The Gathering of Friends Pt1

So, I get to go to this thing every year called the Gathering.

If you've heard of it, it is a tiny con of about 300+ people that used to be swathed in secrecy. Dark secrets abound as to what heinous Eurocentric activities occur within its hallowed walls. Within the 300, there lurks names like Days of Wonder, Rio Grande, Alan Moon, Alea, Ravensburger, Eggertspiele, Hans im Gluck, Z-Man games, Zoch, Friedemann Friese, Phalanx Games.

They are here. They play a lot of prototypes to get gamer reactions, and play each other's prototypes. They also just play a lot of games. It doesn't work like other cons, because they don't really have to put on the full salesman hats, and just run demos.

And then there are just people playing games. Whatever game just happens to be around. Mostly Euros, and a lot of Tichu.

But a lot of AT games get played. Part of that is that the Gathering lasts something like 11 days. With that massive scope (I'm here for 8 days), playing a 4 or 10 or 20 hour game doesn't seem all that daunting. So it is like a summer camp for game geeks.

And this time, I had to drive. We were flying out from Chattanooga on Skybus on Saturday. At 2:13 AM Saturday morning, Skybus sent out an email that they were closing. Could be worse.

On to the AT bits:

People: There are some AT people hanging around. Kevin Wilson is wandering about, trying not to be entirely besieged by Road to Legend questions, and playing Cosmic. Asmodee turned up Repos Production turned up with cases of Cash & Guns Yakuzas. Z-Man has been looking at some pretty AT-ish prototypes, playing Tichu, and Twilight Struggle.

Road to Legend: There is a permanent table devoted to a running Road to Legend game. Alan Moon is heavily addicted, and is usually playing. There are perhaps 3 Hirst Arts painted sets around--and I didn't bring mine.

I did try a 10 hour block of Road to Legend on Sunday. We started at Silver, ran through a dungeon and a Lieutenant Encounter.  Aldie (yes, that Aldie) was Overlord, and we mostly ran through it with minor injuries. That whole idea of starting at silver level should strictly be for experienced players. It may not be that well balanced overall (starting at silver) as the players are allowed to look through the copper treasure deck and just buy stuff. The characters are probably notably more powerful than they would be otherwise.

We did like it though. The core two changes of:
1. Tiny themed levels.
2. Reining in the spawns.
are enough to finally make me adore Descent. Sure it will take 60-80 hours for an RTL campaign. I'm betting it is worth it.

Times Up:
I love Times Up. It is easily the best party game around. Problem is, we've played through the base set enough to have memorized it. The expansions are just too esoteric to be much fun.

R&R did come up with a decent solution. There is a Times Up: Titles version on the way. Instead of people, we're getting Movie, Album, Fine Art, Songs, Books....that kind of stuff. The tiny set I played worked well. Most of the stuff was common enough that people knew it, and it is probably going to replace our default Times Up set.

They are also replacing the basic set with a deluxe set that (might) contain a mix of the better cards from the base game and the expansions. Or it might be all new stuff. It does come with a really nice and tiny digital timer. Most of us who are REALLY into party games have replaced our sand timers with a programmable kitchen timer...and tend to hate sand timers.

Repos Production: The Gathering does have a ban on discussion of prototypes...Without Permission.

The Repos (Cash $ Guns) guys have a prototype with a few pictures from Big Trouble in Little China on some cards. And it mirrors the plot of A Chinese Ghost Story 2. And it is cooperative.

A Ghost Story (tentative title)is brilliant. The board is a 3x3 set of tiles (each with special power) with a set of monster spawn locations on the outside. A variety of very Asian horror critters (Hopping Vampires. Check. Giant Flying Worm Boss. Check. Freaky chicks with long black assault hair. Check. ) appear on the board.

You are mostly zipping around the board trying desperately to kill them long enough to make it far enough through the deck to reach the (randomly chosen) boss card close to the bottom.

Each monster has a special power or two from a pool of a dozen or so. Each player has a special power. Combat involves rolling color dice adding power cubes you collect along the way.

The game reminds me a bit of a co-op Marvel Heroes. In this case, the moving around and locations are more important, and actually feel like you are monster bashing. The game has no flavor text--the powers are simply shown by a set of icons, so you don't have to stop and read the cards to deal with the special powers.

I want to play this again this week.  I'm actually desperately pleading with Repos to give me a playtest copy, the extra work is likely going to be worth not having to wait until October for this one. I might be able to pull it off as I spent our playtest game helping them pick better English names for their monsters. "Bouncing Vampire" sounds like the gothiest porn movie ever. 

Origins:

I finally got in a full game of Origins. This is probably my favorite game of last year. This time my Hobbits were able to break out of Indonesia, domesticate cows, grab some stone weapons, and rafts, and pretty much drive Peking Man out of Asia.

Tricky game. Requires a couple of plays to get the hang of. The only downside is that Age 3 is only a tiny speed bump between Age 2 and the end of the game. The Age 4 expansion better be here soon.

Stone Age: Cross Pillars of the Earth with Agricola. Make it play in an hour, and roll dice for resource gathering. Mostly pure Euro, except for the dice thing.

I think I like it better than Pillars of the Earth. The hour long play time seems about right for this sort of thing. And the not actually knowing exactly how much of things you will get keeps people from sitting there and counting and painfully working out every detail.

Still--Euro. I kinda liked it, but I am still fond of Aricola and Pillars.

Oddly enough, dice are appearing in a lot of the Euros turning up here. I think I'm seeing a few cracks forming in the Euro wall.