Dixit: The Right Game for Non-Gamers

Dixit is a very light social game for 3-6 players (5 is the ideal number, I believe). It's easy to explain, requires minimal "game skill" or concentration, fun, imaginative, and plays in a short time. The components are pretty.

A natural Dixit comparison is to Apples to Apples, but I think a more apt comparison is to Once Upon a Time. Or Barbarosa. I will explain all of them.

Dixit: Each player holds a hand of six cards, each of which contains an imaginative picture with several elements, colors, emotions, and typically a dreamy fantastic scene (like something out of a Dali painting). Players take turns being the active player. On your turn, you lay one of your cards face down and say a phrase, or a word, or a sound, or act out a pantomime that invokes some element of the card. Each other player lays face down a card from his or her hand that also matches your word or phrase. The cards are shuffled and revealed. Each player (except for you) then votes on which card they think you played, or in any case best matches your word or phrase. You cannot vote for your own card.

The twist: The active player only gets points if SOME but not NONE or ALL players vote for his or her card. Each other player gets points if they voted for the active player's card or if someone else voted for their card. Actually, this mechanic is not new (it derives from other, similar games), but it's effective. For example, in Barbarosa, players had to sculpt clay objects for the other players to guess, but they couldn't be too abstract or too easy to guess.

Play is to 30 points.

Every group I have introduced to this game has liked it or loved it. Kids especially love the license to be creative and the challenge of giving clues that point to your card while still allowing the possibility that another card might be chosen.

Apples to Apples: Each player holds a hand of seven red cards, each of which contains a noun: a person, place, object, event, or idea. Players take turns being the active player. On your turn,you turn over a green card, which contains an adjective. Each other player places one of their red cards face down. The cards are shuffled and revealed. The active player selects the red card they think best matches the green card; they can also select the card they think least matches the card or any card that they want (if you play "Claudia Schiffer" on my turn, I will pick it regardless of what the green card says). The person whose red card is selected takes the green card to represent a point, and play is to a pre-determined number of points.

There are a dozen different versions of the game, for different age levels and some subcultures. Most groups like this game the first few times, but tire of playing it with the same people over and over.

This mechanic of players submitting entries from a limited and humorous hand of cards or other items was reused in several games, most notably Cards Against Humanity.

Once Upon a Time: Each player has a hand of 5-10 plot element cards and a story-ending card ("And they lived happily ever after" or similar). The active player tells a story, trying to incorporate the cards in his or her hand, which are played as they are used. If the storyteller rambles, or passes, another player can jump in with his or her own card to continue the story. The player who plays his or her last card and the story-ending card wins.

Mechanically,  Dixit is similar to Apples to Apples (and other games that used the "hazy clue" mechanic) with the card play, rotating active player, best matches etc. The crucial difference is that the creativity in Apples to Apples lies with a) the players selecting a red card that matches the active green card, and b) the selection of the winning card, which can be done with little to no creativity, or even arbitrarily. In contrast, Dixit is similar to Once Upon a Time with the active player required to exercise creativity in order to "play well". Apples to Apples is essentially "closed": the green apples is picked for you and the red apple is chosen from exactly 7 choices. Dixit and Once Upon a Time require open-ended creative expression from the participants.

Dixit scores over Once Upon a Time in many ways, and in fact I can't stand Once Upon a Time (Note that many people disagree with me about this) and I love Dixit. Once Upon a Time is simply a bad concept. The creativity that is required is restricted by the cards you receive, which are cliche fantasy elements. The fun in true creative indulgence works against the goal of winning, which is to narrowly move from card to card in order to end the game and win. Winning, in this case, puts a damper on the process. If you take out the "game" from the game, and just have fun with the story-telling, it's much more fun, and that's what toys like Rory's Story Cubes are all about.

Dixit, in contrast, rewards you for a single bite-sized burst of free-form creativity, and you don't have to be all that creative: the cards make it relatively easy. The amount of creativity required is accessible even to those who are uncomfortable at the thought of having to tell an entire story. All you need is a word, phrase, movie title, sound, etc. Luck plays a factor with any reasonable clue, since the cards played by the other players determine the likelihood that your card stands alone; by then you are no longer in vested in having to sweat. Dixit provides space for elaborate creativity, but doesn't force it.

As a game, Dixit should suffer the same problems that Once Upon a Time does. If you focus hard in Dixit, you can probably cheat your way to victory by simply naming a color. This clue will probably be on some but not all of the played cards, which is exactly what you are hoping for with more elaborate, fanciful clues. But this doesn't happen when you play Dixit. Maybe it's that there is no time limit for giving the clue, and the clue is a single creative act, not an entire story. Maybe I simply played Once Upon a Time wrong.

Both Apples to Apples and Dixit provide all players with options on all turns, which is nice. Dixit provides points to multiple people (multiple wins) on each turn, which is nicer and friendlier. Both games are playable by non-gamers - i.e. people who consider taking games seriously or investing thought in strategy to be a waste of time. Apples to Apples is funnier, because people's red cards often poorly match the green card. But it's all game; the mechanics are everything. Dixit, by providing that element of play - along with some super interesting cards - is more generally likable.

A single box of Apples to Apples is replayable - the replayability suffers if you play repeatedly with the same group, more so than if you play repeatedly with the same components. Dixit is highly replayable with the same group, but needs new cards to keep it fresh (so get some expansions). Without the expansions, the game is still replayable; certainly more replayable than the typical trivia game where the card is useless once it has been seen.

Babylon Translation Tool

As I've written before, I'm doing the Hebrew versions of Apples to Apples, hampered by the fact that my Hebrew is not very good. My plan was to press gang my native Israeli children into supplying the needed cultural references and doing the editing (for pay).

This has proved trickier than I imagined. They are a little more scarce than I imagined, having assumed that the lure of money would be hard for them to resist. Nevertheless, my daughter Tal has made some good efforts on behalf of the project.

The red apples (nouns) fall into two types. The first are common items, for which no specific information is required and I need only come up with a clever quip. This is not so hard, although the Hebrew is still a challenge. The second are the proper names. These are easy to come up with, with the help of Tal and Hebrew Wikipedia, but very laborious to annotate with information, such as years and so on. As a result, the red apples are languishing a bit.

The green apples (adjectives) proved trickier than I had imagined, also, since I didn't have a Hebrew thesaurus lying around.

Babylon Translation Software

However, I just downloaded an awesome piece of software that made the job of creating the green apples a breeze: Babylon.

Essentially, Babylon is a pop up window which works in any application giving me not only Hebrew to English or English to Hebrew translation of whatever I'm selecting, it also includes a comprehensive Hebrew thesaurus. It is the exact tool I needed. I didn't even know about the thesaurus part when I downloaded it, but wow, is it helpful.

With Babylon's help, I created 250 green cards in just a few hours. Many of the Hebrew adjectives I could come up with myself. These I click and then select three appropriate synonyms (sometimes I came up with my own synonyms rather than the suggested ones, but rarely). When I had an English adjective that I wanted to use but didn't know the Hebrew, I entered it in English, found the Hebrew equivalent, and then found the synonyms for the Hebrew word.

Of course, I had Tal looking over my shoulder to ensure that I didn't make any stupid errors in forms or tenses that would make a Hebrew speaker laugh his or her head off. And of course, I will be passing the entire list through one or two more native Hebrew speakers before submitting the cards.

But what looked like many many hours of work turned into a breeze. I'm currently using the free trial version; I assume it will prompt me to buy it eventually.

Thanks, Babylon.

Yehuda

(I have no relation to the company, by the way. I'm just a happy user.)

Weekend Gaming

In my post about how I became a professional blogger, I neglected a few other sources of income:

- Reviews: two reviews, for an average of $35 each.
- Donations: three donations, between $15 to $35.
- Selling copies of my game prototype and funneling people through to buy my game; another side-effect of blogging.

Apples to Apples

We had guests for dinner, including a single mom and her three children ages 15 to 22. They are not game players, but somehow I managed to convince the mom and her oldest to try out Apples to Apples a bit after dinner. Tal, Eitan, and Rachel joined us.

A2A has been known to melt pretty hard non-game-player hearts, but, although she did a fair amount of laughing, she blamed this more on the Chardonnay than the game itself.

We played with the party box sized regular edition of A2A; this is the first time I used this version, having only previously played with other versions or the original smaller regular edition. I recommend this one over the original edition which they no longer make anyway.

Like everyone else, mom and daughter weren't happy with any proper noun cards they drew into their hands and discarded them in favor of other cards. I'm beginning to think that these cards are simply uninteresting, no matter what edition.

Blokus

After lunch I played Blokus with Tal. The last time I had a copy of this game I wasn't particularly thrilled with the two-player variant of two colors each, but this time I really warmed to it. Still, just as well play two-player with the travel edition.

Puerto Rico

Nadine invited Rachel and I over for our oft-afternoon game of Puerto Rico.

I was second player and Rachel was third. I deliberately wrecked the standard opening moves, picking Mayor on turn 1 and Settler on turn 2; the net result was short turn loss for me, and I figured that was the way it was going to end.

Rachel decided to try her own variant strategy of Hospice and University. Hospice is actually pretty good with our tweak of allowing you to move a colonist onto it when you buy it. But University still sucked, even at 7 and coming pre-manned. It's all the other buildings you give up when you buy it.

As a result, Nadine looked like she was heading towards victory. However, I made some huge surges in the last five rounds or so, aided by having a coffee monopoly, a strong Harbor and Discretionary Hold, and some good choices. I'm not sure where Nadine stumbled, but she must not have shipped enough, as even with a Harbor she ended with many fewer victory points than me.

I took the game 65 to 57 to 52.

Game News

The United Methodist youth in Nashville are attempting to break the Operation board game world record of 1:02 minutes.

More merging in the game business, as University Games buys Upstarts.

The Lansing State Journal covers pirate games with some surprisingly good choices.

Yehuda

Flak Magazine on Board Games

Flak Magazine

Flak Magazine has just posted a series of introductory articles on board gaming, including one about Puerto Rico from yours truly. Other articles by JonMichael Rasmus, James Norton, J. Daniel Janzen, and Matthew Baldwin.

Hebrew Apples to Apples

Last night I was visited by the folks of Kinder Shpiel, makers of Jewish and Yiddish board games including Apples to Apples Yiddish Edition. We talked about what is needed for a Hebrew edition (actually, several editions), and I'm going to be trying to make the cards for the first one. Along with the help of my teenage children and all of their friends.

I also played The Menorah Game with them, and they loved it. I hope it will inspire them to create more games for adults; most of their product line is kid's games.

Links

My last post (5 games you need to play) is part of Problogger's latest group writing project. A prize of $1001 will be handed out to one random participant.

One of the first entries was from Classic Kids Games, who is running their own group writing project for a post on how to play your favorite game. They're also handing out $250 worth of prizes.

Bernie DeKoven has a new Junkyard Sports community, where readers can contribute new ways to play outdoor games.

The Hamilton Spectator covers the Great Canadian Baycon Convention.

And in our continuing coverage of the world's most dangerous game and its twisted players, here's a guy sitting on death row for murdering his Chess opponent. (source)

Yehuda

Viral Marketing Board Games

It's Alive

I've been thinking of ways to viral market my game It's Alive. It's being produced by Reiver Games in the UK, but only in a limited edition of 300. Jack cuts and assembles all the games himself to assure the high-quality of the finished product.

So, OK, 300 copies of the games will sell and they'll be great. But how can I get 3,000 copies of the games printed and sold? Or 300,000 copies?

Right now, it would technically do no good to get more than 300 pre-orders for the game, or even 300 pre-orders for the game, because Jack needs time to print and cut them all. So I have to consider the timing of the marketing.

But, imagine that Jack did get 300 pre-orders in a few weeks. Or 3,000.

I'm not entirely happy that only 300 games will be produced, and at this speed. I want to sell lots and lots of copies. I want the game to sit in toy stores around the world and have licensed Star Wars and Pokemon versions. I want them produced with poor-quality components and available on sale for $7. Like every other chump game-designer with a dream, I want the proverbial "next Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit".

I'm totally thrilled that the game is going to print, of course. And I should be happy that it's going to be made so nicely, even though it will be targeted at a smaller audience. But I have so many ideas for marketing that I don't get to use, now.

What's a designer to do?

If you're going to be in York this Wednesday evening, you can do a fresh playtest of the game. Playtesters get free beer (I think this was implied, but do confirm) and 20% off the purchase price of the game.

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is selling a story attached to a product. In other words, you don't show your product with a lot of happy people playing it. You show a great story that happens to include your product. People with no particular interest in the product will share the story.

The story spreads, and as a side result, you get advertisement beyond what money can buy. Think Coke and Mentos.

I was thinking of making a funny video with my game, or some funny advertisements.

I was thinking of a treasure hunt, where each copy of my game would include a clue on a piece of paper. In this case, the people who own copies of the game would have to communicate to solve the puzzle, thereby forming a community.

Or, similar to the above, each game included a rule to a global game of Haggle, where even people who didn't buy the game could play.

So many ideas, and no products to implement them for. Sigh.

Apples to Apples Jewish Edition

I went to my cousins for dinner and my brother David and co for lunch and the afternoon. Tal and Saarya were with me.

In the evening, we playtested Apples to Apples - Jewish Edition with my cousins. Naturally, the only issue is how it compares to the Regular Version.

Well, not so great. As I mentioned earlier, a friend of mine playtested it and liked it slightly more than the regular edition because of the Jewishy expressions. I actually missed the more universal and therefore flexible cards. Specific cards, like people, are harder to play.

And the people in the general edition are universally known, and therefore have well-known personalities that you can match against types of cards. The Jewish cards are less well-known, and therefore less useful to play, because people don't know who they are.

I guess they are supposed to be educational. E.g. you get to explain to your children who Sandy Koufax is. But educational cards do not make for good Apple cards.

There are also a few editing problems, in words mis-spelled and poorly chosen descriptive text. They probably should also have made a new Jewishy picture for the apples. It's not bad, and we had fun playing it just like the original, but if I had my choice I would stick to the original, I think.

By the way, I received this copy free-of-charge as a review copy directly from the publisher.

Day of Games

With my brother and family the next day we played a whole bunch of games. I taught my brother and his eldest how to play Power Grid. It looked like either Saarya or I was winning, but David squeaked out a surprise victory at the end after both Saarya and I made some careless mistakes near the end. They both enjoyed the game.

Meanwhile, Tal played Havoc with the younger kids and managed to do her usual win by winning the final three rounds with straight-flushes. They then played Settlers of Catan. My nephew won that one. Both games were well-received.

After that, we seemed to have trouble dividing people into two groups, as everyone wanted to play the same game that everyone else was playing. I have this problem with my game group, too.

Anticipating a larger game group I had brought Saboteur, which we played with eight people. This one also went over well, and my sister-in-law even joined us. I changed the cave in card to only affect the last card of a tunnel, and not somewhere in the middle, which gives the dwarves a slightly better chance.

However, there was unanimous agreement that nobody liked the scoring mechanism.

After that was done, there was some more milling around trying to figure out what to play, until a deck of cards was brought out and I finally learned how to play Spades.

Spade is a cross between Oh Hell and Tichu; my daughter knows both of these games, and had no problem picking up Spades on her first play. Like almost all partnership card games, it's a lot of fun. We couldn't finish an entire set, but we were pretty close to tied by the end of the game.

Game News

Stephanie Joyce sent me this link to folk art game of Snakes and Ladders which just sold for $64,000.

Matthew Marquand describes his son's experience with his class over a board game design project.

Plenty of people have reviewed the new Settlers on XBox, including Team XBox.

Lucky You, the latest movie revolving around poker, isn't getting hot reviews.

The Eye Judgment is to be a trading card game that comes with a special webcam. In order to play, you hold your card up to the camera, and the corresponding mechmonster appears as if it's standing on your hand on your monitor. (source)

Yehuda

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

Session Report, in which we play around with the cards from the American Jewish edition of Apples to Apples

The latest Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club session report is up here. Games played: Cosmic Encounter, Power Grid, San Juan, Tichu, Bridge.

Jewish Educational Toys was kind enough to send me an evaluation copy of Apples to Apples Jewish Edition. I asked them for a list of cards, and they send me the game; sweet.

I haven't played it yet, so I can't give a review. But we did look at the cards.

Obviously, when you are producing a game like this, you have a number of fine lines to walk: between being funny and being offensive, between being ethnic and being stereotyping, between including content for different levels of knowledge and observance.

And of course, we had our opinions as to when they crossed over the wrong sides of these lines in either direction. Before I get to that in a future post (and after communicating with JET first), let me only note:

- The cards are American cultural Jewish. All personalities are American Jews.
- Many of the cards are yiddishisms that would be familiar to New York Jews, or followers of stereotypical portrayals of ethnic Jewish characters from television. E.g. a green card "Meshuganeh", or a red card "B'shert".
- About a third of the cards are not specifically Jewish in nature, but simply filler cards.
- The production is good quality and the rules still dirt simple.

David took the game home to test with his family.

Yehuda

Weekend Gaming

First of all, I would like to apologize to the writer of most-expensive.net . He wrote a small post about the two most expensive chess sets that got Dugg about a zillion times, while my post about the top ten most expensive board games got Dugg only 6 times (now 9 times).

In a fit of frustration, bad manners, and probably envy, I called his site a "spam" site after a cursory glance at his post (it looked like a spam site to me), and then proceeded to wonder out loud on Digg as to why his post would get Dugg a zillion times and mine didn't.

My attack was inexcusable and rude. Most-expensive.net is not a spam site, and I'm very sorry for writing that. Furthermore, if I don't get Dugg, that's my problem, not his.

Scrabble

We'll start with a game of Scrabble I played earlier in the week with Rachel. I got the Z, Q, X, J, K, two S's, and both blanks, the last two at the same time. I'm assuming that you can guess the results of that game.

Let's move on to the game I played Friday night with both Rachel and Tal, my 14 year old. Tal is still a beginner to Scrabble, and thus she and I decided to play without points.

Rachel was aghast. I think her brain began to explode.

She kept wondering what the point of the game was if she didn't know if she was winning or not. She put down words and tried to taunt me that it wasn't her best word because it didn't matter, and then she was confused when that didn't seem to bother me. In case you couldn't figure this out, she's kind of competitive.

I was happy that my first word was HACKER.

Tal's Gang

Tal had a gang of friends over and they played Apples to Apples, and then followed it up with The Menorah Game. They all like the game wished that I wasn't changing the theme.

Puerto Rico

Rachel and I played as shabbat went out. We played with:

• Assembly Line 1/1 - All your production buildings have additional circle.
• Poorhouse 2/1 - +1 GP if you have 0 or 1 GP after building.
• Small Fashion District 2/1 - +2 GP for trading indigo.
• Small Warehouse 3/1 - Store all barrels of one good.
• Irrigation 4/2 - +1 barrel of one good you produced.
• Commodity Exporters 5/2 - +1 VP when shipping indigo or sugar.
• Large Market 5/2 - +2 GP for trade.
• Discretionary Hold 6/2 - 1. Store 3 barrels of any combination of goods. 2. Place 1 barrel on each full ship for +1 VP.
• Factory 7/3 - +0/1/2/3/5 GP for producing 1/2/3/4/5 goods.
• Large General Workhouse (2 circles) 8/3 - Produce any barrels with matching plantations.
• Large Business 8/3 - 1. -1 GP cost for each building. 2. +1 VP if you ship, once per Captain phase.
• Wharf 9/3 - Load once onto your own ship of infinite capacity.
• Metalworkers 10/4 - +2 GP/quarry.
• Reserves 10/4 - +2 VP/good on your board.
• Fortress 10/4 - +1 VP/3 colonists.
• City Hall 10/4 - +1 VP/indigo building.
• Custom's House 10/4 - +1 VP/4 shipping points.

It was an unusual game in that every single building, with the exception of Large Business, Wharf, Coffee Roaster, and Metalworkers was bought. Yes, including all of the 4 to 6 cost buildings. I think I finally have some good replacements for Office.

--

JSGC Games Day is being planned for Wed, April 4. Come one come all.

Yehuda

Weekend Gaming

My Mantra: It Can't Be Done

We dropped a barfing dog off at my daughter's mechina program on the way to the SPNI field school at Ein Gedi at which we would be staying for the weekend.

Check in wasn't until 3:00 pm, so those of us who arrived early hiked up and around some of the famous trails of Ein Gedi. Our trail up was Nahal David, named after King David, as this was the very trail he hid among while hiding from Saul.

I'm getting older; I admit it. I'm only thirty-seven, but I'm not as dexterous, energetic, and aerobic as I once was. And of course, the less I exercise, the harder I find it to start again.

One thing I know, however, is that I can get over the hump and then keep going for a long time. I simply have to expect that my first few hours of activity look like this:

+ Walk a bit
+ Sit and rest
+ Walk a bit less
+ Sit and rest
+ Walk a bit less
+ Sit and rest
+ Want to go back
+ Walk a bit more

After which I can pretty much walk for several hours straight.

To keep me going, I use a mantra for inspiration. It goes as follows; you might want to try this yourself:

"I can't do it. It's impossible. I'm too tired. I'll never make it. This is pointless. It can't be done. I hate this. I'm a total failure. ..."

And so on, for until I get over the hump. Later on, when my companion needs a rest, while I am ready for tireless walking, the mantra is:

"What's your problem? You want to rest already? I'm not tired, I could keep walking for another few hours. What great air! I feel great. ..."

Which pretty much makes me an all-around pain-in-the-ass.

It was this persevering attitude that allowed me to cross-hike the Appalachian trail, however. A subject for another post.

Modern Parlor Games are Victorian Parlor Games

I didn't feel like hanging out with the grownups Saturday morning, so I went to find the children at play.

I'd been telling these kids that I play games, teach game, have lots of games, and so on. This was generally met by skepticism and funny looks by the kids. So mostly this morning, I simply watched to see what they were doing.

It turns out that the games they play today are simply repeats of the same games we've been playing for more than two hundred years.

They played "Broken Telephone", which wasn't called that before the twentieth century, of course, but was played under a different name. Broken Telephone is where a message is passed around a circle to see how garbled it becomes when it gets back to its originator.

They played "Hide the Ring", where one group either passes or pretends to pass an object between them, and then the second group has to guess who really has it.

They played "Red-Light-Green-Light", although they called it something different in Hebrew, and the current name I give the game is also not its original name. One person counts to three and spins around, trying to catch the others sneaking up on him or her. When caught, the caught players must step back three steps.

And so on.

Which doesn't mean that I was no use, at all. I would occasionally suggest some variants to the games. For instance, for Broken Telephone I suggested passing multiple messages simultaneously, in one or opposite directions, to make things a little more challenging. Just one example.

The Real Gaming Begins

Rachel went on another hike on Saturday afternoon, which allowed me to ply my trade.

Actually, I was on my way to rest and read the newspaper, when I passed the same group of children desperately in need of my help. For crying out loud, they were playing War.

I offered, and they accepted. I said, "Wait right here, and Dr Games will return in a moment." I returned with my box of brought games.

One of the girls recognized Apples to Apples, so we played a game of that. Since there were only four players at any one time, I added a random card from the deck on each round. The deck almost won, too.

We tired of that. One of the other girls recognized the game Set, and I sent them along to play with that, asking them to return when they were done. They returned about ten minutes later asking to play something else.

I brought out For Sale and we played first a five-player and then a six-player game of that. They loved it, and asked for another game.

So we played several rounds of Pit, which they also loved. We continued with Pit until Nadine came over to play Puerto Rico with Rachel and me.

Each game, I suggested that they can play on their own, but they wanted me to play with them. All-in-all, I think I finally convinced them that I was serious about games. It was a fun afternoon.

Puerto Rico

I reintroduced Harbor to the game, as in our previous few games nobody had bought the replacement building I usually place there, Large Business. Unfortunately, Harbor proved as unbalancing as it always has been. Nadine overlooked buying it in favor of Factory, and as a result was unable to use her Factory successfully before the shipping points ran out.

I was playing third, and I had a pretty good start. Rachel and my Harbors fed off each other, but I also had coffee in front of Rachel and a few early victory points for third position. So I ended with an easy victory.


Aside from the games, it was a lovely weekend, with nice company, fresh air, and nice accommodations and food. Nadine played a major role in organizing the trip, and we were all grateful to her.

Yehuda

P.S. Jack has a few preliminary sketches up for It's Alive.

Apples to Apples

Apples to Apples, by Out of the Box Publishing, is one of the stars of the new wave of board gaming. And it's not a strategy game; it's a party game.

How to Play

The concept is dirt simple:

• Each player gets a hand of 7 random nouns (red apple cards), e.g. Marilyn Monroe, surfing, dirt, ...
• Players take turns acting as judge.
• The judge flips an adjective (green apple card) - e.g. bright, scary, important, ... - and each player must play one of his or her nouns face down.
• The judge mixes the face-down nouns and flips them over. He or she chooses the one that matches the adjective best, according to his or her completely subjective opinion.
• The player who played the chosen red apple card wins the green apple card.
• All players pick back up to 7 cards and the judge rotates.
• Play until someone wins a certain number of apples, or you get tired.

Why it's Popular

There are several reason that this game is so popular:

• There is no writing, just cards.
• The game is trivially easy to learn. You can pick it up just watching one or two rounds.
• People can join or leave any time during the game without disrupting the game.
• The judges decision is entirely subjective; therefore, no one can really plan to win, or very much cares whether they win the game. Most people forget that there is a game at all, and just play round by round. Yet there's still excitement every round.
• The forced combinations of cards can be as funny or as your group allows it to be.
• Even though you'll eventually get through the cards, it is not each individual card that is funny, but the combinations, which are limitless.
• Although, most cards have a pretty funny quote on them.

On the downside, your group can't take itself too seriously; there's no real tactical way to win, so it's really more of an amusing pastime than a game. Also, for me, a grizzled strategy game player, once I've played several rounds with one group of players, I'm not really interested in the game anymore. In contrast, my teenage daughter and her friends can play hour after hour, week after week, having a blast every time. It helps that they pretend that when you win a green card, the adjective must reveal something about your true personality.

Versions

Anyhow, Out of the Box is capitalizing on having a hit and is working on several new versions of the game.

I'm not talking expansion cards, which they have, of course. I'm talking cultural versions. Because that is one of the other downsides to the original game: the cards are very American culture-specific. Therefore, unless you were familiar with American culture, you could have a difficult time understanding some of the cards.

To solve this, OotB now has culture-specific version of the game, including:

• Kids
• Junior
• British Isles (developed in conjunction with David Westnedge)
• Bible (developed by Cactus Game Design)
• German (developed by Pegasus Spiele)
• Yiddish (developed by Kinder Shpiel, and equivalent to the Junior version)
• Jewish (developed in conjunction with Jewish Educational Toys)
• Hebrew (in development by Kinder Shpiel)
• LDS (in development)

For the LDS version, you can go to their website now and submit card ideas. You may win a free copy of the new version.

Hebrew Versions

Regarding the Hebrew version, JET was kind enough to promise to send me a copy of the game. I'll give a review when it arrives.

I just got off the phone with Kinder Shpiel. Apparently they are planning not only an equivalent Hebrew version to the above Yiddish version, but also adult versions of both Yiddish and Hebrew, as well as both "secular" and "religious" Hebrew versions.

I offered him my help on the Hebrew versions - for the secular stuff, I think I can volunteer my teenagers with the promise of free copies of the game. I'll let you know if anything comes of it.

Yehuda

Session Report Up, in which I diss Stephenson's Rocket

The latest Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club session report is up here. Games played include: Chrononauts, Power Grid, Zertz, Cosmic Encounter, Stephenson's Rocket, Grave Robbers From Outer Space, Bridge.

The report is up, although some parts are still incomplete.

We held first plays of Chrononauts and Stephenson's Rocket. I was unimpressed by the latter, although I'm willing to try again. I also discovered a problem with Zertz not covered in the rules. Turns out it was covered in the rules.

Game News

ITNews talks generally about a new algorithm to help computers improve at Go.

OnMilwaukee discovers Apples to Apples and calls it "a game of strategy". Indiana's Ball State News Daily also discovers Apples to Apples, as well as iMAgiNiff.

The Orlando Sentinel discusses cheating. "We live in a society in which obtaining a goal or an end becomes more important than how you go about obtaining it."

Yehuda

Jerusalem Touring and Gaming with Chris Brooks

Sorry, Chris has all the pictures, which you'll probably eventually see on his blog.

Our weekend plans were:

- Tour old city on Friday morning
- Go to lunch after the tour
- Go back to my house and game a little, if time permitted
- Synagogue
- Dinner
- Game
- Chris sleeps over and then heads to the airport on Saturday morning

Not everything went according to plan, but it was still a great time.

Tour Start and Guide

I arrived at 9:05 and met the tour guide I had picked out for them. I thought I might be late, but it turns out that Chris and co had traffic and the usual navigation problems crossing Jerusalem and didn't arrive until 9:45.

The tour guide, Ellie, turned out to be a nice guy and a competent tour guide, easily navigating through centuries of history and geological and political facts.

Arab Market

Since 2000, I haven't been to any predominantly Arab areas, anywhere, least of all the Arab market in the old city. I have heard too many stories about tourists or Jews getting attacked. It turns out that Jews and certainly tourists still walk through there regularly, especially residents of other parts of the old city. The market is almost on the border of the Jewish (and Armenian) quarter(s).

I first thought that maybe I should take off my kippah, but after a short time I realized that it wasn't necessary.

The market is packed to overflowing with beautiful clothing and wares, and most of them are reasonably priced. Of course, any price that they start off with is literally fifteen or twenty times the price they are willing to accept, with the exception of basics such as spices or food.

Chris will tell you all about it, I'm sure.

My Bad

One of the things that I forgot when I accepted his invitation to accompany them on the tour were the numerous things that I wouldn't be able to do, that they can do. Such as: eating anywhere they want, or going into churches.

When they went into the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, for instance, I sat outside. And again when they stopped for lunch. I think they felt a little bad for me, and I felt a little bad for them having to feel bad for me, and in the latter case, for the manager of the restaurant who I wasn't trying to insult.

Chess, Backgammon, and Thirty-One

During lunch, I wandered around a little bit. One thing they sell all over the market in great amounts are these awesomely beautiful Chess and Backgammon boards. One was so beautiful that I had to take pictures of it (on Chris's camera). Of course, the owner wanted to sell it to me. He started at $700, and was down to $200 when I left him desperately trying to get me to at least agree to a starting point for negotiation.

By the way, they play at least five different games on a Backgammon board. I observed two fellows playing "Thirty-One". The rules are similar to Backgammon, with the following changes. You start will all of your pieces on your first space (1 or 24). You move similar to Backgammon, including doubles. You cannot take off any pieces; a single opponent's piece blocks a space. One would think that this would make for less strategic play, but the ability to impede your opponent's movement is greater.

Big Yellow Taxi

There is, of course, so much to see in the Old City, and they were enjoying the tour so much, that they decided to continue with the tour for longer than planned. That left two problems.

One was that I had to get home before shabbat; it was already 2:30 and shabbat started at 4:30. And two, they only had use of the parking garage until 3:00 and had to move their car.

Chris decided to take us to the car while the others continued with the guide. He dropped me and his luggage off at my house and then returned to the tour.

Rather than walk to the car, we decided to take a quick taxi ride over to the car, i.e. from the Golden gate to Jaffa gate. About two minutes.

Unfortunately, we had to refuse the first taxi who wanted to take us for 40 NIS; not only a ridiculously high fee, but illegal not to use the meter. He agreed reluctantly to drop to 35 NIS and started yelling at me when I went to another cab.

Then, according to Chris, he turned to him and said "You're a Christian and he's a Jew; what are you doing together?" Lovely. Of course, he thought I was a tourist because I have an American accent.

The cab fair, on the meter, was 16 NIS.

Dinner

Chris returned at 6:00, in time for dinner. He missed a rolicking good time at my synagogue, too bad.

The others also stepped in for a few hellos, and then they were off. Also over for dinner were three of my kids (all except for Ariella) and Nadine and two of her kids. We had a nice dinner, and then Adam came over at 8:00 as we were winding up.

Games

Chris delivered the game I had shipped to him: Tichu, San Juan (for Josh), Saboteur, Lost Cities, Children of Fire, and Wildlife. I am going to try to save some of them for Hanukkah.

He also delivered a new copy of Sunriver's newest game, 24/7. But first, I wanted to inflict him with my game another time, using my new reprinting.

This was a good thing, because it got him out of playing Puerto Rico with Rachel and Nadine; the last time he was here was also the last time he had played Puerto Rico, and on that occasion he was toasted soundly. So he owes me a favor.

The Menorah Game

We played this, and it confirmed the rather odd thing I had discovered about the game: it is best with three players. It's still good with four and two, but best with three.

Saarya played with us. I took the game, and then Chris requested that we play another one. Saarya narrowly won that one, followed by Chris, with me in third. Since KC had the copy of the game I had given them last time, I was happy to give Chris a copy for himself, with the promise that he would play it occasionally.

24/7

We played without the printed rules (which Chris had forgotten), and therefore without the theme which appeared to be completely irrelevant to the game.

Essentially, there are forty tiles, four of each numbered 1 to 10. There is a 7x7 board, with a center square and 8 locations marked "x2". Each time it is your turn, you place a tile and pick a tile. You may not place a tile such that any line of tiles formed with that one totals more than 24.

You score for placing a tile which does any of the following:

- the entire line of tiles adds to 7 (e.g. a 3 placed next to a 4, and no other tiles extend the line) [2 points]
- the entire line of tiles adds to 24 [4 points]. After doing that, you cap the ends with some stones to show that other tiles can't be placed.
- forms a run of 3 or more [the length of the run]
- forms a kind of 3 or 4 [5 or 6 points]
- is the 7th tile in a line [6 points]
- forms both a 7 and a 24 [12 points, total]

If the tile you placed was also on a "x2" you double your bonus. Game continues until no one can play a tile.

The game is a nice game, even easier than Havoc. It is not a brain burner, although you have to look each and every direction that tiles might score. The odds are great that on most of your turns you can score something, and creating a sum of 24 is not difficult.

I liked it enough to want to see if there was more depth to the game. The first game we played resulted in long walls of locations where we couldn't play anything, so there wasn't much to think about most of the time, at least for me.

To tell the truth, my first thought was "Oh, I could play this with Rummikub tiles." And my second was "I wonder if you could award special bonus points for the way the markers are placed on the board after a line of 24 is made."

Since the Puerto Rico game was ending, and we were going to be four people, we didn't play again. After my first play, I gave it a 7.

I played again the next day with daughter Tal, 13, and she liked it. I also liked it better the next day as a two-player game. You have more control and the (very slight) possibility of setting up moves. I upped my rating to 7.5 . It scores higher for kids, and is a good means of drilling simple math skills.

I'm not sure, but it might also be a little better to play with less tiles in hand, as I felt it was too easy to score points.

One definite problem: the box is way too big, by a factor of 2.5 or so, like El Grande's box. Chris says that they should have fixed that before going to production.

Puerto Rico

Rachel won by at least ten points over the next player. No surprise.

Tichu

Since we had 4 (Chris, Adam, Nadine, and me), and Adam and Nadine like Bridge, Chris taught us Tichu, which I had bought solely on it's reputation.

I have to say that I was nervous about it. It plays with a mechanic that other game that I don't like use, such as The Great Dalmuti, President, and so on. On each trick, one person leads an X, and everyone else has to play a higher X until someone can't. The last person to play takes the trick and leads again. First one out of cards wins. If that's the whole game, I wasn't going to like it.

I was very happily surprised that instead enough kinks were thrown into the game to make it into a very good game. For one thing, there are several wild cards that do various things. Second, it's a partnership game, which is always more fun. Thirdly, the game goes until only one person is left with cards. Fourth, even after you've taken a trick, there is the possibility you will lose the collected points.

All in all, there are many subtle strategy points, and I liked it.

One thing that bemused Chris: Like Hearts, you pass cards to other players, although in this case it's only one card to each other player. Nevertheless, Adam and I immediately started working on passing signals, which is pretty hard when you only have one card to pass. But we stuck to it, anyway. Chris thought we were aliens.

We played four hands, and Adam and I were ahead, so it must work. :-) I called and make Tichu on the last hand.

Saturday

Saturday morning, Chris decided to go to Bethlehem while we were in synagogue, and he returned at lunch time. Even though he was supposed to leave, he stayed around and ate a bit with us before taking off.

Another lovely visit, and I hope to be able to reciprocate by visiting him in Oregon, some day.

Apples to Apples

Later that night, Ariella, Tal, Yoav (Ariella's boyfriend) and I played Apples to Apples. It was pretty fun. I had managed to collect Powerful, Patriotic, Idiotic, and Corrupt, which made me all set to declare my presidency, but then I acquired Thoughtful (or something like that) so I had to give that up.

Yehuda

"One has a stronger hand when there's more people playing your same cards."

Links

Gosh, so many links, I don't know where to start.

Let's start with the title quote, which is some sound strategic card playing advice from our American president, George W. Bush. This quote, as well as many other well-known sayings of his, is also an exemplary example of fine grammar.

The above was quoted on a recent Daily Show, which also provided a reference to Kuma War Games, a site that specializes in bringing out games about real world conflicts with as little time lag as possible. In one instance, they were even able to bring out a game about a conflict while it was still happening, so you could shoot bloody murder on your screen while real people were also dying at the same time. What fun!

For other news on war games, here's a large site I managed to overlook until now, The Wargamer.

Speaking of overlooking, I missed this lovely article back in July, about obsessive board gamers (Euro gamers, actually) flunking out of school.

A Frederiscksburg, VA newspaper waxes nostalgic about board and card games.

A Fort Wayne newspaper informs us about the Bible version of Apples to Apples and a slew of really bad Jewish board games,

Here we have some Gothic themed paper board games (scroll down).

Wikipedia has a game themed version called eGamia. Most of the entries are about video games, but they have some entries about board games. The entries could use some fleshing out.

Meanwhile, some Scottish children are being taught to play Chess in nursery school at the age of three.

Books

The Greatest Games of All Time by Matthew Costello is a nice book and a great read, with stories about games from history. It's from 1991, so it's knowledge of video games ends with Nintendo and it's knowledge of board games ends with Sid Sackson. One whole chapter is devoted to Miniature Golf, which only after you think about it do you remember that, yes, it used to be a "craze" in America.

Most chapters also contain games that you can photocopy and play, including versions of classic games and some unique variants.

I asked Tom Vasel about his books with George Phillies (here and here). Tom says:

One of the books contains about half of my interviews, the other contains 126 of my rules explanations from reviews. George comments in and around both books. Both books are aimed at video game designers, in an attempt to broaden their horizons by looking at designing in a different medium - board games.

Local News

Gilad of Modiin will be hosting a games evening this Tuesday evening.

Nadine has sent me the files she used to create the Jewish themed version of Ra. If you wanted a copy, email me. The files are about 1MB altogether.

Yehuda

Weekend Gaming

First of all, my second boing from Boing Boing (for the previous article) is producing very different traffic patterns from the first one.

Last time, most of the traffic was directly from boingboing.net or from a Spanish equivalent microservios.com . This time the majority of traffic is coming from livejournal users reading BB as a feed using the "friends" feature. How strange. Are there so many new livejournal users? So many livejournal readers who read BB? So many people who no longer read BB on their web site? Or is this just a weekend traffic pattern?

Anyhoo ...

There was a lot of gaming this weekend at my house. I taught Tal how to play two-player Pinochle, one of the few reasonably good mainstream two-player cards games that I know. We also hosted guests for the weekend: David and Evida (non-gamers) and their daughter Adi.

Tal and Adi played many games, including Gin Rummy, Set, Oh Hell, Havoc, and Yinsh.

For Saturday lunch we had even more guests: Avi, Shari, and Amitai. Avi I had introduced to Settlers of Catan many years ago and they still often play it at their house. I haven't quite gotten him past it to new games, yet, although his kids have played a few other games, here and there. I had some success today.

First off, I got David (a minor miracle) and Avi and Adi and Tal playing Apples to Apples. Everyone loved it, even David. Amitai and Saarya joined for a second round of it later in the afternoon.

I also got in a game of Taj Mahal with Avi, Amitai, Saarya, and Tal. I've always maintained that Havoc bears a strong resemblance to this game, and Tal and Adi both confirmed that as soon as we started playing. Tal played with the same strategy she uses to play (and win) Havoc, which is saving up for the last battles.

This doesn't work quite as well in Taj Mahal, since points are cumulative depending on what you earned in previous rounds. Nevertheless, she came in a reasonably close second to me. I did very well because I managed to arrange, from the fourth turn onwards, to have an entire hand with only one suit of cards for the entire game. The scores were actually pretty close until the end of round 9 or so, and then I pulled ahead, followed by Tal. Great game.

Later, I arranged for Tal, Adi, Amitai, and Saarya to play Modern Art, which Amitai won. Both Tal and Adi said that it reminded them of Masterpiece. They would have played Masterpiece, too, if it wasn't already too late.

Meanwhile, I played Puerto Rico with Rachel and Nadine. I swapped in a few buildings on low rotation. The building set was:

• Wildcat Strikers 1/1: At the beginning of any round, you can sacrifice this building and return the colonists on it to the supply in order to change one of the phases this round into Prospector instead of its usual function.
• Small Fashion District 2/1: Trade indigo at +2.
• Forest House 2/1: You may take a Forest during Settler. Pay 1 less per building if you have 1/3/5/7/... Forests. [This is slightly upped from the official version. The ability to block someone else's plantation pick is removed. And I never play with both this and Hacienda. Also, see Beachfront.]
• Small Warehouse
• Guest House
• Large Market
• Office
• Beachfront 6/3: You may take a Forest during Settler. You have a "wharf" with a capacity equal to the number of Forests that you own.
• Factory
• Large Business 8/3: Pay 1 less for any building. Earn 1 bonus VP if you ship anything during Captain (once per Captain, not once per shipment).
• Large General Workhouse 8/3 (2 circles): Each occupied location on LGW produces any type of good when matched with an occupied plantation of that type.
• Wharf
• Cathedral 10/4: +1 VP/3 red building VPs.
• Distillery 10/4: +2 VP/sugar plantation (max +8).
• Fortress
• Custom's House
• City Hall

After I described the new Forest House and Beachfront, Rachel jumped for it, even forgoing the standard Settler/Quarry opening to take a Forest House. Unfortunately, taking too many Forests can also severely hinder your resource production, which is what it did for Rachel, especially since Settler was only taken six times during the game.

The game was very strange, all along. Nobody produced coffee. Nadine had a monopoly on Tobacco. I took Factory and Wildcat Strikers. After using WS to prevent anyone from shipping one round, in order to ensure that I had a good position for the boats, I almost ended up buying it again, which can't happen during a normal game of PR.

I produced and shipped a lot of barrels. Both Rachel and Nadine build Large Businesses. Nadine ended with more shipping VP's because of that and the occasional locked Tobacco boat, but I had two big buildings to her one, and one of mine was Custom's House with a +8 bonus.

All in all, in addition to synagogue, nice meals, pleasant guests, and pleasant company, a nice way to spend the weekend.

Yehuda

P.S. A nice article by Larry Levy on the strange phenomenon of how some people think that thinking during a game is cheating.

P.P.S. And here's a whole forum for board games on Yahoo Answers that looks like it needs some new blood.

Weekend Gaming

For lunch we had over a good gaming crowd: Nadine, Brendan, and Josh from the group, as well as my son's friend and her parents. I was looking forward to some nice games in the afternoon.

We opened with Apples to Apples, both because Brendan wanted to play and we never get to play at the group, and because we had a chance to hook in the non-gamers for a few rounds. It was the quickest A2A games I've ever played. Seven players, and it lasted 9 apples. The mom got 3, Eitan won with 4, Eitan's friend got 1, and 1 other went to someone.

[Side note: Apparently, there are Yiddish and Jewish versions of this game, and they are working on a Hebrew one (actually, the work is outsourced). I suggested to them to make an Israeli one in Hebrew, with Hebrew and Israeli cultural references. Has anyone seen any of these versions? Or are they still in production?]

Anyway, they left, and we took the time to get to know the game Lift Off, which we only briefly tried at the group. It is a simultaneous quick-play game (like Spit), but a cute game for all that. Each player has planets on which to play his cards, and another player is also playing on the same planet. You turn over your deck, and for each card you can either play on a planet, cycle under the deck, or discard.

The first trick is that blue cards only go on planets or other blue cards, a single yellow card goes on a blue card, and red cards go onto yellow or red cards. The first to finish his deck yells "stop", and play has to stop.

You then get points for having played a sufficient number of blue cards to support the red cards that you played. I.e. you will score a red card only if certain number of blue cards were played as well. To complicate matters, each planet has different requirements, and the cards played by one of your opponents on the same planet can affect your score on that planet.

It is a hard game to master quickly, but after few rounds you begin to make heads and tails of what cards need to go where. It is fun, but you have to like that kind of pressure and quickness thing.

After that we played El Caballero. I had only played it one time and thought that it was a glorified Carcassonne. I liked it, but I was hoping to find more to the game. I was very surprised to find it.

For some reason, the previous games that I played had open boards where the caballero tiles didn't really crowd out the play area. In this game, the players played many caballero tiles to the point that the available locations to play were very constrained. This made for super-interesting gameplay, rather than the opposite. Since you can do actions in any order, you could sometimes block off the entire board with caballero cards before having to play your tile, which could then be played on the other side of any of your cards.

It all got very interesting. Once again, we had to end the game at the end of the first scoring round. Nadine was leading. I have to up my assessment of the game. And we still haven't even tried the expansion parts to the game.

Nadine had to go, and Brendan and Josh tried two player Lift Off while I excused myself. When I returned, I tried them on 3 player Caylus. Neither of them had played before, while I had not tried it 3 player. We made it almost to the second scoring in about an hour and a half. Brendan was entirely bored, while I was happy, and Josh looked somewhere in between. Caylus just isn't doing it. It really is a bit too long, and too fiddly.

To end the evening, we played two hands of Rook. The we briefly went out to the Israeli book fair.

Neither my Ethics 6.0 nor my Web 3.0 articles have received much in the way of comments. Oh well. You write what you have to write, and hope it connects. I welcome any comments you may have about either of them.

Meanwhile, after being a runner up on one of the headline contests on Overheard in New York, I was invited to apply as a headline writer for their new version, Overheard on the Beach. We'll see how that goes.

Note: I forgot to add that I played a few games of Magic with Josh before lunch. I taught him how to Rochester draft. That, and the fact that he hasn't played in five years and was used to sixty card decks, didn't serve him well. My deck was fairly neat and tuned, heavy with fliers and easily walked him. He had too little mana in both games, first because he didn't add enough, and second because his cards cost too much to cast.

His Magic collection consists of about three decks and an Illusionary Mask.

Weekend Gaming

Just a quick post.

Games played in my house: Apples to Apples, Havoc, Oh Hell, Trump (similar to Oh Hell, going from 1 card to 9 and back down to 1, with an additional round of 9 with no trump), some dumb card games, and San Juan.

Apples to Apples was played by the lunch guests. The remaining were played by my daughter Tal and the children guests. Aside from one game of Havoc, I decided to rest today rather than play games. How unusual for me!

Yehuda

Midway between Monopoly and Chess

First off, a side note about my reading material.

There but for fortune

My Mom sometimes gives me some of her old Discover magazines, some of which I took for reading material. It was going to be a long weekend with little Internet access, and I couldn't count on playing games, so I brought these, as well as a newspaper and the final book of a sci-fi series I was reading.

One of the articles in one of the Discovery's was this one on the physics of bras. In order to learn about how bras work, and to study the natural tendency of breasts to sag, some scientists conducted numerous studies of woman jogging topless or with dozens of different types of bras, with light diodes arranged over various parts of the breasts to track their movements.

And all I kept thinking while I was reading this was: holy ****, am I in the wrong line of work.

There but for fortune, 2

This feeling was repeated when we went to the jacuzzi. The jacuzzi and dead sea pools are free, but if you want to have your body covered in mud, have someone hold their hands over your back and move them in circles, or place hot stones on your head, you have to pay $40 to $90.

Mud. Circles. Rocks. What the hell am I doing working in computers?

The Trade Pact Universe

These three books by Julie E. Czerneda are top notch books that explore humanity through the lens of a number of different alien psychologies (as do many good sci-fi books). They are great pieces of solid writing and skillful sensibility. She never hits you over the head with messages or panders to baser thrills. Yet the stories are thrilling.

The second one is the weakest one, as the tension in the plot is not that tense, since the reader knows what is going on long before the protagonist does. But overall, just lovely. Seek them out.

Apples to Apples

Although we went on a hike on Friday morning, the company didn't provide any team-building experiences, which was a little odd. So it was up to me to bring people together. Luckily I had brought Apples to Apples.

I found Yoav and his wife again on Friday night in a mess of people inside the lounge. When I saw Yoav, he asked me if I had brought a game, and at the word game, several bored people in the group perked up their ears. We started with six players, and a seventh joined us midgame. There were several curious onlookers, as well.

It was a big hit. I really don't know why there is no Hebrew version of this, yet (Hmm, I think I'll fire off an email and find out), but Israelis love American culture and most can read English well enough, especially those working in a tech company. The truth is, I think the game is cute but not really all that cute, but they loved it.

Like most people, most of my cards weren't very useful, but I did have some beautiful matches. For "powerful" I played "television". The next word was "idiotic", and I couldn't replay the same card, but I did have "Barney". Another one was "marriage" onto the word "hopeless".

Because of this, I pulled in 4 cards first, but we just kept playing until it got late.

Midway between Monopoly and Chess

I'm getting better at describing my hobby in a way that actually engenders respect, as opposed to bemusement. My latest is as follows:

You know how in every field there are some people who seek out the absolute best of certain type of items? You know, like people who know the best wines, or collect the best art replicas? Well, that's what I do with games. I find and collect the absolute best games in the world; games from Europe, Britain, Germany, Italy, and so on, that you can't find at your local toy stores.

They are games for adults like Chess, but they look a bit more like Monopoly. Monopoly is a luck game, the best game for kids, but really, there's not much to the game. Chess is a game you have to study all of your life that has no luck. These games are sort of midway between Monopoly and Chess: full of strategy, but you don't have to learn them your whole life to enjoy them. And they are quicker to play, are culturally interesting, and a lot of fun.

Caylus

I am always trying to find another game to play with Rachel other than Puerto Rico. It's not that we don't keep playing it, it's that the same game over and over can make one feel tired of it. When we get tired of it, that means that we don't play it for a week or so and then we play again.

It would be nice to have a second game. Actually, we also will occasionally play Scrabble. But I mean a second Eurogame.

I was hoping Caylus would do it, just like I hoped Tigris and Euphrates or Goa would do it. Rachel didn't connect with Tigris and Euphrates, and Goa she said was ok but fiddly, which is about what I feel.

She didn't like Caylus on her first play, she said that it reminded her of Goa, only worse; it's very very fiddly. Collect the little cubes, play the little cubes, collect the other little cubes, trade for coins, trade back for cubes, buy a building, place the house. And so on.

It doesn't help that the main mechanic of the game is to try to trick you into forgetting something so that you smack your head later and say "I forgot that I needed this/wasn't going to get that!" It just doesn't inspire love.

I'm also feeling a bit of that, although after my third play, now, you get used to the patterns on the board, the paths of play, and so on, and this becomes less of an issue. As this was her first game, I pretty well slaughtered her, which also didn't help, I'm sure.

She asked how Nadine felt about it, and said that she would be willing to try one more time, on the assumption that her feeling of fiddlyness may go down on the second play. But it doesn't look like Puerto Rico is in much danger of losing its throne any time soon.

Puerto Rico

To make up for this, Rachel insisted that we play PR later in the day. I brought out only our classic set of buildings. We started playing while I was completely distracted and the game wasn't even set up properly yet, and I picked two incorrect roles in a row (which I wasn't intending on picking).

I complained and we started again. This time I was more in control of the situation, and at least picked what I was intending on picking. In a two player game, I like to start with Settler/corn if it is available, rather than Settler/quarry (we don't play with Small Market). Unfortunately it wasn't. I took Settler/quarry, she manned her corn and my quarry, and I took Large Indigo.

I ended up with indigo and tobacco, while she had corn, sugar, and tobacco. No coffee. I got an early Large Business, and she took an early Hospice. Sometimes an early Hospice can be devastating (we play that you can move a colonist onto it immediately), but not this time. I mayored whenever it didn't help her, and settled whenever it didn't help her.

She bought a Discretionary Hold which never came into play. The colonists quickly dwindled, and I was ahead in cash. With Large Business, I was able to compete with shipping and build a big building. The game ended before she could do the same.

But it was a good weekend. Good food and too much of it. Lots of sleep. It felt like a real vacation. Of course, the sad part about vacations is that they end too soon.

Yehuda

Weekend Gaming

Apples to Apples

It started with dinner.

Although I was still getting over being sick, and Rachel was full blow coughing all over the place, we somehow had: three visiting Mennonites, a local family of four, Nadine from the game group, and Brendan (an Anglican) from the game group, all over for dinner.

We all had a good time, and the Mennonites gamely tried to defend their pacifist stance, as they always have to do when confronted by non-pacifists who live with terrorism on a daily basis.

After dinner we played Apples to Apples four times, twice with the Mennonites, Brendan, Nadine and myself, and twice more also including the two kids. Brendan wants everyone to know that he won one of the games.

Puerto Rico

Sat after Rachel's shiur, Rachel and I played two-player Puerto Rico. I decided to mix it up again, and we played with the following:

Wildcat Strikers 1/1: At the beginning of a round, you can sacrifice WS and declare that one phase this round will act as Prospector instead of its usual function. Move your colonist to San Juan.

Captain's Quarters 2/1: When you ship, you may add a colonist into the Hold for 1 VP. Each Hold can store only one item of any sort.

Bazaar 2/1: During Mayor, you may trade a GP/VP/barrel for an additional colonist; during Craftsman, you may trade a colonist/VP/GP for an additional barrel; during Trader, you may trade a colonist/barrel/VP for an additional GP.

Small Warehouse 3/1

Trade School 4/2: When you buy a building, you may pay an additional GP to have it come manned with a colonist.

Office 5/2

Inheritance 5/2: When you buy a production building, take its matching plantation from the supply.

Small Wharf 6/2

Super Market 7/3: Trade at +3

Large Business 8/3: Builder and Captain's privileges (Build at -1, +1 VP during Captain phase)

Large General Workhouse 8/3 (2 circles): Produce any type of goods with matching plantations.

Port Privileges 9/3: Once per Captain phase, you may load onto the wrong ship. Choose a type of goods, choose a ship, and load as many barrels as you can of that good onto the ship.

Cathedral 10/4: +1 VP/3 red point VPs on buildings.

Fairgrounds 10/4: +1/2/3/5/7 VP for 2/3/4/5/6 types of plantations (including quarries).

Fortress 10/4

Custom's House 10/4

City Hall 10/4

Looking at this set, I thought that Captain's Quarters and Port Privileges might work together. CQ is hard to use, not only because the loss of a colonists is so hard, but also because it is easy to get locked off of boats, and only one colonist can be in the Hold at one time. PP helps you get around that. PP is a strictly better building than Wharf, but not completely overpowered.

I got both CQ and PP, and still lost by a very large margin. Rachel got Wildcat Strikers, Trade School, and Large Business. She got a large building, and then I got one on the second to last turn. At the beginning of the last turn, she sacrificed her WS to prevent me from taking Mayor, which prevented me from manning my large building, and then she bought her second big building, manned. Score: something like 53 to 41.

Auctions, Monopoly, and D&D

Saturday night I checked my emails. I won a new set of Settlers of Catan cards and the GIPF game in geekgold auctions. Only, I turned out to be twenty geekgold shy. I'm behind in submitting my session reports, so I'm off to do that after this blog entry.

I've also been getting numerous emails about my Monopoly listing. Way to draw traffic. :-) I will be exchanging info and some links with some other sites.

At the next game night we will be doing roleplaying again; I have enlisted Josh's help (another game group member) to become an assistant GM. I've never worked with an assistant GM, so the experience should be interesting. Josh came over on Sat evening and we fleshed out the world and talked about the rules. Should be an adventure.

Toodles,
Yehuda

Weekend Gaming

My daughter taught her cousin and friends how to play Apples to Apples. I joined for a while, but it tends to get repetitive. OK, it was amusing that one of them was tipsy and couldn't stop giggling. They, on the other hand, can play this for hours without getting bored.

She also played Set. I looked on during the first game. Unlike some, I can actually keep my mouth closed while others are playing Set. This wasn't good enough, because my daughter could still tell by my eyes when I found a Set, and this bothered her. I was impressed with her friend's Set finding ability, so I joined the second game and won by a small margin. This was the closest game I'd played in a long time.

Am I bragging? No, not really. Set hits people in a particular area of the brain, and you have it or you don't. There's plenty of other things where I don't; this one I do. Actually, you can probably learn to get better at it if you really care. I'm sure there are plenty of others who could beat me.

Parents who can play well and refuse to "play badly" need to choose the right games to play with their children, so that the kids have a chance of winning once in a while. As the kids improve, the games improve.

Eventually, if they are not spoiled and have not given up playing games because they don't always win, they will start beating you, even at the harder games. This usually happens somewhere in their teens. It's partly due to their having grown up, maybe a little due to you slowing down. But it's fine and good.

Of course, then you have to move to games where you have a chance of winning once in a while.

Yehuda