The Long and Short of the Gathering
Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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I know that some people get a bit distressed when others post their recap of games played at The Gathering. Others love to see what was going on, no matter what convention (Essen, Origins, BGG Con, etc). I'm here to please the latter group and also to simply create a semi-permanent record of my activities.
Usually, these lists are in chronological order. But I realize that I'd lose readership around entry number 3 if I did that, given that the first day began late at night and, therefore, was more of the social fare. And since I am anal quite the cataloger, I've got data out the wazoo. So, I've sliced and diced it and decided to present it to you from longest game(s) to shortest. That puts all the strategy games up near the front, and that's what most folks on this site want to read about.
I've also categorized the games into genres so that I could see where my gaming time went. Most people, self included, would think I play 90% "party" games at conventions. I was surprised to find that I played more strategy games than any other type of game. This exercise also led me to finally realize exactly what I think of as a "party" game. To me, that is a game where creativity and humor are the main components and strategy is almost not an issue and final score is truly insignificant. Here are the categories of games I played at the Gathering (more details at the end of the list):
- Word games
- Knowledge games
- Party games
- Strategy games
- "Old" games (games that were played only for nostalgic purposes or those games which simply don't fit anywhere else)
Enough of this, on to the recap. Sorry for any typos, I'm trying to get this out before work ends today. 
For those intimidated by the length of this list, you can see the snapshot here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/plays/bydate/user/Randy+cox/sta...
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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Of course, I can't get started without covering a few bases. The first one is the whole concept of the event--to get together with friends. I've been attending this shebang since 1994 and every successive year, I find that it's more about catching up with what's been going on with friends over the past 12 months. I see most of these people only once per year, now that I no longer have the luxury of attending the WBC (not enough vacation, y'know). So, I really look forward to these get togethers.
It turns out that this year I played against 54 other people, not including the people who play Werewolf (I didn't write down all the names, and can you really say you're hanging out with someone across the room from you whose only communication is a big thumbs down at key moments?). Here are those I played with. The usual suspects are highlighted (those with whom I played at least 10 different sessions).
Tidbit: Stephen Glenn is the "Usual Suspect" who played the longer games. He averaged over 40 minutes per game with me. My average game lasted 36.5 minutes. Therefore, Stephen is so much a more serious gamer than the rest of these folk.
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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The other thing I have to point out is the gaming time, or lack there of. At a younger age, I thought of gaming events as a requirement to play games non-stop, 'round the clock. That's not the case anymore. The other long-time Gatheringites I primarily hang out with are no longer into that either. They actually take afternoon naps (yep, we're geezers). The ol' bod just won't put up with more than about 14 hours of activity in a day, 16 if we push it. But my breaks aren't for naps, like ol' Bobby and Bill. Nope, my breaks are to take care of life's necessities (eat, groom, sleep at night) and children.
Yes, indeedie, we travel with the kiddos. This is not a means of thumbing my nose at official Gathering no-kid policy. In fact, I'm all in favor of keeping the Gathering adult-only. I wouldn't bring the kids if we didn't have a means of keeping them completely away from the basement (where the gaming ballrooms are). Our kids have never ventured down there and when they ask, I tell them those stairs go down to the part of the hotel where meetings take place.
What we do is to either a) alternate which parent has kid duty as we've done in some past years or b) bring Grandma along and get an extra room and let her do all the kid duty (which she loves). Those are, to me, the only options for Gatheringers with kids--external child care or divide-and-conquer, but in both cases, one must keep the kids as far removed from any gaming as possible. I'd be horrified if our kids got beyond the perimeter and into the open space of gaming and I'd never try to usurp Alan's rule by trying to get a parent co-op arranged for sharing childcare. After all, all kids are different; this is a vacation; and the kids are more important than to coop them up in a room while supposedly having fun. OK, rant off. Suffice it to say that I strongly agree with Alan's rules and wish to abide by them above and beyond just the letter of the law.
But that does explain why there are big gaps in each day of gaming.
You can see that we never got downstairs before 10 am each day. There are two reasons for that. First, you gotta feed the kids (and Grandma, and ourselves). That takes time, along with getting them attired and pumped for a day of wonderful outings. Second, hardly any gamers are around before that time anyway. If you go into the ballroom before 9, you're likely to see one lone table of 4 or 5 people playing a very serious game. They probably arranged for that particular session time months before the Gathering.
After breakfast, we get to game until the late afternoon when Grandma returns and we start the long procession of eating dinner, bathing, winding down, and getting them to sleep. Our kids don't cotton to having others put them to sleep, not even Grandma. So we don't make it back down to the ballroom until around 9-10 pm. From there, it's time for social games, though oft times Rachel is called away by Grandma if our youngest awakens (he sometimes has night terrors and is soothed only by his mom--well soothe is a strong term; tolerates her presence is more like it). So we play games where her departure (or mine if our daughter wakes) won't cause problems. From the chart, you can see that I'm usually in the bedroom by a little after midnight, except for the two nights I played Werewolf.
One more chart to show the waves of gaming life during a week in Columbus. The bright green is actual game playing time (not counting between/before/after sessions or the rules teaching). Blue is other time in the ballroom between games. Dark red/purple is time spent away from the hotel doing stuff with the family. The interesting thing to me is that we did more total "stuff" on the start and end days (mostly due to driving) and bottomed out mid-week. But the gaming and ballroom time had inverse curves.
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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On to the games. I picked up Stone Age from the prize table at last year's Gathering and had yet to play it. Mick Uhl and Cliff Willis apparently like the game a lot and offered to teach it to us first thing Wednesday morning. Turned out to be the longest game of the week at 103 minutes. I have to say that I think it's a nifty game but runs on a bit too long. If anything, I really did discover that at roughly the one hour mark I begin to wonder when a game will end.
Scores:
Cliff 164
Mick 164
Rachel 139 (new)
Randy 104 (new)
So, this was a prize table snare from last year that I may play again. Speaking of gifts received from the prize table... Reverend LaBoon (of the Church of the Subgenius) brought along a game he has owned for six years without playing--Balancing Moon. He figured he'd get Bill and others to play it on a lark. Now, before I arrived, they did just that. They played Balancing Moon, up to the point where they decided it was horrible and put it back up on the prize table. But the interesting thing is that Bobby had never opened the box since he grabbed it in April of 2003.
Lo and behold, inside the box was a certificate granting the bearer free admission to the 2004 Gathering of Friends. Makes me wonder what might be in some of the games I've picked up before and never investigated.
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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Long ago, at a WBC or Avaloncon, I played Twenty Questions and it dragged on forever. History has repeated itself. We sat down to play this knowledge-based game (hence, not a party game) a little after 11 Wednesday night. As often happens with the social games, someone starts a move towards playing (which takes us geezers quite awhile) and then a flood of people join in (bless your heart, Denise). We had so many that we paired into teams and still had five pawns looking at that incredibly long movement track.
This shot came early in the game, at which time the Randy/Bill team was kicking butt. Donna and Rachel were a distant second and Tery/Bobby were plodding along playing the role of tortoise. But we all know the fable--slow and steady wins the race.
Now it may seem that these people were bored, and truth be told, some were. Many talked of the two or even three hour game of 20 Questions, but I'm here to tell you it was merely 98 minutes long. And some disliked the random elements of the game. See, everyone is trying to find the answer one fact at a time. You choose a number (1-20) and the reader tells you the fact. It may be "I am female" or it may be "I saw the beginning of WWI." So, yeah, there is some luck. Additionally, it could say "Lose your turn" or "all aunts and uncles move forward 3." But usually, it's a reasonable fact and the game flows fine. The only problem is that it flows long. For 5-player/team games, the start position should be moved up about 20 or 30 spaces.
In the end, it took us about 30 question cards for someone to reach the end, and that was Tery/Bobby. Second through fifth places went to Bill/Randy, Donna/Rachel, Stephen/Bob C, and Mark/Keith.
Note: for those of you who do not fully log your games here on BGG, shame on you. You can track a good bit of information for future reference, as seen here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/play/details/2846413
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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During the "early" gaming session of the final gaming day (Saturday #2), we started to get around to playing some of the games Bill (puffinge) requested. See, he had looked through my collection (at my request) to find games he'd like to play. He picked a lot. Some were nostalgic and others were just good games he hadn't played in awhile. Others were random psycho factors--games that sounded good in the description but were of totally unknown quality. Schrille Stille was one of his requests. He had played it in the past and enjoyed it.
And it is a good game. For those unfamiliar, you're manipulating the Top 14 (!?) records chart, trying to get your label's performers into the better scoring positions (like #1 with a bullet). You're also betting on who will perform best. And it has one of the neatest contraptions in all of gaming--a means of providing truly secret voting for board manipulation with chips provided by each player.
Well, we got off like gangbusters, progressing halfway up the scoring track in a couple of turns. But then, as always, this game bogs down. Movement becomes more restricitive and players start bunching up near the head of the track (except for poor Eric). In the end, it took 84 minutes for someone to score the 70th point and end the game. It is, in fact, about 15 or 20 minutes too long. But it's still fun to hang out with old (and new) friends.
Scores:
Randy 76
Rachel 71
Stephen G 69 (new)
Bill 55
Eric 51 (new) (surging at the end)
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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I played no games more than twice during the week, and we now get to our first of those--Diamonds Club. Now, I had never heard of this before, though apparently it had already made something of a splash here on BGG. What can I say, I'm out of the Game du Jour loop these days.
Ed Farmheir (or is it Fahrmeier or something else?) kindly taught us this one on Monday morning. Getting the rules straight wasn't very hard and, as usual, my wife Rachel devised a strategy quickly and went on to destroy us (she will no doubt deny the notion that she is any better at unraveling strategies than anyone else). See, Ed and Bobby had played before and were trying to advance quickly on the money and technology tracks. I decided to go green for trees. Rachel had other plans, advancing only to the first advancement level of the money and tech track by the end of the game and pumping no advancement into trees at all. Instead, she gobbled up two sets of animals/parks and ended the game.
83 minutes--Scores:
Rachel 65 (new)
Bobby 57
Ed 53
Randy 45 (new)
Turnabouts is fair play, so on Wednesday afternoon we taught the game to Aaron Bass. This time, Rachel adopted a different strategy, but whatever Aaron did crushed us.
74 minutes--Scores:
Aaron 61 (new)
Rachel 47
Randy 43
Keith 38
This is my first mention of my cousin Keith (edit: I see that he was briefly noted above, but this is the first time I noticed his name). This was his first Gathering and I must say that he had a ball. He also became known as "Cuzin Keith" almost universally (sorry, Keith). We go way back, like we were both born the same year in the same county, but that can be said of a lot of people. We do get together occasionally for gaming but I dare say I played more games with him in this week than I have in the past decade otherwise.
And what do I think about this game? Well, to me it's just another in the long succession of get stuff to get things to finally get victory points, layer-upon-layer games. It all started with Puerto Rico, I guess, though you could go back to Falsche Fuffziger too. Recently, it seems that Thurn & Taxis (which I don't recall well) and Notre Dame fall into this category. Let's call them the "slow build" games. They are well put together, but just don't grab me. I'd play this again, but wouldn't purchase it.
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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Just before teaching Aaron Diamonds Club, we found ourselves with six people and a great choice for that figure is always ShowManager. Now, someone had to leave, but Dan Blum joined us to get us back up to the perfect number of opponents. Half of the table was comprised of noobs, but that didn't stop Eric from figuring things out quickly. There was much "Producers"-esque tanking of plays to get money for the other shows and jocularity, jocularity all around. The game took 73 minutes and did not seem to overstay its welcome.
Scores:
Eric 49 (new)
Randy 44
Rachel 42
Dan 37
Keith 26 (new)
Chris Handy 23 (new)
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8.
Board Game: Oasis
[Average Rating:6.79 Overall Rank:551]
Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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Monday afternoon, with us sitting around playing the "What do you want to play" game, Ed offered up Oasis. Now, I hadn't played in years and Rachel and Keith never had. So Ed taught us another one. At 72 minutes, it didn't seem too long, but it was right on the cusp. I'll say that once you pass the hour-and-ten-minute mark with this game, you're certainly into Tipping Point territory.
Scores:
Rachel 92 (new)
Randy 91
Ed 53
Bobby 47
Keith 43 (new)
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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I first encountered the game Viva Pamplona at the Gathering in 1995 or 1996 when Richard Borg taught it to us. I picked up a copy shortly thereafter and we played it a few times. Well, this happens to be one of Bill's favorite games he does not own, so he put it on my "Please Bring" list. I was happy to oblige.
What a difference a decade and a half makes. Before, this was just a comical running-of-the-bulls simulation (really) with lots of good-natured ribbing. But since the last time I played, Viagra has come along with a truly horrible jingle. You know, that "Viva Viagra" ditty. Well, just guess what the theme song for this game is now, given that Viagra and Pamplona have the same number of syllables?
Anyway, Rachel again grabbed a quick strategical understanding and proceded to trounce us in 66 minutes, just right for this game. In the end, the bull surged and caught a few of us still trying to work our ways into the arena. Note: we played with our best recollection of the rules, since there were no English rules in my box (I had loaned it out earlier, but don't know if that's cause for dissapearance--I may simply have never had any). Anyway, I've printed the ones here on BGG and we got a lot of rules wrong. We made arrow dice faces mean movement of 2 to 5, not 0 to 6 and we deducted 3 for being in the bull's space when it snorts (in fact that's a +3). We also did not deduct one per space behind the bull when it snorts or at the end of the game. We also didn't award points if you were slightly in front of the bull but in an orange space, which is incorrect. All in all, we got just about every detail wrong, but still enjoyed it quite a bit.
Scores:
Rachel 50 (new)
Randy 25
Bill 21
Eric 16 (new)
Keith 15 (new)
Bobby 4
Note that this makes the sixth (out of seven) strategy game on the list so far. Take that all you "Randy only plays party game" folk.
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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I last played Werewolf in a hotel in Connecticut when the US invaded Afghanistan. Of course, that wasn't why I was in Connecticut. Rachel and I were there for the wedding of Aaron Bass and Sarah DiGeussepi (that's just a guess on the spelling). Anyway, we played with other gamers that evening and I haven't played since. Haven't really wanted to. But there is sometimes a problem with playing during the night shift at the Gathering. See, Bill and Bobby and Eric and a few others seem to think that they're supposed to play Werewolf damn near every night--three or four times. They usually are coming upstairs when we're going down for breakfast in the morning.
Well, this year, I broke down and played twice, significantly reducing my Mean Time Between Werewolf Sessions figure. And I have to say, I was not all that impressed. Oh, to be sure, it's still fun to play with friends. But I just don't like all the "ultimate" characters. I would prefer to play with just werewolves, villagers, and one seer. Why all this newfangled stuff?
The first game was played with only 11 players (moderator included) on Tuesday night. I was one of the (dead) villagers and the wolves were caught. It took only 41 minutes, but wasn't all that special.
The second game was a fiasco. A truly horrid role was added--the ghost. See, the first person who died got to pass along a single letter from the grave on each ensuing turn, spelling out something (other than the name) which would point the villagers to the werewolves. Thus, it became a game of simply picking off werewolves each turn (the ghost spelled out colors, so "P" nailed the purple-shirted werewolves quickly and M-A-R got the maroon ones right after).
I had the role of "minion," a villager who aids the werewolves, but I never got a chance. The seer nailed Bill as a werewolf and he seemed to give in. I wanted to refute the information others got "through the grapevine" by saying I was in fact the seer. That would have hopefully made Eric think that Heli wasn't actually the seer (she was) or that I was a wolf protecting my buddies, which would have bought the wolves one extra turn while I was eaten. But Bill quickly said, "I'm not a wolf, now vote" and he was hanged. Maybe he just saw the inevitable writing and wanted to get this thing over with. It lasted about 90 minutes and had 22 players.
I may be done with this game until someone wants to play a vanilla game again.
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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On Tuesday morning, Bob Sumner and Bob Cranshaw (the Bob-sy twins?) were looking for a game and apparently one of their favorites is Traumfabrik. So, they gave us a refresher and we added Ken Drake to make it a fivesome.
Now, this is a game I actually enjoy but rarely get to play. But since we don't go to a game group anymore (kids, y'know) almost all of our playing is quicker stuff for two players. So this, like the entire week, was a great chance to play a good multiplayer game. I really don't recall much except that I put on Gone With the Wind and one really crappy adventure movie which was poised to win the "worst movie" award until a Knizia vehicle was put on by Ken late in the final round. Argh. 73 minutes was just about right.
Scores:
Ken 78
Bob C 64
Randy 61
Rachel 54
Bob S 54
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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And now we reach the first boxed party game on the list (since Werewolf is really just a parlor game)--the old classic Wise & Otherwise. You know this game, don't you? It's another in the bluff-the-answer genre (Balderdashlike) only instead of definitions and people and such, you're coming up with the end of a short saying. An example might be: "There's an old Peruvian saying--He who sleeps in the trees..." and you fill in the blank. One person reads, everyone else votes, and points are awarded for getting the correct answer (written by the reader) or getting others to vote for your answer.
Now, 9 players is a lot for any party game but for these bluff-the-answer games, it gets pretty tedious because everyone has to be the reader once (to avoid unbalanced scoring). This exercise took 58 minutes, and that's just a tad too long even for a great game like this. I like to limit such games to 5 or 6 players, but it's hard to turn down people who want to get their yearly fix of these kinds of games (yes, such people do exist).
Scores:
Bill 12
Eric 12
Denise 11
Keith 8 (new)
Randy 7
Lisbet 7
Rachel 5
Scott Nicholson 4
Chris Esko 4
Amusing factiod: of the 50-odd different games played this week, 5 begin with "W" and 7 come after "U" in the alphabet. Important stuff.
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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So Bill asked for many games to be brought and I added several of my own. I added Eagle Eye Detective Agency because Bill likes deduction games. However, I also knew that he dislikes cooperative games, and this one is a communal effort. Nonetheless, he allowed this one to come to the table on Wednesday afternoon.
In this game, players separately investigate map locations (in Big City) looking for clues to figure out the who/whatdunnit. In our case, it was about a fellow who had disappeared a couple years ago but was now being sought to collect his sister's estate. Well, we moved around (limited supply of cards for that) and found lots of stuff and made our guesses, which were a little convoluted. The official solution was much more vague than what we came up with.
While I like the game, I think it maxes out at 2 players, maybe 3. More than that and someone doesn't get as much movement as the others. It took 57 minutes to complete and I'll credit the foursome (Randy, Rachel, Bill, and Stephen Lesnik) with a victory.
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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Next, we turn to another party game that gets incredibly long with more and more players. In What Was Y'all Thankin' Of (our parlor version of the game later boxed by Richard Garfield), each player must be the category thinker-upper once and each round you have to go around reading out your list for scoring purposes. So the time between turns AND the number of turns grows rapidly as more players are added. We ended up with 11, so it took 51 minutes to play. Since I kept score, I"ll just detail it now (note, in this game, the most points that could be scored for one answer was 10, not 11, as the group decided to zero out any answers that were selected by all of us).
Bobby's category: Rock 'n' Roll Bands - His final score (243)
Chris: Toy Brands - (238)
Randy: Planets (Jupiter scored 10) - (232)
Dan: Academy Award Winning Movies - (230)
Bill: Parts of the Body Above the Waist - (221)
Eric: Breeds of Dogs - (213)
Gina Mai: Beatle Songs - (209)
Denise: States (Ohio and Maryland scored 10) - (207)
Julie: Colors (Red scored 10) - (201)
Will: TV Shows Featuring an Animal - (188)
Keith: Candy Bars (Snickers scored 10) - (171)
This game closed out my gaming for Monday night.
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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The tally for games requested comes to 24 from Bill, of which 3 were what I call party games. We ended up playing 13 of his requests (1 of which was a party game). I brought along 21 other games of my choosing, 6 of which were party games. We played 9 (3 party) of those. This was one of my tagalongs and it was, in my mind, the hit party game of the Gathering.
Portrayal is a nifty game where you give instructions to the other players about how to sketch a drawing only you can see ("Sun on the left and two ladies talking with balloons flying in the background...oh, and they're wearing mini-skirts and rollerskates...and it looks like one has a poodle in her arms..."). You do this for 90 seconds (we incorrectly played with a 45-second timer, but that still worked fine. When time runs out, everyone stops and the reader can now look at the list of 10 specific points about the pictures to quiz the players.
For each attribute ("The sun is higher than the head of either woman in the picture", "There is an airplane above the balloons", ...) players are awarded a point (opponents grade papers). The reader gets a point if anyone got the attribute correct on their drawing. Great fun, even if you can't draw worth a crap.
I pulled this out on the first night and it was well-received and finished in 55 minutes.
Scores:
Bill 57 (new)
Denise 57 (new)
Julie 52 (new)
Randy 50
Mark D 45 (new)
Bobby 40 (new)
Will 37 (new)
Chris E 37 (new)
It was requested again on Thursday afternoon by Denise. Wonder why? This game took only 39 minutes.
Scores:
Denise 40
Bill 37
Rachel 31
Ed 31 (new)
Keith 30
Randy 29
It was also borrowed by yet another group later on.
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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The only other party game to clock in at or above the three-quarter hour mark was Compatibility. This is indeed a classic game, but only if you have the Mattel version (though I heard rumors that Barnes and Nobles was going to publish the original again...anyone know?). This game always works, even if you're paired with someone you just met. It's wonderful when that mojo starts flowing and you pick the same image card for "nostalgia" as your partner who you didn't know previously.
Anyway, as Friday was coming to a close, we played this one. Rachel got a call from Grandma near the end of this one, so Jon Ferro took over for her as my partner. Thanks, Jon.
Scores:
Bill M (new?)/Bobby: first
Bill/Keith (new): two spaces back
Randy/Rachel/Jon: four spaces behind winner
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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Midway through the early gaming shift on Tuesday, Rachel mentioned Formula Motor Racing, a game we really enjoy as a 2-player affair. Bill was wary, thinking we were talking about something Formula De-ish. I reassured him that there was nothing in common, so we played this "take that" cardgame. I typically don't like "take that" mechanics at all, but there are plenty of "help yourself" options to offset the spitefulness in the game.
However, we discovered something in this six player, 45-minute, session. It's not nearly as good with six as with two or three. It gets way too chaotic and opens up the kingmaker problem. But it was still fun, just not three full races worth of fun.
Scores:
Floyd 19 (new)
Bobby 13
Stephen G 13 (new)
Randy 12
Keith 11 (new)
Rachel 10
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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At this point, dear reader (and I suspect the singular is correct by now), we turn to our first word game on the list, BuyWord. This was another Bill request, as he'd read from Mr. Cranky in GeekQuestions that this is so much better than Scrabble. Of course, it's not nearly the game Scrabble is, but it is fine in its own right. So, we taught Bill sometime on Friday afternoon.
The gimmick, as you likely know, is that you purchase your lots of letters each turn (we played the "drafting" variant) and you earn money for each word you make. The money in both instances is the square of the points for all the tiles. Four tiles with a combined value of 7 costs $49, for instance. Players start with $200 and hope to gain from there.
Scores:
Rachel $442
Bill $417 (new)
Randy $378
Bobby $310 (new)
I'd say that it was enjoyable enough to our newbies, but not something they'll rush to play again.
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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I had been wanting to play a game with fellow BGGer Joe Casadonte and the second game of Tuesday morning (after Traumfabrik and before FMR) gave me the opportunity. Joe taught us a game he enjoys--To Court the King. Now, this has been around at the Gathering for awhile, but I've never gotten around to playing it. All I knew was that it was souped-up Yahtzee.
What I discovered is that it's not just souped-up, it's CCGed up. Or maybe Cosmic Encountered-up. Or Puerto Ricoed-up. Whatever, it's got variable powers and I don't tend to like that in a game. But mostly, it's just nowhere near as good as Yahtzee. If I'm gonna invest that much time (44 minutes) in a game of dice rolling for combinations, why not just play the original?
I'm glad Joe took the time to teach us and I'm glad I can now say I've played it. I doubt I'll be playing again, though.
Scores:
Joe: wins as King with 8 3's and an extra die.
Rachel: started final round with 7 6's (no other dice)
Randy: 6 1's plus 3 other dice didn't beat Rachel
Bob C: 5 6's and 4 other dice didn't beat Randy
Will: didn't get to toss in the final round--only 7 dice
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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Ah, the screaming misery of people being burned to death by hot lava. By all rights, this shouldn't be the topic of a fun game, but it really is. On that first Saturday night, after 10 hours of driving and a little late-night gaming, Bobby learned the game Downfall of Pompeii. I, of course, tried my patented Western Strategy (TM) which almost always works. But if you're the only person on that side of the city in a four-player game, more than your fair share of lava will flow in that direction. It did and my folks became crispy critters.
Scores:
Bobby (new) 10
Legend Dan 8
Bill 7
Randy 6
Then, first thing the next morning Eric and Keith got to learn the game
Scores:
Randy 8 (only 3 in the volcano, so won on tiebreaker)
Keith 8
Eric 8
Bobby 7
Interestingly, both games clocked in at 42 minutes. I like that in a game.
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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Another of Bill's favorite games he doesn't owned (in addition to Viva Pamplona) is Sternenhimmel, a game from quite awhile back, in terms of modern games. It's a semi-blind bidding game of occupying constellation stars. Yeah, the theme is pretty bad. Anyway, you place your tokens (valued something like 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 10) on a star of any constellation on the table (there are as many constellations as players in the game and there are 12 total constellations in the box--the Zodiac). If the star you're placing your token on is normal, you place face up. If it's particularly bright, you get to place face down. When a constellation fills up, all tokens are revealed and the player with the most total influence gets first-place victory points. Next most gets second place. Then all other players get one victory point for each token of theirs on the constellation from the winnings of the first place player. In many cases, it pays to be #2 in this game.
The twist is that you also have two doubler tokens (doubles any adjacent star tokens' values) and a black hole (destroys all adjacent tokens unless one or more of those is a black hole, in which case the black holes destroy one another). I may have that backwares, with two black holes and one doubler. But whatever, that's the entire game. It took us 41 minutes and I must say that there is probably a reason I haven't had a hankering to play this one again in the past decade. It's just not all that exciting. If I want the fun of blind bidding (and I like that), I'll go with Aladdin's Dragons.
Scores:
Bill 45
Rachel 36 (new)
Bobby 32
Randy 25
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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The second Saturday didn't get moving very soon because of the flea market. See, a good hour and a half of valuable Gathering time is taken up with a flea market. I am sure some enjoy it (like collectors who sell and get to purchase from others before the "doors open") but it is something of an obstacle to me. Usually, it's done in the early morning (9 or 9:30) and over with by the time I'm done with breakfast, but this year it moved back an hour so that when I got the the ballroom, much was cordoned off and I couldn't get to my stash of games. Minor inconvenience, but inconvenience nonetheless.
So, Stephen picked up a copy of Marracash for something like $15 and wanted to learn it. Rachel bowed out to get our numbers down to four (which always saddens me, as I figure she should be getting to play at least as much as I am). I taught the game to Jim, Stephen, and Floyd with only one rules issue which didn't affect the game all that much. In the end, the others seemed to think that the special item cards (advanced game variant) aren't good but that the game is fine.
Here is half of our game playing (Stephen on the left, Jim on the right).
Funny thing happened in this game. I swear that Jim (on the right, lots of hair and long beard) was humming the tune of "Superstar" from Jesus Christ Superstar. Was he toying with my head? Was I going insane? Mull this over in your mind.
Scores:
Randy 4175
Stephen G 4125
Jim 2350
Floyd 1300
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23.
Board Game: Dixit
[Average Rating:7.52 Overall Rank:70]
Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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Dixit is a French game and I think it was more popular than it would be had it been a Mattel or Hasbro game simply because it's more scarce. Of course, I may be in the minority, as others seemed to love this game. Anyway, the game is another of the party genre of one-answer-is-right, bluff-to-get-people-to-vote-for-your-answer. See, players each have a hand of picture cards, different from all other folk. One person is the on-turn player and places a card face down and states a caption for it (e.g. "Long way from home" or "Happy birthday" or "WTF?"). Everyone places one of their cards face down that purportedly matches the phrase somewhat. Cards are shuffled and turned face up.
Then people choose which card image they think is the "right" answer (the one submitted by the on-turn player). Points are awarded for getting others to vote for you or for guessing the "right" answer. Ho hum.
Now, normally I like these bluff games, but the problem with this one is that the "right" answer may not be the best one (others may have submitted other pictures that better match the caption). Also, there aren't enough cards in the deck, so I imagine replayability would be a problem after just a few plays. Also, the scoring is a little fiddly. If I owned the game, I'd likely use our Balderdash scoring method--one point for each right or bluffed answer and nothing to the on-turn player, but due to the creative nature of this one, that could lead to some abuses.
Our group. Note that people here look no less bored than the folk in the 20 Questions picture.
Scores:
Tery 1st
Rachel 2nd (new)
Gail 3rd (new)
Kenneth 3rd (new)
Mark N 5th
Randy 6th (new)
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Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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It's been awhile on this list since we saw our last knowledge based game (look way back to 20 Questions). Here's another non-party game that some think of that way. Don't get me wrong. It's quite fun and very social, but because knowledge, whether trivial or not, is the cornerstone to doing well in the game, I classify it as Knowledge Based rather than Party.
Anyway, Best of Chronology is much, much better than regular ol' Chronology. The premise is the same--reader gives you a fact and you have to place it properly into your growing time-line based on the date of that fact. Goal is to get a time-line of 10 cards/dates.
In the original, though, you either got the card or not and if you missed, the next player (with better knowledge of how it fits into the time continuum) got a chance to take it. What ended up happening is that players who got their one right every turn still couldn't beat another player who always gets their guess right but happens to sit to the left of a player who misses more often. Game breaker.
Well, "Best of" fixes all that. Now, there is a press-your-luck element, as you can keep trying to acquire cards in your turn, but if you miss, you lose all the ones you had accumulated this turn. And when you miss, the next player doesn't get to steal the card. This makes the game quicker and slants victory towards those who have a broad knowledge of historical events (though not too much, as there are many whammies in the mix). It only took us about three times around the table to finish (rather than the 8 or so for the original game). Still, it took 40 minutes because we had 9 players.
And this game closed out our gaming in Columbus, as it ended after midnight Saturday/Sunday and we had to pack and head out in about 5 hours.
Scores:
Ed 10
Randy 10 (new)
Bobby 5 (new?)
Bill 5
Bruce 5 (new?)
Rachel 5 (new)
Cliff 4
Eric 3
Chris P 1 (two big and one little wipe out)
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25.
Board Game: Maori
[Average Rating:6.63 Overall Rank:1019]
Randy Cox
United States
Clemson
South Carolina
1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
The Back Alley gets no respect.
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Maori should be quicker than it is (took 39 minutes on Thursday). It's just a game of selecting tiles each turn and placing them on your mat. I'm not a big tile placement fan and this one just didn't have a lot of decisions to make. Sorry, I know it's new and therefore supposed to be loved on BGG, but I just didn't dig it. There, I said it. What did you really expect?
Scores:
Randy 44 (new)
Stephen G 41 (new?)
Rachel 39 (new)
Brian 35
Ed 33
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1024x768 works just fine - Don't Wide the Site!
King of Prussia
Pennsylvania
Clemson
South Carolina
I enjoyed every single game I played, because I liked playing with the people there.
As to the boxed products (the games), of the 54 I played, I think that I'd only actively avoid 6 of them in the future. That's a pretty good ratio, I think.
Garland
Texas
I wish they had this when I was growing up in Columbus, but they wouldn't have invited me then either since I was too young!
Brad
Clemson
South Carolina
Garland
Texas
Thanks for the clarification. Those games just don't seem like what I was playing in "old times" though.
I was more into Avalon Hill (or The Avalon Hill Gaming Company - TAHGC after a lawsuit) or SPI (later Victory Games). As usual, I don't fit either place!
Brad