Panama City Beach, Florida
October 15 – 18, 1998
Now, here is what I played. I’ll just give my ratings and highlights of the various games.
MARRACASH
Rating 7
CANYON
Rating 6
This one was cute. It is basically a trick taking game akin to spades or Tonk. They added a board with movement as the scoring mechanism as opposed to pencil and paper. The ending rapids where you must take your exact bid is a neat twist that I liked. On the whole, it would not go to a ‘must-buy’ list for me. Tonk would work just as well with a deck of cards.
RAZZIA
Rating 6
Cute Raj variant. You secretly bid money placed at one of six joints. Not a whole lot of control.
ESCAPE FROM COLDITZ
Rating 5
I actually almost won this one. Got the staff car and a guy almost to the end … four spaces away to be exact. Suddenly, someone did a sudden death run and made it before me for the victory when they realized I would win on the next turn. My dislike for this game is the tedious moving around to get what you need and waiting for the right dice rolls. Not my cup of tea.
CARABANDE
Rating 6
Frank Branham rates this one a ’10’. We built a great speed track with three jumps. Two of the jumps spanned from one table to another. We used two basic sets and three expansion sets in the construction. It was a great track with a lot of exciting plays. Fun game if this is your cup of tea, but expensive!
TOP IT
Rating 6
Placing geometric shapes to score points. Quite a good filler with some thought. Would recommend this one if you enjoy geometric analysis.
THE GOTHIC GAME
Rating 6
Dungeon Quest meets Satan is what we called this one. The object is to stay alive. To give you an idea of this one: you explore a castle trying to find weapons to kill everyone else. Not only are you fighting the board, but everyone else, too! To give you an example, Sandi West died first by losing a toe (I guess gangrene set in!). Then I poured acid on Mark Jackson to dissolve him. I then put Frank Branham on a meat hook before Eric Wood met his demise in the torture chamber with the Iron Maiden. If you like Dungeon Quest, Dungeon and Warlock of Firetop Mountain, then this would be a good purchase for you. The macabre humor is great!
FAIR PLAY
Rating 2
In fairness, the highest rating for this clunker was a ‘4’ by Frank Branham and Eric Wood. This is a car racing game. You roll a die, add a tile of the road track and then offer a card to one opponent face down. The opponent can take it and play it right then, or make the giver keep it and immediately play it. Some cards are good, while others aren’t. So, you can hose or help someone and they don’t know which it will be. The problem is, it is just too random with no real point. Steer clear!
INKOGNITO
Rating 6
It was just too late at night for this one. This would likely rate higher if it had not been after midnight. We had some major problems. First, people just got so far from stuff it was difficult to do anything on a turn. Second, there was major mix-ups in info. Eric Wood and I were partners and both had a different solution, while Frank Branham partnered with Mark Jackson and they, too, had the wrong solution. Lucky for Mark, he won first because he was the only one who got it correct. I am sure all of this was because it was so late.
BAMBOLEO
Rating 4
Don’t let my rating fool you. It should probably be a ‘5’ and it is a tentative buy. It is purely a party balancing game. Large, flat circle covered with various shaped wooden pieces. All of this rests on a high tower atop a cork ball. The thing can really tilt without falling and allows for a lot of tension. This one was the hit of the convention for everyone. A great game for what it is.
IT’S MINE
Rating 6
WALDSHATTENSPIEL
If you can imagine six adults in the pitch dark in a roach infested convention kitchen (we couldn’t turn the lights out in the main gaming hall as the other gamers were playing different games), you can imagine the fun we had. There is no rating because it is really a cooperative children’s game.
Basically there are several wooden trees around the board in varying heights and seven elves represented by pawns. One person is the light … a candle which is lit and put on the middle of the board. The candle casts shadows in which the elves must hide. The elves try to to all get together behind one tree in order to win the game. If the light catches an elf as it moves around the board by a die roll, it is frozen and must be rescued. Well, lucky for us, the elves won this time after a hard fought battle.
MOLE HOLE
Rating 6
Quick Ravensberger game with potential. Try to get your moles in holes. Each level the number of holes reduces. Some strategy here. This would be a tentative buy at the right price.
EXPEDITION
Rating 8
We played this one with five players. Just a suggestion for everyone: We had three newbies and I suggested we mark the community objectives with tokens. It was much appreciated by the new players. By the way, Kim McCarthy was a wiz at this game and whooped us all very handily. I think the game plays slightly better with 3 or 4 players.
VERY CLEVER PIPE GAME
Rating 5
This rating is unfair. We played the four player version with two players playing the ‘pipes’ and two players the backgrounds. It took too long and was too tedious. If played with more than two players, I would recommend only playing with teams. I would like to try this one again.
MIDNIGHT PARTY
Rating 6
We got about seven or eight players for this Hugo the Ghost Chase. Quick filler of 20 minutes with seven players … not bad.
CELEBRITIES
Frank Branham and I won an undisputed victory in this party game, which we went for to take a small break from the board gaming. Frank and Sandi are terrific at this … if they had been on the same team, there would have been no contest.
BARBARROSSA
Rating 5
This was the 1988 Spiel das Jahres. Twenty questions with play-doh. Frank is using some house rules which help the game immensely.
IN TEUFEL’S KUCHE
Rating 6
The components are marvelous. The mechanic of dueling with the pop-up devil is great. This one is just a lot of fun for a fairly simple, fairly quick game.
KEYDOM
Rating 6
You have seen the posts. Yes … too long. Would love to try it again with only four players. Also, I believe upon several replays it would become somewhat mechanical … but I’m not sure. Neat board and neat ideas. Would welcome a copy if one is available because it is so unique … but, it would not come out very often.
CUT-THROAT YAHTZEE
Tim Watson’s variant of “if you score a section, the other players get a zero for that section”. Quick filler before dinner one night.
TIME BLOCKS
Frank and Sandi picked this one up on one of their beach excursions. You are timed to build geometric structures with various shaped blocks. It was tough.
BIG BOSS
Rating 7
I liked it! Yes … better than Acquire. I think the money flows much better, keeping people in the entire game much better than what occurs in Acquire. Especially good with six players.
KAPITAN WACKELPUDDING
Rating 5
Build blocks on boats and take them sailing. Basic topple type game except you move the stack around! Makes for much fun and excitement. This is on my buy list. Again, for the style of game … it is a lot of fun and a hit.
CAESAR & CLEOPATRA
Rating 7
ZUM KUCKUCK
Rating 5
First time for me. It improved with each hand, but I still would not purchase a copy. By the way … first game I have played that begins with a ‘Z’!
DIE MACHER
We played just one turn in order to give everyone a feel for the game. I want to try this one again, for sure. No good opinion yet but it holds much promise.
VOLLE HUTTE
Rating 7
This one is a ‘buy’ for me. You build a restaurant with certain tiles … pool tables, patio dining, formal dining, bars, etc. You then try to attract customers to your establishment. You play action cards to force the customers of various values to leave your opponent’s restaurants and come to yours or someone else’s. Good mix of card play and strategy for the first time out. It may not hold up in the long run, but was intriguing enough to add it to my ‘buy’ list.
In my mind, Gulf Games II was a HUGE success. Thanks to everyone who attended and I hope even more can attend for our next one.