Williamsburg, Virginia
August 7 – 10, 2003
Pneu games (and pneumonia – I hope not) from the Gulf Games week in Williamsburg:
Ed and Susan Rozmiarek and I finally got our game of Siesta in at Williamsburg, and they picked it right up. (Ed won!) Our incisive expert analysis now (I almost said “guess”) is that the game is just so inferior as a two-player game instead of three- or four- that Ed and Susan weren’t able to be properly impressed by it head-to-head.
I also appreciated their bringing along a copy of Mayfair‘s new Lunar Rails, which Jack Lindsay and I played Thursday night until about 6:00 a.m. This is a worthy addition to the “crayon rails” series. If you liked Australian Rails and India Rails, you’ll like this one, too.
I finally tried Moderne Zeiten by the designer rules (instead of those from the first available English translation) and think I rendered them moot by making a huge leap forward to the New York airplane space — the one right next to the finish space — preliminary to ending the game on my next turn. Britannia may rule the waves, but in this one control of airplanes controls the game.
In the “my games with Alan Moon” category, our pal Patrick Brennan (who is not back home in Australia yet to defend himself) won at Coloretto, I won at Zoff in Buffalo, Alan’s fiancée Janet won at Viva Pamplona!, and in partnership with Sus Lundgren from Sweden, Janet won again at Personal Preference, a game which gave us laughs uncounted. This was my one and only game with Dave and Jenn Bernazzani, those photogenic folks who like hamburgers and applesauce. Alan seemed like a nice guy and by all appearances enjoyed himself famously.
In the “my games BY Alan Moon” category, I won both Europa Tour and Union Pacific. Many of the games had “medals” (we called them medals even though they were made of plastic — I won’t attempt to nail down the malleable etymology of the word right this minute) depicting the game’s box lid, and if you won the game, you clipped the medal to your name badge. For some reason, the only games I won which had their own medals were blue games: Europa Tour, Union Pacific, Moderne Zeiten, Carcassonne and Too Many Cooks. This is the sort of coincidence that only happens once in a, hch-hmm, Blue Moon.
I played Ta Yü without a partner for the first time, trouncing Jack Lindsay thoroughly on our way to his returning the favor in the Lunar Rails game, even though there was no medal for this game in a dark blue box. Later when youngster Timothy McCarthy appealed to me to join him in a serious game, I partnered him in Ta Yü, much to the chagrin of Ed Rozmiarek and Dave Vander Ark. I would have trash-talked them a little about the beating they were taking, but Timothy wouldn’t let me get a word in edgewise.
Friday night Sarah Samuelson and her daughter Tessa were playing Pussy Cat and I sat down to admire the board, a clever tree with branches which would “fall off” (literally be removed jigsaw-puzzle-style) when they became too heavy with pussy cats. Sarah and Tessa were having trouble making the game “work,” as all their branches were breaking before they would get to the end-game condition of three big dogs barking at the bottom of the tree (I’m not making this up) on the second go through the decks. I suggested that the game would benefit from not sending one’s pussy cats up the tree quite so fast, and in a game with Tessa demonstrated that point. Tessa caught on immediately and used the new strategy against me, winning the game when — just like an adult — I couldn’t remember which of her branches would support four pussy cats even though she had just shown me 45 seconds before.
Saturday night I got a chance to teach Isaac Samuelson, Sarah’s 15-year-old, how to play Starship Catan. This game is a personal favorite of mine, and Isaac was an apt pupil. In the early stages I was called away for the second round of the Time’s Up tournament, but Philip Sasse took over my position and by report lost a close one to Isaac.
I taught Michael Weston a couple of games which he promptly won and just as promptly decided he liked: Samarkand and Schnäppchen Jagd. The Schnäppchen Jagd game was a weird one in which I never got to change my bargain pile number once in the entire game.
Pat Brennan gave Dave and me a thrashing at Klunker, another Uwe Rosenberg game I’d like to play more often.
In addition to those already mentioned, I played a number of new (or new to me) games over the course of the festivities:
Ohio – Just uncanny what Reiner Knizia can do with numbers. This is a no-luck card game in which everyone starts with 11 identical cards. The hand takes about 10 minutes. I see a great future for this game while waiting for the rest of the crowd to show up.
Res Publica – A more complicated Knizia game of numbers. This is the trading game where you are strictly limited in the form of offer you can make, and some reviewers have found these options too limiting. I liked it, though, or at least figured out enough by the halfway point that I’d have enjoyed another chance at it with my brain in gear from the first card.
Zendo – One of those logic games where you have to figure out the rule for the pieces set out, enlivened by the use of such phrases as, “Master, would it be true to say that the construction has the Zen nature if and only if…?” Another 10-minute round, but everybody will want a turn being Master.
Medieval – This is the new GMT game by Richard Berg, and apparently it has qualities which will appeal to a certain type of player, but I am not really that type. Throwing a lot of plus-one and minus-one chits around is no substitute for genuinely interesting tactics IMHO.
Enchanted Forest – Another memory game for the kids to beat me at. Fluff Daddy should be proud of me for daring this one.
Once Upon a Time – A very silly game, at least the way we played it with Craig and Kim Berg, Elaine Lohroff, et al. It seemed that the rules didn’t quite work, but that didn’t seem to be quite the point as I dissolved into laughter over and over.
Halunken & Spelunken – Dave had promised to teach me this game, and Ed eagerly joined us. They recommended the simpler version, without the bidding on Black Jack, and I found it a light but amusing diversion which should see a bit of play in the environs of Atlanta now that I know how it works.
El Caballero – I had tried this once before, long ago, but had been stumped by the rules. Ted Cheatham got us through the rules this time, with only one observed omission — a player can have more than one ship on a water area — and though we truncated after the next-to-last scoring round, we came away with the feeling we could actually play the game next time.
Smarty Party – The hit of the weekend, if such there was, was this new R&R game where players take turns trying to give the answers listed on the cards in categories such as “Three Harry Potter and Seven Chronicles of Narnia Titles,” “Members of the Brady Bunch Household,” and “The World’s Ten Most Populous Countries.” Much like Outburst in that sometimes your knowledge of a category could be thwarted by the answers actually printed on the cards, but designed for individual instead of team competition. A good design, but I think we played around a third of the cards provided in just two eight-player games, which seemed a little thin. It made me want to get my old Outburst out again, too. In fact, I’ll bet you could use the Outburst cards to play Smarty Party if you wanted.
Battle Ball – I didn’t actually get to play this one, but watched Stephen Glenn and Erik Arneson going at it with great glee. Apparently this uses a dice system somewhat like that of Formula Dé, with different dice assigned to different players on your team for a sort of rugby-style slugfest on a board as big as Daytona 500. It’s a $20 Milton Bradley game which I believe I am destined to buy at Toys ‘R’ Us.
Word Whiz – Three consonant cards are turned up simultaneously, and the first player to make a word with them scores the vowels they contain. I saw this being played several times before Richard Glanzer got out his copy and got me into a game. Larry Levy remarked at the outset, “I fear Stven in this game,” and sure enough, I pulled off a come-from-behind victory, just nipping Richard at the finish line. James Miller distinguished himself by the early deployment of “antidisestablishmentarianism,” leading to a rule that no word could be used more than once. I twice came up with words which scored no vowels (since “y” didn’t count): “syzygy” and “why” — which also was the only word to use all three consonants and no other letters.
My last game in Williamsburg was a Samurai with James Miller and Ward Batty. We might not have picked this except that almost all the games were packed up or being packed up, and this was one we could still reach in James’ boxes! But it worked in my favor as I had the plurality in high hats while the rice paddies and Buddhas ended in ties.
It was another terrific Gulf Games, and much praise to Greg Schloesser and Tim and Vickie Watson for the exceptional work they do to bring this wonderful party to us again and again.
Mark Jackson, Lenny Leo, Ty Douds and family, Kim McCarthy, Michael & Patti Adams, Jon Pessano and family, and Henry Hunger were among the many missing faces we’d have had more fun seeing than not. No offense, guys, but we went ahead and had a good time anyway! Our enjoyments were enhanced by the first appearances of many folks from farther north who’d never had a Gulf Games in their neighborhood before.