Puerto Rico
Nadine, Rachel, and I played in the late afternoon. Unusual buildings:
Poorhouse 2/1: Take a doubloon if you end a building phase with 0 or 1 doubloons. Result: I bought it as my second building and managed to use it three times. Not a very powerful building.
Mercantile District 5/2: +1 VP when you trade. Result: No one bought it.
Specialization Wharf 6/2: After crafting, you may discard the barrel on SW and place one of your barrels on SW. Only one barrel may be on SW at a time. When shipping, you can use SW as a wharf for the barrel type on SW. Discard the barrel on SW after SW is used. Result: No one bought it. But it's fine.
Private Boat 9/3: You may ship any three barrels on your own ship.. Result: No one bought it, but it's fine.
Reserves 10/4: +2 VP for each type of good on your board. Result: I've used this before, but it's hard to use. You have to time it perfectly. And have a Storehouse.
In our game, Rachel bought a Hospice and Assembly Line, while I bought an early Indigo Plant with my Poorhouse. As a result, the colonists went quickly, and the game ended with the colonists running out (first time in years, I would guess). Scores were therefore low. Rachel won 39 to mine and Nadine's 33.
Yinsh
We ate lunch at some friends, and they had two young men as guests. One of whom, Joe, brought out some of his Magic cards when he found out I played games. He had played Settlers of Catan once before, but couldn't find anyone else to play with. Meanwhile, the other one, Adam, had heard about Settlers and wanted to learn how to play.
They came over to my house while we were playing Puerto Rico, and I gave them Yinsh to play with until we finished our game. Joe picked it up immediately and loved it, while Adam is a less serious analyzer and so played more for fun. Joe won handily.
Settlers of Catan
After we were done with our games, I brought this out and taught Adam and we played. We had a great game, I was trailing a bit by mid-game, with a bit of bad luck with the numbers. Adam and Joe were also both cautious traders, but not in a bad way.
I managed to buy a slew of development cards near the end of the game, and earned two hidden victory points and Largest Army. I was pretty close to victory, but Joe got Longest Road and revealed his own hidden victory point to take the game.
More converts. Joe goes back to the states next week, but Adam will be around until January, so hope to see him come to game nights in the meantime.
Showing posts with label yinsh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yinsh. Show all posts
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Yinsh With Saarya
Puerto Rico
Rachel and I played what might be our last 2-player PR game before she goes, although who knows what may happen over the next ten days.
I headed to Tobacco, Sugar, and Discretionary Hold, while Rachel took corn, Commodity Exporters, and eventually Large Business. She was slightly ahead in building and shipping points, but I had her edged with money near the end, and I was blocking boats against her Commodity Exporters while shipping extra barrels in the Hold.
It came down to my getting two big buildings to her one, but when the dust settled, she still beat me 62 to 60. A close game and a nice one.
Yinsh
Saarya and I played a game of Yinsh after shabbat ended.
We began with the rings packed together, and they stayed that way during most of the game. I noticed that a certain point on the board is inviolate if there are three rows of disks ending with a ring leading out from it along the three axes. That formation determined a lot of our play.
I offered to swap rows early with Saarya, but he tried to wreck mine, first. Eventually, I got a row off,followed by another one very soon that he simply overlooked.
When you're up by two rings to zero, you only care about winning and don't mind letting your opponent get his rows off. I did some setting up while Saarya took off one row, and then set myself up for a winning row as he took off the second. Unfortunately, I didn't notice that I was one disk short. He cut across, and we were now equal.
I thought I was in good shape, nonetheless, as his moves were forced and his disks piled up on the side of the board, but Yinsh in the type of game where a row of disks is dangerous for both sides, regardless of the color.
He swept out with a great move, leaving himself two pivotal points which I couldn't block - but neither could he flip: he had disks in the right area, but the lines terminated at the end of the board. Unfortunately for me, I was in a similar position.
And he had just the right freedom he needed to move into position for the last jump, while I didn't, without flipping one of his tiles for him and thus giving the game to him.
An exciting game and a great comeback for Saarya. And none of you could follow this description at all without seeing the board, which sucks.
Game News
The NY Daily News reran an old David Barry column on board games.
Scott John Siegel is trying his hand at "off the grid" game design for Escapist magazine. Here is his first go, Magic Numbers, a simple bluffing dice game.
Oh yes. By the way, this lovely Brazilian Belizean woman loves to play board games.
Maybe you should, too?
Yehuda
Rachel and I played what might be our last 2-player PR game before she goes, although who knows what may happen over the next ten days.
I headed to Tobacco, Sugar, and Discretionary Hold, while Rachel took corn, Commodity Exporters, and eventually Large Business. She was slightly ahead in building and shipping points, but I had her edged with money near the end, and I was blocking boats against her Commodity Exporters while shipping extra barrels in the Hold.
It came down to my getting two big buildings to her one, but when the dust settled, she still beat me 62 to 60. A close game and a nice one.
Yinsh
Saarya and I played a game of Yinsh after shabbat ended.
We began with the rings packed together, and they stayed that way during most of the game. I noticed that a certain point on the board is inviolate if there are three rows of disks ending with a ring leading out from it along the three axes. That formation determined a lot of our play.
I offered to swap rows early with Saarya, but he tried to wreck mine, first. Eventually, I got a row off,followed by another one very soon that he simply overlooked.
When you're up by two rings to zero, you only care about winning and don't mind letting your opponent get his rows off. I did some setting up while Saarya took off one row, and then set myself up for a winning row as he took off the second. Unfortunately, I didn't notice that I was one disk short. He cut across, and we were now equal.
I thought I was in good shape, nonetheless, as his moves were forced and his disks piled up on the side of the board, but Yinsh in the type of game where a row of disks is dangerous for both sides, regardless of the color.
He swept out with a great move, leaving himself two pivotal points which I couldn't block - but neither could he flip: he had disks in the right area, but the lines terminated at the end of the board. Unfortunately for me, I was in a similar position.
And he had just the right freedom he needed to move into position for the last jump, while I didn't, without flipping one of his tiles for him and thus giving the game to him.
An exciting game and a great comeback for Saarya. And none of you could follow this description at all without seeing the board, which sucks.
Game News
The NY Daily News reran an old David Barry column on board games.
Scott John Siegel is trying his hand at "off the grid" game design for Escapist magazine. Here is his first go, Magic Numbers, a simple bluffing dice game.
Oh yes. By the way, this lovely Maybe you should, too?
Yehuda
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Beyonce Got Game
In the very important world of celebrities and their board games, Beyonce bares all about her meeple-lust:
I didn't get to game this this weekend, but that doesn't mean that games made no appearance in my life.
On Friday evening, after I returned from dinner, we hosted some friends for a Tu B'Shvat seder, which is a meandering Hassidic custom about fruits, trees, and wine. This bored me until I brought out the only thing we had that could represent barley to the table, namely the remains of an awesome bottle of scotch. The evening picked up from then on.
Meanwhile, one of the guests are my friends with two kids, said kids who own a stack of games in the living room and always play, but have never played anything good. I took advantage of their being in my house to introduce them to Betsy, my game cabinet. I taught them Yinsh, and the two kids, a girl around 13 and a boy around 11 sat down to play on the living-room floor behind us.
They made it through one and a quarter game. Throughout the game, even though the rules are not that complicated, the boy kept complaining that the girl was cheating whenever she made a legal play. Either he didn't like the play, or he was unable to grasp the full implication of how to play. He kept trying to move rings without placing the disks, jump rings, and all sorts of other things that you can't do. And all the while, accused her of cheating.
Naturally, the girl won, and though she made a game attempt to try another game with him, she had to abandon it when he became more vociferous. But she liked the game, and her parents, who had kept half an eyeball on the goings-on, gave some indication that they may be interested in picking the game up.
After a game with rules didn't work, I tried to interest them in Zero-In, which is simply a bunch of cards where you guess a celebrity's name from a series of clues and an extraneous set of rules, but they couldn't cooperate enough to try again.
Nevertheless, I heard many interesting things, and thought many interesting thoughts over shabbat, about winning and politics and law, and about evil and god, some of which may turn up in future posts. Regarding the latter (evil and god), I will simply quote Levinas for now: "Ontological absence means ethical presence".
Many sites cover the World of Warcraft board game expansion. Just so you know, I often don't bother to cover news items that are extensively covered on other sites.
Both Chris Bateman (on "logistical play") and Bernie DeKoven tackle competition and challenge, as does the mainstream press icWales, the latter of which asserts that competition in childhood can lead to a wealthier life.
Yehuda
"My favourite game is Guess Who. It's like charades and I love Connect Four. I'm really good at it." "I swear, I could kick anyone's a** at Connect Four."
I didn't get to game this this weekend, but that doesn't mean that games made no appearance in my life.
On Friday evening, after I returned from dinner, we hosted some friends for a Tu B'Shvat seder, which is a meandering Hassidic custom about fruits, trees, and wine. This bored me until I brought out the only thing we had that could represent barley to the table, namely the remains of an awesome bottle of scotch. The evening picked up from then on.
Meanwhile, one of the guests are my friends with two kids, said kids who own a stack of games in the living room and always play, but have never played anything good. I took advantage of their being in my house to introduce them to Betsy, my game cabinet. I taught them Yinsh, and the two kids, a girl around 13 and a boy around 11 sat down to play on the living-room floor behind us.
They made it through one and a quarter game. Throughout the game, even though the rules are not that complicated, the boy kept complaining that the girl was cheating whenever she made a legal play. Either he didn't like the play, or he was unable to grasp the full implication of how to play. He kept trying to move rings without placing the disks, jump rings, and all sorts of other things that you can't do. And all the while, accused her of cheating.
Naturally, the girl won, and though she made a game attempt to try another game with him, she had to abandon it when he became more vociferous. But she liked the game, and her parents, who had kept half an eyeball on the goings-on, gave some indication that they may be interested in picking the game up.
After a game with rules didn't work, I tried to interest them in Zero-In, which is simply a bunch of cards where you guess a celebrity's name from a series of clues and an extraneous set of rules, but they couldn't cooperate enough to try again.
Nevertheless, I heard many interesting things, and thought many interesting thoughts over shabbat, about winning and politics and law, and about evil and god, some of which may turn up in future posts. Regarding the latter (evil and god), I will simply quote Levinas for now: "Ontological absence means ethical presence".
Many sites cover the World of Warcraft board game expansion. Just so you know, I often don't bother to cover news items that are extensively covered on other sites.
Both Chris Bateman (on "logistical play") and Bernie DeKoven tackle competition and challenge, as does the mainstream press icWales, the latter of which asserts that competition in childhood can lead to a wealthier life.
Yehuda
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Weekend Gaming
I had high gaming expectations for the weekend, since my guests included Nadine from the game group, Mace and his three kids who are also gamers, and three game-curious students of Rachel's.
Mace and the kids arrived before lunch, and while waiting for Rachel to return from shul, we started a few games. The kids played Settlers of Catan, which disintegrated into some sort of fight by the time lunch started. Meanwhile, I introduced Mace to Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation.
Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation
I explained the game and took the dark pieces, while Mace fretted over the seeming imbalance of forces arrayed against him. Then he waltzed into the dark forces with Aragorn and proceeded to wreak havoc with a series of well-timed card choices.
Saruman managed to make a small comeback by killing a few lost Hobbits, but I was still down to three pieces late in the game. Fortunately, they were close to the Shire. We each had two cards left. He had a 1 and a 5, while I had a 3 and "ignore text on his card", which was effectively a 0.
I made the mistake of flying into the Shire with my Nazgul. I played my 3, but if he had responded with his 5, the game would have been over, with me having no way of stopping Frodo from waltzing into Mordor. But he played his 1. I was now able to walk into the Shire faster than he could get to Mordor. Mace said that he had forgotten about that alternate win situation, so we split the win.
El Caballero
Nadine, Mace, Shachar, and I sat down to play this little cousin of El Grande. It holds more similarity with Carcassonne, however. It's much better than the latter (which I think is good), but nowhere near the former at first glance.
The game consists of a number of land/water tiles, eight caballero tiles for each player, some ship markers, and some castillo markers. The caballero tiles are identical, and are all numbered 1-4 around the sides on one side of the tile, and 5-8 on the other side.
During the game, the map builds in the center of the board, consisting of both land/water tiles and your caballero tiles. Ship and castillo markers are placed onto your scoring tiles, ship tokens on the side of a tile covering a number, and castillo markers in the center of the tile.
Like other games of this sort, let's first start with the scoring rules, after which the mechanics will make more sense. There are two scoring rounds, after the fourth and seventh round. During scoring, for any water area touched by your caballero tile, you score the number of water tiles in the area times the number of ship tokens on your caballero tile adjacent to the area. For any land area touching your scoring marker, you score double its size if you have the highest numerical value on the sides of your caballero tiles adjacent to the area, single if second highest, or nothing at all.
Which is to say that water areas share all points without any conflict, and land areas must be contested.
Each round, you all play cards for bidding, which indicate both the order you play during the round and the number of caballeros you have to play with that round (you may also have some remaining caballeros from previous rounds). During your turn, you adjust your caballero count according to your bid card (using any spare caballero tiles to keep count), must place a tile on the board, may adjust the position of caballero tiles already in place or may add new ones to the board, by paying for these actions from your caballero supply. You may also deduct caballeros to add ships or castillos to your caballero tiles in play. Castillo tokens "protect" your caballero investments, as follows.
All caballero tiles can only have one face touching land. If a tile is placed that causes the tile to have two faces touching land, the caballero tile is lost. If you have a castillo on the tile, the invested caballeros and any ships on the tile are returned to your court; otherwise, they are returned to the general supply.
So the basic tactics of the game are to ensure that no one can place tiles so as to knock away your existing caballero tiles in place. The basic strategies are to achieve high scoring water areas or control of high scoring land areas.
There is more control here regarding tile selection than in Carcassonne, both because you select your tile from a pool of face up tiles instead of picking from the draw pile, and because you auction to determine the turn order in selecting these tiles. But the geometry of the available tiles can still make the difference between being able to secure an area or not.
Still, as I liked Carcassonne (actually, Carcassonne H&G), I like El Caballero. It is certainly a more substantial game, with a great many more options to do on your round, and some interesting tactical side-effects owing to the way the rotation of the caballero tiles interact on the board. I wouldn't pay top dollar for it, however. If you don't like Carcassonne, I can't see liking this game that much more. OTOH, Nadine likes the game, and didn't like Carcassonne, so there you go.
In our game, we were only able to play until the end of round four before Nadine had to go. I held a marginal lead at that point. Nadine had secured some water points, but I was able to secure the largest land area in a way that just barely kept both Mace and Shachar at bay, although it took a long time to convince them that this was so.
Amun Re, Yinsh, By Hook or By Crook
While we were playing El Caballero, Rachel's students decided that Amun Re was the coolest looking first Eurogame to play. And had a very good time. They pretty much got the hang of it by the end of the first round, and happily played to the end with out any major problems. The one who received the most cash at mid-game ended up winning at the end.
Two of them then played a game of Yinsh while some of us went for a walk. When we came back, the Yinsh players had taken out By Hook or By Crook. I warned them that the game wasn't up to the standards of the other games they had seen, but we played anyway. I took the game, and they both pretty much agreed with my assessment by the end of it.
Tadhg Kelly, on his video gaming blog particleblog, asserts that an interviewer can determine if a candidate is a good video game designer by sticking him in a room for four hours with a blank deck of cards, some dice, and some tokens and asking him or her to create a unique and enjoyable game from scratch.
"If the game that he invents is fun (or potentially fun), then he has talent. If it is not, then he does not."
Ah, if only it were that easy to create a good game. I wonder who retains the rights to these interview creations.
Yehuda
Technorati tags: board games, board game
Mace and the kids arrived before lunch, and while waiting for Rachel to return from shul, we started a few games. The kids played Settlers of Catan, which disintegrated into some sort of fight by the time lunch started. Meanwhile, I introduced Mace to Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation.
Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation
I explained the game and took the dark pieces, while Mace fretted over the seeming imbalance of forces arrayed against him. Then he waltzed into the dark forces with Aragorn and proceeded to wreak havoc with a series of well-timed card choices.
Saruman managed to make a small comeback by killing a few lost Hobbits, but I was still down to three pieces late in the game. Fortunately, they were close to the Shire. We each had two cards left. He had a 1 and a 5, while I had a 3 and "ignore text on his card", which was effectively a 0.
I made the mistake of flying into the Shire with my Nazgul. I played my 3, but if he had responded with his 5, the game would have been over, with me having no way of stopping Frodo from waltzing into Mordor. But he played his 1. I was now able to walk into the Shire faster than he could get to Mordor. Mace said that he had forgotten about that alternate win situation, so we split the win.
El Caballero
Nadine, Mace, Shachar, and I sat down to play this little cousin of El Grande. It holds more similarity with Carcassonne, however. It's much better than the latter (which I think is good), but nowhere near the former at first glance.
The game consists of a number of land/water tiles, eight caballero tiles for each player, some ship markers, and some castillo markers. The caballero tiles are identical, and are all numbered 1-4 around the sides on one side of the tile, and 5-8 on the other side.
During the game, the map builds in the center of the board, consisting of both land/water tiles and your caballero tiles. Ship and castillo markers are placed onto your scoring tiles, ship tokens on the side of a tile covering a number, and castillo markers in the center of the tile.
Like other games of this sort, let's first start with the scoring rules, after which the mechanics will make more sense. There are two scoring rounds, after the fourth and seventh round. During scoring, for any water area touched by your caballero tile, you score the number of water tiles in the area times the number of ship tokens on your caballero tile adjacent to the area. For any land area touching your scoring marker, you score double its size if you have the highest numerical value on the sides of your caballero tiles adjacent to the area, single if second highest, or nothing at all.
Which is to say that water areas share all points without any conflict, and land areas must be contested.
Each round, you all play cards for bidding, which indicate both the order you play during the round and the number of caballeros you have to play with that round (you may also have some remaining caballeros from previous rounds). During your turn, you adjust your caballero count according to your bid card (using any spare caballero tiles to keep count), must place a tile on the board, may adjust the position of caballero tiles already in place or may add new ones to the board, by paying for these actions from your caballero supply. You may also deduct caballeros to add ships or castillos to your caballero tiles in play. Castillo tokens "protect" your caballero investments, as follows.
All caballero tiles can only have one face touching land. If a tile is placed that causes the tile to have two faces touching land, the caballero tile is lost. If you have a castillo on the tile, the invested caballeros and any ships on the tile are returned to your court; otherwise, they are returned to the general supply.
So the basic tactics of the game are to ensure that no one can place tiles so as to knock away your existing caballero tiles in place. The basic strategies are to achieve high scoring water areas or control of high scoring land areas.
There is more control here regarding tile selection than in Carcassonne, both because you select your tile from a pool of face up tiles instead of picking from the draw pile, and because you auction to determine the turn order in selecting these tiles. But the geometry of the available tiles can still make the difference between being able to secure an area or not.
Still, as I liked Carcassonne (actually, Carcassonne H&G), I like El Caballero. It is certainly a more substantial game, with a great many more options to do on your round, and some interesting tactical side-effects owing to the way the rotation of the caballero tiles interact on the board. I wouldn't pay top dollar for it, however. If you don't like Carcassonne, I can't see liking this game that much more. OTOH, Nadine likes the game, and didn't like Carcassonne, so there you go.
In our game, we were only able to play until the end of round four before Nadine had to go. I held a marginal lead at that point. Nadine had secured some water points, but I was able to secure the largest land area in a way that just barely kept both Mace and Shachar at bay, although it took a long time to convince them that this was so.
Amun Re, Yinsh, By Hook or By Crook
While we were playing El Caballero, Rachel's students decided that Amun Re was the coolest looking first Eurogame to play. And had a very good time. They pretty much got the hang of it by the end of the first round, and happily played to the end with out any major problems. The one who received the most cash at mid-game ended up winning at the end.
Two of them then played a game of Yinsh while some of us went for a walk. When we came back, the Yinsh players had taken out By Hook or By Crook. I warned them that the game wasn't up to the standards of the other games they had seen, but we played anyway. I took the game, and they both pretty much agreed with my assessment by the end of it.
Tadhg Kelly, on his video gaming blog particleblog, asserts that an interviewer can determine if a candidate is a good video game designer by sticking him in a room for four hours with a blank deck of cards, some dice, and some tokens and asking him or her to create a unique and enjoyable game from scratch.
"If the game that he invents is fun (or potentially fun), then he has talent. If it is not, then he does not."
Ah, if only it were that easy to create a good game. I wonder who retains the rights to these interview creations.
Yehuda
Technorati tags: board games, board game
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Weekend Update
Nah nah. You're all too late. Four people read my previous post and received geekgold (or declined). They're my real fans. The rest of you can retake the test later this year.
I was hoping my sickness would be a transitory thing, but I wake up every day feeling just about the same. Just on this side of not being able to go to work, but not enough not to be able to work from home.
Let's see. Saarya had been sick for about 36 hours and had gotten better. Rachel appeared to be sick for only twelve hours and had also gotten better. But ... more on that later.
As luck would have it, not only did we have guests for the entire weekend, but we also had a group of girls for dinner. These girls had just arrived on the March of the Living, a program for twelfth-graders from America (these ones were from Baltimore) and other countries.
March of the Living takes kids to Poland and has them visiting numerous Holocaust sites, such as Auschwitz and so on. They see mountains of ash, rooms full of eyeglasses and teeth, and so on. They see the ghettos and the burnt synagogues. Perhaps just as important they see ice cream stands selling outside the concentration camps, worthless, genericizing, and desensitizing museums in places where the real articles would have been more powerful, and disdain or naked antisemitism on the faces of all too many Polish people today.
We had a non-Jewish Polish person over for shabbat a few months ago who told us that she thinks that it is a shame that the kids see only this part of Poland, and that part of the disdain of the Polish people comes from the fact that the kids are shown nothing else of Poland. Obviously someone is missing something, somewhere.
After this harrowing week, the kids come to Israel for another week or so. In this case, the girls had arrived at 4:30 am without sleep, had gone to the Western Wall and then come to us for dinner, still without sleep. But you know young 'uns; they were still vibrant and full of energy.
They all said that it was an incredible experience and very meaningful to them. They also said that Israel was so much more beautiful than they had realized.
I coughed and hurfed through dinner, but they were all very nice about it. I found out that when it takes a long time to say anything, it is only worth saying things that don't take a long time to say.
We sent them off at 9:30 pm and hopefully they made it back to their hotel without plotzing on the way.
Our shabbat guests were the non-gamer variety. Their kids play, but only the youngest one came, a girl about 13. We played Set, Yinsh twice, the Menorah game, and China Moon. She lost all but one game of Yinsh, but the Yinsh game that she won was extremely well played. I was certainly trying my best.
I did manage to get the mother to play "shabbat Boggle" with us, which consists of simply finding words on a Boggle grid for as long as possible. In theory, you take turns and the last one to call a word wins. Our game just disintegrated into calling out words as people found them, however.
After shabbat, I was called over to the neighbors, as I'll be narrating a Purim "shpiel", or humorous play. This one is a musical where we make fun of all of the streams of Judaism. Unfortunately for me, not only was I sick, but the play organizer still hadn't written all of my narration (the play is Tuesday night), what he wrote was, um, not so good (but the songs are what's important, so no big loss), and the musicians were still trying to figure out how to sing the songs. I guess we call this amateur theater. I'm sure it will all work out, but it's funny to watch.
Rachel had banished me to one of the other rooms to sleep since I was coughing so much. Undoubtedly as a form of divine retribution, she awakened early in the night with severe heartburn-like pain. Ariella accompanied her to the hospital. In the morning we found out that she has an inflamed gall bladder and may have had a very small kidney stone. She is feeling totally ok right now, but is getting pumped with anti-biotics in the hospital until tomorrow, at least.
The next week should be interesting.
Yehuda
I was hoping my sickness would be a transitory thing, but I wake up every day feeling just about the same. Just on this side of not being able to go to work, but not enough not to be able to work from home.
Let's see. Saarya had been sick for about 36 hours and had gotten better. Rachel appeared to be sick for only twelve hours and had also gotten better. But ... more on that later.
As luck would have it, not only did we have guests for the entire weekend, but we also had a group of girls for dinner. These girls had just arrived on the March of the Living, a program for twelfth-graders from America (these ones were from Baltimore) and other countries.
March of the Living takes kids to Poland and has them visiting numerous Holocaust sites, such as Auschwitz and so on. They see mountains of ash, rooms full of eyeglasses and teeth, and so on. They see the ghettos and the burnt synagogues. Perhaps just as important they see ice cream stands selling outside the concentration camps, worthless, genericizing, and desensitizing museums in places where the real articles would have been more powerful, and disdain or naked antisemitism on the faces of all too many Polish people today.
We had a non-Jewish Polish person over for shabbat a few months ago who told us that she thinks that it is a shame that the kids see only this part of Poland, and that part of the disdain of the Polish people comes from the fact that the kids are shown nothing else of Poland. Obviously someone is missing something, somewhere.
After this harrowing week, the kids come to Israel for another week or so. In this case, the girls had arrived at 4:30 am without sleep, had gone to the Western Wall and then come to us for dinner, still without sleep. But you know young 'uns; they were still vibrant and full of energy.
They all said that it was an incredible experience and very meaningful to them. They also said that Israel was so much more beautiful than they had realized.
I coughed and hurfed through dinner, but they were all very nice about it. I found out that when it takes a long time to say anything, it is only worth saying things that don't take a long time to say.
We sent them off at 9:30 pm and hopefully they made it back to their hotel without plotzing on the way.
Our shabbat guests were the non-gamer variety. Their kids play, but only the youngest one came, a girl about 13. We played Set, Yinsh twice, the Menorah game, and China Moon. She lost all but one game of Yinsh, but the Yinsh game that she won was extremely well played. I was certainly trying my best.
I did manage to get the mother to play "shabbat Boggle" with us, which consists of simply finding words on a Boggle grid for as long as possible. In theory, you take turns and the last one to call a word wins. Our game just disintegrated into calling out words as people found them, however.
After shabbat, I was called over to the neighbors, as I'll be narrating a Purim "shpiel", or humorous play. This one is a musical where we make fun of all of the streams of Judaism. Unfortunately for me, not only was I sick, but the play organizer still hadn't written all of my narration (the play is Tuesday night), what he wrote was, um, not so good (but the songs are what's important, so no big loss), and the musicians were still trying to figure out how to sing the songs. I guess we call this amateur theater. I'm sure it will all work out, but it's funny to watch.
Rachel had banished me to one of the other rooms to sleep since I was coughing so much. Undoubtedly as a form of divine retribution, she awakened early in the night with severe heartburn-like pain. Ariella accompanied her to the hospital. In the morning we found out that she has an inflamed gall bladder and may have had a very small kidney stone. She is feeling totally ok right now, but is getting pumped with anti-biotics in the hospital until tomorrow, at least.
The next week should be interesting.
Yehuda
Monday, January 09, 2006
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
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Weekend Gaming
The Kids
A weekend with all of my kids is a rare and wonderful thing.
Ariella and Eitan are half-time with their father. When they are not with him, they are often with friends. Rachel insists that that be kept to a minimum, however. Saarya is at a sleep-away school that has him coming home two out of every three weekends. Unfortunately, one of those two is to his mother, and one is to me. So that's one out of every three weekends. Tal is with me one out of three weekends.
Of course, all of the above have numerous exceptions: the party, the bat-mitzvah, the visiting relative, and so on. Which means we are lucky to have them all together one out of every six weeks.
A little truism for you: if you are still married to your children's other parent, you dream about getting away from your children. If not, you dream about having your children more often.
No matter how you slice it, after a divorce, your kids have gone from fourteen parental units of attention each week to only seven. Step-parents can be good models and influence and make a huge difference in their children's lives, but it is rarely the same.
So anyway, this weekend of Hanukkah was one of those syzygies.
Tal specifically likes to play games with me. Usually Saarya does, too, but he spent his time reading. So I played with Tal:
Spit (Speed): Tal beat me for the very first time. We were playing with plastic cards (not plastic coated). They were hard to grasp.
Settlers of Catan: Tal won again. I used to find this game slightly boring two player, but now I find it more than slightly boring. Tal took longest road early enough, but never solidified it enough. I was all set to sweep in for a victory by stealing it, but she won before I could do it.
Yinsh: Tal surprised me by winning this one, too. I think I underestimated her. This game is harder for me than Dvonn. I'm still playing with the failing tactics of getting four in a row whenever possible, even though this is pointless when she can just break the line apart again. In the process, I missed Tal's winning lines.
This is a known psychological problem that people have in games: hoping that reality won't disturb your wish that a play will work, when there is no hope that it can. What is really going on is that you are too lazy to actually work at finding a winning strategy. This happens to many people at the end of Puerto Rico games ("if I craft, will you ship?").
Cribbage: I taught this to Tal. I almost lost this one, too. It came down to the wire, and she only lost by two points.
Chess: I won this one, but only through mutual takebacks. Chess is hard for me. However, Tal is only beginning to explore how the pieces interact.
Late at night, after I had gone to bed, I understand that Tal and Eitan played some games of spit and chess, or something like that.
The Concert
Sat night our new shul put on a benefit concert to raise money. It was very good. The musicians were world class, and the program was very unusual, a wierd mix of different styles of music from different millenia.
One of the singers was my friend Rachel Jaskow, of the renowned blog Elms in the Yard. Nice to see/hear her again.
I snapped some pictures which are on the shul site's navbar (Lhadlik1-3).
Yehuda
Update: Added link to Haaretz article for concert.
Technorati Tags: board game, board games, games, gaming
A weekend with all of my kids is a rare and wonderful thing.
Ariella and Eitan are half-time with their father. When they are not with him, they are often with friends. Rachel insists that that be kept to a minimum, however. Saarya is at a sleep-away school that has him coming home two out of every three weekends. Unfortunately, one of those two is to his mother, and one is to me. So that's one out of every three weekends. Tal is with me one out of three weekends.
Of course, all of the above have numerous exceptions: the party, the bat-mitzvah, the visiting relative, and so on. Which means we are lucky to have them all together one out of every six weeks.
A little truism for you: if you are still married to your children's other parent, you dream about getting away from your children. If not, you dream about having your children more often.
No matter how you slice it, after a divorce, your kids have gone from fourteen parental units of attention each week to only seven. Step-parents can be good models and influence and make a huge difference in their children's lives, but it is rarely the same.
So anyway, this weekend of Hanukkah was one of those syzygies.
Tal specifically likes to play games with me. Usually Saarya does, too, but he spent his time reading. So I played with Tal:
Spit (Speed): Tal beat me for the very first time. We were playing with plastic cards (not plastic coated). They were hard to grasp.
Settlers of Catan: Tal won again. I used to find this game slightly boring two player, but now I find it more than slightly boring. Tal took longest road early enough, but never solidified it enough. I was all set to sweep in for a victory by stealing it, but she won before I could do it.
Yinsh: Tal surprised me by winning this one, too. I think I underestimated her. This game is harder for me than Dvonn. I'm still playing with the failing tactics of getting four in a row whenever possible, even though this is pointless when she can just break the line apart again. In the process, I missed Tal's winning lines.
This is a known psychological problem that people have in games: hoping that reality won't disturb your wish that a play will work, when there is no hope that it can. What is really going on is that you are too lazy to actually work at finding a winning strategy. This happens to many people at the end of Puerto Rico games ("if I craft, will you ship?").
Cribbage: I taught this to Tal. I almost lost this one, too. It came down to the wire, and she only lost by two points.
Chess: I won this one, but only through mutual takebacks. Chess is hard for me. However, Tal is only beginning to explore how the pieces interact.
Late at night, after I had gone to bed, I understand that Tal and Eitan played some games of spit and chess, or something like that.
The Concert
Sat night our new shul put on a benefit concert to raise money. It was very good. The musicians were world class, and the program was very unusual, a wierd mix of different styles of music from different millenia.
One of the singers was my friend Rachel Jaskow, of the renowned blog Elms in the Yard. Nice to see/hear her again.
I snapped some pictures which are on the shul site's navbar (Lhadlik1-3).
Yehuda
Update: Added link to Haaretz article for concert.
Technorati Tags: board game, board games, games, gaming
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Weekend Gaming
Two new games have taken off: Yinsh and Havoc.
Yinsh seems like a more accessible game than Dvonn to some people. I think this is an illusion. It's just that the game starts off with less chaos and then proceeds towards more, which is easier to deal with than the reverse. Anyway, both Tal and Saarya played me at least once, with Saarya winning his game.
Tal initially wasn't too sure about Havoc, but decided to play again and now likes it a lot. Something about it prevents me from seeing it as a "great" game - something about poker hands just irks my sensibility of the elegant.However, I can't argue that people, including me, enjoy playing it. I played with Saarya, Tal, and a guest on Friday night. The guest was a complete newbie whom I managed to convince to try a game. He enjoyed it very much, and asked me where he could buy it (I told him). Hopefully he will join us on Wed nights.
In our game, Saarya took a very long time for each round, and I had to cut out two of the battles just so we could finish within a respectable length of time. In the end, I won 28 to 24/24/18.
Sat night I played my first game of PR with Rachel in what must have been many weeks. Still the best new game in the world (by new I mean post-1970). We played with my usual buildings plus a few others that don't get much play: a 3/1 building that lets you place up to three colonists onto empty plantation spaces, and under which you can place new plantations (also useful to control the end game); Irrigation, 4/2, which gives you an extra barrel while producing; a modified Exchange House which attempted to correct the slight bug in the building; etc...
I started off the game looking like I was probably coasting to a narrow victory. Rachel, however, pulled a lovely play about 2/3 of the way through the game, crafting at a point when the boats and trading house were all almost full, and she had Discretionary Hold (allowing her to store barrels and ship some onto full boats). She ended up moving ahead in both shipping and money, and I ended up losing by a few points.
Maybe she should join the international competition instead of me.
Yehuda
Yinsh seems like a more accessible game than Dvonn to some people. I think this is an illusion. It's just that the game starts off with less chaos and then proceeds towards more, which is easier to deal with than the reverse. Anyway, both Tal and Saarya played me at least once, with Saarya winning his game.
Tal initially wasn't too sure about Havoc, but decided to play again and now likes it a lot. Something about it prevents me from seeing it as a "great" game - something about poker hands just irks my sensibility of the elegant.However, I can't argue that people, including me, enjoy playing it. I played with Saarya, Tal, and a guest on Friday night. The guest was a complete newbie whom I managed to convince to try a game. He enjoyed it very much, and asked me where he could buy it (I told him). Hopefully he will join us on Wed nights.
In our game, Saarya took a very long time for each round, and I had to cut out two of the battles just so we could finish within a respectable length of time. In the end, I won 28 to 24/24/18.
Sat night I played my first game of PR with Rachel in what must have been many weeks. Still the best new game in the world (by new I mean post-1970). We played with my usual buildings plus a few others that don't get much play: a 3/1 building that lets you place up to three colonists onto empty plantation spaces, and under which you can place new plantations (also useful to control the end game); Irrigation, 4/2, which gives you an extra barrel while producing; a modified Exchange House which attempted to correct the slight bug in the building; etc...
I started off the game looking like I was probably coasting to a narrow victory. Rachel, however, pulled a lovely play about 2/3 of the way through the game, crafting at a point when the boats and trading house were all almost full, and she had Discretionary Hold (allowing her to store barrels and ship some onto full boats). She ended up moving ahead in both shipping and money, and I ended up losing by a few points.
Maybe she should join the international competition instead of me.
Yehuda
Monday, November 07, 2005
BGG.con: Saturday, Nov 05
1. Shabbat
Lunch was at some friends of David and Sharron's. I think these people were concerned about showing up in the blog, so I won't name names. However, she is an excellent Scrabble player, like David is.
Somehow, whenever the subject about my involvement with board games comes up, little girls stare at me bug-eyed and then run out of the room to bring a board game to play with me, usually something like Barbie's Rocking Dreamhouse Party or somesuch. Must be the parents don't play enough of these games with their kids, and if they don't, I can't say that I blame them.
This time I refused the first offering, and instead went to the game closet with her (8 year old) to see what other treasures she might have and decided on Guess Who? as the least offensive. The game is structured so that the first person to actually guess right (at random) basically wins. Still better than Barbie's Dream Date With Ken.
Later in the afternoon I played Anagrams with David, a game at which I have slightly more chance of winning than Scrabble. Also, Go on a 9x9, again which I don't win too often against him. It is a shame that he decided not to join me for a while at the con, since he also plays some of my games. I guess he feels that he has better things to do, go figure.
2. Back to the con
Since I had a place to stay over in the hotel, I packed up and made my goodbyes to my friends and arrived at the hotel right before the grand drawing.
Magical things happened at the con while I was gone. I left money and my games to trade with various lovely souls. When I got back to the closet where I had left my games, I saw that almost all were gone and two new ones were there. Great, I figured, I got two games. Good enough and all that I expected. Then the person with whom I left the money found me and game me back all of my money and an additional $55 or so. Good lord. Much better than I would have done. Thank you thank you.
From here on out just assume that I don't remember anyone's name. My fault, but it just got impossible to write them all down. Sorry.
I had sold my CD from Traumfabrik earlier on Friday and left a note to that effect on the box, but apparently the person who said they would sell it for me didn't see the note before selling it. Luckily the person buying it did, so it worked out. The only things that didn't sell were the Magic cards and The Arab Israeli Wars. The games I got in return were Modern Art and China Moon. And the cash.
Time to do some game buying.
Around this time, Derk also found me and gave me a con T-shirt as a gift, I think for being the furthest traveled to the con. I heard someone may have come from Australia, so that would probably have beaten me.
Another strange thing began happening on Sat night. People began seeking me out to buy copies of my game prototypes. I mean, cripes, yeah I spent a good amount of money on each of them, but the components were much worse than I would have liked to have given people for the amount of money I had to charge for them. Apparently word had spread, however and people wanted copies. Yeah. Time to get it published. Of course, I also helped spread the word by physically dragging people over to my table and getting them to play it. Almost all of them had kind words (which doesn't mean much when you're sitting in front of the designer) but some wanted to play again right away and some bought it.
So, if any of you bought the game, please send me comments so that I can ensure that everything about the game is finished and so that I can pass comments on to potential publishers.
And for those of you who didn't actually play it with me: the player screens are meant to hide both your player mats and your money. Tiles go on the mats during the game, and can be shifted around at will. When you have won the game, simply reveal the complete collection filled in correctly.
Back to the drawing. Derk was drawing for a few items for each colored ticket. The only item I really wanted was the Gipf series. I wouldn't have minded a Crokinole board, but there was no way that I could carry it home with me. Unfortunately, I didn't win anything from the main items nor any of the minor items that were cleared out afterwards. Oh well. There is something silly about standing around waiting to see if your number is called on a raffle ticket. It feels suspiciously like playing games with dice. Or vice versa.
Saturday night games:
My Game Prototype 3 times, once with Susan of The Game Ranch, who bought a copy. Thanks, Susan!
Pompeii. OK, I had heard some mixed things about Pompeii, which is what I said to the person who was trying to rope me in. He said that it must have been about a different game called Pompeii, so I sat down. Turns out that the roper was ShillKing, and I think this was his game. And yes, this was the game that I had heard about.
The game is basically a lot of dice rolling to start with, and then a lot of little moves afterwards, most of which don't matter much or do very much. There is some excitement about rolling the dice to see if the game will end, but it feels like standing around waiting to see if your number is called with a raffle ticket. I rescued two boat loads of people early in the game, since I saw how few actions you get before the game ends. Once my pieces were off the board, I had nothing to do the rest of the game. Most of the time most of your actions were not so significant, and when they were, you could usually count on a chaotic tile showing up to undo whatever you just did. And some of the mechanics just didn't come into play much.
OK, it is not as bad as all that, but pretty close. If you got rid of all of the lava tiles it would probably play much better.
Since most of the other people could only make it onto the boat once, I won with an easy margin. (54/15/13/2)
Evo: Another game I am not thrilled with, but I saw some people trying to learn it, and whenever I pass by people trying to learn a game I have to stop and teach, which usually means play. William got five parasols which was great since the climate hesitated at gray for a while. None of us had horns until the end when Elisabeth pulled one and began attacking. I had 5 legs, meanwhile. All said and done, the game was a decisive 60/59/59. Which just goes to show that there is not much difference between all of the genes when all is said and done.
I took out Yinsh from the library before it closed, but didn't get a chance to play with anyone. Another one on the buy list.
Yehuda
Lunch was at some friends of David and Sharron's. I think these people were concerned about showing up in the blog, so I won't name names. However, she is an excellent Scrabble player, like David is.
Somehow, whenever the subject about my involvement with board games comes up, little girls stare at me bug-eyed and then run out of the room to bring a board game to play with me, usually something like Barbie's Rocking Dreamhouse Party or somesuch. Must be the parents don't play enough of these games with their kids, and if they don't, I can't say that I blame them.
This time I refused the first offering, and instead went to the game closet with her (8 year old) to see what other treasures she might have and decided on Guess Who? as the least offensive. The game is structured so that the first person to actually guess right (at random) basically wins. Still better than Barbie's Dream Date With Ken.
Later in the afternoon I played Anagrams with David, a game at which I have slightly more chance of winning than Scrabble. Also, Go on a 9x9, again which I don't win too often against him. It is a shame that he decided not to join me for a while at the con, since he also plays some of my games. I guess he feels that he has better things to do, go figure.
2. Back to the con
Since I had a place to stay over in the hotel, I packed up and made my goodbyes to my friends and arrived at the hotel right before the grand drawing.
Magical things happened at the con while I was gone. I left money and my games to trade with various lovely souls. When I got back to the closet where I had left my games, I saw that almost all were gone and two new ones were there. Great, I figured, I got two games. Good enough and all that I expected. Then the person with whom I left the money found me and game me back all of my money and an additional $55 or so. Good lord. Much better than I would have done. Thank you thank you.
From here on out just assume that I don't remember anyone's name. My fault, but it just got impossible to write them all down. Sorry.
I had sold my CD from Traumfabrik earlier on Friday and left a note to that effect on the box, but apparently the person who said they would sell it for me didn't see the note before selling it. Luckily the person buying it did, so it worked out. The only things that didn't sell were the Magic cards and The Arab Israeli Wars. The games I got in return were Modern Art and China Moon. And the cash.
Time to do some game buying.
Around this time, Derk also found me and gave me a con T-shirt as a gift, I think for being the furthest traveled to the con. I heard someone may have come from Australia, so that would probably have beaten me.
Another strange thing began happening on Sat night. People began seeking me out to buy copies of my game prototypes. I mean, cripes, yeah I spent a good amount of money on each of them, but the components were much worse than I would have liked to have given people for the amount of money I had to charge for them. Apparently word had spread, however and people wanted copies. Yeah. Time to get it published. Of course, I also helped spread the word by physically dragging people over to my table and getting them to play it. Almost all of them had kind words (which doesn't mean much when you're sitting in front of the designer) but some wanted to play again right away and some bought it.
So, if any of you bought the game, please send me comments so that I can ensure that everything about the game is finished and so that I can pass comments on to potential publishers.
And for those of you who didn't actually play it with me: the player screens are meant to hide both your player mats and your money. Tiles go on the mats during the game, and can be shifted around at will. When you have won the game, simply reveal the complete collection filled in correctly.
Back to the drawing. Derk was drawing for a few items for each colored ticket. The only item I really wanted was the Gipf series. I wouldn't have minded a Crokinole board, but there was no way that I could carry it home with me. Unfortunately, I didn't win anything from the main items nor any of the minor items that were cleared out afterwards. Oh well. There is something silly about standing around waiting to see if your number is called on a raffle ticket. It feels suspiciously like playing games with dice. Or vice versa.
Saturday night games:
My Game Prototype 3 times, once with Susan of The Game Ranch, who bought a copy. Thanks, Susan!
Pompeii. OK, I had heard some mixed things about Pompeii, which is what I said to the person who was trying to rope me in. He said that it must have been about a different game called Pompeii, so I sat down. Turns out that the roper was ShillKing, and I think this was his game. And yes, this was the game that I had heard about.
The game is basically a lot of dice rolling to start with, and then a lot of little moves afterwards, most of which don't matter much or do very much. There is some excitement about rolling the dice to see if the game will end, but it feels like standing around waiting to see if your number is called with a raffle ticket. I rescued two boat loads of people early in the game, since I saw how few actions you get before the game ends. Once my pieces were off the board, I had nothing to do the rest of the game. Most of the time most of your actions were not so significant, and when they were, you could usually count on a chaotic tile showing up to undo whatever you just did. And some of the mechanics just didn't come into play much.
OK, it is not as bad as all that, but pretty close. If you got rid of all of the lava tiles it would probably play much better.
Since most of the other people could only make it onto the boat once, I won with an easy margin. (54/15/13/2)
Evo: Another game I am not thrilled with, but I saw some people trying to learn it, and whenever I pass by people trying to learn a game I have to stop and teach, which usually means play. William got five parasols which was great since the climate hesitated at gray for a while. None of us had horns until the end when Elisabeth pulled one and began attacking. I had 5 legs, meanwhile. All said and done, the game was a decisive 60/59/59. Which just goes to show that there is not much difference between all of the genes when all is said and done.
I took out Yinsh from the library before it closed, but didn't get a chance to play with anyone. Another one on the buy list.
Yehuda
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