affects your ability to explore), and goods (3 types). Control of these islands is determined by where you place your tokens. On your turn, you can move tokens around, explore, try to take control over various areas, etc. You get victory points based on goods you have, certain positions are worth more VP, etc. We played with the card expansion, which adds another type of action available to players.
It’s a nice game, but I don’t see what all the fuss was about (and that’s not just because my wife won!)? I guess it is a good, fast exploration game; although really it seemed to end too abruptly (by having explored all tiles), just when things were just getting interesting.
6/10
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Next I played a 5er game of TTRM (3 newbies). This is played on a map of Germany and introduces merchandise tokens (VP at cities) and passenger tokens (used to pick up merchandise), a new wild card (4+ routes only), passenger cards (used to move your passenger over others’ routes), and has the destination tickets split into 2 groups – short and long.
I’d played this once before, and thought it was just OK – a nice addition, but tedious to set up/put away because of the tokens. This game was much better (having helpers for setup/takedown helped?). Rodney and I ended up drawing tickets several times – him mostly long, me mostly short. Near the end, I hemmed and hawed and decided to keep the long ticket I drew, thinking I’d have time to draw the cards and make the connection. I was wrong! Mary built out and ended the game 1 turn too soon for me – I couldn’t complete that 21pt ticket! Despite completing 8 others (and getting the 10pt bonus), I lost to Rodney (who had completed 7 tix). I would have won if I had completed that ticket (ONE MORE TURN!), or simply not kept it!
So, a nice addition to the series despite the fiddliness of the tokens, although I think I still prefer TTR Europe.
7/10
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Next, a quick game of Geschenkt with BilboatBagEnd – surprise, Bilbo’s a girl! There’s not much to this game. Ava hadn’t played before, but it took just a few minutes to go through the rules. She apparently learned them well ‘cause she ended up winning.
This is decent filler, but I don’t find it all that much fun. But I’m not really a poker player.
5-6/10
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4.
Board Game: Caylus
[Average Rating:7.98 Overall Rank:10]
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I had played this once before, at Essen (although I think we had a rule wrong). At the time, I’d thought it was a pretty good – but not great – game. I had been very surprised when it’s ranking shot up so quickly.
MarioL taught 3 of us the game, and we played pretty quickly considering we were all inexperienced (I think it took us about 2 hours). ML built almost all the brown buildings while the rest of us were … I don’t know what we were doing! He ended up winning handily while BrianS and I tied for 2nd. M had made some errors at the beginning and was never able to recover.
After this playing, I think my first impressions were pretty accurate – why is everyone so gaga over this game? Sure it’s pretty good, but it just doesn’t seem all THAT much fun.
7/10
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Last game for the night! M and I had played this at Essen, when it was still “Pingvinas!” so I taught ChrisE and BrianS and we played a quick game. This is a very fast abstract game where you set up a random board of hexes with 1-3 fish on them, place your penguins, then take turns moving them around. You collect the piece you leave, so the board develops holes – you try to get yourself into an isolated group so no one else can land on any of your ice floes, and you can just move around collecting them all. I think the new guys made some errors going after the high-value pieces which were clustered together. That left my penguins alone, and I was able to isolate a large section. I ended up winning by a large margin (score = sum of # of fish on all pieces).
I don’t normally like abstract games, but the theme is nice and encourages fast play; most games will end in 10-20min. Definitely worth getting
7/10
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The next day (8Apr), 4 of us (Bilbo, me, Mary and Jürgen__ from Schmidt Spiele) sat down to try to teach ourselves this game. Fortunately, someone walking by volunteered to teach, so it was much easier!
t
This is the latest in the Catan world. You roll dice, collect resources, build buildings – but all are done different than Settlers or Anno 1503. Board position is more mobile – you can build over other players’ buildings, for example. The design probably helps keep the game closer because it should be easier to target the leader. Some may not like that, of course. After one play, though, I think this is one of the best in the series.
7+/10
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Since we had the designer right there, we got him to teach us how to play this game, too. It’s very simple: draw a question card and 2 words, which together form a riddle. All players but 1 race a timer to write down as many funny answers as possible. Someone reads all the answers to the judge (who didn’t write any); the judge picks the 2 best – who scores a point. Play 1 round so everyone judges once.
I can see that this would be fun with the right group, but this game is not for me (or likely for our group) – we’re just not that funny. We played only a few rounds and I ended up tying for the win (several of us had 2 points), but none of us were very funny!
For me: 4/10
For funnier people: 7/10
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8.
Board Game: Zendo
[Average Rating:7.30 Overall Rank:218]
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The last game Kory had sitting around was his Zendo. Jurgen hadn’t seen that before, so we played one quick round. This is a good deduction (induction?) game where you try to deduce the rule the Master has used to create a “koan” – a physical structure using the icehouse pieces. It tends to drag on a bit too long for me, but that’s probably because I haven’t played the game enough.
6/10
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This is one of the new games released at Nurnberg. It has a lot of similarities to Web of Power/China: you draw cards from a display, play cards to allow you to place markers into cities on the map. There is more going on here, with several ways to score. Despite the added complexity, though, the game still plays quickly- probably around 45minutes. LoganB ended up winning, 1pt ahead of me. It turns out that we were taught several rules incorrectly, so I’m looking forward to trying this one again in the next few days.
7+/10
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This is Alan Ernstein’s latest game. It’s a bluffing/set-collection game where each player in turn offers a set of gems for trade; the other players offer their own sets. The catch is that the larger the set, the less required information about the contents of the set (all your gems are kept secret except what you offer). Each gem come in various numbers and its worth changes through the game. There is one scoring round per player, where you earn money by showing the most gems. So, there’s incentive to collect a lot of each gem to ensure scoring the high-value gems, but also some to collect a variety of gems so you might score multiple times. Most money at the end wins the game.
It’s an interesting game, but I don’t like blind bidding and I don’t like bluffing, so it’s not really for me.
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We just wanted a quick filler, and grabbed this from the R&R area. It’s a new party game that combines Pictionary with a word game. Each player is dealt blue cards with single letters on them. Then, several red cards are layed out; each has appoint value (higher for rarer letters, as you’d expect). On your turn, you think of a word using as many red letters as possible, but at least 1 red and 1 blue. If someone guesses it before time runs out, you discard the blues and keep all the reds; the guesser then gets to make their own word but doesn’t have to draw. Keep playing until someone discards all their blue cards – everyone else adds the blue cards to their score pile (they’re -1pts each). Then re-deal additional blue cards and repeat until you’ve worked your way through the blue deck. Most points wins.
We may have gotten the rules wrong because we seemed to run out of blue cards pretty quickly. Or, maybe we played with too many (5)? It’s a pretty fun game, although it is sometimes difficult to quickly come up with a word using the letters you happened to receive. I ended up winning this one, but it isn’t my favorite party game yet!
6/10
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4/9
This seemed to be pretty popular at Essen – the Mayfair booth had 2 or 3 tables for it which never seemed to be available so I never got to try the game. We grabbed a third and started working our way through the rules; fortunately, MarioL was soon available and joined us and was able to explain the rules.
This is a exploration, pick-up-and-deliver, resource management game. The game starts with only 7 hexes revealed. Players move their tribesman around picking up resources (lumber, stone) and delivering them. For example, stone taken to the central temple earns mana, or taken to an empty plains hex with another worker allows you to build a holy stone (a way to earn more mana). You can also build huts. Huts are important because: (1) that’s how you bring your 4 offerings (discs numbered 2, 4, 6, and 7; same set for all players) into play – as the hut is built, you choose one and put it underneath. You win the game by delivering these to the central temple. (2) Huts are where 2 tribesman breed to bring another tribesman into play. There are also special cards that allow you to move further, or give you other benefits. The early game consists of exploring to add more hexes to the map, collecting resources, building huts, breeding, and earning mana (needed to deliver offerings; e.g., costs 2 mana to deliver offering #2). Then, it’s a race to deliver the offerings as quickly as possible. Mana is limited (each player has a max capacity of 8) so you have to be as efficient as possible.
This is a fun game that plays pretty quickly. We’ll probably end up getting it, although I’m not sure if there are many different paths to victory – it seems like you may end up playing the same game many times. Still, a good game.
7/10
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Power Grid – Atolla Modulis
I was walking around and happened to see someone’s (PaulJ?) rather amazing production of this expansion so we grabbed a bunch of others and got a 6er game going. It’s a modular board that you put together in different configurations. The setup took us a while, but we finally came up with something we were reasonably happy with. It turned out to be a pretty close game. I messed my game up by building an extra city on the penultimate turn. That moved me up 1 spot in the build order, so I couldn’t get the cheap prices so I couldn’t afford to end the game! Then, I did it again! I ended up coming in 2nd of several who’d built out to 15. I still can’t believe I made the same error twice  !
I’m not too sure about this expansion: a new map to play on would probably be nice from time to time, but since some/many of the connection costs are entirely random the board is likely to be unbalanced. Would like to play it more, although I doubt we’ll go to the effort of putting a nice version of this together.
7/10
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Kleopatra
The new game from Days of Wonder is just a beautiful thing! You use the box bottom to represent the palace, and play tiles on top (the garden). There are a bunch of plastic pieces (sphinxes, obelisks, columns, a throne) you play all around – the game really looks great. Game play is pretty easy: on your turn, you either go to the market (3 stacks of cards) and take a stack (then add to all 3 stacks from the draw pile), or go to the quarry to build piece(s). Building earns you gold, with bonuses from building 2 or 3 structures at once (most gold wins). The cards are mostly building materials, as well as special cards that allow additional actions. The different pieces require different combinations of material (cards) to build. Many cards are marked – using those earns you corruption points (kept hidden in a paper pyramid like in Tutenkamen). Whoever has the most corruption at the end cannot win. There’s a nice mechanism with the draw stack: half the cards are face up before shuffling, so you have some knowledge about what’s in the market, but not complete knowledge – important because corruption cards in hand at games’ end (when all pieces of 5 out of 6 types of pieces have been built) DO add to your corruption total.
It’s a pretty good game, but I’d like to try it again. I had fun playing it, but it seemed like there was a lot of luck related to the card drawing. But it’s not a deep strategy game so that’s probably OK. Still, I had much more fun with my first playing of Shadows Over Camelot than this game.
6-7/10
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15.
Board Game: Caylus
[Average Rating:7.98 Overall Rank:10]
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Last game of the night!
LoganB and I were about to try a 2er game (Logan hadn’t played this yet), but we grabbed EricB and made it a 3er. The game moved right along, finishing in about 70min. Of course, that was partly because I’d forgotten that the game ends when the last castle piece is built (I built it)! EB made a great move at the end which I didn’t see coming: expecting him to move the provost forward, I moved it back a bit. Instead, he moved it further, right past 3 of my workers! So my last turn, which I brought on myself, was pretty worthless – nice move, EB!
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4/10
Peter Eggert, of Eggertspiele, was sitting around so Mary, Tom and I joined him to try some of his games; this was the first. It hasn’t been published yet, but will be released this year. It’s an odd game where you play cards into a 3 x n (#players) matrix, then draw from the draw pile. When each row is filled, the 2nd highest card moves to the highest, and the 2nd lowest to the lowest, and the appropriate players take the 2 cards. That’s odd enough, but in addition some of the cards are Apple cards, which are actually points for the player _to the left_! Playing an apple card allows you to pick up a card from the board and add it to your hand (instead of drawing from the draw pile).
Fun game, but I never was able to wrap my head around the odd rules. I ended up coming in dead last.
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This was the other game from Eggertspiele that had been getting good reviews at Essen. It was overshadowed by Antike, which we bought; never got to try this. So Peter taught us this: simple abstract game played on a magical wrap-around “Ireland” that has been divided into squares, hexes, and octagons. The larger areas are worth more points. Players move their pieces around the board from vertex to adjacent vertex (but can leap over adjacent pieces or chains of pieces), leaving a marker token in the space they left. If placing your marker creates a situation where there are 2 or more colors on that space, whoever has majority their gets to place their marker (numbered 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4) face down: if you have majority, you put it on top, if you tie you put it underneath the other markers already there. When any player places their last scoring marker, everyone else gets one round. Scores are calculated for each space as the multiple of the number on the marker (1-4) and the position on the stack – top is worth full value (square spaces 3, hexes 4, octagons 5) and each lower one is worth one less. Whoever has the most points wins.
In a close game, I ended up tying with Peter for second, 1 pt behind Tom. It played in about 20-30min – just the right length for me for this type of game. In fact, we liked it enough to buy the extra copy Peter had brought!
7/10
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18.
Board Game: Masons
[Average Rating:6.68 Overall Rank:530]
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Another new game, called Bauer Mauer (or Mauer Bauer?). The board is divided into triangles, with coasts along the both sides. On your turn, you place a wall on an edge, then roll 3 dice: 1 tells you the color tower to place on one side (white, gray or black); you pick for the other side (only 1 tower per vertex, though). The other 2 dice tell you the color of house to play on either side of the wall. It you create an enclosure, this forms a town. Pairs of like-colored houses in a town are removed and replaced with that same color palace (if available). Then, starting with current player, players may play 1-2 scoring cards and draw a replacement card; or discard 1 to draw 2. Cards give you points for various combinations of things on the board (e.g., all white towers unattached to towns, all black towers in the town just formed, coastal towers, etc.). Keep playing until the supply of any type of item (walls, towers, houses, palaces) is exhausted, then everyone gets 1 final scoring opportunity. High score wins.
We had the rules wrong at first, so we aborted the game and started a new one. Still it plays pretty quickly. It helps to know what types of cards are in the deck. I ended up winning by just a few points. I wouldn’t say this is a particularly great game, but then what is? It is solid, and we will likely end up getting a copy.
7/10
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Another new release, coming soon from Rio Grande. It’s sort of like Web of Power/China, in that you draw cards from a supply (6 face up, or draw pile) and use them to place houses on the map. But instead of placing every turn, you build up a chain of cards and only score when you want. There are several scoring opportunities in the game (e.g., building a chain of x length, placing a house in all cities of the same color, placing a house in all colors, etc.); the sooner you achieve a milestone, the bigger your bonus. There’s more going on here than in China, which may or may not be a good thing for you. I enjoyed the game quite a bit – another one for the shopping list!
7/10
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There were 4 people getting a game together, so I joined in. This had to have been one of my worst games ever – with the winner scoring somewhere around 150 points, I came in dead last with only 73pts! At the end, they told me 2 of the guys playing (DaveB and EvanT) had been playtesters for the game! But I think my pathetic score was entirely my doing, and maybe a bit of bad luck.
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This game apparently became very popular here a few years ago; it is now a tournament event (tourney winners pick earlier off the table). Neither my wife nor I had never even seen one of these games before. But everyone assured us there was nothing to it, so we joined the tournament.
The game is simple: there’s a battery-powered figure (Louie) that spins around. Each player has 3 discs (chickens) carefully balanced in a slot, 90 degrees from each other. If Louie spins by your chicken at the right height, he’ll knock your chicken down – the last one to have any chickens left wins the round. Your defense is a little lever just in front of your chickens, which you tap to knock Louie up so he flies OVER your chicken. If you have enough control, you can get him to fly over the next player’s lever and right into a chicken. You can also get him to hit they guy across from you (180deg turn) or go for the 270deg shot.
As you’d expect, we didn’t end up winning. I did come in second several times, but only because I wasn’t a threat and people kept going after the better players. I have little control over Louie, and was mostly just trying to defend myself when the opportunity came (many times, the player to my left would hit it perfectly so I could do nothing but sit there and watch my chicken fall).
This is a surprisingly fun little game. All the buzz generated here has driven eBay prices up, but I’m told this is still available out there in garage sales etc.
6-7/10
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22.
Board Game: Ra
[Average Rating:7.71 Overall Rank:28]
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4/11
First thing this morning after breakfast was the Ra tournament. I used to hate this game – just didn’t get it – but I think it’s my favorite auction game now. I’m still not any good, of course. I was knocked out in the first round, coming in 3rd place (last 2 epochs, I was the last one standing – got unlucky and drew Ra before I could take advantage, ending the round).
8/10
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The new game from Michael Schacht, completely abstract with a thinly pasted on theme: players have inherited a mansion that they are trying to renovate. Boards represent 16 spaces. The central area shows 2 stores with 4 randomly chosen tiles each, and a bank with four 5-gold tokens. On your turn, you can take 1 gold token, or buy 1 item from a store (price = # of tokens on bank). The round ends when any store, or the bank, are depleted. You play 11 rounds, then use the discards to draw 8 random tiles for the final 12th round.
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A new game set in the world of the 2-player card game. I’ve tried the original game only twice – it was OK, but just not all that interesting to me; seemed like there was just a lot of luck-of-the-draw in it. This game is set in the same world, and the card powers match the theme, but it’s playable independently.
The board consists of a central tile square surrounded by tiles that are placed in a particular configuration (square with projections on each side) but with each tile randomly chosen. Tokens start in the middle. The object is to build 4 stones of the Obelisk – the first 4 built each cost 7 crystals, then costs escalate all the way up to 12. The first player to build all 4 wins. You get crystals by moving around the board and interacting with the tiles. The tiles each require various combinations of cards (you draw 2? each turn) played as sets, to complete 1-3 goals. When all goals on a tile are completed, everyone who contributed gets a reward. In addition, the person completing the majority of goals gets a bonus. The rewards are generally crystals, but can also include additional cards and dragon scales. Cards can be used towards these goals, but also for their special powers (different for each of the 5 races/colors). For example, you can discard cards to call the 3 dragons into play or move them onto your tile – if you complete a goal, each dragon present on your tile rewards you with a dragon scale. When all the dragon scales have been awarded, players earn crystals depending on how many scales they have (most are then returned to stock). The interesting thing about the board is that after all goals of a tile are complete, it is turned upside down. From then on, it adds a bonus reward to all adjacent tiles.
The game was just OK. You move around, gather resources, get to the central tile and try to buy the 4 spots as cheaply as possibly. You have to be efficient, and it’s interesting how completing 1 tile’s goals might set up the other players who are working on adjacent tiles. But there’s not much that’s new here. Of course, this was just one play – might try to play it again here in the next few days.
6/10
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GregS showed up today. At least, I saw him today. He'd brought this game along, which is apparently a retheming of Darter ( http://www.dartergame.com/ - they have a nice animation showing how the game works). I'd never heard of either, but he was very enthusiastic about this game. I watched him finish a game with AvaJ, then Ava and I played a game.
It's an abstract game played on a checkerboard-style grid. Each player first places their home base anywhere on the board. There are also 4 dragons on the board, placed in the 4 corners of the central area. Then draw 5 tiles from the common pool. Each turn you play a tile onto the board, then move all 4 dragons. As you'd expect, all the tiles affect dragons in some way.
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Posted Thu Apr 13, 2006 5:09 am
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I didn't see you there! Or maybe I just didn't recognize you? It's very easy to figure out my "secret identity" - it's not that much of a secret. But if you spent any time at the Gathering, you should remember my wife - she was very active in the Hidden Contest (although apparently not as much as Sterling), and probably got you to sign her book.