Convention Report: The Gathering of Friends 2006: April 11, 2006 (Day 5)

By Rick Thornquist
April 11, 2006

Here’s a report of my experiences from day five of Gathering of Friends 2006.  Today I played a number of interesting new games including Dragons of Kir, the upcoming Alea game Augsburg 1520, the upcoming Asmodee game Iliad, Blue Moon City and the new party game Women & Men.

Today I got a late start.  Between doing the video yesterday and getting together yesterday’s report I was up pretty late the night before and slept quite late in the morning.  Today I’m vowing to get to sleep at a reasonable time!

Dragons of Kir
My first game of the days was Dragons of Kir.  This is a fairly new game from a small publisher that caught my eye when both Tom Vasel and Greg Schloesser starting singing its praises.  The game started its life as Darter and then acquired a theme and became Dragons of Kir.

This is a two player abstract that is played on a checkerboard.  Two goal pieces are placed somewhere on the board, one for each player.  Then four dragons are placed on the board (the dragons don’t belong to a particular player).  The idea is to get one of the dragons to your opponent’s goal piece - when that happens you win.

There are a pile of tiles, each having some kind of power.  Players each have a hand of tiles and take turns placing one in an empty space each turn.  After both players have placed one tile, the dragons all move one space forward.  This is where the tile’s special powers come in.  Tiles can block the dragons, move them in another direction, stop them cold, and do many other things.  The object of the game is to place the tiles strategically so a dragon is guided to your opponent’s goal piece.

The game is quite strategic - the only luck element is the tile draw and you have a hand of four to pick from to alleviate that somewhat.  I liked the game - it is fairly abstract, which I don’t normally like, and can bit a bit of a brain burner, but I liked the way it played.  I’m looking forward to playing it again.

Augsburg 1520
Next up was the upcoming Alea game Augsburg 1520.  Stefan Bruck of Alea arrived at the Gathering today and had three pre-release copies of this game in tow.  I think he said it’ll be out in Germany in few weeks.

Augsburg is a bit of an involved game so I can’t really describe it all in a paragraph or two, but I’ll give you a bit of an overview.  It’s mainly an auction game.  There are a series of rounds where players buy cards to use in the auctions and then auctions are held for pieces which give you more money, victory points, or more cards.  After a set number of rounds whoever has the most points wins.

It all sounds like a fairly typical German game, but the mechanisms were different enough to make it interesting.  The auction mechanic is neat - a slight twist from your typical auctioning that adds a layer of strategy. 

I liked it quite a bit.  It’s more of a gamer game - it’s about the complexity of Louis XIV.  At this point it’s in the running for my favorite game of the Gathering.

Iliad
Stephan Brissaud of Asmodée finally arrived at the Gathering and he had a few of his upcoming games in two.  One of the games he had with him was Iliad, a new card game.  The game was designed by Dominique Ehrhard, the designer of Condottiere.  Actually, the game feels like a very jazzed up version of Condottiere, with a new and much richer theme.

In Iliad, players control armies and use them in battles.  Each battle yields victory point cards and gaining sets of victory point cards can get you tokens to give you more victory points.  Whoever gets to twelve victory points first wins.

The army cards consist of hoplites, archers, chariots, catapults, ballistas, elephants, etc.  Players play army cards one at a time in front of them to create their army.  Instead of playing a card you can use a played card to attack another player.  All of the different types of troops have different abilities - these take a bit to learn, but it didn’t take very long to get used to them (there will be cheat sheets, but we were playing the French version of the game).  Players can pull out of the battle on their turn and once the last player pulls out the battle is over (depending on the type of battle).  The victory point cards are then distributed.  Another round is then started.

I actually enjoyed the game quite a bit.  Card games tend to be lighter, but this one is a bit more involved and more interesting.  It has a bit of a ‘take that’ aspect to it, which is not normally my favorite thing, but there’s enough strategy to make up for it.  Also, the art in the game is beautiful.  I’m looking forward to getting my hands on this one when it comes out.

Blue Moon City
Ah, Blue Moon City.  I actually had this one in my pile of games over the last few days but was so busy with other games I didn’t get a chance to play it - I watched jealously as others played it.  Today I finally got my chance to give it a go.

Blue Moon City is billed as a boardgame version of Blue Moon, but it really doesn’t have very much to do with Blue Moon at all.  Actually, it’s a completely different game and the only resemblance to its predecessor is come of the card art, which looks like it was recycled from the card game.

The board is a series of tiles, each with a two, three or four spaces on them, with each space containing a number.  The idea is that players move their token move to a tile and play cards to place a cube on one of these spaces, claiming them.  Once all the spaces on a tile have been claimed, the tile scores and players with cubes on the tile get crystal shards and / or dragon scale pieces (whoever has the most cubes on it gets more, etc).  The tile is turned over and stays dormant for the rest of the game.

The idea is to collect a certain number of crystal shards and deliver them to the center of the board to redeem for a victory point cube.  Once a player has played four victory point cubes they win the game.

The cards in the game are numbered 1 to 3 and show the various Blue Moon races.  The 1 and 2 cards all have special powers allowing you to teleport your piece, play special card combinations, etc.  The basic game is actually quite simple, it’s all these special powers on the cards that make the game come to life.

Though it looks like there may be a bit of analysis paralysis (because there are often many different cards in your hand) I actually found the game played quite quickly as you were able to plan during others turns.  Our game was fast and I found it fairly strategic.  Overall I liked the game a lot and it’s another one that will be vying for my favorite game of the Gathering.

After Blue Moon City, it was time for two quick two player games of Aton.  These were my second and third tries at this game, and I still like the game - a nice two player game.  After Aton it was time to head up to my room for some dinner and relaxation before heading down for some more games.

Women & Men
Women & Men is something a bit different - a party game from Rio Grande Games.  I had heard preliminary reports that it was fun so I was keen to try it.  I found a copy in Jay Tummelson’s pile of games, pulled a group together, and gave it a try.

Women & Men is indeed a party game and if you’ve played the SimplyFun game Eye to Eye, you pretty much know how to play Women & Men because they are very similar.  A topic is read (something like ‘housework that men hate to do’) and everyone writes down five things that match the category.  You compare answers and the more you have the same as others, the more points you score.

There are two main differences between Women & Men and Eye to Eye.  Women & Men is more of an adult game than Eye to Eye - Woman & Men has many categories that are fairly risqué.  This makes it fun for a certain type of adult crowd.  We all found these categories hilarious and the answers got a lot of laughts.

Also, annoyingly, Women & Men has a scoring system that is quite complicated an mathematical - it’s like taking a math test every scoring round.  Eye to Eye’s scoring system is simple.

The game was certainly fun - we laughed a lot.  The scoring system is way too convoluted for a party game, though.  I may get the game just for the fun categories and use Eye to Eye’s scoring system to make the scoring simpler.

After Women & Men, it was time to call it a day.  Yesterday was a very long day and it was time to go to bed at a reasonable hour in preparation for more games tomorrow.  See you then!

Pictures - Click the picture for a larger version
	My games played today… Dragons of Kir
	Augsburg 1520 with Jeannie Hardy, Greg Schloesser, Stefan Bruck and Bud Sauer
	Brian Yu grabbed my camera and took a picture of me taking notes during Augsburg 1520
	Augsburg 1520 score board and cards
	Augsburg 1520 player board
	Augsburg 1520 pieces
	Iliad
	Iliad score cards
	Iliad player cards
	Blue Moon City with Christine Simundson, Larry Levy and Eric Brosius
	Blue Moon City
	Women & Men with Michael Weston, Jenn Bernazzani, Sharon Madden, a mysterious man not involved int the game, Craig Massey and Christine Simundson
	Some pictures from around the Gathering… Himalaya
	Big Kini
	Ingenious
	Lord of the Rings
	Eiertanz… The egg is bounced...
	… everyone jumps for it...
	… and the violent aftermath
	Dave Arnott gives his yearly greeting

© 2006 Rick Thornquist

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Comments:

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Wrong ! I just clicked on here and I got ... a big pictures. Ausburg looks goodygood. Looks like an instant purchase. Posted by Olivier Reix on Apr 13, 2006 at 02:58 AM | #