May 16, 2007

Participants: Jon, Nadine, David, Elijah, Zack, Gili, Adam, Carrie, Peter, Rachel A

A cast of the usuals joined us on this Jerusalem Day. In addition, my Scottish guests, Carrie and her son Peter also decided to join us for a game at the end. I mentioned my guests earlier in the week, when I taught Peter Yinsh, but I had been looking forward to teaching them something to play together, and especially Settlers of Catan.

And you know what? Nailed it.

Lost Cities

Nadine+, Jon

I started off with this slight game, giving it one more chance to prove that it was anything better than a rummy game. Didn't happen, again. It's basically on the level of a light card game. Yeah, you have to decide what to play and what to discard. And the cards are pretty. Uh huh.

Anyone want my copy?

This was Nadine's first play, and she, too, was not impressed.

Elijah+, Zack

Elijah watched us play, and played with Zack when he arrived and the two were waiting for Adam. I didn't hear any shouts of glee.

Tikal

Jon 102, Gili, David, Nadine

I wanted to play this because we hadn't brought it out in a while. We were going to play it three players, but Gili joined us just as we got started.

I didn't forget that Nadine and David were going to be their usually overly analytical selves, so it didn't surprise me that they were. And, once again, it didn't seem to help them. Really, games like these are better played with a little thought and a little instinct, both for the end results and the patience of all involved.

On the other hand, they all believe that I just naturally take to area control games, which is why I'm unfair about it.

In our game, my win was primarily due to my low bidding. The other three spent upwards of twenty or more points bidding on hexes in order to control the treasures. As a result, they gained slightly more than me each round, but they couldn't close the gap I achieved simply by taking whatever hexes came my way.

In truth, I also locked temples earlier than they did, used the action points not involved in excavating treasures to good use, and also avoided the same areas that they were competing in for the most part.

Nadine doesn't like the game that much, mostly because of the ugly treasures.

Cosmic Encounter

Adam (Reincarnator, Plant)+, Elijah (Worm, Anti-matter), Zack (Warrior, Mind)

Elijah's first request every night, Adam and Zack acceded. They also played with comets and asteroids, and I refused to give them any rulings on how these work, since I don't like them.

Mau

Adam, Elijah, Zack

The only winner of this game was me, since I didn't have to play it and I could lob insults at the players to which they could not respond to since not talking is one of the rules of the game.

OK, I think they all enjoyed it, too. Lord preserve me from ever having to play it.

Arimaa

Elijah+, Adam

Adam taught this to Elijah, who surprisingly managed to win.

Settlers of Catan

Peter+, Jon, Carrie

I taught this to both of them, and they picked it up with almost no difficulty. In fact, after explaining the rules, Peter went first and dropped his first settlement on the best spot without any consultation. In shock, I then realized that not only was it the numerically best place on the board, it also have great resource diversity, and was the best location for all three of those resources.

His win is therefore not much of a surprise, even with his generous and promiscuous trading, and the bad luck I had at the beginning of the game didn't help matters. Peter managed both Largest Army and Longest Road and got to 8 points reasonably quickly, while both of us still had 2 (I actually had an additional VP from a development card).

Despite this, I managed to work my way up to seven points, and lost only one or two rounds before I would have won by stealing away Peter's Longest Road. Carrie had a harder time, being on worse resources and numbers.

As the game wound down, Peter insisted that they buy the game, so Carrie will contact me for where to get this in the UK.

Puerto Rico

David 67, Rachel, Nadine

Rachel was keen to play with Nadine, and to play Puerto Rico, of course. David was willing to play them. I didn't see the game, and I left the scores at home. David won.

GAMES DAY: April 4, 2007

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Ben, Tal, Josh, Avri, Keren, Debbie, Gili, David K, Saarya, Binyamin, Adam, Pinchas, Tikva Shira, Zvi Yehuda, Itamar, Nadav, Shlomo, Rafi, Meir

21 Participants, for a fairly smooth, albeit loud, Games Day. My apartment is simply too small for this. I must find a larger place for next Pesach. Sukkot we play on the roof, anyway, so the noise is not so bad.

Avri is a player from Beit Shemesh who came for the first time, bringing his brother Rafi. Rafi brought his brother-in-law Shlomo, and Shlomo brought his brother Meir. Or something like that.

Keren is a reader of my blog, and she came by for the first time with her friend Debbie. Except for Gili playing Settlers with them, I somehow neglected them while they were here, which I feel bad about. Come again, and I promise to play more with you personally.

Itamar brought his nephew Nadav, and Binyamin brought his kids Tikva Shira and Zvi Yehuda. Pinchas came on the last few Games Days too, and he is an old Bridge partner of mine.

The others are regulars.

24/7

Tikva Shira+, Zvi Yehuda

I taught this to the kids; they kept forgetting the rule about rows not going past 24, and Z"Y never quite got the way you get points.

Amun-Re

Saarya 43, David 36, Nadine 33

Nadine was ahead 2 points in the interim scoring, 15 to 13 to 13.

Bridge

Jon, Adam, Nadine, Ben

We played this simultaneous with our game of El Grande, while waiting for people to take their turns.

Binyamin, Adam, Tikva Shira, Zvi Yehuda

They played one hand of this at the end of the evening, waiting for the Amun-Re game to end, so that Binyamin could take the game home.

Carcassonne: the City

Jon 130ish, Binyamin/Ben 85ish, Nadine 55ish

Binyamin taught us this version of Carcassonne. It has the usual three area types, but one third of the way through the game you begin placing walls and towers around the tiles.

The most significant difference is that only roads have to match, not areas. We found this to be a huge huge Bad Thing. Most of the tactics of Carcassonne derives either from merging with other areas, or from locking opponent's areas so that they can't close them. This rule significantly reduces both of these options, making the game simply a matter of picking the best tiles and putting them down in the best places each turn. Whoopee.

It is one of those situations where too many opportunities for scoring makes a significantly worse game, rather than a better game. There is not enough tension.

I got luckiest. Nadine made a few sub-optimal choices, according to Binyamin, and he got upset enough to leave the game early. Ben filled in for him for the last few rounds, without any understanding of the rules.

Chess

Pinchas+, Jon

Pinchas loves Chess, and I play very infrequently, and totally tactically. I also get bored with games where it's clear that one person is winning, and the only way for them to lose is to make a dumb mistake.

So I enjoyed the game at the beginning where I managed to secure a lead over Pinchas by a Knight and a Pawn. Then I got bored, moved too quickly (I should mention, perhaps, that I don't like to take too long with my moves, and I was also simultaneously playing El Grande at the time), and went down to a single Pawn advantage.

In the end, I didn't feel like dragging the game out for another 50 moves, so I lost a few more pieces and resigned. It was a little rude of me. Sorry, Pinchas.

Keren, Debbie

Keren and Debbie played a game of this later in the day.

Die Macher

Jon, Gili, Binyamin, Adam

This is one of our grails of gaming - simply getting it onto the table. That took most of the day.

The rule explanation then took another hour and some, as usual, and it was about three hours before we finished the first round. I was really hopeful we would finish the game, for once, because we were ll enjoying it, and the second round went much quicker and smoother. But Gili had to leave before the game would finish, so we only finished three rounds.

We all really enjoyed it, for what we played. There are a lot of rules that I have to keep digging up and remembering, but we all suffered the adverse effects of this, and managed to keep on forging forward, anyway.

El Grande

Nadine 107, Adam 100, Ben 94, Binyamin 90, Jon 83

I made the mistake of having a slight early lead after round three, which made me a target. And this despite the fact that this is Nadine's signature game. And she won, of course, in the end.

Nobody was horribly behind the whole game.

Geschenkt

Rafi 13, Avri, Saarya, Shlomo, Meir

I taught them this game as a brain cleanser between the games of Power Grid and Santiago. Rafi won it.

Lost Cities

Keren+, Debbie+

They played two games of this, while we were davening Mincha. I think I didn't explain the rules completely. I believe they were drawing and then playing, and opposed to the other way around.

Nautilus

Ben, Nadine, David, Josh

These guys were looking for what to play and started with this. Binyamin warned them that it wasn't really their type of game, and he turned out to be correct, and they abandoned the game halfway through, not particularly enraptured.

They also complained about the sameness of the colors on the chips and other design elements.

Netrunner

Jon++, Binyamin

Rather than try to find my Magic lands, I taught this to Binyamin. I first played the Corp, while Binyamin drew a number of expensive cards and couldn't quite get together a cohesive attack. I took home 5 agenda points without too much trouble, and we decided to switch sides.

We then played the fastest game of Netrunner ever played. Binyamin played his turn and didn't protect R&D. I raided R&D three times and pulled three agendas, totaling 8 agenda points. Game over.

Perhaps there is a tad more card luck in Netrunner than in Magic, after all.

Power Grid

Saarya 14, Avri 11+, Rafi 11-, Meir 10, Shlomo 6

Saarya taught them this, and naturally won, as the only experienced player. The others bought too many power plants. They played on the US without the NW, but no one even made it into the SW.

I should note that Shlomo's dismal score is not due to lack of plants, but probably being shut out of fuel.

Princes of Florence

Ben 58, Avri 57, Nadine 53, Josh 48, Tal 41

Tal would like it noted that she was leading at one point. Keren and Debbie also looked interested in trying this game.

As you can see, a close game, with Avri scoring well for his first time.

Santiago

Avri 76, Meir 55, Rafi 51, Saarya 45, Shlomo 37

I suggested this one to them, and they were all first time players. They seemed to enjoy it.

Settlers of Catan

Gili+, Keren, Debbie

I was going to play this with them, but Gili sat down before I got there. They all enjoyed it, even though Gili was the more experienced player and gave them a trouncing, it appears.

Shogi

Adam+, Pinchas

Pinchas likes Chess, so Adam taught his this Japanese game of Chess. Unfortunately, all the pieces were disks with Chinese writing on them; I have no idea how Pinchas could ever distinguish the pieces.

World of Warcraft

Itamar, Nadav, Tikva Shira, Zvi Yehuda

The award for the day's longest game goes to this, not Die Macher. They started playing at 12:30, and ended, without finishing the game, at around 9:00 or so. I have no idea what they accomplished during that time. The biggest problem was that none of them were native English speakers and the cards were all in English, so they had to keep running to Binyamin for explanations.

Zertz

Zvi Yehuda, Tikva Shira

Played at the end of the evening.

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.