We were invited for a day of (board) gaming yesterday. We had seven players. There are good games that work well for seven players, but most are pretty long (Advanced Civ) or have enough of a learning curve that you want to bring new players in gradually (Seven Ages). One of these days we'll try a renaissance game for seven that jducoeur once told me about (URL safely stashed...somewhere), but I wasn't thinking far-enough ahead for that.

We improvised and played a seven-player version of Iron Dragon. All of the "crayon rail" games are nominally for up to six; we scard up another crayon and pawn, and we declared that the first and last trains were available for everyone (so the last person to get to the big train wasn't screwed).

A seven-player game was crowded but worked. I think it would not have worked with cut-throat players; we were playing a friendly game where people didn't deliberately interfere with others' track-building or refuse to build small spurs that would help other players rent track.

We went through the entire deck of cards once and a bit, so all of the disasters came up. We got the rainbow bridge, a magic connection between two cities (one in the old world and one in the new) very early, and I think that made a huge difference.

With seven players and each of the four entry points to the underworld being restricted to two connections, only one player gets to build a path through. I didn't get cards that would motivate me to go there until pretty late in the game, so I ignored the underworld except to build track to connect the major city. (Yes, it was easier to connect to the underworld than to the southwestern "E" city. I completely blew off the southwestern part of the map.)

Foreman are more constrained in a seven-player game. Elves and dwarves are most popular and in a six-player game you can always get one or the other; in a seven-player game you can't. People tended to hang onto formen for a long time rather than casually trading them for a short-term benefit of a few dollars, because you might not be able to get your original one back by your next turn.

All in all it worked well and I would do it again (with the right players). One note for future reference, though: banish the yellow crayon from the game! Even in a six-player game, find something else to use. Yellow crayon + incandescent light + sub-optimal vision = problem. (I staked out black, but it was hard for me to see where the yellow track had already been laid.) Yellow -- what were they thinking?

We had half a dozen people over for an afternoon and evening of board games today. On Thursday it looked like we would have somewhere between 6 and 14 people; we ended up with 8 gamers and one extra for dinner. That's a good number -- small enough to be managable but large enough to support more than one game (and, thus, variety).

( Runebound, Iron Dragon, El Grande, TransAmerica )

Food quantities worked out fine. We had some chicken left (since we were a few down from the maximum number of people who could have shown up), but it'll get eaten tomorrow. Tossed salad was more popular than coleslaw; I probably don't need to bother with the latter next time. (For some reason I had predicted the reverse.) People seemed somewhat mystified by hulvah; I thought Dani had fed this to the gamers before. My oven is too darn small; two pans of breaded chicken, one pan of wings (all of these pans are about 9x12), and one cookie sheet of rolls fit only by applying compression and using the third dimension -- bah.

After dinner some people played a five- (or six-?) player game of Settlers of Catan. I am told that we need new dice; these ones weren't producing the numbers people wanted. :-) I was gamed-out by then, so I chatted with lorimelton and wanderingpixie while the others played.

Now there's an odd failure mode. Tonight I opened a book I bought recently (new) and found that it begins on page 41. Nothing was torn out; it appears to be a binding error. I guess I should have checked sooner (I bought it a couple months ago), but it's a torah commentary on Exodus, which we start this week, so I didn't need it before now. Fortunately, Amazon has an extended return period for books bought late in the year, so they'll exchange it and I don't even have to pay to ship it back. Yay.

Dani has decided to tackle the vast collection of Magic: The Gathering cards (most of which are his, but the older cards are mine). We haven't played in years; I would consider playing again in a simplified world, but they lost me when not only were there 6000 different cards, but they decided that many of the commons needed four different types of art. When I can't easily track what my opponent has in play, I lose interest. I understand that it's worse now; Dani says they are still publishing expansions and making money at it. After 12 or 13 years of this, I wonder how many cards there are now. (For comparison, the basic game, the one I played in the beta edition, had 300 cards. The first, and best, expansion set added, I think, about 75. Things went downhill from there.)

A few links:

These "new rules" might be incorrectly attributed (the reason they're on Snopes), but they sure are funny.

Advice from hindsight (from unspace).

This biscotti recipe sounds easy enough to try (from cookingengineer).

The origins of the great war of 2007 (link from rjlippincott).

Aieee. As tsjafo comments, I wouldn't trust the government with a pill that can alter memories. Granted, they're a long way from erasure, but I still don't trust that sort of technology in the hands of anyone with the power to compel -- in which category I would also place health providers, 'cause they're mostly owned by the insurance companies.

Yesterday ariannawyn held the traditional new-year's-day party. There was gaming, but I spent the afternoon just socializing with people instead. (And eating, of course; it's a brunch plus some.) There were people I missed seeing and people I didn't expect to see who were there, so I guess it balanced out.

Today we hosted a games day. I played one new game, Lunar Rails. Yes, this is a Eurorails-style train game, set on the moon. The map covers the whole moon (not just the near side); this is implemented as two circles with indexed connection points along the edges. It took me a little time to get used to that and properly see points as close together or far away; I'm surprised because I'm usually pretty good at that kind of spatial reasoning. The game mostly uses new commodities, like titanium, but also reuses some of the standards, like tourists. It was a fun game and I would happily play again. It also turned out to be very close; when the winner went out at exactly 250 points, I had 243 and the other two players had around 230. I had spent most of the game trailing; I'm still not sure how I got up to second place. (Ok, I picked up 15 points from being in the right place at the right time on my penultimate turn, but I had thought I was about 50 points down.) I also don't think I've seen a train game before where everyone was that close.

I also played Trans America (a different kind of train game) and Settlers of Catan (4 players, no expansions). The board had three tree hexes meeting, with one of them being an 8 (the others were something middling like 4 and 5) and a tree port off of one of them. So after getting cut off from the other resources I needed, I settled there and spent much of the game pounding trees into the things I needed. Weird, but it worked ok. (Not well enough to win, though.)

Six people spent quite a bit of time on a game called, I think, Rune Spell Bound; it was described as kind of like D&D on a board. (I think either gootmu or demonlurking brought this.) They spent the last three hours being, they said at the time, an hour away from finishing; I presume this was a matter of learning curve.

There was a long-running game of Puerto Rico going during that and the Lunar Rails game. I hadn't realized that none of the people playing had played before or I would have offered to go over the rules for them so they weren't working it out from the book. Oops.

We had nearly exactly the right amount of food for dinner. Lucky guess. :-)

Tomorrow we're visiting with sanpaku and Mrs. sanpaku, who are visiting from out of town. Should be fun!

A friend came back from Origins, a gaming con, talking about how his niece apparently has a knack for painting "lead" miniatures. (What are they made out of now, pewter?) So they're looking for tips on technique, and they'd be interested in any local contacts in Columbus.

I did some figure-painting back in the 80s and didn't completely suck at it. I learned from friends and from magazine articles. Now I imagine there are good web sites, but I haven't done this in years so I haven't hunted them down. Before I bring the power of Google to bear on my friend's request, I figured I'd ask my friends here for recommendations. I know some of you paint; what sites have useful advice for beginners?

We had a fun evening playing Zendo. Oh, so that's who demonlurking and wanderingpixie are! The net is funny sometimes. :-)

We had eight different colors of pieces and still found ourselves having to recycle to get the pieces we wanted. It's way too easy to develop superstitions about size+color.

I didn't get to try my hand at being master. Maybe next time. This was only, I think, the third time I've played the game.

Today our friend Pam hosted a fun day of gaming. We had ten players, so tended to split into two games at any given time. I played the following:

Carcassonne: I sometimes think I will just never get the strategy of placing farmers.

Swashbuckler (first time for most of us; Dani just got a copy): simulates a bar-room brawl; fun idea with mechanics that are sometimes a bit tedious. As with Robo Rally, you plot out your sequence of actions somewhat in advance and then execute all the orders in sequence. Observed: throwing chairs can be very effective; throwing daggers and beer mugs didn't do much; tipping over tables (onto people, or with people standing on them at the time) seemed like it would do more damage than it did; swinging from the chandeliers never came into play; losing half the hit points in your body hinders you but being down to one hit point in your head makes no difference (you weren't using your head for much anyway, I guess). Cute game; would play again.

Quoridor (approximately): played on a 9x9 board; you start in the center of your side and are trying to move your piece to the other side. Of course, so is everyone else. On your turn you can either move or place a two-space-long wall (barrier). Tends to create one-space-wide corridors, hence the name.

Vinci: we misread the rules on conquering territories and thus saw faster turnover of civilizations than we should have. Our five-player game was very close most of the way through.

A two-player card game, name unknown. You play with 26 cards, 2 through ace in red and black, drawn from two visually-distinct decks such that all the red cards come from one and all the black cards from another. Deal five cards to each player; you look at your cards and place them in a row face-down, in order (black lower than red of the same number). To play, draw a card and look at it. You can either add it to your sequence (face-down) in the proper place or use it to attack. To attack, you point to a card and guess its value. (Remember that you already know its color.) If you are right, your opponent has to turn it up and you can guess again. If you're wrong, you have to place it face-up in your own sequence and your turn ends. Starting off can be kind of slow (lots of wrong guesses), but between the information you know about your own cards, the information you learn in play, and the limited option space, you can rapidly bring logic to bear on the question. Interesting and quick game.

I have the vague feeling that I played something else, but I can't think what it was if so. It was kind of a long day, though fun.

This session tended toward shorter games. I'd like to try out Age of Imperialism soon; we recently received it as a gift and haven't yet been able to play it. Maybe we'll host the next games day and do it then.

Today's Halloween, so I've been assuming that costumed children (and some non-costumed non-children, based on past years) would show up on our porch seeking sugary tribute. I saw nothing in the newspaper about scheduled hours for this, so I applied the power of Google. I wonder whether this means that the web really is pervasive, or if people who have kids (or otherwise care) have alternative sources of information. Silly me; I just naturally assumed that this was one of the jobs of a local newspaper.

I did buy some sugary tribute; we'll see how many people show up before we leave for dinner with friends. We didn't get a lot of people last year or the year before; it's possible we have a a reputation as the house that hands out weird stuff due to Dani handing out comic books for a few years in the past. On the other hand, we might just live on a low-payoff street; the houses are more spread out than a few blocks over and I'm not sure how many neighbors participate.

This afternoon we visited with my parents (and sister and one of her kids, though said kid preferred the computer's company to ours). My parents are taking the death of their dog (about a month ago) pretty hard. Thor was a 14-year-old golden retriever; they'd had him since he was 2.

They had him cremated, and my mother showed us the urn that contains his ashes. I'll have to look that one up in Miss Manners. I mean, what's the proper response? "It's a pretty urn"? "I'm so sorry" (but I said that already)? Silence? (Oh, and a wise move: they seal the urn, so accidents that don't involve breakage are harmless.)

I knew that dogs could be trained to do a lot, but I was surprised to read about the assistance animal that called 911, barked persistently into the receiver until the folks on the other end reacted, and then unlocked the front door for the ambulance crew when his owner fell.

We had a visitor Shabbat afternoon, and the three of us played games for a few hours. Aha -- that's a good way to spend (part of) long Shabbat afternoons! (I can't just read all day -- I get headaches from eyestrain.) Of course, with the change of seasons and now the time change, long Shabbat afternoons are going to be much less long for a while. But I must remember this come summer and try to arrange for it on a regular basis. Besides, I like having company and I have friends who like to play games, so what's not to like in this plan?

Friday night at services someone was wearing a Kerry/Edwards button -- transliterated into Hebrew. Some words should just not be transliterated into Hebrew. "Edwards" is one of them. Boy did that look funny.

Thursday night there was a board meeting concurrent with the evening minyan, so the rabbi got them to stop and attend the service. So we had a full house for once. :-) At the end he made assorted announcements (good & welfare), and he commented on my participation in the Sh'liach K'hilah program. (I think this was the first public announcement of that, though it hasn't been a secret or anything.) He said good things about me that made me happy, and the president of the congregation would like to meet with me soon to learn more about some of the topics we covered there.

The program is producing results already. I'm already organizing (and acting as cantorial soloist for) next Friday night's service; that was arranged in advance. And I just assumed that I'd be leading the Thursday services while he's gone, because that usually falls to me. That leaves next Saturday morning's service and torah study. I asked my rabbi if there was anyone in particular he wanted to have do either of those, and he said "you". Ok, I can do that. :-) Actually, while I expected that for the service, there's someone else he might plausibly have tapped for the study, and I'm not experienced with leading study (yet), so this will be a chance to learn something new.

Torah study this morning centered around the priestly benediction (the end of Naso, around the end of chapter 6 of Numbers). A question: how does anyone have the authority to give blessings (now)? All blessings come from God, of course, but we give each other small-scale blessings all the time, and rabbis are often asked for more significant blessings (such as at life-cycle events). But no one speaks for God, and we're all allowed to ask God directly for blessing, so doesn't that make a blessing either chutzpah or just a wish?

My rabbi pointed out that it is the person asking for the blessing who gives the blesser authority to do so. I'm not articulating this well now, but it made a lot of sense this morning. It's connected to trust and the relationship between the two people involved.

Someone I know from outside the congregation (she's not a member here) came to the morning service and really liked it. (I think she's been there a couple other times.) She asked me afterwards if you have to be a member of the congregation to read torah in that service. No one's ever asked before, and I'm certainly happy to be open about this (for people who are showing up anyway, as opposed to people who will only come when they get to read), so I said we'd be happy to have her. I then asked how much lead time she needs, and she said something like "a few days would be nice, or a week or two if I'm going to chant rather than read". I said that accommodating that would be no problem. :-) (Most of my readers want a month or so.)

The person leading the service gave me hagbahah (lifting the torah) today. I've never done that before. We're 80% of the way through the scroll, so it's kind of unbalanced. I had trouble holding it up straight, but I think I'd do ok with something more balanced or even something that favors the left hand instead of the right. (I'm a trained rightie but a natural leftie.) For those who are wondering, at the end of the torah reading it is customary to hold the opened scroll vertically and raise it up so everyone can see the text. You're supposed to have three columns showing (don't know why), but I only managed two today.

This afternoon and evening we had a bunch of people over for gaming. We played a new train game called Age of Steam that's like the 18xx games but simpler. (The railroad stock is abstracted away, there are fewer types of tiles, and the game is shorter.) It took a little while to get the hang of it, but I think I like it. We also played El Grande (my second time playing), and some people played a game that looked kind of like Civilization but simpler and shorter. It was a fun day, though we now have a surplus of cookies. :-) (You know how sometimes everyone brings chips, and sometimes everyone brings candy, and sometimes everyone brings drinks, and...? Well, today everyone brought cookies. There are worse fates.)