Gathering Report - Day 7

Today's report will be a short one. I played one long game and a couple others, but also spent a lot of the day talking with people and decided to call it a night earlier than previous days. Time to start getting back on track.

Die Macher - I was in the game room relatively early and stumbled into a great opportunity to play this game with Rick Thornquist as our teacher. Christine, Terry, Chris and Kevin were the opposing political parties as we struggled to match our platform to the fickle whims of the German electorate over seven elections. Rick did a great job teaching and I am glad I finally learned to play this game. Still, between rules and play it was over five hours long, and I'm not sure I'd choose this particular title to play again for that length of time. Don't get me wrong, it is great and deserves to be a classic, but I think it would only really shine with a familiar group that got to play it regularly enough to enjoy the nuances. Unfortunately, I also have to concur with the gripes about the graphic selections, simply observing what the positions were from across the table was needlessly difficult.


Colosseum - After some time wandering and talking with friends Becky and I ended up sitting down to play this next game from Days of Wonder with Chris Biancheria, Bob, and Bernhardt. It is played over five turns as you plan out the production of four or five performances and the expansion and purchase of assets to make it all happen. The game works, but doesn't really all hang together for me. It is hard to put my finger on what bugged me, perhaps the trading system where all assets are open and you can see what people want. In any case, I just found it fell a bit flat, like I wasn't getting the payoff for my time that I was looking for. Becky tried it again later in the day and concurred with this first reaction, so I think it will be a pass for us.

Battlelore - After dinner I entered the Battlelore tournament. I know the Command and Colors system and had played once without lore cards earlier in the week, but this was the first time playing with that element. It took a while to get set up and started and then Rodney and I slugged it out. Our game took quite some time as we had a combination of cards with which to stop each other, and poor dice rolling. Finally, after a long battle I finally won by a score of six to five. This is definitely a game I enjoy, but Becky has indicated she won't play with me, so our copy went on the prize table. I'll need to find chances to play when back in Vermont though.

That was it for my gaming. I wandered a bit and then had a wonderful conversation with Steffan O'Sullivan (he used to run one of the great resources for game reviews out there, but recently has been transferring this information to Boardgamegeek). It was already getting late, so I poked my head into the Game Show tournament (you can see teams huddling to try to name the twelve independent countries of South America in two minutes below) and then it was off to bed.

Tomorrow is the flea market and the big prize table ceremony. Many depart right after that so things are winding down. We are staying for the annual dinner with Alan for the first time, so stay tuned.