Frank Branham: Bits from the Gathering

This will be even more rushed than the usual painfully hurried entry. There are too many people and chat with, many I've known for the 13 or so years I've been doing this Gathering thing. I've STILL yet to even chat with, let alone find time and location to play a game with Mike Siggins--something that is terribly long overdue.

So far, my happiest moment of the Gathering...I can't talk about yet.

My second happiest moment was being approached by a total stranger and handed a bundle with a CD, a record, and a T-shirt for The Ghastly Ones. I adore this horror surf band, and those of you who listened to the Boardgamespeak episode I was on may remember their groovy cover of Grim Grinning Ghosts. Essential listening. I haven't even gotten around to all THAT many of the new games, but the post Nuremburg crop is turning out quite well. Here are some thoughts on the good bits.

My favorite game is a Friedemann Friese prototype trick-taking game. I love trick taking games, but we only ever get a decent one that feels new every couple of years. We only get a great one at perhaps half that rate. The game has 36 cars married to a standard deck. Each card has a rule that modifies the basic Whist game. Each play submits a card after looking at your hand, and you have at it. The combinations of rules create some TRULY terrifying combinations, and often require some extremely strange brain bending to work out how to approach them. This happens every single hand. So it is like playing Barbu with literally thousands of possible hand types. The game is untitled, but I'm certain that F's will be involved and that my suggestions for the name will be wisely ignored.

Notre Dame is clearly very good. It feels like a slightly lighter version of Puerto Rico. The role cards are replaced with a card drafting mechanism that doesn't make the game as tense, and lessens the interaction. On the plus side, there are more types of resources to deal with, and the game is quite compelling. It will likely make a lot of top 5 lists this year.

The new Age of Steam is ALMOST perfect for my tastes. It removes the auctions, uses more forgiving math, and moves along at a brisk clip. If it had the large deck of action cards as in Railroad Tycoon, it would be perfect. Removing the auctions and tweaking the math definitely makes it feel lighter than Age of Steam, but I'm not so sure that it is really that much different. I'm all for it of course. Auctions bad.

Curiously, my other favorite game is almost entirely centered around auctions. Phoenicia is perhaps the first game that can really be called Outpost light. (I have made an argument this morning that it is an advanced version of Saint Petersburg--which would make Saint Petersburg an Outpost-very-light.)

The auctions are not odious to me, being of the Zepter variety where perhaps two people might want the same thing, and they bid up an item 2 or 3 ducats in the early game, or simply burn through all of their cash on hand in the later game. So the auctions go quickly.

Most of the elements of Outpost are actually present in this 90 minute game, even though it APPEARS like a much simpler form. You get discounts on later technologies, new types of "factories", worrying about storage space for your production, and the usual sorts of mechanics.

What Phoenicia has over Saint Petersburg is the insidious nature of the card distribution. It uses a four-staged deck of new technologies, and the distribution creates an uneasy mix of shortages in certain stages of the game. Saint Petersburg mostly has the one trick of having to shift from production to victory points. Here, the victory points are more spread out, and the storage limit forces you to grow your production to buy the really big important cards at the end.

To win, you absolutely have to watch for blind alleys, and plan a couple of turns ahead. Phoenicia is more forgiving than Outpost, as the paths are rather less defined and are definitely more flexible. Unlike Outpost and Zepter, I bet an experienced and quick group could rip through it in an hour.

Oh yeah, there was a Game of the Afternoon thing I participated in. Friedemann Friese, Joe Huber and I had prototypes based around clothespins, a desk clock, and a noisemaker. James Miller (chicken!) failed to pull together an entry in time, although he and Brian Yu (phhbbt!) had a very odd concept for a game. I bashed together my unholy entry out of Knex pieces, wire, a battery and buzzer, and aluminum foil to take second place. Lots of people took pics, and several of the jury were reluctant to approach the unholy sculpture. My primary goal had been that if the jurists were given a choice between playing again and having their pubic hair set on fire---they'd take the game. That actually worked out fairly well, then.

My game was a kid-style roll and move with each player having three pawns to race through a 3D grid. The entire board tilted with a tilt sensor which went off if the board tilted too far. That means, you had to worry about balance.

Clearly, I lost to Friedemann's Nacht der Magier-inspired mechanism that had the minute hand of his clock knocking off pawns to end a player's turn. I didn't get a good long look at Joe's game, but everyone seemed impressed with the theming and the use of the time schedule and the clinking glass noise of the noisemaker that felt all wedding-y.

It was fun. But alas, I have wisely decided to opt out of the stress of trying to create something even more terrifying for next year. I have a dungeon crawl to do.



© 2007 Frank Branham

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I’ve never played Age of Steam, but it sounds to me like I’d like the new one better as well, because I totally agree with your “Auctions bad.” sentiment.  That being said, though, I have to ask: *Which* new Age of Steam? Posted by Dave Wilson on Apr 5, 2007 at 10:54 AM | #

Looking forward to the FF trick taking game. Many thanks for the report! Posted by Brent Mair on Apr 5, 2007 at 02:12 PM | #

"So far, my happiest moment of the Gathering...I can’t talk about yet. (snip - 99% of the article) I have a dungeon crawl to do.” Are these two statements related?  If so, that’s great news (and not so great news). Great news b/c if anyone can do a dungeon crawl correctly, you’re the man for the job. Not so great news because I was hoping your “happiest moment” was having a publisher sign Battle Beyond Space. Then again, those two statements are likely completely unrelated.  But I prefer to live in a world where sci-fi and horror are the only movie genres in existance, all board games are beer-resistant, and big-name publishers develop Frank Branham games on a regular basis. Posted by Jon Theys on Apr 5, 2007 at 02:57 PM | #

Excellent info Frank! Posted by Lee Fisher on Apr 5, 2007 at 03:00 PM | #

Thanks Frank, I score another point in the Game of the Week. I’m now losing by 15. Dale Posted by Dale Yu on Apr 5, 2007 at 11:24 PM | #

And I have to wait *how* long to try these games? :-) Posted by Marc Gilutin on Apr 5, 2007 at 11:34 PM | #

Frank taught me BBS this week and I played for the first time. I think I took the record for most inept play ever - I had zero units left with 2 rounds to play.  I’m pretty sure that’s not the way to win the game… pk Posted by Patrick Korner on Apr 6, 2007 at 03:56 AM | #

Freidemann was showing his characteristic confidence the night before. Asked “Do you think you will win?” the answer came back “Of course, I will win for sure”. Shyness, being retiring and uncertain are not part of his makeup. Alan Posted by Alan How on Apr 8, 2007 at 08:48 PM | #

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