Gathering Report - Day 2

Yesterday I only played a handful of games, but somehow managed to get to bed very late, so this update is in the morning.


Notre Dame - Above you can see Jay Tummelson teaching the newest Alea title as we found him on Sunday morning. All the good things you have heard about Jay are true and more. He is a wonderful teacher a boon to the hobby and all around good guy. Right after teaching this group he brought some of us to a second board he had out and taught it again so we could play.

The first thing to notice is the nifty setup. The oddly shaped district pieces are arranged about a Notre Dame tile selected for the number of players. With three it is a triangle, two or four a square or five a pentagon. No matter what shape you use, one district per player fits snugly into the arrangement creating an attractive presentation. Most of your play is in your own district, but a carriage from each player can head out through town.

The game is played over nine rounds, in three groups of three turns. During this time you have the potential opportunity to play to each of seven districts, move your friend and help build Notre Dame. The trick is a clever mechanism where you draw three cards on your turn from these nine options, keep one and pass on two. You then keep one of those two and pass on the remainder. In this way the players jointly dictate each other's actions. You only can play two of these three cards and must discard the third.

A last clever piece is the rats. They accumulate as the game goes on and penalize you heavily if you ignore them. So the game is one of trying to build an infrastructure to generate victory points, help work on Notre Dame, send carriages out to recover messages from throughout the city and keep the plague under control. Kris, Becky and Tom played a learning game with me and I enjoyed enough to come back later the same day.


Pillars of the Earth - It was cathedral building day for me I suppose. I next learned on the new Mayfair English edition of this Essen 2006 release. Jennifer was kind enough to teach and David and Becky joined me for the play of the game. Another terrific title for my tastes. I appreciate how at the beginning of the game you are essentially gambling with your choices, but the decisions become more predictable as the game proceeds to lead up to a tense endgame.

Kevin, Valerie, Dale and Brian play the epic full game of Through The Ages. This is on my list for a second play sometime this week. If you have trouble telling Dale and Brian apart, just pull out a camera and see which one mugs for it.

Prototype - Next I played a prototype. One phenomenon of the Gathering is sometimes you get poor translations or incorrect rules explanations that cloud your opinions. In this case, I actually think that may have happened as the game was run by the publisher, not the designer. You'd think this would be the point at which that doesn't happen, but it is a good reminder to take all these first impression reports with a heaping helping of salt.


Notre Dame - Mathew wanted to try this title so I agreed to teach and we were joined by Paul and Angela. The second playing was won in a very different way from the first and we all struggled much more with the rats. The difference in plays is a good thing to me, showing lots of replay value. It is immediately apparent that if you let a player go off on their own down a path, they will likely win. At least as far as Carriages and Notre Dame are concerned.


Mr. Jack - I had played this title a couple times last fall and agreed to teach Mathew it as well. Based on conventional wisdom I let him play detective as I played Jack. On the first turn he was able to get two pieces flipped to innocent. Then the second turn he miscalculated and only got to flip one more. Even more important, unnoticed by Mathew I had moved a piece within on movement of exiting the board. With five potential killers still out there he started to get concerned, especially when my moves made it so that four of them were guaranteed to be seen. Not detecting my gambit, he figured "Well, at least I'll get to flip one." and moved a piece to prepare for the following turn.

I announced that Mr. Jack was unseen. "Uhoh." End turn 3, out goes lamp, Mr. Jack takes first move and exits the board. It is good to see that it can happen, even if it requires a small oversight from the detective. He could have stopped it of course, but at the expense of making no progress in deducing who was Mr. Jack.

Dune - Finally, at 8:00 I began an epic game of Dune with Nate, Evan, Daniel, Zack and Brian (not Dale). We had our first worm on the third turn and quickly split into three two player alliances. Then the diplomacy instincts took over. Frequent sideboards were held, strategies discussed and the game play stretched out. We stopped for pizza and Evan, my ally at the time said something offhand to Nate like "Well, we know these alliances w0n't last to the end of the game". At the next nexus event I dropped him and teamed up with the Emporer. It seemed like a good idea until Harkonen dropped a single unit into a major stronghold and deployed the lazgun and shield. By the next nexus I was back together in an alliance with Evan, but this time Dan was on board as well as we struggled to hold the balance.

It was easily the longest game of Dune I've ever played, but very enjoyable. At one point it seemed like 3/4 of the pieces were in the spice tank, but still, victory proved elusive. In the end Zack (Bene Gesserit) and I (Fremen) were able to consolidate control of every city but Arrakeen and I shared a win in my fourth distinct alliance of the game. By that time it was 3:00 A.M. (Yes, it took about six hours of game play, plus rules and pizza break) and I went to bed.