Weekend Gaming

Fri night we were invited to a friend: single mom with a boy my son's age.

I considered bringing Traumfabrik, which this friend had played and seemed to enjoy, but I was sure that we wouldn't be the only guests, and Traumfabrik is limited to five people.

So I brought Set. I was also ready to play Zendo, which can be played with any items you have lying around (such as knife, spoon, and fork). I would have like to have tried it, since I haven't really had a chance yet, but as it turns out I only ended up playing Set with her son. It's still hard to convince normal people to play games.

Set is a problematic game in that you really, really need two people with equal abilities, or it gets embarrassing. Her son was not bad, but not good enough to make a challenge, so I just sat there without calling Set while waiting for him to find the sets. I guess you can try to get better at the game, but it basically hits one space in your brain, and if you happen to be good at that sort of thing, there you go.

Otherwise, two games of PR with Rachel. In the first one, I bought buildings badly, played badly - my brain stopped working. Rachel also played very well, and she won by something like 63 to 54. In the second game, I started off with a poor play (Builder/Small Indigo - there was no Small Market), and of course she took Mayor, and then I took Settler anyway, taking a corn. I thought I was already toast, but this time I played exceptionally in the zone, always taking Mayor before she built, Builder before she could buy it. Basically, the game was as confrontational as you could get in a non-confrontational game. Final scores were high, with me winning 69 to 64.

The "official" Tel Aviv group by Gilad seems to have burnt out temporarily; they haven't had any sessions for a while. Hopefully they will get back on track.

Yehuda