Convention Report: The Gathering of Friends 2006: April 16, 2006 (Day 10)

By Rick Thornquist
April 16, 2006

This is my report for the last day of the Gathering of Friends 2006.  Today’s events included the Lost Cities tournament, games of Twilight Struggle and Marvin Marvel’s Marvelous Marble Machine, and the final dinner.  Here we go!

Lost Cities
My first event of the day was the Lost Cities tournament.  I actually hadn’t intended to do this tournament.  My girlfriend Christine was actually supposed to do it - she gave me instructions to wake her up in time for the tournament but when it came time to get up, well, she decided she was much more interested in getting more sleep (she’d been up all night playing Werewolf again).  I decided to take her place.

There was quite a big turnout for the tournament and gamesmaster Kevin Nunn split us up into duos.  I drew Dave Arnott, who proceeded to smoke me two games in a row.  Yikes!  I’ve played Lost Cities lots of times and thought I had the game pretty much figured out, but I learned a few new strategies from the masters at the Gathering.

Twilight Struggle
After Lost Cities I came across Paul Skrabut who was keen to play the highly regarded new game Twilight Struggle.  I’d seen this one played a few times at the Gathering, including by Alan Moon who seemed to be playing it constantly.

Twilight Struggle comes from GMT, who is generally known for wargames.  It is a bit wargamy, but it is mainly a two player area control game.  The game covers the cold war between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. who are both trying to exert their influence over the countries of the world.  The board shows a map of the world with interconnected boxes each representing countries.  There are markers for both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. that represent the amount of control they have in these countries.

The game is driven by cards which are played alternately by the players.  The cards can be used to add control to countries or they can be used as an event, which can do special things.  The events are based on events that actually took place during the cold war and the game just exudes theme.  There are certain sudden death victory conditions, or if you play to the end, there are other victory conditions.

The game is not really complex, though I was taught the game and may have had an easier time of it than if I had read the rules.  The gameplay is quite deep, though, there is tons of interesting strategy here.  There are a few slightly annoying quirks - the typical wargamer’s insistence on putting dice in the game for one, and some preposterous spelling errors on the components.  That aside, I thought the game was excellent.  It is a long game - our game went to three hours and we were only on turn 7 out of 10 before it ended - but I was engrossed throughout.  I can see why everyone seems to be so impressed with it.

Marvin Marvel’s Marvelous Marble Machine
My next game was Marvin Marvel’s Marvelous Marble Machine.  Rodney Somerstein had acquired a copy of this game, based on Tom Vasel’s positive review. 

Marvin Marvel’s Marvelous Marble Machine is from a small publisher - Pair-of-Dice Games.  The board is cloth with a field of hexagons printed on it.  During a player’s turn, a marble (which is actually a circular tile) may be placed in at the center of the board and in subsequent turns will start moving down a row of hexes.  More marbles will appear on subsequent turns.  Each player has control of one of the edges of the board (in our six player game) and if a marble goes off a player’s edge they score the marble.

Making things interesting are some machine tiles that can be placed on the board.  These tiles can do all sorts of things to marbles that land on them - change their direction, push them, rotate them, etc.  The idea is to place machine tiles so they direct the marbles towards your edge of the board and away from other player’s edges.

The game does feel quite like Dragons of Kir - in both of them you are placing tiles on a board to influence other pieces.  It may sound like a brain-burner, but it doesn’t seem to be - there aren’t enough marbles or pieces on the board at one time to make it that complicated.

I thought it was pretty good, but with six players towards the end of the game there was a fair amount of downtime.  I’d like to play it again with less players.

The Game of Life Card Game
After Marvin, Larry Levy prevailed on me to join him for a game of Pickomino or, as I call it, ‘Reiner Knizia’s Game of Pure Luck’.  During the game Larry was constantly singing its praises while I was deriding the pure luck aspect.  Larry made up for my torture by introducing me to a little game that, much to my surprise, I though was quite good - The Game of Life Card Game.  Normally I wouldn’t touch a Hasbro game with a ten foot pole, but Larry told me that the game was designed by Rob Daviau, so I gave it a try.  I only played about half a game but I found it to be a nice little card game.  Now I’ve got to try to find a copy…

We had to break off The Game of Life Card Game in the middle so we could head out for dinner.  This is another Gathering tradition that has been going ever since I started coming - anyone who is still left on Sunday night is invited out for dinner with Alan Moon and he picks up the tab.  As in previous years, we headed out to the Chinese restaurant that was hosting the festivities.

When we got there we found a huge group - sixty-some - who had come for the event.  There was lots of food and drink, and much recounting of various silly events from the week past.  There were also a few birthdays to celebrate.  It was all great fun - thanks to Alan for having a great dinner for us stragglers.

After dinner, people still wanted to play games, so we headed back down to a small room that we had stashed our games.  I played a final game of Augsburg 1520 and then headed up to my room to pack for the long trip home tomorrow.

And that’s it!  I’ll post a wrap-up of the festivities tomorrow.  Stay tuned!

Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version
	My games played today… Marvin Marvel’s Marvelous Marble Machine
	Marvin Marvel’s Marvelous Marble Machine
	Pickomino with Henning Kropke, Larry Levy (who just got his last tile stolen), and Valerie Putman
	Some pictures from around the Gathering… Kevin Nunn directs the Lost Cities tournament
	The Lost Cities tournament
	The Can’t Stop tournament
	The Can’t Stop tournament
	During the afternoon of the last day at the Gathering - still lots of games happening
	The Sunday evening dinner
	The Sunday evening dinner
	Back at the hotel playing some final games
	My last game - Augsburg 1520

© 2006 Rick Thornquist

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Comments:

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Ted Vasel? Have Cheatham and I merged? Posted by Tom Vasel on Apr 18, 2006 at 03:51 AM | #

Well Tom, a few days earlier there was a Greg Cheatham playing Hart an der Grenze with us. It was a scary two headed abomination that kept doing really bad mexican accents. Or was it Ted Schloesser...? :) (I think Rick even has a picture of this mythical creature) Posted by Kevin Bender on Apr 18, 2006 at 07:29 AM | #

Tom - D’oh!  Sorry about that, I’ve fixed it.  I’ll chalk that one up to sleep depravation. - RIck Posted by Rick Thornquist on Apr 18, 2006 at 07:56 AM | #

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