Quick notes from the gathering

The ipad is a bit hinky to type really long bits from so I'll try to hit the high points.

Met Vlaada. There was fawning. And no new Vlaada game this year.

Cyclades is a great game kind of a Mare Nostrum lite.

Zev says Road Kill Rally by Origins. BBOS when he can figure out how to do the ships.

Glen More by Alea is getting praised and panned. The unofficial nickname is Jenseits Von teutencarcacaylus. which tells you a lot both about the kind of games that are getting popular and the starting backlash.

No games of Descent have been witnessed. Two preproduction copies of Defenders of the Realm turned up. The art and sculpts are just stunning.

Repos has a couple of prototypes. One is getting near constant use and has that kind of citadels buzz around it. The other is batshit crazy in a completely French way.

Gunther Burkhardt and Wolfgang Kramer teamed up to make Seeland. It is probably the most dramatically pointless game ive played in years. Anyone saying anything positive about it should be made pariahs.

Einfach Speziale destroys everything good about the original game.

Peloponnes is a pure short old school cube and auction euro with resources. It.........works really well. 45 minutes with some tricky timing and risk

Sounds great, Frank -- thanks for taking the time for the updates.

And it sounds like Larry Elmore smites his detractors.

I'd like to know if there are any promising names for games there (apart from BBOS and Road Kill Rally).

I glanced at list from a Eurgamer and was put to sleep by the names: Macao, Asteroyds, Jaipur, Dog, Gonzaga, Samarkand, Xactica, The Speicherstadt.

The only one with some promise is Asteroyds and that is only passable (Asteroyds of War would be good). First things first you should come up with a great name before coming up with a game. Where oh where have the great game names like Chainsaw Warrior gone?

I want me some Road Kill Rally and Battle Beyond Space so bad it's stupid. I'll be sure to bust Zev's balls at Gencon if he sells out of either/or before I get to buy a copy.

Gunther Burkhardt and Wolfgang Kramer teamed up to make Seeland. It is probably the most dramatically pointless game ive played in years. Anyone saying anything positive about it should be made pariahs.

Haha! That's fucking classic! So tell me Frank would it get swept off the table or no?

The ipad is a bit hinky to type really long bits from so I'll try to hit the high points.

Wow. That's about as subtle as "well, you know, today is my birthday".

Met Vlaada. There was fawning. And no new Vlaada game this year.

Oh Jesus...I bet they've put that man on a golden throne. I can just see a room full of obese middle aged men falling prostrate before him.

No games of Descent have been witnessed.

Huh...did Alan move on or something? That's weird, that was a big deal for a while.

Gunther Burkhardt and Wolfgang Kramer teamed up to make Seeland. It is probably the most dramatically pointless game ive played in years. Anyone saying anything positive about it should be made pariahs.

Well duh, look at the designers. Both of them haven't done anything useful in years. Kramer has done anything good in this decade.

Einfach Speziale destroys everything good about the original game.

But...but...its speziale!

I keep having this recurring nightmare that I wake up and I'm at the Gathering.

The ipad is a bit hinky to type really long bits from so I'll try to hit the high points.

Touch pads blow when you need to do some serious typing. And I hear editing your text is a bit of a pain with the iPad.

I keep having this recurring dream that I'm an iPad.

Michael Barnes wrote:

I keep having this recurring dream that I'm an iPad.

That's horrible. Hopefully you wake up before all the tech journalists spooge on you.

I hope Vlaada gets the hell out of Columbus before all the "Friends" spooge on him.

If that hasn't already happened...

moofrank wrote:

Cyclades is a great game kind of a Mare Nostrum lite.

So ... this would be Civ-ultra light? Sort of like an experimental aircraft?

Maybe Cyclades is a more Euro take on mare. There is less hidden information. But the game also requires you to seriously plan ahead. The games vary in play style a lot.

There isn't a lot of fawning over Vlaada or any of the other several dozen designers around. Vlaada is just a weird Czech guy whonwrties computer games during the day.

But then there is also a guy who worked on Fallout 3. And an actor who had a love scene with Jeri Ryan in an Indy movie. And a guy with half a dozen sf novels in his series. And the guy who didn't make it who is CEO of a small airline.

Also played Hansa Teutonica today. Not completely terrible. But it Is abstract as hell and has at least a dozen ways to score points. I get the idea that folks are designing games with a blender.

Michael Barnes wrote:

I hope Vlaada gets the hell out of Columbus before all the "Friends" spooge on him.

If that hasn't already happened...

Well, that had me snickering in front of some dour faced blackjack players for the better part of 20 minutes who where probably wondering what the fuck was so funny. Hell, the pit boss even came over to ask me what was so funny.

The look on his face when I told had me had laughing for another forty.

moofrank wrote:

Also played Hansa Teutonica today. Not completely terrible. But it Is abstract as hell and has at least a dozen ways to score points. I get the idea that folks are designing games with a blender.

I played this at Averyfest when everyone else was playing something fun. This game is a fun grinder. It is so fucking abstract. It's also completely inexplicable. It has an abrupt timer too that doesn't occur at any natural point, just when someone has scored X number of points. So it ends inexplicably, you score points in a variety of inexplicable ways and you gain powers by doing something inexplicable. And most of the powers (besides using more actions, the best choice everyone is constantly fighting over) are also inexplicable.

moofrank wrote:

Cyclades is a great game kind of a Mare Nostrum lite.

I thought Mare Nostrum was a civ lite game. Man, if they get any lighter, they'll float away.