Chattanooga, Tennessee
March 2 – 5, 2000
What a weekend! Clearly it was the best vacation I have had or will have this year.
A few thoughts:
Taj MAHAL is a brilliant, innovative combination of vying/placement/set collection genres. (I use “vying” as the generic term for the poker-like mechanism of upping bids until people fold, with the folders losing what they have bid up until that point). It’s a long game, but the strategic depth seems to be on par with the length of the game, so it engrosses the whole way through rather than feeling “too long for what it is”.
KARDINAL & KONIG, is nothing new, but it is an extremely well-implemented example of its genre, packing a huge punch in a short playing time. A great game.
CarolUS MAGNUS is also a respectable game, but for some reason, it didn’t get my adrenaline pumping. Many others really loved it though, and I can appreciate why.
Time PIRATES seemed pretty dull to me, but there were some other groups that liked it. It’s a light set collection game, without whole lot of depth as far as I could tell.
WONGAR was badly badly broken, at least in the form that Jay was teaching it.
BUS was liked by many others, but the game I played of it was unsatisfying. Almost every round, it was to someone’s advantage to “stop time” to prevent anyone else from scoring, resulting in a low scoring game that seemed devoid of forward progress.
Vampire is another Rummy variant from Knizia, with only an artistic connection to the theme. It seems weaker (less interesting and less innovative) than some of his other efforts in this genre like Zero and Katzenjammer Blues.
In addition to playing all these new games, it was delightful to get exposed to some of the older games I’d previously missed, as well as some great filler games I hadn’t yet played like Dolce Vita, Nicht der Bohne, Arriba, and Take Off.
Thanks again to Jay Tummelson for bringing and teaching so many new games, to the Gulf Games founders for making it all happen, and to the many great players who brought their collections and provided a fun gaming experience for the whole weekend.