Board Games Are Becoming More Popular

This is a guest post written by Dee Barizo. He's paid to blog at Net Business Blog. He's been playing German board games since 1998. His favorite games are Settlers of Catan, Puerto Rico, and Apples to Apples.

I don't know about you, but it seems like more people are playing board games today. Before I give evidence for this trend, let me give you some background about myself and where I live. In the last 7 years, I've lived in in a small town that's very close to Fort Worth, a city of over 600,000 residents. When I first moved in, I was the only one who would organize board game sessions. I was the only one who owned German board games. (Is that what they still call them today?) However, things have changed. Every Saturday night, there are game sessions run by other people. Also, people have bought their own German board games.

The same phenomenon is true in Fort Worth. I thought since Fort Worth had many residents, it would be easy to find a regular board game group. However, I was disappointed. I searched the internet and gaming stores and found only 2 board game fans. We started a gaming group in a bookstore with just 3 of us. We grew it to 4 people when one of my college buddies got interested. After a couple months, I had to quit the group because of work. This was five years ago. Early this year, I decided to find out what happened to the group. I expected it to be dead. A three-member gaming group does not have much lasting power. However, when I showed up, there were over 15 people in the group. Most of them were regulars.

This rise of board game popularity is not just found in my area. Whenever I travel, I regularly meet people who have played and enjoyed Settlers of Catan. My college buddies who have since moved to other parts of the country will tell me that they've started buying German board games. Also, they'll tell me they've been going to board game sessions. And they'll say the people running the sessions own more games than me. (I've spent over $1000 in board games.) And here's an interesting fact. These board game session organizers are relatively new in the board game scene. Most of them played their first German board game less than 3 years ago.

So, why do more people know about board games? Why are more people buying them? There are probably many reasons but I just want to cover one.

Gaming in general is on the rise.

It's not just board games, of course. Video games have become very popular. I think more people are valuing interactivity in their entertainment. Look at the movie industry. It has not been experiencing much growth. In fact, many industry experts predict that video games will become bigger than movies.

I think this growth of video games (I include computer games) have helped board game evangelists. Because of the interactivity factor, video games are much closer to board games than movies. Also, video games have become a lot more focused on multiplayer play, or playing against other gamers. This too makes it easier for board games to grow in popularity.

Many of the new video games are geared for the casual player. For example, the Nintendo Wii's record sales numbers can be partly attributed to the casual audience that it targets. Online web games are perfect for the casual gamer, too. These casual online web games are more popular than online video and social networking.

And don't forget poker especially the online poker trend. Poker got big very quickly and would've gotten even more popular if it wasn't for the online poker US ban. I've had a couple poker friends get hooked on Medici and Princes of Florence because I told them they were interesting betting games like poker.

Another thing is that games are often more social than other entertainment mediums. Sure, TV and movie buffs will still get together to watch their favorite shows and movies. However, because of our busy and disconnected lives, people are looking to be more social. And game night is excellent social gathering. There's just something about a game night where people can come and go, eat, laugh, talk, and actually look each other face to face and interact. I've seen it over and over again with my friends. At first, they'll be hesitant to come to their first game night. But once they've experience the social atmosphere and met other people, they usually become regulars.

It's a good time to be a board game geek today. Everyone is playing games these days. More people want to be interact with their entertainment rather than being passive participants. And in this environment, board games are beginning to flourish.

Feedback

Is your gaming experience similar to mine? Are more people playing board games where you live?

Linkety Link

Chris Brooks has written his own parallel session report to mine about his visit to Israel and dinner and games at our house.

Someone made a rather amazing diorama in which to play Puerto Rico. With pictures.

Chris Bates compares the rise of Poker to the decline of Bridge.

The Toronto Star talks Eurogames. (via Ryan)

The Globe and Mail talks about an Israeli company using virtual reality to train people to reuse their physical limbs. (via Serious Games)

MAJAX! is a serious board game that aims to recreate the pressure and chaos of an emergency situation, and is aimed at health services to "provide an inexpensive way of testing major incident control procedures and promote team building".

Front Row Crew talks about "good" and "fun" in board games on their latest podcast. Just skip the first 30 minutes or so.

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

Visitor Coming

This time Chris (Brooks) says he will make it tomorrow; he's already booked the tour guide for the morning in Jerusalem.

If all goes well, I'll meet him in the morning, we'll tour around, have some lunch, and come back to my house. If all continues to go well, he'll give to me the games I ordered and shipped to his house, as well as a copy of 24/7, and we'll get a game in before shabbat.

Then shul, dinner with Nadine and co., and then Adam will drop by and we'll have another game after dinner.

We haw.

I've shipped out three copies of The Game, which is all I managed to cut so far. I'll try to get another two or three out tomorrow. Then I have to cut some more for a few local requests.

Whatever may come, I will always know that I once created something good. Isn't that sweet?

In the meantime, I've written chapter 7 of Encounter, but I'm not happy about it. Something isn't holding together. I'm hoping it's something I can fix, rather than have to gut it and start over. I'll be happy to see the whole thing done someday. Then I can take it and re-edit it as a whole. And maybe submit it somewhere, or publish it on Lulu. Not that anyone but me seems to like it.

Yehuda

Weekend Gaming

We did game after all, but not as I had hoped.

The family had some young boys, ages 5 and 7. I neglected to inform them that the games closet was not a toy closet; people get easily confused about that issue.

I looked up and found him with Lord of the Rings the Confrontation open, trying to understand how to play. I tried to help, but had to convince his father after a bit that this was not for kids.

The kid himself asked, after trying to understand the game, "Don't you have anything with dice?"

And I only noticed after a few rounds of play, when he played one of his cards (and after losing Frodo twice in a row), that the card he played had a wet and ragged corner. I looked up and yes, he was biting the cards.

I put away the game and brought out Checkers for him to play with his father while I went back to the table and downed a cup of wine.

Elkins coming, shortly.

Update: The Elkins have come and gone, and we did NOT game Balderdash. Sharron insisted on us playing something called "conversation", which had totally lame rules and no freakin' tension or discernible strategy. And it was long, man, and I could never tell when it was my turn. The game ended without any clear winner (although I think I was losing).

I give it a 4 on the BGG scale. Willing to give it another shot sometime, but it need some serious rules revamping or an expansion. Even some nice bits would make it more enjoyable.

Yehuda

Christian Pilgrims Coming

For dinner this evening we are having over two new shul members, as well as two more visiting Christian pilgrims.

Some of our Christian pilgrim guests have come from a myriad of sources. We basically volunteer whenever someone asks if anyone can host. It's easy when your kids are already in their teen years or older.

Also, my downstairs neighbor is a tour guide, and he gets a lot of Christian touring groups.They are friends of Israel and good tourists. He sends some of his group to local families on Friday evenings to experience an authentic Jewish traditional meal and maybe learn a little more about Jews. Of course, we also learn a little about them, too.

My neighbor gives some pre-shabbat training to our guests: how it is inappropriate to try to convert us, make us see the light, or even mention the word Jesus too often, lest we feel uncomfortable or get offended. He also describes a few of our rituals, and some things that we do or can't do on shabbat. With one exception, our guests have been lovely and pleasant. The exception praised Jesus just a few times too many for me during dinner; this combined with him being a rather dominant conversationalist.

I don't expect to play much; maybe tomorrow afternoon. But on Saturday evening I invited the Elkins to join us for a game of Balderdash. This will hopefully be my first play.


The 64 year-old woman who blew herself up in Gaza yesterday has essentially made life more difficult for the last remaining segment of the Palestinian population that was, until now, not subject to extensive security checks. Way to go.

But I noticed in the news article that her 52 year-old daughter tried to justify her actions. 52 year-old daughter. 64 year-old mother. 9 months of pregnancy. You do the math. Update: the source was here, but they have since removed the alleged age of the daughter.


I link here to Wil Wheaton's report from Gen-Con. For those not in the blogging know, Wil played the hated Wesley Crusher in the first few seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. He loathed many of the lines and directions that he was forced to perform and has been trying to escape from the shadow of that role for the last eighteen years. He is actually a cool guy, a great blogger, and a major geek sympathizer.

The Deseret News out of Utah does a complete job on Eurogames.

Joystiq also goes non-digital with a post for the holiday season on great analog games.

Another killing, this time in New Zeland, over a board game, this time Scrabble.

The Union Tribune in San Diego notes an 11 year-old Chess player, whose mother claims that Chess has helped her son's focus, concentration, logic, math, and memory skills. I note the article only because one of the reporter's gushing praises of the young player is, "He has memorized each of the 64 squares on a chess board." Wow! I ... I ... I'm not sure what that means.

Yehuda

Less Distance Than There Seems

There is less distance than there seems between here and there.

I played my first online game of Santiago against Alfred, Jonathan Takagi, Scott Firestone, and Scott Slomiany. I concentrated on an early large territory, expecting others to come back as the game progressed. Only, in the last half of the game, no one was able to connect more than three tiles of the same type. Furthermore, the entire center of the board was completely barren. My early territory, which was the only thing that I acquired during the game, secured a win for me.

It's a joy to be able to play with friends around the world, so easily.

In other news, Chris Brooks, extraordinary game blogger and co-founder of Sunriver Games, will be in Israel again at the end of November, and we are going to try to hook up again. Our record is 1 for 2 on his Israeli visits, so far.

Another blogger, Maksim Smelchak, has also hinted at a visit to Israel sometime soon.

It's so nice to have contact with the outside world. I wish I could have gone to Essen or go to BGG.con, but we can't have everything, I guess.

Serious Games is now listing open job positions.

I also want to mention today's Something Positive, where Fred MacIntire gets "jewed". By "jewed", I don't mean the traditional offensive meaning of the word, which is to get cheated. I mean to get treated as Jews get treated: blamed for anything wrong that any other Jew does, and often something that hasn't been done at all.

Today, Fred, who is a sensible believing Christian, gets grouped in the same bucket as obnoxious fundamentalists, whom he despises as much as his accuser does. I feel for him.

Yehuda

Run for the Hills: The Intellectuals are Coming

Through our shul, we ended up with a lovely man who was looking for a meal. His name is Avner Falk, and he is psychohistorian, political psychologist, and general psychologist. Among other titles, he has written books such as "A Psychoanalytic Biography of Theodor Herzl".

Now it is by startling coincidence that this man ended up at our house for a meal on Rosh Hashana; my wife is doing her PhD on an analysis of mythic narrative in midrash, particularly Pirkei D'Rabbi Eliezer, an eighth century text. They had several areas of interest that overlapped, in that they both studied historical figures through a psychological lens.

Now it is a further startling coincidence that at the same meal we had invited some friends of friends of ours, Daniel and Hava Boyarin. Daniel founded a large area of Jewish studies at Berkeley, and has written, among other works, "Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash". Rachel invited him as he was in the country and was, as a favor, reviewing parts of Rachel's thesis. Hava also has a PhD in something.

By further startling coincidence, Avner had read some of Daniel's stuff, and Daniel had read some of Avner's stuff, and neither had met before.

It is not at all coincidental that our friends were also invited, Mel and Dina Kline. Mel has done literary analysis of many biblical texts, and so on. And his wife is also smart.

So there I was, little old me and my obsession with board games and blogging seated aside five intellectual biblical scholars.

And they talked about: movies, old jokes, cooking, and kids.

Games Played

I only managed to get in two games this holiday: Havoc and The Menorah Game. I taught them both to new players, my kid's cousins. Both are simple games, easy to teach new players, and work well with three players. And are fun.

And I won them both. Experience rules.

Some links

Israel has had a few fatal train crashes lately, so it was thankfully amusing to read about this one. Last line of the article: "The condition of the camel was unclear."

Three days of play in public happened last weekend in New York City, the Come Out and Play Festival. It looks like it was a lot of fun. Here's a report.

Yehuda

Linkety Link

Nothing special.

My friends Yitzchak and Avigayil and family are visiting Israel and he and kids will be coming to the game group tomorrow evening ... I just responded to an interview request about my Web 3.0 article. I'm working on two other tech related articles ... I just posted today's Gone Gaming article.

Links:

Uganda has produced an AIDS prevention board game: "Throw a '1' and you will be advised to 'always wear a condom if you have to have sex' before moving forward two spaces." I was all set to make fun of this, but it turns out that Uganda is one of the few African nations that is actually doing a good job of reducing the number of people infected with AIDS.

America vs the World blog has created a cute political redrawing of the Risk board. Not that I agree with the politics of the site, necessarily.

And yesterday's Miss Manners dealt with poor board game etiquette.

Yehuda

Wanderings

Two fellow bloggers posted about personal difficulties yesterday: John Farrell and Darth Tanyan. Send 'em some love.

Escapist Magazine ish #41 has an article on Game Rules as Art . (via Ralph Koster).

We've got more Mennonites coming for Friday night dinner. I don't know where they are all coming from. We just keep getting calls from this tourist group asking us if we can host some more of them in order to give them the Jewish shabbat experience. Must all be part of one large group, since we haven't received any other Christian denominations. I wonder if Mennonites (pacifists) would play confrontational games.

Rachel and I haven't played Puerto Rico for a while. She may be burnt out, since it's the only game she plays with me regularly. She expressed interest in playing Havoc again, however. I would really like her to want to play Power Grid, Louis XIV, Tigris and Euphrates, or a train game of some sort. Still working on it. Nothing can really compete with that elegant role selection mechanism, however.

Saarya and Tal will be coming for shabbat as well, so I expect we will be playing something.

Next week the regular game group resumes. And Friday afternoon and evening we are looking forward to having Chris Brooks and co-worker Eric as our guest.

Yehuda

Session Report Up

Here.

Games played: Santorini, Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation, The Menorah Game, Power Grid, Primordial Soup, Bridge.


Visitors from America, dept: Chris Brooks is on his way to Israel for a visit again, and I'm hoping he'll have time to stop by for game night.

Georgi LaForge, here we come, dept: new bionics to provide sight directly to the optic nerve.

Yehuda

Sleepy Yinsh

After a sudden reacquainting with an old friend from college a few weeks ago, I received yet another sudden reacquainting from another old friend from college who is/was in Israel for a few days: L'vannah Bielsker.

The last time she was in Israel, it happily coincided with my wedding. That was eight and a half years ago. She was able to drop in this time for Sunday night dinner at the same time that my mom-in-law was packing up to leave. We had a nice chat while the rest of my family watched Madagascar in the background. They laughed the whole time, so it must have been amusing.

L and I traded info about our old Cornell friends, her life and teaching, and so on. After college, she hiked in Alaska for several summers chasing eagles, taught in Italy for two years, did residency in Costa Rica, and spends her free time hiking in the mountains and along California's coastline. Now she teaches high school Biology and Chemistry. She is still one of the most beautiful women I've ever met (my photo doesn't do her justice). After achieving almost everything she ever wanted, I think she is finally looking to meet someone to marry. If you're Jewish and traditional and looking to meet someone special in her thirties, let me know.

Eventually I brought out a small game just to show her what I "do". I like Yinsh, but I'm not good at it, so I thought it would be a good easy intro. L was already starting to fall asleep (it was about 10:30 pm) before she started playing. She placed disks slowly and sleepily, removing one of her rings first. I followed with two, and then she took a second.

At this point I realized that there was no way she could drive back to Tel Aviv to finish packing without getting a little rest first. I put her to bed for an hour, but she woke up after twenty minutes feeling refreshed enough to go. Hopefully she will return again, this time in less than eight years.

Yehuda

Family

Naturelich received the two copies of the Menorah Game that I sent to him; I hope he enjoys them.

The Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club web site will be at http://www.freewebs.com/jergames until further notice. Please adjust your links accordingly.

My wife's mother, Margaret, is here for a visit. She's a sweetie; the type who is always supportive and happy to do just about anything with anyone in the family just for the together time.

Also visiting is my good friend Shlomo, who visits me whenever he is in Israel and also shows up for game nights. I invited him over for dinner.

To that end I dragged them both into playing/they wanted to play/ the Menorah game. We played four ways: myself, Shlomo, Margaret/Rachel, and Saarya (who was home on his last day of vacation from school).

The game was slow, but intense and enjoyable, as both Shlomo and Margaret learned the ropes. Margaret and Rachel spent a lot of time huddling and trying to decide what to do with the candle they flipped up each turn. It was also an unusual game where a lot of candles got bought out of discard piles, when that is usually a rare occurrence (sometimes not at all during a game). We all got hit with exactly one soldier during the game.

Despite Margaret/Rachel having two wilds and lots of cash near the end of the game, I managed to pull off a victory through a combination of luck and planning; I had also saved enough cash to buy my last candle out of a discard pile, if necessary, but instead I just flipped it up and bought it to win the game.

As a small aside, my office had a little game during its latest work "pow-wow". We played a small combination of trivia followed by pictionary with Hanukkah/work related themes. I should really volunteer my services for the next "pow-wow".

Yehuda

Special Session Report Up

A special session report covering Chris's visit is up on my main website. Games played: My game prototype, El Grande, Puerto Rico.

Yehuda

Driving Around, You Can See All the People ...

I was in the area, yesterday, so I agreed to drop by the game publishers to run through the game one more time with them to ensure they were playing right. And they weren't. Good thing I showed up.

Unfortunately, the three corners I had to turn to get back to the main highway - less than 2 kilometers - took over 50 minutes of traffic just to get me to where I could see the highway. And when I finally got a view of the highway, I saw that the traffic going off far into the distance. I would still be there right now if I hadn't manage to break off from my lane and meander my way through the city streets to a different highway.

Chris Brooks should be stopping by on Saturday afternoon/evening. Directions to my house are difficult, and I don't answer the phone from Friday evening until Saturday night, so ... good luck getting here, Chris. (I did send him the best directions I could, as well as a pointer to an interactive online road map of Israel.)

Yehuda

Tidbits

When my head is on straight again, I will try to flesh out the details. To summarize:

- A game company called me and asked me to design numerous games for them - simple games for kids to be handed out by large companies as advertising. Yowza.

- Chris Brooks says he may be coming to Israel and would like to drop by. Looking forward to it.

- I played several games over the weekend, including: a game I invented in a few minutes, to give to this company, based on the Can't Stop genre; Casino (the card game) with my daughter; Paks, a card game from A Gamut of Games, with my son; Taj Mahal with both of them; and Puerto Rico with Rachel (61), Nadine (48), and Saarya (64) (which I lost miserably (41)).

Jon