Another Gathering of Friends has come and gone, as has another week of trying to recover from staying up too late and eating less-than-healthy meals at weird times. . . . This is an exhausting week for me; as much fun as I am have, being around that many people for that much time takes a toll on my energy. This is the largest con I attend, and I don’t think I could handle anything larger. The reward of an entire 7 days of playing games and spending time with good friends is well-worth the sleep and vegetable deprivation as well as the emotional energy I exhaust being there.

My only regret is that I didn’t get to play as many games with my co-Opinionated Gamers as I’d like, but I did manage a few plays with them. My original plan was to take some photos of the OGers and include them here, but I failed right from my very first game, alas. Here are some highlights from my games played (42, with 32 different players).

I do not like to do too much advanced scheduling of my days at GoF, since that feels way too much like work, but I make two exceptions and one is for my friend Bruce, since I want to be sure to get a game in with him every year. Fun fact – I met Bruce at my very first GoF in 1999. This year we chose Quacksalbe (which by chance we played with some of the OGers as well).  Quacksalbe is an odd little trick-taker from way back in 1998. Each player is a physician specializing in an area of medicine; this is noted by the color of the card in front of them. Each round a new patient is revealed, and that patient will have some requirements about the treatment they need.  Each player plays a card of their choice; following suit is not required. After each player plays a card, the color of the highest value across all cards played wins the trick. If the requirements of the patient are met, you place them face up (positive points at the end of the game) and if the needs are not met you place them face down as a corpse (negative points at the end of the game). It’s weird and unique and I definitely have not figured out the best way to play it, but it is interesting and always fun. I am not sure how the theme would do if it were to be reprinted, and it is not widely available, so I am happy to play it when I have the chance.

Since I started with a card game, I’ll keep going with card game highlights. I was curious to try 5 Towers, since I was told both that it was a great game and it was an abomination. Spoiler alert – I fell solidly in the upper middle of that. It didn’t wow me, but I enjoyed it. Your goal is to build high towers in five colors to score points and win the game.  Each round five cards are up for bid. You bid the number of cards you are willing to take. If you win,you take those cards and place them on your towers or create new towers. However, the value of the cards decrease as the tower goes higher, so you have to be strategic about what you are placing. You can always discard the top card of one tower every time you win a bid, but those cards count against you at the end of the game.  Once you top a tower with a 0 it is finished and you can do nothing else with it, but your score for that tower will be doubled at the end of the game. I thought I was doing somewhat poorly, since I had towers but capped them early with 0s, but that turned out to be a winning strategy. I’m probably not running out to buy this one, but I’d gladly play it again. 

I had a pile of card games I hadn’t had a chance to play, so roped some friends into playing through a few. First up was Pies, which was fine but not really my cup of tea.

Next up was Mori, which was really good. It’s a fairly standard trick-taking game in which you must follow suit, but when you win a trick you take a die, which can be played on a later turn; the die can be played at any time, and does not have to follow suit, giving you some flexibility. That flexibility is important, because some tricks have negative points (skulls) while others have positive points. It was very interesting and I look forward to future plays. 

After that we played Bacon. I wasn’t too sure about this one, but it turned out to be pretty fun. It’s a climbing game, which can be played as a partnership game but since there were 5 of us we played individually. One player leads a combo and other players either have to play that same combo at a higher value, a special (kind of  like a bomb in Tichu) or pass. First player to get rid of all their cards wins the hand. 

Other cards games played included Sticheln, Cabanga, and The Crew: Mission Deep Sea

I did play a few new (or at least new-to-me) games at the Gathering, and my favorite was Imperium: Horizons, a game I never heard of but am very glad I played.  I am a big fan of engine builders and this one did not disappoint. This is an additional set of cards for Imperium Classic and Imperium Legends (which you can read our review of here), and why I didn’t seek that game out at the time I don’t know. You have a deck of cards to start, and each turn you either activate (play a card or use an ability), innovate (get a new card), or revolt (remove cards from your hand/discard pile). There’s a whole lot more to it than that, but it all worked very well together and I quite enjoyed it.

My spouse and I have a fair amount of credit at our local-ish game store thanks to the awesome auctions they run, which allows me to unload games we no longer want in return for credit at the store (Diversions, who I highly recommend because they are awesome).  Having two gamers loose in a store with what feels like free money leads to us buying games just because we like how they look or the description on the back of the box. I am happy to report that all 3 of these games are good games, and I’ll provide a detailed review of all 3 in the coming weeks. Here they are in alphabetical order.

Arborea – my first reaction when shown this game was not “oh, that’s looks cool”, it  was “my eyes hurt just looking at that” but Mark was intrigued so we picked it up, with consolation from one of the employees that it was much less visually daunting when on the table. Well,. I am not so sure about that, but once you have played it a couple of times it is much easier to look at it and know what is going on. You place workers on paths that move, having them hop off to follow a trail that will gain you rewards. Do you leave them in place on the path to get juicier rewards, or do you have them hop off early for a more immediate bonus? There is a lot going on here and a lot of interesting mechanisms, and after 4 plays I look forward to more, although perhaps with 2 or 3 and not 4. More to come.

Cosmoctopus I did not remember on first sight, and solely picked it up because it had cute tentacles. As soon as I read the back of the box I remembered Matt had given a preview of it after GenCon, and it looked promising. I am happy to report it is not just cute, but a good game. It’s an engine builder in which you collect resources to complete constellations to gain tentacles for your cosmoctopus. We got lots of attention while playing it because of the cute bits, but there really is a good game underneath.

Rats of Wistar – I saw this in play quite a bit during the con, and I managed to play it twice. You’re a rat who has escaped from a lab, and you need to build a home for your family while also exploring a nearby farm to get food and resources to help you along the way. You take 3 actions every turn on a rondele that rotates 60 degrees every round; actions on the rondele are paired with base actions printed on the board, but the pairings change due to the rotations so there is a lot of coordination and optimization happening. It’s a very good game. I mentioned earlier that I generally make only 2 scheduling exceptions, and this is the other one – any day I get to have lunch and play games with Scott and Cato is a great day.

Life in Reterra – a new game from Hasbro and designers Eric Lang and Ken Gruhl. We only had about an hour, and we were able to learn this one from the rules and play it in that time. Players are rebuilding the earth by placing tiles and buildings. There is some player interaction, but you are mostly just building your own little world. It was definitely light and perhaps meant as a family game, but I enjoyed it.

Viticulture Worlds – I really enjoy Viticulture Tuscany, so was willing to give this a whirl when Tim suggested it.  It plays a lot like regular Viticulture, but you have to get everyone to a certain victory point level as well as advancing another token to a certain point as well. You take similar actions, but work together to get tiles onto to the board to improve various action spaces and to make them available to more players.  It was definitely hard and we failed, but we got close and had fun trying. I really want to try this one again.

Elder Sign – it is a tradition with a particular group of friends to play at least one Cthulhu-fighting game, and this year we went with Elder Sign with a couple of expansions. There were 7 of us, but Tim took on the role of DM while the six of us just barely escaped from the tentacles (a bit of a theme of the week) of our evil villain. It’s been a while since I played this one, and I am not sure why, as it was quite enjoyable. It has all the feel of Arkham Horro and Eldritch Horror, but the set up and play time was much shorter. I still like those two, but this is a good choice for when you want a shorter experience with the same sort of gameplay. I do think the expansions added to the experience, so I will have to look into those.

Daybreak – Keeping up the co-operative games, Daybreak saw a lot of play and I got 2 plays of it in. This is my favorite type of co-op- shared goals but your own sandbox – and Matt Leacock did a brilliant job of integrating the theme into the gameplay. I am really enjoying this one, even if I have only managed to save the world on 2 occasions. . . .

MonsDRAWsity – I am not much of a party gamer these days, but I received this game as a gift and I seized this opportunity to get it to the table. One player secretly looks at a card for 20 seconds, trying to remember as many details as possible. They then put it face down and describe it to the other players, who try to draw what they are hearing. Clearly none of us have great memories or art skills, but it was silly fun and sometimes a good laugh at the end of a long day of learning rules is what you need.

My last game of the Gathering is always DasMotorsport Spiel. It’s a racing game with limits on how you can move and the ability to get various flags that can cause you to have to go through the pit or possibly going down in a burning heap of flaming metal. We also play with a 20 second timer, because apparently it is not stressful enough. I am not very good at it, but it’s a fun experience and I managed to make it to the podium this time. We don’t know need to worry about which place on that six-spot podium I made it to. . . . .

Other games played: Just One, Bonsai, Was Sticht, House Of Cats, Medicine, Djinn, Lovecraft Letter, Faraway, Hadrian’s Wall, Three Sisters, Tinderblox, Rafter 5, Ark Nova, Clank Catacombs, 21 Days, Yggdrasil, Splendor Duel, Scratch House, Tipperary, Cheese Factory, and Havalandi.

Opinionated Eaters and Drinkers

Niagara Falls is not a hotbed of culinary delights. The best local opportunities are the ones brought by other attendees – I make cookies (this year chocolate chip, speculaas, and rainbow rave) and others brought stroopwafels, Belgian chocolate, Tim Tams and beer. I did have a delightful dinner in Tonawanda that I neglected to take any photos of (Prescott’s Provisions, if you find yourself in the area) and some delicious beer from Mortalis Brewing in Buffalo.