Game at Nadine's, and Other Holiday Gaming

I don't hold a JSGC game night on the same week as Games Day, figuring it's overkill. But Nadine decided to have over some guests on her now free Wed night, and they were all JSGC members. So we held an unofficial JSGC game night at Nadine's on Wed.

Participants: Nadine, Jon, Bill, Shirley, Eitan, Emily, Abraham, Sarah, Adam, Noa

Noa was Abe and Sarah's guest, and not generally a gamer I surmise. Adam, Bill, and Shirley didn't make it to Games Day, so it was nice to see them.

The centerpiece of the evening was Battlestar Galactica, which lasted approximately six hours. The players were Adam, Bill, Shirley, Eitan, Emily, and Abraham. Abraham was the only player who had played before.

The Cylons won in a close game that came down to a die roll. Bill and Abraham were Cylons.

Meanwhile, a few other games were played.

Nadine, Sarah, and I played Agricola; first play for Sarah. Scores: Jon 41, Nadine 39, Sarah 30.

Sarah had a natural planting strategy, and she played a whole bunch of occupations. She got almost no animals, however, and too few of the other points. Nadine managed to get two additional workers in round 11, and had a sizable animal collection, but not many bonus points. I was slower than usual with both planting and house building, building to only three rooms (I usually get to five). I had good pastures, and was unobstructed in getting miscellaneous points I needed in the end. Mostly, I had all my people and a lot of bonus points.

The game was fairly quick.

I then played two games of It's Alive with Sarah and Noa, while Nadine took over for Adam, aho had to leave.

First plays for Noa. In the first game, I won by a good amount (61, 46, 41), which made me fairly confident. Noa liked it, and wanted to play again. In the second, I scored the lowest I ever scored, ever. I only had two tiles! Noa won (43, 41, 19) and was very happy about it.

Thursday evening, a neighbor invited me over to play. She's a non-gamer sort, but likes to play some traditional games like Rummy. I brought Boggle and was shocked that she had never played it. I taught it to her, but it was kind of lopsided in my favor for the few games we played.

We switched to Rummy. There was a lot of confusion as to which Rummy we meant, because she used to play "Gin Rummy", which turned out not to be Gin Rummy at all. We played one hand of Gin Rummy as I know it (without knocking). Then her husband joined us and we played one hand of what she called Gin Rummy, but was something more like 500 or Rummikub.

We had to pull the rules out of her, one by one, as she simply assumed that we knew them at each turn where they were relevant, even after I warned her that there are hundreds of variations for the game. Her rules:

• Two decks of cards.
• Can't meld until you have a minimum of 50 points.
• Each round, you pick and play out.
• Only the top card of the discard pile is accessible.
• Face cards are worth ten each, aces worth 11.
• Up and down to the ace, but not around.
• Can add to other players' melds, by sticking the cards into them.
• No duplicate suits in kinds.
• No points; first to go out wins, and that's it.

Rules 2-4 made melding a difficult affair, and I'm pretty sure she remembered the rules wrong. I called it Frances Rummy, and each time we pulled another rule out of her, it was "That's how you play Frances Rummy!"