Emanuele Ornella: Ludopathic Gathering 2009

This year, as usual, Bruno Faidutti organized his own gaming event called the Ludophatic Gathering – and this year, as usual, I attended. The first time I was invited was 2002, and since then I’ve missed only one (not counting the one year that Bruno didn’t hold the event). This should give you an idea of the fun I have there!

As usual, the Ludopathic Gathering was held in a small town in the middle of the France called Etourvy. Bruno frequently says that this small town is in the middle of nowhere, and for the most part I agree. To get there, I’ve tried all the possible combinations of transportation, as in a classic network game in which you try to find the best travel route to reach your target destination. This year involved a cheap flight to an unknown small airport in the north of Paris (80 km away!), plus a car rental solution.

This year, thanks to the first of May holiday, the gathering started at Thursday afternoon. I stopped in Paris during the morning to meet Ystari Games’ Cyril Demaegd (who was heading to a gathering organized by Sebastien Pauchon in Switzerland) before then meeting Friedemann Friese (who was already in Paris for the Salon du Jeu de Société that was held the weekend before). Can you imagine the scene that followed? One Italian and a German (with green hair) in a small Japanese car driving on the French roads searching for the way to Etourvy. I have to say, for the record, that we missed the right way only once, and Friedemann taught me the classic German U-turn! Finally we arrived and started to play. For the first evening the dinner was a buffet of French cheeses, and I played Jet Set and Valdora. I was exhausted from the travel and went to sleep early.

The day after was a great day for trying prototypes, whether from me, from Friedemann – it was Friday and therefore the only day available to try his game of the same name – from Jean-Pierre Schillemann, and from Christwart Conrad. I had also some interesting games in the afternoon and night: Small World, Fits, Pyramid and many others.

The Gathering is not only for playing board games, but also for a lot of stuff related to board games. There are a lot of game authors, publishers, illustrators, distributors, shop owners and friends – every one of them with a passion in common! Throughout the years, I’ve seen many children there as well, most of them under a year old, as their parents could not resist coming to the Gathering. (The parent this year was Pierô, the illustrator of many French games).

The event features two main rooms for playing which are full of tables. On the ground floor sits Bruno’s famous game library, from which anyone can take a box and sit down at a table to play. The first time that I saw so many games all together I was impressed: stores that I visited had fewer games than what I was seeing! My first thought was: “I will not be able to play all of these games in an entire life,” but at that time I was in the early ages of my boardgaming adventure! My thought this year was: “Okay, 80% of the games I know at least the title, 50% of them I’ve already played, 25% I’m not interested in playing, but still a good 15% I want to try.”

This year I played fewer games than in other years, perhaps because I played more prototypes. One of the funny things at the Gathering is that you can play a game that is not yet published but will likely be! For instance, I remember that I had played an early version of Taluva by Marcel–André Casasola Merkle that was themed in the Vikings fjords and had ships rather than villages. I played Formidable Foes, and I saw Shadows over Camelot years before it was published!

On the first floor is even more space, and usually some “special toys” are also available. This year I had a lot of fun playing a tabletop soccer game as well as another game in which up to four players must blow a small ball using some special hand pumps.

Each year Bruno organizes a tournament of games to be played outside, and this year the session consisted on two different games. In the first game, everyone had a colored strip on each leg and each arm for a total of four different colors. Then we gathered in the garden, and Bruno started to call pairs of colors. Everyone needed to join a foot with a hand of the matching color. By the end we had constructed a chain of legs, bodies and arms, but not everyone was able to connect all four of their colors. The second outdoor game was a live version of Walter Obert’s Tokyo Train. The winners of these games are recorded by Bruno as they will be the first ones called at the end of the Gathering for the prize table.

Another thing you can always find at the Gathering is a “puzzle” game in which you play alone and you can, once more, win a first call to the prize table! This year we had to find six differences in the prints of covers to some of Bruno’s games, including Key Largo, Citadels and Red November. One puzzle from an earlier year involved a special glove glued to a box, and inside the box – unseen by you – were several pawns and pieces from various games. Using only your sense of touch, you needed to list the name of the games that these pieces belonged to. In another year, the punched cardboard sprues were displayed on the walls and again the goal was to list all the games that these came from. All of these are games for real ludophiles!

So the Gathering is a place where you have fun playing board games, where you can meet interesting people who are all in the board game field, where you can have friends, where you can eat some good food, and where you can drink. The only thing that is really small is the number of hours to sleep. I know some French guys who in past years didn’t go to sleep and continued to play games for over 24 hours!

Me, I’ve learned from past experiences to avoid “heavy” games after midnight, so on Saturday night I had a lot of fun first playing Das Magische Labyrinth, then discovering the amazing game Dixit, about which I must say a few words. When I first learned that an unknown game from a new French publisher won the “Jeu de l’année” at the Cannes festival I was surprised, but had no interest in playing it. I thought, “Okay, another party game won the prize instead of a ‘serious’ board game,” thereby reminding me of Villa Paletti. And yes, Dixit is a party game but it’s amazing! I would strongly recommend everyone play it. We played with seven (even though the game goes up to six players only), with many from different countries and it was great fun! [Editor’s note: Scott Tepper reviewed Dixit in February 2009 if you want to learn more about the game.]

That evening continued with Tokyo Train and Rhythme and Boulet from Cocktail Games, two games that were so fun that I want to now discover all the other games from this publisher. We ended at almost 4.30 am with Straw and Pit.

So what about “serious” board games? Well, I played several of them and saw a lot of people playing Small World (Philippe Keyaerts is one of the usual Gathering attendees), Valdora, Bombay, Fauna, Dice Town (Bruno Cathala sadly didn’t come this year), Pyramid (another author missed this year: Marcel-André), Fits and many, many others.

For me the Gathering is a great occasion to meet friends that I can see only twice per year: at the Gathering and in Essen! It’s also the event where I can playtest several prototypes and present them to publishers who are present. This year Ravensburger was present, and other companies present this year or in years past includes Repos Production, Matagot, Days of Wonder and Tilsit. It was at an earlier Gathering that I was presented by Bruno to Tilsit and had a chance to show the Mind the Move edition of Fantasy Pub. A couple of months later, Tilsit decided to re-publish the game.

All in all, it’s a long trip to be in Etourvy, but it’s worth it for a lot of concentrated fun with good people, enthusiastic friends, and untiring players. When at the end, just after lunch on Sunday and the emptying of the prize table, I headed back to the small Nissan, this time without Friedemann, I felt small and alone. And yet I had the memory of living this fantastic adventure once more and heading back home, happy to see my wife and kids!

Thank you, Bruno – never stop this special event that makes tiny Etourvy the center of the board game in France for a weekend!

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