Williamsburg, Virginia
August 7 – 10, 2003
Part I
Well, we’re now home safely, after a day and half of checking out Washington D.C., then the long haul home via LA. Matty‘s sus’d out the whole plane thing now and he was great, sleeping half of the LA flight, and then about 9 hours out of the 14 hour Sydney flight.
We had a terrific time at Gulf Games and would like to extend our deepest thanks to everyone who welcomed us so warmly. The effort put into the organization of the event was extraordinary, and the camaraderie throughout our time there was a joy. It was wonderful being able to discover that the people you read of from afar are every bit as nice as you’d ever wish. On behalf of Fleur, myself and the bub, our thanks!!
I’ll no doubt write up some gaming notes as time allows over the next day or two, but until then … may your every roll unleash a trombone. 🙂
Part II
Fleur & I were visiting the eastern seaboard for a holiday and Greg graciously extended an invitation for us to tag along to Gulf Games. We had a terrific time, the event was superbly run and the camaraderie and bonhomie was outstanding. We were made to feel very welcome, and thoroughly enjoyed putting faces, personalities and voices to the people I’d been chatting with over email for years now.
Anyway, it’s not a full wrap, I’ve not written up a bunch of games that I’ve talked about before, but here’s a run-down of new game’ experiences and other highlights from our Gulf Games visit. I’ve pretty much just talked about the games here, but if you want the full goss on people, I’ll see what I can do. Did you know that Stven Carlberg for instance is … or Dave Vander Ark was seen doing …
SPOT THE X – On our drive from Orlando up the seaboard, we couldn’t help ourselves occasionally breaking into games. First up, whilst driving into St. Augustine, FLA, was Spot The American Flag. Fleur won 10-4 after just 43 seconds of play (We don’t come from a flag culture you understand, so we drove through a state of continual amazement). This game was too short, so second game was Spot The Swamp whilst driving through FLA, GA, SC. Sadly I lost all those as well. These games need to give the driver a head start to be fair. A rating of 2 after 2 games. Btw, coming from a continent where the biggest rivers are as wide as a street, we found the size of rivers we’d never even heard of amazing!
TEN AMPHORAS – an obscure du Poel game, providing me the required Frank Branham experience on my first night. It’s a tile pickup game. A 7×7 grid is filled with 40 tiles (10 amphora pictures made up of 4 tiles each), with the 9 tic tac toe’ spaces containing hosage tiles to complete the grid. You can move 2 or 3 spaces containing one right hand turn, and you can pick up the last tile you move off. Your mission is to pick up complete sets of amphoras, so there’s a fair bit of analysis going on to determine route planning – which is the easiest to pick up, who else might go for it. The problem is you can only keep two tiles in your hand, and any tile placed in front of you that is less than a set of 3 in an amphora can be picked up by anyone who lands on a hosage tile. So the trick is to get three tiles all in one amphora in successive turns, and lay them down immediately. These are now worth 1 point and are unstealable. A completed amphora of 4 tiles is worth 4 points. It was an ok game, but nothing to search for. 30 minutes. We played with 4, but it may have better downtime with less players.
ZENDO – I really enjoyed it as a pastime type game. Win or lose, it was just plain fun trying to work stuff out as the grasshopper, and just as much fun being the Master enlightening his students as to the true Buddha nature of the Koan.
Crokinole – Fleur & I really enjoyed our games. It’s ideal for chatting away whilst playing – which was perfect for us trying to get know everyone as fast as we could. I *can* confirm that if ever you wanted to find Dave Bernazzani, this was an easy starting point.
NEW ENGLAND – It went straight onto the buy list from Ward’s shop after 1 play, and two games last night with the Pymble crew lands this one with an 8 rating. I love the go first – pay more’ mechanism, even when I get hosed paying 4 and there’s no good cards out. The balance between tiles and cards is finely wrought, always wanting more than you can get. Good stuff in a 60 minute package.
PIRATENBILLIARDS – this goes into the Crokinole category, a dexterity game where you can chat away whilst playing. It’s fun to play whilst it’s out, but too tricky for casual play and not addictive enough for a purchase.
PAPUA – urghhh. A competitive race, but you can only move if you’re part of a group with other players, and then you have to move the whole group. Which begs the question, why bother if it’s just going to come down to a crap-shoot in the final 6 spaces when whoever rolls an exact count wins. And too nasty. If you land on a player’s pawn, you can send that pawn 50 spaces back to the start – and in a single roll game, that’s too far. I rate this an urghhh.
DOMAINE – Take Lowenherz, strip out all the slow stuff (the bidding duels), make knights a bit less powerful by putting in an uber-alliance card, and bingo, you’ve got a sped up, more balanced game. It’s still a multi-player territory carve out game though which relies on everyone doing their bit to keep leaders in check regardless of the fact that it’s easier to pick on weaker players, so this isn’t my favourite genre. I won’t be picking it up (already have Lowenherz), but would happily play if someone else brought it along. It’s probably a 7 or so.
CAPT’N CLEVER – It was ok, but just not very exciting. It’s not hard to work out what your best’ play is each turn, and not hard to give a hard’ destination to the next player. Then, let player interaction take it’s course and hope it helps you get where you want to be. I give this about a 5.
M – Purely abstract, but lots of decision tree to navigate without it being overwhelming, and I liked it enough to buy it on discount. A 7 rating.
DER GARTEN DES SONNENKONIGS – It’s a perpetual auction game of plots of land that are really hard to value, as their worth is determined by how soon surrounding plots of land are auctioned off and that’s largely out of your hands. But given it’s a rich get richer game, winning stuff early seems good. We all rated it a 6 or so, ok to play, but nothing really sparkly to make it stand out. Like all auction games, you probably need to play with gamers who know the game inside out to make it shine, but it just didn’t seem varied or interesting enough to want to get to that point.
EDEL, STEIN & REICH – Granted it boils down to a guessing game (it’s not a bluffing game, you don’t get to up the ante), but it’s about as good as a guessing game gets. It has great groan factor, and captures all the flavour of Basari. If anything, it improves it, replacing the dice race with a money grab and providing score card opportunities when a 5th player is involved. The loss of board is little loss at all.
MINI FORMULA DE – it’s exactly the same feel as big brother, but 2 lanes instead of 3, no 6th gear, 1 stop corners only, and 20 chips to chuck in whenever you overstep a mark instead of pre-allocating 20 points across the categories and hoping you got the allocation right. There’s absolutely no need to get this if you’ve already loaded up with the real stuff, but if you ‘re without a race game, it’s decent fun. I’ve always thought it’s a pretty average game without all the league trappings to dress it up though, and you don’t get it here – the race track is just a made up track.
OCTILES – an abstract cross between Chinese Checkers and Iron Horse … find out where best to lay a complex track piece to advance your pawn from one side to the other and move your guys over as far and fast as possible. Prone to paralysis, but a fun challenge to untangle.
BLOKUS – a fun 20 min exercise in squeezing out of jams.
ZICKE ZACKE HUHNERKACKE – there’s no hiding here … concentrate 100% on memorizing 12 tiles (revealing them in correct order allows you to move) or lose in a hurry.
SMARTY PARTY – trivia, list style. Go round and round trying to pick say 6 out of 10 for a question that has a list of answers. Each incorrect answer gets you a score. Low score wins. The questions were a bit too America-centric for Fleur and I (that’s our excuse anyway), but we had a fun time with it, and it’s a nice pastime game.
THE NEWLYWED GAME – we wet ourselves laughing through this one. Dave and Jenn are a crack-up!! All questions and answers fall under confidentiality agreements thankfully, so the amount of trouble the guys got into cannot be revealed.
KING’S BREAKFAST – great 15 min fluff. I went and immediately bought it and it’s had a heap of playing last night alone.
KOHL, KIES & KNETE – so now I know what everyone’s been talking about all this time. This was a fun game but you can’t take it seriously. It’s all about perception and whining, and the luck of the cards helps. Get in on a heap of deals, offer choices, and have lots of cards when others don’t!
DIE FLIEGENDE HOLLANDER – I didn’t love it, but it was interesting enough to try again at some point. Unfortunately the game disappeared into the gathering dusk mist just after we finished.
OHIO – a simple rolling trick game where everyone starts with an identical hand (1 through 10 and a tichu phoenix like card worth -10) and you see who can take the most in face value. It was interesting to play several hands and see how the tactics and group think moved the game in different paths, but ultimately pretty soulless and too simple to be addictive.
INTRIGUE – I had a LOT of fun in this one. I was able to effectively deploy the baby strategy – hold a 7 month in your lap and beg successfully for kind assistance in funding schooling, food, clothing and shelter. Little Matthew would go goo-goo and the gaming hard nuts in Michael Weston, Frank Hamrick, Ward Batty and Ed Rozmiarek would go ga ga ;-). The game is probably a popularity contest in most respects – if people perceive you as a leader or a regular winner, then you simply don’t get awarded paying jobs by the other players and there’s nothing much you can do about it except whine harder. So I’m not sure I’d pull it out too often, but jeez, all the expostulating and creative cases for the dough were fun.
CONFUSION – I really really liked this one. Imagine 12 pieces each deployed on an 11×11 grid. The pieces each move differently – one like a king, one 4 spaces forward only, one up to 2 spaces orthogonally, etc. You can see your opponent’s pieces, but not your own. So you try to move a piece. If you can’t move it, you’ve learnt that it can’t be about half the possible candidates. If you can move it, you’ve also ruled out all the possible pieces that couldn’t move to that space. You gradually learn more and more about your pieces, and as you develop your knowledge, you start to focus on grabbing the puck that starts in the middle of the board and moving it the opposite end of the grid for the win. Your opponent’s moves also tell you about your pieces – there’s Chess like capture, so presumably he’s moved somewhere I can’t land … or was he bluffing. There’s a Checkers like crowning rule as well. Very, very cool. And I wished it was still being published.
DAS VERSHWINDEN – Al, K-Ban, Greg and myself pulled this out late Sat night, but sadly the Wand of Wander and the Dice Of Destiny were both somehow missing from the set, and the game can’t be played without them. Our mooted World Championship vanished before our eyes, and we were all suitably distraught at the thought of the set being incomplete. As somewhat compensation, we pulled out Winds Of Plunder to have a lash at.
WINDS OF PLUNDER – I really liked this one. It took a few turns for everything to click into gear and the possible strategies to unfold, but once it did, the game rocked along merrily and finished in an hour or so. On a turn, you pray to the Gods for the winds to blow your way (bid vp’s in the fist) or if you don’t care, bid nothing. Highest bidder in the winning wind direction declares who the first player will be. Then sail along to an island in the Caribbean that the winds allow you to reach. Each island has a tile (that changes after each visit) that offers 2-5 vp’s, and a mixture of crew, boarding and food points which all convert to vp’s at various rates. Being the leader in each of these categories when it’s your turn allows you extra actions or bonus vp’s. An alternate strategy is to collect treasure maps from the islands. Each treasure you earn (visiting the island on the map) ratchets up the points, Taj Mahal style. If you have more boarding points than another player, you can sail to their island and steal vp’s or points from them, so there’s a catch the leader thing happening. There’s also three action points you can deploy each turn to pick up action cards and use them, typically against the leader. So lots of things to do and choose between. The hit the leader stuff ensures people are relatively close throughout, so have a strong final turn planned – or ensure you’re doing the leader hitting by concentrating on collecting boarding points!! The theme to mechanic is strong. I enjoyed it.
EXXTRA – You have never seen so much silliness from a bunch of giggling gerties in one game as this. Lots of fun, and highly educational as well … I never knew that 13 was Louisiana Legal for instance!
VIVA PAMPLONA – Olè!
ZIRKUS FLOHCATI – the last game, and jeez, I’m never playing this with Sarah again. Every single turn if she doesn’t turn over a 6, it’s a 7, and if it’s not a 7, she’s stealing a 7 from someone else. The final score had her in triple figures to our single digit scores. Sus was asking Magnus to take photos of Sarah’s hand at one point as proof that the Improbability Drive really does exist!! 🙂