Shabbat Gaming / New Rule For It's Alive

I spent shabbat with my good friends David and Yael. Shira, their nine year old daughter, was also home. David is a semi-regular at the Jerusalem game group.

We started the evening with Shira telling me that she wants to play a great game with me that she has called It's Alive; she went goggly-eyed when I told her I had created it. We played the basic game after dinner with a new rule change:

The following new rule is an official variant for the game of It's Alive, and will be the standard rule in any new editions. On your turn, you can - instead of buying, selling, or auctioning the top card of the deck - buy a card from someone else's graveyard directly to your board. It costs the buy value + the sell value of the card. You can pay this cost using any combination of cards and/or coins. I.e.:

Card value	Cost from grave
2	3
3	4
4	6
5	7
6	9
7	10
8	12
9	13
10	15

This replaces the entire double step procedure of first paying to bring the card to the center of the table and then buying, selling, or auctioning the card.

In the basic games, this means that cheap cards are nearly always bought from graveyards, and expensive ones more frequently. In the advanced game I suspect that duplicate cards will be auctioned more frequently and expensive cards fetched from graveyards more frequently.

We played the basic game and Shira won.

After this, David and I drafted Magic cards before bed. The next day we played with our decks. I had to play three colors and I was feeling pretty vulnerable with my deck because it had nothing against fliers except for a Serrated Arrows. I lost the first game quickly because I didn't draw more than two lands. But I won the next two games with one of those level up white guys who gives all of your other creatures +1/+1 . David didn't get many fliers out, and the one that he got out I killed with the arrows. So I basically won because I had the big white guy; when I drafted it, it was choice between him and an equipment that you could use to tap an equipped creature for any color mana.

We drafted again and played again, and this time I lost two games, both with large buildups, and once again I had nothing to take out his fliers.

On shabbat morning before lunch, Shira taught me Thirteen, a game that we played with a whole mess of cards from various decks, though I suspect that it should be played with two standard decks of playing cards. Shuffle both decks, including the jokers. Each player gets thirteen random cards face down in ordered slots, numbered one to thirteen. The first player picks a card and places this card face up in the slot corresponding to the card value (A is one, K is thirteen), then reveals the card that was face down in that slot. He goes again using the newly revealed card. This continues until he reveals a card that corresponds to a slot that is already revealed. He then discards the unusable (for him) card. In case you didn't notice this part of the game is exactly like the solitaire game Clock.

The second player takes the discard if he needs it and proceeds the same way. Otherwise, he draws from the top of the deck and proceeds the same way. Play continues this way until one person has finished his board. He sets aside the last revealed card to use in place of a draw on any later turn that he desires. He shuffles all of his cards in with the deck and the discard pile, deals out twelve cards (one less than the previous round) and continues. If he draws or reveals a King, he can't play it obviously.

This continues until a player has only one card left and then completes his board, whereupon he wins. Jokers can used for any card, and if you draw a card that goes into a slot with a face up joker, you can replace it and reuse the joker somewhere else.

There are two choices in the game. 1) when to use a card you set aside from a previous round. 2) where to place a Joker, the significance of which depends - very slightly - on what cards your opponent has already revealed. These choices are not significant.

Shira won, with some jokers to spare.

Later in the day we all played Cities and Knights of Catan. Shira needed some help understanding the cards and occasionally deciding where to place roads and settlements. She won this, too.

Preorder My New Hanukkah Game Now!

My (old) new game Candle Quest is up on Kickstarter. You can go there right now to pre-order the world's first and only decent game with a Hanukkah theme ... heck, with any Jewish theme. Go there. Right Now. I'll wait.

You should know, however:

• This game is a new version of The Menorah Game, of which my previous published game It's Alive! was a re-theme. This new edition returns the game to its original theme, but with all new graphics and professional publication (the original game never went beyond prototype stage).
• The game includes new simplified rules for younger players.
• The game will not actually be available for a few months. You won't be getting it this Hanukkah. Kickstarter is being used to contribute to make publishing the game possible and as a PRE-order. We need the money NOW to print and ship the game. Your backing gets you all kinds of goodies, and for just $25 you also get the game itself, shipped free in the continental US.
• This game will be printed in a limited run, so backing the project on Kickstarter is your best chance of securing a copy of the game.
• As of right now we are seeing a large expense in getting individual games shipped internationally, and that includes Israel. Hopefully we'll have a solution for that sometime soon.

Everything you need to know about the game, the project, the rewards for backing, etc, is on the Kickstarter page. A brief summary:

Candle Quest is a lightly-themed set collection and resource management game that features an assortment of dancing, waving and sad candle characters. It is a fast-moving family board game for 2 to 5 players ages 5 and up and takes 30-45 minutes to play.

In Candle Quest, you and your fellow players each need to find 8 different colored candles to light your Menorah. Some candles you can buy. For others, you can’t afford to pay full price; you may have to sell or bargain for them. Be on the lookout for the highly-valued magical dancing candles, but watch out in case one of your candles burns out! Will you be the first to collect your candles and light your Menorah?

Backers of the Kickstarter campaign who pledge at least $25 will receive a copy of the game when it is printed. All backers will receive additional benefits such as signed games or artwork, or digital downloads. Like most small publishing efforts, this game will be produced in a limited release, so it if you want a copy, grab it now.

The game will appeal to experienced gamers looking for a quick strategy game as well as parents and teachers interested in an original game that relates to the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.  There is a complete lack of original entertaining games with Jewish themes beyond a few simple roll-and-move or trivia games for children. Candle Quest breaks new ground as the first and only designer game for Hanukkah intended to be entertaining for adults but playable by all members of the family.

Some gamers liked the horror theme of It's Alive! However, there were many others who liked the game but wanted a more family-friendly alternative. We hope that this new theme will serve the purpose. While it's about candles for your Menorah, there is no actual Jewish content in the game, so it should be enjoyable for anyone.

Gilead Games

I'm involved in a new project that aims to bring The Menorah Game back to life. The Menorah Game is the original prototype version of It's Alive, which was published by Jackson Pope of the now defunct Reiver Games. More info about It's Alive can be found here.

The new project is called Gilead Games.

It is a joint project between myself, Nadine Wildmann who took over the Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club when I moved to Raanana, and our friends Bill and Shirley Burdick in the US. Nadine is a game tinkerer (she created a biblical themed version of Ra for our group), a PR specialist, and a Wordpress wizard. Bill is the designer of a wickedly innovative RPG system called Death of the Vele; here is an interview of Bill by New Style. Shirley has designed and run live action Euro-style games for large groups.

We are still exploring what is required to publish the game or license the game to another publisher. Kickstarter is a strong possibility. Nadine has commissioned new artwork for the game that you can see on the site. Example:

Some of you like the horror theme of It's Alive, and that's tribute to the publishing skills of Jackson. However, there were many others who liked the game but wanted a more family-friendly alternative. We hope that this re-re-theme will serve the purpose. It's about candles on your menorah, but there is no actual Jewish content in the game, so it should be enjoyable for anyone. Of course, the basic mechanics will remain the same.

If you're at BGG.con, Nadine is there, and Bill and Shirley will be there soon, so search them out and say hi.

Weekend Gaming

Tal had her friend Ruti over for shabbat; Tal and Ruti are probably The Menorah Games' biggest fans. So naturally, they played the game about a dozen times, with me playing a few times. I think Tal won most of them.

Tal is still bemoaning the new theme, and tried to convince Ruti to bemoan it as well, but Ruti seemed to think it was cute.

I also taught my non-gaming friends how to play Settlers of Catan, now that they have a child almost old enough to play something well (6 years old). Unfortunately, I really lack games for kids in my house. I have to correct that if I'm ever going to do more game demos for parents and such.

They really liked Settlers, and I spent some time telling them how to make the games they play now better, too, which seemed to impress them. Maybe I'll turn it into a lecture series or something.

I played Set with Tal and Ruti and won without much difficulty. Challenge me, I dare you.

A video interview about the Entertaible. It's beginning to suffer now from being announced too early. I want to try the damn thing out already.



Yehuda

Weekend Gaming

Good evening, and welcome to the weekend news.

But First, Conflicting Events

This evening I had two conflicting event to attend: an engagement party for Josh and Idit of the game group, and a remembrance talk for the son of some dear synagogue members who was killed in an accident fifteen years ago.

Rachel went straight to the remembrance, while I drove Nadine to the engagement party, only to discover that we were both about twice the age of everyone else there. We skipped out of that and arrived at the remembrance, only to hear the last few sentences of the talk.

I figured that with good set of wheels, we could probably also have hit two weddings and maybe a bat-mitzvah all in one evening. You know, get them all out of the way.

Unfortunately, I fear that this will be no more successful than the plan I hatched last time I was in Eilat, which was to stock up on newspapers for the next month, rather than have to buy them one at a time.

The Menorah Game

Tal went to a friend for lunch and came back in the afternoon to prove to me that there is no point in her coming back in the afternoon because I will be asleep anyway. I showed her.

We played The Menorah Game two times, and I won both times. I still love the game, which makes me happy. Then we played a game of Oh Hell. Tal took the lead, but I narrowed the gap until it came down to the very last trick, which she won.

Puerto Rico

Toward the end of shabbat, Nadine came over for our usual shabbat Puerto Rico game.

We played the same positions as last time: Rachel first, me second, and Nadine third. This time I tried a first round Hacienda followed by a second round Settler/quarry. Of course, this left both lots of cash and corn plantations for Nadine and Rachel, which was going to make the rest of the game an uphill battle.

Rachel had a coffee monopoly, and I had an effective tobacco monopoly (Rachel produced it, but never traded it). It didn't help that Nadine gave Rachel two early sweet trades (she later gave me one). Rachel jumped on these opportunities and secured a large victory at the end of the game 54 to 46 (me) to 45 (Nadine).

Nadine could have changed the ending slightly if she had taken City Hall instead of Custom's House as her big building. It gave her 6 points, but it would only have given Rachel or me 3 points, and meanwhile, City Hall would have given her 5 points. So she would have ended up beating me. Hard to see, though.

Game News

The Columbia Tribune runs a story on the new board games.

Promo Magazine, and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, is unhappy about the new Visa branding in Hasbro's games.

Symbiosis University in India has launched a three-year diploma for students to learn Chess.

Brian Arnett holds the world record for collecting board games at 1,345? And the previous record was only 868??? Isn't this incorrect?

Vatican, the Board Game. Race to become pope.

Shigeru Miyamoto, designer of titles such as "Mario Brothers," "Donkey Kong," and "The Legend of Zelda," says that video game developers should resist the temptation to produce only sequels of established hits and games based on horror and revenge.

Yehuda

My First Game is Being Published

I suppose I should announce this here, too.

*Ahem*

The Game Formerly Known As The Menorah Game is going to be published by Reiver Games.

It is being re-themed as a light-horror game called It's Alive!. The previous link contains more information, including the following:

It is the turn of the nineteenth century, and mad scientists throughout Europe are competing for the infamy of being the first to create life through the power of alchemy. Using only the raw materials provided by some dubious 'Suppliers to the Anatomical Trade', harnessed lightning and the services of a motley crew of unattractive servants you race to collect the eight body parts needed to create your monster and bring it to life. Unfortunately the local peasants are particularly clumsy and tend to die in freak farming accidents so the dubious gentlemen rarely find a whole cadaver in sufficiently good condition. Instead they offer the parts they have managed to salvage. Each turn you may buy the offered part, sell it to an anatomist for a meagre profit, or auction it trying to get a better deal or rip off your opponents. You might be lucky and get a coffin with a weakling clerk's cadaver in it, which can be used in lieu of any strapping villager's body part, or your involvement in the macabre trade might invoke the villagers' wrath.

It's Alive! is a set collection and auction game for 2 to 5 players, aged 12 to adult. Games last 20 to 40 minutes.

It's Alive! will soon be available as a 300-copy limited edition. Each copy is numbered x/300. If you would like to pre-order a copy please contact me at jack@reivergames.co.uk and ask to be put on the waiting list. Copies will retail for £15 plus postage and packaging (yet to be determined).

Note that aside from the re-theming, slight changes were made to the tile distribution and the game can now accommodate up to five players.

What Jack doesn't mention is that I'm offering all people who have copies of my prototype a 20% discount on the game as my thanks. Further details about that when it's actually available for sale.

Here is the parallel announcement on Jack's site. The game also already has a BGG entry. Oddly enough, it doesn't show up on my designer page, yet.

Oh, yes, I'm also working on another game design, of course.

Yehuda

P.S. Oh, yes: Don't believe Jack when he says ages 12 to adult. Some of the game's biggest fans were 9 or 10 when they first played it. [Jack says in the comments that the age range was determined because of the new theme.]

Analysis of The Menorah Game

I wrote an Analysis of The Menorah Game for Gone Gaming. Check it out if you are one of the lucky few who has a copy of my game.

As we come to the end of the year, I am considering new directions for my blogging. The laser-like focus I intend for this blog hits the beam-splitter of my head before I post. Where I was once mostly board games and a little tech and Israel, I am now half board games and half philosophy, ethics, Israel, and other stuff.

I know that this is annoying to some people. The obvious solution was just to wait to move to the new Blogger, when I will be able to tag my posts. However, I think I will be going a bit more radical.

As of February, I plan to split the game stuff off to a new blog; I also plan to stop writing for Gone Gaming and move all of my game related posts to the new blog. This blog will continue to be about everything else.

Questions: Do I repost or move some of my game posts to the new blog? Or just let them stay here? What about links on other sites to my past posts?


Some lazy links ...

A whole lot of free downloadable board and card games on Super Duper Games.

In January, the Westview Iowa church will be holding a silent auction of games to raise funds for the Waukee Area Christian Food Pantry. Consider checking out the organization and donating all those games you got for Christmas but didn't really want. Game donations are tax deductible.

Regarding my quip about crazy Chess players, David sent me links corroborating or contesting this craziness, such as this article in Time magazine from April, 2005 about Bobby Fischer, Did Chess Make Him Crazy?

In the middle of this article by the Corvallis Gazette-Times about Christmas shopping in general, comes the following quote from Errol Noel at The Toy Factory:

In some cases, it’s been tough to keep up with demand. Lego construction kits and a board game called Settlers of Catan, for instance, have been difficult to keep in stock.

The Detroit Free Press managed to sneak Apples to Apples and Blokus into an article on recommended games for young and old.

And here's a "board game" called Spintastik. It's just a spinner that assigns chores around the house, as well as the rewards for doing them.

Yehuda

Hunukkah Gaming 1

There are two shabbat Hanukkah's this year. I was lucky enough to get in two games of The Menorah Game on the first night of Hanukkah with our two guests.

They were total non-gamers and played very stone faced. I was assuming they were going to say some nice things and then leave after the first game, but they said it was great and asked to play again. Then they lauded the game a few more times.

They couldn't believe that I had designed the game by myself, apparently assuming that games must spring out of nowhere, or at least out of nameless faceless game corporations.

The first game was the basic game, and the second the advanced game. I won both, even though I wasn't the one who went out in the advanced game. I did have two wild candles however.

I've begun analyzing the mathematics of the advanced game.

A little spice: Peter Olotka, designer of Cosmic Encounter, does Christmas Cosmic Encounter poetry.

Yehuda

Quick Post

Awaiting a secret santa post, and waiting to see if mine was received.

Around half of my games are now sent and/or sold; get one before they're gone! I'll probably be playing with my Aunt and Uncle who we've invited for shabbat.

And Tal is here, too.

A few games I ordered are sitting on top of my game shelf, but I'm not opening them until Hanukkah, which is ... ulp ... next week already.

Shabbat Shalom,

Yehuda

Game and Ungame

I haven't missed the fact that my blog's focus is now pretty diverse, from games to Israel, technology, law and IP (where did that come from?), media and poetry, religion and philosophy.

I will have to make the shift to Beta blogger if only to add tags to my posts. Either that, or split up the blog.

Game

I sent out my Secret Santa gift, and have been informed that mine is on its way. My SS tells me that this was the first Hanukkah present s/he has ever sent, which increased his/her holiday spirit.

I have uploaded six months worth of reviews and session reports to BGG. 100 GG in one go. Apparently, people like my session reports and aren't thrilled with my reviews. I guess what I do falls somewhere in the middle.

When I write reviews, I don't go into the same sort of detail that others do. I don't list every component, every facet of game play, and every rule. Instead, I describe the basic mechanisms, win conditions, and game feel; what I need to know to know if the game is my sort of game, and no more than that. I might then do a brief analysis of some of the strategies or thought processes that come up in the game.

My session reports, if they don't also include mini-reviews, are either a few paragraphs, or complete blow by blows of the entire game (usually for Puerto Rico or Princes of Florence).


ORDER The Menorah Game from me; the components aren't great, but the game is. Get it in time for Hanukkah. Email me for a copy.

Ungame

Radio host Jerry Klein suggested that all Muslims in the United States should be identified with a crescent-shape tattoo or a distinctive arm band. He was testing his listeners to see what kind of responses he would get. And guess what he got?

Robert Satloff finds Arabs who saved Jews during the Holocaust. Not many, but some.

In the Arab technology field comes Sainul Abideen from Bangladore, who has created a process of storing up to 450 GB on an 8x11 piece of paper. Which is incredible for many reasons.

Update: As noted by Jason in the comments, the storage capacity has been grossly overblown; only a few MB of storage appear to be possible. That's still pretty cool, actually. Imagine backing up dozens of files to a single piece of paper. It's still cheap, bio-degradable, foldable, and cool.

Back in the Jewish world, US News also points us to a commentary from Yeshiva University by Matt Williams who throws down a gauntlet challenging how the yeshiva handles the mixing of sexes, and asserts that it creates rather than assuages sexual tension.

Finally, in the continuing genre of Star Wars parodies, check out the shortened versions of the entire Star Wars saga (very well done). Vid 1 and Vid 2. (via hamzy)

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

Cuttng Out The Mockups ....

I forgot about that part. :-) It takes about twenty minutes for each game.

And I had to remember the primary rule of cutting things with an exacto knife: Hold the straight-edge over the desired part, so that when the knife slips while cutting, you only deface the white space on the sheet. If you reverse this, holding the straight-edge on the white space, if you slip while cutting you lacerate the board or tile you are trying to cut out.

I also forgot to buy envelopes; I'll buy some today so that I can mail them. And I have to recheck the rules and print them out.

Thanks to those of you who have emailed me for a copy. My email is shadejon at gmail.

Of course, when people like Mike Doyle are creating works of art like this, I could get disheartened.

The rowdy world of chess is now getting drug testing, although one could wonder exactly why.

And in continuing news about Head Gamez's plans for a 1,500 work force for producing board games in Nova Scotia, snags have occurred. The CEO, director, and founder, Kerry Martens, has quit. Kevin had chosen Parrsboro owing to fond memories of the place during a navy stint. The future of the development in that location is now in question.

Yehuda

The Menorah Game, Reprinted

I just printed thirty spanking new copies of The Menorah Game, in time for your holiday shopping needs.

While waiting for a publisher to take up the game, my choice has always been to print it correctly myself, which would require making a few thousand copies of good quality for about $7 each, or reprint the mockups, of which I can print any number I want for about $7 each.

I went with the mockups again. What can I say? I'm just not ready to invest my own money or my friend's money in this until I have already produced a good selling game. It's fear, pure and simple. If someone wants to come to my rescue and take over, they are more than welcome; it's going to not have to depend on my initiative, which is limited to sending copies of the game to publishers.

For the reprint, I added little Hebrew letters to each tile so that those with color-blindness can more easily match up the candles they need to collect. I also added extra numbers to the game screens so that it is clearer that there are 4 of each gold candle and Greek soldier.

I printed them without the coins because the small coins made out of paper were simply useless. But despite printing only three board per game instead of four, it still cost me as much for each game. The price of printing went up that much.

It was $7.50 per mockup. Add a single page of rules, baggies, envelopes, and shipping cost - generally around $12 to $15 per game, depending on where you live.

I can tell you right now that anyone paying that much will be disappointed by the quality of the components - sorry - but the game is now thoroughly play-tested and quite good and endlessly replayable. It's my favorite auction game. If I do say so myself.

Seven of the reprints are already spoken for. That leaves another 23 for anyone interested in acquiring a copy or for me to give out as gifts.


One could ask the question: in all these years, only one game that has made it to fruition? And you call yourself a game designer? The truth is, I have been concentrating more on blogging than game design. I have started, but not completed, many other designs. And I have done a lot of variants for games, many of which are quite good. But, no, I can't really be called a game designer unless I am regularly sitting down to the business. I may as well be living in LA and call myself an actor.

Yehuda

Odds and Ends

- I've written the sixth chapter of Encounter. It needs some editing, but should be ready to post next week.

For those who are late coming into the story, Encounter is a cyberpunk short story I am writing and posting irregularly on the Gone Gaming blog. Check the indexes on the blog for the previous five chapters, if you are interested.

After I finish the whole thing, I will take it and re-edit it all again. Then I will decide what to do with it. Publish it on Lulu? Send to a publisher?

- I also thought of a way of turning my Menorah Game into a pure card game. I may go back to reworking the theme and design. Or I may just keep talking about it for another ten years and not do anything about it.

- 2Old2Play writes about how the existence of strategy guides is affecting the way games are developed. On the one hand, I don't think very much about strategy guides, when they exist to take the thinking part out of the game so you can get to the whacking part. On the other hand, I don't mind a guide around when I give up on a puzzle (this is hypothetical, since I don't play much in the way of computer games).

And if the solution is not one that requires thinking but just requires random actions to solve, I probably don't think much of the game at all.

- GamesBlog mentions that Phillips is moving forward with its "Entertaible". They still haven't published any games for it, yet. I don't know why, but I honestly have really really low expectations for this. And this is despite thinking that the idea is a great one.

I'm just waiting for the buggy software, proprietary DRM'd games, privacy issues when connected to the internet, exorbitant pricing, incompatibilities, and so on and so forth.

- The Escapist runs another article that tries to convince us that games are good for us. The problem with these types of articles is that the agenda forces them to dismiss anything negative. And the problem with articles that claim gaming is bad, is that they dismiss anything positive. I need to see a few balanced, well-thought out articles that deal with the subject seriously from both perspectives.

Yehuda

2 plays of The Menorah Game / Card Games

I played The Menorah Game with Tal. She beat me in both. The first game was rather close. In the second one, I imprudently bought an early Gold candle to prevent Tal from buying it, and I got nailed with a soldier on the next round, which forced me to toss it. That hurt.

Tal's strategy is to auction a lot, a lot more than I would. It is a sound strategy in a two-player game. It probably wouldn't work as well in a multi-player game.

Still a good game. Someone ought to publish it. ;-)

Card Games

I was trying to think of the best card games using standard playing cards for N players, and this is what I've come up with:

1- Scaling cards, building card houses, scaling cards into card houses
2- 2-player Pinochle, Cribbage
3- ???
4- Bridge, Hearts
5- ??? Cheat? Oh Hell?
6- ???
8+ Haggle, Duplicate Bridge

Pretty pathetic, no?

I've got a few books with card games in them, like A Gamut of Games and Card Games Around the World, but I haven't tried to play many of these games yet.

There have to be better 2-player games. For three players, Skat looks like it might be interesting. Five or six players, anyone?

I played Spades many years ago, but I can't remember it. What essential card games am I missing here? I want to be prepared if I'm ever at a house that only has playing cards.

Yehuda

Weekend Gaming

April Fool

I couldn't fool anyone with yesterday's news about Derk, owing in part to my obviously poor Photoshop skills. My skills are not generally so bad; I just didn't take the time to do it better.

Surely it was otherwise believable that "let's go to a pork BBQ" Derk would convert to Judaism, right?

Other April Fools around the game web include Boardgamegeek, whose opening page allegedly showed Aldie's control screen, including buttons for "Randomize ratings" and "Annoy users", and so on, as well as Boardgamenews with a fake ad and news story. Update: And an amusing Boardgame Babylon episode.

I posted mine a wee bit early because April 1 was shabbat, and I knew that I wouldn't be able to post it on the right date. But I postdated the posting date correctly. Post posted post.

Anyhoo ...

Dvira

Dvira (the 7 year old) was dropped off to play with me by her mom. I was hoping to also play with either Saarya, who was home for shabbat (but he went to sleep), or the visiting American, Charlie (but he never showed up). So it ended up just being the two of us.

We played The Menorah Game three times, and I won three times. I'm actually a little surprised at that, because I didn't expect that skill could win so frequently in this game, but it still does.

We then played Havoc twice. In the first game, she trounced me in the first four battles. I warned her that she was seriously depleting her hand, but, being her first game, she didn't see it through all the way. I then took the remaining battles, pretty much, and won 36 to 29.

In the second game, we started out similarly, but this time she didn't need to spend as much effort. I won a battle or two in return, but she kept pulling in matches and I kept pulling in junk. She lost one more battle, but won the last one, keeping her lead by about 8 points.

After that I taught her how to play Oh Heck and Gin Rummy, games that I hope she can also play with her friends and family.

Rachel

We changed the clocks on Thursday, which means that we had an extra hour on shabbat. Which means that Rachel and I will be playing our usual shabbat afternoon PR games. Rachel won the last two times, so it was only fair that I won these two games.

I'll just mention two buildings:

Trade School 4/2: If you pay an extra doubloon when you buy a building it comes with a colonist from the supply.

This is a very nice building at its cost and a good replacement for Hospice. That extra doubloon offers temptation to spend money and also increases your options during the builder phase. It requires some finesse to use, and makes the University's feature finally available at a reasonable cost.

Giant Production Building 10/5: Take one extra barrel of each type of good you produce during Craftsman.

A big building without a VP bonus, this can nevertheless produce a good amount of extra bonus points if bought early enough. You'll find that a lot of what you produce goes to waste, but who cares? Notice that it is also worth one extra VP straight up. This makes a nice departure from the usual ten pointers.

We alternated ownership of these buildings during the two games, but I won each by about 4 points. In the first game I had Factory even though I was producing only two goods, Corn and Indigo. It still gave me a doubloon during each Craftsman, and it prevented Rachel from taking it. In the second game, I managed to block boats with goods that Rachel wasn't producing.

Saturday night we went to a Jazz concert at our local shul by some local talent; very nice. And I took Saarya back to school in preparation for his three day tiyul. It started this morning, right when it started raining a very late winter rainstorm. Rain is a blessing here, but I do hope that his trip isn't all washed out.

Rejection

I received another rejection letter for the Menorah Game. I wasn't expecting any more, actually. This one came from Out of the Box:

Thank you for submitting your game for our consideration. I do apologize for the delay in responding, but we been growing quickly and time is very short.

Since we are now distributing Rio Grande games, we have added over 130 card and board game titles. I feel that your submission falls in the Rio Grande genre of gaming. As such, it is not necessarily a good fit as an Out of the Box publication, as we are well represented in this area.

Jay (Rio Grande) wrote to me in November to tell me that he wasn't doing any new games for 6-8 months, so I don't expect to hear more from him for a while.

If you like my game and want Jay to publish it, you can feel free to write to him. Actually, I haven't heard from a bunch of people who bought the game. Anyone ever play it?

News

And in the news: Dominoes to be the next poker on ESPN? Just read and be amazed how the criteria for choosing dominoes is, quote, "the competition, the trash-talking, the color, and it's old school". In other words, Ethnic people who fight with each other. I have to add that to my list of why people play games.

Technorati tags: board game, board games

Weekend Gaming

Dinner: We ate out at a friend's house. She had other guests including one named Rebbecca. Our mutual friend had been trying to put us together (as it turns out, we had met before) because Rebbecca also plays games with her family all the time. She had brought a little game to show me when she had heard that I was coming. It turned out to be the Norwegian version of Pass the Pigs.

Rebbecca and my friend both come from Norway near the Oslo region.

Lunch: Invited out again. When we got there, their child was putting away Wonders of the World Monopoly (a Hebrew translation of the English version). This was the same family whose mother had asked me to teach her the rules to Rat-a-Tat Cat, but them hopelessly forgot them again. Non-gamers; what can you do?

Afternoon: When I got home I found one of the single mom's over with her daughter in tow. I wrote about her previously. This time I remember her name: Dvira. Dvira talks about me to her mom and has wanted to come back and play again since her last visit. We were both happy to reacquaint. She is about 7 years old.

We played The Menorah Game with her mom before her mom went off with Rachel to Rachel's torah class. Then we played three games one on one, and two more after Tal came in and joined us. Dvira didn't win any, but she definitely got better after each game. After that I introduced her to Settlers of Catan. It was a great game, tightly contested. We were all sitting at about 6 or 7 points. I got Largest Army which brought me to 8 points, but then Dvira built a settlement and after a round or two stole Longest Road from Tal to clinch the victory. She was quite excited.

We may see her at the game night, although she can only stay until 8 o'clock.

The Set system: On the way over to lunch I was thinking about how to transform the Set game into a system of games using a pack of playing cards. I thought about a little math game that plays without the picture cards. The black cards are face value, the red cards are face value plus ten. Cards are slowly flipped over. The first player to call an equation that uses cards on the table gets them. Equations can be formed using at least one of +, -, *, /, and an =.

Some variants: You can add the jacks and play that when there is an even number of jacks on the table the black cards are plus ten and the red cards are regular. You can also play that players keep their pile face open, and the top card of each player's pile can also be used (and is taken by the player forming the equation).

Yehuda

In other news

The Menorah Game has now been officially turned down by all publishers. *sniff* I have a few options for self-publishing (I would change the theme, of course) and even investors willing to pay for it. I have to decide if I want to do that and risk all of their money. Because we would still have to advertise and distribute it somehow. What should I do?

In case I haven't said it a thousand times already, time to make some more games.

BGIA awards should be here soon ... a little late, but hopefully not too late.

BGG.con now has a date. I have little hope of attending, but maybe there'll be another miracle this year.

Gone Gaming is now six months old.

My game group members have overwhelmingly said that they want to try out RPGs and Magic, so our next few sessions will be slightly different than usual.

Yehuda

A review and a pillow-fight

Here's a nice review of my game (in prototype format) by Coldfoot; thanks!

And we were all secretly wondering if the recent girls-only game convention "Nobody but us Chicks!" was going to have a pillow fight; turns out it did!

Yehuda