Another Day at the Gathering

Unfortunately Boardgamegeek is not responsive for me right now, so no hot links to game titles in this post. You can quickly search any of these games there.

Blogging daily does help track the passage of time, but I've officially lost track of the number of days here. I can work it out, but instead let me just outline the next day I was here. We got up and to the game room by mid-morning and Becky and I (both wearing our Penguins sweatshirts as the playoffs are starting) found David who had about an hour and a half before an obligation. We decided to play Kingsburg which Becky told me she had liked better than I reported on our first play, so I wanted to give it a three player shake. I liked it better than the first time, but it still ran too long as was too repetitive in decision making for my tastes.


As we were walking away from the table Greg grabbed me to play a new prototype with Doug and the game designer Peter. We really enjoyed it and I'd love to say a lot more, but as it looked like Peter was on track to be lined up for a publisher in the next day or two I'll save my comments for when I can put in a bit of meat.

I tracked down Becky and convinced her to try a game I'd played six months ago, Galaxy Trucker. This game has an element where all the players are frantically grabbing tiles from the center of the table to build ships simultaneously, competing against each other to be first to complete it. After that, you fly them through a series of gauntlets indicated by various cards and watch as they can either gain goods to sell, or be damaged or destroyed en route. Much like Roborally a lot of the fun can come from inadvertent misfortune to the players. Bob joined us , even though he doesn't love the game, because we accidentally each asked him separately if he wanted to play. Tami also jumped in and wanted to try. We played the game as described in the rules for new players, and I confirmed I really like it, while Becky and Bob confirmed it wasn't their thing. C'est la vie.


Becky and I went for dinner at the Mexican place across the street. Good food at a good price, and came back to see a game of Pandemic that Mark and Gary were in just wrapping up. The two of them were interested in playing again, so Becky and I sat down. We had four roles, but were missing dispatcher (the one role I'd played before). We seeded the deck with five epidemic cards and quickly went about containing diseases. We cured blue, but couldn't quite eradicate it, while red was cured and eradicated two turns later. After curing black and trying to stamp down yellow a bit we realized we were getting very close to losing due to drawing all the cards! Some good collective thinking got all the needed cards into Becky's hand and she won the game for us on her turn. If her turn had gone to completion we would have lost. I'm now one and one at this game and have enjoyed both plays a great deal. The first likely new buy from the Gathering for me.


After Pandemic I misremembered how much time we had until the Loopin' Louie tournament so we asked for something short. Mark suggested Lexio and Tori joined Becky and me to play. Lexio is a beautifully produced card type game played with thick black tiles. Much like Gang of Four, Tichu and other similar games, your goal is to empty your hand of tiles first. Tori had a rough time of it and the game ended fairly quickly, with Mark the beneficiary and winner from his one big hand. The picture below is of a horrible losing hand for me. I played one five tile hand but failed to keep the lead so the five tiles shown had to be split in a desperate attempt to reduce my losses.


By the time we stopped playing Lexio we were again left with about 45 minutes until the tournament. We spent a few minutes watching a big group play Tales of the Arabian Nights, and then were recruited by Kori to help play test a very simple accusation style party game John is designing. We ended up being eight, with Jake, Dave, Kori, John, Gina, Becky and Elizabeth all intently trying to decide where we stood in the order of things. We had time for four rounds, so offered some general ideas but mostly just gave John a chance to see what happened as the game scales up.

Next was the Loopin' Louie tournament, which was very well attended this year. I believe there were between 60 and 70 players, but unfortunately only 8 sets of Loopin' Louie to be used. That meant that at any point in time abouthalf the players were waiting their next turn to play. I didn't start at a table and didn't do well my first two times up, so it was starting to become a long hour as I waited in line. Then my game picked up as I won two in a row and thus was able to play five games in the hour, about par for the course. This year a lot of players won two games, but four wins were necessary to guarantee a spot at the final table.

Becky wanted to try Agricola with occupations and minor improvements, and after a long search for a table to play, and other players, we ended up finding Rodney who had never tried three player. The game goes quicker with that few, and the distribution of resources into the game is much different. This time I also had cards with a lot of synergy and was able to plant a field by the first harvest that would produce for the rest of the game and get a baker, second field and oven by the second harvest so that I never had to worry about where my food was coming from. With that critical infrastructure out of the way I just rolled forward to post my best score yet of 44. I also made a final turn gaffe in not grabbing an extra family member. If I hadn't already pre-ordered the game this would be my number one buy of the Gathering.


Becky went to bed and I wandered a bit, ending up back at Peter's prototype where he, Ralph and I had an extended discussion (that various others took part in at times as well) about one very particular piece of his game. It was really just exploring final development ideas to take the game as close to perfection as possible, and is the sort of design I feel I thrive on. As already laid out the game works wonderfully, but I think the changes we developed will really bring things to completion. I think he'll be trying them today so we will see how it goes.

At that point it was late so I begged off the continuing discussion and went to bed.