August 15, 2007

Participants: Jon, Yitzchak, Adam, Gili, Rachel A

Ah, the light heady days of summer, when most people are on vacation.

San Juan

Jon 43, Yitzchak 40

I plunked down a first turn Prefecture, which is fairly deadly in two-player. I followed it up with a Smithy, Silver, and a rare-for-me Tower. I got the three six-point cards and managed to hold on to them and build them by the end of the game.

Yitzchak had Library around building number four or so, so I kept taking Prospector to make his life difficult. Eventually he built Prefecture, Quarry, Smithy, and Carpenter. He built three big buildings, too, and one more building than me, but his Triumphal Arch wasn't as lucrative as my Palace.

Lost Valley

Gili 13, Yitzchak 9, Jon 8, Adam 8

I almost started Industria, but these guys had never played Lost Valley, and I liked the game enough to play it again. Especially since I know that some of the members who didn't come don't like it as much.

Adam went off in one direction where there wasn't much mountain gold, although he eventually mined one mountain hex for three chips. Gili went off and mined her own mountain hex for four chips, which won her the game. Yitzchak followed me around a bit, which slowed both of us down.

Eventually, I mined three chips out of one mountain, giving him the last one. He went off to find river gold.

As Gili was ahead, she explored like crazy. With the last unexplored tile placed, the river was immediately capped. No one had been exploring the river, so it was only four segments long. The game then ended too quickly for me to open up a new mine.

Everyone appears to have enjoyed the game. I'm looking forward to playing again.

"Sawmill" in Hebrew is מנסרה (mansera). "Saw" is מסור (massor). --Adam

It's Alive

Jon+, Adam, Yitzchak

Adam suggested this, and we played the basic game. I massed a lot of money at the beginning of the game. I was also the only one to be hit with Villagers, first a 4 and then a 6. Then a few more to boot, which I ignored.

Despite this, I won the game, which only goes to show you that it's possible. I kept careful count of how little money my opponents had. They never had quite so little that I could abuse them, but still. I also got a little lucky pulling the card I needed after a few rounds at the end, although I had enough money to buy it from anyone's graveyard, too.

Puerto Rico

Jon 60, Yitzchak 57, Rachel 56, Adam 40

Rachel requested this, and may even have done better if her attention hadn't drifted for a few rounds in the middle of the game. We played the standard building set.

-1-
Y: Settler/Quarry, Adam takes corn, Rachel tobacco, I take coffee. I end up with a lucrative coffee monopoly during the game. Rachel does almost as well with her tobacco.
A: Builder/Small Market. Rachel builds Small Market.
R:Mayor
J:Prospector

-2-
A:Trader+, after some urging from me. If he does something like Settler and then Rachel takes Craftsman+, I will Trade+. If Rachel takes Trader+ and I Craftsman+, Yitzchak has no good and won't Captain+.
R:Craftsman+
J:Captain+
Y:Prospector

-3-
R:Builder+/Small Sugar.
J:Settler+/corn. After this phase, Adam and I have coffee plantations, while Rachel and Yitzchak have tobacco plantations.
Y:Mayor+
A:Prospector

-4-
J:Builder/Coffee. Yitzchak builds Tobacco.
Y:Mayor. Now, Yitzchak will be trading tobacco, and I'll be trading coffee. Rachel has Sugar and Small Market, while Adam has Indigo and Small Market.
A:Settler
R:Craftsman+. I thought this was rather a bad move, giving Yitzchak Trader++ next turn and a tobacco to trade. As a result of this move, cash was high for the rest of the game.

-5-
Y:Trader++/tobacco. Of course. Adam trades indigo, Rachel sugar, I coffee. Trading House empties.
A:Mayor
R:Captain++
J:Prospector+

-6-
A:Builder+/Factory. While Factory was indeed a scarcer resource than Coffee, this allowed my coffee monopoly to continue for longer. Rachel and Yitzchak both build Harbor. I's at 6 doubloons, so I wait.
R:Craftsman+
J:Trader/coffee. Another full round of trading.
Y:Settler+/corn. Yitzchak wanted to take another quarry, but Rachel and I convinced him that this was the reason he had been losing his last few games so badly. One quarry is more than enough, and he needed more shipping goods, especially with a Harbor (same would apply to Factory). I won the building point game, and I didn't have a single quarry (instead, I had coffee monopoly and Factory).

-7-
R:Builder/Tobacco. I built Factory. Yitzchak could not be dissuaded from building Hospice, which didn't help him during the game. Adam built Large Sugar.
J:Mayor+. I was very wary of doing this, because it filled in Yitzchak and Rachel's Harbors, and they already had goods to ship.
Y:Prospector+
A:Craftsman+

-8-
J:Captain++
Y:Trader+. This time Adam doesn't have an indigo to trade, so one space is left in the Trading House.
A:Settler+
R:Mayor

-9-
Y:Builder+/Guild Hall. He ends up with a full Guild Hall by game's end. Stupid building. Adam and I both build Small Market. After building, I still have 10 doubloons on my board.
A:Craftsman+
R:Captain. Rachel and I begin blocking boats with our trade goods.
J:Prospector+. I'm now looking at buying two big buildings, as I was flush with cash.

-10-
A:Mayor+
R:Settler+, Yitzchak takes a sugar plantation. Rachel has had a sugar monopoly until now.
J:Trader+. I fill in the Trading House with an indigo.
Y:Builder/Small Sugar. I build City Hall.

-11-
R:Prospector+
J:Craftsman+. The 5 boat had 2 coffees in it, and Adam was going to be producing coffee soon. I produced 2 coffees, but elected to not take an additional coffee as my bonus good, even though anything else I would produce wouldn't ship. I preferred leaving the boat still partially full. I took an extra corn, beginning a long buildup of corn on my Small Warehouse.
Y:Captain+. Yitzchak always prefers to Captain when he is afraid he will be locked out, otherwise.
A:Mayor. Nobody has any monopolies anymore.

-12-
J:Builder+/Custom's House. Not as much for the points it will give me, but for denying it to Yitzchak or Rachel. Turns out to give be a fair bit, after all. No one else builds.
Y:Settler+
A:Craftsman
R:Trader+. I debated not trading my coffee. Adam and Rachel were pretty much sure to get the other two big buildings before I could, anyway. I had two coffee barrels, and I could only ship one. But the other one could be left over to start another coffee ship. I decided that I would be crafting again by then, anyway. Also, I had my eye on a Wharf already at that point, as I was accumulating corn.


-13-
Y:Captain+
A:Builder/Residence. Rachel builds Fortress. I'm one shy for Wharf. I build Construction Hut.
R:Mayor+. All big buildings are manned.
J:Craftsman. I now have 7 corn. I'm totally aware that I won't get to ship them on the next Captain phase, as Adam or Rachel or both will block me. But all three ships are going to empty, and the game isn't yet going to be over, leaving me clear sailing to ship them all on the next Captain phase. My next concerns then were whether to worry about Wharf and manning it, or simply go for sending them on the regular boats. Sending on the regular boats helps cut off Harbor shippers.

-14-
A:Captain. I keep my 7 corn.
R:Mayor
J:Builder/Wharf. For my City Hall, and just in case I can do it again.
Y:Prospector++

-15-
R:Craftsman+. Rachel has since regretted this move, as others cut off boats before she could ship and the game ended due to victory point depletion.
J:Captain. I chose to ship 7 corns on a boat and block it, rather than Mayor and Wharf. This nearly doubles my victory point total for the game. Game end triggered. Adam hands me the game now by shipping his three coffees, allowing me to do the same, instead of shipping one sugar or indigo, which would have given Rachel three more victory points instead. It's true that this is a slight flaw in the game.
Y:Builder. Yitzchak fills in his last production building. I build Hacienda.
A:Prospector. Adam is already ahead in any tie situation.

-Scores-
Y: 26ship + 21build + 10bonus = 57
A: 19ship + 17build + 4bonus = 40
R: 35ship + 15build + 6bonus = 56
J: 26ship + 21build + 13bonus = 60

August 08, 2007

Participants: Jon, Dylan, Ben, Yitzchak, Nathan, Adam, Tal, Elijah, Yaira

Tal and Elijah dropped by after their play rehearsal. Tal brought her friend Yaira over, too. Nathan returned after a long absence.

I set up Industria for a quick run through the rules. It looks simple enough, and I hope to give it a complete go next time.

Cosmic Encounter

Ben+ (Demon, Sorcerer), Dylan+ (Judge, Calculator), Nathan+ (Witch, Grudge), Jon (Schizoid, Pacifist), Yitzchak (Void, Industrialist)

I took the Schizoid, a power which fills me with glee. Unfortunately, my win conditions were simply one of a series of mistakes I made throughout the game. They were: a) 3 foreign bases, and b) foreign bases not shared.

I hoped that my second power, the Pacifist, would give me a slight but not overwhelming advantage with this, because the Pacifist doesn't need allies to win battles. Also, the other players are ally happy. Of course, Filth would have been even better.

I neglected to notice that in a five-player game, I don't actually get to be Offensive player that often and that most bases are gained while allying with others. As a result, I never had a foreign base that wasn't shared.

I made other dumb plays, like not playing a compromise card against the Sorcerer, and such things.

Meanwhile, the other players asked lots of questions, but the closest they ever got to figuring out the criteria is that it involved tokens in some way. Dylan asked early on if the criteria involved where you placed your bases, to which I said no. He complained that in fact my answer should have been "yes" for that, since "the bases had to be placed on planets where other bases weren't". Ben and I disagreed.

You have to expect little problems like that to come up with the Schizoid.

Since no one could guess the criteria, and I couldn't seem to win, the game pretty much came down to getting five bases and zapping me. Dylan got five bases, and then Ben and Nathan did. Ben then Super Demoned his power onto my Schizoid. Yitzchak and I could get to four bases, but no more.

Meanwhile, the other two most abused powers, Judge and Witch, were also in the game, as well as the Void. The Void is the only power I refuse to play with in the game, not because it is too weak or too strong, but because it makes the game not fun. My fix for the Void is to change it to the Praw; tokens go to the Praw, and can be taken either from Praw to Warp, or from Warp out. Dylan and I both thought that the Judge might be too powerful, as well. We couldn't figure out how to fix it, and in any case, the fact that the judgment doesn't apply when a comp is played or the Demon is used, negates the power well enough.

While we played Cosmic, Adam and I started a game of Zertz, but abandoned it when Elijah came in.

Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation

Adam, Elijah

Adam and Elijah played at least one game of this, possibly more.

We played two games. I was black both times. We each won once. We also argued about whether Gandalf is a Maia and whether it's a waste of time to learn Quenya/Elvish.--Adam

It's Alive

Tal+, Yaira

Tal+, Adam, Yaira, Elijah

Tal introduced this to Yaira. Then Adam and Elijah joined for a four-player game. I took a look late in the second game and thought Adam was going to win, but Tal somehow pulled off a victory.

Yaira liked the game well enough.

I was about to win a few rounds before the end of the game, but then drew a villagers tile that I couldn't pay for, which set me back enough that Tal was able to pull it off. --Adam

Apples to Apples

Elijah, Adam, Tal

They played a number of rounds of this, until Dylan Adam got into some lengthy discussion with Genia about Esperanto.

Bridge

Jon/Adam, Ben/Yitzchak

And we played a few rounds of this to end the night. I lost one hand by not figuring out that Ben had to have the singleton King of Spades.

Yehuda

August 01, 2007

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Binyamin, Zvi Yehuda, Ben, Yitzchak, Rachel A, Gili

A comfortable evening of games. Nadine did some game hopping. Every time a game opened up that she liked more than the one she was playing, I took over for her and she switched to the new game. Binyamin tried to do the same thing without any luck.

Samurai

Zvi Yehuda+, Binyamin, Jon, Gili

Samurai is a Knizia tile-laying game that I have been avoiding simply because of the little Buddha statue pieces, which irk my religious sensitivities. Binyamin bought the game and solved the problem by taking sandpaper to each of the little round pieces.

You place tiles with numbers and pictures, and whenever a space with a piece is surrounded, the person with the highest valued tiles of the appropriate piece type surrounding the piece takes it. Placing tiles that affect multiple spaces, joker tiles, and two special effects tiles make the game tactical enough.

It's pastoral like Through the Desert, but I think a slightly better game. TtD was nice and simple, but nobody really loved it. T&E is a heavy weight game, of course. Samurai is lightweight, but possibly more interesting.

Unlike these other two games where the scoring was neat and interesting, the scoring here is the one thing I don't like about the game. It is convoluted and arbitrary. One other drawback is the easy possibility of giving things away to your LHO, which makes your RHO feel rather frustrated.

Zvi Yehuda won mostly due to luck. I played senselessly, as it was my first game and was just experimenting with the pieces. I expect I will do pretty well in this game hereafter.

El Grande

Nadine+, Gili, Binyamin, Zvi Yehuda

Nadine took a commanding lead early on, and the other players resigned after the second scoring phase, rather than drag on the game.

Lost Valley

Nadine, Zvi Yehuda, Binyamin

Nadine taught this to Binyamin and Zvi Yehuda. We discovered that we had gotten a number of rules wrong the last time we played, the most major of which would have extended the game a bit longer to good effect.

Since the river ended very quickly, the game ended up being rather short. A shorter game means more luck. Binyamin complained about the luck in the game for the whole game.

Puerto Rico

Rachel 54, Ben 50, Yitzchak 43, Nadine/Jon 42

I took over Nadine's high shipping point but otherwise pathetic position as she switched to El Grande. I wasn't able to make up the money differential and so lost rather decidedly. Rachel swept to another victory with Discretionary Hold and Factory.

Power Grid

Yitzchak 1, Jon 16, Ben 14

In this rather unusual game, I did everything counter-intuitively and ended up losing by a hair. I raced ahead in cities that I couldn't power after the first several rounds.

In a three player game, goods are rather scarce, and coal and oil essentially ran out while garbage and nukes hit the 1 to 3 cost range. Only then did we start switching.

Being ahead in cities, Ben and Yitzchak were somehow convinced that it was within my power to end the game by building too many cities. As a result, they bid fiercely over some high powered plants, trying to convince each other that they should get the plant or I would win. For instance, Ben bought the 30 for 99.

I didn't feel like I was anywhere near winning, but I admit that I got all of my plants, slowly but surely, with almost no fighting.

In the end, Ben and Yitzchak had more capacity in plants. But Ben ran out of money to build cities. Yitzchak had just enough to build to his capacity in cities, plants and fuel. I lost to a single mistake in the last round.

I replaced my 5 triple coal plant with a 7 triple garbage plant, instead of replacing my 4 double garbage plant. The reason that I did this was because I thought that if I left myself with coal/oil requirements, then Ben and Yitzchak could buy out all the fuel before I could get any, which was true. However, I didn't realize that if they did that, they wouldn't have had enough money left over to buy cities.

Bridge

Binyamin, Zvi Yehuda, Nadine, Jon/Ben

Ben or I (depending on whose turn it was in Power Grid) played with Nadine against Binyamin and Zvi Yehuda for a few hands.

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.

July 18, 2007

Participants: Jon, Binyamin, Tikva Shira, Zvi Yehuda, Tal, David K, Ben, Nadine, Adam, Dylan

I'm doing this without notes again, for some reason.

Shadows Over Camelot

Binyamin, Tikva Shira, Zvi Yehuda, David K, Ben, Nadine

They took this out to start the evening, which is a good choice as people can join as they come. I'm not thrilled about the game, so I sat out until some stragglers showed up. I believe that the Loyalists won. I don't know who was the Traitor.

Order of the Stick

Jon, Adam, Dylan

Even though this is quite the American style game, I thought I would give it a go seeing as it's such a funny comic. It was certainly enjoyable dealing with the theme: the cards, the notes, and so on. I playacted Elan, too. Fun.

As a game, it's really a typical American game, a little like Munchkin. You add your bonuses and have to roll above the monster's strength, picking up loot and gaining abilities as you go. Not at all bad, and I would play it again, but the theme is really critical to my enjoying it.

Dylan had to go before we could finish. We were about halfway through.

Shear Panic

Binyamin, Tikva Shira, Zvi Yehuda

Nadine showed them how to play it. They used all of their best cards early on, so that, in the last phase, all of their cards were totally useless. Which annoyed them.

Either they have to reserve their cards better, or there is something a bit clunky about the game.

Bridge

Binyamin, Tikva Shira, Nadine, Ben

They played a few hands as a filler.

Go

Adam+, Jon

I'm still pretty low ranking in Go, even though I love the game. Adam gave me the first move to even it out.

I didn't play all that badly. I threw away some territory in favor of solidifying an area I was nervous about. Adam connected territory across the middle of the board and had an entire side. The result was something like 35 to 14.

It's Alive

Adam 51, Jon 35, Tal 31

I suggested this, and Adam was willing. Tal was too. Adam preferred the basic game, but we coerced him into playing the advanced game.

Tal and I were both hit with Villagers and Adam won, so maybe there is some truth to the luck bit. Still, I mismanaged my money early on, so Adam's win was as much his good play as that.

Power Grid

David 15, Ben 13, Nadine 11

We're now playing with the house standard variant that the top four cards of the upcoming stack are visible. It actually shortens the calculation time, because you no longer have to guess what may or may not be coming. And the game is much better as a result.

David took a runaway win here, apparently.

Colosseum

Jon, Binyamin, Tikva Shira, Zvi Yehuda, Adam

This was the first play for Adam and me. This game is big with way too many components. Other than that, it's a fairly standard Eurogame with auctions, trading, and set collection.

It is supposed to be played for 5 rounds, but we only had time for 2. I would play again.

July 11, 2007

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Ben, Binyamin, Adam, Gili, Ofek, Dylan, Yitzchak

Game night was back in my house after being hosted by Nadine for several weeks. Thanks Nadine!

Atlantic Star

Binyamin 55, Yitzchak 48, Ben 39, Jon 36

Among several new games that I have, this was the one I wanted to try most. We almost had a five player game, but Nadine didn't like the look of it so she bowed out.

Ben hated the game, when the specific routes he wanted early on didn't pan out. After that he was sour for the remainder of the game. Yitzchak and Nadine were basically agreeing with his assessment that it was almost entirely a luck based game. E.g. the way that I feel about Alhambra.

Binyamin was also not thrilled with it. I was the only one who loved it. And as you can see, I came in last.

I'm also the only one who thinks that there is far less luck than everyone else was complaining about, and that you have to play what you're given rather than try to ope you get a rigid set of cards in a particular order. Sure, sometimes you'll win that way, and sometimes you'll lose badly that way. But that's the wrong way to approach the game.

So I had a good time.

Settlers of Catan

Ofek 10, Gili 9, Nadine 9, Adam 9

This was a long game, and as you can see, ended very closely.

Shear Panic

Ofek, Gili, Adam, Nadine

They started this game, but Adam quickly began to hate it (I'm not sure why, as it's very much like Go). However, they had to end early, either through having played initially incorrectly or simply because Gili and Ofek were tired. Nadine said that she liked it, because most of the information was out in the open.

Cosmic Encounter

Ben+, Yitzchak+, Jon, Binyamin, Dylan

We bandied about a few choices and settled on this (sorry, Elijah). Ben has a history of winning this, even with poor hands, and this time he got a good hand to start with. I think I got his hand by mistake.

He went for a solo victory against Yitzchak, who played Emotion Control, whereupon they swapped base for a base for victory.

I was Wraith and Prophet, which don't work together in one respect, and work together in another. However, I never really got to play my Prophet power.

Binaymin was Reincarnator and something, and he ended up as Grudge at one point which was annoying.

Ben was Witch and Mesmer. The former he used fairly effectively, sometimes simply as a threat against attacking him.

I forget the other powers.

Bridge

Ben, Binyamin, Yitzchak, Nadine

They played several hand of this to wrap up the evening.

Queries and Theories

Jon, Dylan, Adam

We tried a game of this, but it isn't quite as interesting as Zendo when played by the straight rules. At some point, there are simply N possibilities of what the rule could be, and you have to try them all by trial and error. In order to make the game quicker and more fun, I allowed a yes or no question to be asked before each player's turn.

Chess

Nadine/Dylan, Adam/Jon+

Nadine and Adam left an unfinished game. When I picked it up to play against Dylan, I was up a queen against a knight and bishop. Even with this, it was difficult for me to pull off a victory; eventually, I played the easy strategy of swapping pieces hoping for a better material advantage in the end. It felt like cheating, and it was still rather close.

I only won by getting my last pawn to turn into a queen after everything else was gone (and two other queens has bit the dust).

July 4, 2007

I wasn't here, but I hear that Adam has the scores. Nadine writes:

We played Tower of Babel for the first time - Adam, Nadine, Binyamin, Ben, Joel. Binyamin won by a mile, Adam was second, and both of them had played before.

Then we played Princes of Florence - Binyamin, Adam, Ben, Elijah, Nadine. I was last, all luck....