Indonesia, 7 Wonders, Acquire, Ivanhoe

Monday

Eitan, Emily, Nadine, and I played Indonesia. It was the first game for all of us, although Nadine and I had played through the first era once before.

We didn't finish this game, either; we had about one more round to go, so we didn't get to the last round where money scored is doubled. The money situation when we quit was fairly close, although I was behind and Nadine was in front. We also forgot that all bid money is kept for the player's score, and not returned to the bank. Otherwise, I think we got it mostly right. I'm still not sure about placing cities at the beginning of each era, as the rulebook is unclear on exactly how that works.

Anyhoo.

Indonesia is a straightforward economic game for 2-5 players, though it probably works best with 4 or 5 since it involves area control, competition for limited resources, and auctions. The board is a map of Indonesia with cities placed in various areas; more cities arrive as the game progresses. The game is played over several rounds, each of which has a number of phases: merge companies, acquire unclaimed companies, move up on one of the special tracks, and operate (expand your companies/ship goods).

Each company starts as a single business, available for free on the board, one per person per turn. You are limited in the number of companies you can hold based on how far you've moved up on the slots track.

There are two type of companies: shipping and production. The production companies produce any of four types of goods. Each city on the board needs a single good of each type; after a city receives one good of each type, it now needs two (additional) goods of each type, etc. To get goods, some production company has to create the good and some shipping company has to have a route between the production company and the city. The owner of the production company nets money for sending the good, but pays the owner of the shipping company some money for each space used to ship; the further away from the city, the more paid to the shipper. Shipping to a city is mandatory if the city needs the good and the company produces the good and the shipping company connects them. You may actually lose money shipping the good, paying more to the shipping company than you make in the sale.

Therefore, if you're producing, you want to be the one controlling both the production AND the shipping line between the production and several cities (letting other players ship what is needed to the other cities around the board) OR you want your production close to several cities so that you are not paying more in shipping than what you are earning for the goods. In fact, you want to be making more than double what you are paying to ship, or else the shipping company will be making more than you and win the game; and the shipping company will be making money on several players' turns.

Naturally, if you control shipping, you want to be the only one with a route between cities and far off production locations.

This is all very interesting at the beginning of the game, when there are not too many production companies and shipping lines do not extend too far, and you may influence the competition in the shipping companies to create routes for you. Unfortunately, close to the end of the game, this process becomes not only tedious (which would be bad enough) but foregone if the shipping company has become a monopoly. You can spend a half hour calculating just by how much the shipper is going to beat you. Our game was fairly close in terms of money near the end, but the remaining game play wasn't a matter of what good decisions were left to take; the decisions were trivial. It was simply a matter of calculating hundreds of additions and subtractions to arrive at the trivial answers. Which is not what I would call interesting.

The weakness lies in that mergers are a) forced, and b) irreversible. Once a merger is called between two companies, the company will be merged; the only thing left to determine is who gets the resulting company. Since merged companies can't be unmerged, and there are not sufficient shipping companies to provide any real competition once shipping companies merge, the rest of the decisions are about merging production companies - which holds some interest, but is also fairly trivial once the game is near completion, and operations - which are entirely trivial but cumbersome, as mentioned above.

Like other Splotter games, the game has some great ideas but needs to be refined just a bit more. The initial acquisitions and decisions about how to increase on the tracks is fun and challenging: do you go for more expansion, more slots, better shipping capacity, turn order? The goods delivery works well until about 2/3 of the way into the game. The mergers are half good - merging is a good mechanic, but it lacks the ability to defend against merging and to split merged companies. The choice of shipping vs production, and which goods to produce and when to merge rice and spice into a new good (meals) is good. The game overstays its welcome by 20%, and is unnecessarily complicated in terms of math and fractions ("the bid starts at 140 and increases in values of 7; you get 2/7 of the bid, and you get 5/7" "How much is 5/7 of 243?").

The map looks pretty, but is nearly non-functional with poorly demarcated borders between map sections and sections too small to contain the good markers, making a mess as production fields grow and goods get delivered to the cities. And, like many pick up and deliver games, there is an element of king-making when there isn't a monopoly.

Ok, so all of that is after one play. I made a huge mistake calling for the merger of two shipping companies, one of which I owned, when I didn't have enough money to top the high bid. Getting half the money in no way compensated for the loss of the company and its future monopolistic income, and so I pretty much lost the game at that moment. Perhaps all I'm saying is that a poor play(er) can lose or throw the game in an instant and then you'll be bored for the remainder of the game. Which is not necessarily a detraction for when the game is played between equal, experienced players. Just be sure that you like spending more time adding, subtracting, and dividing numbers than you do making actual decisions.

Tuesday

On Tuesday evening I made my first visit to the game club in Raanana. The club is run by Ellis, who made his first visit to my Jerusalem game club on Games Day on Passover.

Ellis has several hundred board games in his basement, most of them clean spanking copies of war games, but also a smaller shelf or two of Euro games (he has as many Euros as I have games altogether). Five of us played: Ellis, Jon (me), Abraham (former JSGC member who moved to Raanana), Peleg (who also came for Games Day), and H-something (forgot his name, starts with an H).

First up was 7 Wonders. First play for everyone except for me, and I had played only once. I mostly taught, with Ellis filling in the details (he actually had read the rules, while I hadn't).

7 Wonders looks like a big fat Civilization-like board game from the outside of the box, but in fact is as quick and simple as Fairy Tale or Dominion. It's a card game with 3 booster drafts of 7 cards each. Pick a card, play the card, pass the rest to the player on your left. The cards are all non-interactive: no attacks, no thefts, no special turns or actions, no nothing. Just plunk the card down and move on. The only interactive element is that, in some cases, a) the value of your card might depend on what one of your neighbors' has built, or b) you may only be able to play a card if one of your neighbors played some other card, first.

Each card either "produces" a resource, or provides points ala Ra: straight points, points in sets, points based on the cards you or your neighbor has played, points in comparison to how many cards of that type your neighbors have played (that's as far as combat goes in this game), or money to "buy resources" from your neighbors. If you don't have the resources that you need to play a card, you can pay a neighbor for that resource if they produce it (they don't lose it when you buy it; you just also get to use it). Cards are free if you already produce all the resources you need for the card, or if you've already played a card that precedes it in a kind of build path.

There are three "ages" (i.e. sets of 7 cards). Draft and build six of them, toss out the last. Do this three times. At the end of each age, compare the "combat" points and give out a few points. At the end of the game, give out more combat points (now actually worth something) and all the rest of the points. The winner has the most points.

Is it fun? Yes, it's fun. The game is balanced in many ways, many paths to victory. And, unlike other games where it simply doesn't matter which path you take, here your path is constrained based on the cards you are dealt and passed. You have a limited set of interesting choices, and your success is based partly on your neighbor having to choose whether to advance his own points and pass you what you need or block you, probably to his own detriment. Even his ability to block you is constrained: you can always start on a new path without losing what you've already played (maybe a little loss for switching, but not much), and each player can only play one of any type of card.

The game's shortcoming is, other than the lack of any interesting complications or confrontations, that as each player's tableau grows, you have to continuously check what your neighbors have played (only the two immediately on either side of you, not your opponents across the table) in order to know how they will benefit with what you pass them. You also have to continuously check your own tableau; you can play certain cards for free if you've already played other cards, but the information for this is based on the name of the card and a little reminder at the top and bottom of the appropriate cards. Until you get the game down, you will constantly refer back and forth between the card names.

In my last game, I concentrated on green card sets and didn't do spectacularly well. This time I concentrated on brown resources and still didn't do spectacularly well; in fact I mostly helped my neighbors. Peleg won by getting a decent set of just about everything. I don't know how.

We then played Acquire. First game for some of them, but Ellis and I had each played many times. Neither of us won, however; H-something did. Acquire remains a fun game, even after 50 years. I lost because I concentrated too much on outlying chains; I did well, with second place in several important chains. But I had nothing at all in the major end-game chain, and no cash for a few turns in mid-game.

Lastly we played Ivanhoe. First play for me, and I think second play for one of the other guys. I had never heard of it, but as soon as I saw that it was a card game designed by Knizia I had a pretty good idea of what I was in for: set collection or stacking, colored chips, little in the way of theme, a few action cards.

Ivanhoe is a perfect example of a Knizia game. There are five colors. One is led, and you either "fight" trying to beat all previously played sets until all but one player gives up, or you withdraw. If you win the round, you gain a chip of that color. If you win in purple, you can gain a chip in any color. Special cards affect cards already played during the round, white cards can be used for any battle, etc. Very light, entirely theme-less (overlaid with something about jousts and Ivanhoe, of course).

Ellis won before anyone else had collected more than a single chip, and I think only one other person had even managed to do that. Very luck dependent, which is ok for a light game, but this wouldn't be my first choice for a filler. I'd play again to see if I could do a little better, however.

Wielding the Decks 7: Acquire

A little late, but here goes:

Acquire is a classic game of stock acquisition and mergers. It's played on a 12 by 9 board; that's near enough to 13 x 8 that we can fake it. Add some tokens and you're good to go.

Create the board as you play: use the four jokers to mark the corners of the board and adjust the exact card locations as necessary during the game. Using two decks with different colored backs, one set of cards is used for the first four rows, and the other for the second four rows. Or, you could let a player choose in which row to play (e.g. row 3 or 7) on his or her turn.

Use 26 tokens in each of 7 colors. One token is used to mark the hotel chain. The others are the stocks. Use paper and pencil to keep track of money.

Yehuda

Review: Acquire, new edition

The following is a guest post by Moshe Sambol:

I heard from Funagain Games about a month ago that they had a new stock of Acquire. Having played the game a few times on an old board of my in-laws', and not having had luck finding a reasonably priced copy of the old edition(s) to buy, I was happy to pay $24 for a new copy (not including S&H). I received it on Thursday via visiting American Mom service.

The construction of the new set is a real let down. Everything is cardboard at best. Whereas the old set includes plastic tiles which are placed on a plastic board, the new tiles are simple cardboard squares that you have to punch out of a few sheets of cardboard before your first use. The board is a simple piece of cardboard that folds down the middle. It and the tiles are plain gray. Even the font used on the pieces is not my taste, the E is rounded and practically indistinguishable from a 3.

Aside from the board and tiles the set includes play money, stock certificates, and legends to help players figure out the values of the hotels.

The stock certificates are very nicely done on colorful, tasteful, sturdy-enough card stock. The money is the same junk you'd get with a Monopoly set, albeit at higher denominations. The legends, though, are a real embarrassment. They are printed on the last few perforated pages of the instructions booklet and you have to tear them out. That the manufacturer didn't even bother to print these on cardboard was shocking to me.

The final components are a set of six cardboard racks which can be used by each player to hold his or her tiles. These must be punched out and assembled, like the tiles.

Even the box itself is inferior to the old sets: it doesn't have compartments for the various pieces, you just dump them all back into the box when done. With the tile racks assembled it's a tight fit, but I wouldn't recommend taking apart the tile racks as after a few re-assemblings they'd certainly start falling apart.

In the old set there were separate compartments to hold the stacks of stock certificates during game play. With the new set, you'll need table room for those.

Having said all that about the construction, after having played once last night I'm glad I own it. Our group included game enthusiasts and non, and the game kept all of our attention and was fun and interesting.

I first learned Acquire a year or so ago. Since then I've played (and acquired) Settlers and Puerto Rico. In my opinion Acquire is more interesting than Settlers and significantly less challenging than P.R. I liked that it's quick and easy to teach to a new player. The luck factor is present but low (random tile draw). Our game took over an hour but certainly less time than PR would have taken. I think I'll be able to teach this to my (young) kids just as easily as Monopoly, but will be much happier with a game that doesn't involve running around the board.

Overall for those who don't own it I recommend it, but be prepared to be let down by the materials. The stock certificates are the one reason not to just put this together yourself.

War and Peace: Games, Food, and Surf in Tel Aviv

Wacky Adventures in a War Torn Country

Update: added pictures

Saarya, my fifteen year-old son, and Tal, my thirteen year-old daughter, and I went to Tel Aviv for a short vacation. The vacation started on Friday; our weekend experiences are covered in a previous post. This post covers Sunday through Tuesday.

Our original plans were to go north, but neither my wife nor my ex-wife would let me do that, even though, statistically speaking, there was still a four times greater chance of dying in the car trip up to the north than in dying from a Hezbollah missile.

In fact, Hezbollah has been threatening to bomb Tel Aviv, so, with any luck, we would still get to experience the thrill of shrieking sirens, the mad scrambling for bomb shelters, and the lingering smell of death and chaos. As luck would have it, however, no bombs fell in Tel Aviv. Rats.

The temperature was hot, by the way, but not New York City hot. And muggy.

The Safari

Our first stop was the Ramat Gan Safari. The main attraction here is that Tal has become obsessed with zebras, to the point of trying to acquire the nickname "Zebra" at school, with variable success.

Saarya warned that he doesn't like zoos, but, armed with seven books from Alan Dean Foster's Tar-Aym Krang series was willing enough to sit and read while we walked around. I went pretty sure that I had a moral objection to zoos, and in going to zoos, but having not been to one in more than ten years, was willing to take a chance at reassessing my feelings.

Unfortunately, my feelings were strengthened.

The "Safari" actually consists of a drive through area, along with a zoo inside, and then a return through another drive out area. The drive through areas had all the zebras Tal could ever want to see live. The zebras came up to our car and tried to eat our window.

Click here for eleven zebra pictures.

There were other less interesting things in the safari section, including some lions who were asleep.

Click here for non zebra pictures (penguins, giraffes, lions, etc.).

As a matter of fact, that basically describes all of the animals we saw. They were pretty much all asleep. The snakes looked like so much piles of plastic. The hippos might as well have been rocks submerged under the water. For all I know, they had already drowned.

The animals that were awake all did the very fascinating activity of staring forlornly at the visitors. They just sat there looking right back at you, scanning the crowd, and hoping that someone would explain to them why their formerly happy life in the endless prairie or tundra had come to be reduced to a life-long sentence in a prison cell. And those were the lucky ones. The less fortunate had electric shocks to contend with, or had had parts of their bodies permanently ripped out in order to make them more docile or less mobile.

Zoos were originally created in order to show the wonders of the world to those who could not otherwise see them. With the advent of pictures and then videos, what is the point? The only people who still go to zoos are researchers and children. Research I can understand. But this misery is too high a price to pay for the entertainment of children, most of whom don't like the smell anyway and would prefer to be playing games or running around.

There was one bright spot to the visit, and it came from the only animal present of its own free will, more or less: humans. There was a show at two o'clock.

I wasn't expecting much - something like a children's version of Little Red Riding Hood or such - but it turned out to be a very nice show with a magician and two acrobats. The magician was fair, although he did very nice work of making some people appear and disappear. The acrobats, especially the woman, were amazing, however; I'm talking Cirque De'Soleil amazing.

It was worth the price of admission.

We left at three, which is when check-in time was at the youth hostel.

The Youth Hostel

My budget is limited, as you may know; you may even be in the same situation. So it's nice when every once in a while you try to save some money and it actually works out well.

The Youth Hostel in Tel Aviv is a simple stark building right across the street from the lovely Yarkon river and it's grassy walking areas.

The receptionist is snarky. There is little in the way of amenities. What there is, however, is: a clean room with four beds, a strong and well heated shower, working and well adjusted air conditioning, and a reasonably edible breakfast. That's all that we got, and that's all that we needed. Oh, we also got an in-room refrigerator, and a television that could receive two channels, but who cares?

There was one problem: no parking designated for the hostel. We were lucky to find free parking across the street most of the time, and when there wasn't, we found a free municipal parking lot on a side street, directly behind the hostel.

Two nights cost us 680 NIS including tax, which is about $150. That left us more money for other stuff, or simply more money. Survey says: recommended.

The Game Store

I had brought some food along with us, intending to eat light Sunday, and spend money only going out to dinner at my favorite Tel Aviv Chinese restaurant on Monday. With that in mind, we went for a walk around dinner time down Weizmann street to find Israel's only game store that sells Euro games, Freak. The Youth Hostel is located right at the top of Weizmann, and so the walk was about ten blocks.

Unlike Jerusalem, Tel Aviv's restaurants are generally not kosher. So we kept an eye out for kosher places just for general interest, and we found a few here and there on the way.

We eventually found the mall within which Freak was alleged to be, and after looking around, found it on the -1 floor.

Freak is a small store. There is a small hallway going into it directly up to the cash register. To the right is a small room with computer games and miniatures, and to the left is a small room with roleplaying and, in one bookcase, about 70 board games. Behind or on the cash register are CCG products. In the roleplaying room is a table that would fit around eight for gaming, and in the miniature area another two or three tables that would each fit two people.

Gilad from the Hebrew board gaming group alleges that twenty or more people come for game nights once or month here, but I just don't see how. Nevertheless, the store does host board game nights once a month, and weekly game sessions of Warcraft, D&D, Magic, and so on.

I had three missions. One was to see the store. The second was to meet and interview the owner. The third was to try to convince him to donate some stuff to my collection of games that I was sending to the bomb shelters in the north, or at least to let me buy them at a discount.

I saw the store, and it was modest. The board games are priced at what would be retail prices, plus 17% VAT, plus some probable shipment fee, plus more on top of that. Alhambra, for instance, was 250 NIS ($55), while Tigris and Euphrates was 240 NIS ($53). Apparently it depended on whether the game could be ordered in some sort of bulk shipment, or had to be ordered individually. They were out of Settlers of Catan.

All of the board games they carried came from Silver Stars, the exclusive importer to Israel of many of these games. (More on them later.) Suffice to say that Freak gets along with Silver Stars, but it is a business relationship, not a close personal one. I suspect that Freak would much prefer to do its own importing, rather than have to buy from Silver Stars.

Two people were working there, Eli, the owner, and Ilie, a worker. They had customers coming in regularly, so it seems that they are busy and profitable. There were also a few people playing an RPG at the table.

Eli told me that the bulk of his profits comes from the computer games. The other stuff is less profitable; if it wasn't profitable at all, he wouldn't carry it at all. Eli is happy with the gamers who come to play at the store; they get a place to play and access to the games at a small discount, and he gets the increased business by virtue of ready purchasers in his store, and as the known place to play games in Tel Aviv.

Eli himself plays some computer games and a bit of RPGs, but no board games, CCGs, or miniatures. He claims to be looking at opening a second branch in Haifa by the end of the year. Obviously, this plan is going to be set back a little by the current situation in Haifa. I later found out that he has had this plan for some time already, so I don't know how likely it is to happen. He has no plans to open a store in Jerusalem any time soon.

The Freak store has been around in Tel Aviv for quite some time, but only began carrying board games two or three years ago.

As far as donations or discounting, he didn't look too thrilled with the idea. He says that he could be more generous with the computer games, but that donating or discounting board games would be a difficulty for him. Nevertheless, he still offered me a "25% to 35%" discount on the board games, which I estimate is probably about what he pays for them.

I considered the board games. Even with a discount of 35%, 400 NIS was going to get me two, maybe three, board games, none of which had Hebrew translations. The same 400 NIS I spent last week got me two Monopolies, two Pictionaries, two chess sets, and buckets full of Legos, all with Hebrew instructions where appropriate.

I decided that although ultimately introducing kids to better games was a nice long term goal, in the short term it just didn't make sense to give out so little when I could make a whole lot more kids happier for the same price.

The First Restaurant

At this time, I decided that we could splurge a little for dinner. The mall had a food court where at least two of the places were kosher. If we all got something like a schnitzel sandwich, we would be spending about 70 NIS, which wasn't outrageous.

Unfortunately, Saarya wasn't too thrilled with the offerings, and we decided to go back to one of the places that we had passed on the way. It turned out to be a nice looking dairy restaurant. The price for all three of us now looked like it would be around 130 NIS, but the food would be better, at least.

Unfortunately, Saarya wasn't too thrilled with the offerings. I long ago decided to pick my battles. Saarya had been patient at the safari/zoo, so I wasn't going to start admonishing him for his fussiness here. I was a picky child, so I know what it's like.

We were directed to another meat restaurant called Meatos, also on Weizmann, but in the other direction (past the mall that we had just come from). We went to look at the offerings there; it looked really good, but even more expensive, around 200 NIS for the three of us. Saarya said that it didn't look any better than the first place we were at, and he was now willing to go back there, but I had had enough walking finally, and anyway, I'm a sucker for good food.

The food and the service were both excellent. Really really excellent. A low 4.

A brief aside about my food rating scale:

My scale works as follows:

1 - Inedible. The kind of food where you don't even finish it because you prefer to be hungry that have an upset stomach.

2 - Basic. This covers the Hostel food, fast food places, and quick dinners at home.

3 - Good. This covers good restaurants, normally the most that I can afford. A "1" hamburger tastes like leather. A "2" hamburger tastes like browned meat-like stuff. A "3" hamburger is thicker, has good quality meat, is cooked the way you want it, and tastes like steak.

4 - This is excellent food, restaurant quality that I go to only on expense account, or if someone takes me out. Also first-class airplane food.

5 - There is no kosher 5 class food, as far as I know (maybe the King David restaurant). 5 is from the best restaurants in the world, and would indicate not only perfect food but a unique experience.

End aside

So when I say that the food was low 4 food, for 3 prices, you now know what I'm talking about. The truth is that there were five items priced within our range on the menu, and the rest of it was out of our range. But that was adequate for us.

And that was Sunday. Peace.

The Mall

The next day, Saarya had originally planned to meet some friends, but it didn't pan out, so he ended up coming to the mall with us. It seemed to me that he once again tolerated rather than enjoyed the experience, but he claims to have been happy to go.

We went to Dizengoff Center, because that's where my eldest daughter Ariella always asked to be dropped off when I pass through Tel Aviv, and I trust her finely tuned shopping instincts.

I loathed it. The center is designed in the similar confusing style in which the "new" Tel Aviv central bus station is designed. The floors make big erratic rings around a central open area, while each ring is actually part of a spiral. Each ring is actually a double ring, and there are seemingly randomly located escalators which only go up, sometimes one, sometimes two flights. And there is a second part of the mall which does the same thing. Throughout, there are random nooks and crannies, side passages, sudden ascents or descents, or walkthoughs. And constantly blaring music and advertisements.

It's like Dante designed a mall.

Tal bought herself a few things with money she had made this summer, while Saarya mostly read. He did buy a book. I bought a newspaper. Although I was trying to keep off the grid, I needed something else to read at the beach.

After the mall, we went back to the Hostel and ate lunch. Tal and I played Havoc.

The Beach

The beaches in Tel Aviv are free, but you have to pay for parking. I spent a lot more than I realized, but still not too much, so hey. Also, there was a stack of chairs and umbrellas in a nice pile, and many people were using them. I thought it would be nice to have some, and only knew that I had to pay for "renting" them when a guy came by ten minutes later to collect money. Again, not too much, so I gave it to him, even though we really didn't need them.

The beach in Tel Aviv is really wonderful. There are no rocks, and little litter. The sand slopes out very gradually and the water was warm. It was also slightly less hot out than the day before. Really, a great experience.

It had been a long time since I had been in salt water. I was a little disconcerted by the saltiness on my face. What was fun was the nice medium sized waves that lifted you up every ten seconds or so.

When I got to the newspaper, I read about the dozen solders killed by a missile in the north, and then I found a small condolence message on the bottom right side of the page addressed to the son of my downstairs neighbor, consoling him on the loss of his father.

He had been sick occasionally, I knew, but he had been happy the last time that I saw him (last week), so it was a bit of a shock, as you can imagine.

We were ready to go at 6:30, but I wanted to see the sun set. It probably would have been very beautiful, but clouds completely obscured the sinking, so no go.

The Second Restaurant

We went home late, showered and changed, and were ready to go to find the Chinese restaurant. I remembered it being called China Lee, and on which street. When we got there, at about 9:10, there was a different restaurant called Shang _____ (something) and a meter or two afterwards a big sign saying that China Lee had moved to such and such a place.

I called them, and they couldn't fit us in until at least 10:30 pm. Meanwhile, this restaurant looked ok, still oriental (Thai), and could take us immediately.

Enter restaurant at 9:30. By 10:30, the restaurant had taken our order.

Apparently, as we were told by the nice couple sitting next to us, the new restaurant was under new management. I don't think it was entirely the management's fault - some blame must go to the waiting staff - but it was grossly mismanaged. Waiters and waitresses ran to and fro, and then back again. There sure looked like there were enough of them, and the restaurant was not at all packed. But it took them a freakin' hour to: ignore us, not give us enough dishes, not give us the "crispy" noshy stuff with sauce, not take our order, and then try to take our order again twice. We got the crispies only after our neighbors complained on our behalf to several passing waitresses.

I bet out loud that they would get the order wrong, and while they didn't bring us anything that they shouldn't have, they completely forgot half the order. So we got the main dishes and the rice, but didn't get the soups or egg rolls.

The food: excellent, excellent. Again, a low to medium 4, although this one was slightly pricier, a high 3, so more of a match.

The staff was apologetic after the first hour, at least. One of the waitresses tried to pour water for us into out glasses just to show how apologetic she was. But they didn't offer us any sort of discount. I left a standard tip. I just don't feel right in punishing the waiting staff for poor management.

We came home rather late. So ended Monday.

The Game Importer and the Game Center

I had read in the paper that the Educational Center for Games would be having some game mornings this week, starting Tuesday, from 9:00 to 13:00. I mentioned the EGCI a few months ago when I first found it. It is run by one Helena King (0544 717 314). She evinces no knowledge of the new games, but she has a good heart and spirit when it comes to games. She claims to get high double digits for various activities on occasions, all kids and their parents, of course. The ECGI has been operational for twenty-five years.

I very much wanted to go and meet her, so that was this morning's activity.

To kill another bird, I had also been in contact with Johnathan from Silver Stars, also regarding donations or discounts for games. I very much wanted to meet him, as well.

Johnathan was more forthcoming than Eli from Freak. While Johnathan has exclusive rights for imports, he very much has his eye set on the long term goals of building up the gaming community - the more people play any games, the better. The more they play his games, whether he was involved in it or not, the better ultimately for business.

He goes to events and does demos. He is also organizing Israel's first board game convention which will be later this month. See his site for more details.

He suggested that he could give me a free copy of the Travel edition of Settlers of Catan, and that a 40% discount on a Hebrew translated copy of Citadels would not be too expensive. I asked him for two copies, and arranged to meet him at the EGCI, which would also serve to introduce the two of them to each other.

Helena, it turns out, had just returned from outside of Israel the night before, and was unaware that the advertisements had run about activities in the game center this week, having thought that she had canceled them before she left. She called me at 9:00 in the morning to return my call, and I told her that she was expected at the center and that I would be there soon, too.

We met at 10:00. The EGCI has several rooms. In two rooms are slews and slews of games, mostly old fashioned, with the occasional gem such as some Go boards or a nice copy of Acquire. Several more rooms stock vintage games, such as puzzles from the 1920's, old first edition Hebrew Monopoly sets and so on. Another room has toys, another has a game library with about a thousand books on play, games, and toys (mostly older stuff), and the last room has a workshop for creating new games.

Helena is an old fashioned motherly sort of British woman, very personable. Johnathan showed up a bit later, and he was also very nice.

We talked plans, about hosting activities, demos, coordination, and so on. We talked about Freak and another store that also carries some of the games, Gilad, other games groups such as the two Go game groups, and others who are involved in gaming in whatever capacity. Johnathan was persuasive in trying to get me to come to more Tel Aviv events, especially the one coming up this month. I promised to make an effort.

Johnathan does this full time. Helena is a volunteer. I paid Johnathan for the games and then he had to go, as he was in the middle of translating more RPG books into Hebrew.

Saarya read his book while Tal and I taught Helena how to play Acquire. Tal also needed to be reminded. Tal won by making the most out of mid game mergers. I out-earned her slightly in the end game, but not enough to win. The score was $58k to $46k. Helena had $26k.

Helena is not a "gamer". She spent a lot of the time during the game teasing Tal about cheating (not seriously), or mispronouncing the hotel chain names. To her, games are not about the games, but about laughing and poking fun. She was a little surprised that even Tal played the game with a certain degree of seriousness.

On the other hand, she was cognizant enough to notice that Acquire was a much better game than Monopoly, and her judgment about the relative value of many of the other games around seemed pretty reasonable.

All in all, a productive and fun morning, although, once again, Saarya ended up only reading his book. I donated the Travel Settlers to Helena, since it didn't have Hebrew rules, and thus I couldn't send it up north.

The Negative Note

When we went to find someplace to eat, Saarya again found fault with the first place that I found. He and I got into a little tiff over the issue. He was then impatient to get home. There was one other activity that he would have enjoyed doing - some sort of Chinese circus - but it was only later in the evening and I deemed it too expensive when we went to check it out. In hindsight, it wasn't really that expensive, and I really should have taken them, but my judgment was impaired at the time.

Tal and I went to look at the river one last time while Saarya waited for us, and then we went home. When I got home, I went straight to a shiva call.

Overall, a fun trip. Interesting and different, and mostly enjoyable.

But no missiles. Rats.

Yehuda

Personal losses from the war, so far:

1) My step-daughter Ariella's step-brother Noam lost a good friend.
2) Gila Meyerson, the P.R. person from MaTaN, a place where Rachel works, lost her son.

May there be no more.