Friday, February 19, 2010

February 17, 2010

Participants: Jon, Gili, Claude, Binyamin, Nadine, David K, Mace

I had some last minute work to finish. Claude is a local designer of simple but interesting wooden games who has come before, and also, coincidentally, a friend of Gili's. He introduced a number of his own new games.

Claude Game

Mace, Claude, David+, Nadine

I forgot the game name. The game was like Mastermind crossed with Liar's Poker, and I didn't get to play it. The game was enjoyed by all the players, however. From only looking at the game, I'm not sure that each player, if sufficiently highly intelligent, should not be able to win siultaneously.

Each player secretly gets a role, and based on the role must either "always tells truth", "always tells lie", "alternates truth and lie", or "say whatever he likes". Each player is also given a card in one of four colors and with one of four numbers that all other players can see.

On a player's turn, he flips over an unused card from the 16 casrd deck, and then asks one of a set number of questions about his own card in relation to the flipped card: is it the same color? same number? and a few others. The other players, from LHO around, answer the question by placing their yes/no disks along a track, like a Mastermind track. The question asked is left visually beside the answers (using a simple code system). When you think you know what your card is, you reveal, and either win or lose (actually, I don't know what happens if you lose; do the others keep playing?)

Like Mastermind, it's more of a puzzle than a game, except that the "say whatever he likes" guy has more to do ... and also, we believe, has somewhat more of an advantage (will probably figure out his card one round before everyone else). And, though the board has a dozen track spaces, chances are that no more than 6 will ever be required.

It's the quietest game I've seen since Princes of Florence. Lots of working things and figuring.

Claude's games now have a website, which I will fill in here later.

Magic

David++, Jon+

We drafted Rochester draft again, though (as per comments on the previous Magic session) I may mix up the draft next time. we both ended up with White/Green/Red, since that's what came out. David only lost the second game because he reckelessly went full out on the last round, instead of attacking with half his critters, and then finishing me off the next round. The third game was close, at least.

Power Grid: Factory Manager

Nadine, Binyamin, Mace, Claude (part)

This was way too complicated for Claude, and he had to leave early, anyway. Nadine had to read the instructions to teach the game as she didn't remember them from the one two-player game we had played. This is always a painful way to learn a game, especially one as complicated as this one. I don't know the results.

Dvonn

David+, Jon

David had never played this, and he enjoyed it, as I suspected he would. He was a little unsure of the depth, since he beat me, but I convinced him that it's easy to mess up, even with experience.

1 comment:

Nadine said...

I didn't play the Claude game, Gili did. Factory Manager was a contest between Binyamin and Mace, Mace was ahead the whole game and won by a few points. They both did a good job of getting the right buildings from the beginning, I was way behind from Round 2 because I was using too many guys and didn't have enough money. We got rid of some low buildings which no one was going to buy, a pretty random house rule. We also played somewhat randomly for Claude after he left - selecing buildings for him but not having him in the turn order auction. Binyamin had been anxious to play to see if he wanted to buy it, he easily decided not to.