Weekend Gaming

Dinner: We ate out at a friend's house. She had other guests including one named Rebbecca. Our mutual friend had been trying to put us together (as it turns out, we had met before) because Rebbecca also plays games with her family all the time. She had brought a little game to show me when she had heard that I was coming. It turned out to be the Norwegian version of Pass the Pigs.

Rebbecca and my friend both come from Norway near the Oslo region.

Lunch: Invited out again. When we got there, their child was putting away Wonders of the World Monopoly (a Hebrew translation of the English version). This was the same family whose mother had asked me to teach her the rules to Rat-a-Tat Cat, but them hopelessly forgot them again. Non-gamers; what can you do?

Afternoon: When I got home I found one of the single mom's over with her daughter in tow. I wrote about her previously. This time I remember her name: Dvira. Dvira talks about me to her mom and has wanted to come back and play again since her last visit. We were both happy to reacquaint. She is about 7 years old.

We played The Menorah Game with her mom before her mom went off with Rachel to Rachel's torah class. Then we played three games one on one, and two more after Tal came in and joined us. Dvira didn't win any, but she definitely got better after each game. After that I introduced her to Settlers of Catan. It was a great game, tightly contested. We were all sitting at about 6 or 7 points. I got Largest Army which brought me to 8 points, but then Dvira built a settlement and after a round or two stole Longest Road from Tal to clinch the victory. She was quite excited.

We may see her at the game night, although she can only stay until 8 o'clock.

The Set system: On the way over to lunch I was thinking about how to transform the Set game into a system of games using a pack of playing cards. I thought about a little math game that plays without the picture cards. The black cards are face value, the red cards are face value plus ten. Cards are slowly flipped over. The first player to call an equation that uses cards on the table gets them. Equations can be formed using at least one of +, -, *, /, and an =.

Some variants: You can add the jacks and play that when there is an even number of jacks on the table the black cards are plus ten and the red cards are regular. You can also play that players keep their pile face open, and the top card of each player's pile can also be used (and is taken by the player forming the equation).

Yehuda