Gulf Games 2007 Day 2

Tuesday was our day that we scheduled to be tourists, as Gulf Games did not officially start until Wednesday. As our tourist-y activity, we chose to obey all the billboards we'd seen on the drive up and "see Rock City". Despite having lived in Atlanta for 9 years as young adults, we had never visited this famous attraction in the northwest corner of Georgia, thinking it to be a tourist trap and preferring to do serious hiking elsewhere. Well, I'm glad we decided to go this time. It's a nice, beautiful place to walk around, especially with kids. A nice job has been done blending the man-made features with the natural rock formations. We enjoyed ourselves very much, even though we had to dodge a bit of rain. I'd forgotten just how beautiful this part of the country is with all the trees and spectacular views. Rock City just took a few leisurely hours too explore, leaving us with plenty of time for more games before and after dinner when we got back.

This was also the evening for the group dinner which was the only group activity for which we signed up. The restaurant was right on the hotel grounds. On the plus side, the food was okay and the live entertainment was decent. On the minus side, it was expensive, dark and the music made it impossible to visit with folks, the main reason for going to the group dinner for me. In addition, our waitress was one of the singers (as were all of them, I think) and this may have been a reason for it taking so long to get our food.

The games I did get to play this day were all on the lighter side:

Tier auf Tier

This is a neat little dexterity game of stacking wooden animals. I'd played it the previous summer at Gulf Games and have always been on the verge of buying a copy. It really is more of a children's game, though and mine are almost grown. Is buying games for future grandchildren a valid excuse?

An impressive animal tower in Tier auf Tier.

If Wishes Were Fishes

A new Rio Grande release is always worth checking out, especially if it includes purple rubber worms. In this game you are trying to acquire fish and then sell them at the appropriate market based on their type. The board depicts a market for each type of fish and some buyer meeples that get moved to the different markets during the game. There is also a junkyard across the top where fish go when the markets get full. On your turn you choose a fish card from a display. If you choose the first card in the row, it is free, but if you choose one from the middle you have to place a worm on each card to get to it. You get to keep any worms that are already on cards from other players' previous turns. This is very similar to getting civilization tiles in Vinci. It's a simple clever mechanism; I like it. The cards depict both a type of fish and a wish. You may either keep the fish and put him in your boat if you have room or you may choose the wish, but not both. The wishes do various things like enlarge your boat, move the buyers or affect which and how many fish you sell. When you sell fish you put that number of your fish markers into the appropriate market on the board and get paid the stated price which is higher if there are buyers present. Each market can only hold so many fish and there is a bonus when it closes for the players with the most and second most fish there. Then there are some fiddly rules for the junkyard. Actually, this is my problem with game. It was just way too fiddly and too long for such a light game. I'm having trouble even remembering the rules. I didn't enjoy it very much although I'd be willing to try it again to be sure.

Susan, Shea, Chris Lohroff and Ed (taking picture) go fishing in If Wishes Were Fishes.

The Great Chili Cook-off

This is a fairly new game that I hadn't noticed until now. I saw it being played numerous times during the week. Some people seemed to really like it but I thought it was pretty ho-hum. It reminded me of a cross between Nicht die Bohne in the way that cards are collected and Too Many Cooks with the theme of collecting ingredients for a recipe. This time players are trying to make different types of chili as depicted on recipe cards that they keep secret from the other players. I say "chili" but some of the ingredients include cherries, peanut butter and chocolate. Honey and mustard are also choices and rather suspect as well. Blech! These are not chili ingredients! Even worse is that none of the recipes includes beans. And where's the cumin? Whoever came up with these recipes needs to visit Texas ASAP to try some real chili.

So, moving on to the game itself, players are dealt a hand of cards that show an ingredient and a number. In turn order, each player plays a card. Now, in order from the player who played the highest numbered card to the player who played the lowest, each chooses one of the cards played to keep until the end of the round. Once all the cards have been played and collected, players use the ingredients from their collected cards to make one of their recipes, receiving the numerical value of each card used plus a bonus if they complete the recipe. The player with the most points after three rounds is the winner.

The game isn't bad; it just isn't as interesting as Nicht die Bohne. Since recipes are secret, it's hard to stick people with unwanted ingredients or intentionally keep them from getting the ones that they want. Also, since the numerical value of the cards played strictly determines the order of choosing, it doesn't have some of the tricky choices that you get in Nicht die Bohne. Still, the game is okay and the differences make it much less mean and easier to grasp. We got a copy in a math trade. I suspect we'll be bringing this out with casual players.

Burg Appenzell

This is a new children's game from Zoch that looked really cool in the pictures I'd seen. I was hoping to get to try it. It's hard to describe because you really need to see it in action. Differently shaped tiles are stacked in the box to form the board. You several very cute wooden mice that start in one the four corner towers and then move around trying to collect different types of cheese. The cheeses are hidden under the top roof tiles and will be uncovered and covered as well as moved during the game so you'll have to remember where they are. To collect a type of cheese, you have to have two mice sitting on that type at the same time. There is a mechanism like that in The aMAZEing Labyrinth where you are able to push entire rows of tiles. This can not only move mice and cheese, but can also uncover pits into which your mice can fall. Needless to say, this can be a very evil, evil game, maybe too evil with a group of cutthroat adults. I enjoyed it, but probably not enough to buy a copy. The components are just insane, almost enough to merit a purchase anyway.

Our mice run about looking for cheese in Burg Appanzell.

Up next: Day 3, a day dungeon delving

Gulf Games 2007- Day 1

We just returned from my family's favorite week of the year, Gulf Games. This small, private family-friendly game convention is held in various locations in the southern U.S. and has been our family's summer vacation for several years. This one was held in Chattanooga, Tennessee in an older hotel in downtown on the same grounds as the historical Chattanooga Choo-choo. In fact, there were actual old railway cars in use as hotel rooms for a hefty price, I'm sure. The Gulf Gamers had two large rooms to use for gaming that were separated by the hotel's narrow bar and the entrance corridor to the men's restroom. I never could quite get used to walking under the "Gentlemen" sign to get to the other room. I never tried to peek, honest!

Four airline tickets and a rental car were not in the budget this year, so we suffered through the 17 hour drive from Austin in our aging van. Fortunately, we have family in northeast Texas and were able to break the trip into a 5 hour day and a 12 hour day of driving. Except for a bizarre spell when none of the gauges worked in the van (no officer, I really don't know how fast I was going!), we had an uneventful trip and arrived in Chattanooga around 9:30 pm. We intended to drag our exhausted selves straight to our room to collapse, but we couldn't resist the lure of gaming that was already going on in one of the rooms. I LOVE when we first arrive and get to see friends that we haven't seen in a year!

Olé

This turned out be a very enjoyable, light card game that didn't tax my road-weary brain too much. There seems to be an endless supply of card games like this - simple but with a few new clever twists that require a bit of hand management. I'm always keen to discover new ones as fillers for our game days so we will certainly be seeking a copy of this. Another nice thing is that it handles up to eight players.

The goal in Olé is to get rid of your hand of cards and not take penalty chips. The cards are ranked by both color and number and you can play multiple cards on your turn as long as each beats the previous card by either rank. If you play a card that is higher in both color and number you must play another. Anytime that you can't play a card you get a penalty chip that will be negative points at the end of a hand. A round ends when either a player has run out of cards or everyone takes a penalty chip. You get negative points for chips and the numerical value of cards left in your hand. After getting dealt cards for the next round, the player in last place gets to choose which colors are ranked highest. The way this is shown on the card themselves is clever and makes it easy to see while playing. Hands equal to the number of players are played and the person with the fewest negative points wins.

Despite being too tired for a game, I had a great time playing as it was with a fun, lively group. However, we were totally done in for the night and hit the hay afterwards.

This ends my Day 1 report. Look for Day 2 shortly!

My New Favorite Game

Since I really need to be doing about a dozen other things right now, most involving tedious house cleaning chores, I've been overwhelmed with an urge to park here in front of my computer to write about my New Favorite Game. This would be Age of Empires III: Age of Discovery, not to be confused with the game with the suspect mission cards that is called just Age of Discovery. AoE III is/was being hyped relentlessly on BGG and I was sure some nice person in our gaming group would buy it for me to try, but no such luck. Ed and I had to take the plunge and get it ourselves and then we had to actually convince our group to play it. Apparently Adam, our meaty games barometer, had tried it up in his new city and was not impressed, thus damning* it in the eyes of our group. I've played twice now. I loved it both times. I am now one of those annoying fan boys (girls?) who is compelled to babble on about how good the game is to anyone who'll listen. So, here goes:

This is a fabulous game. It takes some of the cool, sleek Euro mechanisms from games like Caylus and Puerto Rico and uses them in a highly themed game with all the American goodness of plastic men and ships. In true hybrid fashion, you have not only little soldiers, but also little merchants and colonists. You get a smidgen of combat with your action selection and trade goods. You get to explore the map and enjoy the suspense of flipping over a tile, but you better have enough manpower to slap down the natives shown. Of course, you don't know exactly how many you'll encounter until you are there, so here is a little luck you'll have to deal with. Like those other two games, there are definitely some distinct strategic paths you can take, but they feel much less scripted in AoE III. You may know exactly what buildings you'll need to acquire to execute the "colonizing" strategy perfectly, but there is a small chance that a building never even comes up for purchase (Oh, no! More luck!). Unlike Puerto Rico, there is only one building of each type. Players may grab actions and buildings before you do, confounding your plans and causing you to have to make adjustments. So, between the few luck elements and the uncertainty of what other players will do, it is harder to plan out and execute a perfect strategy. This made the game more fun and unpredictable for me and makes me think that it will have a lot of replayability. I found myself on the edge of my seat during the whole game trying to decide what actions to grab first. And Ed (drat him!) was always one step ahead of me. Thankfully, there seems to always be something useful to do even if you have to diversify your strategy a bit.

The first game, I did fabulously but fell way short of the win. I went for a "discovery" strategy and was able to discover a new colony nearly every turn, giving me both money and victory points. I was able to purchase capitol buildings that gave me a free soldier and captain for the discovery box. I came in second but far short of Paul, who concentrated on colony majorities. I'm thinking that this strategy cannot be ignored as it scores victory points three times during the game rather than just at the end like everything else. We did miss a rule that, while not a game breaker, impacted my strategy probably quite a bit. We missed the fact that when you discovered a new colony, you get to place a free colonist there.

The second game, I was able to get a capitol building which gave me a free merchant each turn, followed by one that gave me a free captain. So, I decided to aggressively pursue acquiring sets of trade goods thinking that it would yield me a constant flow of cash as well as lots of victory points at the end of the game. Plus, I got a building that required everyone to pay me a buck for each ship that I had, fitting in with my plans nicely since ships can be used as wild trade goods in the sets that I was trying to collect. I think that this caused me to focus too much on trying to acquire those ships. Unfortunately, Ed (blast him!) was able to snag the building at the end before I could that gave bonus points for ships. I ended up way, way, in last place even though everyone, including me, thought that I was doing so well during the game. What was shocking was the fact that Doug seemed to be struggling the whole game with no money and no way to buy buildings. He ended up quietly building up in the colonies and collecting discovery tiles and ended up the winner. Sneaky, sneaky, Doug! Since then, Ed and I have been discussing strategies and I've been thinking about the game constantly. I can hardly wait to try it again. Too bad it takes so long to play. Both our games took three hours, not including the rules explanation. There are a few player aides on BGG that really helped.

I will say that I was disappointed a little in some of the components. I would have preferred that the plastic pieces be dull rather than shiny. I kept confusing the merchants and the colonists. The box is horribly flimsy as well. The card quality is not the best. Nitpicking, I know. :-)

Here I am looking totally perplexed as I decide what to do. My fellow players are Paul, Brian, Helen and Ed (taking picture).

* My blog gets a "G" rating here. We all know what that does to movies so I'm tossing out some profanity here and there to appeal to my adult audience. Heck, even our gaming pastor friend's blog has a "PG" rating! Thanks Mark, for the link to this rating website. I now have a goal. Wait until I talk about the my Runebound character when I will get to mention big boobs. (hee, hee. Maybe I can get an "R" rating!)