Furrycon has been an annual boardgames convention organised by SFC press.  For 1999 they decided to have two, their regular one in Brighton, redubbed Furrycon South, and one in Sheffield, with a name that escapes me for the moment.  It was held during the bank holiday weekend of May 28-31, 1999 and was the fourth convention I had attended, although only the third I had 'stayed over' at, and only the second I had gone to alone.

As I seem to be in the habit of doing, I skipped the Friday evening to save myself the cost of another night in the hotel - I'll have to think about B&B next time. Instead, I got a stack of games ready on Friday night and went up Saturday morning - eventually. It was one of those terrible mornings where nothing seemed to go right and there was always something else that needed doing before I could leave. To find my mobile phone, for example, I had to phone it up and then wander around the house listening for the ringing. It eventually turned up in the car, but then I found I had lost the car keys - again! It was one irritation after another and by the time I finally got going, I was muttering dark imprecations about what I would do to the next inanimate object that had the gall to cross me and I was so tense that you could have used me as a tuning fork (if you were very big and so inclined).

I was still feeling tense when I arrived at the hotel to find a barrier down blocking the entrance to the car park and a car parked in front of that barrier.  Having resolved that problem, I followed the other car into the underground car park which obviously doubles as a set for 'Candid Camera'.  All of the real parking spaces were full, and all that was left were the joke spaces - these were either humorously placed behind concrete pillars or in inaccessible corners for the amusement of hotel staff on cigarette breaks.  The occupants of the other car were Nik and Jacky, a fine pair of gamers who had also come for the con.  I couldn't resist stopping, getting out and watching as Nik stood behind the car and attempted to signal to Jacky by means of ornate hand signals how she was meant to reverse the car through a space smaller than the car itself.  It certainly helped to relieve my tension. Luckily, as this was going on, someone came along and drove his car away, freeing up enough space for both of our cars - phew!  We introduced ourselves and headed off into the hotel swearing that we wouldn't be giving up those spaces until we were ready to go home.

After checking in I had a quick wander around to see what was going on.  There was a table of new games for sale from SFC alongside a Bring 'n' Buy table.  Over in the corner there was also a table for the 'prizes'.  The prize system works by people bringing along games to put on the prize table and then, at the end of the weekend, all those who brought prizes return to the table to claim other prizes.  I thought this was an excellent idea, but changed my mind when I saw the actual table - I felt that, although some people had brought some nice stuff in, some others seemed to have brought any old tat they had lying around.  It certainly put me off taking part for the moment.  At the other end of the room were a whole load of tables piled with SFC's games library - all of which could be played by any of the attendees.  It certainly would have been handy if I hadn't already brought enough games to keep a small (and not very aggressive) army going for a week.

We had all been given our obligatory name badges (it's hard to remember who you are after three days of gaming) and this enabled me to identify Steve and Rosie of SCAT who I had dealt with by e-mail, but not met before. Steve suggested a game of Castle of Magic and, even though it seemed like it might be a bit long, I like to get stuck into my first game pretty quickly to break the ice.   The game bears some similarities to Talisman (fantasy setting, inner areas of the board, etc), but with little or no artwork, many secret things (rituals, realms, player objectives, etc), and diplomacy (otherwise known as manipulation, two-timing, or, in Russell's words, lying).  You use the diplomacy parts to make deals with other players once you learn a little of their secret objectives.  The scoring is such that you have various ways to achieve a 'win'.  Russell seemed to get the short straw in this game because most of the other player's main objectives meant he had to die - which was ironic considering how keen he had been at the start to find out if players could 'kill' each other.  It must have been a bit boring for him once he realised this - especially given the length of the game.  Three of us, though, played out the game with a mixture of considered treachery and paranoia, especially as I had made firm but slightly incompatible alliances with both of the others... In the end I resisted last minute treachery to boost my score and two of us tied for the lead.  An interesting game but, a bit too long.

The game went on so long, in fact, that we had to complete it in two stints.  At two o'clock we suspended play to take part in the 'Silly Drive'.  This is a strange name for what is perhaps the best idea at the convention.  What happens is that everyone disperses to a bunch of tables with four players at each and plays the fifteen minute game that is on that table.  Afterwards, whoever came last moves on to the next table, whoever came third moves on two tables, second three tables and first four tables.  This gets lots of quick games in with a variety of people and helps to ensure that everyone gets to meet and play with a bunch of new people.  You then have very little shyness when it comes to approaching any of these people for a game later.

My first game in the Silly Drive was indeed silly - Ker-plunk.  This is the game where you have a tower with loads of 'straws' holding up a bunch of marbles.  Each player pulls out a straw at a time, trying to avoid any of the marbles falling - the winner being the one who has dropped the least marbles.  Setting the theme for the weekend, I was joint first after the first game when we decided we had time for another, dropping me to last place on the aggregate scoring.

The next table along had 6 Nimmt!  This card game is the predecessor of Hornochsen but tends to be somewhat more luck based than that game.  It seems to be a game that people quite enjoy or hate with a vengeance - the trouble is that those who enjoy it seem to prefer Hornochsen, so it is getting less play than it used to.  The one person at the table who really hated it was Angela and, of course, she won by a huge margin.  I, on the other hand kept to form by being joint first after the first hand and third by the end of the third - luckily we didn't go on to play a fourth.

Next up was Trick 'r' Treat (Grusel Wusel in German).  This is one of those games that seems to be designed to lead to punch-ups.  It's about matching cards to pictures on eight dice and giving them to other players - all done against an egg-timer 'ticking' away the seconds.  Possible punch-ups arise when someone disputes a card they have been given, so they give it back, then that player disputes giving it to them in the first place, etc, etc.  This is happening when your nerves are already under a high degree of strain because of the timer and the fact that the other players are continuing to give you new cards while you're arguing about this one.  Not a game to play a lot, then, but okay as an ice-breaker from time to time as long as the atmosphere remains light.   One piece of practical if you buy a copy: the dice are not very well made and the pictures on them will start to wear off after two or three games - apply some lacquer or other protective coating before using them at all.

Surprisingly enough, I think I won Trick 'r' Treat, allowing me to move forward four tables to my last game in the Silly Drive - Wurmeln (Worms) - a new game for me.   Each player has a worm - seven circular pieces laid end to end (yes, I know circles don't have ends, but you get the idea). You also have a die that you use to bid how many spaces you wish to move that turn.  Any players who bid the same amount as someone else are unable to move that turn.  As the worms move towards the finish line (or in my case, stay where it is) they attempt to force each other round the long way by getting in each other's way.  My first four bids were the same as someone else's, allowing the other worms to be halfway along the course before mine had moved at all (despite my threats).   In fact the only way I got moving at all was by telling everyone else what my bid was going to be each time so that they would choose something else!  As you can guess, I did rather badly.

Having got the Silly Drive out of the way, I looked back to the table containing our unfinished Castle of Magic and saw that no-one else was back there yet - this was probably because we were all looking toward the table from various parts of the room rather than going back to it.  Anyway it was enough for me to start up a game of Sherlock Holmes with five others, only one of who knew the game.  As always, the game went down well, especially with Nik - but then he led from start to finish if I remember correctly.  Before we had finished, though, the Castle of Magic players had returned and looked on me with great disapproval for being involved in another game and, to teach me a lesson for hopping between the two tables, started up a game of Can't Stop on the Castle of Magic table so that they also had two games but could stay in the same seats.  After a while, we finished at Sherlock Holmes and I could apply myself single-mindedly to Castle of Magic until it had finished.

After that I fancied something light again, so introduced some players to Uwe Rosenberg's latest hit - Mamma Mia.  This is another one of those that a fair number of people were keen to try over the weekend and we attracted a few passers by.  It went down pretty well.  I also learnt that it's pretty important not to end a round with no recipes and very few ingredients, especially with five players, because in the next round you spend your first two turns restocking on ingredients and then recipes, meaning that the round is half over before you are even ready to play!  That's my excuse for doing badly this time.

We followed this up with a game of Fluxx, the card game where the rules and objectives change as you play.  This game works best as an opener and this was a strange time to play it, but three of us had our minds on the freeform that was to follow so we just wanted something to fill in the time.

And so on to the freeform itself - my first taste of one.  A freeform is a sort of role-playing scenario where the participants actually get up and move about whilst talking to each other rather than rolling a d19+3 to see how much their "plus 7 Sword of Severe Grazing" has removed from each others' limb count.  This one was called "Tinseltown Tonight!" and involved various film personalities (actors, directors, critics, etc) attending a Hollywood charity auction.  Everyone taking part was asked to fill in a character preference sheet; these details were examined and everyone was given a name badge and a sheet of private details and objectives of the character they had been assigned.  The character I got was the one I had put second in my preferences, but it just goes to show that I'm the last person you should ask about what I want because, as soon as I saw the details, I hated it: what really went too far is that I was required to be "zany" - surely something no true Englishman would consent to be, even in jest!

Fairly soon things got underway.  What this means in practice is that everyone got up and started babbling to each other in affected accents about this, that and the other and could anyone spare a few thousand quid to finance a new film or, indeed, could anyone spare the odd half-hour on a Saturday to be in a film.  It was all pretty scary for a beginner - especially as the requirements of my character, as well as being zany, were to make as many people laugh as possible!  Eek!  Luckily Carol (Johnson - of SFC) who was running the game had pointed out that the unused characters were lying on the table ready to be used by anyone who fancied a change - I probably lasted about three minutes before heading for that table - in an entirely un-zany manner!   Looking through what was still available, my eye was caught by the character of Xavier Banderas, Cuban/ American Stunt Man, and I ended up enjoying him so much that I stuck with him until the end.

Xavier was meant to be trying to get backing for his new stunt company so that he could retire from actually performing stunts himself.  Over the course of talking to the other characters, I embellished this somewhat for my own amusement.  I was setting up the company to provide more exciting and dangerous stunts than ever before; the "highly-trained" stunt people were being brought in from Cuba because they were cheap and didn't mind too much doing dangerous stunts;  there had been "some" fatalities, but no-one asked too many questions;  the company needed backing to buy a new boat because the Coastguard had confiscated the last one; we had an expert "legal department" who were ensuring that we had no trouble with the law; the legal department would also remove any bodies if there were unfortunate accidents and "he" had also borrowed all my cash earlier on in the evening to pay someone off; etc; etc.  I also offered to provide stunt doubles for everything from signing a name (to protect Viv's fingernails) to Harrison's place in his wedding bed (free of charge) and tried to get directors and actors to introduce more danger, decapitations, falls from tall buildings, etc into their films for more excitement.  (Please note, though, that I was having fun with a character, and how I played it said more about my opinion of shady businessmen than my opinion of the Cuban people.)

All in all, I had a lot of fun with Xavier, but the intensity of the whole thing was quite wearing and by the time it stopped, it was a relief.  It didn't end very neatly either: I had expected it to end once the actual auction had taken place, but some people seemed set to go on all night.  Other than the auction there was no defined event to mark the end.  Eventually I went over and joined a growing group of rebels flaking out in the corner, which we declared a non-freeform area - although we had to fight off attacks by one or two people coming into the corner still in character.  After a while it became clear that it was fizzling out and Carol called a halt.  Then everyone sat around discussing various aspects of what had gone on and who had done what and I started to get worried that we were going to go through the whole thing again in review form!

So, what were the highpoints?  I enjoyed playing Xavier, even if it wasn't according to specification.  Steve and Rosie were a lot of fun as Utopia, the androgyne, and Viv, the "darling", and it wasn't until I played a board game with him the next day that I discovered that Nathan wasn't American after all.  The lowpoints?  It went on at least an hour too long. It was too intense as a bunch of characters all single-mindedly pursued their own objectives in a small room - perhaps this was to do with the number of beginners in the game and would be better with a more experienced group.  More "non-player characters" might have helped - meaning more people who were there to ensure the smooth running of the game and had worked out various plot aspects beforehand - maybe that's just the same as saying more experienced players.  Would I do it again?  I'm not sure: at first I would have said no, but one or two of the more experienced participants told me that it was not a typical freeform and that it would be unfair to judge without some more experience.   So, who can tell, I expect I'll have another try yet.

After all that acting I realised that, apart from my giant bag of snacks, I hadn't eaten anything all day.  Obviously delirious with the freedom of being out of the freeform room, I wandered off into the centre of a strange city on a Saturday night, just as the groups of 'lads' were heading from the pubs to the night-clubs.  Despite one or two slightly dodgy moments, I found somewhere to eat and returned to the hotel without even getting lost.

By the time I got back, people tended to be heading to bed, or in the middle of epic games that would keep them going for a while yet.  So I rounded off the day with a game of Devil Bunny Needs a Ham with Angela and David, who have been at every convention I have attended.  Devil Bunny is one of those excellent Cheapass games and has such a simple concept that it's hard to believe you could get a game out of it - but it always seems to work well enough as a light game.   David and Angela seemed happy enough with it for that time of night anyway.

And so to bed - not to sleep though I'm afraid.  I always find it difficult settling in a strange bed anyway but, just in case I wasn't, the hotel had thoughtfully provided me with a pillow which bore the same relationship to the hand of Morpheus that the Spanish Inquisition had to religious tolerance.  They must use a special brand of foam that only grows in the lands where people have, er..., very hard heads.  Sorry,... as you can tell, the lack of sleep was getting to me.  After a fairly restless night, I was taking my time coming to my senses in the late morning when I received a phone call.  "That's nice", I thought "a phone call in my room.  It could be someone with a plan for an exciting day's gaming or just some general concern for my health."  It was actually Russell, calling to remind me that I had signed up for the mini-Intergame tournament that day and that if I didn't get down there pretty quickly, I wouldn't have trouble sleeping for much longer.  Actually, he was much more polite than that and even gave me fifteen minutes to turn up - it was rather embarrassing though - especially when later in the day Nathan made a noise of recognition and said "Oh, you're the one who was late for the tournament".

I arrived to find that I had been put into one of four teams of three and that they'd put me down for Elfenland in the first round, which was fine by me. It's been a little while since I last played this, but it is definitely one that I like.  We played with the Amigo rules, which I don't think are as good as Alan Moon's set and also took me a while to adapt to.  Anyway, I started off the day in typical form by coming dismally last - partly because of the rules, but mostly because my first turn put me on the other side of the board to everyone else, preventing me from sharing their routes. Doh!

As I moved to the relevant table and sat down for the second tournament game, I found myself with the same three players from the last game. I guess they must have decided that I was easy to beat and had decided to follow me around to boost their scores. The game this time was Res Publica, a trading and set collecting card game from Reiner Knizia, which was new to me. The peculiar thing about this one is the trading: instead of negotiating deals like you would expect, you have to offer a trade in a very specific and limiting way which results in the trading taking on a drawn-out slow motion quality that I found somewhat frustrating to say the least - it can take a few turns to make even very simple trades.  On the whole I think this would probably put me off buying the game, although I'm sure I'd give it another go.  And now I'd got flowing I didn't come last, reaching the dizzying heights of third.

The third game was Samarkand, Sid Sackson's game of buying and selling in the desert.  Not the greatest of games, but one I have grown more fond of over time.  Again, we did play to with a few rules changes (in line with 'Intergame standards' apparently) some of which were good but at least one of which was terrible - and helped me drop from second to third.  Perhaps second place was rising above my station.

My last tournament game was a current favourite of mine, Ra.   This is Reiner Knizia's recent bidding/collecting game set in ancient Egypt and everybody seemed to be trying it out at some stage during the weekend.  Although I usually do quite well at this, things seemed to be against me a bit.  At one stage Nathan and I hadn't collected many tiles and we were being rather co-operative in order to catch up with the other two near the end of the round.  But, would you believe it, as soon as Nathan had settled for a tasty set of tiles with his last sun, I turned over three Ra tiles and ended the round!  This may have been due to the other players sneaking Ra tiles into the pile near where I was picking up... Well, it could have been...!  I can't remember if this secured last place for me - but it didn't help.  In any case, I enjoyed the game, as I always do.

I'm not sure on this, but I think that, overall, my team came last in the tournament - not surprising given my performance. Oh well, at least we got some good games in.  At this point, a number of people disappeared for another freeform. This one was called "Bus Stop" and I think was meant to be shorter and lighter than the last one. I had put my name down for it when I arrived, but I wasn't ready for another one yet, so I kept my head down.

Once the coast seemed clear, I spotted Nick on his own and we decided that he would introduce me to Lost Cities (the game - rather than sending me off to the Amazon or some such). As it was, Nathan turned up before we got started, having also decided to abandon the freeform. And we ended up merging with a game just finishing and another player or two to get eight people. Rather than split into two fours we thought we'd get in some games for large groups.

First of these was The Great Dalmuti, a new one for me again. This is a card game where the idea is to try and get rid of all your cards as quickly as possible, but you can only play cards if they are lower valued than the previous players.  The highest cards can only be got rid of if you get the lead.  First to get rid of their cards gets least points (points being bad in this game) and an advantage for the next round - the ability to swap their worst two cards for the best two of whoever comes last this round.   This seems like helping the leader a bit too much for my liking, but the game was fun and worked well with the large group - one for the club perhaps.  I think the most amazing thing about playing was the consistency with which Nathan was dealt excellent hands - any time anyone was wondering where the 1, 2 and joker cards were, you could bet that Nathan had them.  He won of course.

At this point, some of our players were rather hungry and went off to get some food from the bar. In the meantime Russell brought Timothy over so that we could show him how to play his new copy of Ricochet Robot.   Another victim to the brain-destroying monster!  Actually I confirmed my own victimhood by buying a copy for myself at this convention - a common fate among those who have played.  Timothy soon got totally drawn into the game - and Russell showed the dangers of challenging him to a game by seeming to have a four-move solution to each problem.  Once the others had finished their food, I had the task of removing the suddenly limpet-like Timothy from the large table so that we could play our many-player game.  I tried resorting to such underhand moves as putting in fake bids for the current problem and claiming the hotel was on fire but nothing seemed to do the trick - he was in the Ricochet Robot trance!  In the end I just had to get officious and bullying, and my persistence finally paid off.

There were seven of us for the next game which was Parts Unknown by Cheapass Games.   Those who had eaten beforehand were the lucky ones as the game lasted until quite late, but it was certainly an interesting experience and a lot of fun.  It must have raised the odd eyebrow around the room due to some of the phrases that emanated from our table  The best of these, and the memory all of us players took home with us was "Giblets at 12!".  You know what it's like when you say something and someone else says the same thing at the same time?  Well, I can remember at least three times during this game when someone had asked for prices of 'Leftovers', that I responded "Giblets at 12!" in chorus with two or three other players!  It has the same kind of ring as "Pistols at dawn!".   When I was describing the game to someone else the next day, I only had to use this phrase to elicit the response - "Oh, you were at that table".  As for the length of the game, check out the link to the review page for a suggestion on how to improve that.

By this stage I was pretty damn hungry myself and, as the large group broke up, I went to order some food from the bar myself.  It came pretty soon and I ate it while Gary explained the rules of Hornochsen to the others.  I had been keen for Angela and David to play it as they hated 6 Nimmt so much.  Ultimately, though, that failed and they still didn't like it.  Perhaps it was because we had got such a poor spread of the initial cards or perhaps it's just people who liked 6 Nimmt who prefer Hornochsen and if you don't like the former you still won't like the latter.

Before heading off for bed, I wanted to get in one more game for more than four, so I talked them into playing Und Tschüss, the game where you mustn't come second.  This is an excellent card game for large groups, designed by Martin Wallace of Warfrog Games - who had been at the convention on the Saturday or Sunday.

And so, after another rough night, it was Monday.  And I came down to find a game of Family Business just getting underway and so 'muscled my way in'.  This is a popular card game that calls on players to be sneaky and unpleasant.  Each player has nine cards in front of him/her representing his/her 'family' (as in Mafia) and a hand of action cards.  The action cards are all designed to either get members of opposing families on the 'hit list' (a queue in the centre of the table) and so killed, or to get members of your own family off the hit list.  The game always seems to follow the course that players gang up on the weakest to eliminate them from the game before turning on someone else, hoping to weaken them up enough that the other players will join in.   It's not one you'd play again and again as it's all too easy to keep picking on the same players.  But it's certainly fun now and again.  For some strange reason, I tended to get left alone until I was one of the last two players - by which time I had picked up enough defensive cards to ensure the win.  Hoorah!  Poppa will be pleased...

Most of those players then disappeared to take part in the Furdonia elections.   This was the culmination of something that had been going on among its afficionados since the start of the convention.  It is some sort of Diplomacy type thing performed entirely by making deals between players and using 'influence tokens' to further your own and your allies' aims.  It had been largely unnoticed until now by us non-players, but it definitely got somewhat noisy during our next game - even to one of the players insisting on shouting (as part of the game) about his failed election attempt behind our table.

Anyway, I soon found enough people to continue with another game, and we continued the gangster theme with The Mob.  This was the first time I had properly played this game and I think it went down pretty well.  I actually did rather well in this game too.  Either its down to my skill at gangster games, or my increased luck on Mondays, or, more likely, the weasel way that I managed to point out how much better targets the other players would make.

Having six players together, I took the opportunity to get in another game of Und Tschüss.  Apart from a bit of a problem with how many cards should be left, all went well.  By the way, I should point out that Colin, who played in these last games was the second person at a convention to give any indication that he read these pages.   Brilliant!  He also said that he felt I didn't give enough information about what games were like to actually play.  Not so brilliant!  Oh well, I'll try to take it on board.

We ended the day, and the convention, playing Tycoon - which has to be my favourite game at the moment.  Every time I've played it I've become more enamoured of it.  The balance is so fine that just about anyone could win and the only strategy you can come to the table with is to keep a close eye on what everyone else does and react to it correctly.  I've also never played it with anyone who didn't like it, which has to be remarkable for any business game.  It's great, get a copy now.

While we were playing Tycoon, the prize distribution that I mentioned earlier actually took place.  The games that had been donated were laid out on a table and players names were called out one at a time to come up and get anything that took their choice.   At the end of the list, they started again at the top, getting people to go up for a second helping.  All in all I think everyone got three or four things from the table and I guess someone must have picked up the stuff I thought was rubbish.  What I did manage was to trade Nik and Jacky a copy of Hornochsen for the copy of Cafe International that he had got from the table.  Result!  Thanks guys!

Anyway, things wound up after the Tycoon game so I spent some time saying my goodbyes before loading up the car and heading back home.  I had had an enjoyable, if sleepless weekend.  I think, out of the few conventions I have been to so far, that this was the friendliest.  I think this is partly due to the people attending being, almost exclusively, fans of the same type of games as me, but mostly I think it has to do with the efforts put in by the organisers and by volunteers like Russell.  A number of people asked if I would be going down to Furrycon South (at Brighton in August) and I said that I probably wouldn't, but you know, they're such a nice bunch of people that I just might...

Thanks to all who played: Stephen Tavener, Rosie Tavener-Jones, Russell Harris, Paul Norris, Ron Bason, Richard Sands, Chris Dickson, Kevin McGowan, Lee Lonsdale, Jacky Sharp, Nik Luker, Andy Merritt, Andrew MacAlister, Brenda Rozario, Gordon Sweeney, Nick Harrison, Nathan Richards, Colin Bell, Michael Longdon, Rod McDonald, Gary Jackson, Mike Jarvis, Mark Moores, Timothy Hunt and those welcome regulars, David Blowers and Angela Caunce.   Thanks folks, see you soon.

Cheers.

Trev.