Destin, Florida
October 21 – 24, 1999
Despite a late start (believe it or not, Nashville DOES have traffic) and less than stellar directions to Destin, Buster Williamson and I arrived at the hotel around 6 PM on Thursday night and promptly dove into gaming.
Games: Loopin’ Louie, Zircus Flochati, Dog Eat Dog, Piratenbilliards, Cosa Nostra, Sinking of the Titantic, Honeybears, Gold Connection, Pit, Jagerspro
—A quick run at LoopIN’ LOUIE set the mood for the entire weekend… I would be beaten on by children & adults… and even Craig “I can’t win a lei” Berg. Age was not able to beat youth, as Cassie Berg bested Ariel, Kayla & I.
Rating: 7 (it’s dropped, as we O.D’d on it around here.)
—Next up: Zirkus FLOCHATI… which I’d been waiting to arrived. (Greg brought my part of an Adam Spielt order to Gulf Games.) On the box it says 3-5, but we played with six with no discernible problems. Take a card from the table or add one to the layout… two cards of one suit on the table (there are ten) end your turn. 3 of a kind (Trios) can be laid to the table for 10 pts, having one of each suit can be called (and the game ended) for a 10 pt bonus, and then the highest card of each suit still in your hand counts for points.
It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a very enjoyable little game. Easy to teach, cute artwork, some strategy but nothing too taxing… it’s a nifty filler.
Rating: 6-7
— Dog EAT DOG, the newest of the QED Games, was next. While most folks wimped out and ate dinner (slackers), Michael Bland, Buster & I dug into this very cynical game of pollution and resource exploitation.
Each player is the division head of a large conglomerate, bent on stripmining the land for resources in order to produce goods, make money… and then embezzle it into your Swiss bank account. (Sounds a bit like Junta, eh?) You start with 25 million and one wilderness square (along with a resource or two). Once per turn, players may embezzle up to 1/2 of their division’s ‘operating account’ into their own private account. (This is especially helpful when approaching the tax space, as the division loses 1/3 of it’s cash if it has over 25 million.)
A turn is pretty simple… roll two dice and move around a monopoly-like outer track. (This acts a random event for the most part, causing divisions to hire new workers because of Affirmative Action, or to be unable to extract resources due to Eco-Terrorsts. It also gives each player a good guess at when everyone else will be able to purchase a new wilderness square.)
Next, you can sell raw materials for 2d6 x 1 million or products for 2d6+20 x 1 million. If you choose to roll to see what the market value is, EVERY other player with those resources and/or products may immediately sell them at that value.
The next phase involves paying workers (1 million each) and hiring/firing the same. (Hiring is 3 million… firing is free but you just paid them their salary.)
It takes workers to do the next two things in your agenda. First, you can make products (usually a combination of two resources). Making 1-2 products causes one pollution marker to be placed, 3-4 two markers… and so on. (In two games, we haven’t seen any major pollution output, but we did play short game rules.) Each product produced takes one worker to make it happen.
The second thing is to extract raw materials. Each division starts with one wilderness square in the center of the board (16 of them in a four x four grid). The artwork here is gorgeous. Each worker can extract one raw material… and taking them one at a time is the “right” thing to do. (ha) If you take more than one raw material in a turn from one space, it degrades to the next level. (For example, the bald eagle habitat now has a bald eagle on crutches… the Monarch butterfly habitat now has a butterfly sanctuary in a plastic tent.) It changes which materials will be available on the next turn. Degrade it again, and the space becomes useless. (Eagle skeletons… a set of condos labeled ‘Butterfly Mini Pads’.) You may also purchase raw materials that had been sold earlier at a cost of 12 million each.
Of course, deals are welcomed. Everything but workers are tradable. Each division has it’s own products, with the exceptions of dkMart (which can make anything, but only type of product per turn) and Waste Mismanagement (which combines pollution with raw materials to make recycled products.)
The board is ingenious in that it uses the home cities on the outside track to become starting points for pollution on the inner board AND for marking when another property becomes available to a division (you can only own two wilderness squares.)
As well, there are event cards and corrupt politician cards. Politicians restrict access to certain wilderness squares and can be bribed away from the Legislature and/or other players.
The game Thursday night went two hours (we played a short game of 100 million in your Swiss account… the regular rules suggest 150.) We played again on Sunday with six players and went about the same (two of us had played before). The games developed VERY differently and it looks like it will change with different groups of players & strategies. The playing time will probably drop to the boxside predicted 1 1/2 hours when everyone’s played once or twice.
I didn’t win either game, but I want to try it again. Does that say anything?
Rating: 7 Buster 123 Mark 7 Michael Bland 56
— PiratENBILLIARDS was one of the hits of Gulf Games… is it really a surprise Frank brought it?! (BTW, Craig, has Kim called Germany to order a copy yet?!)
Imagine if you will a wooden grid of 1 1/2 inch square holes, 7 x 7. The bottom of the grid is not wood but art canvas. Each player is given an odd-shaped mallet and in turn whacks the bottom of the board (set up on 1 1/2 foot legs) underneath one of their balls, attempting to get it to jump toward the opposite side. Land in the hole with an opponent, you capture their ball. Land in the hole with the ‘Death Star’ (a large black ball any player can whack) and that ball is out of the game. Land off the board or in the safe zones of the opponents to your left or right, and that ball is out of the game. You get two points for getting across and 1 point for each ball captured. Game ends when one player has no balls remaining on the table. That’s it.
It’s addictive. Ask the Bergs… ask the kids who were drawn to it as if it were covered with rare Pokemon cards. Frank strikes again.
Rating: 9
Ty6 (won due to more balls on the table)
Frank 6
Mark 3
Michael Bland 1
— Magnus then attempted to teach a group of us JAGERSPRO (am I spelling this right?) It’s a horse racing game where the big money is in owning stables, insurance companies & the bank! I think it could be a pretty interesting game IF it were in English. As it is, there are two decks of cards, both in Swedish, that are used numerous times during each race. This is a paste-up job rivaling Svea Rike (which, btw, isn’t pronounced anywhere NEAR like I thought it was.)
— Frank brought Cosa NOSTRA at my request. This odd backgammon variant features a circular board and nifty bits (henchmen carry violin cases + an incredible spinner featurning two ’30’s looking cars with shooters in them that occupies the center of the board.) It’s a 30 minute bashfest.
Magnus rolled doubles his first five turns and cruised to an easy win over Frank, Tim and myself.
Rating: 6 (but it looks so cool I’m trying to get a copy)
—The four of us followed that up with a game of an old favorite, Ideal’s THE SINKING OF THE TITANTIC. It’s even more luck-ridden than I remember, but it’s still an enjoyable romp. I was out of it as soon as my boat hit the sea (no food or water) and Tim was the first of the group to reach the rescue ship.
Rating: 6 (it’s really a 5 as a game, but the bits give it a point)
—The fearsome foursome continued with a quick game of HoneyBEARS. This was my first time to play my own game (once again, my Adam Spielt order). Four bears (conviently colored four different colors – I wonder how often this happens in the wild?) are running/walking to the cave where the honeypots are hidden. The closer they get, the happier they are. Happy bears are good… since you get 5 times the value of the space (printed on the board) for each pair of walk (move 1) cards of that color, 2 times for each run (move 2) cards of that color, and 1 times for each single walk card. Joker cards are also available but aren’t worth anything. The balance between pushing bears out of the danger of scoring negative points & hanging onto cards to score with… yikes. What a sneaky little mechanism.
One I didn’t get a grasp on, evidently… as Frank trounced us.
Rating: 7Frank 99 Magnus 89 Tim 79 Mark 64
—I’d pulled out Gold CONNECTION… one of my “gotta try” list from Sid Sackson… Michael Bland & Tim Watson were in… and then 7 year old Timothy McCarthy decided he wanted to play. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have let him, as he managed to knock Michael and I out of 2nd place. 🙂
Gold Connection is a thinly-themed Can’t Stop-like concoction. Each player is rummaging through the vault, stealing bars of gold (interestingly enough, sequentially numbered in four different colors). The roll to pick up a bar or bars is the value of the bars plus the number of spaces you moved to get there… you’ve got to roll that number or above on two dice. There are some mechanisms for stealing from each other and for movement, but overall it’s Can’t Stop with some interesting chrome.
My early lead evaporated when the rest of the group decided I was the best possible target. (We still had some questions about how many rows you could start and if finished rows were protected in any way.)
Rating: 6 Tim 33
Timothy 32
Mark 29
Michael B 29
—I finished the night out helping get us a security report by playing Pit at 2 am. I bowed out some 100 points down in order to crash into bed.
FRIDAY
Friday morning came early, but I was raring to go. In fact, in one of my more “game junkie”-like moments, I was sitting outside the gameroom door waiting for Greg when he arrived with the key. (Sheesh… am I pathetic or what?)
Games: Robin Hood, Victory & Honor (playtest), Himmelsturner, Cloud 9, Jump!, Saturn, Headquarter, Olympia 2000, Welcome Party, Take It Easy, Buried Treasure, Viva Pamplona, Cosa Nostra, Rette Sich Von Kann, Quacksalbe
— RobIN HOOD was the first game of the morning… mentally, I find myself confusing this one and Zirkus Flohcati. Buster describes this as the game ” where Maid Marian runs around the table.” I’d call it the game ” where Mark gets beaten with rubber hoses and sent to bed without any supper.”
Not a bad little game… a nice filler/opener that I’d be willing to pick up cheap. (Of the two, I like Flochati better… quicker, easier to teach, cute cards.)
Rating: 6
—Next Ty roped Buster, Chip, Greg & myself into a 3+ hour playtest of his game VICTORY & HONOR. I don’t want to give away too much, but suffice it to say that Ty (a) paints a wicked board (on something that looked as heavy as a manhole cover!) (b) has some VERY interesting ideas going here (c) was willing & ready to listen to tweaks, suggestions & complaints… AND (d) has a pretty good game on his hands (ok, a little information… it’s a trick-taking game where the results are played out on a map of Europe.)
We were all in agreement that it needed shortening and tightening… which our suggestions help do for the group that played on Saturday. I’m looking forward to seeing a more polished version in Chattanooga. (Polished is a relative term, of course… this is the nicest looking prototype I’ve ever seen for a board game.) Mind you, I won this thing HANDS DOWN (and, of course, we changed the scoring system after I won!) 🙂
Rating: 7 (it’s not quite there yet, but with more work it’s headed solidly in that direction)
Mark 274
Chip 201
Greg 198
Buster 148
I think this is where we went to eat lunch. I don’t know anymore – food is definitely NOT a priority when compared to gaming!
—Back from lunch, we dove into a game of HIMMELSTURNER (which Frank just sold me a British copy of… named THE GREAT BALLOON RACE… the check is in the mail, Frank!). It’s a cousin of Undercover/Heimlich & Co. with a bit more control (but not much more) from the demented mind of Nik Sewell (designer of Luftschlosser, my first pick off the prize table, and Die ErbRaffer, one of the Berg’s favorites from the weekend.) Not to mention the really cool balloon pieces and the beautiful board.
Each player receives a card with 3 different colored hot-air balloons pictured on it. Evidently, we’ve bet on these balloons and want them to be the first to finish. In turn, each player rolls a d6 and moves ANY of the balloons in the direction of the arrow on their space. There are a variety of spaces… mostly forward arrows, but some backward; a Lightening space that zaps the balloons back to start, Sunlight spaces which give the player an extra turn, and Deflated Balloon spaces which cause a balloon to sit there until all the other balloons have passed it or it is bumped off the space. You can only win on YOUR turn, so even if someone else completes your card, it has to get back to you before you can declare victory.
I’ll be the first to admit this isn’t a terribly deep game… but, like Undercover, it plays quickly and is a lot of fun. I’m also intriguied by the designs of Nik Sewell... this game shares a fascination for weather themes with Luftschlosser.
Rating: 6 (judge it for what it is… not what it isn’t) Buster won. Also playing: Greg, Craig, Sus, Frank, Mark
—Continuing our afternoon of light fillers, I taught another group Cloud 9. Now, a lot of mean things have been written about this game… some of them true. YES, it is an UGLY and inefficent board design. YES, the basic game is essentially a guessing game. YES, Buster called it ” craps for kids.”
However, it’s important to remember that there are some interesting bluffing rules (wherein the active player is NOT required to play the correct cards to advance the balloon) that I didn’t try to teach to the mixed-age crowd we had playing. Don’t dismiss this game so quickly.
The win here came as Karie held out for big points when the partnership of Gail/Lindsay caused the game to end by bailing out. Everyone else’s nerves failed and left them behind Karie and her “nerves of steel!”
Rating: 6 Karie 60
Greg 55
Mark 54
Timothy 53
George 51
Gail/Lindsay 48
— Jump!... More light filler courtesy of the gentlemanly Ben Baldanza… The description of this game over the Net had fascinated me, but the generally negative reviews and high price tag had kept me away. For once, public opinion was pretty accurate.
Each player chooses one card (from a VERY small hand) to lay down ala Take 6. The cards are then revealed & resolved starting with the start player. You can move one of the two planes, switch places in the plane with another player, jump out of the plane, or keep others from jumping. The object: jump as close to the coast as possible without landing in the water. Repeat 2 (or 3) times.
It’s a nicely-made game… the components and cards are cute… it just doesn’t deliver much. There’s nothing wrong with it, per se… it’s just not very good.
Rating: 4 (5 if I’m being charitable) Greg 1st
Ben 2nd
Mark 3rd
Lindsey 4th
Karie 5th
—Some folks were taking a trip to the beach (” Beach?! What beach?!”) or going to grab dinner… but Frank pulled out yet another wooden balancing game called SATURN. I’ll do my best to describe it… but it’s easier to see it. The center of the mechanism is a yellow orb/planet that has two prongs sticking out of opposite sides. Around this are three rings (hence, the name Saturn) that rest on the prongs of the ring inside of it… which are set at odd angles from each other. What you end up with is a very tippy set of three rings with some very weird physics.
Each player in turn puts a large (3 pt), medium (2 pt), or small (1 pt) ball on the inner (x1), middle (x2), or outer (x3) ring, scoring from 1-9 points. If you attempt to place a ball and a ring comes to rest on the table (they’re about 1-2 inches off the table) you have to take the ball back and you lose your turn. The game ends when one player runs out of balls (moons, I guess).
Somehow, I managed to defeat Frank in this very beautiful coffeetable-like game. It’s not the uproarious romp of Bambeleo or Wackelpudding, but I definitely liked it better than Jenga.
Rating: 6 Mark 45
Frank 36
George 27
Karie 26
—Frank then enticed me into playing another game from Theta (the company that made Saturn), HEADQUARTER. A big honking wooden head with an empty spot in the middle of it (imagine your boss here). The two players in turn pick out large wooden cubes (glued into pairs) out of a bag and place them in the head. The objective is to create areas of contiguous color, as individual cubes are worthless and you score the square of the area of each block of color you create. The head space is two cubes deep, so you can place the cubes completely on your side OR stick them through to interfere with the other player.
The head alone must weigh 2-3 pounds (I can’t imagine the shipping cost… Frank, do you own stock in UPS?)… but the game itself plays quickly and with minimal brain strain for what is essentially a two player abstract. (Not knowing what your next draw will be makes a difference, of course). It reminded me a bit of the old Nintendo game, Dr. Mario… and if it weren’t for the cost of the thing, I’d own one yesterday.
Rating: 8 Frank 172
Mark 146
—I’m afraid we didn’t give OLYMPIA 2000 a fair shake as we rushed to finish before the Welcome Party started. I can see where this would be a fun little family game with a bit of strategy. I’m looking forward to trying it again.
Rating: 5-6 Tim 19
Mark 14
Michael “more than Buster”
Buster 3
The Welcome Party sorely missed the presence and able leadership of Ted “Party Monster” Cheatham… but I soldiered on in his absence. The “Getting 2 Know U” bingo went pretty well… though it turned out to be tougher than I though it would be. I finally had to list the names of all the people on the bingo card to narrow the field a bit. Of course, a great deal of the fun was finding out that Sus worked in both a mine & a convent, or that Ben had sent a mouse into space & been written up in USA TODAY, or that Sheldon Smith had played football with Stone Phillips. If it gives you any idea about how much fun we had, I don’t remember who finally won. (I know it wasn’t Tim Watson, who kept trying to win WITHOUT anyone signing his paper… Tim, Tim, Tim!) 🙂
We then jumped into our Take It Easy tourney… suffice it to say that I didn’t win.
Following the party, the room became awash with gaming. (And noisy, though not as bad as our Pit game at 2 am the night before.)
— Buster & I played Buried TREASURE with Kenny & Calvin… young Calvin not only won but managed to keep giving Buster & I advice one which cards to play!
I’m a fan of this little game, but agree that the design of the cards could have been more carefully thought out.
Rating: 7 Calvin 32
Buster 31
Kenny 29
Mark 29
—We followed that up with VIVA PAMPLONA, a game I’ve had on my wish list for a long time since someone described it at ” Midnight Party with bulls”. As it turns out, this isn’t a bad description.
Each player has 3 runners who have come to Pamplona to prove their manhood (which is kept track of with chips). In fact, manhood/bravery points is how you determine who wins the game. On a turn, each player rolls the dice and moves two of his runners forward. There is much jostling (pushing other players around by outnumbering them) which Buster & I proved ourselves to be quite good at. (He was the Big Bully… I was the Little Guy who kneels down so the Big Guy can push you over his back!) 🙂
But the key element is Toro the Bull. Every round of turns, a new Toro card is drawn, and the bull either moves down the street OR goes on a rampage and attacks. Runners behind the bull (cowards) lose pts, while those closest to the bull receive pts for their bravery.
Finally, reaching the arena awards points to the players… but you want to get there BEFORE the bull does. In our game, Toro rampaged early & often (kind of like voting in Louisiana, eh, Greg?)… then broke into a gallop toward the arena. Most of us were left flat-footed back on the city streets. Tim’s cowardice (running ahead of the bull) paid off handsomely as he was the ONLY player to reach the arena before Toro.
This is a very enjoyable game… kind of ” Midnight Party” for gamery types & non-gamers as well. It stays firmly placed on my “want to buy” list.
Rating: 7 Tim 36
Chip 26
Mark 23
Buster 22
Kenny 12
Calvin 11
—Another game of Cosa NOSTRA ensued… this time we fought our way down to very few men. Frank ran his boss around for the victory.
Frank won. Also playing: Buster, Mark, Chip
—Only at Gulf Games would I dare try Rette SICH VON KANN... otherwise known as the “Lifeboat” game. Let me explain… I love negotiation games – Settlers, Chinatown, Europa, etc. BUT, I don’t like vicious games where you can’t back in the game. Obviously, Rette has not been on my list of games to play. However, with the friendly comraderie of Gulf Games, I was willing to give it a shot.
I won’t bore you with a description… those are easy enough to find. Ty and I made a deal early and landed a boat with our men (and one of Jon’s), thus painting a target on ourselves for the rest of the game. At one point, my double-dealing drove Jon to exclaim, ” And you call yourself a minister?!” (Much laughter ensued.) 🙂
So far, so good… but then the endgame. In an experience oddly reminiscent of my only playing of Krieg & F., what was a solid 7-8 game in the early going turned into a low 3 as the ugly kingmaker problem reared it’s head. I was knocked out of contention early, and simply could vote to destroy others – which I refused to do. I abstained from the remaining votes. With the closeness of the top finishers, my role would have simply been to decided who won… blech.
I wish there was a way to fix it… the early going in this game is a lot of fun. But it crashes & burns at the end… only the joy of playing it with a great group of guys (esp. the self-titled ” benevolent” Capt. Craig Berg!) made the experience bearable.
Rating: 3 (nice bits, good early going) Jon 20 (via a SCREWY tie-breaking system)
George 20
Craig 20
Ty 19
Mark 18
Greg 13
I think I may have played something else in here (probably another defeat at the hands of a child in Loopin’ Louie) but I’m not sure.
—I finished the night out this time with a VERY late night game of QuackSALBE. This odd game of doctors and their quack treatments is a real hoot… this would be an excellent game to reprint in English, Jay! There’s not much to it (some hand management, but the luck of the draw is prominent)… though it would make an excellent closer (as it did for us).
Each player has a speciality, which can be used to treat each patient (drawn from the patient deck). Patients have “kill” values, which cannot be exceeded without causing the patients death. At that point, the player whose cure had the highest value gets credit for either saving the patient (if under the number) or killing them (if over). And that’s it.
My pill therapy proved to be deadly… Sheldon managed to break even on keeping patients alive versus killing them, which proved enough to win.
Rating: 6 (Greg asked me on Sat. morning what I thought of the game… I told him it was brilliant at 3:30 am in the morning).
Sheldon 0
Mark -1
Frank -1
Ben -1
I chuckled my way off to bed…
SATURDAY
A little later start this morning (too much quackery at 3 am the night before), so I appeared at the game room around 9 am, eager to get in some more gaming.
Games: Liar’s Dice, Torres, Hallo Dachs, Die ErbRaffer, Zum Kuckuck, Honeybears, Apples to Apples, The Gothic Game, Can’t Stop
I think I played SOMETHING before the Liar’s Dice tournament, but for the life of me I can’t remember what. (The older I get… sheesh.) I didn’t manage to do well this time (after making the finals at GGII& GGIII)… oh well.
I also taught Papua to a group of players… and Frank helped me figure out the rule I had misinterpeted (which would not be the LAST time this would happen on Saturday).
Torres was one of the highly anticipated games of the weekend. Of course, Jon Pessano was the Torres evangelist (have you played yet?!). So, with help of Michael Bland’s one time through, we gave it a go.
Again, I won’t bother with a description. It took a while to get used to the cards (what could they ACTUALLY do?) and wrapping your brain conceptually around the idea that you could enter a door at any level of the castle and exit by any other door at an equal or lower level was a stretch.
Frankly, it reminded me a lot of Tikal… use of action points, evolving board, and… the danger of INSANE amounts of downtime. Played at speed, I think I’d really enjoy this game. Throw one “let me think about it” guy into the mix and it slows to a crawl. (Which is funny, considering I used to love AH wargames… go figure.)
I won… under protest from Buster, who I (a) gave some advice to, then (b) saw the perfect blocking move after he did it. Hey, it’s a learning game!
Rating: 6 (I can see what a great design it is… it’s just not my cup of tea) Mark
Buster
Tim
Michael Bland
Shari (my wife) and Sheridyn (Buster’s girlfriend) had arrived, so I took a break from the gaming tables to walk the beach with my wife (Oh, there IS a beach around here… funny, I never noticed it before.) 🙂
This was followed by our group dinner (much fun) and the awarding of the prize table, where I picked up Luftschlosser, Apples to Apples, and a potpouri burner for my wife (thanks, Vicki!).
—The night of wild gaming swung into gear with a run at Hallo DACHS, one of my new acquisitions for my ever-expanding children’s collection. The board consists of a series of connected pathways, with a variety of number chips (1-5) on them. Players are attempting to feed the badgers (thus the name of the game, Hello, Badger!) by finding them good food. A chart on the board shows six different kinds of food. You roll a d6, check the chart, and then…
AAAAGGGHHHHH! It’s a memory game! Around the board are a number of face-down tiles. You have to find the food you just rolled and turn it face up. If you are on a ‘3’ number chip, then you have to roll again and find that food…. and then one more time. Conceivably, you could be required to find five different matches for the same item. If you get the badger his food, you get the number chip, which flips over to reveal a badger and some points (it varies). There are garbage dump tiles as well, that take away points. The game is to 15 points.
For a memory game, this is a lot of fun. It works well with mixed age groups. Heck, I’m glad I bough it. I managed to sneak past Cassie Berg & Tim Watson by making a couple of big scores late in the game.
Rating: 7 Mark 15
Cassie 14
Tim 14
Michael Bland “less than that”
Now on to the fabled game of Die ERBRAFFER, yet another Nik Sewell creation. It’s the only game I know of played on the diagram of a family tree!
The mechanics are not terribly sophisticated (play a card, work out what happens, draw a new card) but the chaos that ensues is impressive. Players are working to get money to their heirs (held secretly) and benefactors (unmarried aunts & uncles) in order to accumulate the largest stash. Cards allow you to move heirlooms around, take & give money, etc. In a favorite Nik Sewell card mechanism, there are even cards that force all players to discard their hands and draw new ones (no hoarding!)
Part of the joy of the game was who played it… we had a blast making up names for the different family members and taking/giving money to them. (Of course, Derk & I had to figure out SOME way to enjoy the game, as we spent most of the game getting hosed.) It’s not a great game, but it’s a lot of fun with the right crowd and pretty fast-moving (at rougly 45 minutes playing time.) I’ve tried it with 3 players a couple of times, and while it’s fun, it really shines with 6… chaotic fun. Rating: 7 Ken 71
Kim 66
Cassie 57
George 55
Mark 42
Derk 41
From there, I joined a game of ZUM KUCKUCK. My first try of this interesting little card game was at 3 am back at GGII with Ted & Tim. It needed a 2nd try.
If I judged a game by whether I won or not, this one would be a turkey. I was in the basement almost the entire game. But, it’s a good system with the duplicate bridge mechanism of everyone playing everyone else’s hand and a very nice handicapping system built into the cards. It’s worth a try for anyone who enjoys card games.
Rating: 6 Craig 17
Gail 13
Kim 12
Shay 10
Mark 5
As serious and mean-spirited as our first game of HoneyBEARS had been on Thursday, the game on Saturday was light-hearted & friendly. The Thursday game had usually seen one bear charge into the lead, leaving the others behind. This game saw most of the bears make it to the 2-3 points spaces. As well, the late hour made for lots of laughter as we attempted to explain the reason for each card play – ” Green Bear is lonely in the back.”!
George’s mathematical mind closed on us like a steel trap.
George 110
Greg 101
Mark 100
Cassie 97
Craig 89
It was midnight… time to call for THE GOTHIC GAME. This adventure in random killing and bloodshed is a twisted version of Dugeonquest where you hunt other players down, once you’ve found some weapons. It’s basically roll & move + draw a card when you enter a room, but it’s still great fun with the right crowd.
Less than five minutes into the game, a snake chased Greg into the moat (and the acidic water finished him off). Next, Ken was turned into a vampire and was unable to return to the crypt by sunrise. Peter managed to kill Frank with his Congalese Blow Pipe about the same time I escaped from the Well of Death (or whatever it was called). Yet another vampire, George, crumbled to ashes before returning to the crypt. Finally, Peter, in a vain attempt to escape me as I chased him with a scorpion, died doing the dishes in the kitchen. I emerged victorious.
I wouldn’t play this one more than once a year… but it’s good once a year, if you a get my drift!
George (or was it Ken?) brought out a German copy of Can’t STOP (with the cool leatherette board and the big honking wooden pieces)… and promptly showed me I’d been playing incorrectly for nearly 2 years! After the first turn, if you can place a white marker, you must… we’d played as long as you can move a marker, you don’t have to place one. (Rob, you taught me wrong… or I didn’t listen very well!?!) George I each managed to win a game before I shuffled off to bed.
Last but not least, sometime this day is where I learned I’d been playing Lost Cities wrong as well… play then draw, NOT draw then play. Sheesh.
Next post – Saturday!