Gathering Report Pt 2: Burnout

As the Gathering goes on, I find that I can play fewer and fewer games, and spend more time at long dinners, trips....out....anywhere. Places that aren't in a non-windowed basement ballroom for 8 days.

One highlight is The Guard Tower in Columbus. It has been perhaps two years since I've been in a proper game store. This one is remarkably clean, well stocked, and well worth the trip if you re in the area.

Other trips were to places with air, sunshine, and beer. (Arrogant Bastard Ale is actually reasonably tasty. We had to buy bottles just so we could give one to Friedemann Friese. )

One interesting social aspect of the Gathering is the Flea Market on Saturday morning. You have a mix of Americans looking for imported German games, and Europeans picking up stuff they can't find in Europe. Particularly amusing was watching one of the Hans im Gluck (iconic Euro publisher) guy walking around with a couple of Tom Wham games. The copy of Icebergs he was carrying was a second copy in case he ever needed one.

Games:

Tales of the Arabian Nights:

 I gave up the Looping Louie tournament, so I could finally play a pasted up German Edition of Arabian Nights. There aren't a lot of obvious changes from the one I know well. We did gain a lot more Destiny points than is usual, and we actually had a player die.

Zev also told me about the new Z-man edition. It will include 6 sculpted plastic figures, cards for status and treasure effects, and a few rules tweaks. The largest change is that players will get an encounter each round. Also when you draw a themed terrain encounter card and you are in that type of terrain, you automatically get the themed encounter.

 He is dropping the Merchant  game from the main rulebook and moving a revamped version into a free downloadable PDF.

Quests are being mostly dropped, although each player will get a quest card to give them a reason to travel. Upon completing their travel, they get a bonus of some type.

All of these sound good to me.

Manoeuvre:
I was going to skip this one as it looks like yet another light wargame from GMT that is pretty abstract. This one was designed by a cabbie, plays on an 8x8 grid, has only two unit types, and looks dull as dirt.

So I played it, and it is really good. Well worth the cost of entry.

The nice twist is that each nationality has their own deck and units. You may move one unit per turn, and play and draw as many cards as you wish. The card deck has attacks, leaders, and special cards. If you want to attack at all, you have to play an attack card for that particular named unit. Leaders allow you to make coordinated attacks or regroup a damaged unit.

What this one has over Battlelore/C&C is the decks. Some nationalities have different step reductions, are stronger at ranged volleys, vastly different card distributions, and the odd special power. My French had useful artillery and great leaders, but the Russians seemed to be able to regroup frequently, and suffered little when they were hit.

The downside here is that the game is scenario-less. It comes down to a very non-historical first to kill 5 units or have units into enemy terrain. Makes a decent beat-em-up, but not a very good wargame. Think Epic Duels for the Napoleonic crowd.

Game X:
This is a Rio Grande prototype that I can say almost nothing about. The history of the game is interesting, as it is by an American designer who was playing this game for like 12 years in his game group. The game has a crack-like addictive quality that got its hooks into lots of people--including myself. Expect lots of hype as this game heads toward production some day, but much of it will be deserved.

Leaping Frogs:
During one of our quests out, we passed by an edu-toy store. I picked up this bit of surreal whimsy. Toss beanbag frogs onto a trampoline so that they hop out and land on a lilypad to score points. A little hard to aim, and without the strategy of other dexterity games, so we only played it for a couple of hours. 
 

Wie Verhext / Witches' Brew:
Early buzz on this says it will be the next Spiel des Jahres. This is a simultaneous choice resource collection, and turn in sets for victory points. Everyone chooses 5 actions from a set of 13. When you choose the same actions as other players, you can choose to take over and try to be the only one that performs the action (like every other game of the sort) or immediately perform a more limited version of the action.

I thought that it would be more fun to take the copy out in the parking lot and set it on fire. I hate that random choose an action thing.

Days of Wonder:
I spent a dinner with Mark Kaufman from Days of Wonder. Most of the chat was not about games. The parts of our dinner that were about games tended to end with a "I can't really say much about that." types of comments.

The reason for including their name is this section is from the discussion about announcements. DoW is trying to only announce or provide detail on a new game only within a month or so of being able to ship it. Game production is fraught with delays, product changes, misinformation from fan sources, and the occasional cancellation. Thus, they are only announcing things after the product is fully locked down and being printed.

Given the volatile nature of gamers, this really does seem like the way to go. Go look at the FFG forums to see just how many posts relate to "it didn't come out on time," "when is it going to come out", "the color indicator didn't move", and "FFG sucks, and has major production problems."

Tribune:
There was one copy available for play, and I could never seen to get to it. FFG really needs to get over their major production problems. Will it ever come out? FFG sucks.

Editor's note: Just as this was being published, Frank hit us with one more update:

(I thought of one more game of note that I played.)

Make You Gunfighter:

Ken Tidwell ( created the first BG website of note: The Game Cabinet) dragged me into a silly, silly cardgame that is Bang! crossed with Go Fish. You have to show a card to shoot into one or two places. Pick a player and ask that player to show you all cards they have matchine your target. They lose cards, you get money. Money can be spent for random event cards, and players down to their last card get a special power. 

It works, but was fluffy as heck. Far easier to teach than Bang. The best part is the absolutely Japanese production. Superdeformed cute gunfighters, barmaids in bunny suits, eyes with spirals in them. The gloriously Engrish title is the icing on the cake.