New Orleans, Louisiana
February 25 – 28 , 1999
Wednesday
Pre Gulf Games warm up at Greg’s.
Evergreen
Good game. Ty Douds won with 138 points; Jonathan Degann and I tied with 136. Lenny Leo finished fourth with 121. A real nail-biter.
We played without the timer. However, the timer would definitely improve the game as there is a possibility of analyzing possible moves to death.
Ratings: Jonathan, Ty and I gave it 7’s. Lenny gave it a 6.
Ra
Greg and others have described this one. As I recall, Jonathan won this one.
I am not a fan of bidding games, but would prefer to play this over Medici or Basari.
My rating was a 6.
Big CITY
I helped Greg win this one by building a Post office which helped him build the Shopping Center. The Shopping Center’s 30 points gave him the win.
My rating: 7
May go higher with more play.
Friday
Klunker
A card game. Players offer jewelry for sale while trying to collect their own sets of 4 pieces of jewelry. Players are penalized for each incomplete set of jewelry.
It is a good filler card game, but I would rather play Bohnanza or For Sale.
My rating: 6
EL CABELLERO
The best new game I played at GG. OK, maybe its not so new. I bought this one six weeks ago and had yet to play it, so it was new to me. It combines features of El Grande with the tile laying/new world discovery feature of Entdeckerer.
Turn order is based on playing action cards ranging from 1 to 13. The higher the card, the earlier in the turn you can play, but the fewer Cabelleros you will have available in your province. The lower the card, the later in the turn you play but the more Cabelleros in your province. Playing a lowest card assures you first choice in selecting an action card in the following turn.
Like El Grande, success is based on two things: mastering the timing of the play of action cards AND getting the most points per cabellero you can.
I enjoyed this one. It cracked my top ten list. However, because of its length I will likely play EL Grande more often.
My Rating: 9.
Siesta
This another one Jay Tummelson brought. There are three types of pieces: Suns, Roofs, and Shadows. You want to position a roof adjacent to suns in such a way as to create the longest possible shadow. The longer the shadow, the more points you score.
Jonathan Degan and Iplayed to a tie, followed by Greg and Frans Labranche. If you like abstract games, this may be worth a look.
My Rating: 5
Saturday
Take IT EASY
My first experience with this. I hesitate to rate it, because it is not a game. It is a group puzzle. Its almost a Bingo variant. Some one calls a tile. Every one has the same tile. Everyone puts it on the board in hopes of getting all of the same kind in a row. ZZZZZZZZZZZZ. In fairness, the spouses and children enjoyed it thoroughly (as did many of the other regular gamers), so it certainly has appeal to non-gamers. On that basis it has merit, and I would probably buy it if I had young kids of my own. Alas, old grognards like me require much more substance.
ChinaTOWN
My initial rating: 6. Mark Jackson made a good point that I was at a disadvantage playing with the three Nashville guys who were more inclined to trade with each other. On that basis, I will withhold final judgment until I play it with the Westbank Gamers.
However, I have two concerns.
First, Mark’s observation notwithstanding I really had very little to offer trading wise in the first turn of the game. This put me in a hole out of which I had a hard time climbing. While I have encountered the same situation in Advanced Civilization many times, Advanced Civ is long enough that you can recover from it in subsequent turns. Also, Advanced Civ has other aspects besides trading (such as city planning and the occasional border conflict- not to mention hosing your buddy with calamities) that could offset a bad trade hand.
In contrast, Chinatown is short (6 turns). If you fall behind early, there is not much time to catch up. Second, trading is IT in Chinatown. You have no chance of burning down the stores of your fellow player to help equalize things a bit. (Hey, that would be a cool variant!)
Second, several have commented that 4 players works better than 5. I would have thought a game involving trading and negotiation would be better with MORE not FEWER players. Can any one explain why they felt 4 was better?
EuphRATE AND TIGRIS
No gaming convention would be complete with playing this at least once. I played with Lenny Leo, Frans Labranche (age 14), and Greg. Frans picked up the game very quickly. This was the fastest game we ever played (just over an hour) as everyone went for treasures. I don’t remember the score, but the standings were:
Greg, Frans, me, Lenny
Rating: 9 – A classic
Space STATION JEFF
A Cheapass game. We did not finish it because of the group dinner. Greg and Mike Labranche said it was basically the Very Clever Pipe Game in space. I won’t rate it since we did not get a whole game in, but I am not in a big hurry to play it again.
VerrATER
This gets the Bismarck Award for the dog of the convention. (For those who don’t know, Bismarck is the name of my Dalmatian.)
This is a card game. There are four players. Each player either is a member of the Rose faction or the Eagle faction. One player chooses land areas over which the Rose and Eagle factions will have battles. Players play cards to influence which faction wins the battle. The members of the winning faction get victory points. Of course, table talk ensues to coax players into contributing more to the battle. Sorry, but this game felt too much like Atlantic Storm for my taste.
Actually, there are two fundamental differences between this and Atlantic Storm, neither of which redeemed the game. First, Atlantic Storm is trick taking game. In Verrater, players play numbered cards.
The faction with the highest point total wins the battle and gets the victory points. Thus, the game uses a similar combat system to that of Joan of Arc, another dud.
Second, one player may be a traitor. This is not revealed until after all cards have been played. Thus, you have no way of knowing (unless you yourself are the traitor) whether the 14 points of cards your neighbor is playing will help you or hurt you. You also are powerless to do anything about the traitor. If you suspect that someone is about to betray the cause, you can simply not play any cards to influence the battle, but he will still get the victory points for the combat.
My Rating: Initially 2. However, I will revise it to 3 because, unlike Atlantic Storm, this game is fairly short. It also does not have the unreadable components like AS does. Thus, it deserves a higher rating than AS.
According to Greg, people have been raving about this one on the Internet. If that is true, I do not understand why. While the other players rated it higher than me (5-6 range), all agreed that they could not understand what the fuss was about.