Birmingham, Alabama
February 13 – 16, 2003
As usual, I had a terrific time at Gulf Games!
Bryan Rankin, Jeff Stephens and I were roommates and rode over together for the event, and thanks to their “bright and early!” strategy for avoiding the morning traffic, we pulled into the hotel parking lot at something like 9:00 Thursday morning…. me without benefit of sleep for the last 20 hours or so, but what’s a few Z’s among friends, right?
We were enthusiastically greeted and name-tagged up by Greg Schloesser and quickly toted our games in for the festivities. Ty Douds noticed that I had brought Street Soccer and immediately drafted me to teach him and brother Kenny the game. It’s a simple little matter of angles and passes with a lot of luck thanks to the die roll… but I like it, and so did they.
A game of Moderne Zeiten was the first game I actually played, and this was with Joe Huber, Greg Schloesser, Elaine Lohroff and Larry Levy. I think only Elaine had never played before. I apparently explained the rules very well, as I finished in dead last!
Next, determined to get some longer games in at this Gulf Games, I managed to scare up five players who were near-novices at El Grande: Jay Jones, Ian Borthwick, Larry Levy, Jim Cobb and myself. With some assistance from Mark Jackson at a nearby table whenever we ran into questions about the rules, we slogged through the game in a couple of hours or so, with Ian holding on for the win and everybody seeing some missed opportunities along the way. As novices, we repeatedly fell into the mistake of thinking we could set something up for later when, as we gradually came to realize, the rule of thumb in El Grande is, if the points are there, grab them! From the discussion during the game, we all seemed to agree that El Grande is a game that was fine in its day but is now a longer and slower game than we have grown accustomed to playing. I won’t be rushing out to buy a copy, and Jim even started wondering out loud toward the end what he might get for his on eBay… but I’m glad we played it.
Another round of Moderne Zeiten, this time with Susan Rozmiarek, James Miller, Ty Douds and Kevin Gonzalez. This time I explained the rules so badly that I achieved the biggest victory margin over the rest of the pack I have ever seen in Moderne Zeiten. It helped that the game ended much more quickly than average and I was able to claim New York and London with only three markers down in the two cities combined. But I’m afraid it didn’t make a very good impression on Susan. Try it again, Susan; the game doesn’t always go like that.
Susan and Ed Rozmiarek did join me and Kenny Douds for a running of Clans. Through some strange conjunction of the planets, we soon found that we were playing in one of four simultaneous games of Clans at neighboring tables! I had only played the game once before, but managed to explain how it worked with some help from Ward Batty at one of the nearby Clans games. Susan won this one, decided she liked it fine, and, hopefully, forgave me for the Moderne Zeiten game!
Still determined to get some longer games played, six of us decided on Breaking Away, the bicycle racing numbers game. As the game got underway, I warned everybody, “This is not a short game — you’re going to be here for a good hour and a half.” I think this helped maintain the patience levels of Kevin Gonzalez, Ward Batty, Ian Borthwick, Jay Jones and Larry Levy throughout the game, and I’m going to try to remember it next time I start a game that may look deceptively quick, because we really ARE getting used to 30-45 minutes as the length of time a game takes. Anyway, we pedaled through this one carefully and Ward took the victory at the end.
After a nap break it was time for the Take It Easy game at the Welcome Party, where my table included Susan Hendee, Joe and Ben Huber, and David, Theresa, Nicholas and Samuel Vander Ark. Although I was one of the last three or four people left standing when the scores were called, actually I was standing in lieu of Joe Huber, who had the high score at our table but had to step away before the stand-down was done.
Going back to the open gaming, I fell into a game of Too Many Cooks with Brantley Tyndall, Jay & Kay Jones and Sheldon Smith. If I recall correctly, this was the close one where Brantley and I tied for best score, but fortunately there were two Too Many Cooks medals and we both snagged one.
Next I showed Ed, Sheldon and Jay how the Circus Maximus game from the new Reiner Knizia “Rome” package from GMT Games works. This is an amazingly clever affair of a simple hex track, an oval loop, and cards numbered 1 to 5 which each player metes out amongst his three chariots — rinse, lather, repeat. I was the smart money at the table, having played the game a couple of times before, and sure enough was able to use a couple of tricks that had beaten me in previous races to make it to the finish line first with all three of my chariots in this one. As is not unusual for me, I stand in awe of the excellent games Dr. Knizia manages to wring out of very simple mechanisms, and I look forward to playing this one again.
For a change of pace I got into a game of Kathai with Peter McCarthy, Kevin Gonzalez and Ward Batty. This is a relatively simple game of getting enough cards in your hand of a particular good to sell, hopefully at the best possible price, on a market where the price for a good drops to zero when it’s been sold, and you have to wait for it to work its way back up. Lots of luck but pleasant to do, and the cards are these cool desert colors that are nice to look at. So I expect to see Kathai get plenty of play as a 20-30-minute filler.
As the nightcap, Mark Jackson led a romp through Galopp Royal for Craig and Kyle Berg, James Miller, Chris Lohroff and myself. I had been wanting to try this game for some time, so I was glad to be there… but I wound up feeling there was a lot more dice-rolling in the game than I really like in a race game. Kyle beat us soundly with some good buys in the auctions and some good dice-rolling.
And then, thoroughly exhausted even though it was barely past midnight, I headed for some serious snooze time.
Day 2
Friday morning I walked into the game room and found my chance to describe the rules for Thor and Sarah Samuelson’s first game ever of Union Pacific. Leon Hendee, David Vander Ark and Jeff Stephens joined us for the fun. Neither Thor nor Sarah had any trouble with the game, as Thor beat us handily and I seem to recall Sarah came in second. I expect they liked it enough to play it again.
I then fell into a quick game of For Sale with Michael and Julie Weston, Keith Canova and Craig Berg. I can’t remember who won this game — I do remember I came in second — but the main thing I remember is that Craig and I got into a silly argument about whether For Sale was a similar game to Jumbo Grand Prix, the Reiner Knizia card game where you need one card each of four different colors to build your race car. Craig said, “In our group we call Jumbo Grand Prix Reiner Knizia’s For Sale.” I kept saying, “No, not at all!” Craig kept saying, “Yes, totally!” I still don’t see it. Maybe Craig can say “Yes, totally!” for us again.
Keith Canova and I then joined Larry Levy, Vonda Matthews and Derk Solko for an older game called Manager which Mark Jackson taught us. I thought it was interesting but a little too much rinse-lather-repeat to be any more. It seemed to sound a chime deep within the primordial heart of Larry, though, and he galloped off to victory with hardly a glance behind.
Next I have down that I played Too Many Cooks with Keith C., James Miller, Larry Levy and Keith L. Unfortunately I can’t think of anyone named Keith L. Maybe this was actually Chris L., that is, Chris Lohroff. At least I don’t have any trouble picturing Chris playing a card game. I either won this game outright or it’s the Too Many Cooks game that ended in a tie. Memory fumbles. Too many Too Many Cooks games.
In the Wheedle game I played after that, it was definitely Chris Lohroff, Larry Levy, Jeff Stephens and Jay Jones who did the trading thing, and by virtue of my having kept the score card I can definitely state that I won the game, helped by a big 24 points on the last hand.
From there, the quest to play more longer games at this Gulf Games continued with a five-handed game of Funkenschlag with Jeff Stephens, Bryan Rankin, Peter McCarthy and Patti Adams. Patti was new to Funkenschlag but got right into the spirit of the thing, entering the bidding wars for the power plants and cutting me off when I wanted to build on the same ice shelf a couple of times, and was right in the midst of things until we got down to the game-deciding power plant shake-out at the end. We had one of those typical Funkenschlag situations where we were approaching the endgame and needed to buy much bigger power plants, but the turn of the cards would not cooperate and get them out into the market for us. Finally everything broke loose and Bryan managed to get the best of things, connecting to his 18th city in the same turn as I did but finishing the game with a few more Electros in hand than I for the win. It seemed to take us at least three hours to get there, but it was a good ride.
People who would come over to the table to see how the game was going would inevitably remark on Bryan’s home-produced Funkenschlag board, a laboriously hand-cut affair of big interlocking saw-toothed hex-shaped modules. This, as Jeff explained at least eight times, was designed and posted (to the Geek, I think) by our pal John Tamplin in Atlanta, but all the careful detail work of printing, pasting and cutting this particular set was done by Bryan. While imbuing the game with a greater possible variety of maps, which seems to appeal to a number of players, this also has the immediate virtue of simply looking better than the roll-up map that comes with the game.
Our long day’s journey into electricity being completed, I quickly found myself partnered with Leon Hendee in a game of Korsar again John Moore and Keith Canova. Though Leon and I had more experience with Korsar and took the early lead, we were eventually outgunned and outmaneuvered by the canny pirates of la Nouvelle Orleans.
While sharing some pizza with the Samuelsons and the Vander Arks, our conversation somehow drifted around to Alex Randolph’s charming game of racing pigs, Russelbande. (Well, it was a ham pizza!!!) Since it’s silly to describe this game without getting out the fabulous little pigs to show people, we soon had the game on the table, and since it’s silly to have the game on the table without playing it…. you get the picture. As ever, the brightly colored wooden piggies did circus tricks and stole the show, and Sarah added yet another game to her list to get.
Then David left the table and Theresa, Thor, Sarah and I proceeded to hack through the thickets of Goldland. It was a good game for most of us, and Thor was only four points back of me at the end, but Sarah has already reported on the sad results of the chance she took, depleting all her resources to get into the square next to where the temple tile would be laid, hoping to see a clear road and a free step into the temple… but no, it was not to be! Hard luck, Sarah. High and dry in Goldland is a tough spot.
And here we leave our heroes high and dry in Birmingham, with more game reportage and repartee to come your way in part 3.