I traveled to Colorado Springs this week for a business trip, and had the
pleasure of spending an evening at Plenary Games headquarters with Angela Gaalema. I've been a gamer for most of my life, but have only recently become
engaged with the boardgaming world. These games are indeed wonderful, but
it is clear to me that the reason this community is so vibrant is the people.
I spend way too much time on the road, but it is amazing how easy it has been to
hook up with folks in the gaming network no matter where I travel. In the
Seattle area I managed to hook up with two guys in a brewpub for an evening of
gaming; a month later in Redmond I joined the crowd at
WizKids for a
great
session. While in Providence, RI I had a
chance encounter with Lawrence
Whalen of Face2Face games. And of course right in my hometown of Portland
there's a great presence of regular gaming groups, like
PortlandGamers and the
crowd
at Benjamin's.
Angela was very quick to answer my email letting her know I would be in
Colorado Springs and was kind enough to invite me to her home and company
headquarters. I purchased
Fresh Fish recently directly from Plenary , so I
was very curious to see how she manages her operations (and of course to play
some games).
My visit started with a tour of her warehouse, which sits on top of a
recently covered indoor pool. Angela assembles all of her shipments (from
the source components) by hand, and she has certainly been very busy lately
keeping up with her orders (I think I recall her mentioning that she shipped
around 250 copies this week). Her warehouse is full of big empty boxes for
shipping, unsorted stacks of tiles, wooden bits (yes, including the often
maligned red/orange ones), game boxes, inserts, rules, and game boards. I asked
many questions about the business and Angela was extremely forthcoming about the
challenges she faced getting the game shipped in such short order - the project
didn't even start until around October of last year. She is clearly
envious of the higher quality printing available from German printers - even
though it would be cheaper for her to send her printing overseas, she is
(understandably) unwilling to give up the control and predictability of working
with American printers. In any case, her first offering is a great first
effort and I look forward to seeing the future releases from Plenary.
Angela then showed me her game collection (allowing me to further rationalize
my meager collection and feel safe that I'm not nearly as much of a gaming geek
as my wife might think) and we spent some time talking about her recent trip to
the Gathering of Friends. Then we spent some time gaming.
Having read about this game for some time on
spielfrieks, I was very
eager to try this (still hard to find) offering by Stephen Glenn and Kosmos/Rio
Grande Games. I don't get the theme and how it relates to the game (well,
I guess I do, but it is not a natural linkage), but I think the game is
fantastic. In this two-player card game, players compete for color bits
that vary in rarity - if you accumulate a certain number of bits (smaller number
for the rarer bits) of a certain color, you win the corresponding trophy card
for that color. Win 3 of the 5 trophy cards, and you win the game.
At any given time, there are 4 landscape cards on the table with 1, 2, 3, or 4
bits of varying colors on each one. Depending on the card, each player is
trying to accumulate the lowest or highest score of a set of cards matching the
colored bits on the landscape card. So if a card has a "high" goal with a
red and blue bit on it, then each player is trying to lay down the highest
combination of a red and blue card to claim those bits. Player interaction
and disruption comes from the ability to play cards on your opponents side of
the table (e.g., play a high card when the goal is to achieve a low score).
Angela got off to a flying start in our game, and while I managed to claw my
way back to respectability, she easily won the game. This is a fantastic
2-player game that I will be sure to pick up as soon as I can find it.
Funagain
claims that they will have it in stock by the end of May.
Clans is an interesting game. It has a theme of nomadic groups that
consolidate to form groups and villages. There is a hidden element to the
scoring in that players do not know what color (tribe) each other player is
trying to push forward, but this game mostly plays like an abstract strategy
game with a nice theme and pretty bits. Angela beat me handily in this
game, but I can't say I was terribly engaged - a bit too abstract for me.
Not a game I plan to add to my collection.
This is a beautiful two-player card game - the theme revolves around wizards
trying to accumulate ingredients for spells. There is a memory component
to the game, as each player is trying to consolidate on a few sets of
ingredients - players in general are rewarded for collecting multiple instances
of a particular ingredient and penalized for getting only one of a specific
type. The catch is the players are not permitted to inspect their stack of
collected ingredients, so it is important to memorize what has been collected.
There is a small degree of player interaction - there are certain cards that can
force the top card of the opponent's ingredient deck to be discarded.
I finally managed to win a game against Angela - this game played very quickly,
and I enjoyed the mechanic and loved the theme and artwork. I'll
definitely play this again and may consider adding it to my collection.
Angela wanted to try this older game by Alan Moon - in fact, she was given
this by Alan Moon himself at the recent Gathering of Friends. Mush is
essentially a roll-and-move racing game set in the theme of dogsled racing in
Alaska. I'm not a huge fan of racing games, and the mechanic felt very
clichéd - players can decide to rest or move (or even press their dogs after
they've moved). The harder players push their dogs, the slower they will
ultimately go. I won this again, but we were both eager to get it over
with. Nice theme, but not my cup of tea.
It was pretty late (12:15am or so) by this time, and I was preparing to go
when I mentioned how much I liked Puerto Rico. I've only played about 4
times, but I like the game enough that I'm sure I could play at least daily (I
really need to start playing on BSW
- my handle is CaptainCaveman in case you care). Angela offered to play me
using the two-player variant where each player plays two separate boards.
I'm still trying to grasp some of the strategic subtleties of this game, but I
had a blast losing to Angela (she claims to have logged over 300 BSW games last
year).