July 22, 2009

Participants: Jon, Gili, Abraham, David K, Bill, Nadine

A lovely bunch of regulars.

San Juan

Abraham 24, Gili 22, Jon 22

First play for Abraham, though he has played Puerto Rico and Race for the Galaxy, so this wasn't much of a stretch. Of course, he didn't know the cards as well as we did.

That didn't stop him from putting together an awesome synergy for trading: Market Post, Well, Trading Post, and so on, all working perfectly together. Gili followed with higher paying production buildings and Aqueduct, while I had only my lone Indigo Plant the entire game, going the Quarry and Carpenter route. Word to the wise: if your opponents are crafting and trading, you're not going to make much money unless you can benefit from their role selections, too.

Still, I had good luck picking 6 point buildings. Abraham didn't pick any, so he just built quickly to end the game as fast as possible while he was ahead. Gili got out a Guild Hall and I got out a City Hall, but it wasn't quite enough.

R-Eco

David 17, Nadine 6, Bill 2

First play for Bill (or perhaps second). David likes this game a lot, which surprises me, as it doesn't strike me as his type of game.

Stone Age

David 160ish, Abraham 150ish, Bill 110ish

Don't have the exact scores, but something like that. David thought he made mistakes, so naturally he won anyway, though Abraham came close.

Caylus

Jon 124, Nadine 107, Gili 80ish

We searched around for a game that both Nadine and Gili liked, since they don't like my favorite games. I'm less than enthused by Caylus, but don't play games only if I hate them (like Fluxx). I find Caylus to be overly dry, overly long, and - strange as it may sound - not requiring too much thinking. It's actually a pretty forgiving game if you keep your eye on the victory points. Or perhaps I just don't care who wins, after five levels of converting money to workers to cubes to buildings to more building to yet more buildings.

Nadine took the first favor, I but I quickly jumped ahead in favors. I got to the end track in cubes, so that I could get the gold cubes I needed, and of course the end track in buildings, which is required to win. I also don't neglect the gray buildings, whose point return is quite good, or the castle.

The provost doesn't get much play in a three player game; I lost out on using one building on one turn, which I couldn't really afford to use, anyway. We all seemed to have a lot of money most rounds.

And since we hadn't played in a while, and the board is really poorly designed, Gili got confused by the rule of which level of the favor track you can use in which phase. I also reminded them about placing workers on your own building for only one coin, even after others have passed. Knowing the rules better gave me a slight but unfair advantage.

Dominion

Abraham 45, David 31, Nadine 20ish

The only card that trashed other cards was the Thief, and it trashed your opponent's cards. David used Thief a few times only to realize that he was helping rather than hurting his opponents by trashing their coppers. Abraham drew a completely synergistic deck which drew itself in total on every turn.

David reached a buying power of 19 on one turn, which is the most I've ever seen.

Antike

Jon 12+, Bill 6

First play for Bill. A learning experience. I really really love this game, because, while conflict is an option, you don't lose much if you lose a combat. The object is to gain points, not territory. And no dice rolls!

Bill was trailing on my Know-hows, and working at expansion, ignoring my immanent poise to strike. I then swooped in an sacked two of his temples, netting two destroyed temple points, one "five cities" point, and one "seven seas sailed" point in one turn. Since it was getting late, and I was now winning 12 to 6, I suggested he resign, which he did. But he liked the game.

August 19, 2008

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Elijah, Zack, Gili, Hillel, Avraham, David K, Saarya

Game night was a day early, owing to a conference I'm attending tomorrow night. We didn't have a chance to test my prototype. Zack attended last year, but his family went back to the states. He's here for a few weeks, but tonight will be his only game group appearance. Elijah also returned after a long absence.

Year of the Dragon

Nadine 101, Elijah 97, Hillel 92, Zack 83

First game for all but Nadine, who had to explain it a few times as players slowly arrived at the club and needed to hear the explanation from the beginning.

Nadine writes: Zack lost points due to getting the least explanation due to coming late. I only won because no one [else] had played before.

Caylus

Jon/David 84, Avraham 74, Gili 58

We played about half the game and then I got up to let David finish my position when he arrived. I'm not thrilled about the game anyway.

I gave David an ok but not thrillingly good position. He promptly made a mistake in his inherited position and lost ground. And yet, he still won the game. Go figure. This was Avraham's first play and he underestimated the importance of Green/Blue buildings. Gili missed out on the second and third castle scoring (she had one house in the last castle section; none in the second).

Cosmic Encounter

Elijah+, Saarya+, Hillel, Nadine

Hillel's first play. All of them were a little rusty and came to me with rules questions. Even so, they made several mistakes, throwing into question the game's results. For instance, they played the Vacuum as the one who selects which tokens the other player loses, which is deadly. Elijah and Saarya won on a joint comp/comp.

Tichu

Jon/Avraham 1025, David/Nadine 875

I opened with a Grand Tichu, which I made, and we both went out first to boot. A 400 point lead. I called and made Tichu again. Then David began to call Grand Tichu and Tichu, and after several rounds, we were only ahead 60 points. I won the last game with a Tichu, and that settled it.

In every hand, David and I had our cards down first; of course, being Avraham's first play, and Nadine dividing some attention in the first few hands with Cosmic, this was understandable. In nearly every hand, either David or I called Tichu or Grand Tichu; Avraham and Nadine never called it. And in nearly every hand, David and I went out first, leaving Nadine and Avraham to play for third. Too bad David and I weren't teammates.

David made a Tichu where both Avraham and Nadine had bombs and he didn't. His Grand Tichu was also helped by getting passed cards to complete both a bomb and an inside eight card straight. I had a single bomb, on the last hand, which I broke up to play a 10 card straight, followed by a three of a kind. I was left with a 9. David eventually played an 8, letting me go out.

June 18, 2008

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Jonathan, Gili, Yitzchak, Shirley, David K

Gili and Binyamin were absent last week attempting to teach some non-gamers how to play Settlers, apparently without much success.

Princes of Florence

Jonathan 63, Nadine 62, Yitzchak 61, Gili 58

I set this up, but then moved to another game and Nadine took my place. The scores are really close, as you can see, and this was Jonathan's first game.

Caylus

David 116, Jon 68, Shirley 68

Shirley's first game. I generally don't like playing this, as it takes too long and is too fiddly. And, when you know you're losing, you get to know that for a few hours. That's what happened here. I had a nice second round, but the Provost kept knocking out everything I wanted to do, and David was just miles ahead structurally by mid-game.

At one point, I had the decision to move the provost back up 1 to 3 spaces, but I was only considering the space nearest to the Provost, and what would happen if David moved it back to that spot. I decided that the space didn't matter enough, but I would let David decide. I missed the fact that he could move it three spaces, knocking out two of mine. It was a 10 point loss for me (no building in the castle, no favor) and a large loss in momentum, too. And it hurt Shirley prettily, too.

It was just a matter of how much he would win by. A lot, as you can see.

Notre Dame

Yitzchak 71, Nadine 58, Jonathan 56

Another first game for Jonathan, but he didn't fare quite as well (though decent enough).

Magic: The Gathering

Jon+, David+

We simply cut 60 cards for each player from the stack of remaining unplayed cards, eliminating a few of the duplicates. Without drafting, one doesn't feel like one has as much to do with one's own success. In this case, David had the better deck. Building and playing still have a lot to do, but not enough.

I won the first game only because David was stuck at two lands for nearly all of it. And it was still close.
[DK: Well close is an exaggeration. I was holding my own, which was very surprising for only two mana over many many rounds. Jon neglected to mention that my two mana was after a mulligan down to 6 cards since my first draw was mana short. And this was with a 40 card deck with 17 mana.]

The second game wasn't a walkover for David; I managed to bury three of his creatures. But he had more ways of delivering the pain than I did.

May 14, 2008

Participants: Jon, Jonathan, Nadine, Yitzchak, Dylan, Ari, Bill

We're back to a weekly Wed schedule after the various hagim. Also, Bill returns from the U.S. for a few weeks, to try once again to introduce us to the joys of roleplaying outside of D&D. Ari has been with us before, but not for a long time.

It's Alive

Jonathan 60, Jon 52, Nadine 49

I introduced Jonathan to the game, and we played the advanced version. Nadine got all the Villagers, while Jonathan seemed to get all the coffins. Nadine still completed her board first. But in the end, Nadine only scored 49, even with the 5 point bonus, while Jonathan scored a hefty 60: 44 on his board, and 16 coins.

Robo Rally

Jon+, Jonathan, Nadine, Yitzchak, Dylan, Ari

We weren't sure how long we wanted to play this, since we were waiting for Bill to come and start a roleplaying session. So we chose a single board and a single flag. And each robot had an option, two of which were very painful (if they shoot you, they switch your program for theirs/they push you instead of damaging you). What could go wrong?

Turns out nothing, for me. I saw that the game could be won in three turns with perfect cards and play and no interference. Somehow or another, I actually did it. The whole game went three turns, which was an hour.

On the very first turn, my cards were Move 2, Move 2, Move 1, Turn, Turn. I almost left them like this, when suddenly I realized that it would be safer to start with a Move 1 rather than a Move 2, so I switched cards 1 and 3. That was the key to winning. Everyone else went in front of me and I just shot them or pushed them. If I had done it as I had originally planned, someone would have fallen behind me and eventually shot or bumped me.

R-Eco

Dylan 17, Nadine 16, Jon 5

I'm amazed I got a score above negative, actually. It didn't seem like it for a while.

I came up with a variant for the game right before playing. I mixed up all the chips upside down, stacked them into four stacks of seven, and then flipped them right side up onto the four cards. We knew what the top chip of a pile was, but not what the next one was going to be. Colors and numbers were completely randomly ordered.

Turns out to be a blast. The scores are higher, since more people can acquire 5's, which makes the game more interesting, and not simply who takes the last chip, which is often what happens. Give it a try.

Caylus

Ari 103, Yitzchak 92, Jonathan 71

Jonathan's first game. I didn't see what happened.

Universalis / Children of Fire

Bill (GM), Jon, Dylan, Nadine

CoF is a light roleplaying system based on angels which you can download for free. Dylan and I had pre-made characters. Nadine claims that she had made one once when Adam had been planning to run a session, but either she never gave it to me or I couldn't find it. So she had to come up with a character as we played.

Universalis is a points base storytelling experience where it costs you points to introduce items or events that change the story, or to interrupt. The point was to create the setting for the CoF game. The whole things took about twenty minutes, during which I was trying to wrap my head around my first non-D&D RPG experience. In the end, the story setting was pretty much what Bill assumed it would be.

In, CoF, the three of us angels were sent down to Wichita to examine why a lot of prayers have been coming up to heaven, as well as complaints about strange abuse cases, crop circles, and loss of memory. I think we're supposed to think it's aliens, but obviously it's some sort of demon activity.

My character looks a bit like Dream from Sandman, but with a wolf motif and always has a wolf with him and a rod that can glow. I am distracted by the suffering of animals over humans, which I hammed up a lot. Dylan's character is a short portly guy with a glass eye. And Nadine's character looks like a 17 year old girl with blue hair and weird colors (think Delirium from Sandman). We made an impressive looking group. Wherever townsfolk ask what we're doing in town, I just say that we're here for the sci-fi convention.

So far, we're hitched a ride to a motel, heard some complaints from the townsfolk. Then we scouted out at night and I rescued a 16 year old boy from a crazed dog (or vice versa, depending on who you ask). That's it for two an a half hours. We got interrupted a lot and had fun.

August 23, 2007

Participants: Jon, Gili, Adam, Binyamin, Yitzchak, Saarya

Game night this week was moved to Thursday night since I had to take Rachel to the airport on Wed night.

It's Alive

Jon 48, Adam, Gili, Saarya

Requested by Adam and Gili as an opener while we waited for the other two to arrive. I requested that we play th advanced version, since we played the basic version last time.

Adam got hit by two villagers, but also got two coffins. Gili got one each. I managed to escape unscathed, only seeing a coffin when I needed it to win on my last turn. The other players were not very far advanced when I won, which is kind of unusual.

Caylus

Yitzchak 94, Jon 78, Adam 68

Not my favorite game, but at least I had to do some planning and thinking this game. I won't play Caylus with more than three players, and only some players at that.

I thought I was doing well, and I would have been much closer if I hadn't lost out on one favor I needed to build my second blue building. It couldn't be helped, as others needed it too, and I had to choose what to invest in. Yitzchak had the most favors this game, and while I didn't think he used them amazingly well, he did so well enough to win handily. His last round was a perfectly planned building strategy of 4 houses in the castle and the largest blue building.

Tigris and Euphrates

Binyamin 6, Gili 5, Saarya 5

I don't know how the game went, but Binyamin insisted that I write down the scores. Gili and Saarya appear to have tied.

Princes of Florence

Binyamin+, Gili, Saarya

One again, Binyamin won by a narrow margin, and Gili and Saarya both tied right behind him.

Cosmic Encounter

Yitzchak+, Adam, Jon, Binyamin

Adam insisted on us each playing three powers. And to add to the confusion, he was the Pentaform and Binyamin was the Reincarnator. Then I went and foolishly played the wild Reincarnator somewhere in the middle of the game, which was dumb, as I had a good position and good powers. Even though I ended up with the Disease as a new power, I never had any bases with enough tokens on them to spread for a victory.

The game was pretty long and drawn out. Other than that, it was fun. We all hovered around 4 bases for a bit of time before Yitzchak won by shear exhaustion of all other cards.

July 25, 2007

Participants: Jon, Nadine, David K, Adam, Gili, Yitzchak

A relatively quiet evening. Actually, I kind of like it that way.

Lost Valley

Nadine++, Jon, David

This was one of my few recent unplayed purchases, and I was happy to get it to the table.

Lost Valley is a game of discovering terrain, acquiring resources to swap for gold, trading the gold in for better equipment, and getting even more gold. The one with the most gold wins. Like other games of this sort, a person who is ahead has a tendency to stay ahead, but not entirely, as resources become depleted in the area you are working, and your cart becomes fuller giving you less maneuverability.

There are dozens of little things you can buy to enhance your powers, three types of resources needed to do things on the board, random event chips you can pursue, and common buildings you can build that anyone can use. The idea of the latter is to gain more benefit than any other player by building them in an area where you are and others aren't.

We first started by playing out a round or two to get the feel of the game and then restarted. Nadine is somewhat impatient when it comes to new games, and was fairly convinced already that the game had too much luck or didn't make sense. Patience!

We then played a game out. Nadine took an early lead having gone first and acquired the early river gold without much trouble. Unfortunately, she kept hanging around in my area. This is a problem in the game, because you don't want to expend resources building access to treasures only to have someone else then waltz in and take them.

Meanwhile, David was by himself slowly panning for and collecting gold. Only when we managed to convince Nadine that she was better off striking out on her own did she move ahead. She then mined some gold out of the mountains and won fairly easily.

The first several moves were played extremely slowly because the players kept trying to figure out how to do way more than they could in a single turn. They kept reviewing and reviewing what could be done hoping that there was some way to do a lot really quickly.

Eventually we realized that this was not how the game worked. Finally we just did our teeny single action each round, and the turns became very quick.

When the game ended, we were all convinced that somehow Nadine had received a huge advantage from her first turn. And this was complicated by having received twice as much from her random gold chips as we did.

These face down treasure chips are a favorite among designers, but, while they advance the theme, they don't really advance the game play. I prefer the Through the Desert idea where the chips are placed randomly but are placed face up.

In addition, the random discovery aspect works fine so long as it always provides at least something to do, like when you draw tiles in Tigris and Euphrates. In games like this, however, if you draw tile after tile of the same thing that is useless to you, you can't get much out of it (which is what happened to Nadine in the second game).

You could just play the game the way it was designed and write up the results to the story of the game, which is fine for some people. Our little group likes better play and planning to be more obviously rewarded, however, so we try to mitigate these types of random events.

One way would be to always assign the gold chips in a certain order to newly discovered lands (e.g. a single gold for the first two chips, and then 2 golds for any additional chips on a land). And/or have players decided which type of terrain or terrain type they will be discovering next.

In our second game, we didn't do anything that radical. Instead, we looked at the startup of the game and decided that the initial discovery of a few gold while everyone else remains poor is too much of a swing in luck. To mitigate this, we gave each player two gold to start with.

The result of this is that each player could start the game by buying something which will color the strategy he will be taking (a sieve or a fishing rod, for example), or set out hoping to be the first to gain the easier gold.

Our second game was much tighter and more balanced than the first. Nadine had some bad luck with her tile draws, and the river closed into a loop quickly, which made the game end by ice flow. David bought a sieve initially, but then failed to use it properly. We thought that maybe the events were very powerful, so he found and used four of them. While the events are good, the time and material he lost in pursuing them ended up not being worth his while.

Bottom Line: I think it's a really good game. After two games, we still have many many avenues of strategies and tactics yet to explore, and the changing nature of the game is always enjoyable. While the rules are not always thematically sensible (a cart can carry extra stuff but a horse can't?) most of them add to the game play.

There are a number of rules issues not covered entirely well. I had to make up some of the rules as we went. I'll look online to see if our questions have already been covered by others.

It was fun, and we were all willing to try it again, even Nadine.

Caylus

Yitzchak 121, Adam 111, Gili 92

This game took four and a quarter hours and I'm glad I wasn't involved in it.

We build six prestige buildings among us. I build three, Yitz built two, and Gili built one. --Adam

Power Grid

David 17, Jon 16+, Nadine 16-

We always play the game with the top four plants arriving from the stack face up. This eliminates the biggest element of luck from the game, which is one person getting a better plant while others have no idea if another large one is coming or not.

Even so, David managed a coup in acquiring the best plants. Nadine's situation looked hopeless - her income was generally only two cities for most of the game, and she powered none - while I would have been fine except for my production capacity.

We were ready to throw in the towel early, but we decided to play it out. Somehow, even though David still won fairly handily, Nadine and I both made a good comeback before it ended. I ended up beating Nadine by a single dollar.

Session Report 2007-06-20

Participants: Nadine, Gilad, Ben, David K, Binyamin, Yitzchak, Adam

Game night was held at Nadine's house again. Jon is on vacation, leaving me (Adam) to wreak havoc upon the session reports. Gilad has been around a few times before, I think. If I'm not mistaken, he is a gaming tycoon and owns a sprawling, multi-billion dollar gaming empire.

Colosseum

Nadine 84, Gilad 78, Binyamin 3i - 2

I did not play this game or pay much attention, but from what I could see and from what Nadine told me, it's a lot like Go. No luck at all and a lot of deep strategic thought. That's explains why Nadine won, because she's good at that kind of game.

Caylus

David 92, Ben 72, Adam 53, Yitzhak 46

We played this game instead of Power Grid because we couldn't agree on a ruleset for the latter. Some players seem to be enamoured with de-Candyland-ifying Power Grid, for some odd reason. Pure Evil.

Anyway, Caylus gives a very strong impression of being very similar to Go. It's true that there's a bit of luck in the starting position, which makes it a bit different from Go, but after that the gameplay is very similar. David started out with some good shimaris and was able to extend and consolate them in a way that got him both influence and territory, and eventually a commanding lead. He also played the yose very well, while I screwed up on that. By the end of the game David had a lot of good aji, and Ben was not in a terrible position, whereas Yitz and I were in fairly bad straits. I was able to make sabaki a bit near the end of the game, but wasn't able to capitalize on it as much as I had hoped.

I also kind of blocked Yitz in the endgame, accidentally, not even thinking specifically about his position, and in the end wasn't even able to use it. He retaliated by blocking me in a different way.

Bridge

Binyamin, Nadine, Yitz, Ben

They played this for a while and were still playing when I left. Seems a lot like Go.

Chess

David+, Adam

A classic. Very similar to Go in game play, but a bit shallow. David said that after playing so many Eurogames he doesn't like Chess so much any more.

The position was fairly even throughout most of the game. David started out with mane-go (mirroring) in the beginning, but switched from that before I could punish him. There was some give-and-take throughout most of the game, with both of us building some territory and some influence, and it was quite close (though I think I had a slight lead) until I badly misread a simple life and death problem, which put me behind for good. I resigned soon after that (as David was hurrying to leave anyway).

June 06, 2007

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Adam, Zack, Elijah, Binyamin, Gili, Yitzchak

Today we say goodbye to Zack whose family is moving back to the States. Best of luck! Zack may be back for one more session this summer.

Welcome back to Yitzchak after a long absence. I let Yitzchak know about the new club in Beit Shemesh, which should be much easier for him to get to.

Crossword Dominoes

Jon, Nadine, Gili, Zack, Adam

This game consists of fifty dominoes with letters on either side, generally a consonant and a vowel, but sometimes an important consonant combination, such as TH or WH. The object of the game is to place your tiles on the board so that only words are formed.

We didn't play this so much as play around with it. Our general impression was that turns are going to be way longer than in Scrabble. Furthermore, it is both easier to make small words, and more luck dependent.

We envisioned that simply trying to find a way to arrange all your tiles is more fun than the alleged actual game.

Settlers of Catan

Adam 10, Jon 8, Nadine 7, Gili 6

Although it looked like Adam had a very early lead, and Nadine had a very poor start, we eventually ended up at 8-8-8-7. Then Adam took back the Longest Road that Gili had taken from him and won the game. Gili could have prevented this by building another road rather than a settlement, as Adam could not extend his road any further than was necessary to win.

Caylus

Binyamin+, Zack, Yitzchak

I don't know the final scores, but Binyamin won by a single point, while this was Yitzchak's first game. Binyamin did a number of things specifically to annoy Zack during the game, and he returned in kind.

Bridge

Jon, Nadine, Binyamin, Adam, Zack

They decided to play some bridge hands during the previous two games when things were bogging down. Unfortunately, they kept going even when things weren't bogging down. Furthermore, I am one of the few who can really do two games at once, Binyamin and Adam weren't doing as good a job, IMHO.

It was all too chaotic for me, so I bowed out.

Go

Adam+, Elijah

Adam played this at the same time as Bridge. He gave Elijah a 3 stone handicap on a 9x9 board and still won.

Tic Tac Toe

Adam, Elijah / Adam, Zack

Don't ask. Adam actually lost a game to Zack when he wasn't paying attention.

Blokus

Jon+, Elijah

I dragged Elijah away from the Chaos to teach him this. He wasn't in a thinking mood, however, and wasn't really trying. As a result, I crushed him without too much difficulty. I hope he tries harder next time. It's a nice game.

Tichu

Jon/Elijah, Adam/Zack

I don't know what the scores were, but Adam bid Grand Tichu twice, and he made it both times I believe.

Puerto Rico

Nadine 54, Jon 47, Binyamin 46

These guys decided to play only with strange buildings. As a result, we were all in uncharted waters, even if I knew the buildings better than they did.

I did some nice coffee trading, and built three large buildings, but got truly shut out of shipping. And one of my large buildings was only worth 5 points (total).

Nadine managed to outbuild me and majorly outship me.

May 09, 2007

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili, Tal, Annette, Eliezer

Hmm. I must have scared away all the regular game group participants; the only regulars to attend were Nadine and Gili. Where did everyone go?

Annette and Eliezer came back for another visit, although it's a long trip for them.

Hearts

Jon/Tal, Annette/Eliezer

I introduced them to Team Hearts for a quick light opener. I had to refresh Annette on the rules of Hearts, and it appears that she wasn't too thrilled with the game. She asked if we could play President.

Tichu

Jon/Tal, Annette/Eliezer

So I tried them on Tichu for one hand. Annette appeared to like it more, but she will need more than one hand to really get into it. In our game, Eliezer went out first, Tal last, and they ended up with all 100 points.

Puerto Rico

Jon 54, Nadine 53, Annette 44

At this point we did our usual dance of what to play. Annette wanted to play Puerto Rico, while Eliezer didn't. I assumed that more people would be coming, so I decided to play Puerto Rico at the same time that I played something with Eliezer. Little did I know what trouble I was getting into.

After Tal went off, and Gili arrived, we were five for the evening, yet, instead of playing a five player game, we ended up playing two three-player games, where I played in both games throughout the evening. How do I keep ending up in this position?

In Puerto Rico, we played with the straight building set. I was first. Both Nadine and I did a fairly straightforward four goods/Factory strategy. Nadine got a fifth good going while I took Harbor, passing up Guild Hall. In the end, she had three large buildings to my two, while I edged her out in shipping points.

Annette had nice goods production going and two quarries (to my none), but none of them were trade goods. So she remained cash shy.

Yinsh

Jon+, Eliezer

I introduced this to Eliezer and played simultaneous with Puerto Rico. As a result, I had to split concentration between these two games.

Our game was very crowded in the center. I won solely based on the fact that I understood the patterns of the game better than he did on his first play. Typical moves I used included my having a ring with two of his pieces extending one way and two of mine the opposite way. Jumping his pieces gave me five in a row.

Caylus

Jon+, Gili, Eliezer

I let Gili pick the next game as she arrived in the middle of the Yinsh game, and this is what she chose. Oh well. Not my favorite, but I'm willing.

It's hard to describe a Caylus game. Suffice to say that I managed two large buildings including the 25 pointer, as well as a lot of castle points and favors therefrom. Gili also got two buildings, and more building points, but less castle points. In the end, she made a small mistake in building in the castle. Even without it, she probably wouldn't have won, but it would have been closer.

Eliezer didn't quite get the green-blue building dynamic. He spent the last part of the game getting straight victory points and gold cubes. Actually, now that I think about it, he was about 20 points behind Gili, but he had a fist full of cubes and cash that we didn't bother to count at the end. It's likely that he was closer to Gili's score than we realized.

The Menorah Game

Nadine+, Jon+, Annette

We played two games, Nadine winning the first and me the second. In the second game Annette was very close to winning but got hit with a soldier and we managed to fill in our tiles before she could build up again. These were her first plays.

Nadine still doesn't like the soldier mechanic in the game and would prefer to play with out them.

We managed to hit a situation that I had never hit before not covered in the rules. The last two cards were both soldiers. After the first was dealt with, the second is put aside and another tile is supposed to be drawn, after which the soldier set aside is returned to the deck. This makes the first time that a soldier was mixed into the deck on the second time through the deck.

Even after a few hundred plays, things like this happen.

San Juan

Nadine, Annette

Nadine taught Annette how to play this but they only played a few rounds before they had to go. Annette appeared to like it.

April 25, 2007

Participants: Jon, Zack, Elijah, Nadine, David K, Binyamin, Gili, Adam, Josh, Idit

This week we had to say goodbye to Josh and Idit, on their way to Boston for the next few years. Boston game players, do find them a home. Thanks.

David brought back Apples to Apples Jewish edition, which he said worked as well as the regular edition, and he would choose if he had to choose between them.

Vulkan

Jon, Zack, Elijah, Nadine

Vulkan is a game played using the components from Feurio, a game that I really didn't like. In fact, my review was so negative, that the author of the game, Heinrich Glumpler, wrote to me and asked me to try this game instead. All you need is Feurio and the rules to Vulkan, the latter of which is available as a free download.

In Vulkan, all the tiles are laid out in any sort of shape (a Settlers of Catan configuration seems about right, but you can just start playing at the end of a game of Feurio). One tile is turned over to be the volcano.

On your turn, you "fly" over the fire, dropping water. In other words, you place yuor pieces on all tiles in a straight line. You can't fly over the volcano.

Any hexes that are now filled are scored. The person with the majority in the hex scores the hex; in the case of a tie, the current player scores it, even if he or she is not involve in the tie.

These hexes are removed from the board. If this creates any isolated ares no longer connected to the volcano, these hexes are also scored, and empty ones collected by the current player.

If you run out of pieces, you can no longer take a turn. The game ends when all players have run out of pieces.

The biggest change in this game from Feurio is that there is no luck. This makes the game a simple abstract puzzle, which takes no more than 5 to 10 minutes to play. The decisions are clear and meaningful. It was fun - or at least would have been if I wasn't still reading the rules while we were playing. In any case, it is light-years better than Feurio.

You simply analyze the board, make your move, and hope your LHO doesn't give his LHO the game, like in so many other turn based abstract games. I doubt the game will survive dozens of replays with the same opponent, but it is a nice filler for a few games, at least.

Zack won, but most of our turns were helping each other with the moves.

Caylus

Nadine 91, David 90, Zack 65

David still suggests this game whenever he comes. Zack also still likes it, but this time Nadine appeared to get bored of it. She complained that the game was too balanced; i.e. no matter what you did to get ahead, the players in back would regain again.

For myself, I have a problem with games where there are so many paths to victory that it simply doesn't matter which one you choose, since everyone will end at around the same number of points anyway (*cough* Goa *cough*). I think this is what she was getting at.

I heard the usual mutters of complaining about past mistakes. Zack ended the game before David was ready for it, apparently, by building six castle spaces in a single round, which filled it up. 

[Actually, what caught me unprepared is that he used 3 gold cubies in order to build the sixth 
space in the castle. I had also made sure that I would go first on the next round... - David]

Die Macher

Jon, Binyamin, Gili, Adam

Us veteran members of the Die Macher club were convinced that given a four hour game night that we could finish a game of this. We had learned the rules on Games Day.

Unfortunately it wasn't to be, as we only made it through three rounds, yet again. This time, however, Gili and I painstakingly wrote down every single state of the game, so that next time we bring it out we can start from round four.

By the third round, Binyamin was getting bored with the game, saying that the grand complexity gave one the illusion of more control than you actually have. Sounds like politics to me.

Our provinces have been pretty low scoring ones. Gili had a large lead in the national polls for a while, but Binyamin just refused a campaign contribution and went up twelve points. I've co-won two out of three elections so far. I have no hope in the next one, but a strong chance for the fifth. Binyamin also has two co-wins so far, and Gili and Adam each have one. Adam has been having financial problems owing to his poor election placements so far.

Carcassonne

Josh 65, Idit 65, Elijah 54

Ben left his copy of this lying around, so when Josh and Idit showed up and we were all in the middle of other games, they played this. This is the original version with the River supplement (whose rules I don't really know).

It looks to me like it was a low scoring game.

San Juan

Elijah 38, Idit 36, Josh 29

And they continued with this game, while Caylus and Die Macher were still going on.

Tichu

David/Jon-Elijah 1005, Zack/Nadine 295

I started playing opposite David while simultaneously playing Die Macher, and then Elijah took over for me after San Juan ended.

David and I started off with a cool 300 points, and Elijah and David took another 300 point hand two rounds later. In the first hand, David called Tichu when I was going to.

I had an interesting situation where I had remaining in my hand four aces, two fives, and a four. The only guaranteed way to win was to break my bomb into a full house, a single ace, and then play my four as my last card. So it pays to break up bombs, occasionally.

Elijah also had a situation where he had a two, two fours, two fives, and a straight from six to ace. He was going to play a straight from four to ace until I, looking over his shoulder, told him that that was a losing play; instead he played his six through ace, then his two pairs of fours and fives, and then exited with his two.

Nadine is convinced that there is very little actual strategy to the game compared to the luck factor.

Mau

Adam, Zack, Elijah

Mau is a game that I loathe, but Adam likes it. Zack and Elijah had never heard of it, and we had to convince them that they would love it in order to get them to play, From the sounds of hysterical laughter on their part for a good 45 minutes, we knew we had done well. They loved it, especially Zack.

If you want to know what Mau is, you're encouraged not to look it up, as part of the "fun" (read: childishness) is not knowing the rules before you start playing. But you can look them up on Wikipedia, if you so desire.

Bridge

Binyamin/David 1260, Jon/Nadine 280

We managed to play four hands. My opponents bid and made a 6NT contract on the first hand.

April 11, 2007

Participants: Jon, Zack, Gili, Adam.

A very small group tonight, which was great for me, as I started getting sick earlier in the day and was going to have to kick everyone out early, anyway. Also, it's amazing how quiet four people are compared to a whole group.

Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation

Jon+, Zack

Zack tends to lose this when he plays Elijah, but as this is a fairly quick opening game which he already knew how to play, I opted for it.

I played white. I made an early sacrifice of Gandalf with a low card so that my remaining cards would be one step up over his. This was against Shelob, and therefore I saw, for the first time, Shelob return to her lair.

Zack seemed to be ignoring the search for Frodo, concentrating instead on trying to get into the Shire. Frodo was therefore able to sneak into Mordor before he could do this.

Caylus

Gili 80ish, Jon 70ish, Adam and Zack 60ish

I'm not a big fan of Caylus, but with only Zack and Gili around, and the fact that Gili likes it and Zack had never played, I agreed to give it a go. Then Adam joined us just as I finished explaining the rules and so we made it a four player game.

The game went generally better than the lest few times I played so I wasn't interminably bored. There was a lot of jockeying for position with the turn order and the Provost. Furthermore, every brown building was built before the gray ones began to appear (one gray building was built before the last brown building), and then all but one gray building was built.

As a result of the building order, gold was in very short supply, but we still managed to get a few blue buildings built. Gili was obviously winning already by the last third of the game (one of the problems I have with the game). I knew I could catch up a bit, but not enough.

She built the 25 pointer, and I was ready on the next round to build two smaller blue buildings, when she passed in the placement phase a round before I needed her to, resulting in my being able to collect one less cube than I needed. Lucky for me, I noticed that I could build the small blue building for 7 and a favor, use the favor to get the extra cube I needed, and then in the last scoring phase build the other blue building for 14. Still not enough, as you see.

Adam would have liked to take that 7 point blue building, but I got it first, so instead we helped him notice how he could get the blue building that required pink cubes through some finagling, which he did.

It was only 9:45, but I decided to go to bed.

January 24, 2007

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili, Zack, Dylan, Adam, Eyal, Binaymin, Rachel

Eyal returns again, as does Dylan, but we push off roleplaying yet again.

Mykerinos

Jon 49, Nadine 46, Gili 30, Zack 25

This was our first play. For a review, see my blog entry.

In our game, I started by securing an x5 in black and brown. I didn't realize brown's potential until too late; I will correct this in the next game. I decided to pick up either first or second in three areas each round, and either first or second seemed about equal to me, since there is typically enough left over for second place that whatever first place chose, I simply chose something else equally good.

Another thing I sort of missed in my first game was the value of third and fourth place wins in the first two rounds, where cards are typically left over. Another thing to correct in the next game.

Regardless, I still pulled off a win of 49 points, to Nadine's 46. Zack, who only had a single x5, and Gili who had none, were not really in competition.

Caylus

Dylan 93, Eyal 76, Adam 69

Adam taught these two how to play. The game actually went fairly quickly ending around the same time as our Mykerinos game.

Poker

Adam, Dylan

While waiting a few minutes for us to finish Mykerinos, Adam and Dylan played a few hands of five card stud. Another first for the game group.

Princes of Florence

Gili 54, Jon 48, Nadine 46, Binyamin 45, Zack 36

Proving that most Jesters doesn't equal the win if you spend too much on them, and especially in a five-player game. The order of play was as follows, with me starting first. In our game, players may choose one profession out of two, instead of out of five, and the twenty-first profession is flipped up and available for recruiting but may not be purchased.

Jon	Zack	Gili	Binaymin	Nadine	Notes
Recruiter 800 Travel Profession	Jester 1200 Profession Opinion	Builder 700 Travel Profession	Lake 200 Profession Watch Maker [+2] (+3)	Forest 200 Profession Opinion	Second player is the one who can afford not to buy a profession in the first round (and if he doesn't, third player can also skip, and so on), but Zack bought, so everyone else did, as well. My Recruiter came cheaply, partly because others didn't recognize them as more valuable in a five player game (despite my warning).
Recruiter 700 Opera [+3] Choreographer [+0] (+3)	Builder 900 Laboratory [+3] Religion	Forest 200 Opinion Bonus	Jester 1200 Travel Bonus	Lake 200 Travel Bonus	I get a second cheap Recruiter. The professions were all gone last turn. Since I am last player, it is easy for me to take the three point bonus, while playing a work for cash. I still have five more works to play.
Prestige 200 Bonus Bonus	Forest 200 University [+3] Philosopher [+0] (+3)	Recruiter 700 Religion University [+3]	Jester 1100 Religion Poet [+0]	Builder 600 Opera [+3] Composer [+2]	I didn't realize that this was Binyamin's second Jester, or I would have bid one more time. Gili and Zack are both shy on cash at this point. There are eight more actions to go; I have five works to play, which leaves me three actions, and I have two bonus cards. At this point I figured three more bonus cards and then five works, each with a bonus. Except that I didn't think I would be able to get all my works out without a Jester or two. Also, my Prestige and Bonus cards both required me to have Lakes, as did half my works.
Lake 200 Bonus Religion	Jester 1100 Library [+3] Bonus	Prestige 200 Philosopher [+0] (+3) Workshop [+3]	Recruiter 900 Opinion Theater [+3]	Park 400 Laboratory [+3] Physicist [+3]	Zack and Binyamin both have two Jesters each, but they've paid high prices for them. Now Binyamin is also working on Recruiters. I get my first Lake, which is good, but I take Religion instead of a Bonus, thinking that the +3 for one of my works, plus potential +3 for something I recruit, is better than another Bonus. In this, I'm wrong, as I had plenty to recruit that used Lake and Travel, so I used Religion only for that one work, and a Bonus would likely have been at least as good or better. Gili fought briefly for the Park, and Zack is out of cash, again.
Lake 200 [+3] Mathematician [+4] Bonus	Park 600 [-6] Bonus Jurist [+6]	Prestige 200 Bell Maker [+6] Bonus	Builder 300 Cartographer [+4] (+3) Library [-3] [+3]	Jester 800 Chapel [+3] Bonus	Zack and Binyamin both pay the price for not having enough cash. I gain some cash and points carefully from my works. I'm starting to worry, because I know I can't play all of my works and I don't have the Jesters that I need. My second Lake helps both Prestige and Bonus. Even now, I don't see Gili sneaking up behind me.
Jester 400 Painter [+8] Watch Maker [+8]	Lake 200 Botanist [+10] --pass--	Park 200 Theologian [+10] Studio [+3]	Recruiter 600 Dramatist [+6] (+3) Tower [+3]	Forest 200? [+3] Organist [+7] (+3) Bonus	I was thrilled to get a Jester at this price, even though I still couldn't play my last work, yet. I was less thrilled when Binyamin picked up his second Recruiter.
Jester 400 Composer [+8] Physicist [+8]	Prestige 400 Alchemist [+11] --pass--	Park 200 [+3] Bonus Sculptor [+11]	Forest 400 Jurist [+10] Astrologer [+12]	Lake 200 [+3] Bonus Pharmacist [+14] {+3)	I was again thrilled to get a Jester, which finally allowed me to play my last work. However, Nadine took a second Lake which reduced my Prestige bonus from +6 to +3. Gili ended up unable to play both of her last works, so she took a bonus and played one of them. I thought that that was that. However, my Prestige card was worth only 3, Zack's was worth 7, and Gili's two cards were worth +13, which gave her first place.

Wildlife

Zack+, Binyamin

Binyamin and Zack wanted to play this, and Binyamin was only willing to play two or three players, since it was already ten o'clock. They played two player.

Tichu

Jon/Dylan 210, Adam/Gili 90

We played three hands. Dylan called Tichu in the second, but Adam went out first, which would have been the same result if Adam had simply called Tichu first. In the third hand, we both went out before our opponents.

Puerto Rico

Rachel 47, Jon 45, Nadine 41

The scores were predicted from our seating position, according to Nadine. However, the seating position is less relevant when we are using different buildings (and especially no Small Market), and when I screw up the classic opening by starting with Builder/Construction Hut.

We almost never play with Construction Hut, but I was playing with a four point building that gave +2 VP for each quarry you have, so for once the building was worth it. Unfortunately, still not enough to beat Rachel.

Nadine was able to man and produce indigo on the second turn thanks to the unusual opening. Both Rachel and I acquired early Hospices on our next plays, because Corn hadn't made a showing on any of the first three settlement pools, which implied that they would be readily available in later pools. This was correct, and combined with my Construction Hut, made Settler always productive for me.

Meanwhile, Rachel was using Hospice just as well. Nadine had early trading in Tobacco, and I followed it up with early trading in Coffee, but she was also able to secure Tobacco shipping (producing three each time), while I was never able to ship Coffee. Rachel took Tobacco as her fourth good type and acquire Harbor. Even though she ended with no big buildings, she had 31 shipping points to my 7, which was enough to clinch the victory.

January 17, 2007

Participants: Jon, Nadine, David K, Shevi, Josh, Idit, Jeremy, Adam, Gili, Binyamin, Zack, Rachel

Another week of almost-RPG, pushed off once again until next week.

The Menorah Game

Nadine+, Jon

David+, Shevi, Nadine, Jon, Zack, Binyamin

I wanted to try out a variation on the tile distribution that was designed to accommodate between two to six players. Each additional player adds a set of tiles, thus keeping the relative number of tiles available per person about equal.

For two players, the number of tiles was slightly less than usual, but the impact on the game was extremely minimal. For six players I added most of the tiles from another set. With six players, like with so many other games that accommodate up to six players, the game bogged down considerably.

With six players, there was a tremendous amount of auctioning, so it's not like you were bored. And the auctions went quickly. In fact, as far as bogginess, I would rate this game better than other games with six players, such as Power Grid or Wildlife. But other games with six, suchas Geschenkt or Havoc would beat it.

As a result, most of us were bored with the six player variant and we decided that three or four is still best.

In both cases we played the advanced version of the game, which was the first time for the advanced version for some of the players, such as David and Nadine. Remarkably, both Nadine and David didn't like the advanced version compared to the basic version, and David said the advanced version was decidedly more lucky!

This is in contrast to some of the other people their, such as Binyamin and Shevi, who both much prefer the advanced version to the basic version, and consider the basic version too lucky. So it was a fifty-fifty split.

Yinsh

Josh+, Idit

I quickly rattled off the rules to these two who played while we were playing TMG. Josh won, but declared Idit to be a great blocker.

Children of Fire: the Board Game

Adam (Anakim) 12, Binyamin (Sorcerors) 10, Shevi (Children of Dark)
9, Jeremy (Watchers) 6

The same complaint from the last two plays reared its ugly head again, which is that the game is not guaranteed to terminate. When you get to the last undecided character, if the balance is equal, the game can just keep going back and forth.

This was particularly aggravating to Binyamin, whose cards were the least numerically, and therefore the worst at picking up points with the masses as everyone else did at the end of the game.

It is a general consensus that the game can be fixed with a rigorous number of turns limit, such as twenty or so. One person suggested that masses tokens become more difficult to buy as the game goes on.

Amun-Re

Zack 43, Idit 40, Nadine 35, Josh 25

This was a first play for all but Nadine. I assume that everyone liked it, although I have no further information about the play.

Caylus

David+, Jon, Gili

David and I almost started Netrunner, but Gili came along so we joined her into a game of Caylus, which was one person more than I really like to play the game.

Well, to be honest, it's three people more, as each time I play it it goes down another notch. I was particularly bored this game, and not simply because it looked like David had a relatively early lead, but because I really didn't care to calculate the results of my actions so much. These two facts are rather related, I suspect.

I don't know why. I'm happy to calculate breadth games such as Magic, or depth games such as Go, but Caylus, which has so much of both, just leaves me bored.

David managed to thwart my building plans a lot, and then managed to shoot to four green buildings while Gili and I had only one, although I acquired a second. Due to my refusal to do any calculations, I ended up only converting one to a blue building (the 25 pointer). I was still about 25 points behind David, and Gili was also about that behind me.

I was happy to see the game end.

Netrunner

David (runner), Jon (corp)

And both of us were very happy to get back into another game of this. This time we made it about halfway through the game in about one and a half hours. By the end, we were still looking up tons of rules, but having a blast doing so.

Netrunner, like Magic, is a rich game with complex rules. Having followed Magic, one gets the sense that they built on Magic's successes, tried to avoid some of the problems, and added a whole lot more. As a matter of fact, Netrunner and CCGs in general have more in common with the previous generation's war games and RPGs than they do with modern Euro games. They sit in this lovely place in between, where the rules are deep, expansive, and complex, but the resulting game is easy and
compact, and quick to play.

Last time David took the corp and I had the runner, and this time we reversed. I had managed to cash in two agenda worth four agenda points, while David had built up a veritable army of programs and hardware, but had yet to liberate any agendas.

The next time we play will go smoother, and we may even finish the game. Only thereafter will we start to think about deck construction with our limited supply of cards. I suspect I will need to acquire more in order to give us some deck-building options.

Magic: the Gathering

Adam+, Binyamin

Although they had some play experience, neither had deck-building experience, and they had to get some tips from us as to how to pull something playable together. Then I had to field a lot of questions during the game as to how and/or why to use certain cards.

Still, they both seemed to enjoy themselves.

Puerto Rico

Zack 58, Nadine 50, Rachel 41

Zack does seem to have a genius for winning his first games, much like Elijah used to have. This was his first play of Puerto Rico, so he got a lot of assistance during the game.

January 10, 2007

Participants: Jon, Ben, David K, Shevi, Nadine, Gili, Adam, Zack, Binyamin, Eyal

Eyal returned for his second visit. With Zack barely speaking Hebrew, and Eyal speaking English, but much more comfortable in Hebrew, games are our meeting point.

And with only ten people, it's amazing how many games can hit the table
on a single game evening.

Feurio

Binyamin, Jon, Nadine

Binyamin came to me and asked me to see if I could find anything resembling tactics or strategy is this game that seems to get a lot of high praise on BGG. Knowing only that he doesn't see any, I gamely sat down and gave it a looksee.

The game consists of hexes numbered 1 through 6. Each turn, you flip over a tile and must place it at any location that has the highest numbered surrounding hexes. So where you can place the tiles is very limited, and sometimes give no choice at all.

Then you choose to put some of your meeples onto any one piece on the board that still has available space. Since you have a limited (but not very) number of meeples, you have to decided where to put them. Also, you may only put onto a hex the maximum of a) 2/2 the number on the hex, rounded up, or b) the number of free edges the hex has remaining. If a hex becomes surrounded, it does not lose the meeples it has already acquired.

That's it. At the end of the game, you score the numbers on the tiles under each of your herds divided by the number of the lowest tile that is not entirely surrounded by other hexes.

While this all sounds good on paper, I was forced to agree less than five turns into the game that Binyamin is entirely correct. While not entirely free of any tactics altogether (although entirely free of strategy), the barest amount that you have under your control is so pitiful, and your moves so forced, and the results so luck-dependent, that I literally stopped caring by the last third of the game, and couldn't even be bothered to count, let alone record, the scores.

It's just dull, and what decisions there are are effectively meaningless. The possibility that one could actually block your opponent, as opposed to simply taking the maximum score on each play, is a non-starter, and if it occurs was also beyond your control.

The only thing nice I have to say about the game is as follows: it's quick and easy to learn. The mechanic of how the hexes spread is a neat mechanic and fits the theme (fire spreading), but entirely doesn't work in this game.

San Juan

David, Shevi

Shevi has decided opinions about games. These two came and tried to get in a filler game, but abandoned it after a few rounds, because two others had also shown up, and because Shevi didn't like the game.

Santiago

Zack 94, David 91, Eyal 79, Shevi 70

Instead they played this excellent game. The rules are almost as simple as Fuerio, but boy is there a difference in game play!

Wildlife

Nadine 100, Gili 89, Adam 87, Binaymin 73

I sat down to start this game again, eager for another play, and this time with the correct rules (about herds). Halfway through the explanation Adam appeared, so we included him. After the explanation, Ben appeared, and I refused to turn it into a six player game, so I abandoned it to play with Ben.

In general, people liked the game, except Binyamin. This wasn't helped by the fact that Nadine had a mammoth herd on the board and was on her way to winning near the end of the game when Adam and Gili decided to spend upwards of 45 minutes taking a single turn in an attempt to find a way to break it up.

This resulted in Nadine getting rather bored, and Binyamin getting rather frustrated, and I can't say that I blame them. All in all, this extended the game to around 4 hours. For 4 players. Ouch.

Caylus

Jon/David+, Ben

So I sat down to play 2-player Caylus with Ben who had only played it once before and 3-player at that. We got going, and then David popped over from finishing his Santiago game, sad that he had wanted to play it. Since I wasn't really into it anyway, I got up, yet again, and let David take over for me.

This was David's first play with 2-players.

Princes of Florence

Zack 60, Jon 59, Shevi 52, Eyal 43

Instead, I got to teach three first-time player the joys of PoF. Luckily, Eyal could understand enough of my English to play the game. Shevi was initially fearful, but began to get into it. Zack and Eyal liked it already by the end of the first round.

The only real strategy tips I give is the approximate values for the auction items in the first few rounds, especially warning about the Jesters and Recruiters (the latter less so in a 4-player game). Zack took the first two Jesters for 1200 and 1300, while I took the next three or so for more reasonable prices.

Shevi took Builder in the first two turns for 900 and 1000, which I thought was rather excessive. Other than that, most other items went for fairly cheap, and several times several players took items for the minimum price of 200.

I had no real luck with my cards, but still played a fairly solid game, which seemed to be pretty good. Zack's win in the end was simply for having the 3 point bonus for best work as well as buying a Prestige card on the last turn for a full 8 points.

Settlers of Catan

Eyal 10, Zack 8, Jon 5

Shevi left, and I wanted a filler game for three. Since Eyal and Zack had played Settlers even prior to joining my club, this was one of the few games that we could get into and play through quickly. I started on reasonable places, including the only worthwhile brick hex, the 8, where the others were on 2 and 3.

The other players had more city starts, with high ore and wheat. That wouldn't have bothered me, as I shared their wheat and ore hexes as well. But wouldn't you know? 8 never rolled up except when the robber was on it - and I mean not once the entire game - whereas 3 rolled up at least half a dozen times in the first twenty rounds or so. Eyal even traded 4 bricks for something at one point.

I sulkily decided that my goal was simply to get to five points before the game ended, which I actually managed to do, with one round to spare.

Tichu

Adam/Jon 65, Nadine/Zack 35

There was discussion over whether to play Bridge or Tichu, and our population had difficulty figuring out how to do this.

We played one hand of Tichu here with no Tichu being called. While this game was going on, I simultaneously played Lost Cities with Binyamin.

David/Jon 50, Adam/Zack 150

And then I simultaneously played Tichu while playing Bridge. We played two hands here, and even though David and I "won" the last hand, we netted 0 points from the tricks.

Lost Cities

Jon 100 something, Binyamin 30 something

Known on BGG as the best two-player game or as the best game to play with your non-gaming spouse, I have to completely disagree with the former while reserving some judgment on the latter. As a gamer, this game is simply brainless. Oh, it's much better than Feurio, as the decisions you make are actually meaningful and the game includes both tactics and strategies. But they are not that deep, and can easily be absorbed by the end of the first game.

As a result, I was easily able to play this simultaneously with Tichu, win to boot, and not particularly care anyway.

Bridge

Ben/Beinyamin 400, Jon/Nadine 0

Ben and Bin made two games while Nadine and I went down in one. Bridge is still The card game, and Tichu is Bridge-lite - very lite. As light as can be an simple be a complex and interesting game. Well, maybe Team Hearts is even lighter, but no lighter than that.