Secret Lair: Black is Magic is a new limited special card reprint collection, designed by black artists and released during black history month. Proceeds will go to Black Girls Code.
This is a nice gesture. More substantial is the new director of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Wizards of the Coast, Jontelle Leyson-Smith. Hopefully this means that last year's diversity awakening at WotC (following accusations and complaints) is on the right track.
- 17 contributors left the board game news and blog site Everything Board Games. Read their statement here. Essentially, the EBG owner Lake Leafty, not only failed to say anything in support of BLM, he actively refused to let anyone in the company discuss doing so publicly or on their internal forums. Leafty posted a response, posing as a victim of an attack campaign, but the post seems to have been taken down. His story is essentially that EBG is a board games site, not a political site. That always sounds so reasonable, and it always falls apart when you inevitably discover that Leafty's Facebook feed is full of anti-BLM, anti-SJW, anti-leftist, etc posts. So no politics unless it's his politics, apparently. Addressing systemic racism and harassment in business and culture is not politics, it's human rights. HOW you address it is politics. HT Kotaku.
- Speaking of victims of an attack campaign, Eric Lang, one of the few well-known Black board game designers, was suspended from Twitter. He used a serial blocker to block thousands of racist tweets aimed at him. Twitter was less than forthcoming as to why he was suspended, but he has since been unsuspended. HT Kotaku.
- Following up on previous stories and moves, Wizard of the Coast added disclaimers to various legacy content about their possible racist or insensitive content. They also claim that this is a first step, they condemn harassment of anyone pointing out their flaws, they apologize for their failures and aim to do better.
In addition, WotC also cut ties with MtG artist, Terese Nielsen, although a few more cards containing her artwork still are scheduled to be released in an upcoming set. The complaints from customers is of her following and retweeting many white nationalist feeds and posts, and other associations she has demonstrated.
They also cut ties with artist Lizbeth Eden who regularly posts semi-nude pictures of herself and semi-nude artwork for magic card proxies on her private web pages, because, WotC wrote, "adult nudity and sexualized posting" content violates their terms of service for magic creators. Which got many people in an uproar, since a) Magic cards and Dungeons and Dragons feature and have always featured semi-nude women, b) the pictures are not sexually explicit, they are semi-nudes, and c) this could be interpreted as shaming women's bodies.
- WizKids and Indie Game alliance ended their relationship with Robert Burke, after Burke posted some inflammatory anti-BLM posts on Facebook.
- Meanwhile, in the video game world, Ubisoft seems to be the epicenter and primary example of a toxic sexual harassment culture.
Following up on last month's post about diversity in gaming, here are some additional items from the last few weeks:
- Wizard of the Coast: First, they have responded to the issue regarding inherently evil races in Dungeons and Dragons (such as dark elves) by reviewing and changing future products to enable all members of all races to choose their own morality. See their press release. This may not be enough; game design freelancer Orion D. Black just resigned, claiming that the Wizards press release does not address real issues of racism within the company structure; his statement is here. Second, they have cut ties with Magic artist Noah Bradley, who has long and often been accused of severe sexual harassment, after Noah himself posted a lengthy acknowledgement and apology on the topic.
My brother has four boys who play games, especially Magic and D&D. They also have friends who drop by to play with them. He has acquired a narrow collection of board games from those I've taught him over the years, and I recently donated to him a few thousand newer Magic cards from my overflowing collection.
This shabbat I taught him Age of Empires III; we played four players. I took a small early lead, and became a target for the rest of the game. My brother especially urged the other players to spend their actions ganging up on me while he, free from having to do the dirty work, slowly moved forward himself. Ah, brothers. In the end, I beat him by 7 points.
I also taught them Glory to Rome. I taught it slightly better than I did for my first play (see the last game group session report), but they still managed to do nearly every step wrong over and over again. One would think that, after doing a step wrong a few times and being told how to do it correctly, they would finally do it right; apparently the brain needs to truly understand certain processes before it can accept instruction on them.
Unlike my previous game, no one built any game-ending buildings, so we played until the deck ran out (only two sites left). I didn't think I was in last place, but I also wasn't sure that I was winning. I actually was winning, it turns out, until my brother dropped a late building that gave him 1 point for each 2 resources left in his stockpile, and with that he beat me by 1 point.
The blue cards (move to the Vault) were very scarce, for some reason.
Lastly, we played some Magic, two against two. Each team had 40 points. My brother likes to fix games to complement the strategies that he likes to play, rather than go through the work or gain the experience required to actually play the game as it was designed; occasionally I fix games, too, but nowhere near as radically as he does, and only after reading up on other people's experiences first, to be sure that I'm not being myopic.
For Magic, my brother plays that each player gets to pick 60 cards from the collection at random. Then, for every two gold cards the player tosses out, they can pick one more card of any specific color that they like. Then they can pick 8 more cards of any specific color or colors that they like. That's the draft.
Each player can, at any point during the game and only once, toss a non-land card from his hand and pick a random land from the deck. In addition, all lands automatically have "Cycling 2".
That's not to mention some of the rules that he gets wrong, but those at least he lets me correct.
I played partner with my brother against my nephew and a friend. We did a lot of damage, knocking them down from 40 to 16 while only taking 5 points of damage ourselves. However, their army kept getting bigger and better; this was partially due to one of our opponent's having miraculously picked nearly all of the better, newer cards during his random drafting. He finally slammed us for 19 points during one turn. We were reduced to pinging them, and it still took him four more rounds to finish us off.
I have 5,695 magic cards, not including basic, non-foil lands and a handful of foreign language cards. That's about 4,000 too many cards for my needs. I'm offering them for sale first to my game group, and then to my readers and the Israeli public, and then to whomever.
Take a look. The quality ranges from very good to acceptable; I tossed out the unplayable cards, but a dozen or so of the remaining cards have noticeable corner bends, and around a quarter of the cards have whitened edges from use. I probably mislabeled some of the cards by the wrong expansion, but not many. Ask if you need to know.
Anyone interested in picking up any cards that my game group doesn't is welcome to email me.
Secret Santa
Rachel's luggage finally arrived, so I got my first secret santa gift which was mailed to her in the states: Canal Mania. The other secret santa gift is supposedly in transit, but it's been in transit for a month. Hoping it shows up eventually.
I also got Dominion Prosperity, Glory to Rome, and Gosu, which I bought for myself. And, on the way from Amazon.de, are Shipyard, Carson City, and Tobago. I would have added Die Handler and maybe Blox, but I had to face the fact that no one in my game group was going to play these with me. Several other games I wanted either weren't available on Amazon.de or couldn't be combined with their cheap international flat rate shipping. They'll just have to wait for another season.
Lastly, I got the game I need to ship to someone else in Israel as their Secret Santa. Somewhere along the way (or at the original point of purchase) one of the box cover corners split, which is a shame. Tikal is a fine game, however, so hopefully it won't matter.
Visited the Oxford Gaming Club to play a little more Magic. This evening, attendance was low and people had to go early, so we didn't play an entire draft and Swiss rotation like we did last time.
I started with a game of ... I don't remember the name. Oops. I thought it was The Great Wall of China by Knizia, but the description on BGG doesn't match what I played. Here's a description: A partial map of Italy (I think) divided into 17 areas. Each player gets 6 cubes. The object of the game is to win 6 areas, or any 4 contiguous areas.
There is a deck of cards, with various numbers of tan cards valued 1 to 10 (missing some numbers, I think). In addition, there are several special cards, such as a red 10 unaffected by other special cards, a red 1 that gives you control over where the next fight will take place, winter which cancels spring and changes all yellow cards to value 1, spring which cancels winter and gives a 3 point bonus to all highest valued cards, a raven that lets you take back a card, a cross that ends the round immediately (winning the current battle for whomever is currently in the lead), a drum that doubles all your card values, and others.
The play is like Havoc: each player continues to play cards, one at a time, until everyone passes. Once you pass, you can't play any more cards. The winner is the player who has played the highest total value. Every player then redraws back up to 10 cards plus the number of areas he or she already controls (the rich get richer).
I lost a few rounds because I didn't know what I was doing. By round 4 or so, I knew what I was doing. I lost one more highly competitive round, but then took 4 of the next 6 rounds, winning with 4 contiguous areas. The cross cards are deadly, and the drums nearly as deadly. The ravens are worthless.
It was ok. It worked, but it wasn't anything special. Kind of like Odin's Ravens or Traders of Carthage.
Next up I played a few games of Magic. I didn't have any cards, and we weren't drafting, so I played against a guy using one of his decks against one of his other decks.
My deck was WUG with Allies, which are very powerful. So powerful that I beat him while he was playing what he said was the stronger deck. We switched decks, and now I was playing BRG with a number of strange combo cards, such as cards that do damage to your opponent whenever your opponent tosses a card, and many cards that cause everyone to draw and toss cards. This time he won with his "weaker" deck, but I may have played my deck incorrectly, as the cards were all new to me.
One more game against a different opponent, this time with cards that had the new ability to give +1/+1 to any of my creatures until the end of the turn if it attacks alone. And since nearly every card I played had this ability, I did quite well. Especially once I got out another card that gave me a second attack round each turn; at which point I discovered that not only did I get +X/+X for my first attack, but +2X/+2X for my second attack (since the ability triggers twice and lasts until the end of the turn). And some of my creatures were unblockable. My opponent played an Elf deck, which is more annoying than effective, though it was close. He kept gaining life equal to the number of Elves he had in play, but I was still doing more damage than he could gain. Even when he played some Planeswalkers, all of which I believe are terribly overpowered.
After game night, I came home and played Scrabble with Rachel. She had two bingos to my one, and she also scored well with a double triple-letter X. Final score was around 400 for her to 320ish to me.
Airport
Now in the CVG airport.
I bought the ticket for this flight together with my entire international ticket, but my travel agent warned me that this particular leg to Dallas wouldn't be counted as part of the international ticket, so I would have to pay extra for my luggage (and wouldn't get the usual two free pieces). When I called American Airlines last night, they told me not only this leg, but also my leg to Toronto from Dallas wouldn't be considered part of my international flight, and I would have to pay extra suitcase allowance for that leg, too.
When I checked in this morning at the airport, the machine let me have two free suitcases on this leg, after all. I suspect that that's what will happen again when I check in for my flight from Dallas.
There was no one else checking through security; no one at all. Just me and six TSA agents. Out of boredom, they took a little extra time to pat me down (upper body only).
Student life is vibrant at Miami University. Buildings and houses are still adorned with Halloween decorations. Banners call passersby to dances and performances. Students outside are engaged in discussion, music, and performance.
I met up with the Miami University Strategy Gaming Club, which meets Sunday and Tuesday evenings. The group started with wargaming and RPGs back in the mid-seventies, and was revived again by, among others, Dave Chalker in the late nineties/early aughts. Unfortunately, I didn't keep notes and so don't recall anyone's name (they were all nice people, however).
Five or six people played Pathfinder. The GM used his computer and an overhead projector to display the battlefield, and he positioned the virtual PCs in their locations, including such enhancements as line-of-sight, and so on. They all seemed to be having fun.
Three people played board games, from a stack which included the long and complex - Game of Thrones, Twilight Imperium III - and the very chaotic - Fluxx, Munchkin, Junta, etc, with nothing in between. There were no middle of the road strategy games like Settlers or Puerto Rico. I opted out of playing any of these. Later in the evening I convinced them to try It's Alive, I have no idea how it went over, except that they didn't play it a second time.
Around twelve people, including myself, played Magic: the Gathering. Eight of us played a tournament. We "booster" drafted from a collection of excellent cards from the past five years or so. Many rares and powerful cards in the lot, as well as some key commons such as Incinerate and Terror.
The remaining players played a Magic variant where you can play with any cards you want, but with only one of each card in the deck and a minimum deck size of 100 cards. Kind of bizarre.
All the players are regular players, with up to date knowledge of all the cards and how to integrate current strategy and tactics. My last analysis of Magic was around 4th edition, though I've played with the commons and uncommons of many of the sets since. None from the last year or so, however. I expected a) to take a much longer time drafting and playing than any of the other players, and b) to lose badly. But it looked like a challenge.
It's tough drafting when you have no idea of the relative worth of the cards you're seeing. And when of the fifteen cards from which you have to pick, four or five of them are simply awesome. I drafted nearly entirely black/red, with nothing but direct damage, creature kill, mana diversity and boosters, and fliers. I played a little light on land, only 15, plus some mana boosters, but it was also only a two color deck, and it was hard already leaving out cards that killed multiple creatures. Back in my hometown, the deck was unbelievably strong. How would it hold up here?
Against my first opponent, the answer was "fantastic". In our two games, I took maybe four points of damage in game two. His problem was, his deck was a control deck that used my creatures against me, but I had very little in the way of creatures. So he sat empty while I killed what he played and burned him down. I was surprised at my easy victory, and got a little cocky. Needless to say I lost the next two matches.
Both of them were very close. I went 2 games to 1 against both opponents, and in one of each of the games that I lost against each opponent I had him down to 1 point.
In my second match, my opponent played white, blue, and green. I lost the first game because he got out a nifty combination of cards: one imprinted a creature from his hand, so that, every round, he could pay its mana cost and bring out a copy of that creature; and the creature he imprinted was a Clone.
This also depended on me playing creatures he could use, but not entirely; he could target his own creatures as well. I got stuck. I also misplayed, having a hard time wrapping my head around the combination, and ended up giving him my cards to copy at the wrong times. He managed to clone one of his own creatures that let him draw two cards whenever such a creature came into play. He was drawing so many cards, he had to toss.
I won the next game, but lost the third from not having enough mana in my deck. I considered adding more mana to my deck, but I was reluctant to toss anything.
In the third match, I won the first game; he played a black and white deck, with multicolor splash. He knocked me down to 10, but I killed everything he had and then burned him. In the second game, I was a little light in mana, and he got out better cards, too many for me to control. In the third, I simply didn't draw lands until it was far too late. So I should have thrown in another land or two, after all. Die and learn.
I spent shabbat with my brother Ben and we got in a few games, including this one. These were his first two plays of the game. He began by not understanding why it wasn't trivial for Criminal to win. So I had him play Criminal first, promising to switch sides for game two.
I forgot that he tends to whine when he thinks that there's no hope from his position, rather than look harder at finding a solution. So every once in a while I had to point out an available option. He still didn't believe that there would be hope, and I had to force him to play it out. It came down to him having two guys on round 6, one of which I was going to light and the other of which I wouldn't.
The one I lit (A) was not Criminal, and the other one (B) couldn't escape in time. Yet, if (A) had been Criminal and I had only been able to light (B), (A) would have been able to walk off the board and win the game. So it came down to the wire. And anyway, making it to round seven as Criminal on your first play is fairly impressive.
Now he was convinced that there was basically no was no way to win as Criminal. I took over as Criminal, and escaped on round 4, when I ended up with first shot at moving Mr Orange who was Criminal and had a manhole cover under him.
I think that Mr Jack is a game which you can lose if you don't think through your tactics very carefully. But if you don't throw the game, the games random elements then decide who wins, seemingly randomly.
Even so, the tactics that require thought are fun. You have to think not only about this turn, but the next two turns. It's challenging.
Magic
Ben doesn't like drafting, so we play Magic by rolling a die and picking three random cards from one of the colors, over and over until we each have 68 cards. Then we build decks.
This resulted in my having an incredibly poor deck for the first games. I sat there with basically nothing to do. Even though he was stuck with only two mana for a fair portion of the game, I still couldn't win.
The second time we did this, I had a slightly better deck, but it was still no match for his Shambling Strider, a 1/1 Bander, and a Village Elder. He kept picking off my creatures as fast as I could bring them out, and my lack of any damage or bury effects couldn't help me.
It became very boring and seemed to drag on for too long. Next time we play, I want to use my cards; his are too mundane.
Spent the first day of Sukkot at my brothers. When I wasn't creating stories to tell my niece, eating, sleeping, or davening, I was gaming.
Magic
Wed evening we played Magic: the Gathering, which I hadn't played in some time. We drew random cards, built decks, and battled for 2 out of 3 games. I built Black/White, splashing red for a Fireball, and heavy on the creatures. Ben built Black/Blue. Both of us had a lot of fliers.
The first game I drew rather poorly and lost. A late Pox evened the score a bit, but wasn't enough to save me. In the second game, we both had light land pulls, but I played the swampwalker I had swapped in from the sideboard. The third game was very close. Twice during the game, a series of spells or attacks cleared the entire creature space leaving us both with nothing but land out. It cam down to the wire, with me at the advantage, but Ben somehow managed to find a way to get through the last point to kill me right before I could kill him.
Some people complain about Magic because of the collectible aspect of the game or because in order to compete at fancy tournaments you have to buy the latest cards. What a bunch of bollocks. Ben and I had one of the finest gaming experiences ever Wed night with nothing but pulling random cards from his antiquated collection.
A couple of thousand Magic cards costs tens of dollars and provides an incredible, portable game play (both during the game and outside the game) and a replay value far and above just about any board or computer game.
Winner's Circle
I brought a few games with me that I thought my 7 year old niece could enjoy, and Winner's Circle, Knizia's horse racing board game, one of them. It manages to take a simple dice driven horse racing and betting game and turn it into something light and fun, with a nice balance of luck and thought, and decent player interaction. It's too light for my game group, though.
I didn't think Ben would like it, because dice don't tend to like him. Given that warning, however, he found it tolerable, especially since my niece enjoyed it enough to want to play a second time. Tal also joined in the second game, while I went to read.
The game I played was close, but I managed a close win.
The Menorah Game
I brought a copy of It's Alive to show them, but Tal prefers to play with the original theme and graphics, as does my niece. They played a few games. The only shame about the newer nicely published version is that the graphics are less appropriate for younger players. It's a favorite game of kids I know ages 7 and up.
Amun-Re
Unlike my game group, Ben made the mistake of letting his religious gaming buddies read the unadulterated rules to Amun Re before playing it, and since then they won't try it. Religious problems with the theme. I solved that in my group by tweaking the theme somewhat.
Saarya agreed to play with Ben and me. I started with strong pyramids to their strong farmers, which is generally a disastrous way to start. I fully expected to lose, especially when Ben tied me at the end of the first era. Now I didn't even have a token lead to build on, and far less money than either of them, too.
My building certainly fell behind in the second era, but I managed to secure the provinces I needed to fulfill two bonus cards in my hand. One of the provinces I needed wasn't a problem, as it was the least desirable of those on offer; the others I got by the skin of my teeth.
Saarya ended up deciding the game by choosing which side of the river he wanted to secure best pyramids. He took the side in which he was competing with Ben, leaving me to gain the bonus on the other side. That was just enough to let me win by 3 points over both of them.
Surprised the heck out of me.
And by the way, this was the first time I noticed that in the second era you only choose among provinces that were also available during the first era. I had always simply drawn new provinces from all possible cards in the second era. I'm not entirely sure which is the better mechanic.
Game News
Mainstream media always compares new board games to Monopoly, even when the comparison is not exactly warranted. In this case, the Islamic game Heaven's Gate is called the Islamic version of Monopoly, even though it's clearly a trivia game, not a real estate game. And there are no dice.
It differs from Monopoly in that the players do not roll a die but instead pick the card on the box they arrive in. On these cards there are questions to answer such as "Who is an unbeliever?" or "Name the four sects." Those who gain 2,000 points at the end of the game earn the right to go to the Heaven.
Speaking of Monopoly, the usual crowing and complaining is going on in response to the final release of the UK's new Monopoly version, in which only some cities managed to get on the board at all, but the ones in the cheapest spaces are complaining anyway. Your fault for not cheating and hacking the contest like the other cities did, so shut up.
Scotland Yard, the old game of chasing Mr X around London, is going live via mobile devices, Ravesburger, and T-Mobile.
First there were card games, then there were collectable trading cards, now we have a collectable trading card game. When I first heard about this game a few months ago I was a bit concerned. I personally do not like trading cards and feel that for the most part they are a waste of money. So my feelings from the start toward this game were a bit negative ...
The game is quick to learn, and the starter deck comes with a small 36 page rule book. I learned the basic rules in about 2 minutes, and only needed to pick up the rule book for a few strange situations ...
The real nice thing about the trading card aspect of the game is that every time you play a new opponent you should get to see cards that you have never seen before. This will keep the game fresh and exciting, if not expensive as you try and find the perfect cards to defeat your opponents.
Over all I give this game a very high rating, the art is wonderful, the game is very enjoyable. Hopefully 'Wizards of the Coast' will come out with a collectors set in the near future so that us collectors of SF/Fantasy art will be able to see all 300 pieces of art.
... The flaw in its design is, IMHO, that you do not have any control which tiles produce what, when, and for which player(s). This doesn't seem too bad at a glance, but due to the fact, that you may be excluded from the "valuable" parts of the board by not being able to build roads in the beginning, a player may become cut off from the race for victory quite early ... In our games such a situation, a single player losing after about half an hour and just waiting for the rest of the game (up to two hours), occurs in about half of the games.
I would describe the situation something like: you need skill to win "die Siedler", but you've got to have luck in the first stages not to lose it.
But apart from that flaw, which could, again IMHO, tolerated in a game lasting less than one one hour, Die Siedler von Catan *is* fun and satisfying to play.
... There is considerable fun as you kick your opponents out of regions, or launch a surprise attack from the "tower" (the 10th region) into a region of your choice.
Mayfair had their usual range, including LOTS of Siedler items - Seafarer, the card game, everything but the Seafarer 5/6 player expansion (and no, I don't have any more of those, sorry). They had pretty good prices on the Siedler stuff, too. They had two new abstract strategy games - Balanx and Gipf. Balanx had a cute tilting board but struck me as a gimmicky Chinese checkers variant. Gipf's box had mostly overblown piffle, so I passed on it as well. Unfortunately there was no way to play either of these unless one found a partner and rented a copy in the open gaming area (Mayfair had a table in their booth, but it was occupied all weekend by a huge 3D Siedler board).
DIE FURSTEN VON FLORENZ: Without a doubt, the hit of the show. Fabulous. Played twice and taught a half dozen other groups how to play. Buy it! Jay ... are you listening? Is it to late to release this one in English? Initial rating: 9
We found a table and a German girl joined us for a test of "Carcassonne". An easy, but quite clever tile laying game. You build up a map with the tiles with roads, towns, meadows and monasteries. You try to control them by playing one of your 7 followers on them and when an entity is completed, you score it and take back it (if it hasn't become a farmer, which is scored at the end). We were sure it would be a great filler for the late game evening, so I found a copy for 23 DM.
I mentioned this on Spielfrieks, but a guy in a group was sick for about a week, and since he had nothing better to do, he constructed a homemade prototype of Puerto Rico based entirely on photographs and Mik's description ...
Normally I'd say nothing here about the experiment. except for one thing. Our lame wannabe copy of Puerto Rico was received with complete, total enthusiasm. At our next Friday gathering, the original five showed up just to do it again. I have not seen anything close to this since Princes of Florence hit our table last year. It is all they want to play ...
Our synagogue held a clothing swap: bring lots of clothes and 20 NIS, take what you want and whatever is left gets donated. The money goes to the synagogue.
We came late. Apparently word hadn't gotten out, and there hadn't been much attendance. People had brought lots of clothes, but very few actually took any. Everyone had enough clothes. Everyone had too many clothes. They just wanted to donate.
We brought a basket full, and we left with most of a basket full (different than what we had brought). My theory is: I don't care what I wear on my T-shirts, but I like some variety. So I brought lots of them and picked up some others. Most of our outgrown clothes had already been given away.
After we were done, it was time to help bag and box the remaining clothes. We also helped return a few folding tables to the basement of one of the members who lived near the synagogue.
So away we went, into the dark recesses of the neighbor's downstairs storage room. We opened the door and turned on the lights. Rachel and Sarah (the organizer) didn't seem to notice anything unusual about the room. There were some shelves, a pool table, a Ping Pong table, a bicycle and some boxes. The usual.
There were also several posters about Magic pre-release tournaments neatly hung on the wall. Several. There were Magic cards on the pool table. There were thousands more on the shelves. There were boxes of card protectors.
I have played Magic for several years, and I have never been to a tournament. The tournaments in Israel, so far as I knew, occurred infrequently and were held at the local mall; or so I had thought. I have never seen a card protector. I had never seen most of these cards.
Gah.
This guy ... or this guy's son, undoubtedly ... lives a block from my house.
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.
My English birthday, that is. My Hebrew birthday is the night of the start of Passover.
I came into the world causing trouble.
In America, the first two days of Passover both have major holiday status, which means that no "work" can be done on them, exactly like Shabbat (with the exception of certain food preparations). "Work" here includes driving, turning on or off electrical things, lighting or dampening fires, writing, using money, and so on. If you want to know why, you can send me an email.
Why do I tell you this? Because the year I was born, Passover fell on a Wed evening, which means Wed evening/Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were all "non-work" days. Which made my imminent arrival into the world on Wed evening so much fun for my Mom.
In the case of danger to human life, which birth is considered, you are allowed to do most types of work. That meant that they could drive me to the hospital, Long Island Jewish hospital to be exact.
However, there was no such danger to human life that permitted my father to then drive home from the hospital to our house again. Which left my 4 year old brother Ben and 7 year old brother David to do the Passover Seder with my grandmother. She basically fell asleep, and I hear the Seder consisted of whatever David had learned in school followed by the Passover cake.
My father walked home on Thursday, as the hospital was only a few miles from our house and all part of one urban continuity. My mother spent three days in a hospital that didn't know what Passover food was other than matza, which is what she ate for three days (perhaps fruit, as well).
All in all, I established my role as a pain-in-the-butt early on.
Now I'm thirty-seven: a prime number, the body temperature in Celsius, the unassigned UHF channel, the number of Shakespeare's plays, and, of course, the number of hexes in Settlers of Catan.
Send me a Magic: The Gathering card for my birthday to
Yehuda Berlinger 7/5 Hayarden St Jerusalem, Israel
and I'll send you one back in return. Then you can put the words "I swapped MtG cards with Yehuda!" somewhere on your site.
A friend of a father of a friend of my son heard that I was selling my Magic collection and came over to view it.
We spent an hour looking for the rares, then the ones he really wanted. About 5 cards were worth anything special in his opinion - Armageddon, Necropotence, and 3 Scragnoths - which he valued, total, at about $8. Then another 75 "good" rares he values, total, at about $12, total. The rest, about 3500 - 4000 cards, including uncommons, less good rares, and commons, about, total, $60.
I had to tell him that I will think about it, which left him a little disgruntled - he spent time helping me look through the collection, and he came with cash in his pocket. I just don't know if I'm ready to part with my ten year collection for $80. Argh.
I have to finish cataloging them and see if anyone else offers more. Or just keep it.
I have decided to upload my magic card collection, in preparation of trading/selling anything valuable in it.
First step was ordering all the cards by name. Then I downloaded a full list of cards from the internet - I found full lists for each individual set, but no full list of all cards. The closest I found were the complete price lists, which contain most cards, but not all.
So I downloaded that to disk, opened in Excel, and began adding all cards by count. When known, I also added information about the card set, and the condition if not good.
So why not use pre-packaged software for this? All of the ones I tried were either: non-existent, cost money, required Microsoft Access, or simply killed my computer when I tried to run it. Which is a shame, because my list doesn't include standard information next to each card (like rarity and color), just the name, count, and any notes.
I am looking to trade for Netrunner, Middle Earth CCG, or board games. Always willing to take cash or coupons, of course.
I began collecting in 4th edition - I think that was when the big upsurge happened. My first cards were 4th, Homelands, Chronicles, Ice Age, etc... plus lots of Revised given to me my already established players. I never really spent much money on the game, even though I spent a heck of a lot of time on it.
People complain that Magic is an "expensive" game. I think that is just not true. When people talk about Magic being expensive, they seem to think that playing Magic REQUIRES you to compete in Pro tournaments. Does playing football require you to compete in pro tournaments?
Constructing decks is fun, yes. Buying a few cards to make a deck nicer is fun, yes. But that is only one very small way to play the game. For the last nine years, I have played the game, with my friends and brothers, by drafting from the thousands and thousands of commons and uncommons we have collected for almost nothing. The cards are interesting and often powerful. We have so many different cards that we still surprise each other with cards we haven't seen. When I want something new, I spend $5 and get another 100 cards on eBay; or, I just trade a rare card and get a few hundred commons in its place. Then we draft, construct, rinse, repeat.
Most of my collection is probably not of tremendous interest to the great Magic hoarders. My Ancestral Recall, dual lands, Mana Drain, etc... are all gone. Many of my cards were lost or destroyed. Still, between my brothers and me, we still have lots of good rares, both new and old: Necropotence, Nevineral's Disk, Armageddon, etc...
