Ava Jarvis: There and Back Again: A Gathering of Friends Report, Part 2

Monday: an in-depth look.

People are present and actively gaming when you get downstairs about thirty minutes ahead of the start of the Wildlife Adventure tournament. You wonder what it will be like when the entire Gathering has gathered, per se. There is something in the air that makes you miss the din of a crowd....

You settle down at table with your fruit and trail mix breakfast, and wait for the tournament to start, chatting with people gathering in the general tournament area, admiring the various copies of the game that people brought along.  When roll is called for the first set of games, you are pleased that your opponents will include Daniel Karp and Steffan O’Sullivan.  Tom DeMarco you aren’t familiar with, but he’s a pretty nice guy. 

You start the game with a spring down Western Africa, but your plans peter out from there.  For reasons unknown, everyone has decided that expeditions should all head (or be manipulated to head) westwards.  You should have manipulated at least one of the expeditions back towards the Orient, but you do not.  By the time you realize your mistake, the expeditions have steamed off and no one will claim an Asian animal for the rest of the game (and only one Australian animal, the hard way).  Half of your hand consists of occidental animals.  Oops.

Tom has a very good sense of timing in this game, since he knows when to spend his travel vouchers.  Daniel runs into some good luck with the events, and ends up in second place, two or three animals behind Tom.  Steffan O’Sullivan gets a moral victory for getting to the Blue Whale all the way at the bottom of the board.  You and Steffan are tied for third.  A fun game even if you did lose, and this is not the type of game you sweat over.  Still, it would have been fun to continue.  Maybe next year.

You and Daniel depart the tournament area, looking for something to fill the gap of not playing more Wildlife Adventure for the moment. At some point Daniel mentions his beautifully painted War of the Ring set.

Well, why not?

Setup and refreshing of the rules takes an hour or so, and then we’re off, using an excellent, in-depth (without being overwhelming) step-by-step player turn sheet from BGG.

Rick immortalizes on video the final fall of Gondor while the Fellowship speeds towards Mount Doom. The spies of Sauron are apparently incompetent, although the Witch King and Saruman are quite the opposite, felling fortification after fortification. Aragorn dies valiantly but unfortunately too early. Gandalf the White hangs about in Fangorn and manages to kill off Saruman, but not before great damage is done to the Rohirim. The game ends a few turns later with the Frodo and Sam one step away from dunking the ring, but not before the besieged Grey Havens (and the last of Daniel’s needed victory points) is overwhelmed by Uruk-hai.

There’s a little more time before anyone is really hungry for dinner.  You play Geschenkt, Um Krone und Kragen (a minor hit at the Gathering), Times Square (not bad, a typical Knizia card game), as well as a Friedemann Friese prototype. (You find that you still can’t count.)

Afterwards, you and Daniel swing by Pizza House (which doesn’t deliver, but is possibly better than Pizza Mart, which does). It’s not too bad. On the BGG scale, you might rate it a 6 or a 5.

On the way back, Daniel makes you sign up for the Loopin’ Louie tournament, and you finally do so, with some trepidation.  Then you and Daniel play Mauer Bauer along with Fabio, who is happily eating the rest of the pizza from Pizza House.  The game is cut short for the tournament.

There are quite a few people crowding over at the tournament table setup for Loopin’ Louie.  From the crowd, this must be one of the most popular tournaments of the Gathering, if not the most popular. You soon find out why:

• Prior experience is not a necessity when it comes to looping Louie, a squat baron in a motorized plane who circulates the board and knocks out your chickens. You bounce Lou with a plastic paddle, away from your chickens and hopefully into one or more of your opponents’ chickens.
• There is no formal tournament setup. You just try to get in as many goes as possible, although you must still wait in one of the lines for your turn (there are chairs, so it’s not bad at all). When a table has finished, the next line up rushes in. The turnover of players is constant, which adds to the fun.
• Seriousness has gone out the window. You have a tally card that you mark when you take first or second place at a table, but this is, overall, not paid much attention.
• Just about everyone that is currently here, is here.
• The bout between the final four involves just about everyone standing around the table, watching in interest and laughing when Lou loops and reprimands the over-confident.

You finish with only one first-place and one second-place mark on your tally, and have had an hour of fun, and consider yourself as coming out ahead even though you were nowhere near the final four.

This is the best tournament experience you have ever had.

As the cheering crowd dissipates after Lou’s last loop, it strikes you that many people at the Gathering take a more relaxed, fun attitude towards gaming. There are party games, late-night sessions of Werewolf, trivia races, glow-in-the-dark and mouse-flicking dexterity feats, being played in alteration with quiet, serious games (and other games inbetween the two extremes). The atmosphere is casual and entirely unlike the gaming groups you’ve been part of, where people usually have a single-minded focus on strategy. This is most likely because a gaming group get-together is more limited in time.  In contrast, the Gathering and conventions like it stretch over several days, and no matter how much you really want to, you can’t play Caylus all that time.

It’s midnight. The night is young.

At some point you find Sterling Babcock taking out his beautifully translated version of the German edition of Arabian Nights.  You can’t resist: it’s late, which means you are a bit too tired for a round of Princes of Florence, but an experience game like Arabian Nights is up your alley.  You’ve only played this game once before, the less balanced and less production-ready first edition.  The new edition is a welcome change.

A large part of the fun of an experience game is an interest in what others are doing when it’s not your turn.  Taking turns to read from the book and index in the encounter table help keep the interest up.  Sterling also has created useful player aids that speed up the game, further reducing downtime.  The game is a blast, and you can’t stop laughing and out and out enjoying yourself, as you tend to do with this kind of game.

Experience games work best for people with common sense, e.g., someone who doesn’t decide to assist the evil Vizier when you’re supposed to be pious, or someone who doesn’t decide that, in order to combat a storm, he must first drink.  But you have a lot of fun this way and are a bit too giddy to think.

It’s 4am when you finally hit the hay.

This is your most memorable gaming night of the Gathering.

To be continued.

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(The author would like to thank all those who lended notes, created dated photo albums, or wrote Gathering Geeklists on BGG.  They were enough to jog a memory boost that lead to this Monday report.)

© 2006 Ava Jarvis

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Comments:

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Thanks for the nice report.  Interesting choice of perspective… >WALK NORTHWEST Gathering of Friends You are in a room furnished with wooden tables, chairs, and mounds of colorful games, each gracefully fashioned from cardboard, plastic, and wood.  An array of gamers from all across the land fill the room.  The only exit is south, as if anyone is going to be needing that anytime soon. Alan Moon is sitting here, contemplating an empty game box. >ALAN, BUILD GAME “I’d be glad to, but not for free!” >GIVE THE JEWELED MEEPLE TO ALAN Alan examines the jeweled meeple carefully. “Thank you,” he exclaims, placing it in his game box. >ALAN, BUILD GAME “Oh, yes, your game. Unfortunately, I have no board.” >GIVE THE BOARD TO ALAN Alan accepts the board. >ALAN, BUILD GAME “Darn it! I’m fresh out of pawns.” >GIVE PAWNS (to Alan) Alan accepts the bunch of pawns. >GIVE THE DIE TO ALAN Alan attempts to build a beautiful roll & move game out of the die. Finally, he gives up and hands it back to you. >ALAN, BUILD GAME Alan grumbles but constructs a handsome train game. He admires his handiwork and hands you the game. (Appologies to Zork, and Alan Moon, but mostly to Ava) Posted by Thomas Pancoast on Apr 25, 2006 at 08:06 PM | #

Heh. When I was younger and reading about the Gathering of Friends at various places (in my innocence), I wondered often what it was like to be there.  It seemed a kind of Holy Grail or whatnot. Well, I got to go, and I had a great time. I wanted to share this great time with others in a more personal way than just a very long session report.  And anyways, the second person/present tense gets used so little, it’s great when you can find an opportunity. Posted by Ava Jarvis on Apr 27, 2006 at 05:59 AM | #

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