Game at Nadine's, and Other Holiday Gaming

I don't hold a JSGC game night on the same week as Games Day, figuring it's overkill. But Nadine decided to have over some guests on her now free Wed night, and they were all JSGC members. So we held an unofficial JSGC game night at Nadine's on Wed.

Participants: Nadine, Jon, Bill, Shirley, Eitan, Emily, Abraham, Sarah, Adam, Noa

Noa was Abe and Sarah's guest, and not generally a gamer I surmise. Adam, Bill, and Shirley didn't make it to Games Day, so it was nice to see them.

The centerpiece of the evening was Battlestar Galactica, which lasted approximately six hours. The players were Adam, Bill, Shirley, Eitan, Emily, and Abraham. Abraham was the only player who had played before.

The Cylons won in a close game that came down to a die roll. Bill and Abraham were Cylons.

Meanwhile, a few other games were played.

Nadine, Sarah, and I played Agricola; first play for Sarah. Scores: Jon 41, Nadine 39, Sarah 30.

Sarah had a natural planting strategy, and she played a whole bunch of occupations. She got almost no animals, however, and too few of the other points. Nadine managed to get two additional workers in round 11, and had a sizable animal collection, but not many bonus points. I was slower than usual with both planting and house building, building to only three rooms (I usually get to five). I had good pastures, and was unobstructed in getting miscellaneous points I needed in the end. Mostly, I had all my people and a lot of bonus points.

The game was fairly quick.

I then played two games of It's Alive with Sarah and Noa, while Nadine took over for Adam, aho had to leave.

First plays for Noa. In the first game, I won by a good amount (61, 46, 41), which made me fairly confident. Noa liked it, and wanted to play again. In the second, I scored the lowest I ever scored, ever. I only had two tiles! Noa won (43, 41, 19) and was very happy about it.

Thursday evening, a neighbor invited me over to play. She's a non-gamer sort, but likes to play some traditional games like Rummy. I brought Boggle and was shocked that she had never played it. I taught it to her, but it was kind of lopsided in my favor for the few games we played.

We switched to Rummy. There was a lot of confusion as to which Rummy we meant, because she used to play "Gin Rummy", which turned out not to be Gin Rummy at all. We played one hand of Gin Rummy as I know it (without knocking). Then her husband joined us and we played one hand of what she called Gin Rummy, but was something more like 500 or Rummikub.

We had to pull the rules out of her, one by one, as she simply assumed that we knew them at each turn where they were relevant, even after I warned her that there are hundreds of variations for the game. Her rules:

• Two decks of cards.
• Can't meld until you have a minimum of 50 points.
• Each round, you pick and play out.
• Only the top card of the discard pile is accessible.
• Face cards are worth ten each, aces worth 11.
• Up and down to the ace, but not around.
• Can add to other players' melds, by sticking the cards into them.
• No duplicate suits in kinds.
• No points; first to go out wins, and that's it.

Rules 2-4 made melding a difficult affair, and I'm pretty sure she remembered the rules wrong. I called it Frances Rummy, and each time we pulled another rule out of her, it was "That's how you play Frances Rummy!"

Pink Games 3

Here's a whole new set of pink games to make your life happy (happier) (not so bad).

Don't miss Pink Games and Pink Games 2.



A different set of Bicycle Pink Playing Cards, some of the proceeds from these cards, like many other pink games, goes to breast cancer research.




Pink Go Board, with pink and white stones. Nexus Gadgets carries a line of classic games in pink, including pink dominoes, mahjong, backgammon, and chess.




Pink Bingo Wand and Chips




Sex And The City Game




Scrabble Pink Flower; unlike the Designer's Pink Edition, this one doesn't appear to be in support of cancer research.





Find It Games Glitz & Glamour - Pink Ends, one edition of the game.




Pink Treehouse; Treehouse pyramids are components in a game system that has tens or hundreds of user-contributed games. They come in various colors, and this year came out in pink (cancer research).




How to Get Your Pink Card, about living the gay lifestyle.




Gayopoly; gay, along with female, is apparently stereotypically associated with the color pink.




Pink Stories, a story and deduction game with "girl themes".




Mother - The Game, a tongue-in-cheek trivia and acting game about mothers.

Yehuda

Encounter in a Dark Alley

I've always felt closest to God while in motion.

To me, the most obvious sign of the hand of God is when He blocks my car with a sudden slow car, or eases it with a set of perfectly timed lights. This is His way of ensuring that what needs to happen, happens, and at the right time.

When walking anything more than a block, I always experience at least one meaningful encounter: a lost person, a sudden object sighting in a store window, an encounter with a neighbor. Last night's was a little more meaningful than others.

Walking to meet friends on Emek Refaim, I nearly passed by the dark alley that connects two larger streets, but decided in the end to turn down it. The alley begins with three small steps down into it.

At the bottom of the steps, a man with a tattered cast on his right arm lay with his feet on the steps, his body prostrate in the alley. He was white-haired and thin, dark-skinned (Arab or Sephardic, I can't always tell), and shabbily dressed. While briefly concerned about a trap to steal my money or the possibility of acquiring swine flu, I nevertheless stopped to ask if he needed help. He said, groggily, that he did.

I tried unsuccessfully for several minutes to get him to his feet. His face had scars and his lip was cut, but otherwise I thought the standing problem stemmed entirely from the alcohol I smelled on him.

After several minutes, by which point I had him sitting at least, another man stopped and looked at us from the mouth of the alley and asked if we needed help. I said yes.

We got him to his feet, but he couldn't walk on his own, and could only stand by leaning against a wall or person. I tried to ask where he was going, and he said down the alley to the other side. I asked if he lives near and he said yes. I asked his name. He said Yechiel.

About this time a couple stopped at the mouth of the alley and asked if we were all together, to which I said no. I started walking the man down the alley, a few steps, and then resting. The other guy followed. After a few of these steps, the woman said that she had called an ambulance (I wasn't entirely sure why, yet). A few more steps and then we stopped in a slightly more lit circle within the alley.

Only then did I see the circle of blood on the back of his head, under the white hair. The guy kept smiling, occasionally cursing (Israelis curse by saying "sheet"), holding my hand and leaning. He was very unsteady, but not entirely incoherent. We waited for the ambulance.

For some reason, a minute later two police showed up; do they monitor calls to the ambulance? They asked the guy questions (somewhat harshly, to my ears): What happened? Can you walk? Do you need help? I had to point out the head wound to the police.

With all these people around, and an ambulance on the way, I decide that I was no longer needed and could make my way to the rendezvous with my friends. So I don't know how it ended.

Games Day Session Report

The Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club hosted another successful Games Day. Session report is here. Games played: Amyitis, Antike, Battlestar Galactica, Bridge, Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers, Checkers, Chess, Cosmic Encounter x 2, Dominion x 4, Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation, Magic x 3, Market of Alturien, Notre Dame, Pirate's Cove, Pitch Car, Princes of Florence, Puerto Rico, R-Eco, Race for the Galaxy: the Gathering Storm x 5, Rock Paper Scissors, San Juan, Shadows Over Camelot, Yinsh.

Some 25 participants. 13 hours of gaming.

Board Game Blog World Roundup

I maintain a comprehensive list of all English board and card game related blogs and podcasts on the internet, so far as I know. To be on this list, a site must:

- Have an RSS feed
- Have been updated in the last 3 months, unless a post indicates a specific hiatus.
- Update at least once a month
- Be primarily concerned with board and/or card games, in general (generally not only war games, minis, or RPGs)
- Contain content of general interest to the world, and not simply list new inventory for a company
- Post primarily in English; there are plenty of non-English sites around the web on this topic, but I don't track them

The list is located on the sideboard of my blog. I just dropped fifteen blogs/podcasts from my list. But don't despair; I have another fifteen I'm adding since the last update:

Publisher Perspective: Byron Collins of Collins Epic Wargames. About game publishing.

Clever Games for Clever People: By the owners of a UK store called Zsuaro. No further information.

Consoles and Cardboard: Podcast by Jon, John, Scott, ... About digital and tabletop games.

Death of Monopoly: Eric Martin, Kitchener, ON, CA. Not from BGN.

Downtime Town: Reviews, videos, podcast by Robert Florence, UK.

Game Kastle Blog: Various musings from the employees (and friends?) of Game Kastle, Santa Clara, CA.

Game Mechanic For Hire: Phil Kilcrease, Salt Lake City, UT, a member of the Game Designers Guild. Posts about game mechanics and their variants.

Games for Educators: A cross venture of the Chicago Toy and Game Fair (Mary Couzin) and Live Oak Games. All about games and education, with various contributors. For instance, Teaching Strategies is a podcast on the Games for Educators site by Tom Vasel and Giles Prichard.

Games With Garfield: Richard Garfield (yes, the designer of Magic: The Gathering) muses about new board and card games.

Margin of Victory: John, Russ, and Rick. "In-depth" look at board game workings.

Paper Money: Podcast from Ben Clark from Imagigrafx and Rett Kipp, a marketing consultant. All about the board game business and publishing.

Science of Board Games: Christopher Swenson, OK. Also looking at game design.

Simon Dice: By Simon Dice, Mount Pleasant, DC.

The Game Aisle: Positive game reviews only from Kim Vandenbroucke, a mainstream game designer and developer.

Yehuda

Shabbat Shalom

I just spent 24 hours with my son Saarya, hiking Nahal Arugot in Ein Gedi, BBQing on the Dead Sea beach while circled by 13 hopeful cats and listening to British yeshiva students sing Hebrew songs, and watching Keeping the Faith on television back at the room in the Youth Hostel.

31 days until I take my month long trip to the US/Canada, including seeing Rachel again for the first time in 3 months and hitting BGG.con .

Games Day is on Sunday.

Time to attend to the house.

Session Report, in which we try Hacienda one more time

The latest Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Report is up. Games played: Geschenkt x 2, Hacienda, Year of the Dragon, It's Alive. And a teaching session for Robo Rally.

I fire up Hacienda once more to see if we want to keep it. Verdict is still out.