My GoF 2006 Playlist
Anye Mercy
United States
Arlington
TX
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As always, I didn't actually write much down. Well, to be honest this time I didn't write ANYTHING down. I was in the mood for extra relaxation. Of course, this makes the formation of a geeklist even more difficult.
So, as always I invite people who I gamed with to add any missing games or information. If I remember anything else (which I probably will) I'll add it later.
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Anye Mercy
United States
Arlington
TX
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With Warren & Sharon Madden and Larry Chong. My first game of the event. The quirk to this crayon rail is that after the fall of communism, it costs $1M to bring your train into Russia from the other former Soviet countries. (But not to go out.) We played with public locking rules.
Winner: Me, but only because Warren got slammed by an event card that made him drop a good and so I beat him by one turn to $250M. In my heart I think of Warren as the winner of this game.
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2.
Board Game: Tichu
[Average Rating:7.73 Overall Rank:36]
Anye Mercy
United States
Arlington
TX
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Still my favorite game, played it a bunch of times with different people. Aldie and I partnered up for the Tichu tournament and despite a great start were beaten in the first round by Daniel Karp and Lucimara Martin (who gets very excited when she goes out).
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3.
Board Game: Masons
[Average Rating:6.63 Overall Rank:712]
Anye Mercy
United States
Arlington
TX
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One of my favorite new games, I played this with Dan Blum, Charlie Davis and I think David Jones if I remember rightly. I was ahead most of the game but blew my wad and ended up third. I forgot who won. Still, a great lighter game by one of my favorite designers. Other people say he's hit or miss but he's usually a hit for me.
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Anye Mercy
United States
Arlington
TX
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This one was new to me too though not a really new game. Players have five dwarves that they send into the mine to collect gems to make jewelry for the goddess Freya. There are special ability cards that allow a dwarf to either be stronger, stealthy, thieving etc. but for the most part each dwarf can only carry one load. It's a well balanced game for the most part, although when the thief cards were out all players were reluctant to bring dwarves out of the mine. I had fun playing but it didn't make me jump up and down.
Other players were Charlie Davis, David Jones, Paul Jeffries and I believe David won.
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Anye Mercy
United States
Arlington
TX
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A new-to-me card game played with Michael Weston and I can't remember who else (bad Anye). Interesting mechanics but I misunderstood the rules and ended up with way too many cards at the end.
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Anye Mercy
United States
Arlington
TX
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Another new-to-me card game played with Michael Weston and the same folks I can't remember from the last game. This one is a great light filler, I'm surprised I'd never played it before.
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Anye Mercy
United States
Arlington
TX
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A self-published abstract strategy game by Ben Corliss. Each turn you pick up a stack of gems from one space on the board and you lay them back down one at a time, one per space, in a row until they're gone. With a couple caveats. 1) You can only make one 90-degree turn in your path. 2) If the space only has gems of one color, you can only place gems of that color. 3) If you reach a blank space you can dump all the remaining gems. If you can't make a legal play from your starting spot, you can't go at all. You pick your starting spot sometime between the time you finish your turn and the player to your right finishes their next turn. If they catch you not having placed, they do a loud 5-4-3-2-1 countdown and if you still haven't placed you lose victory points.
Anytime the fifth gem of the same color is placed in a square that only contains that color, the "village" scores. If it is YOUR color (as the person laying down the 5th gem), you get 25 points. If you are finishing someone else's village, you get 5 points (but prevent them from finishing it for 25 later). There is also end-game scoring based on the number of gems in a developing village + the number of temples of the same color + the color of the space if it is the same number --> all squared.
I played this with Greg Schloesser, Aldie, and I can't remember who else. But what I remember is being ahead for most of the game in terms of village scoring but then getting whooped in the end-of-game scoring.
This was fun, a little abstract, but definitely a solid and well designed strategy game.
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Anye Mercy
United States
Arlington
TX
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I'd have been remiss not to play this one since everyone was talking about it. It is quite light and has resemblances to web of power and Ticket to Ride. You draw cards with German, Austrian, and Swiss city names on them and you form routes of contiguous cities. When you score a route of three or more cities you place meeples in the cities - the cities are in regions of different colors, and you have a choice either to play one meeple in each city of one region color or one meeple in one city per region of all region colors your route travels through. There are VPs for getting a meeple in all regions, or in all cities in a region, and VPs for making routes of a certain length (first one to make the longer routes gets more points than the followers). The whole game is about an hour and quite light fun.
I played with Bobby Warren, Michael Weston, and ... forgot. Bobby kicked our behinds though.
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Anye Mercy
United States
Arlington
TX
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Bought this at Essen but hadn't had a chance to play it until now. It was MUCH shorter than I was expecting and after playing I didn't feel I groked it more than when I started. I know Aldie was in the game and I think Dan Blum but can't really remember for sure if it was really him or who else was playing. I'm pretty sure there was a woman sitting to my left. Ava maybe? My memory stinks.
Anyway, I got my butt majorly handed to me. I won't even try to describe the game play in detail, basically there are auctions, set collections and majority control elements but it all goes very fast. Money is very tight.
I definitely want to play again though to see if I can get better at it.
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Anye Mercy
United States
Arlington
TX
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This was known as "Yahtzee: The Gathering" because of its die-rolling, Yahtzee-esque mechanics + special ability cards that you get by getting different collections of dice (straights, all odds, all evens, X of a kind etc.) It's very light but does have some choices, the tension of a gambling/die rolling game and was fun to play but not earthshattering.
I played this a couple times, once with Derk, John Haley and .... and once later with Zev from Z-man, Larry Levy and Pevans.
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Anye Mercy
United States
Arlington
TX
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Played this with Larry Levy, Zev and Pevans. Lightish game where you choose each turn whether to take a tile or money. Tiles start off costing 4 but as people start taking the 5-er coins, the price drops to 3..2..1.. clear tiles/reset money to 4. If all the tiles in one of two columns are taken then the tiles and money are reset as well.
So what are the tiles for? Decorating rooms in your california house. The rooms are in one of five different colors (floor tiles) and there are furnishings particular to each of those five color rooms (furnishing tiles). There are also tiles to let you expand your attic, meaning you can buy tiles and not place them immediately. There are only 16 spaces for floor/furnishings in your house and one is prepopulated for your convenience. You earn VPs by getting specific combinations of room colors/furnishings, by getting three rooms of the same color, and by getting "gifts" from partiers (i.e. when you add a furnishing to a room, the groupie who likes that color comes over. For each groupie at your house at a given time after the first, you get a VP "gift".)
Game ends after a set number of rounds and is about 45 minutes I think. It's light, it's cute, but it's not earthshattering though either.
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Anye Mercy
United States
Arlington
TX
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Played with James Miller and Ward Batty. Very similar to previous versions but this one has a couple new things. Each station has one or more chits with a number on it, in decreasing value. Each player has three passengers that they can add to the board when they build a station. Once a passenger is on the board, the player can choose as their action to move that passenger as far as he wants along existing routes, picking up VP chits along the way. They can use their own routes for free but can also travel opponents' routes by playing a passenger card (in the train deck). Also, there are new 4+ wild cards that can only be used in segments of four or more tiles - these only cost 1 action point to pick up unlike other wilds that cost two.
It adds a nice element to the game without being overwhelming. I'd still probably use the original as a gateway game but I slightly prefer this one to T2R:Europe.
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13.
Board Game: 2038
[Average Rating:6.99 Overall Rank:1246]
Anye Mercy
United States
Arlington
TX
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18xx in space! I was looking forward to playing this again, but ended up feeling really crappy thanks to problems with my meds. So it didn't go all that well. Other players were Joe Huber, Joe Rushanan, Michael Tsuk, and Mark Geary. My lack of enjoyment of the game had nothing to do with either the game or the company but only to being totally zonked out and barely conscious.
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Anye Mercy
United States
Arlington
TX
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My favorite new game of the event. It's a two-player heavy-weight from my DC Gamer buddy Jason Matthews and Ananda Gupta. I had been looking forward to playing it based on buzz but wasn't sure I'd like it, given that I'm not really a wargamer and I don't appreciate the cold war theme as much as others (esp. male others) do. But, I was very happy with the game. I played with Charlie Davis and the game went really long (10pm - 3am) but there was really very little downtime and it was very engaging with lots of choices. Sure, there is luck but it isn't overwhelming. I'd heard that it was very difficult to win as the U.S. but somehow I pulled it off at the beginning of the 10th round.
I ordered this as soon as I got home.
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Anye Mercy
United States
Arlington
TX
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Played in the Can't Stop tournament with Dan Luxembourg, Bryan Johnson, and Jonobie Ford. We were all being fairly cautious with our rolling but Jonobie came out as the leader pretty quickly. She had two columns before we knew it and was very close with the third. Luckily she won because I had to leave for the airport soon after!
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16.
Board Game: Fudge
[Average Rating:0.00 Unranked]
Anye Mercy
United States
Arlington
TX
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We didn't actually play the linked game but we did play a Fudge! RPG adventure led by the creator, Steffan O'Sullivan. It was a bunnies and burrows adventure where I reprised my former role of "Sprig", the nervous seer bunny who likes spiders and caves and hates humans. I won't spoil the adventure for those who may get to play it later but it was tons of fun, as it was the last time I played one of Steffan's games.
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Anye Mercy
United States
Arlington
TX
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I really am an idiot because I didn't know half these questions. And even sometimes when I was supposed to be an idiot, I got the questions right by mistake. I also was horrible at guessing who was lying, was wrong almost every time. Other players were Noreen Fair, Richard Glanzer, Jason Matthews, Dominic Crapuchettes, and Bobby Warren. I think Noreen won but can't remember for sure. I'm not a party gamer really so this isn't my cuppa but we did all laugh at the things each other didn't know.
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Anye Mercy
United States
Arlington
TX
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Played with Ben Corliss, Nate Beeler, and Dug Steen. Lots of laughs had by all. Ben wanted me to partner with him for the tournament but I had a dinner engagement so didn't think I'd be back in time (and wasn't). It was fun though.
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Anye Mercy
United States
Arlington
TX
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Played one of Dug Steen's prototypes.
Didn't get a chance to play the newest version of Kevin Nunn's prototype Zong Zhi (sp?) - which I loved when I played it last time, but that lots of people have said is exceptional now.
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Anye Mercy
United States
Arlington
TX
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This is really the main new game that I wanted to play that I didn't get a chance to. Alan is one of my favorite designers and so I look forward to playing this. I've heard this is lighter than the last couple games Hangman's released.
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Anye Mercy
United States
Arlington
TX
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Dominic Crapuchettes just reminded me that we played this together too, along with most of the You Must Be An Idiot crowd. He won with the tie-breaker (we both had 8 worms but he had a higher numbered tile).
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Anye Mercy
United States
Arlington
TX
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Played a quick one of this while having my Taco Bell breakfast with.... darnit, why can't I remember?!?! Was it Larry Chong?
Anyway, I need to buy this game. Not just because Blokus is fun, but because this game comes with BOTH of my favorite color pieces: purple and orange.
Booyah!
I won, but not by a huge amount.
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Moorpark
California
North Andover
Massachusetts
Arlington
TX
(Entries are not in chronological order)