I am just wrapping up my second visit to the Gathering. I had a great time, and even played a few games. I was one of the early comers and will have been here for 11 days by the time I leave on Monday.

I'm not currently as active in regular gaming as most people at the Gathering, or as most people on the Geek, or as I was a year ago. I now live out of the country, without my games, and without any game group. So my perspective is a little different. Perhaps as a result, I learned a few things.

So what did I learn? I am not a collector. I don't htink I ever really have been, not even close (I guess it depends who I compare to, but certainly compared to folks here), but I used to at least want to get most/all games I liked to play. I've come to realize that I'm happy to just be able to play games I enjoy. I neither need to own a game just because I like it, nor do I even need to try every game, even games by big designers/publishers. It's a bit of a relief, actually.

At my first Gathering, I made a list of games I wanted to try. The list was long, but entirely tractable. I think I mostly accomplished my goal. This time I had no such list. The new games I tried were simply what looked cool to me, what was popular (at least once), or what I got roped into when folks were looking for one more. It was actually much more relaxed this way. But I certainly played many many fewer new-to-me games than I expected.

So here's a report of sorts, of what I played. For better or worse, I am not as "detail oriented" as many folks here, and don't track every game played, what time, who was in it, who won, scores, colors, phases of the moon, etc. So this list is the games I remember playing, with random comments about each.

Stuff I saw more than a couple games of but didn't play myself:
1960
Prototypes (somehow I didn't play any this time)
Tribun (heard good things--didn't get a chance to try)
Descent (there was a big table with this setup for most of the time)
Various miscellaneous rail games
Pandemic
Ticket To Ride Card Game (seemed pretty popular--maybe I'll get one in tomorrow)
In The Year of The Dragon
Cuba
Kingsburg
Hamburgum
Power Grid (w/ expansions)
Probably a few more that I can't remember.

I suspect I'll get a few more games of Tichu in in the next 20 hours before I need to leave to head back to Beijing.