Last month, I made my annual foray to Niagara Falls to participate in The Gathering of Friends, my favorite gaming convention.  I had a fantastic time, as I always do, thanks to the people and the chance to play games non-stop for nine full days.  Here’s a summary of the games I played and the wonderful experiences I had.

First Friday

I flew into the Buffalo airport from home and arrived at the hotel during the early evening.  I got to play a few prototypes designed by friends, but also got to play three games during my first day, two of which were new to me.

Boitas – My first game of the Gathering was a set collecting trick-taker.  It wasn’t bad, but not particularly memorable.  Neutral.

Hot Streak – This is a gambling game where you’re betting on the outcome of a highly chaotic race.  It seems to be a favorite of many of the OGers, but I don’t do chaos, so my only enjoyment came from watching James Nathan screaming and prancing around like a man possessed at the results of the race.  I’m pretty sure that he won’t come packaged in every box, so this title is definitely…Not for me.

Earth – My second play of this.  It feels like a very loose game where you have a ton of ways of scoring points, only some of which you will use.  Play #2 was slightly better than the first one, but I’m still pretty meh on it.  Neutral.

First Saturday

A good day, featuring titles old and new.  But first…

Interlude #1:  Tool Use

I awoke to my first full day of the Gathering and hopped into the shower.  Unfortunately, the dial that controlled water temperature was loose, so if you turned it to the hot side, gravity would slowly, but inexorably, move it to maximum heat, so that I was either taking a freezing shower or a boiling one.  In desperation, I wrapped a hand towel around the dial, in the vague hope that it would serve as a counter-weight.  Much to my surprise, it worked!  I have to admit being just a little bit proud of this (SEE WHAT I HAVE DONE!), since I’m usually far from handy around the house.  Hot shower achieved (without scalding my skin), I was ready to game.

Let’s Go to Japan – This middleweight game about planning your dream Japanese vacation has been a big hit with everyone I’ve played it with.  I taught it to one of my Gathering buddies and it went over well, as always.  I really like it.

Louis XIV – Louis is one of my favorites, but I haven’t played it in at least a decade.  Fortunately, Joe Huber needed to play this to meet his goal of getting all his owned games played this year and he didn’t need to twist my arm to participate.  My rustiness showed, as I finished well back, but it was still great to play this again.  I love it!

Aeterna (played twice) – Some years at the Gathering, there’s a huge hit among the new games, but that didn’t seem to be the case this year.  That held for me as well, as there wasn’t a 2025 game that I flat out loved.  My favorite new-to-me game was probably this Martin Wallace title that debuted a couple of months ago.  After my first game, I was uncertain about it, but I really warmed to it after my second play.  It’s based on Ancient Rome and the players earn VPs by having the most citizens at each of the Seven Hills of Rome.  In addition to placing your dudes, you can buy cards, which give you all sorts of resources, abilities, and actions.  There are three eras and after VPs are awarded from the majorities battles at the end of each era, the Hills with the highest population are devastated.  This gives the player with the most citizens there unrest, which is the game’s bogeyman, and also reduces the VPs for that Hill for the succeeding eras.  The devastation mechanism is the title’s main innovation, but I thought the rest of it was solidly designed as well.  There’s lots of different things to balance and I found it made for a satisfying and challenging game.  Dale reviewed it for OG earlier and while he liked it, he also complained that it was hard to do everthing he wanted to.  I didn’t find that to be the case—Wallace gives you plenty of tools to manage things—but I also tend to like unforgiving games, so perhaps what was a bug for him is a feature for me.  Anyway, I’m seriously thinking about picking this up, as I’d like to play it some more.  I really like it.

Revolve – The designer of Scout has come up with another shedding game that uses two-sided cards.  This isn’t just Scout’s little brother—there are some new and interesting ideas here and the two games feel pretty different.  It’s a solid game, but I definitely prefer Scout.  I like it.

Rise & Fall – This appears to be a pretty polarizing title and since I haven’t had much luck with other Christophe Boelinger games, I hadn’t sought it out.  But Mark Engelberg offered to teach it and I found it to be pretty interesting.  Probably too abstract to be a true favorite, but I liked that there were no random factors.  I like it.

Sunday

Any day in which you get to play your current Game of the Year, improve your rating of a game played earlier in the week (Aeterna), and discover a heretofore unknown trick-taker is a great day!

Civolution – My feelings toward this Feld opus have resembled a rollar coaster ride.  Exactly one year ago, I played the prototype at the Gathering and was bitterly disappointed with it.  Fortunately, I was able to give it another play last November and, thanks to a much better grasp of the rules, my opinion of it did a 180.  One of my main goals at the GoF this year was to play this at least once (not necessarily an easy task, for a monster game like this), to truly decide how much I liked it.  Mission accomplished!  I got to play it three times and now I’m absolutely infatuated with it.  Not only that, it’s clearly my 2024 Game of the Year and has even risen into my all-time top 25!  Not a bad one-year journey.

It remains a beast to set-up and teach, but I’ve now experienced first-hand that a duration of 45 minutes per player is absolutely achievable and, with focused, experienced players, even 30 minutes per player is at least possible.  I still think it will be very hard to get to the table in any of my game groups, since I’m not sure I know enough players willing to cram all those rules into their cranium.  But there’s a good chance I’ll be able to get it played at cons and other special gaming occasions, including, of course, next year’s Gathering!  I really love it!

Schadenfreude – Sometimes, in your voyage to discover new titles, you get lucky.  Late on Sunday, I was chatting with some folks and noticed a small game box on the table in front of me.  It was titled “Schadenfreude”, a game I had never heard of.  When I asked about it, I was told, “Oh, you have to play this!”, so I did.  And it’s a blast!  It’s a trick-taker where the second highest card of the suit led wins the trick, but that’s not the end of the weirdness.  When you win a trick, you take the card you played, along with any off-suit cards that opponents played to the trick.  You keep these face up and their sum is your score for the hand.  The game ends when someone’s total score exceeds 40 and the player who is closest to 40 without topping it wins.  But the real “schadenfreudy” rule is that if you ever win two cards of the same value, they’re both discarded!  So your score can bounce around like a pinball, thanks to the machinations of your loving opponents!  The game starts slow, but as scores approach 40, it really shines, as each player’s status rapidly goes from safe, to winning, to the brink of elimination.  And despite all that chaos, there really is a lot of scope for skillful play.  Everyone I played this with (I got in four games) really enjoyed it, making it one of the hits of the Gathering, even though it’s a 2021 design.  And I have to thank the careless person who left it on the table instead of putting it back in the stack it came from!  I like it.

Monday

I got to play one of the games on my dance card, along with a couple of new-to-me trick takers.  I also got in my second game of Civolution, with the game starting at 1 AM!  Not recommended!!!  We didn’t finish, but I still really enjoyed it.

Endeavor: Deep Sea – I’d been hearing very good things about this underwater version of Endeavor, so I was very happy to give it a try.  It really doesn’t have that much to do with the original game—it’s very much its own beast.  And it did not disappoint.  There’s a good deal to think about, a lot of variety, and the decisions are engaging, without being brain-burning.  Both Endeavors are very good, but I think I may slightly prefer the newer game.  It just got nominated for the Kennerspiel and even though I don’t think it will win (it seems too complex for what has become a middleweight award), I’ll be rooting strongly for it.  This and Aeterna were my two favorite new-to-me games from the Gathering.  I really like it.

Chaos Cove – This is a 2024 Wallace title that I hadn’t heard of before.  The players use the abilities of 16 different characters to help win battles against invading pirates and barbarians.  It’s pretty good, maybe with less control than I usually prefer, although I don’t think any of us played all that well.  I think that Wallace usually does better with heavier games than this one, but I’d be willing to play it again, to see if I could do a better job of figuring out the strategy.  I like it.

Trick Raiders – Someone recommended I give this recent Japanese trick-taker a try, so I was game.  The main gimmick is that some of the cards in your hand are dealt face up (and you can modify which cards these are, to some extent).  It’s a standard trick-taker, but the exposed cards are the only ones you can use to lead to a trick and the cards in your hand can only be used to follow to a trick.  If you need to play a card, but you don’t have one available that meets these requirements, you lose a life.  The person with the most life chips when someone runs out of them wins.  Pretty simple concept, but it turned out to be surprisingly tricky and made for a very enjoyable game.  In fact, we liked it so much we played it twice, so it was a good recommendation!  I like it.

Sumida River – The same fellow recommended this shedding game, so we tried it as well.  You’re trying to get rid of all your cards, as usual, but the cards you play must form a meld (a sequence or N of a kind), they must contain cards higher than the previous play, and they must be a different kind of meld than anyone else has played to that trick.  Again, pretty tricky stuff and an equally enjoyable game.  There’s so many good recent trick-taking and climbing games that I haven’t heard of and I want to play them all!  I like it.

Tuesday

I got lucky and unlucky, all in one day, while playing some very interesting new games.

Bomb Busters – There has been a lot of chatter about this cooperative deduction game from one of my favorite Japanese designers, Hisashi Hayashi, but this was the first time I got the chance to try it out.  You’re trying to guess the tiles in your teammates’ hands, thanks to some information that they provide.  If you succeed, you defuse the bomb; if you don’t, well, BOOM!  Similar to games like The Crew, this starts fairly easy, but the difficulty builds up; fortunately, you have some tools to help you out.  I got in three hands and enjoyed all of them.

Later that day, someone asked me if I knew that I was one of the winners of that day’s raffle.  I didn’t realize I had (it’s an automatic process and they post the winners on a white board, which I hadn’t bothered to check).  The prize was a game, of course, from a group they had on a shelf.  Most of the titles were of little interest to me, but there was one copy of Bomb Busters, which I had just tried out!  I was very happy to add this to my collection; I think it will go over well with one of my game groups at home.  Hey, I’m a winner!  (By the way, we just found out that Bomb Busters was nominated for the Spiel des Jahre, which is great news.  Right now, it’s considered the favorite, so hopefully, it’ll be a winner too!)  I like it.

Bid Coin – Yet another new-to-me trick taking game from Japan.  In this one, you have a limited number of bid cards in addition to your hand and you have to play them to meet or exceed the number of tricks you’ve won that hand.  The goal is to have your bid match the number of tricks you win, which allows you to discard the bid cards you’ve played.  What makes this tough is you can’t take bid cards back, so you need to be careful how you play them, since adding a high number to what you’ve already bid will make hitting your bid on the nose really tough.  (The bid process reminded me a bit of an old Knizia auction game, High Society.)  This was another interesting new game that had a different feel.  I like it.

Robotrick – Okay, they can’t all be winners.  This is a trick-taker for exactly 3 players that includes a fourth “robot” player, who has a simple algorithm for how it will play to the tricks (there are 10 different robots, each with their own unique algorithm).  I can see how you could conceivably plan for the robot’s actions with a lot of look ahead, but the process seemed tedious and unenjoyable.  I can see why it has a good rating, but it really didn’t work for us.  Neutral.

Interlude #2:  Opinionated Eaters—Sad Trombone

Ben Bruckart and I usually drive up and back to the Gathering together, but this year, he could only attend for three days, due to other commitments.  He arrived on Tuesday and we didn’t waste any time playing games together.  Then it was time for dinner, so I suggested my favorite local restaurant, The Horny Hog, a BBQ joint that serves amazingly good ribs.  We drove over there, only to see a sign on the door with the saddest of possible words:  “Closed for Renovations”.  No ribs for hungry gamers!  This was not only very disappointing, but possibly bore bad tidings for the future—the local economy in Niagara isn’t very robust and mom-and-pop places like The Hog open and close all the time.  All I can do is hope that those “renovations” aren’t permanent.  Ben and I drove around and found another promising looking BBQ place; the food was decent, but it was no Horny Hog.  My beloved ribs will have to wait until next year—I hope!

Kansas City – This is Chris Wray’s latest trick-taking design.  Each player tries to take the exact same number of tricks.  To assist you with that goal, if you lose a trick, you may be able to change one of your unplayed cards to the trump suit.  The ideas here are interesting, but games where you must take an exact number of tricks have never been my favorites.  I’m also not a fan of the graphic design—it’s stylish and artistically attractive, but the Art Deco graphics make it hard to distinguish things, at least for me.  It’s still a good game, but I was hoping for more, since Chris has said that it’s his favorite of his designs.  I (sorta) like it.

Rebirth – This is one of Knizia’s latest and has been a big hit with many.  Ben loves it, so I was happy to try it out, even though Reiner’s more abstract games usually don’t rank as my favorites.  And that’s pretty much how it played out; it’s straightforward and fairly interesting, but not really something that does much for me.  That probably says more about me and my tastes than it does about the design.  Mechanically, Rebirth is similar to Through the Desert, one of the Good Doctor’s most acclaimed older games; I never really got into that one, so there was no reason to expect that I’d find the newer game to my liking, either.  Neutral (but I’d play it again)

Wednesday

Played a bunch of games with Ben, which automatically made this a good day!

Nokosu Dice – Definitely one of my favorite of all the newer trick-takers.  The way the dice work with the cards is really inspired.  Our three-player game was excellent, as always.  I really like it.

Jaipur – An oldie, but this always makes for some enjoyable 2-player fun.  Ben did a better job of wrangling his camels.  I like it.

Barrage – This and Civolution are my two favorite games from the past 10 years.  Mark Engelberg wanted to learn it and we managed not to melt his brain too badly.  It’s such a terrific design, with so many inspired mechanics.  Ben is a shark at it, though, and he won fairly handily, but Mark certainly held his own.  I really love it.

The Crew: Family Adventures – Steph Hodge and her boy toy Michael wanted to try this out, so we were game, given our love of the original The Crew.  Once again, this is a cooperative game, but instead of it being a trick-taker, it’s based more on Crazy Eights; you have to play certain cards by matching either the suit or the rank of the previously played card in order to win each scenario.  It’s reasonably clever, but much easier than the adult version of the game.  Given the intended audience, that seems entirely appropriate and I’d be happy to play this with some younger gamers.  But with my usual game groups, it’s not one that I’d ever play.  Neutral

Mesos – Ben and I both love the designs of Simone Luciani.  Mostly that’s due to his heavier games, but even when he produces a lighter title like Mesos, we’re still gonna check it out.  This is a drafting tableau builder with some clever concepts, but it’s still fairly straightforward.  It’s enjoyable and would make a fine palette cleanser between longer games, but expecting it to match Luciani’s meaty creations was probably unrealistic.  I like it.

Moon Colony Bloodbath – Ben wanted me to show this recent Vaccarino game to him.  It’s a perfectly fine design and professionally done, but it just isn’t very exciting.  It also lasts a bit longer than I want it to.  I’ve played it twice now and I think I’m done with it.  Neutral.

Harmonies – This is a very highly rated middleweight which recently won one of the Golden Geek game of the year awards, so when I saw a game starting up, I was happy to try it out.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t too impressed.  For one thing, playing it with 4 is a bad idea—there’s way too much downtime.  For another, the display size of 5 seemed too small, as there were many turns in which there was nothing attractive on offer.  It didn’t help that my right-hand opponent switched strategies after I’d committed to my starting tile and consistently grabbed the tiles I needed.  I eventually went in another direction out of desperation, but those early point-starved turns pretty much doomed me.  The luck factor just felt much too high.  Sadly it was not a fun game for me, particularly since I often had to wait just to have another set of crappy choices presented to me.  Maybe this would be better with 2 players, as, with just a single opponent, defense would come into play, but my personal harmony will probably be higher if I just avoid it.  Not for me.

Thursday

There was a gap of more than 60 years between the publication dates of the games I played today, which made for an unusual, but fun day.

Password – Growing up, I loved watching game shows on TV.  Naturally, I played my share of “home versions” of these back in the day.  It’s been a very long time since I last played Password, one of the grandaddies of the genre, but I was asked to fill in for a player who had to depart.  Even though it’s never been my favorite of the old game shows, it was fun to step back into time and my partner and I managed to eke out a victory.  The Password is…I like it.

Wispwood – CGE was showing a prototype of the main game they’ll be releasing at Essen.  This was pretty good, with the players having to play Tetris-shaped tiles in order to meet their goals.  It’s shorter and lighter than what I usually expect from CGE and perhaps too abstract to really appeal to me.  I’ll be happy to play it when it comes out, but I don’t think I’ll wind up buying it.  I like it.

Fives – This is the latest version of The Green Fivura, just released by CMYK as part of their very distinctive looking Magenta line.  It’s one of my favorite of the new trick-takers and extremely clever.  I’m very happy this is getting a major release.  I love it.

Apiary – Bees…in…Space!  That’s the very unusual theme of this WP design, a middleweight that plays very fast.  I got to meet the designer, Connie Vogelmann (this is her first design, which was followed up by the hugely successful Wyrmspan) and we had several very interesting discussions.  In the game, my hive got schooled, but that just shows that there’s more for me to discover here.  I like it.

Roll & Write for the Galaxy – Just like last year, Ben and I got together with Tom Lehmann to play a couple of games of his R&W version of Dice for the Galaxy.  Not surprisingly, he and co-designer Wei-Hwa Huang have made some changes.  We continue to love it and I can’t wait for it to be released.  I love it.

Second Friday

Today was the day for people to show me some of their favorites.  Gotta love that.

Chu Han – More Lehmann goodness.  This is Tom’s take on a 2-player climbing game, with the cards having all sorts of special powers.  I enjoyed it, but I was hoping for something that would blow my socks off and, sadly, no wearing apparel was lost.  However, Tom’s games almost always benefit from repeated play, so this is one I want to play a few times before I finalize my opinion about it.  I like it.

Cosmic Eidex – Ben and I asked Nate Beeler (one of our OG writers) what game he wanted to play with us and he was very excited to show us Cosmic Eidex, a card game that dates back to the late 90’s.  It’s based on the 19^th century trick-taking game of Jass, a very popular traditional game in Switzerland, with the twist being you either want to take the most points (but not too many) or the fewest points.  In addition, each player is assigned an ability each hand (that’s the “Cosmic” part of the game, as in Cosmic Encounter) and there’s a ton of those available.  The victory conditions (which actually anticipate some of the things you see in modern trick-takers) take a while to wrap your head around, but they make for an interesting game.  Unfortunately, the trump suit has different rankings than the other suit; this is derived from Jass and takes some time to get used to if you’re not familiar with that game.  Additionally, the card art, while very attractive, is very different than a traditional deck, and I really had to focus on them to figure out which cards were which.  All of that meant I was expending a lot of energy on non-gaming tasks, rather than exclusively on maximizing my score.  The game is interesting and I can see why it has its exalted reputation, but it’s also pretty chaotic at times.  Given the effort required to play, I don’t think this will be a favorite of mine, but I was very glad I had the chance to try a game I’d heard a lot about over the years.  Thanks, Nate!  Neutral.

Grachtenpand – Next, I sat down with Joe Huber, who said he wanted to show us “the only 2024 game that he felt was a keeper”.  It turned out to be this fairly simple card drafting game, in which you’re trying to construct buildings, with foundations, floors, and roofs, in a way that gives you the most points.  It was pleasant, but in no way memorable.  Another reminder that, even though Joe and I have a reasonable number of titles that we both love, overall, we have very different tastes in games.  Neutral.

Free Ride USA – I was happy to teach this Friese game to one new friend and one very old one.  It’s a very clever design and so much easier to play than the European version, because of the use of color.  Planning your path through the States, based on the tickets available, is always a fun challenge.  It’s one of my favorites of Friedemann’s recent games and a superior middleweight.  I really like it.

Grand Austria Hotel – Then it was time for the annual death match between Joe Huber, Simon Weinberg, and me.  We have a perpetual online game of GAH going on, so we make a point of having a face-to-face game of it each Gathering.  Simon won this year’s contest convincingly.  I love it.

Second Saturday

My last full day at the Gathering, which is always a bit bittersweet, but I was ready to go home after nine full days of glorious gaming.  Happily, I was able to end things by playing two new games that I’d been trying to check out all week.

Glen More II – After yet another wonderful game of Civolution, I ran into Chris Wray and asked to play something with him.  I know he’s a huge fan of this revised version of Glen More, so it seemed like an obvious choice.  The only time I play the updated game is with Chris and I always enjoy it.  This was no exception and the combination of excellent game and excellent company was, well, excellent.  I really like it.

Das Labyrinth des Pharoa – I saw Steph Hodge and figured that playing a couple of games with her would be a fine way of closing out the con.  We wanted to play Fellowship of the Ring and asked Dan Blum to join us.  He agreed, but asked to play this somewhat obscure 2013 game first.  You play tiles with paths and treasures on them, Take It Easy-style (so all the players play their tiles in the same order).  It was a game.  It did seem as if I could have done better with more experience, and it was pleasant and harmless enough, but unless I find a real fan of the game (like Dan), I don’t see this game hitting the table again.  Neutral.

The Fellowship of the Ring – There are a lot of trick-taking fans among the OG writers and most of them are deeply in love with this game, so I knew I needed to check it out.  It’s a co-op, like The Crew, but it’s themed around Lord of the Rings.  The players choose a character, from the different members of the Fellowship, and each of them has specific abilities and objectives.  Getting all of this to work together, from the 18 different scenarios, is a very interesting challenge.  I enjoyed the game, but I think I like The Crew a bit better, thanks to its unique system of signalling.  I like it.

The Gang – After I finished a few games of Fellowship, I started wandering around, saying my goodbyes.  But then I saw a group getting ready to play The Gang.  This might have been the most played game at the Gathering this year, but I hadn’t tried it yet, mostly because it’s based on poker and that’s a game I have no interest in.  Still, this seemed like an ideal final game.  It’s a cooperative game in which the players have to rank their hands in a game of Texas Hold‘em.  The only information you have is each player’s guesses about the relative ranking of their hand throughout the game.  This started slowly, but I started to see how it could work and the overall appeal of the game.  I think it helped that we had a “chatty” group, in which players freely discussed their theories of who might have what (without revealing anything about their own hands).  It did indeed turn out to be a very satisfying way to finish up my time at the Gathering.  I like it.

As usual, I had a fabulous time, played a lot of great games, and had fun with some of my favorite people on the planet.  I can’t wait to do it again next year!