Sunday, April 24, 2011

Shabbat Gaming

Had my friends over for all of shabbat ... and his parents, and their daughter and her new husband. I slept on the couch. I also had Nadine over for both meals and we played games in the afternoon.

Nadine and I taught Dominion to the newlyweds. He had played a few games before, such as Settlers and Puerto Rico; he had played them at a friend's house in Beit Shemesh, a friend who had learned the games at my house when I had lived there. She played some bridge, taught to her by her father.

We used the base set: Village, Workshop, Bureaucrat, Feast, Gardens, Council Room, Festival, Market, Mine, Adventurer.

I've never been comfortable with a Gardens strategy. We all ignored it in the first game, instead concentrating on Village, Festival, Mine, Market, and so on. I tied for first with 28 points.

The second game, I decided to try Gardens; no one else did, so it worked spectacularly. I bought mostly kingdoms that gave additional cards, such as Workshop and Bureaucrat, and additional buys, such as Festival - I skipped Market and Council Room. I also got a few Villages, so that I could play the other cards more than once a turn.

The others continued as they did in the previous game, with a few more Bureaucrats and Council Rooms added in for good measure. The game ended when I had exactly 49 cards and 10 Gardens. Argh! Didn't matter. I had 55 points, and my nearest competitor had 38.

I saw my friends and the newlyweds playing Apples to Apples later in the day.

In the evening, my friend and his father and I played Cribbage, which was a very close game until I pulled off 16 point on the penultimate turn, leaving me five points from winning and first to play and score. I started by playing a 7. It was followed by an 8 and then a 9, whereupon I played my 6, for 4 points, and another point for the go, which was all I needed.

We then played a number of hands of three-player bridge.

Nice to have gamers of a different sort over once in a while.

No comments: