In the fall of 1998, a small group of families gathered off-season in a summer camp facility in Panama City Beach (Florida) to play board games and begin to build friendships. That was Gulf Games #2… and my wife & I were privileged to be there.

It’s been nearly 28 years… and I’m still privileged to be a part of this amazing family-oriented gaming event. What follows is my impressions of the 38 different games I played over nearly five days. (They are grouped by number of plays and then alphabetical order.)

Games I Played Three Times

OK, it’s just a single game – the really delightful 3 Chapters. It’s short (15 minutes with experienced players, 30 minutes with a full table of five newbies) but it manages to mash together a “pass the hand” draft, a quick round of trick-taking, and a bit of card synergy for final scoring. Add in the some really nice cartoonish fairy tale art coupled with thematic touches to the various scoring opportunities… and I will happily jump into a game of this whenever anyone offers.

Games I Played Twice

In the universe of tiny games in tins, Barbecubes is a personal favorite. (I need to get myself a copy!) It’s published/designed by the same folks who did Tinderblocks – but I think the combination of the grilling theme and the clever use of the storage tin to make the grill make it the best of the bunch.

Thursday night three of us played my beloved Clash of Cultures… and then I got to play it again on Friday morning. This is a civ-building games with a great tech tree system, cool minis, and an epic sweep as your civilization grows, deals with events both good and bad, and comes into conflict with the other players. It’s long (about 60-75 per player) but I had a blast with it even though I didn’t win either game.

I managed to make it to the finals of the annual Liar’s Dice tournament – and I was the last player eliminated. (I don’t play Liar’s Dice nearly as much as I used to – but I’m always glad when it gets suggested.)

I first played Ninety Nine last fall at a post-Essen event… and it was fun to get to play a couple of more times this weekend. I’m convinced that 2-3 players is the sweet spot for this game of sequencing cards based on the rules – 4 player games have a little too much downtime and the game overstays its welcome.

One of the newest additions to my collection is actually the same age as Gulf Games – Tonga Bonga was published back in 1998. This Stefan Dorra classic requires players to race to set up camps on various islands – but hiring crew (dice) is complicated by a bidding system that can mess you over due to dice rolls. I won both games I played without making it back to Tonga Bonga to obtain the bonus – it’s key to not overbid on hiring. (The second game we played with the start player rotating – a common house rule that is now official in the latest version of the game, Batam.)

I also played two prototypes – but I was sworn to secrecy on those. :-)

Games I Played a Single Time

I can’t recommend 1%: A Game of Strategic Chance – the idea of the game is interesting (buying extra chances to roll the winning combination) but the mechanism to get those chances was clunky and didn’t seem to fit. (One player noted that there was a 1% chance of them playing it again.)

Like I said back in November, 7 Wonders Dice isn’t going to set the gaming world on fire – but it’s a pleasant mostly-multi-player-solitaire roll’n’write with nice production.

One of the new games Braeden (my son) and I had an opportunity to play was Age of Galaxy. The limited card hands are reminiscent of Res Arcana, but there are a lot more ways to approach the puzzle of this game. One tip: don’t ignore the income guilds – the bonus actions when a Golden Age is triggered is very helpful. I’m curious about how the solo system works – but I’m not sure I’ll pick this one up… it’s a little heavy for the majority of folks I play games with.

The Barnes & Noble down the street was discounting a number of games – so Greg Schloesser (the hero behind the continued success of Gulf Games) picked up a copy of Avant Carde. It’s a deck-builder where you’re working to create groups – well, honestly, the lay down of your hand each turn is an attempt to create Uno-like runs that generate cash for you to buy new cards for your deck. The storage system is attractive (folding boxes) but not always functional for play – but the game itself works. (It doesn’t hurt that I won.)

It was fun teaching Bärenpark to a group of folks… and then managing a win (well, tie for the win). The game itself is a tile-laying game where the position of the tile you play tells you which features you can draft for use on your next turn. I’m a huge fan. We played the most basic version (no goals)… with experienced players, I like adding in the grizzlies and additional boards from the expansion.

Back in the day, we used to enjoy playing Last Chance with groups of friends – a game of gambling on fulfilling a specific dice roll on the cards. Biddle is a much better implementation of that same idea with less fancy production and much better game design/structure. We played with six players (even though the game only comes with components for five) – and it works just fine.

I had a little extra room in my game bag, so I stuck Cape May in – hoping that someone would want to play. That someone turned out to be Angela… and we finally got a game in late Saturday afternoon. There’s a lot to like in the game – it has nice table presence with Victorian house pieces and fences as well a solid game system. The only thing I’d complain about the income markers (which are too easy to knock about) but otherwise it’s a very enjoyable game of city-building with a distinctly East Coast tourist village flavor.

One of the games I requested was Dewan – I’d enjoyed my first couple of plays immensely and wanted to teach it to my son. As expected, he enjoyed it. I’ve described it elsewhere as a cross between Ticket to Ride drafting and Web of Power card play – only with much better bits and artwork. Now I want to try some of the alternate scenarios that come in the game!

Years ago (at least pre-COVID), Warren taught me to play Dynasty League Baseball. Honestly, he didn’t really teach me the game as much as he led us through it to enjoy the dice-chucking/stats-churning fun. We got together for a rematch this year between the two worst teams in MLB circa 2007. He had the Tampa Bay Rays; I had the Pittsburgh Pirates. I had three good innings to rack up a substantial score; Warren ended up with 5 players (3 left fielders and 2 shortstops) out with injury due to what we can only attribute to a cursed left field. I suggested we needed to get a priest with some holy water to stop the carnage. Warren has suggested we simply call it the “Worst Cursed Series”. I had a blast.

I’ve always liked Reiner Knizia’s Beowulf: The Legend… but it has been a polarizing game. Some folks love the push-your-luck nature of the challenges, while others find it distasteful and frustrating. EGO is the re-imagining of Beowulf… in which he modifies the push-your-luck element, adds additional variety to the game system, and does away with the weirdly L-shaped board. Most importantly, the push-your-luck mechanism now rewards players who have 100% success and lets players who utterly fail off the hook – only punishing players who have partial success. This leads to some different decisions as you manage the anger of the alien races you’re negotiating with… all to the good. In general, I like the new art style, though it does introduce some UI issues (the weird 1, 2, and 3 coin icons, for example) and the boards are awfully busy. But the game plays slightly quicker with additional variety to keep players from locking into a particular bidding pattern – what’s not to love?

Exxtra (more recently published as “Excape”) is a cool push-your-luck dice that I (a) enjoy, and (b) don’t do very well at it. I’ve also played it A LOT at various Gulf Games events. And, yes, I did not win this one either.

Let’s be clear – Fair Enough is a game designed by Friedemann Friese to be the official Essen fair game, so it’s not the second coming of Power Grid. It’s a light 30 minute drafting game melded onto a push-your-luck showdown that mimics the process of making wishlists prior to Essen and then braving the halls and booths with limited time to get it back to your hotel room. There are a lot of Easter eggs for long-time gamers in the card art – so it was really fun to teach to a new group of players at Gulf Games.

Faraway was a great filler while we were waiting to get our second Clash of Cultures game to get underway. I still find the weird backwards scoring mechanic fascinating… now I want to try the game with the expansion.

I finally played Flip 7… while it’s not a substantial gamer-y game, it was fun when played quickly. Basically, it’s Blackjack-lite with tinges of UNO, but that doesn’t preclude it from being enjoyable to play. Flip 7: With A Vengeance (which we also played) is Blackjack-lite with extra meanness/take that elements. I much preferred the original Flip 7.

I’ve played Haunted Mouse before – and I need to apologize to Michelle and Earl for doing such an incredibly poor job of teaching the game to them. The less said about this debacle, the better. (When taught correctly, it’s a shedding game with some clever bits that doesn’t overstay its welcome at the table.)

Much as I love playing Heat: Pedal to the Metal with all the bells & whistles (extra Legend automa cars, weather, drafting equipment for my vehicle, etc.), most of the time I end up playing vanilla Heat. That’s we did at Gulf Games… and it was great. The Spain map (with tunnels!) is tricky and a lot of fun – and I managed to snake out a second place.

I played my first games of Hot Streak at last summers Gulf Games event – so it was fitting that it came to the table again here. The mix of cards we got were awfully friendly – the races were (for the most part) shorter than the races in games I’ve played before… but the betting, race-fixing, and utter chaos was still front and center. It’s perfection – with the caveat that you need people who actually want to have fun with this playing the game.

Late Friday evening I took a short break and ended up without a game to jump in – so I took the opportunity to teach myself the solo learning scenario of Jisogi: Anime Studio Tycoon. The production of the game is really gorgeous, particularly the excellent anime-style art. The gameplay is your classic worker placement to accomplish engine building (with some nice thematic touches)… but the theme is that your tiny company is struggling financially, so you’ve got to fight to keep your proverbial head above water. I won the scenario easily – but that’s not a surprise, as it was simply designed to teach the rules and systems.

Greg taught us Jungo – a new variation on shedding games. It’s fine but not particularly earth-shattering. (I may have reached my saturation point with new shedding games.)

My Saturday afternoon tradition is hosting a Memoir ’44 Overlord game – this time I hosted two of them at the same time! The Operation Market Garden scenario (which I took part in as the paratroopers holding the town of Arnhem from the German counterattack) went swimmingly for the Allies as the poor German team could not get a decent roll to save their lives. The final score was 13-1. (Yes, that’s an unusually lopsided score.)

On the adjacent table, eight players (including my son) played out the Encirclement at Khalkin-Gol scenario (Japanese versus Russians in 1939)… and it was decided by a single flag (18-17 in favor of the Japanese, if I understood correctly. As always, both games were great as a number of us play in them every year – and we got to initiate some new players into the joys of one of my favorite games!

Braeden and I tried Phil Walker-Harding newest design – Misfit Heroes. It’s a card tableau building game with a LOT of variety due to the combination of sleeves and cards. Braeden – who is a pretty serious Magic: The Gathering Commander player, was in hog heaven creating combo after combo. It wasn’t as interesting to me – but I can see the appeal for other players.

I’ll be the first to acknowledge that Sanctuary is streamlined Ark Nova… and being an Ark Nova fan, I knew I was likely to enjoy this before I got it to the table. Even with that, I was impressed at how well-done this version was. The solo game of Sanctuary was great (incredibly simple to manage the system) and my two & three player games have been enjoyable as well. Our 3 player game at Gulf Games was quite pleasant and made me want to dig it out of my bag and play again when I got home.

SCOUT – the shedding game where you can’t rearrange your cards AND you can “borrow” cards from other folks plays to fix the problems in your hand. I’m just OK at the game (and wearing down on shedding games in general)… but the company was excellent.

One of the truly delightful experiences of the weekend was teaching a bunch of younger (OK, a lot younger) gamers the wonders of the classic Showmanager. It’s such a clever/smart/fun drafting game with some tough decisions and interesting turns of fate. I can’t ever imagine letting it out of my collection.

I was taught a relatively new game, Slide – which has players moving blindly from their tableau then drafting cards back that must “slide” into position from the edge. When all the cards are turned over/revealed, all cards with orthogonal matches are removed and your score is the remaining card values. (Low score wins.)

Braeden and Ted took me on in Sniper Elite: The Board Game… as a multi-player “one vs many” game, Sniper Elite is a bit like playing Scotland Yard if Mr. X had a gun and could shoot the people chasing him. It’s a lot of nail-biting fun, for both the Allied sniper/spy and the Axis soldiers trying to hunt him down. The solo mode works as a puzzle but doesn’t capture the high-stress feel of the multi-player game. (I managed to blow up the sub then use my trench gun to forcibly dissuade them from pursuing me to my second objective for the win.)

Another long-time Gulf Games tradition, the giant Take It Easy was probably my best performance in a long time at that game… but my score only got me to the final eight or so players.

I’ve been enjoying Tenby as a solo game – so it was nice to play as an early morning game on Sunday with Braeden and Floyd. It’s a cute city-builder with a Kingdomino-ish drafting system and lots of different ways to combine buildings and piers to score points. It takes a little longer per player than I’d guessed, so I’m probably going to end up keeping this one as a 2-3 player game.

Jeff & Larry and I trotted out the seemingly ancient The Game of Life: Card Game – which is a perfect example of a card game spinoff that is MUCH better than the board game that it is based on. (My favorite “this is your life” game is still The Pursuit of Happiness… but GoL: Card Game is way more portable). I didn’t choose to go to college, got married young, and had lots of kids – which did not turn out to be a winning strategy.

Last but not least, I was able to play about half of a game of The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship. It takes the cooperative elements of Pandemic (no surprise – Matt Leacock is the designer of both of them) and adds some wargaming elements and a metric ton of Midde-Earth theme. The end result is initially overwhelming but very cool. I want to try it again with an experienced player to help us learn the ropes.

Can’t wait for the next Gulf Games!!!