Session Report, in which we play Vulkan by request

The latest Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club session report is up here. Games played: Vulkan, Caylus, Die Macher, Carcassonne, San Juan, Tichu, Mau, Bridge.

We say goodbye to Josh and Idit, headed for Boston for a few years. They'll be looking for a game group there.

We play another half-game of Die Macher, but save the game for next time.

We play Vulkan at the request of the author, Heinrich Glumpler, and find it to be a better game than Feurio.

Zack falls in love with Mau.

Apples to Apples, Jewish edition

David K brought back A2A, Jewish edition, and says that it went over well. Given a choice between the two (he doesn't really like either game so much), he says the Jewish edition is definitely more enjoyable, as seeing the Yiddish/Hebraic words appear adds a little spice.

He also says that in both the regular and the Jewish editions, the people Apple cards are the ones nobody wants, unless they are so famous that they define certain adjectives (such as Einstein or George Bush). In short, nobody likes the less well-known people cards.

There are also a few cards whose explanatory print is extremely poor. (e.g. Poland is a country that lost three million Jews during the Holocaust. Lost?! Hmm... Now where did we put those Jews? I know they're around here, somewhere ...) As I said last time, I will be sending an email off to the publisher about these.

Game News

While others are reporting on the dull news about Hasbro's profits, I would just like to mention that Cranium is laying off 20% of its workforce, even though they're making profits. Sounds like another case of sticking it to the workers.

Here's a roll-up USB chess board that looks like it is useful in many ways. You can represent the chess game on the computer, and play it with physical pieces at the same time. (source)

Here's the IG Game, a new board game intended to help practice and pharmacy staff understand information governance .... zzzzzzz .... (source)

Mensa chose five new games as Mensa Select: Gemlok, Gheos, Hit or Miss, Qwirkle, and Skullduggery.

And the Guardian makes an unusual plea for more people to play games.

Yehuda