Gathering of Friends ’26 Recap

Games Played and quick notes (on new-to-me games)

• 1846 x3
• Dark Pact x3 — I finally got my copy just prior to the Gathering and played several games. I will have a review soon.
• Tricktaker’s Guide to the Galaxy x3 — I would definitely buy this if it were easily available. You deal out your hand, play a game of “No Thanks” to get rules (which give you +5 points if you fulfill them and -20 if you don’t) and then play the hand out. Nice fast filler.
• Bomb Busters x2
• The Gang (Deluxe Edition) x2 — Has rules for up to 10 players. Surprisingly … they work.
• Quartermaster General WW2 (2nd Edition) x2 — Really wanted to try the second edition. But didn’t have the expansion. I hear 2nd edition cleaned things up, but …. there were obvious mistakes on the box (2-5 players? Seriously?) and downgrades on the board (no SOP), so I wonder how carefully they cleaned up the cards.
• Scout x2
• Sides x2 — Cooperative password-ish game where you have to use clues starting with specific letters. Perfectly fine.
• 1822MX — Note to self, do not try to play using PNW rules for the first hour.
• 18EU (Minor Powers Variant) — I don’t know if the variant has been published, but it makes it similar to Railways of the Lost Atlas.
• Azure — Surprisingly good abstract filler that I’m still thinking about. Might buy, even though I dislike abstracts.
• Dice Realms
• Dune
• Fast Sloths — Cute enough, probably has good replay value with all the different animals you can put in the game (who carry around the sloths).
• Got Five! — Reasonable deduction game.
• High Frontier 4 All — Decided to splurge and upgrade my set. Played a 3 hour teaching game, not the 10+ hour game.
• Liar’s Dice
• Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship — Very clever improvement to the Pandemic system, and you can feel the theme. Not a purchase for me, but I’d play again. This was getting constant play
• Magical Athlete — Fun but stupid game-adjacent activity. “Bunco for Gamers” as Mrs. Tao might say.
• Meister Makatsu — Another Reiner card game filler, so … it works. Would play again.
• My Book Nook: Cozy Word Building Game — Good idea, mildly infuriating execution in that you score based on word length, but the hard letters give trivial bonuses (instead of saying “Count word as longer” or something). But do we hold cozy games to the same standards? (I do).
• Oath
• Petiquette — A clever party game idea (you get a sequence of animals with hats of various colors, with a ? and the judge decides which animal/hat/color combination should go there, and everyone tries to guess). But it got old way too fast. Avoid.
• Santa Fe
• Soothsayers — Maybe I got a bad rules explanation, but avoid and play Glory to Rome or any game in that family instead.
• Time Agent
• Titan
• & Two Unpublished Prototypes of which I will not speak. I also saw several other prototypes that I didn’t feel the need to play, because I mostly don’t play prototypes and they seemed like “I will not like this” or the occasional “I will simply buy this when it shows up1).

So … most of the new games2 are fine (nothing set my world on fire), whereas many of the older games had spectators and onlookers going “Wow, I haven’t seen that in ages.”

Part of me wants to do some stats on my games played by year (or counting by “hours played” instead of “plays,” which should shove the date several years back further) but I am tired right now. Perhaps later, unless there is a tool that already exists to do this?

Also, there was a nice memorial to Bill Cleary, who died last summer.

1. More Mage Knight ︎
2. “That I played,” and I had a pretty high standard (the new game shelf covered a wall) although sometimes I just agreed to a blind game for the company. There were many new games that were obvious avoids if you share my tastes … point salads, etc. ︎