cellio | Entries tagged with games

There are a lot of board games that can be broadly described as historically-informed world conquest: Advanced Civilization, Seven Ages, Age of Renaissance, History of the World, and no doubt some set in modern times that I haven't played (like Diplomacy and Axis and Allies). In many of these you play a single empire throughout the game, so it's natural to feel a little "territorial" -- when someone attacks you it's an attack on your guys, and one often retaliates, leading to a more directly-compeetitive game. (As compared to, say, Euro Rails, where you're all competing but you're sharing the world.) Different players have different styles, so in my experience these games start with some attempt at agreement on the level of aggression, and a player who is either overly aggressive or overly cooperative and accommodating can screw up the mood for everyone.

Within the last few years I've been introduced to two games where you play multiple empires over the course of the game. You would expect this to lead to less player attachment; if one empire tanks, well, you've got the means to start another. In practice, I've found this to be true in one and not in the other.

In the few games of Seven Ages that I've played, I've noticed that players (at least in my group, and certainly this is true of me) still feel pretty attached to the empires they have in play. I might have three empires in play, each one bringing me points each turn, but if someone wipes one of them half off the board I feel unhappy, and thus I am more reluctant to do it to others. (I am more of a cooperative player than an aggressive one.) I say this knowing full well that (1) it's nothing personal, (2) I like this game, and (3) it's a game and you're supposed to do stuff like that.

In History of the World you also play several empires over the course of the game, and I realized this weekend while playing that the ebb and flow, rise and fall, conquest and obliteration is perfectly natural and not at all bothersome beyond the "hey, I was getting some points from those guys!" reaction. In this game if I need territory I take it, and I know others will do the same thing, and that's cool -- I've got more guys where those came from. So, what's the difference in this game? I think there are two key factors: predictability of new empires and timing of scoring.

In Seven Ages, you can only bring in a new empire when (1) you have pieces available and (2) you have an appropriate card. I've had games where I would have happily replaced a failing empire, but I did not have the means to do so for a few turns running. So I was stuck playing a losing position while waiting for the luck of the draw. Bummer. In History of the World, on the other hand, you play each empire for one turn, and then everyone gets another (not necessarily playing in the same order). Your residual empires help your score as long as they stick around, but there's this sense that everyone's moving on. You can't go back and modify those empires any more; they've been and gone. If I need to knock over your guys to build mine, well, those are the breaks. Sure, there's competition for resources, but it's more asynchronous. I also know that due to the variation in turn order, you might, or might not, go twice before I go again.

The other factor is the timing of the scoring. In Seven Ages, as in most games, everyone takes a turn and then you score everyone (or you score only at the end of the game, in some games). I can build my board position all I want, but it's only what survives after you're done that helps me ("all that work for nothing", possibly). In History of the World, each player plays and then scores before play passes to the next person. In this most recent game, in the last epoch every single player save one dominated northern Europe -- obviously not simultaneously. I went early that round, collected my points for it, and watched empire after empire squish my guys (and each other's, as the epoch went on) to build that position. It made it more natural for people to actually take the logical, historical conquest paths, and hey, I already got my points so it didn't take anything away from me directly -- there was just the general vying for getting the best overall score possible. In this sense, the scoring feels more like Euro Rails (make a delivery, get paid) than like Seven Ages. I'm finding that I like this model, though I don't necessarily dislike the other.

The two-player game went well; the four-player game bogged down and we aborted it. The next logical thing to try was a three-player game, which

alaricmacconnal helped us out with this weekend.

We had in play the purple reptiles and the other two sets that were not "dogface". (One of these days I'll learn all the names.) One of the other players was the best (potential) herbivore and the other was the best (potential) carnivore, leaving me in the middle. Each species has advantages and disadvantages; I just haven't learned them all yet.

I went into the water, which seemed like a good idea at first but then the others started crowding me out. After one turn in which I was down to two counters and no obvious growth path, I was ready to resign but agreed to keep playing. In the next turn (turn 8, I think) we got a disaster that ended the game. Oops.

That took about an hour and a half, so we decided to start again. I suggested we juggle creatures around; in the end Dani and Alaric kept what they had and I swapped the lizards for "dogface", a mammal. Dogface's special trait is that individual creatures, as opposed to whole species, can be declared herbivore or carnivore. This seems nicely flexible. In practice, it's kind of a bookkeeping hassle.

For all players, you can have your carnivores prey on your herbivores (so long as they're different species). This led to comments like "it's ok; I brought my own food to this biome". :-) A problem for carnivores is that not all herbivores are equally edible; some develop roadrunner DNA (speed, nocturnality, armor), and you have to adapt (speed, nocturnality, anti-armor) to eat. The carnivores end up moving around, following the prey, just like in real life.

The other thing that can make an herbivore inedible is size, and that was my biggest problem in this game. There are six sizes available in the game; a carnivore can eat prey of its size or up to two bigger. I had a gene that I really didn't want to give up that constrained my best carnivore to size 1, but Dani was going for size 5 and 6 creatures because there are places where herbivores compete on size. It's complicated but mostly good.

That trait I didn't want to give up? I think this was a huge factor: I got a poisoned bite, which allowed me to ignore roadrunner DNA. (I don't understand, logically, why it would help with speed and nocturnality, though helping with armor makes sense.) In a previous game when I was playing a carnivore strategy the prey kept hiding or running away; since DNA comes out randomly and then you have to win the bidding, addressing this isn't always easy. But this time the luck ran in a different direction.

For a while Dani and Alaric were doing better on population than I was, but I managed to catch up and ended up winning by about five points (with top score around 150). Alaric would have instead won by one point if the disaster on the last turn hadn't made one of his species extinct. Ah, fickle fate.

The game seems to work best when players can fall into niches, but that's not always possible and a fair bit of conflict is inherent in the game. I think it works reasonably well, but the 3-player game came in at 5.5 hours, a little longer than I expected. Each player and each species adds complexity, so I think we need to come up with some player aids (visualization, mainly) before we try another 4-player game.

Today we played a four-player game of American Megafauna, again playing the basic game using third-edition rules. When Dani and I did this a week or two ago, we finished a two-player game in about three hours. Today, with four players, we called the game after about 5.5 hours. We were on turn 15 (of 25) when that happened.

I don't think we were overly hindered by learning the game; while none of us has played a lot, only one person had not played at all, and she picked it up pretty quickly. It was hard to keep track of the traits of the various species (at peak there were 11 in play), and I was not the only one having trouble reading the chits on others' mats. I think we all tended to cache the most important stuff in memory and ask questions for the rest. Dani was the only person who never asked for speculative help (which of these would win this fight?). Maybe it's a personality thing, or maybe it's that he's played more games than any of the rest of us.

The base game has four families of creatures, two mammals and two reptiles. I ended up playing a reptile (not the one I played in the other game). I was told that it was the best prospective carnivore in the game (not so great on herbivores). I ended up mostly playing a carnivore strategy, but was hindered by some populous species getting "roadrunner DNA" early on that I couldn't counter until late in the game. All of Dani's herbivores were nocturnal from early on, and it wasn't until about turn 12 that another chance at that emerged. (Nocturnal prey can only be eaten by nocturnal predators.)

I had a strong start, helped by winning the bidding on the first additional species to come into play. (Each species is token-limited; score is based on total tokens.) But then things started going worse for me as they went better for others; that is the way of worldwide evolutionary trends, I suppose. When we quit I was in a downturn; I had a plan for fixing it over the next two turns, and I think it would have worked, but I was definitely struggling. However, because I was pretty far in the lead from the early successes, people conceded to me. If the game had gone to the end it probably would have been closer; they were catching up.

I like the game, but we've got to find a way to speed it up or shorten it. 6+ hours is too long for this game. I don't think reducing the number of turns is the right answer; events in the world need a chance to play out. I have a sneaking feeling that some sort of notational or visualization approach would help speed things up, but I can't right now imagine what it would be, short of software.

Dani and I played a two-player game of American Megafauna. This was my first time playing. It actually worked ok for two players; most multi-player games don't. That's a bonus.

On one foot: you are playing one or more species (a phylum, loosely) 250 million years ago. The board consists of biomes with different characteristics; you acquire DNA that lets you adapt in compatable ways. For example, a biome might require water-tolerance (amphibian) and give extra points to insect-eaters. Or a biome might support anyone but give extra points to creatures that can reach the tall trees. Depending on what cards come into play, you can bid for DNA or for the chance to spin off new species. Random events can throw wrinkles into your plans, most frequently by altering biomes. Scoring is based on the number of counters you can keep alive on the board.

The game has five sets of counters -- not identical, so we chose two at random. I played lizards (purple), and Dani played "dog-face" (yellow, mammal). The game has a basic reptile/mammal split, so I suspect it worked well that we played one of each.

You start with one species and from that can spin off more, inheriting the base characteristics. My base lizard was almost immediately amphibian, so all my derivatives were too. One derivative was aquatic (required water to live in); the others were more flexible. Initially there weren't a lot of marine biomes on the board, which was a problem, but new biomes and climate change helped me out.

Dani, meanwhile, went in for carnivores, at least some of the time. Carnivores don't actually eat other players' counters; it's about balancing species, not individual chits. Carnivores have to be supported by herbivores, but that comes at no cost to the player of the herbivores. That said, most of the herbivores in our game ended up developing armor, making it unprofitable to be a carnivore. (Anti-armor -- you know, stuff like big sharp fangs -- was under-represented in our game.)

Mechanically, each species is represented on your playing mat by a card (about 2x2 inches) and a pile of little cardboard tents to represent acquired characteristics. You can have any characteristic more than once (this means a stronger presence). I don't know what's typical, but we had species in play with a dozen of these little tents, which is more than fits on the card. Because orientation of the card also matters (it indicates your size), this made it a little hard for me to see what was going on on Dani's mat and vice-versa. This was tractable for a two-player game, sitting next to each other; I don't know how well it would work for me across the dining-room table. I was keeping stuff in memory more than looking. If the markers were plastic rather than cardboard, some sort of stacking scheme might have helped with that.

Our events were not well-randomized, though we shuffled thoroughly. So I don't have a sense yet of what that should look like. We had one catastrophe, on the last turn, that caused five of the six species then in play to go extinct. I gather that lesser catastrophes exist.

Our game took about three hours, including teaching, which is a comfortable length. (It means it can play in an evening and not just on a weekend.) The plastic tray that Dani bought helps with chit management, but at the expense of things not fitting well in the box. Speaking of the box, it opens on an end rather than having a conventional lid -- bad choice IMO.

Dani played a draft of the third edition last year at Origins, but that edition has not yet been published. He bought the second edition and its expansion, and downloaded third-edition rules, that that more or less fits together. (That this is so suggests to me that the third edition won't be published as a packaged game.) The rules support a basic game and an advanced one; we played the basic.

Overall, it's a neat game with an unusual concept, and I'd like to play it more. I don't think I have a great feel for it yet, but I like what I've seen so far, aside from some of the physical aspects.

Our friend Alaric recently turned 40, so he decided to celebrate by inviting bunches of people to his house for the weekend to play games. Hence, my dubbing of the event "Alaric-con". :-) (It's 11:30PM Sunday; Dani is still there.) It was fun.

( Read more... )

Last Sunday was Easter, so today was

ralphmelton and

lorimelton's annual bunny melt and high tea. It was quite a bit of fun, I met some new people (coworkers?), and the food was spectacular. (It's a pity no one thought to take pictures before we started eating.)

Lori suggested that this ritual meal needs a haggadah. I'll bet we can do something with that! This is the chocolate of affliction (leftovers at half price!); let all who are up to date on dental insurance come and eat. Ma nishtana: on most days we dip at most once but on this day we dip dozens of times; and on most days we eat our fruits plain but on this day we eat them with sugary goo. Four cups of tea is easy. I need to come up with something for the magid (the telling of the story). Err, that would require a story. :-)

In the evening some of us played a game that was new to me, Rum and Pirates. Each player (the game supports five) has a supply of pirates, which can be placed on the board to direct the active piece toward various special spaces. These spaces might provide victory points (or chances at same), or they might provide tools (such as money and free re-rolls of the die). The game is fun and not too complicated. According to the box it plays in 60-75 minutes; we took 90 but three of us had never played before. The game has a lot of parts (mostly chits), but -- unusual for such games these days -- it actually comes with a suitable plastic holder with the correct number of subdivisions. Most games give you a random assortment of compartments (or none at all) and you end up using zipper bags, which is a hassle if you have a lot of different types of pieces. Anyway, fun game; I'd definitely play again.

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?

Saturday we invited people over to test-drive two new-to-us games, Caylus and Arkham Horror.

( Caylus )

( Arkham Horror )

We had one player who was new to our group this time (one of my coworkers). I think she had fun. I hope so. :-) (We sometimes have mega-gaming days with 15 people who play whatever looks interesting that day, and sometimes try to assemble a specific number of players to play specific games. This was a case of the latter.)

( Read more... )

Today we joined friends for a day of (board) gaming. We knew there would be between seven and eleven players, so Dani and I brought along Civilization and Seven Ages, the two games we have that work for that number of players and that we'll both play, though both of these are long games. We did, in fact, have exactly seven players, but we chose other options. (The problem is that few games work for seven and few work well for three, so either you play one game or you split into two groups and reduce to a different problem.)

( Talisman, Puerto Rico, Tsuro, Trans Europe )

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.

( Shabbat stuff )

Saturday night as we were trying (and failing) to go to Chaya for dinner, we walked past a new restaurant called Susheli. It looked open and not busy, so we walked in. They said they weren't actually open yet; they'd be open in half an hour but if we didn't already have reservations we'd have to wait. So, some other time -- but does that timing strike anyone else as odd? It did to me, so I looked at the hours posted on the door -- closed Friday for dinner, open Saturday an hour after sundown (demonstrably not true, by the way, but that would be quite ambitious if my guess is right). Could it be? I looked at the menu posted in the window; it included entries like "shrimp (mock)". No immediately-obvious certification, but Dani was getting impatient so I figured I'd check later. So I'm not yet certain, but it's possible that there's now a kosher Japanese restaurant in Squirrel Hill! Whee! (I failed to look for a mezuzah.) Currently, the only place where I can order a sushi platter, as opposed to individual pieces, is Chaya, because they understand kosher versus non-kosher species. But part of the appeal of sushi is letting the chef choose appropriate combinations based on what's fresh, his own creativity, and whatever else. I miss that at restaurants other than Chaya.

I wondered about the name. "Sheli" means "for me" in Hebrew, so if "su" meant something (that implied good food) that would have been neat. But according to Dani, "su" doesn't mean anything, so I guess it's "sushi for me" but only sort of. Assuming that they're trying to do something clever with Hebrew, of course.

After dinner we went to a party at Chez Melton (lorimelton and ralphmelton). We had a good time. There weren't as many people I already knew as at past parties; the Claritech crowd was largely absent (us and two others). It was good to see Kevin again; since the end of the D&D game I almost never see him.

We ended up in a large game of Apples To Apples, which is a good party game. Each player has a handful of cards with nouns on them; in turn, each player draws and plays an adjective card, and other players each pass in a noun that goes with it. The person who drew the adjective chooses the noun he likes best, and the person who played it gets a point. Iterate until a score threshold is reached. It's a fun game that usually moves pretty quickly. This was the first I'd played with the expansion sets, though, and I think they are a net loss. There were a lot of rounds where I felt I didn't have anything plausible and tossed junk, and it was clear this was happening to others too. I suspect that the original game was well-thought-out and then in the expansions they just threw more words into the mix. Part of what makes the game fun is seeing all the clever or funny submissions that show up; when half the submissions are, essentially, discards, it's not as much fun. But even so, a fun game (and we should pick up a copy to have on hand when we host gaming days).

This morning our power went out again, with no obvious reason, but we found that it was out for several blocks, so it wasn't just us. This time it was out for almost two hours. Dani recently deprecated a UPS (not big enough for the computer/monitor he's currently using), so I appropriated it for the VCRs. I've had to reset the VCR clocks three or four times this week; this was the first outage long enough to also take out the programming. (Apparently the model is that the VCR will just get the time from the cable service, so it doesn't need to dedicate battery power to that. But I don't have the right kind of cable service for that.) I wouldn't buy a UPS for the VCRs, because that seems extravagant, but with it just sitting there, neglected... :-)

Most of my bulbs have sent up green bits, it seems, but no crocuses in bloom yet. It seems late for them and early for everything else.

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.

Last time we had gaming someone brought a game called Runebound, and Dani liked it enough that he got his own copy a few days ago. The game is for 2-6 players, so we tried a two-player game this weekend. ( Read more... )

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!

You're being too productive. Let me help. :-)

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?

Today we held a games day. Well, I suppose technically that's "are holding"; there are still people downstairs, but I didn't think I was up for a long game after dinner.

We ended up with 13 people, so we broke into three groups. One of the others played Iron Dragon; the other was finishing Ra when we finished our game, but I don't know if that's all they played. I was in the group playing Age of Imperialism, which we received as a gift earlier this year. Dani test-drove it last month with a few people, but I wasn't home for that. So this was my first time playing. (One of the other players had played once before.)

( Age of Imperialism )

After dinner some people decided to play Age of Renaissance, which I've played a few times before. It's similar to Civilization in a lot of ways. It's a fun game, but one of the ways it's similar to Civ is in length, and I wasn't up for it. I wasn't the only one, so the rest of us split into two groups to play shorter games. I played Settlers of Catan (and actually won, which rarely happens) and then a couple games of Trans America (a fun, fast, train game).

Age of Renaissance consists of three ages (or epochs, or whatever). They were about to enter the third one about half an hour ago, so I suspect they'll be at this for another hour or so.

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.

Thursday night Dani and I drove to Silver Spring to spend Purim and Shabbat with friends. It was a lot of fun, and I'm glad Dani decided to go with me. (And not just because that meant he drove through the foggy mountains at night. :-) )

( Read more... )

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.

Dani brought a game called "Ideology" to the election-night party. It's for five players, playing Communisiom, Capitalism, Fascism, Imperialism, and Islamic Fundamentalism. There are three factors -- culture, economics, and military -- and you use these to try to gain influence in the world. (Each ideology has different strengths and weaknesses, and they mostly make sense.) It looks like a fun game, though we'll need to try it with an all-adult group to really evaluate. There was one child playing with us and that both slowed things down and (occasionally) added frustration.

Other games present were Nuclear War (a classic for these parties), Chrononauts (looked like the new edition), and a politically-customized Fluxx deck. There were probably others.

A lot of people there had not yet seen Marry an American. It went over well.

Most appropriate food at the party: a confection depicting a US flag with a bush trampling across it, shedding. The artist explained that the bush was leaving a mess for others to clean up. There were also the obligatory pork rinds, baked beans (both Heinz and Bush's), meringues (cookies made from hot air), nuts, and random snack food. Oh, and Johan managed to find blue wine [1] to accompany the red and white wines. The beer selection included Blithering Idiot and Arrogant Bastard.

[1] The label actually said "apple flavored wine product" and did not include an ingredients list, though it did include a government warning about alcohol. "Wine product"? Maybe I don't want to know.

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.

Our friend Pam invited the usual gaming suspects to her new house today. Dani and I brought her a house-warming gift -- Iron Dragon. (Hey, we're gamers; of course we'll get a game for the new homeowner who'd like to host game days but doesn't own a lot of games herself.) She really likes that class of train games, so she was pleased. (We didn't break it out today, though.)

Dani's rule of gaming days: no matter what you plan, you will end up with seven players. Seven is pretty much the pesimal number for the games we tend to play, unless you want to commit all day and evening to a single game. If anyone has recommendations for games that play well for seven players in about three hours (two is fine too), I'd love to hear 'em. (We actually started the day with eight players, allowing us to split into two groups of four, but one player had to leave after dinner.)

I played three different games and learned one other:

Trans America is a fun, fast little train game played on a loose approximation of a map of the US. The country is divided into five regions, and you are randomly assigned one city in each region. You are trying to build track to connect all your cities. There is no notion of "owned" track, though you can only build track that connects to a marker you place at the beginning of the game. So you tend to end up with small bits of track eventually merging into a large network. Once we got the hang of it we were playing five-player games in about 20 minutes, so this works well as a fill-in while waiting for the other group to finish a game so you can redistribute people.

Circvs Maximus is a game of chariot racing a la Ben Hur. You build your chariot by distributing four points among four categories (max two per): driver skill, chariot type (light/medium/heavy), starting speed, and endurance. Chariots can slam into other chariots (and/or the horses pulling them); that's where chariot type comes in. Some maneuvers require you to burn endurance points (a non-renewable resource), as does whipping your horse for higher speed (or having someone else whip your horse on the way by). Damage to your horses slows you down; damage to your chariot forces you to make checks (die rolls) before certain maneuvers (or before moving too quickly) to see if your chariot flips. (If that happens, your chariot becomes airborne -- we almost saw one land on another chariot -- and your driver is now being pulled along the ground by the horses, taking damage each turn.) Victory condition is a live driver being pulled by at least one horse across the finish line (chariot technically optional, but advised). I had a lot of fun with this one, particularly in the game where we each ran two cooperating chariots. I ended up winning (by a nose) in a game where I put two points into initial speed and two into endurance, and whipped the horse almost every turn. This was the "run like a bat out of hell" strategy, but I got attacked a few times and some very lucky die rolls kept me from flipping in the endgame.

I saw but didn't play a quick little unnamed card game (supposedly Japanese). It's sort of a logic puzzle. Take ace through ten of two different suits (one red, one black); these 20 cards form your deck. Each of two players is dealt four cards, which he must place in numeric order (red wins ties), face down. On your turn, you draw a card from the deck, look at it, and then use it to "attack" one of your opponent's face-down cards, choosing a card and gussing its numeric value. If you're right, your opponent turns that card up and you can either attack again or take the card and add it, face down, to your own field (in proper position). If your guess is wrong, you must place the card face up in your field. Game ends when one person's cards have all been revealed.

I also played Puerto Rico. None of us had played it a lot, and one person was playing for the first time, but it went pretty smoothly. (Lost by three points, darn it.)

While four of us were playing Puerto Rico the other three opted for "a quick game of Titan". I keep telling Dani that that trick never works. :-) One player got knocked out after about an hour (so for him it was a quick game, I guess); the other two played for a while longer and then decided it would take too long to play out and Titan isn't all that interesting with just two players. Dani actually owns a game board for Titan that's set up for just two players (Johan made it for him), but I don't know if he's ever played on it. (I think the idea was that this board would lure me into playing two-player games with him.)

Other games in play were McMulty and Ra. I like McMulty but wanted to play new-to-me games. I'm not a big fan of Ra, though I've only played once and maybe I just haven't given it a fair chance.

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.)

Monica

world-conquest games

American Megafauna (3 players)

another game of American Megafauna

game: American Megafauna

Alaric-con

bunny melt

games day: an experiment

two new games

last few days

games day

games day

weekend

random bits

game review: Runebound

weekend gatherings

addictive

tips for painting miniatures?

games day

Zendo

Purim and Shabbat (road trip)

games day

election-night party (light stuff)

weekend bits

games day

Shabbat (mostly)

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