Destin, Florida
October 21 – 24, 1999
It was the best one yet. The location was great, the games fun, the people interesting, and the level of competition fierce. I’m always happy to be around people who enjoy games like I do. This will keep me coming back.
I was especially impressed with how well mannered the kids were during the whole convention. Ok, kids will be kids, they do like to run around and be loud. But I saw no instances of kids pouting about not being able to play, or losing a game. On the contrary, it seemed when kids were playing among themselves or with adults, they conducted themselves quite well. I was especially impressed when Calvin Douds and I both wanted the green men in VIVA Pamplona. He insisted I take them. So we had a roll off to see who got them. Ok, I won, but it was a nice gesture from one so young.
I’ve misplaced the few notes I made from the convention, so I’ll just have to go by memory (=trouble). By no means are the comments in any sort of chronological order (does that make them chronillogical?)
A few highlights:
Played Vinci three times on Friday afternoon I believe. Didn’t plan to do this. Played it once, liked it, and got some others to play about an hour later. The third game came about when I took Lenny Leo’s place early in a game because he needed to go take care of some business. Never came close to winning but greatly enjoyed playing it. I think it was the second game, which I was “teaching”, where Derk Solko got the combination of Messengers and Astronomy (I think). I got it into my head that this would allow him to bring his forces on scattered wherever he wanted around the board. He immediately moved into as many port squares as he could and screamed ahead on the VP track. As he put in his report, we reeled him back in, but that really kind of skewed the game. There was a moment there where we seemed to be considering starting over but we didn’t. Probably because Derk made such a good target then!
Frank Branham always comes up with great stuff. The most unusual were the PiratenBilliards and the “Throw-the-ping-pong-ball-filled-with-sand-into-the-box” game. I was a witness and stand ready to testify should it come up in court somehow, that Craig Berg really can’t hit the broadside of a warehouse. At least not with a Ping-Pong ball. Terrible slice you’ve got there Craig. Unfortunately I was just about as bad in the first TTPPBFWSITB game I played. Then I noticed Sheldon Smith was putting a little backspin on the ball and doing quite well. I tried that and from then on could put it consistently in the box. My best shot came when I landed among a group of different colored balls and knocked them all back but my own color. I believe I got both 1st and 2nd on that throw, maybe even 3rd. I had the same type of shot later and much to my dismay, it caused all my balls to roll to the bottom of the box. How the @$&% did that happen. As far as the PiratenBilliards game goes, all I can say is that I suck.
Pit was great. I know Greg Schloesser is very unhappy that it’s now in his house, but this game brought back great childhood memories. This was a game we wore out several copies of as a kid. Its fast, furious, loud, all the things that I don’t usually care for in games, but I have a connection to this one and love it. And we didn’t get thrown out. Either the walls were really thick or our neighbors had earplugs. I won the first two hands after I joined and didn’t win another one for about another hour. But hey, I was in the black the whole time!
Torres. I played this one with Mark Jackson, Buster Williamson and Michael Bland. It started out real slow and somewhere during the rules explanation I must have dozed off. This was really the only game on my MUST play list and it didn’t start well (at least not for me). I wasn’t really grasping what I was supposed to be doing until about a 1/3 of the way into the game. Somewhere it finally clicked and I warmed up to it more. By that time I was behind but liking it OK. The game was dragging because there was too much analysis going on. I would hope more experience in the game would speed it up. By the end of the game I’d decided that it was good but I wasn’t wowed like I thought I was going to be. It’s on my maybe buy list.
Zirkus Flochati – A game about fleas??? Played this one 3 or 4 times with adults and children. Noticed that Greg seemed to favor going for the Grand Gala (or whatever it was called) where you have to get a card in each of the 10 colors. Tried that once and had a good score, but not enough to win the game. This is a fun little filler game. It’s on my buy list.
Hallo Dachs. A game about badgers, bluebottles, snails and other flowers and small creatures. Played this with Mark Jackson and a couple of the kids. Shamefully I can’t remember which ones (I think Calvin and Cassandre) but I’m probably wrong. Basically a child’s memory game, which means I have very little chance to win. Tiles are placed around the board with pictures of flowers or bugs on ’em. You move a pawn around on a board to land on numbered chits. The number tells you how many times you have to roll a die. Each time you roll the die, it indicates which picture you have to turn up on the tiles. If you miss one, your turn is over and you simply turn the tiles back face down. The tiles are never removed from the game, so the object is to remember where you see the different pictures. If you are able to find all the pictures for the number of times you have to roll the die, you take that chit and turn it over. It will have a number of dots on it indicating how many points you just won. The first one to 15 wins. The real trick is to remember multiple places where pictures are because you might roll that picture more than once. Usually I run when this type of game shows up, but I really had a good time. Probably had more to do with the people I was playing with, and it’s a lot of fun watching someone miss a guess knowing they are about to guess wrong. Would buy it if I had kids.
Buried Treasure – another game I played several times with various people. Very good game, fairly quick. Good filler but not a main event. On the buy list.
Dog-Eat-Dog – Derk Solko, Michael Bland, Mark Jackson, Lenny Leo, Ken Girton and me. Derk has already given a pretty good description of the game. I think I could have won (or a least done better) with more careful play. I missed an opportunity to get enough resources to manufacture something during the next turn. All I had to do was hire one extra person – I had plenty of money. And later I forgot that I could do my embezzling at any time during my turn (such as before I moved my pawn) and ended up paying taxes needlessly – cost me about 18 bucks. At the end I had 3 manufactured goods to sell and barring a really bad roll, I probably could have won when my turn came around. But Derk won just before I got my turn. I was playing Waste Management which has got to clean up pollution in order to manufacture anything. Cleaning up pollution helps (maybe) other players but it’s the only way to get it. No other player has pollution markers they can trade to you. Since the other players can “control” whether pollution comes onto the board or not, you are somewhat at their mercy. Fortunately you can have any type of resource to match with pollution to manufacture something. This is a game that would take repeated playings with different companies to get a better feel how best to play it. But I don’t know if I liked it well enough to want to play it that often. Not on my buy list.
Viva Pamplona – my first time to play this game. How long has it been around? Cute little game of running the bulls. Plays fairly fast with a few mildly tense moments. In our game the bull took a leisurely stroll down the street for the first half of the game. Wasn’t too hard to keep close around him, though one of my runners evidently had a girlfriend at the stadium and was trying to get there as fast as possible. About the time the bull was coming up on the second corner, he snorted ferociously and trampled everyone in his path. He didn’t stop until reaching the stadium ALONE! At that point it wasn’t a matter of how many points you won but how many you lost due to being so far behind. If I remember correctly I eeked out the win due mainly to my chicken runners which were already far ahead on the track when the bull charged.
Evil Geniuses – why I liked this game I’m not sure. It’s one of Franks inventions. Except for Pit, I really don’t like real time games. But this one was ok. There was a neat little mechanism of having a timer passing around the table during the game. When you had the timer, you could take a free card anytime before it ran out. After taking the free card you passed the timer to the next player who could turn it over or not. It was a way of keeping cards flowing in the game. You also got to draw cards by building a body part of your monster. The game is kinda like Pit because you trade cards in real time. The first to create a monster with six parts can declare the hand over. You add up points and high man wins.
I played many more games than described here and enjoyed them all to one degree or another. I don’t recall anything that I played that I considered a real dog. Since it’s getting late (after midnight on a work night) I better stop. I may follow up with more reports especially if I find my notes.
The gaming was great and I enjoyed seeing “old” friends and meeting new ones there. Can’t wait for March!