Gathering Report - Day 5

Thanks for the feedback comments. I'll see if I can keep up with more tournament info. I know the Tichu tournament that started last night at 7:30 is still going, I believe with four partnerships remaining.

Wednesday is the fifth day of the Gathering for me, and thus retains its place in the week as hump-day. Unfortunately, when this means an end to gaming it is too bad.

Venedig - I had the pleasure of learning this game with William Attia, Valerie Putnam and Dale Yu. A table full of 'gaming glitterati'. Bobby Warren and I were there to keep it real. The game is an interesting mix of mechanisms, centering around playing cards that allow you to build structures on one of five islands. As you score, your gondola moves along the canal, lending to scoring increases if you can build on a currently adjacent island. A clever game and one I would gladly try again.


Factory Fun - I first played this at an event last fall, but hadn't gotten a chance in six months and so had it among my list of new games to try. After running into Paul and Jacob we settled on giving this quick game another go. Nataline joined us, and in a rarity for the Gathering, we all knew the rules already and were able to just start playing. If you don't know, this game has two parts. One is a speed round where you flip machines and then everyone can take one. If you grab too quickly though you may be hurt by the result. In the second part you must play the machine to your factory and pay to place pipes to hook it all up. I enjoy this game quite a bit, but it isn't for everyone as Paul expressed a lot of frustration with the position he ended up developing.


Hour of Glory - Frank Branham had previously reviewed this game and I was interested in trying it out. He agreed to play the Nazi guards as Stephen Lesnik, Brian Fealy and I took on the role of the allied spies trying to loot the base for secret information. The game play was tense and exciting as each of us tried to use our unique abilities to best advantage in the game. We had quietly dispatched of many sentries and hid the bodies and were on our way out of the complex when the Kommandant played by Frank caught up with the elusive Russian a firefight broke out as we raced towards the exit and we were one minute short of fulfilling the dreams of our Hour of Glory. A lot of fun and would be perfect for a group that likes games with some chrome and a cooperative element.


Factory Fun - Becky got back in town after visiting nearby family and we had a bit less than an hour before a planned group dinner. We had run into Marty and I offered to teach him this title. It played quickly and we found that with the right group - willing to grab pieces based on looking at position rather than racing to grab without certainty AND quickly playing into the factory - the game is definitely quick and fun. This is good because I like the game and it stepped up a notch in Becky's book on this play.

Next we headed out for a group dinner of attendees of the Gathering of Friends who also play World of Warcraft (plus anyone who wanted to visit Schmitts in Germantown). As always this was good food and great fun as we chatted about everything from what characteristics make the perfect comic book movie to which ways of removing Jar Jar Binks are best for recovering some goodness out of the prequel movies. By eight o'clock we were back in the gaming hall.


Hermagor - Stephen, Jesse McGatha, Richard Rowan, Becky and I sat down to play this title with two interwoven parts that turns out mostly to be about the first auction portion. The auction is an array of tiles and by paying various costs you can position each of your four markers between to tiles, diagonally to four of them or directly on a tile. Each tile will be won by the player with the most markers around it, but the marker on top is first tie breaker and the marker on a side is the second.

This auction has a very Taj Mahal aspect to it in that once a marker is placed it cannot be moved. Thus, if you find yourself provoking or defending battles around numerous tiles you can expend a lot of resources to absolutely no gain. On the other hand, sometimes you just need certain tiles and so retreating to pick off the easy wins isn't always an option. The other half of the game consists of a traveling salesman problem as you move around a map and set up shops in cities matching the icons of tiles you won. In this phase there is little direct interaction (only a bonus payment if others set up shop where you already are) so this part of the game is more of a scoring puzzle. Overall well recommended, although I think five may have been too many. Next playing I will try with four, which I suspect is the sweet spot.

Alhambra Dice Game - Scott Alden, Ava Jarvis and Daniel Karp grabbed me as I walked by to try out the new Alhambra Dice Game. The initial reviews of this title had been fairly poor and so we wanted to try it out and see if they were fair shakes. The rules are simple enough, with each player taking up to three rounds of rolling to try to get sets of matching symbols and then scoring based on the best two markers in each of the six tracks. We ended up aborting the game after a scoring and second rolling round (a total of eight turns each). The game works and it isn't bad, but it isn't particularly good either. I enjoy dice games, but I would play Yahtzee, Pickomino, To Court a King or Can't Stop to address certain 'gaming itches'. I just can't ever see pulling this one out to play instead of one of those. Still, I'd play it with a group that liked it.


Taluva - After much hemming and hawing the same group ended up moving on to a game of Taluva that I taught for Dan and Aldie. After two plays I find I really like this game and I may seriously consider picking it up. The game play is enjoyable and fairly quick and it has the nifty mechanism for building your island up on multiple levels. I was glad Ava was at the table to catch me on a few missing rules in my explanation. Overall a good day, and I was able to get to bed for a better night's rest.