Shabbat Gaming

I had a family from Raanana over for the first time for lunch, and the guy stayed after to play Scrabble with me. He was a tough opponent; he had obviously played in tournaments before. He played the only bingo during the game, but I beat him by a 50 point margin by playing a lot of double/double and double/triple moves.

Meanwhile, in two online Scrabble games that just ended, I played 7 bingos between them. That's a streak I don't expect to repeat. Playing bingos (or words at all) in online Scrabble isn't the same. Since you are not permitted to submit an illegal word, you just keep playing around and clicking submit until the game accepts your play. It takes a lot of the edge out of the game, and it's definitely different than face to face play.

Shabbat I went to my brother's and the kids wanted to play games (or hear stories) the whole time, even the five year old (I think he's five). I played Set with two of the younger ones, and I was shocked with how good them were, even the five year old. I didn't take sets myself; I only called Set and let them take the sets after they found them. So I would have killed them, technically. But I think they're going to get much better really fast.

The other game I played was Dominion, three times. I lost the first game taking Conspirators and Pawns against my brother who was simply taking silvers and golds. Actually, I also did some bad planning and had some bad luck. I took a Mine early when I should have taken a Market (before I settled on the Conspirator strategy), and I got to use it all of once during the game.

I requested the same set again, and this time I played more diverse and took more Markets and Spies. I won this game.

In the third game, there were no bonus actions on any cards, but there was Throne Room and Black Market. I picked well with Black Market while Ben had the same luck problem I faced during my first game. I had a runaway win, even though Ben had accidentally stacked 18 provinces instead of 12 (I took 11 of them, while Ben took 6).