by Larry Levy and Ben Bruckart

Well, they’re at it again—last month, Larry and Ben made yet another visit to Niagara Falls to participate in the world’s greatest board game convention, the Gathering of Friends. And once again, it didn’t disappoint, as there were great games and great times to be had with friends old and new. They wouldn’t dream of keeping this all to themselves, so they’ve worked together to provide this account of their experiences during that week. The games are all listed in alphabetical order, with the year of publication included to help give you a point of reference, along with their ratings for each design. That’s enough exposition–let’s make with the memories!

Ben’s Intro: My Gathering experience started a little early this year as I met Scott Kippen who is a friend of one of my weekly gamer buddies. He resumed his participation in the Gathering and flew in on Thursday, so we did games while sampling Scotch and Whiskey, the day before Larry arrived. Then tradition resumed with Larry coming north to my house and I introduced him to a few games he hadn’t yet seen after some dinner. All in all, my gathering experience was about 50 plays, many with Larry and a significant number with Joe Huber and a new friend I made, Aaron Lawn. I seemed to play a lot of prototypes each day and then mixed in some polished favorites near the end of the week. It deserves a special side note, I always try to link up with James Nathan. He is a lot of fun to play games with and be around. He also usually has some unique games which I will try and highlight below. Thanks to everyone I gamed with and got to see again this year!

Larry’s Intro: What can I say? It’s the Gathering, the greatest week of the year! So many good games, so many good friends, so many good times. Even in a year where none of the new games really stood out, it was a blast. I hope each of you has something in your life that you enjoy as much as Ben and I enjoy the Gathering of Friends.

 

Interlude #1: Opinionated Eaters—A Potbelly Precursor

Ben: The night before we drove up to Niagara Falls, Larry joined my family for dinner at a restaurant. My son selected a chain sandwich shop we enjoy, Potbelly, for dinner. I had to try the Jalapeno Popper Chicken Sandwich. This was a tasty sandwich with a slight amount of bite from the pepper but mitigated by adding cream cheese into the recipe. While this isn’t a specialty or rarity, it was new to me. Rating: Neutral, but, then again, I like spicy food.

Larry: I’ve had many a fine meal at Potbelly when I lived in Virginia, but there isn’t one near me, now that I’m located in North Carolina. So I heartily approved of Ben’s son’s choice. I had my usual, their chicken salad, served with melted cheese on a toasted sub roll, which was as good as I remembered it. The adventure was off to a good start!

5 Towers (2023)

Ben: I asked Joe Huber to teach this game as I had heard a lot about it and not all of it was outstanding. There is a fear in playing this game, a fear of what’s to come (in the cards) and how much to push your luck early versus late. The game beats you up a little until you get a good mix of luck and timing going. Rating: Not for me.

Larry: This is an auction-based card game where the players are trying to build the highest towers with cards that must be played in the appropriate order. I’m reasonably sure that skillful play is possible, but I wouldn’t be surprised if having good fortune was the best strategy. There’s something there, but the gameplay didn’t really grab me and I probably don’t need to play this again. Rating: Neutral

Aeronautika (1996)

Larry: Joe Huber really wanted to show us his latest grail acquisition: a beautifully preserved copy of this rare Jean du Poel game. Physically, the game is a marvel, with 4 inch long wooden bi-planes with propellors that spin, along with dowels that let you raise your plane to three different heights. It’s table presence is fantastic. The game itself actually wasn’t too bad, one of the more enjoyable du Poel games I’ve played. I mean, there’s a lot of “take that” and luck in the card drawing, but we all had a great time and figuring out how to fly from London to Paris and back (after circling the 8 inch tall Eiffel tower!) without running out of fuel was a genuine challenge. I’ve played it once and that’s enough, but I’m very glad I got to and it was one of my highlights of the Gathering. Thanks, Joe! Rating: Neutral

The game also provided one of those unique moments that makes the Gathering so special. The bi-planes reminded me of Sopwith Camels, so at one point, I started singing the 60’s hit song “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron”. Almost immediately, Joe and another player in the game, Aaron Lawn, began singing with me. We enthusiastically sang the entire first verse and chorus in unison, to the bemusement and/or bewilderment of the other players and passersby. It was great. I mean, where else could you not only find three people who know an obscure 60 year old song, but who feel comfortable enough with the people around them to belt out the lyrics? That’s the Gathering in a nutshell and why it’s so much more than just playing great games.

Ben: Do you have that one coworker is who is wildly enthusiastic to show you pictures of their baby? That’s how I felt when Joe was skipping along on the way back from our Pizza dinner together to teach us Aeronautika. After Joe recounted how few copies there are of this game in the wild, he taught it to us with gusto, and it was indeed a great production that I really enjoyed. There was a good deal of screwage and a lot of card play that included some “take that!”. It was a highlight of fun for me, as so many people stopped to marvel at the game’s production. This is a game that needs to be played at conventions for sure. Rating: I like it.

Amsterdam (2022)

Larry: I love Macao; 15 years after its release, it remains one of my favorite of the great Alea games. I’d always been curious about Amsterdam, which is Feld’s redesign of it, as part of Queen’s Stefan Feld City Collection. My new friend Ryan Post was kind enough to teach it one late night. The basics of Macao remain, but there are quite a few changes and a bunch of stuff added. I don’t think I changed my basic Macao strategy as much as I needed to; certainly the next time I play, I’ll make a point of sailing earlier. I liked the new version and can see its appeal, but I still prefer Macao. Things did seem less tense in Amsterdam—unlike Macao, I really didn’t care how the dice came up during the last third of the game. And without the orgy of ship movement at the end (which is standard in Macao), the last few turns of Amsterdam didn’t seem that impactful, at least not for me. I think I’ll appreciate it more the next time I play, but if given the choice, I’ll go with the original game. But thank you, Ryan, for teaching, as getting to play the new version was one of my goals this year. Rating: I like it (but I LOVE Macao!).

Anunnaki (2023)

Larry: Ben and I are both enormous fans of Simone Luciani’s games. Our buddy Simon Weinberg enjoys them as well, but hasn’t had the chance to play as many of them as we have, so he requested that we schedule a Luciani Day. The festivities began with Anunnaki, which is a 4X-ish Euro in which the players are space aliens who are attempting to impose their will on Earth and a few other planets. I kind of got myself locked into a limited set of actions (as you’ll see, this will be a constant theme for me during the week) that yielded me quite a few VPs, but didn’t let me do nearly as much fighting as the other players, which probably isn’t the best approach in a 4X game. Or, as I commented after we finished, “I just turned Anunnaki into a 1X game!”. Still, the design is clever and I look forward to playing it again, hopefully with a more balanced approach. It may not be top-flight Luciani, but even second tier games from the master are better than most designer’s masterpieces. Rating: I like it.

Ben: Luciani day, as Larry described above, gave me a chance to teach a bunch of games that don’t get played often with my family. Anunnaki is my favorite Italian designer’s attempt at a combat friendly version of 4x. It does deliver on many fronts; action selection is unique and sequencing them properly allows you to unlock some strong additional abilities. Knowing my audience and that their free time was mine to toy with (like God), I threw every single module and mechanic I could at them. We played the base game + distant planets, Mythical creatures, prelude cards, and the extra races to play. It was a long and fulfilling gaming session, but they were a little overwhelmed. Rating: I love it.

Barrage: The Nile Affair Expansion (2022)

Larry: This was the second game of Luciani Day. Barrage is probably my favorite title to appear over the past 10 years; it’s absolutely brilliant. Ben wanted to try out this expansion and even though I’m usually not crazy about such add-ons, I was happy to check it out. We were all shocked to discover that the Nile expansion made an all-time great game even better! There’s a new mechanism where you can sacrifice water drops for valuable actions and VPs and it turned out to be far more impactful than we thought it would be. Even better, there is a bit more water available (it is based on the Nile, after all) and that made the game even more dynamic and enjoyable. Even though we didn’t get to finish it, we had an absolute blast! I’ll always jump to play Barrage any time and any way I can, but from now on, if given the choice, I think I’ll ask for a voyage down the River Nile, please! Rating: I really, really love it!

Ben: Larry covered this well. It was a fantastic twist on an already brilliant game. I was shocked how much I liked it, and it remained very tactical without being overly complicated. Some early moves paid off well for Simon, with him using dams to collect and improve his engine without constantly generating power. Rating: I love it.

Beyond the Sun Card Game (prototype)

Ben: Two of my favorite guys to link up with at the Gathering are Joe Summa and Ken Hill, a pair of very talented developers. Joe is also a fantastic gamer and has a very strong knack for refining games. He wanted to introduce me to this light, card driven game of tech tree development he had designed. He promised a 3-player teaching game would only take an hour, so “off we go.” It was indeed very refined, with abstract, simple gameplay, but which included some tactical choices. There was a slight element of luck that can be mitigated against by your choices. It has a multiplayer solitude feel, with a shared competition for conquering or trading with other planets, as in regular “Beyond the Sun.” I played the first game with Dan and Felix and then taught the second game to Larry and Bayard. It was crunchy and had a small footprint. I very much liked it both for its breadth and approachability. Rating: I loved it.

Larry: We got to play a Rio Grande prototype for a card game based on Beyond the Sun, a game Ben and I like a lot. It was pretty good, but perhaps a bit abstract, even though it did a good job of capturing the feel of the original. Clearly, Ben likes it more than I do. Rating: I like it (barely, but would be willing to try it again).

Interlude #2: Opinionated Eaters—Goin’ Hog Wild

We ventured off property to see if the Horny Hog BBQ restaurant was still in business. As it stole Larry’s heart last year, we had to go there again. Larry had his beloved ribs, smoked low and slow, and I had the “Oinky Boinkie Meal”, which was a sampler of Brisket, Pulled Pork and Spare Ribs. Once again, the food was amazing.

Civolution (2024, prototype)

Larry: My one sentence review of this much ballyhooed prototype is a paraphrase of Oscar Wilde: “Nothing exceeds like excess”. I will also say that that is probably pretty unfair, but it summarizes the way I feel right now.

But let me give you some background. My most anticipated design of 2024 was without question Civolution. A complex game by the great Stefan Feld, with development by Viktor Kobilke, one of the best developers in the world, and produced by Peter Eggert’s new company (Deep Print Games)? OMG yes! I didn’t think there would be a copy available to play yet, but when Ben found out that Deep Print was looking for people to playtest it, he signed us both up in a heartbeat. I was so looking forward to it!

The teach took a good 2 hours, but I knew that would be the case going in—there’s a huge amount going on. I thought I had absorbed most of the rules reasonably well, but when it came time to actually play, I realized I had no idea what sort of things I wanted to do. I stumbled around for a bit, focused on some very suboptimal goals, and later realized there were a whole bunch of critical rules I’d forgotten or just missed during the extensive teach. We had to cut the game short, which didn’t bother me a bit, as I wasn’t enjoying myself at all.

But my poor play wasn’t the main reason for my disappointment—you probably have no right to expect your first play of a monster like this to go well. It’s just that the enormous scope of the game seems way out of whack. I mean, there are 15 actions (each of which can be upgraded twice), 18 resources, a huge board with lots of actions to take on it, goals, bonuses, penalties, yadda, yadda, yadda. If you wanted to come up with a parody of a super detailed point salad Euro, this wouldn’t be a bad start. Most damning of all, I couldn’t shake the feeling that you could lop off half of the game and still have a perfectly good and challenging title. And yet, I have such respect for the designer and particularly for the developers that I had to wonder if it was me who wasn’t seeing it, particularly since there are gamers whose opinion I trust who’ve played it and loved it.

In the end, I think Ben’s take summarized my biggest issue with the game—how the hell are you going to teach it? If I had a group where everyone was willing to prepare by either going through the online rules or watching a detailed video, and therefore be prepared to play without a complete teach, that would be one thing. But I don’t; a few members of my group are already balking at games like Nucleum and Evacuation (which are definitely heavyweights, but not games which require 2 hours to teach!). Even if they were amenable to me teaching them, we only have a window of 4.5 hours on our game nights and, ludicrous as it sounds, there’s no way I could teach the game and get a first play of it in during that timeframe. So even if my first impression had been much better, I’m not sure the game would be practical for me.

Even after all that, I’m not giving up on Civolution. The central mechanic (you roll 6 dice and, each turn, choose 2 of them to form one of the 15 different actions) is clever and promising. If I had the opportunity to fully absorb the rules, I’m sure I would play much better next time. So if one of my buddies decides he has to grab this, I’d be right there the first time he wants to play it. But it’ll have to come from someone else; I’d need that additional buy-in to ensure that this is a game that would get played instead of taking up copious space on my shelves. If it never happens, I’m okay with that. It’s disappointing, but I’m still glad I got to try it; maybe I dodged a bullet. And who knows—at some future date, my dream game might actually wind up being a dream and not a nightmare. Rating: Not for me (at least, for now).

Ben: I was very excited to get this played when I saw it out on the table. I even arranged for us to play it the next day. I arrived early, punched the remaining pieces, and set it up to allow Phillipp (one of the co-owners of Deep Print Games) more time to teach. But after it was over, I was left with a bitter taste in my mouth. We only played 3 of the 4 turns because someone from our party had a commitment (read: ran out of time) and the game was very long. While I liked the game, I think it will only reward on repeated plays. I can’t tell you that this was a great experience. The teach was long and slow. To give players a great experience, you need to teach all three sides of their player board (left, right, top) and you need to explain the middle board, tech and scoring board, round tracker board and round scoring rules. We spent so much time talking about the 15 actions that brains were fried before we started talking about rules on movement, sharing tiles, goals, and rewards. While this game is certain to sell well, I was disappointed. As the person who teaches games, 120 minutes to teach is not really going to get it played much. It will be reserved for all-day gaming events and once or twice a year plays. I also felt like certain portions of this game could have been simplified or removed and the game would have felt the same. Do I really need 3 tiers of four types of goods? This is nothing against Phillipp, who also had to leave early and was replaced by Peter Eggert, but the game seems to reward repeated plays if everyone knows the game. I teach a lot of games to new players, so I can’t really see myself reaching for this at all. Rating: Neutral.

Council of Shadows (2022)

Larry: I got an unofficial early start to the Gathering this year, since I drove up to Ben’s home in Virginia prior to us leaving for Niagara the next day. After dinner, we decided to warm up for the festivities with a few 2-player games. Council of Shadows is a sci-fi themed action selection and majorities design from the post-Stefan Brueck Alea. It doesn’t stack up to the great Alea titles of the past (not that I’d expect it to), but it’s still pretty good. The game’s central mechanism is that you have to gain sufficient Energy to score, but each Action you take raises the Energy threshold you need to reach. It’s a nice balancing act. Ben’s experience showed as he overcame my fast start to win convincingly, but this is a title I’d like to explore some more, probably with more players. Rating: I like it.

Ben: Larry and I had talked about Council of Shadows in previous years as it has a rather unique mechanism for scoring. This is a favorite game of my son’s and I wanted Larry to experience it, even if 2p is not the ideal player count. I was able to demonstrate the effectiveness of the different strategies of consumption and how the game is played, so he got a taste. I still think this is an underrated gem of 2022. Rating: I love it still.

Domus Domini (2015)

Ben: Joe Huber brought this out after our wild game of Aeronautika. In fairness to Joe, I probably shouldn’t played it, as I needed a break, but he taught it with the same enthusiasm as Aeronautika, so “off we go.” It was a bit heavier than I was prepared for and I didn’t truly understand how some of the early actions slowed my momentum till later in the game. It was unique and not bad, but I didn’t have any “aha” moments that made it stand out for me. Rating: Not for me.

Larry: This is an economic game of sorts about running a monastery, from the designer of the excellent Planet Steam. It has a very so-so rating on the Geek and it didn’t make much of an impression on me. It’s possible that it could be better with more plays, but it didn’t really inspire me to investigate it much more. Rating: Neutral.

Expressions (2024)

Larry: This is a cooperative game in which the players are trying to deduce which cards everyone holds in their hand based on the information they reveal about their cards. It uses a system similar to the mechanism from The Crew, in which the way you play a card states that it’s the highest card, lowest card, only card, etc. The twist is that each card played that way counts against the team and you need to be able to deduce at least half the cards dealt out while they’re still hidden in the other players’ hands. The concept was very appealing to me and I had high hopes for the game. Unfortunately, there’s a group of hidden cards that are in no one’s hand, so you often can’t be sure if the missing card is in Player X’s hand or is in the hidden pile. This reduces a deduction game to something of a guessing game and that always annoys me. So good ideas, but I’m not sure I’m thrilled with the way it was implemented. Rating: Neutral.

Ben: I think this game is better than Larry gives it credit for. Simple yet challenging cooperative deduction game with limited information. Components were good and rules were good (We should say this more!). Rating: I like it.

Interlude #3: Making New Friends

Larry: I have made so many good and lasting friends at the Gathering over the years—the number has to be at least 100. And one of the joys each year is making new ones. This time around, it was getting to meet Opinionated Gamers writers who were attending the GoF for the first time. Matt Carlson has been with us so long and written so much good stuff that I felt I already knew him, but this was our first face-to-face meeting. He’s as likeable in person as he is with the written word. Of course, his defining characteristic is he has green hair. It’s actually a more neon shade of green than Friedemann Friese’s, which is a darker green. At one point, we observed Matt exiting the ballroom at the exact same moment that Friedemann was entering. We joked that there must be some sort of Conservation Law concerning green hair and we were relieved that they hadn’t actually been in the room at the same time and threatened the fabric of the Space Time Continuum.

My other new acquaintance was Ryan Post, one of our newer additions to the team. Unlike many of the other OGers, whose gaming tastes tend to be lighter and more accessible than mine, Ryan loves the heavy stuff and our favorite games are strongly aligned. He did a great job of teaching us Amsterdam, a game I really wanted to try out. You can be sure I’m going to try to spend a lot more time with Ryan in the years to come, as a fellow lover of the great heavy games in our hobby. Great meeting you both, guys!

Fishing (2024)

Larry: It must be great to be Friedemann Friese. You sit in your (green) chair and think, “Hmm, what about a game that does X and Y?”, where X and Y are very different things, and then you have the talent and imagination to create just such a game! For Fishing, the combination is a trick taking game with deckbuilding. How is that even possible? Here’s how the The Man in Green did it: Each hand, you keep all the cards you won in tricks that hand, shuffle them, and deal yourself cards for the next hand. If you didn’t win enough cards to make up the next round’s hand, you are given cards from a new deck, where the cards get progressively more and more powerful as the game goes on. Since you score for each trick you win, the poorer you score in the current hand, the better your chances will be in future hands. Voila, a deckbuilding trick-taker!

It’s an irresistable idea and we did have a lot of fun with it. I do have a couple of caveats that will require more plays to resolve. The first is that our game featured wild swings of capability. For example, I won a ton of tricks during the first hand (I didn’t try to, but the other players stuck me with the lead and I couldn’t lose it). That gave me the early lead, but shut me out of the new cards for the next couple of hands. Consequently, I scored very poorly for those hands, until I’d worked through all the crappy cards I won during the first hand. Then I was able to get some very powerful cards indeed, which let me do well and shut me out of new cards for the rest of the game. Other players had similar highs and lows and it’s not obvious if there’s a way of timing this properly, so that you peak at the right moment and are able to win, or if it’s just a roller coaster ride that you have fun with, while things happen and someone wins because things just work out well for them. I’m hoping it’s the former, but we’ll have to see. The other nagging doubt is whether the first play of this will be the most enjoyable, because we were all discovering these great new cards. There was lots of cries of “You have a card that does what???” that made our game a hoot, but once you know all the cards, the game will have to live or die on its innovation and solid gameplay. So to some extent, the jury is still out on Fishing, but I really did enjoy my first play and am very impressed by yet another great concept from Friedemann. Rating: I like it.

Ben: I wanted to try this game based on the buzz. It’s a novel concept and implementation. I do have some reservations about it, even though I thought we all enjoyed our play. I worry it might be novel just the first few plays and the fun will wear out very quickly. I would need to play it a lot more to confirm this, but our game was very swingy. You might have a good hand that leads to 3 or 4 rounds of losing constantly and feeling very marginalized before you feel like you are playing it again. Friedemann is great at what he does and this is a really unique game, but is it tight? I’m not sure. You play eight rounds that go quickly. The best cards in the game are the “take that” cards that are very entertaining to play on people. Rating: Neutral, but I need more plays.

FTW?! (2023)

Ben: I got to play with Jonathan Franklin who is another Opinionated Gamer that I hadn’t met in person. He is a nice guy, especially when he leaves me with some great cards to pick up and play. I finally won in this game, but I feel it’s very dependent on the windup to the end and playing the person to your right. Rating: I like it.

Larry: I continue to love this deceivingly simple card game from Friese. I’ve shown it to groups of different sizes and player types over the past year and it’s always been a hit. I had a fine game of it at the Gathering, where I was able to prevail despite not once going out. Secondary low cards FTW!!! (Among other strategies.) Rating: I really like it.

Gads Hill 1874 (2016)

Ben: I asked Huber to bring the game and teach it and he obliged. I had heard that this was a sneakily good game that crossed deduction with tactical tile placement. In the game, you build the town and earn money (points) by finding the final placement of buildings. You can take varying levels of scoring cards or buy buildings which hinged on eliminating placement options of varying buildings and requiring they be in those spots. It’s a neat game and I wish I could have looked at more of the scoring cards (some were harder than others). Rating: I like it.

Grand Austria Hotel (2015)

Larry: Just like last year, Joe Huber, Simon Weinberg, and I continued our once a year FTF GAH game, to supplement our continual game of it on BGA. Simon has been struggling with his results frequently, but he put all that behind him in this contest, as he wound up on top despite some fierce competition. Great job, Simon—let’s see if you can continue your success in the electronic world. Rating: I love it.

Hot Streak (2024, prototype) ***James Nathan Special***

Ben: Hot Streak is a new entertaining racing game where there are 4 characters running a race and you bet on who will win. The best part of this game is the hedging. You can bet for higher rewards on a win but lower scoring if you finish second, or vice versa. Cards are dealt and characters move, but wait…there’s more! Characters can change lanes, run over each other, turn around and walk off the board, or slide in increments to determine the winner. All in all, this was a fun one to watch and many laughs were had. Rating: I love it.

House of Cats (2023)

Larry: Roll & Writes were a cool thing for a while, but, like many gamers, I’ve pretty much had my fill of them. But there’s Roll & Writes and then there’s R&W’s designed by the great William Attia (and co-designed by another awfully good designer, Kristian Østby). House of Cats is easily explained, has interesting decisions, the variable special powers give it a nice dynamic feel, and each of the four sheets are sufficiently different that it feels as if you have 4 games in 1. William made his reputation with heavy designs, so I’d never thought I’d see a Roll & Write from him, but since he did produce one, I can’t be surprised that it’s a game I like. In fact, this might be my favorite R&W of all time. Rating: I like it.

Ben: I don’t really like Roll and Writes, and this didn’t really change my mind. Nothing against playing with the designer, I did pretty well but I just didn’t like my choices. I spent more time thinking about his other maps than the actual game. Rating: Not for me.

Inkling (2021)

Larry: This is a party game where you are given some words you have to spell out, but only a handful of letter cards to spell them with. The idea is to use the cards in clever ways and orientations to do the spelling. There is definitely some scope for cleverness in how you do that and there’s skill in both the spelling and guessing of the words. My first play was reasonably entertaining, but I’m not sure about its staying power. Still, I can see the right group having a good deal of fun with this. Rating: Neutral.

Jambo (2023)

Larry: I played a quickie game of this brilliant classic with Joe Huber while we were waiting for other players. It continues to be one of my all-time favorite 2-player games and I’ve found a regular opponent for it in my new game group, which makes me very happy. Rating: I love it.

Knarr (2023)

Larry: There’s been a good deal of chatter about this Viking-themed tableau builder and after playing it, I can see why. The rules are straightforward, but there’s enough going on to maintain your interest. The best strategy isn’t obvious and while the decisions aren’t brain-burners, they’re numerous and feel satisfying. It also plays fast and the turns are short and sweet. I’ve seen this compared to Splendor, but I think Knarr is much more interesting and is the kind of short game I’ll be happy to add to my collection. Rating: I like it.

Lata (2023)

Larry: This is a middleweight production/selling game from a couple of experienced Portuguese designers. The stripped down way in which you set up your factory to produce tinned fish is fairly interesting. Once again, I found myself locked into what turned out to be a suboptimal strategy and wound up being squeezed like a sardine in a can. I need to try to avoid this in the future, although by this late point in the Gathering, I think I was getting pretty tired, which at least partially explains my less than stellar performance. Anyway, I’m not sure I gave the game a fair shot and would be willing to try it again, but right now, I’ll quote Dylan and say it ain’t my cup of meat. Rating: Neutral.

Let’s Go! To Japan (2024)

Ben: Theres a story behind this delightful game. The designer, Josh Wood, was planning and saving his money for a dream trip to Japan when the pandemic began, and he had to delay his trip. He began learning Japanese and doing even more research into his trip which coincided with a nice game from AEG. I had a lot of gamers asking me if I had tried this one yet and if I had backed it (which I hadn’t). Simple, elegant, and refined gameplay made this one a winner. In addition to the gameplay, the art, components, and careful planning of your turns made this a hot commodity at the gathering. My only negative was the scoring at the end felt a little slow and had to be done one by one in our group. Rating: I like it.

Larry: The Kickstarter version of this game came out just prior to the Gathering and the retail version is supposed to have hit the stores earlier this month. This design about planning your “perfect” Japanese vacation was one of my more pleasant surprises of the week. It’s unquestionably a middleweight, but there’s an awful lot going on, so there’s plenty of enjoyable decisions to be made. Maybe too many for a family title, but I still think it’s doable. I think it’s fun first time out of the box, but it appears your performance will improve with experience, which is always nice to see. My only concern about it is that there’s a lot of different ways to score and some of them aren’t really easy to track, so it can feel as if “we all do stuff, there’s a bunch of scoring, and someone winds up winning, perhaps to their surprise”. Again, I suspect that once players gain experience, that won’t be the case, but I can’t be sure after just one game.

Two other points. I don’t know much about Japan and traveling in general doesn’t interest me, but the activity cards (which describe different tourist attractions) are extremely detailed and interesting and the players who were familiar with Japan were delighted with how this was done. I think this aspect of the design will be a real highlight for many people. Secondly, AEG did a fantastic job with the game’s physical design. Everything is top notch and gorgeous, without ever seeming over the top. The fact that I, who is usually theme and component agnostic, noticed and appreciated these things is all you need to know. Great job by all concerned and I predict this will wind up as one of the year’s bigger hits. Rating: I like it.

Let me Off (2017) ***James Nathan Special***

Ben: This was a fun trick taker where you had some cards in your hard but also cards shared between you and the players on each side of you. You had to follow suit and that sometimes meant playing good cards from your shared hands/personal hand, even when you didn’t want to. It was fun and a good twist on the genre. Rating: Neutral.

Lords of Baseball (2024)

Larry: Lords of Baseball is a unique sports-themed game from L4 Studios and Mr. B Games that was just delilvered to its Kickstarter backers. It’s not a baseball sim; instead, the players act as baseball owners/GMs in charge of fictional teams during the 1910s (a period where there was a good deal of baseball stadium construction). You acquire and upgrade players, beef up your farm system, and make improvements to your stadium to bring in more fans (which gives you more money to work with). The team construction elements are pretty abstract, but there’s a lot of loving detail given to the feel of old time baseball. It’s more of a financial game than a sports sim, although you do play out multiple seasons. I love baseball and have always been fascinated by the strategies of building and maintaining a good team, so this is clearly aimed at me. I’ve been aware of this project for over a year and, in fact, had just read the posted rules before arriving at the Gathering. I had no idea it would be here and was delighted to get to play a season. It’s not perfect (the catch-up mechanism might be too pronounced), but I thoroughly enjoyed it and would be first in line to buy a copy, except for one thing: I have no idea who I’d play it with. While I don’t think familiarity with baseball is an absolute requirement, I do feel that people who love the sport will get much more out of this title than those who are indifferent to it. So it’s entirely possible that this single season will be my only exposure to Lords of Baseball, but I’m very glad I was able to try it and playing it was one of my highlights of the week. Rating: I love it!

Interlude #4: Opinionated Eaters—Canadian Chinese

Tom McCory found a Chinese place in Canada across the Falls called “New York Chinese,” and a group of us including Bob, Tom, Phil, Kent, Scott, and myself poured into a car for some excellent Chinese food. Then we walked around the area. Niagara Falls, CA has a strange Halloween theme going on.

With those images of monsters North of the Border still resonating in your brain, we’ll end the first part of our Gathering experiences right here. Tune in tomorrow for Part 2, featuring more great games and greater gluttany!