The Opinionated Gamers

From Thurs 10-18 to Sun 10-28, the Opinionated Gamers will be covering the SPIEL fair from Essen, Germany.  A few of us will actually be at the fair, and others will contribute from home.  As with other special gaming occasions, we will eschew our usual limitation of one post per day and move to a more traditional blog format where any of our writers can contribute as the spirit moves them!

Well, here I am in the airport, sitting at my gate waiting to fly to Essen.  The last few days has been its usual frenzy as I’m struggling to get everything done for work, get all my stuff packed for Europe, catch up on writing for the blog, etc.  Delta threw me an interesting wrinkle yesterday… I had purchased my airfare almost 90 days agoas I saw a decent rate online at that time – and while I haven’t been super diligent at looking, my once-a-week check of fares has only found one week where the fare was lower, and only by $7.  In any event, I just got an email yesterday from Delta reminding me that my flight times had changed.  I didn’t remember any previous notification of the schedule change, and a quick search of my gmail also did not show a notification.  Nevertheless, my flight which was supposed to leave at 1245 had been shifted to 215.  At first, this seemed like a good thing because it would give me extra time in the morning to doublecheck my bags to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything.  However, when I looked a bit closer at my itinerary, I realized that I now only had a 49 minute layover in ATL.

That’s right. 49 Minutes in Atlanta. To leave my first plane (from row 28), get out to the terminal, transfer from Concourse A to C, find my new gate, try to upgrade my seat and then get on?  Oh, and the gates in ATL close 20 min prior to international flights, so that really is only 29 minutes.  And, that assumes that everything is running on time from Dayton, etc.  I didn’t think that would be enough time, so I clicked on the “Reschedule” link conveinently provided in the email, and I went to try to choose a different flight… There were a few available, including one from Cincinnati (I happen to live almost exactly between DAY and CVG), so I clicked the link.  Seats were available, and I clicked on the button to confirm the change.  And then – Delta.com asks me for an additional $1440.69 to process the seat change.  Huh?!  That’s almost double my original fare?!  A quick call to my helpful Delta Skymiles representative ended up getting me the flight change gratis, but it was a nervous hour spent on hold with multiple representatives trying to make sure that I could make my connection to Europe.  I’ve had to spend a night in the chairs at Hartsfield before, and that’s definitely not something that I am ever wanting to do again.  It also saved me from having to consider Delta’s backup plan in case I missed my flight to DUS.  Which would have been DAY-ATL-LGA-CDG-DUS.  Good for my Skymiles account, but about 3 transfers more than I’d like to deal with. Luckily, I got the last seat on the CVG-ATL leg, and now I get a generous 85 minutes to transfer.  Still a bit tight, but the weather looks good, and I’ve got my running shoes on.  I might even be able to hit the Chick-fil-A for lunch as I jog between gates!

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I have found that many gamers find Leo Colovini very polarizing.  Well, not in person – he’s a wonderful guy to game with… I mean it more in his designs.  They are often quite abstract in nature which is unappealing to some.  I have found that people either love or hate his games, and the decision comes down to whether or not you like abstract games.

For me, I am generally not swayed by the presence or absence of theme, choosing to focus instead on game mechanics.  As such, many Colovini games are among my favorites, including Carolus Magnus, Clans and Meridian.  I find that Leo is able to focus in on an interesting and challenging mechanism and build a solid game around that central idea.  Sometimes there is a good theme attached to the game, and sometimes it’s simply moving around wooden bits on a board – but as long as the game is good, I’m OK either way.

Aztlan

Designer: Leo Colovini

Publisher: Ares Games

Players: 2-4

Ages: 13+

Time: 60 minutes

Times Played: 1 with pre-production copy at GenCon

Theme: Aztec tribes fighting for control of the land

Main Mechanics: secret and simultaneous card play, area control, special action cards

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