Patrick Korner: Gathering of Friends 2006 Report - Part 1

Let’s see now… I’m tired, haven’t eaten properly in quite a while, and yet keep reminding myself how much fun it all was.  Clearly, I’ve just returned from Alan Moon’s annual Gathering of Friends, also known as “the most fun a gamer can legally have in the state of Ohioâ€?.  The Gathering is an invite-only event where all the games are free, you get invited out for dinner every night – always on the tab of some fat-cat publishing executive, of course – and all attendees are guaranteed of having their prototype picked up for publication.

Okay, I may have stretched the truth a little there.  The reality is: You go and play games with a whole pile of really great folks, from our gracious host Mr. Moon right on down through the guest list, and occasionally try and take a break from the games to take care of little things like eating and sleeping.  And, if you’re like me, the smile doesn’t completely fade until you’re back home and re-immersed in the boring world you managed to leave behind for a little while.

Since it’s the ‘in’ thing to do, I suppose I should put my thoughts about this year’s Gathering of Friends down in some quasi-permanent form too – like a report or something.  If only I had some kind of regular forum in which to express myself…

What, rec.games.board is pretty much dead?  Man, nobody tells me anything… Oh, hang on a second.  I know – I’ll do the report here!

Day 1 or, How I Managed To Arrive Suitably Exhausted

Being a West Coast kind of guy, I didn’t have the luxury of driving out to Ohio – I could have, but I figure I’d have arrived right around the time to help Alan take everything back down again.  So, flight.  Air Canada via Toronto, to be exact.  Red-eye leaving at 11 pm local time, to be completely exact.  Which means that I’d be arriving at the hotel right around 10 am, which should be perfect timing – check in, dump bags and head for the games.

Ah, how life has its way of throwing you curveballs.

For some reason, known only to morons and sadists, Air Canada figures that the red-eye is the perfect flight on which to offer free newspapers – because, you know, current events are what we’re all jonesing for at 1 in the flippin’ morning.  In any case, I graciously decline, intent on sleeping my way to Toronto so that I may arrive refreshed and, dare I say, ready to go.

Sadly, the young fellow to my right does not graciously decline.

And my, to his credit, he’s a dedicated reader of the newspaper. 

What’s that noise?

Oh, crap.

By the time the flight arrives in Toronto, I am ready to climb the walls, thanks to all semblance of rest having been destroyed by crinkle-meister, who, at one point, was the ONLY person on the ENTIRE plane to have his reading light on.  After disembarking, I seek out caffeine.  I will be seeking caffeine for much of the coming week.

Being sleep deprived is not really the way to best appreciate Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, which, in a strange twist of fate, is also currently being run by morons and sadists.  In order to get from Point A (where my flight from Vancouver arrives) to Point B (where my flight to Columbus departs), I need to take a shuttle bus, go through a passenger checkpoint, pick up my luggage, pass through customs, drop my luggage off again, walk for about a half a mile and then take another shuttle bus – because the airport is actually like three little airports, all next to each other but not connected by anything but buses.

Apparently this carnival of torture will improve upon completion of the new airport wing.  I am not certain of this, but I wish them luck.

The airplane to Columbus is of the propeller-powered variety, which means I will not be getting any rest on this flight either (for those who have never experienced such a plane – it’s like being trapped inside a very angry lawnmower).  Which means that I am all the more alert for the landing in Columbus, which seems to be taking place in a stiff crosswind.  There is much dipping of wings and swerving on tarmac, which results in much consternation among passengers and sighs of relief once the plane has stopped moving – sideways, forwards or any other direction.

But now things start to take a turn for the better – unlike last year, when I mistakenly hailed a cab, I know that the hotel is sending a shuttle to pick me up.  And so, luggage in hand, I head out to the pick-up point and await the final leg of my journey to the mythical land of the Midwest Hotel and Convention Center.

Now, I’ve travelled a very long distance to get here.  So who do you imagine is the first person I see upon entering the hotel?  That’s right: Rick Thornquist.  Rick is in the lounge area, working on yet another live-from-the-show update.  A short distance away is a laptop that, the coming days will prove, is connected to a World of Warcraft server pretty much 24 hours a day – apparently there are some addictions stronger than board games.

To make a long story short, I check in, dump my bags, extricate my prize table offerings, and head down to report my presence to Alan and jump into the fray.  It is nearly exactly 10 am, I have had nearly exactly 2 hours sleep, and it is nearly exactly time to start reporting on Day 2.

Day 2, or Playing Unfamiliar Games with Familiar Faces

I have brought a healthy selection of games for the prize table this year: two more copies of Snifty Snakes (since they are, without exception, one of the oddest games ever to be published), a shrinkwrapped copy of Maharaja, two opened-but-never-played copies of Basari, and a still-in-shrink copy of Code 7, the Canadian edition of Code 777.  I am hopeful that at least one person will go away happy with one of my games.

Load lightened, it is time to seek out a game.  My first game of this year’s Gathering?  Thurn und Taxis, with Dale Yu, Valerie Putman and Bobby Warren (I think.  I am terrible at logging who I played with, so that will have to do until I am corrected).

Thurn und Taxis

One of Hans im Gluck’s Nurnberg releases, and the latest effort from Andreas Seyfarth of Puerto Rico fame (although TuT is co-credited to his wife as well).  It’s a game set in Southern Germany (as well as several other neighbouring countries), in which the object is to build lines of houses through the various towns shown on the map.

A player’s turn is quite simple: Draw a card (either from the six face-up cards or from the face-down stack) and then play a card.  The card played must be connected by road to the card next to it – if this is impossible you must remove all previously-played cards and start afresh.  Afterwards, if you have at least three cards in front of you, you can choose to score, which means adding houses to the board (and possibly claiming some extra victory point tokens).

If you choose to score, you have a choice: either all cards of a single colour or one card in each colour.  So, for example, a four-card chain with two green, one dark green and one light blue card in it would let you either place a house onto the two green towns OR a house onto three towns: the dark green one, the light blue one, and one of the green ones.  If you’re already got a house in a town, you don’t get to add a second one.  You also don’t care if someone else has already added a house there – unlike the cloisters in Web of Power, sharing a space is permitted here.

Once you’ve placed your houses, you take victory points as permitted.  There are a set of cards that require chains of three through seven cards – you claim whichever one is the lowest card you don’t own yet (so a six-card chain will only get you the #5 card if all you have is #3 and #4 to date).  There are also other bonus tiles: for chains of five or higher, for having a house in every town in a region, for having a house in every region save one (the largest one), etc.  There’s also a bonus tile awarded to the player who initiates the end of the game, which is triggered when only player has either gotten rid of all their houses or claimed the first #7 card.  After the current round is played through, the final scoring takes place.

One more thing worth mentioning before going over the final scoring: This is a Seyfarth game, after all, and so it should come as no surprise that there are roles for players to choose.  Unlike Puerto Rico, though, they only apply to the active player.  There are four roles (which I will describe according to their actions, not their names): draw a second card, place a second card, add two to the effective length of your chain for scoring, and replace the available face-up cards with a new set (very Showmanager-like).  You can only choose one role per turn, so if you draw a second card you won’t be able to place two or anything.

Back to final scoring: Each player adds up their victory points (from the tokens they claimed and from the highest card they have – i.e. if you have a #6 card you don’t count the points on your #’s 5 or lower) and then subtracts one point for each house left unplaced.  Whoever has the highest score wins.

I like the game a lot, even though I am tired enough to play quite poorly, learning game or not.  It has elements of several other games in it, but they’re combined in a way that’s still unique and engaging.  True, it’s no Puerto Rico, but it’s still quite good.  If I’d never played Web of Power before I’d probably say it’s very good, but the sad fact of life is that the more games you play, the harder it gets to find truly original and innovative mechanics.  I’ll also go out on a bit of limb and pick this as my early front-runner for this year’s Spiel des Jahres – it’s a middleweight game that’s fun to play and comes from a publisher that hasn’t won for a while (not to mention this would be a chance to make up for giving the SdJ to Villa Paletti instead of Puerto Rico in 2002).

Memoir ’44 – Pacific Theatre

Next, I spy Richard Borg running a demo of the latest Memoir ’44 expansion and am eager to give it a shot.  The final Japanese / Marines minis aren’t out yet, but the new terrain types are on the board and the new rules are easy to incorporate, regardless of the fact that Russian troops are standing in for the Japanese.

The main new difference to gameplay with this expansion is that both the Japanese and Marine forces have special rules that affect how they battle.  The Japanese have the Banzai ability, which makes them truly ferocious in close: in a close assault (i.e. the attacker is next to its target), a full-strength Infantry unit gets to roll an additional die.  They also get to move and battle AND take ground after a successful attack – in other words, the Japanese forces in the game act just like the real Japanese forces did: coming at you in waves and getting in as close as possible.  And, just to make sure there’s no quarter given, the Banzai units always ignore the first flag, terrain effects or not.  Yikes!

Mitigating this all-out offensive power is the Marine’s new ability: Gung Ho.  Gung Ho means that for each card the Marine player uses, they get to order one additional unit (so long as it meets the card’s criteria).  In other words, a Marine Recon lets them order two units and then still draw two cards, keeping one and discarding the other.  In practice, this means that Marine artillery is witheringly effective, since it can be ordered in addition to whatever other maneuvers the Marine player is making.  And all it takes is a single hit to remove the Banzai ability from a Japanese unit…

I end up playing the Japanese against Mr. Borg himself in what I think was a Guadalcanal scenario.  And while I put up a good fight, it’s obvious that I am the student and he is the Master.  I think I should have tried harder to eliminate the artillery units – they killed me pretty good.  But the new rules are a blast and totally re-shape the feel of the game.  Congratulations to Richard on yet another successful expansion of the Memoir ’44 universe – I am looking forward to playing it again upon release.

One final note: Some have commented that, if this is a Pacific Theatre variant, shouldn’t there be a new map with islands and ocean?  I can’t speak for Days of Wonder, so I don’t know if such a map is in the works, but the scenarios that come with this expansion are all, according to Mark Kaufmann, smaller-scale battles that will be playable on the original board.  In other words, don’t expect the Battle of Midway – but you might get a scenario that looks at one particular element of that battle.

Eggertspiele

Next up was a late prototype that is planned for release at Essen by Eggertspiele – I got to play with Peter Eggert, Jay Tummelson and Mary Prasad.  I won’t say anything more about it except that it’s good, I want it, and I think the future is bright indeed for Peter Eggert and his games.

John Silver

An Eggertspiele title that I *can* talk about is John Silver, a clever little card game premiered at Nurnberg and which should be available soon.  The game is a pirate-themed affair in which players play out cards into rows of certain colours, trying to get the most points for themselves while forcing the bad cards onto their opponents.

The board has four rows (different colours), and each row has four spaces (in a four-player game), with each space being ‘owned’ by one of the players.  On a player’s turn, they get to put one card in hand into any open space on the board.  Afterwards, if that fills a row, the row gets scored.  Finally, the player draws a new card.  If the card they played was a gold coin card, they have to draw from the pile.  If it was an apple card, they can take any card, including a face-up one (which will, more often than not, be a bad card they’re trying to avoid).

Scoring is simple: The highest-value card in the row has the next-highest value card added to it, while the lowest-value card has the next-lowest value card added to it.  Then, the high-value pile is given to the player who owned the space in which the highest-value card was placed, while the low cards go to whoever owned the space the lowest-value card was placed in.  The catch?  Gold coin cards will score for the player who claims them, while apple cards will get passed to the player on your left – which means that you may collect lots of cards, but a pile of them won’t be worth a thing to you.

When the game ends, the apple cards are passed along and the scores tallied.  Then, whoever has the most black marks (which are on the bad cards I alluded to above) loses eight points, while the player with the second-most black marks loses four.  Highest score wins.

I am confused at the start of the game, but rapidly start to see some of the strategy.  It is good to hold off on apple cards, since they let you undo what others have tried.  It is best to try and give apples to the player to your right, but this is not always easy.  The game is light but enjoyable, and I end up having fun even though I lose handily – thanks in no small part to more black marks than I can imagine.  I can see this game doing well as a filler as well as in a relaxed family setting since the sense of being directly targeted is not as great as in other games.  I also suspect this will be a very interesting game for two, since the apple cards are then guaranteed to go to your opponent.

There is still more to cover on Day 2, but I will have to leave it for the next instalment.  Coming up: My take on Masons, the fun and frivolity of Day 3, and more, including some discussion of the culinary delights of the Columbus area.

pk

© 2006 Patrick Korner

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