Savannah, Georgia
August 1 – 4, 2002
Wilella and I arrived a couple of days before the official starting time for Gulf Games and joined the group expedition to Cracker Barrel for supper on Tuesday night. I believe chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes was the most frequently ordered meal.
The Berg family had been kind enough to give us a ride from the Holiday Inn to the Cracker Barrel, and on the way back Craig and I discovered that we had both read the same “101 Elephant Jokes” book in our younger days.
Kyle, however, had some new elephant jokes we had not heard before, and over the course of about 10 miles of I-95 reduced Craig and me to tears of laughter. This started innocently enough:
“How do you put an elephant in the refrigerator?”
“I don’t know — how?”
“Open the door and put the elephant in the refrigerator.”
“Ohhhh.”
Then it got complicated.
“How do you put a giraffe in the refrigerator?”
“Open the door and put the giraffe in the refrigerator?”
“Um… not exactly. You open the door, take the elephant out of the refrigerator, and then put the giraffe in the refrigerator.”
There was more… but I’ll spare you the sordid details.
Back at the Holiday Inn, we waited for the gospel service to end so Gulf Games could take over the meeting space. Much decorating ensued, with Vickie Watson and Greg Schloesser doing the honors with many helpers on ladders and with wall and ceiling stickums.
According to my notes, my first game of Tuesday evening was Trendy, the Reiner Knizia card game, the only known copy of which is in Ward Batty’s possession. Someone won the game, but not me.
My second game was Fabrik der Traume, the Reiner Knizia movie-making auction game. I thought I was doing pretty well, getting the first and only movie made during the first quarter, but Jeffrey Glanzer (movie shark) meanwhile concentrated his efforts on getting one blockbuster picture made. It took him until the third quarter to do it, but it was a 22-point picture, and it carried him to victory.
My last game of the evening was another round of Trendy. Hilarity seized us as I taught the rules to Greg, Craig and Ty, but hilarity was not a rarity this week. Someone won the game, but not me.
Bright and early Wednesday morning I was drafted into the earliest game of Puerto Rico I’ve ever played. Ty, Kenny, Tim and John sat in with me, and I explained the game from scratch to Kenny and filled in a few details that were missing for the rest of the group. I was the experienced money at this table but just did manage to finish with the win against Ty, who was coming on strong.
After lunch it was time for our bus tour of Savannah, an excursion Wilella particularly enjoyed. We traipsed around town looking at the colonial town squares, historic buildings, rivers, bridges, cemetaries, and places where the events of “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” had taken place. We got hot and sweaty but soaked up lots of interesting tidbits of local lore.
Back at the Game Room of Good and Evil, Craig, Greg and I met up with Kevin Whitmore for an excursion into the wacky waters of Tonga Bonga. We taught Kevin the game and launched into what turned out to be the closest fought round of Tonga Bonga any of us had ever seen. I was losing pretty much the whole way, but Craig and Kevin were tooth and nail. On the final round, as I had to figure out which of them deserved the worst of my dice roll, I decided Kevin was slightly in the lead and so gave him my zero-value “Retchin’ Ralph,” giving Craig the two. What I had failed to take into my calculations was that Kevin, having been dunked by TWO Ralphs in the round, would not have to pay his crew. Thus he got back the miserly two ducats he had offered as salary, and sure enough, those were the two ducats he won the game by!
After that you might think any further gaming would be anticlimactic, but not so! James Miller and Joy Mills roped Larry Levy and me into a game of Powerpuff Girls – Villains at Large! It quickly became obvious that James and Joy were the smart money in this game. Larry and I strove mightily, but with the defeat of Mojo Jojo, it was James edging Joy for the win.
Joy then expressed an interest in learning how to play Siesta, and we were joined by Ward and I believe Larry again for this exercise. I demonstrated not only the correct rules of the game but also my winning ways. Joy insisted that I mark down on my notepad that she had come in second, even though I explained that I wasn’t keeping all that thorough a record of players and scores, just the names of the games I played and a star if I was the winner. But Joy wanted me to mark down that she came in second, so that seemed like a pretty good reason. Also I was pleased to see she enjoyed Siesta so much that she grabbed a copy for herself from the prize table later.
I then was pleased to meet Al Newman, who drafted me into playing his prototype, Treasure Hunter, with Ty and Kenny and Jeffrey the movie shark. My brilliant luck at turning up just the right numbers was the winning edge in this one, about which I will say no more.
Next I played Drahtseilakt, the game in which you try to score as close to zero as possible, and if you get a bad score in one of the early rounds you can have it wiped out if you score a zero in a later round. As usual, I scored zero in the FIRST round (when there’s nothing you can wipe out) and went on to lose a close game to somebody else, not me.
Schnappchen Jagd was next on the agenda, and I hunted for bargains with Chris Lohroff and… I think Larry Levy again. We had a small discussion on the rules as a preliminary, as somebody had been told something along the lines of not having to have the minimum required number to be able to clear cards from your trash pile. Fortunately I had prepped on the Schnappchen Jagd rules just a couple of days earlier and knew right where to point to the pertinent language. Having thus demoralized the opposition, I cruised to an 8-4-3 victory.
Wednesday night’s last game for me was Kap Hoorn, which I seem to recall teaching to Joe Huber. Can that be right? No, wait, I think we taught it to some other new player, while Joe joined us but already knew the game. In any case, I drew awful tiles and languished at the back of the pack while Ward sailed in for the win.
Thursday morning meant the “official” start of Gulf Games, and I was able to persuade my reluctant wife Wilella to make a rare appearance in the gaming room for the occasion.
She immediately spotted the Crokinole boards in the middle of the room and wanted to know what that game was. We sat down so I could demonstrate and were quickly joined by Leon Hendee and one of the many youngsters in attendance for a game of Crokinole.
Willy caught on quickly and proved to be a deft hand at flicking the discs, so before long we had won the game and I took her over to show her where she could pick out a medal for the victory. At this point she was all “This is great! I actually won a game!” and I believe immediately went on to be taught Blokus (another hit for her) while I found a game of Goldland.
I don’t actually remember who was in this Goldland game with me. I wound up playing Goldland three times in Savannah, and the third game sticks in my memory more.
After that I joined Frank Branham, Sandi West and Joe Huber for a game of San Gimignano, or, as I liked to call it, San Gimme-Gimme. Joe and I both caught on quickly and had developed unstoppable plans for winning the game by the time we were through the opening. My plan was a step ahead of Joe’s, so I took the medal. It’s a nice looking game, and Frank keeps hoping it’ll turn out to be a good strategy game, but so far most of us are unconvinced.
Joe next galloped us through a round of Bongo, a speedy-identification game by Bruno Faidutti. I think we had a Berg kid and/or a Vander Ark kid beating our time on this one, though I believe Joe did squeak out the victory. I felt lucky just to get a couple of the calls right!
Another Drahtseilakt game then transpired, this time with Sandi and Joy among the players, and once again I scored zero on the first hand and went on to lose from there. (It’s traditional.) I think Sandi won it.
I then wandered over to where Theresa Vander Ark had been teaching Elaine Lohroff how to play Kupferkessel Co., a two-handed game I was looking forward to learning, and Theresa was nice enough to explain the rules and then let Elaine and me exercise our rudimentary skills against each other. I thought the game was pretty nifty — not numbingly complicated, but fun and with just enough tactics, look-ahead, and memory to be entertaining. I moved it onto my list of games to get.
Next I was victimized by a younger Vander Ark, Jeanette, who beat me and two other hapless muggles at the Harry Potter Trivia Game. (“Can you really hold your own in that?” Ty asked me on our way to the table. “I doubt it,” I replied.) Jeanette knew approximately every detail from every paragraph of every Harry Potter book and got most of the answers without even needing the prompt from the multiple choice option.
Thoroughly trounced, I headed for a table of six to play Squint, a sort of Pictionary-without-pencils from the makers of Apples to Apples. A certain amount of hilarity did ensue, and the game gathered many a fan over the course of the week, but personally I will still prefer Pictionary.
Before the room was closed down for preparations for the Welcome Party, we got in about the first half of a game of Stimmt So! Kevin Whitmore, Susan Hendee and Maria Batty were among those playing for the first time, and though we did not finish the game, it should be noted that Maria was leading when we called it quits after the second scoring round.
At the welcome party we all played Take It Easy. I did awful! 42 points or some dreadful number like that. Sandy Kurzban beat the room with a nice round score of 200.
After a certain amount of tiddly-winks, I got in another game of Puerto Rico. I think this was the one where Joe Huber got beat by Jeff Stephens, but they do kind of run together after a while….
A game of Ra was the next order of business. We taught it to Joy Mills and she beat us all soundly.
Next a game of Breaking Away was organized. This is the numbers-intensive bicycle-racing game which Jim Cobb recently taught us, though it has been around for years. It’s an interesting game and we had a good table who took it seriously and played it hard. Jeff Stephens won with a breakaway (appropriately enough) approaching the second sprint point, with his lead rider then panting toward the finish line three spaces at a time just ahead of the pursuing pack to lead his team to victory.
Zoff in Buffalo came out next, and we were thoroughly Zoffed by… I forget who, but he beat us handily. Another good game.
My Thursday ended with another game of Kupferkessel Co., which as I recall I taught to Jeff and then beat him at.
My Friday began with Craig Berg, Leon Hendee, Sheldon Smith, Laura Smith, James Miller (the real one this time) and a game about cats and dogs called Wie Hund and Katz! The game was very chaotic and silly and so were we.
Next I showed Michael Adams, Joy and James how to play Attila. Actually I think James had played before, which was a good thing since he caught my scoring error at the end of the first era. It was a close game, about five points between first and last places at the end, in which Michael emerged with the edge for the victory. This is a solid and subtle game of numbers which would benefit from being played with more familiarity.
Over at the other end of the room I got into a game of Union Pacific with Michael & Shanna Labranche. I believe Kenny Douds, Leon Hendee and Jeff Stephens were the other players in this one. Apparently Michael & Shanna were still used to playing Union Pacific strictly by the rulebook, but they were willing to go along with the innovation (devised after all by the game’s author, Alan Moon) of being able to acquire Union Pacific stock only by trading in another share for it. We did, however, play with three of the four dividend cards being shuffled randomly into the main body of the deck. Leon and I have played the game many times using the technique of dividing the deck into four roughly equal parts and putting one dividend card into each, so we reminded each other to be alert for the possibility of the game ending much earlier than what we were used to. Sure enough, the dividend rounds came out pretty quickly, and when the game ended about two-thirds of the way through the cards, I had melded only six or eight shares of green, two shares of brown, one share of purple, and four or five shares of UP — but this was enough to tie for the win with Shanna at $90. Shanna raced over to the wall to grab the Union Pacific medal before the box was even packed! “I love this game,” she told me.”So do I,” said I.
I next moved to “the big table” for some Pick Two action. I have yet to win this game, but it’s a pile of fun to play, rearranging the letters into crosswords as quickly as possible while the crowd calls out for more. One day I know I’ll sneak in for a victory, but this time I think it was Vickie Watson who led the way.
The next table had Loopin’ Louie on it, and Wilella joined Kevin and Kayla and me for a few spins of the old barnstormer. the the Carlbergs were kind, and the K’s split the wins.
Willy then got me to join her for a practice round of Blokus, which she had decided she liked and wanted to experience actually getting all her pieces on the board for. I forget who it was who joined us then to make four, but I finished just one step away from a perfect round, using all my pieces but having to play my one-square on the next to last move instead of the last.
After that we headed into downtown Savannah for some nice Italian food with Joy Mills and the Hendee family, where a good time and a lot of pasta was had by all. No games were played during dinner, though we did spend some time speculating on why half a dozen 10-year-old girls were dressed to the nines and in and out of a stretch limo half a dozen times on their way to who knows where. Ken, Mariselle, Derk and was it F Rank DiLorenzo? found the same restaurant about a half hour after we did, so we jollied with them on our way out.
With my pesto and salmon snugly in the fridge in the hotel room, I headed back to the game room where James Miller (if that is his real name) sent me to my first defeat in Kupferkessel Co. That’s okay — I still like the game.
Joe Huber then promised to play a good mid-to-heavy game with me if I would first play a good lightweight game with him. So he taught us Foppen, a clever trick-taking game in which the low card on one trick gets the “Foppen” token and doesn’t get to play on the next trick. Naturally, the object is to get rid of your cards. It was a clever construction, and we enjoyed the game. Sandy Kurzban and I targeted each other early (we were the leaders after the first two hands) and got down in the trenches and played it down to a tie. Unfortunately two other players beat both of us… but at least Sandy and I didn’t lose to each other!
The promised mid-to-heavyweight turned out to be Frisch Fisch, another game by the same author, Friedemann Friese, who obviously likes the letter F. This was an interesting exercise in constructing routes on a closed board and did indeed make me think hard, which I had been wanting. But it didn’t make me think I needed a copy of the game, which was released only in a limited edition and is rare and now rather expensive. The highlight of this, as Joe taught us the game and beat us handily, was Richard Glanzer, owner of the game, actually getting to play it for the first time.
Greg Schloesser then buttonholed me with the request that we play a game together, since our paths had not crossed since the official opening of Gulf Games. We were joined by Larry Levy and Joy Mills for a round of Samarkand, one of my favorite Sid Sackson designs. Larry got the idea quickly and took the win, with Greg and Joy close behind.
My participation in a game of Tichu was requested — when a partnership game needs a fourth, they’ll take just anybody! — so I joined Derk, Chris and Frank DiLorenzo for a few times around the dragon and phoenix. I’m a relative novice at the game, but I asked them if I was doing anything wrong, and they said generally my play seemed to be fine… so I had to conclude that Frank and I were getting terrible cards! We lost and kept losing. Then we lost some more. It was so bad it was funny. I guess I learned a few things about playing Tichu… and it was fun… but boy, did we lose.
That closed down Friday night for me. Saturday, once the clatter of the the Call My Bluff tournament had subsided, I started out with a round of Trendy with Dennis Mills and another couple of players. Somebody won… wasn’t me.
Then I played my second game of Goldland. This one was with David Vander Ark, who didn’t win the game but said he’d have to get a copy, and another couple of players who slip my mind. Somebody won… it was me.
Next I hooked up with Susan & Ed Rozmiarek (and if I spelled that right I award myself a gold star) to try out Emerald. I had played this once before with Frank & Sandi and hadn’t been especially enamored of it, but with Larry leading the way on the rules, we had a good time collecting gold and gems in the dragon’s lair. “Maybe a lunch hour game,” said Susan to Ed when the tumult and shouting was over, and I think that about pegs it. Enough decisions to make a difference in the outcome of the game, but nothing you have to spend a lot of concentration on. As I recall Ed bagged the victory here.
The same foursome migrated across the room for a go at Quandary, one of Reiner Knizia’s simplest and most brilliant designs, in the beautifully produced American edition from Milton Bradley. “Oohs and aahs” about the lovely clicking of the chips were duly evoked from the Austin Powers, and eventually Susan took what looked like a pretty hefty lead into the final round. Of course, one of the interesting things about Quandary is that, knowing who the leader is, your options for sensible play become limited. You HAVE to pick scoring chips in colors other than those the leader is picking, because if you merely score just as well as the leader, your chance of winning is nil. (Royal Turf uses this same feature to good effect, further complicated by the hidden bet values.) So I invested heavily in one of the colors Susan wasn’t and was lucky enough to get it to come in for me to edge her out for the win.
Next I joined K-ban and some of the younger ladies present for a hand of Frank’s Zoo. (Note to self: Do better at remembering the kids’ names next time. I forewent keeping track of games played on the Friendly Person boards in order to save time for gaming, but I regret losing the help this used to give me in remembering people’s names.) I’ve had a hard time finding anybody who really likes Frank’s Zoo, including a game in Pensacola people could hardly wait to get out of, and this time was unfortunately no exception. The girls were more patient, but the hand obviously outlasted K-ban’s and my interest in it. (On the plus side, as I was giving a Tichu preview last night at the Atlanta Boardgamers, two of the Tichu newbies were like, “Oh, so this is a Frank’s Zoo variant. Oh yeah, we play that all the time!” So maybe I’ll finally get a chance at the game with people who know some of its ins and outs.)
After that I found my way into my third Puerto Rico game of the week. I have no idea who I played with but know I did not win.
A couple of Daytona 500 races were the next order of business with Leon and the two older Vander Ark males. I perversely drew not a single wild 5 in either of the first two races — luck of the draw can do that to you in Daytona 500 — but at least saw the winnning spread fairly equally around the table while I was coming in third and fifth or sixth, so I wasn’t too far out of the running as we headed toward the final race, and I figured it was about time I was dealt some wild cards. Unfortunately we did not get to run this, as the hour of the Prize Table was approaching and the Vander Arks were off to dinner. So my Big Comeback had to stay imaginary.
The Prize Table was as ever the focus of much excitement. We buzzed like bees around a particularly alluring bunch of flowers as the hour approached, marking our lists and checking them twice, recommending and disrecommending games to each other, sometimes an “Oh, that’s a terrible game — you don’t want that!” about one WE really hoped to nab, and so on.
I thought I made out very nicely at the Prize Table. I got there too late with my first pick for either Pig Pile or Blokus, which were Wilella’s big new favorites from the week, but I did eventually get away with Flowerpower (which it turns out Willy likes too!), the new Theophrastus fromMayfair Games, the old Die Bosse from FX Schmidt and Sid Sackson (which looks very promising and has cool, vaguely Peter-Max-ish artwork), and a game about ships called Bounty which everyone assures me is terrible but has great bits if you like ships. And I like ships. So maybe I have some new tryouts for the role of the Flying Dutchman in my Freibeuter games.
While the Prize Table was going on, Susan Hendee and Maria were helping me do the scoring on the Monopoly, Harry Potter and truck questions. This turned out to take a lot longer than anyone expected. Two or three people saw our plight and helpfully offered to write a computer program to make the scoring easier next time…. That would be nice!
Eventually the numbers were done and I was able to go back to the letters, in the form of Pick Two with Vickie, Elaine and others. I made it close but lost again. This time it was Gail Schloesser who had us under her spell.
Nur Peanuts hit the table next with Vickie, Craig and Kyle Berg, myself and a fifth. Apparently Vickie had never played with fewer than six, as she had never seen the drone in the game. Also it turned out that, while we had all played the game, I knew the rules better than anyone else at the table — only claiming one property in a five-player game before the dice-rolling starts, not having to pay the winner of the round if you’re parked on your own property, etc. — and I don’t think the other players were really quite comfortable with the unfamiliarity of the official rules set. Craig quickly went into kamikaze mode (somebody always does in Nur Peanuts!), and when the smoke cleared I had the most money left with Kyle comfortably in second.
After that Shanna and Michael, Joy and Kevin twisted my arm into a five-player game of Goldland. Kevin was familiar with the rules, but I explained them for the other three, and then was going to opt out of the game because I feel it runs a little too slowly with the full complement of five players… but they talked me into staying, and I was glad they did. It turned out to be the most closely contested of my three games of Goldland of the week and the company was most entertaining! (Maybe the five people I played it with before just weren’t enough fun!) At this point I was teaching the rule — since debunked — that to get the two-gold bonus for reaching the temple you have to get there in the same round as the player who gets there first. Now I find that the rule as written says that you merely have to get there within a round after the first player gets there. A small distinction, but it did drive my strategy a bit as I was sitting second player and went to some pains to make sure that Michael, as fifth player, did not reach the temple ahead of me and thus deny me the bonus. With the correct rule I could have relaxed a bit and just gone into the temple after him… but I won’t complain since the game worked out for me. Shanna, who observed during the course of the game that it was tough going for a player late in the turn order to try to find a way through the wilderness, nevertheless was fascinated by the game and in its final stages, when I was the clear leader and everybody was targeting me, led the table in a five-minute discussion of how Michael could have a chance to take the desert tile (worth 5 points!) away from me on his last turn. Actually we all got into it, with even me suggesting the tricks of the trade which would give him a chance to set up two desert camps in his last two turns, and after exhaustive examination of the question breathed a communal sigh of satisfaction as we finally figured out how he could do it. Of course this was all in service merely of forcing my hand, as I then had to use MY last turn to set up an extra desert camp myself to protect that 5-point tile instead of going for the 3-point treasure I would otherwise have claimed. But it made for quite a good ending to the game, which as it turned out I won by only a single point over the ever-striving Shanna.
As the evening wound down, we persuaded the shy and retiring Peter to teach us the game of VIVA Pamplona! David, Joy, Henry Hunger, Jim Cobb and I clambered to run with the bulls in this colorful and fun-filled Wolfgang Kramer romp. Just from the description of the game and the artwork on the game board I told Jim, “Already this could be my third-favorite Wolfgang Kramer design.” We had a very lively bull in this game as all his high-numbered cards came out first, and the tagonistas had a hard time just keeping up the pace. Only three of us barely managed to get a marker into the arena before El Toro made his entrance there, ending the game, and it was Joy who had amassed the most points along the way to win the day.
(I’ve already put in a bid on a copy of VIVA Pamplona! and have rated it as my fourth-favorite Wolfgang Kramer game, after Daytona 500, Goldland and Princes of Florence.)
Peter and Henry called it a night, and our final foursome closed down the room with Russelbande, an Alex Randolph game of racing these lovely little wooden pigs which have amazing acrobatic abilities — the rules come with a whole pageful of ways you can stack them up in colorful, clever ways. (During the course of the race they do get to ride piggyback.) Your one strategic option in the race is the chance to extend the racetrack by one track section if you feel you need the extra time for your pig. Joy said that according to fluffmeister Mark Jackson this was called “your secret weapon.” She trailed badly in the race, so I said, “Use your secret weapon!” On the next turn, after she had already deployed this stratagem but was still far behind the pack, I jokingly taunted, “Use your secret weapon!” again. “I’ve already USED my secret weapon!” she shot back. “Use your OTHER secret weapon!” I said. At this point Joy dramatically focused her feminine wiles and batted her eyelashes MOST coquettishly at me… absolutely the best laugh of the week for David, Jim and me.
On Sunday Willy and I got in one more game of Blokus with Joe and Joy. Joe’s first game, and we politely let him win. 🙂
After that it was all packing and hugs as we loaded up and headed back to Atlanta for the week we moved across town from Tucker to Powder Springs.
And that, little Adam, is another story.