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Convention Report: The Gathering of Friends 2006: April 8, 2006 (Day 2)
By Rick Thornquist
April 8, 2006
This is the second day of the Gathering of Friends 2006 - my first full day at the event. Today was a great day - I got to connect up with a lot of old friends and got the chance to play lots of new games. Here we go!
After waking up and having breakfast, I headed down to the ballroom to see what was going on. The place was already buzzing - lots of people were already there and many games were in progress. I spied Alan Moon playing Twilight Struggle and said hi. Every time I saw Alan throughout the day he was playing Twilight Struggle. I guess he likes it!
It wasn’t long before a group of us got together and sat down to play a game. I was keen to try all the newest Nuremberg games, but we thought we’d warm up with a game of Tramfabrik. The players were Matthew Gray, Christine Simundson, Kevin Gonzales and Valerie Putman. The scores were all fairly close but it was Kevin who pulled off the win with 71 points.
The same group then decided it was time to start checking out some of the new Nuremberg games. First up to bat was California, the new Michael Schacht game from Abacus. This one comes in the standard Abacus flat box - the same size as Hansa and China.
In California, players each have a small board showing the empty floor of a house divided into a grid of rooms. The idea is to renovate your house by renovating the rooms and adding furniture.
On a player’s turn they can either take money from the bank or buy a tile which is a renovated room tile or furniture tile. The renovated rooms are placed onto your house board and the furniture on top of the renovated rooms. At the end of the game, you score points for the number of rooms you have renovated, plus you can get bonus points for building certain combinations of rooms and furniture.
The game has a very Schachtian feel - a very simple, elegant mechanic. The game had a some strategy but is on the lighter side. Our five player game felt somewhat chaotic - it was difficult to get the tiles that you wanted because other players would grab them first (this reminded me of playing Alhambra with more than four players - it’s just too tough to get the tiles that you need before they are gone). I was told by others that the game is pretty chaotic with 4 or 5 players but is better with 2 or 3. I played a two player game earlier this week and I agree it was somewhat better. Still, after two plays, I’d give the game an average grade.
Next up was Thurn und Taxis, the new big box Hans im Gluck game from Karen and Andreas Seyfarth (the game will be sold in English by Rio Grande Games as Thurn and Taxis). I was very much looking forward to playing this one - hey, a new Andreas Seyfarth game from Hans im Gluck has got to be good, right? And it is!
Thurn und Taxis is basically a placement game. The board that shows southern Germany and some surrounding countries which is divided into areas with cities in each of these areas. The cities are connected by roads.
There is a set of city cards which represent the cities on the board. Players have a hand of these cards and use them to place postal branches - a little wooden house - in cities. You basically draw a card and then play the city card in front of you as part of a chain or cities where you want to place your houses. Once you have played a certain number of city cards you then discard them and place your houses on the board. There are also five special actions and you can use one of these each turn to draw more cards, etc.
Scoring is by filling up regions, plus getting certain lengths of city chains, and a few other things.
The game feels a bit like a few other games. Mostly I would compare it to Web of Power, which is a placement game with some similar properties. The card drafting is sort of like Ticket to Ride and Showmanager combined (with the attendant frustration at not getting the right cards). The scoring of the regions has shades of the merchandise tokens in Ticket to Ride - Marklin - the player who scores it first gets the most points, the second player gets less, etc.
My impression? I liked it a lot - a very nice game indeed. The game is not too complicated (but not simple either), plays in an hour, and has some very nice strategy. There are lots of ways to score and a number of different strategic routes to take. Most everybody I talked to during the day was singing the game’s praises and every one of the few copies here was busy all during the day. For me, this one is a keeper.
Moving from the more gamer game of Thurn and Taxis, we go onto Hart an der Grenze - a much lighter game published by Kosmos. The theme in this one is very silly - you are crossing the Mexican border into America and are trying to smuggle goods in to make cash. Some of the goods are legitimate - maracas, sombreros, but there are also illegal goods - cigars, etc.
One thing about this game, the components are really, really nice - maybe too nice. Each player gets a suitcase to smuggle their items and this suitcase is a little metal box. There are other nice little bits as well. Actually, I’d say it’s overproduced - it’s a big box game and could easily have been smaller and cheaper. If you don’t mind the price, though, the bits are great!
During each round of the game, one player takes on the role of the customs officer. The other players take some of their goods cards and put them into their suitcase - this is what they are going to try to smuggle. Each player then tells the officer how many goods they are trying to bring over the border, which must be true, and which legitimate item they are bringing, which is usually a lie (just like really going through customs!).
The customs officer then picks one player to search his bag. That player can stave off a search by bribing the customs officer with money, but if that fails they must be subject their bag to a search and perhaps lose any undeclared items. All of the players then get to save any goods that made it through the border. At the end of each round these goods are sold for money.
There are a few other little things, but that’s mainly it. It’s very much a light bluffing game and fairly silly. I’m not normally wild about these types of games but we did have a good time roleplaying the theme. I thought the game was a bit long for what it is, but you can easily reduce the length. In the end I thought is okay fun, for a certain crowd who are looking for something lighter and sillier. I may play it every once in a while, but that’s about it.
Like the previous two games, Nottingham is one of the new crop of Nuremberg games. This is a small box game from Abacus.
Nottingham is mainly a set collecting card game. You are grabbing different kinds of goods cards and trying to meld them to get points. Each time you draw a card you can either take it or use its power to take other player’s cards and do some other things. Once you have three of a kind or certain types of sets, you can meld your cards to get points. Whoever has the most points wins.
The game is lightish and has a little strategy, but not a lot. I think it’s good for when you want a nice card game to pass the time that isn’t too taxing. I’d say it was pretty good and that’s about it. One nice thing about it is that it plays with seven players - a number not supported by most games.
Chinesische Mauer is a new small box game from Kosmos. Actually, when I first read about the game I thought it was a big box game and was surprised when I finally saw the game in the same small box as Spy and Manga Manga.
Chinesische Mauer means Chinese Wall and has to do with the Great Wall of China. When you see the components, numbered cards with numbered scoring tokens, it screams Reiner Knizia - and it is indeed a Knizia game.
The table is set up with four groups of two scoring tokens and players take turns placing numbered cards in rows beside these tokens. At the beginning of a players turn if he has the highest sum of cards in a row he gets one of the scoring tokens. Another player can take the second token and then the row of cards is discarded and two more scoring tokens are put in the row. Once all the tokens are gone, the game is over and whoever has the highest sum of tokens wins.
This being Knizia, there are a few twist and these are mainly in the special powers that some of the cards have.
Chinesische Mauer is a very typical Knizia card game and it works fine, but I’d say is nothing special. I thought it was okay for filler material for the occasional game but not much more than that.
Next up was the other Hans im Gluck big box game from Nuremberg - Mauer Bauer (in English it’ll be Masons from Rio Grande).
This one is by Leo Colovini. Colovini’s games have a signature - mainly abstract games that are fairly straightforward. This one does feel like a Colovini game albeit one that has been jazzed up a bit.
The board is an area divided into triangles. On your turn you place a wall on one of the triangle sides and then roll some dice. The dice tell you which color of towers to place on either end of the wall place the color of some houses which are placed in the spaces on either side of the wall.
Once an area has been walled off, it scores. Each player has a number of score cards in their hand and can play one or two of them. These cards all have some sort of condition - red houses in the enclosed area, white towers outside the enclosed area - and a score. Players have a choice as to which cards they will score and then get another scoring card.
The game is more of a gamer game, about the same weight as Thurn und Taxis. I’m not normally a fan of Colovini’s games, I find them a bit too abstract, but I did like this one. It’s got enough strategy to make it interesting and while you can get a bit screwed if you have bad scoring cards, there are ways to alleviate that. I’m pleased that I got a copy of this game brought over for me from Germany and hope to play it again soon.
With the end of Mauer Bauer, it was time for dinner (lunch, as usual, had been skipped). Valerie Putman guided a group of three cars to her favorite Columbus haunt - a place called, if I remember correctly, the Starlight Diner. When we got there, unfortunately, there was a 40 minute wait. A big group stayed but a small group of us vied for a Mexican restaurant closer to the hotel (to maximize our game time).
After dinner, I wandered back to the hotel and back down to the ballroom. Marty Hoff spied me and immediately suggested a game of Taj Mahal. My favorite game? Of course! We played a great game where Marty was far ahead for most of the game. I thought the rest of us were playing for second place but I was able to come back with some good province connections and get the win in the last round. Marty vowed a rematch - I’m looking forward to it!
My last new game for the day was Seeräuber, a new small box game from Queen designed by Stefan Dorra (I think the multilingual version is to be titled Buccaneer). It seems Queen thinks there aren’t enough pirate games already - somebody should set them straight!
This is a fairly light game where the object is to put together a group of pirates and then storm a ship for loot and booty (loot being money and booty being treasures).
Each player has a set of numbered pirates which are disks. On your turn you usually take one of your pirates and stick them on top of another player’s pirate to form a group. Other players can then place their pirates on top of these groups.
Once the groups have a certain number of pirates in them, the player that controls the group - the captain - can send them out to storm a ship. The captain and perhaps another player who has a pirate in the stack gets some booty. The captain then gets the loot and pays it out to all players who had pirates in the group.
This keeps going until all the ships have been plundered. The player with the most loot wins and sets of booty chips can give you bonus money.
The game is yet another light to medium weight game. There’s nothing earth-shattering here - it’s yet another okay game that is a decent time filler. I didn’t mind the game, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to play it.
My final game of the night was a quick game of Attika. Adam Smiles got us with a connection win.
And with that, my day was over. Whew - that was a lot of new games! It was already 2:30 in the morning and time to hit the sack. I paid a quick visit to the stalwart group of Werewolf players before getting some sleep in preparation for more gaming tomorrow. Stay tuned!
| Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version | |
 | My games played today… Traumfabrik with Matthew Gray, Christine Simundson, Kevin Gonzalez, Valerie Putman plus Interested Onlooker (Bud Sauer) |
 | California with Matthew, Christine, Kevin and Valerie |
 | California |
 | My home in California |
 | Henning Kropke (Hi Angelika!), Matthew and Christine play Thurn und Taxis |
 | Thurn und Taxis |
 | Henning, Andrea Meyer, Matthew and Christine play Hart an der Grenze |
 | My suitcase in Hart an der Grenze |
 | Matthew Gray is the Sheriff in Hart an der Grenze |
 | Nottingham with Chris Page, Henning, Valerie and Kevin (well, Henning didn’t play - he just crashed the picture) |
 | Chinesische Mauer |
 | Lotte, Dan Blum and Henning play Mauer Bauer / Masons |
 | Mauer Bauer / Masons |
 | Ada Jarvis, Adam Smiles and Kevin pretend they are playing Seerauber / Buccaneer |
 | Seerauber / Buccaneer |
 | Some pictures from around the Gathering… Alan Moon contemplates yet another game of Twilight Struggle |
 | One of the many games of Thurn und Taxis / Masons |
 | A group playing Hacienda |
 | Electronic Catchphrase |
 | A late night Werewolf group |
© 2006 Rick Thornquist
Posted by Rick Thornquist on Apr 9, 2006 at 07:57 AM in Special Features, Convention Reports, Convention Report: The Gathering of Friends 2006 / 4890
Comments:
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Wonderful seeing these pictures! Thanks Rick! Keep em coming, time permitting, of course. Posted by Mike Doyle on Apr 9, 2006 at 03:57 PM | #
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Is Seeraeuber a new version of Safeknacker? Posted by Jeff Allers on Apr 10, 2006 at 12:27 AM | #
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Got lots of new Nurmberg in that day, that’s excellent! A shame to hear that nothing is that special except for Thurn and Taxis and maybe Mauer Bauer. And I thought the exact same thing about Chineseich Mauer until I saw the price, it does have that big box look to it. Is Hart an der Grenze the same as Contraband? The descriptions sound identical. Posted by Phil Schwarzmann on Apr 10, 2006 at 01:52 AM | #
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Jeff, according to Joe Huber, Seerauber is indeed a remake of Safeknacker, possibly with a few new twists. Posted by Larry Levy on Apr 18, 2006 at 10:26 AM | #
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Rick, do you know if Rio Grande plans to publish Hart an der Grenze in the U.S.? Thanks in advance for any info. Posted by John Barnes on Apr 19, 2006 at 10:50 AM | #
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John - I haven’t heard of any plans for Rio Grande to do Hart an der Grenze. - Rick Posted by Rick Thornquist on Apr 19, 2006 at 01:35 PM | #
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RioGrande will not publish “Hart an der Grenze”. Some retailers will import it, but since the exchange rate is bad, and the game is overproduced, it will beinteresting to see how much it will sell for in the States. Posted by Robert Zurfluh on Jun 1, 2006 at 10:26 AM | #
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Thanks for the clarification, Robert. I believe that Boulder Games is planning on importing it, but they haven’t received it as of yet. This game sounds like a lot of lighthearted fun from the Gathering reports, but perhaps not $50+ worth of fun ;-) Posted by John Barnes on Jun 1, 2006 at 10:58 AM | #
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It’s just over 20 Euro from adam-spielt....and gamesurplus is getting it as well (along with funagain). GS has been very good regarding pricing on imported games. So, I keep my fingers crossed. Posted by Robert Zurfluh on Jun 1, 2006 at 11:15 AM | #
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