June 22, 2011

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili, Binyamin, Tikva Shira

Nadine returned, as did Binyamin, giving us a more normal session than last week's.

As I noted on my blog, I will be moving to Raanana in August. The fate of the JSGC will be left in the hands of Nadine and Gili. Hopefully they will be able to keep it going while I'm gone (at least a year, maybe more).

Fairy Tale

Jon 39, Nadine 35, Gili 35

I saw that several of my cards were going to be worthless by the end of the game, so I was pretty sure I was going to lose. How did I win? Seven of the nine cards I scored averaged 6 points or so. Nadine and Gili had several cards that scored only 2 to 4 points each.

Navegador

Gili 70, Nadine 70, Binyamin 69, Tikva Shira 67, Jon 62

I requested this, since I loved it the one time I played it. Binyamin thoughtfully brought it. First play for everyone else except for Binyamin.

I may love it, but I'm also bad at it, or at least I'm bad at the strategy; the tactics I can handle. I bought an early ship-building house and had essentially no income for the next fifteen turns. Everyone else had little houses or colonies and raked in 100+ income on markets; I pulled in 20 or 30, and I couldn't afford to buy houses or colonies, which made is a catch-22. (Binyamin, with his extra sail action, swooped in and took the only colony I could have afforded.) I figured that this early mistake set me back about ten moves. And I barely even used that ship-building house during the game.

By the end of the game, when everyone else was pulling 250+ or more from markets, I was finally pulling around 100. I scored as well as I did because, other than that early mistake, I get the tactics of games like this. I can focus on points in a game rich with intriguing mechanics that distract from the end-scoring. As I said, I love the game. I just have to figure out how to play my start-game correctly.

T"S was the first to pull ahead in worker-building advancement, and Gili followed. Nadine had the most ships and the most blue disks. Binyamin had the most colonies.

Set

Jon 12, Tikva Shira 8, Nadine 4, Binyamin

There wasn't time for a full game, so we let T"S choose a short game. Binyamin would have gotten more points if he had been actually playing. Which is odd, since he's pretty colorblind.

Bridge

Jon/Nadine 550, Binyamin/Tikva Shira 0

Three hands of Bridge. Nadine and I set them one trick in two hands, and we bid and made one game in the other.

March 16, 2011

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

Quiet night with lots of play.

Boggle

Jon, Nadine, Gili

We played three games while waiting for others to arrive. I played only five letter words, but I also noted four letter words, mostly so I could cancel them out against Nadine. Nadine played four letter words, while Gili, a native Hebrew speaker, played three letter (and the occasional two letter) words. No one really kept score, anyway.

Glory to Rome

Binyamin+, Jon, Gili, David K, Nadine

First play for David. We played that you could not have more than four buildings in progress at any one time. While we were wary about how Forum would play, since we thought we knew a few ways to counter it, we decided to give it one more try. Binyamin ended the game with a Forum victory; I was a few moments away from ending the game with Catacombs. If I had done so, I would have won, followed closely by Gili.

Binyamin thinks, and I agree, that the trouble with Forum is not that it's unbalanced, which it isn't. It's that it makes the game less fun. It's just not a fun experience to do well and play well, working toward something, and then not have the game even judged on that criteria. It would be different if Forum's exceptional win criteria weren't so easy to fulfill. I generally don't like mechanics that end a game at someone's will; this is much worse. I think that we're going to have to change Forum to something like "end the game and gain +3 points" or something.

Magic: The Gathering

Jon++, David

It's a rare day when I beat David at Magic. I felt like I drafted all over the place, but I ended up with WG with a U splash. David played BG. One of David's black cards was Eastern Paladin (tap to kill a G creature), and most of my good creatures were G, which is why I diversified to W and U. Lucky for me, David never pulled out his paladin.

In the first game, David thunmped me down to 7, but I brought out blockers, and then a flyer and a pinger. The latter two worked him down for a while. He tried to kill one of my good creatures, but I was saved by a card I had never used before and wasn't entirely sure how to use: Standard Bearer, which I had innocently thrown on a Bears early on.

In the second game, I brought out an early Bears followed by a +3/+3 enchantment, and he resigned three rounds later.

Tribune

Binyamin+, Nadine, Gili

All I know is that Binyamin won and the game went fairly quickly.

Bridge

Jon/David, Binyamin/Nadine

We played a few hands. David and Nadine don't play often, but we still had fun.

December 15, 2010

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili, Nechama, Binyamin, Mace

This report is done without notes and a few days after the session, so it's pretty anemic in terms of facts. I sold off a number of games to Binyamin. Making room for a few games on the way.

1955

Nadine+, Jon

I was sent this game in prototype form (pretty well done for a prototype, actually) to review. The game is, as of this posting, on Kickstarter.

The theme is the Cold War of 1955. Two players use card-driven mechanics to achieve political influence in 6 countries. On your turn, you play two cards, refill your hand, and move your spy. You win if you gain control of your opponent's country or if you gain control of any three countries.

The game immediately stuck in my head as "1960-lite". Cards allow you to either add the influence to the location identified on the card (or your home country or the country in which your spy is) or let you take the special action, but not both.

I sent some comments to the publisher. When I get a response, I will post a review on Purple Pawn.

Nadine and I each secured our own countries and one other. We fought back and forth for the remaining countries, and Nadine took it in a surprise victory.

Nadine, Gili

They played, but I don't think they finished the game.

Navegador

Binyamin 110ish, Nechama 94, Jon 91

Binyamin brought his copy and taught us. It's a fantastic game by the creator of Antike, also with a rondel, but this time with no direct confrontation. You can only take items that others need before they get to them. It's a tight economic game, and if you don't have your engine going early, you're in trouble, like I was. I finished much higher than I anticipated, actually.

A must-buy for our group. I was planning on buying Shipyard, and now I think I need both.

Louis XIV

Mace, Nadine, Gili

I don't remember what happened, except that they all ended with the same number of completed missions.

Schotten Totten

Binyamin, Jon

Binyamin was going to buy this from me, but he didn't. I had never actually played, so he taught me. It's actually better than I expected, since Lost Cities is always held as a great two-player card game and I never liked it. This is better. Luck with the special cards plays too big a role, however. Either we didn't know what we were doing (we only had the German instructions and the symbols on the special cards are worthless, so that's possible) or we need to find a way to equalize the cards or just play without them.

Bridge

Jon, Mace, Binyamin, Nadine

I don't even remember who partnered with whom.

April 14, 2010

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili, Ben, Binyamin, Abraham, Emily, Eitan, Joan, Lori, Bill

Lori returned for her second session. Joan is Eitan's grandmother, and she came to play Bridge, for which she found willing participants. Ben and Binyamin both returned after long absences, returning some games they had borrowed several weeks ago.

Robber Knights

Ben 29, Gili 28, Binyamin 27, Jon 23

First play for Ben and Gili, second play for me and Binyamin. Nadine didn't want to play, so sat off to the side. Midway through the game, Binyamin remembered that he didn't want to play, either, but managed to finish the game.

Most of our game group doesn't like tile-laying area control games, such as this, Carcassonne, Taluva, and similar. Binyamin in particular thinks this game is more dull than most. I disagree. I don't think it's a fantastic game, but I'm happy to play it and I don't think it's boring. At least, when your opponents move at a reasonable clip.

Ben took quite some time to make his moves, which is part of what frustrated Binyamin, and me a little. There's not enough game there to think that long. Still, he won, so there you go.

Dominion + Intrigue + Seaside

Jon 45, Emily 30, Bill (Lori) 27, Eitan 23

Scores approximate. I tried to teach this to Lori, but her eyes kept glazing over. Eventually, Bill sat down to "help" her, but he ended up playing while Lori watched.

We had two reaction cards and no attacks. Nothing that gave 2 actions, but we had Upgrade and Remodel. We had the card that gave +1 action/+1 card/+1 VP, and the one that gave +2 coins and +1 action/+1 card if this was the third or later action on your turn.

Emily and Eitan tried combination of the latter two cards, while I remodeled my way to glory.

Emily+, Eitan, Bill

The next game they played took a few hours, but it was interspersed with a lot of general chit-chat between them and other non-playing people in the room.

Summoner Wars

Gili++, Abraham

First play for both of them, Abraham brought this, the first of several games he recently acquired. They both appeared to be having fun. I think Gili won at least two games.

Bridge

Ben/Binyamin, Jon/Nadine

We played a few hands.

Ben/Binyamin, Joan/Nadine

They played several more hands. Joan is quite an experienced player.

Jon 3380, Joan 2100, Nadine 1600, Ben 1200

We played a 12 game round robin, changing partners after every four hands. Vulnerability was None, Dealer, Dealer, All. Scoring was duplicate.

Ben played Bridge for three and a half hours and drew an opening hand twice, 12 and 11 points once each, and the rest of his hands were 10 or less points. It's hard to win non-duplicate with that kind of luck.

In our first pair-up, Nadine and I scored two games, then went down 2. In the last hand, Ben and Joan scored a partial with overtricks. In the next set, Joan and I scored two games, set our opponents once, and then went down 1.

In the last set, Ben had no hope of winning since I was ahead of him and he was my partner. Our opponents made a game, but we set them three times, once for 500 points.

February 09, 2010

Participants: Jon, Gili, Nadine, David K, Binyamin, Abraham, Sara, Eitan, Emily

Game night moved to Tuesday night owing to a wedding on Wed.

Dominion + Intrigue + Seaside

Nadine 36, Gili 31, Jon 30

When Treasure Map shows up, one has to decide whether to go for it early or try something else. Last time I played with it, Chapel was also available, which made the decision easy. This time we had Warehouse (draw and discard three cards), which was nearly as nice, though not quite. Nadine and I both went for it, and she scored it well before I did. Which makes the game a little too reliant on luck.

Truth is, I should simply have bought a third one and I would have done better, so I really have myself to blame.

Gili went without it, taking Festivals, Feasts, and Mining Villages, which we also got to eventually.

Aton

Binyamin, David

Binyamin took this game home to learn and then taught it to David. Binyamin said it would take five minutes to explain and fifteen minutes to play, but it seemed like it took fifteen minutes to explain and five minutes to play. David didn't look too enthused about playing it after the explanation, but since they were waiting for us to finish our game of Dominion, they went ahead.

There is apparently some tactical depth to the game, but I didn't hear either of them raving about it. Still, I'll have to try it eventually.

Saikoro

Eitan, Emily

When they arrived, they played this twice. When I first got the game, I thought the box was excellent, but recently I've noticed that the dice don't really tumble properly if you just shake the box (like they do with Boggle). Eitan took the dice out and dumped them over the board. Still a nice game, though.

Tribune

Binyamin+, Jon, Gili

This game is deceptively simple and coddling, which is probably why Nadine likes it. Something nice is always happening to you, even if you're not winning. After a few plays, however, you realize that you need the nice things to happen to you faster than they do to the other players.

Some of your initial strategy depends on your opening hand. Gili said, at the end of the game, that her hand was particularly crappy, which is why she didn't manage to claim any factions on the first round, and subsequently lost the game. I'm not sure how accurate this is. It would have to be really, really crappy, and there must also be no way of remedying the situation on the board, which doesn't seem possible in a three player game.

Binyamin and I both started strong. I think I even may have started a little stronger, but I didn't control both factions that I needed on the second round, so I didn't get the Tribune until the last round of the game. Meanwhile, Binyamin ended up with control of five factions in round 3, which is unbelievable. Gili had ten cards for control of one of the factions on turn two, and, no surprise, she kept control of it until the end of the game.

The game ended after turn four, which seems to be about normal; it's a quick game, even with the most "difficult" requirements.

Dvonn

Abraham+, Sara

Abraham taught Dvonn to Sara when they arrived, and Abraham won narrowly.

Stone Age

Sara 140, David 116, Abraham 115, Nadine 62

While I mocked them for rolling dice, they all seemed to enjoy playing this. They ended about the same time as we ended Tribune.

Phoenicia

Jon 36, Binyamin 34, Emily 31, Eitan 26

First plays for Emily and Eitan. First win for me. This is another game that rewards multiple plays, and I'm starting to grow on it. It also looks like it cold use expansion buildings, like so many other games with special ability cards.

This is the first game where I didn't worry too much about getting early people. I think that paid off, because placing people is expensive. I got an early Dyer and then something to boost my production. The first few rounds we all started off about the same, but I eventually burst forth from the pack with my Dye House, followed closely by Binyamin. Emily also kept pace with victory points, but not with production, and so couldn't quite make the final push.

Eitan fell massively behind in production, but got both of the Shipyards, and so was poised for a late game comeback, but couldn't come back enough.

Le Havre

David, Abraham, Nadine

Last time we played, David claimed an early debt strategy would be good, and so attempted to implement that this time. But they played for two hours and only made it halfway though the game, and so gave up when it began to get late.

Nadine and David both find the game fiddly. David likes the game well enough, but I think likes Agricola more. Nadine definitely likes Agricola more, while Abraham likes Le Havre more. So it taiku.

Bridge

Binyamin, Abraham, David, Nadine, Jon

Abraham played a few hands with Binyamin against David and Nadine, and then I played a few hands with David against Binyamin and Nadine.

January 13, 2010

Participants: Jon, Gili, Nadine, David K, Ben, Binyamin, Abraham, Bill, Shirley, Eitan, Emily

A nice complement of gamers return. First time we had three simultaneous games going in a while. Bill and Shirley return from a US visit.

Dominion / Intrigue / Seaside

Nadine 36, Jon 31, David, Gili

We played with random cards from all sets, and ended up with four cards that let you trash cards in your deck. I used Remodel, Wharf, and Nobles. Nadine seems to win by simply taking Silvers.

Binyamin 19, Ben 18, Abraham 17

While we played with one set of treasures, they played with the other set. I didn't see the results, but apparently Ben ended up with 11 or so curses.

Homesteaders

Jon 65, Gili 48, Eitan 43

First play for me and Eitan, second play for Gili. I had been wanting to play this ever since it was demo'd for me at BGG.con, but it never worked out. However, when I can get three games running simultaneously at game night, working things out becomes easier.

Homesteaders is up there with the great Eurogames, nearly all pure resource management and optimization, tons of routes to victory, a stark progression throughout the game, and interaction through auctions and denying other people scarce rewards.

It's hard to get everything you want or need, and yet (in our game) money wasn't too tight or painful, since you can always try something else, instead. It will take several playing to figure out play beyond mere "decent" to "focused". Which is how it should be. I really love it. It has Alex Rockwell's signature all over it.

It's not perfect, however. It's actually a little short (!). And, while elegant, sensible, and straightforward, and theme looks like it should be dripping from the pieces, the theme doesn't come through much, and the game is not so ... immersive as Puerto Rico, Agricola, or some other games. It's very nerdy and calculating. You have to love planning and calculating. Trade this for that, these for those, swap these other things for one more of these, build a better income to get more of these, and gain move vp's with these others.

It's also a bit much for my analysis paralysis gamers, because they want to calculate all the possible points for all the possible swaps, and the time to value ratio for this is low. As for me, I just picked a few good paths and stuck with those that enhanced them, dismissing without calculating many other paths as not worth time thinking about. I figure that I'll play several more games, trying out a bunch of paths each game, and then I'll have a better idea about which ones work best.

In the meantime, as you can see, I won handily. I started with early steel production, and then used that for early trade chip production. Not too many of anything, but some of many things. I ignored apples and cows entirely, and only got a gold at the end for the 2 vp it gave me. I also got a few buildings that gave points for buildings of type X, and a few buildings of type X, which I recognized as fairly efficient. Lastly, the end buildings that let you buy them and then let you buy an additional building are killer buildings.

Nearly all of my buildings required no people, so I was saved in having to get people, and in having to pay for their upkeep. I wasn't contested enough in the buildings; only once, when I had to pay $9 for what I wanted. I'm sure that won't happen again, and money will feel more tight. I can't tell you much about what the others were doing; Gili had warned that trade chips were essential, and so Eitan ended up with too many of them. Gili stole the 10 point building that generates 2 points a round away from me, but I got several other nice buildings instead.

One other thing: I think the debt taking is a tad too easy. You can take them whenever you want and there is no sense whatsoever in paying them back before the end of the game. They should really cost $1 a turn to maintain, like people.

Le Havre

Binyamin 137, Abraham 121, Emily 99

I foisted this onto them; Binyamin actually wanted to play Homesteaders, but we needed to divvy the people up. First play for him and for Emily. Abraham had played once before.

Binyamin didn't like the game so much, although he may have warmed a little to it by the end. I think he compared it unfavorably to Agricola.

Tribune

Ben 29, David 26, Nadine, Bill, Shirley

First play for everyone except Ben and Nadine. Nadine loves the game. Ben enjoys it, too. David didn't warm to it much, though I don't know why. David and Ben were the only ones who fulfilled the victory conditions, so once again it came down to who finished them first for the 2 point swing. David claims that he lost due to a specific mistake he knows that he made.

Saikoro

Jon+, Eitan

I taught this wonderful little two-player quick game to Eitan, who also liked it. I wish the box would allow a tad more room to shake the dice. Otherwise, it's a neat and pretty little two player strategy game that plays differently each time and takes only about five minutes.

Bridge

Jon/Nadine, Ben/David/Binyamin

We managed to play several hands of this at the end of game night. Bridge is always fun, always good, always challenging, and always will be. It's what a great game should be.

Eitan looked on and tried to learn.

June 24, 2009

Participants: Jon, David K, Hershel, Gili, Abraham, Sarah, Binyamin, Moshe Avraham

Sarah is Abraham's wife; this is her second visit. MA contacted me two weeks ago interested in knowing if anyone knew how to play Pentago, as he was interested in learning more about it. I invited him to drop by. He was uninterested in any other games, just in Pentago.

Magic: the Gathering

David++, Jon+

I invited David to come a bit early and we got in a draft and three games of Magic. The first two games were both mana skewed victories. Really, Magic has a mjor flaw and this is it. Way too many games come down to mana screw, even after mulligan rules.

I created a rule a few years ago that helped out immensely; I stopped playing with it when they introduced the new mulligan rules, in order to give them a chance, but we find them wanting. Here is the rule:

Each player can, once only, and only before finishing his or her fifth turn, do either of the following: a) discard a random non-land card from the game to draw a random land card from his or her deck; or b) discard a random land card from the game to draw a random non-land card from his or her deck.

In practice, we look at the bottom of our deck, choose the first one we find, and then shuffle the deck. If, for some reason, this would interfere with some already played card (such as something that puts a card on top of your deck), we work around it in the most sensible fashion.

The one land difference usually turns an unplayable game into an enjoyable one. We have decided to reinstitute this rule in future games.

In our third game, I used this rule, and we had a longer battle. I still lost, though David said my deck was slightly stonger. I played White/Green with a Blue splash. Many fliers, counters, and cards that gave bonuses for the number of creatue type X in the deck. David played Green/Red with Blue.

Stone Age

David, Gili, Abraham, Sarah

First plays for Sarah and David. David starved some of the time, but I don't know the rest.

Amyitis

Hershel 59, Jon 46, Nadine 46, Binyamin 44

First plays for everyone. Binyamin taught the rules, though it was his first time, too. He warned Nadine that she probably wouldn't like it (too complicated), and she didn't. In the end, she didn't not like it as much as she thought she wasn't liking it most of the game.

I thought it was quite good, as did Hershel. Owing to not understanding the strategies and values of resources, we made mistakes in our priorities and only came to realize how valuable the commodity chips were in the last third of the game. It was about that time that we also noticed the first real problem with the game, which was that a different number of cards to acquire these chips are available each round, and if you happen to be last player and N-1 of these cards are turned up, you're screwed - especially if N cards were turned up on the other rounds.

Aside from this, there are a lot of different strategies to explore and many paths end in frustration once you realize that someone else is going to beat you to the payoff in that path and there's no longer anything you can do about it. It is for that reason that I thought playing with chips hidden might be worthwhile: you're just as screwed, but at least you don't know it for a few more rounds.

In our game, Binyamin tried ignoring the tiles altogether, but it didn't pay off fo him; I was able to beat him to the cascading point sets anyway, which was the payoff he needed to compete. I played a balanced game, but ignored the transient points from irrigation too much. Hershel had the most irrigation and tiles, which gave enough of a VP boost to win.

Pentago

MA and Jon, David, Hershel, or Binyamin

While or between various games, each of us took turns trying this simple abstract. It's a 6x6 board divided into four 3x3 quadrants. Each quadrant can rotate. On your turn, place a piece and rotate a quadrant. Five in a row wins.

6x6 is not a very large board. As we played, we found several of the major patterns, none too difficult to discern if you can keep the abstract lines in your head. Though I didn't prove anything, I pretty muh decided that first player will always win (maybe force a draw), as his first move advantage is huge and second player spend too much time playing catch up. This advatange may be mitigated by allowing the second player to choose to play or swap colors as his first move.

It's a decent abstract. I wasn't thrilled with the way that one player can exactly unrotate the previous rotation of his opponent. I would rather that there be a one move wait between undoing a rotation. I think it would make it slightly more interesting, and also, perhaps, help the second player somewhat.

Dominion

Sarah+, Abaraham, Gili

First play for Sarah. Everyone thought Abraham was winning, but Sarah snuck through a victory. They played with the suggested introdutory card set.

Bridge

Jon/David, Binyamin/Nadine

We played a few hands to wrap up the evening.

April 29, 2009

Participants: Nadine, Hershel, Abraham, Jon

Game night at Nadine's house following Yom Haatzmaut. I arrived last.

Taluva

Jon 3/1, Hershel 2/1, Avraham 2/0/+, Nadine 2/0/-

I suggest this as an opener, as I'm still exploring it, it's not too long, it's pretty, and it's elegant. First play for Abraham.

I think I played one more time than either Hershel or Nadine, and this is my type of game, so I was able to plan several rounds ahead in certain areas, while the others were still exploring the possibility space. Toward the end, the others colluded to see if they could stop me, but every place they could hurt or stop me was protected.

Abraham picked the game up well and would have done better, but he forgot one of the rules which meant that his master plan couldn't come to fruition. I suspect he won't make that mistake next time.

Everyone enjoyed the game for what it was. I have yet to play it with less than four players; the extra turns for each player would make a significant difference, I believe.

Dominion

Nadine 30, Jon 29, Hershel 24, Abraham 24

Suggested by Abraham, and enjoyed by all. The set of card contained no attack cards and Gardens to boot. There were ample extra actions to go around. So the game ended reasonably quickly.

Abraham tried a unique strategy of using all of his extra buys to acquire coppers, and then buying several Gardens. But because of the length of the game, he could still make them only worth 3 each by game end, which was not enough. I thought I was doing well, but I also knew that Nadine had 2 Provinces before I started buying mine, so although I caught up, it wasn't quite enough.

Jon 32, Nadine 24, Hershel 23, Abraham 22

We had Gardens again, but this time no extra actions, and no extra cash, except for Militia. To make matters worse, we had Thief, which made buying Gold's nigh impossible; in fact, no one did.

I think someone got to 7 cash twice in the game. Instead the Duchies wet first, and I finished the Gardens while Nadine finished the Estates. Hard to work with Gardens when someone is stealing your cards all the time, but I managed to steal enough back to make my Gardens each worth 3.

Bridge

Jon/Hershel, Nadine/Abraham

Hershel hadn't played in many years, and it turns out that even when he had, he didn't use any sort of bidding system. Abraham is very much a beginner. So we did a lot of learning. Hershel and I made two partials and set our opponents in a partial. They made one partial.

It's Alive

Jon 49, Nadine 42, Abraham 27, Hershel 22

Abraham suggested we play this, and Hershel wondered if I wasn't already sick of it, but I'm not. In fact, I'm still trying out new strategies.

Jack the publisher seems to feel that you should never buy on your turn, and I tried something like that, but it's not always practical. In any case, I won not because of any strategy, but because I drew all three 10 cost coffins (and one villager). Nadine drew a coffin and no villager, while Abraham drew both 4 and 6 villagers. I ended with no cash, while Abraham had more than he could score.

Tichu

Jon/Hershel 535, Nadine/Abraham 265

We taught this to Hershel who liked it. It's certainly less brain-intensive and more forgiving than Bridge.

I started with a Tichu, but lost most of the points: 115 to 85. They won most of the point in the next round, too: 140 to 160.

I bid and made Tichu again, but we actually ended with a -15 score to their 115: 235 to 265. I keep saying that Tichu is more important than points, and it is, but I guess you do need to look out for points.

Hershel ventured a Tichu on the last round and he made it. My hand was equally good, so I went out second, giving us a final victory.

March 04, 2009

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

A low-key game night full of games.

Metropolys

Binyamin 42, Bill 39, Nadine 36

Binyamin taught this Ystari game to the other two. It looked like a typical Ystari game; I find their games to be clever and complicated, but soulless. I don't know how the others felt about this game.

Dominion

David K 34, Gili 29, Jon 27

First play for all of us, although David had played twice online. Dominion is The game of the last year or so (not counting Agricola), and it's deck-building mechanics made me fairly sure that the game would be well-received by our group. It was, for the most part.

I really like the deck-building, and the way adding, removing, and swapping cards makes such a difference to your play. I like how some cards are better early and some late, and so on. It's very clever, and the different types of cards seem like they will make for many interesting plays.

We played a number of different strategies, and many seemed to have possibilities. And, since many different ones will be available in future games, we'll always have to be on our toes.

However, there are a number of drawbacks.

The most glaring is that the game is quite obviously far far better as a computer game than a tabletop game. One, you constantly have to shuffle your cards, which is just insane, especially when you have so few of them. Two, you constantly have to keep track of how many actions and buys you have left. The buys usually don't matter too much, except when you accidentally buy two cards but are only allowed to buy one. But the actions can be confusing. Third, you constantly have to check how many cards are left in each deck, where a nice number over the deck back would come in handy.

A few other drawbacks: The game end is somewhat problematic. In our second game (see below), we all concentrated on three certain cards. As a result, the only person to buy any victory points at all won without breaking a sweat, as she could finish two piles with only one card each on her turn before any of us noticed. I guess everyone should play different strategies, but, unlike PR, you have to choose different strategies in order to prop the game up, not just because of the limited resources.

The interaction, apart from the two possible times that something can run out, is nearly non-existent. Often one of us just took his turn as the last player was finishing. Thank goodness for the few cards that add a bit of interaction, like the militia.

And as I mentioned on my blog, the box insert is supposed to help you keep your cards in order, but it's strange arrangement and differently sized slots are most confusing.

Lastly, I spent an hour trying to understand the game setup. It is very difficult to understand that the ten kingdoms mean "select ten of the card types and only play with those ten types." I couldn't figure out what a kingdom was for the life of me. Eventually I figured it out, about the time that David was explaining it to us. Very very poor instructions. They could have included an illustration of the setup.

In our game, we played with the suggested starting kingdoms. David played the Markets, while I played Mines and Golds. David won, but he also started with a better first draw (5/2 vs my 4/3) and also the markets let him buy 2 things (3 and 1 VP cards) when he had 7 coins, while I could only buy one thing with 7 points, since I didn't have a second buy.

Although David won, and I see how the markets are like free coin cards, I don't think they are a killer strategy; decent, but not killer. We will have to see.

Gili 9, David 3, Jon 3, Binyamin 3

As noted, this game ended way too quickly and quite unexpectedly for all players. Gili simply realized she could end the game by removing the last two cards from two piles, and she was the only one with a VP card.

Pillars of the Earth

David 58, Binyamin 57, Gili 45

Binyamin had only played once before, a few years ago.

Puerto Rico

Jon 63, Nadine 52, Bill 48

Bill hasn't played this much. I played the first half of the game and my second Dominion game simultaneously. Bill had tobacco and Small Market and eventually Factory and Wharf. Nadine on my left got coffee and eventually Harbor.

I got coffee and Harbor, too, in front of her. I also got all five goods, and several times passed over building or several coins on cards in favor of just pushing through victory points. I only abandoned this once to get Guild Hall (maxed out at 10) at the end of the game, although I suffered a small shipping point loss to Nadine to do so.

Fairy Tale

Jon 33, Nadine 32, Bill 28

I suggested this again, believing that I will continue to like it more and more each time I play, as I become familiar with what works and what doesn't. It's true, but the large random factor of what cards are available to me in the game are still so very high. Somehow this is ok in Geschenkt, but here it's frustrating to try something and have no chance to accomplish it not because your opponent thwarted it (which also happens) but because the card never even appears.

If you can let that go, the game is actually quite good, and pretty fast, which makes it a nice filler.

Bill 41, Nadine 37, Jon 35

In this game, I tried a variation: two rounds of picking from 8 cards and playing 6. It gave us more control as to our comboes (plus), but less cards entered the game making rarer comboes even more difficult (minus).

I have several other ideas on how to fix the game. I'll have to try them.

Bridge

Jon/David, Binyamin/Nadine

We played only one hand before I kicked them out.

February 4, 2009

Participants: Gili, Binyamin, David, Nadine, Jon

I arrived late to find them playing on the wall outside my apt; sorry!

Apples to Apples

David, Nadine, Binyamin, Gili

They played a few rounds of this, and David said he enjoyed it. I guess any game played on a wall outside is probably enjoyable.

Merchants of Amsterdam

Jon, Nadine, Gili, David, Binyamin

This is a Knizia auction/area control game with a nice but mostly irrelevant 16th century Amsterdam theme. It's not bad in some respects, but the auction system sucks. Really.

The game uses the Dutch auction (naturally), which means that the price starts high and gradually falls until someone is willing to pay the price. Why is this so bad?

First of all, it uses a mechanical spring-loaded component which is almost guaranteed to break fairly quickly. Ours is new and seems fine. Second, the thing is loud. It doesn't just silently spin until it dings at the end; it makes an awful stream of clatter which my wife immediately banned from the house.

Third, it's terribly boring to sit and watch a clock tick down. I guess it's supposed to be tense, but that gets old after the first auction. And we're not talking 1 or 3 auctions per game. We're talking an auction on every player's turn! That means the vast part of the game is simply waiting for the damn thing to spin down to a reasonable price.

Fourth, it's just not an exciting auction type. It starts, there's one bid, and it's done. Only one person gets a chance to do anything.

So, one dutch auction in a game could work, but not every turn. Moving on ...

We considered alternatives to the auction given. We ended up having the first player count down from some reasonable starting point, but this gave the person counting down an unfair advantage to be first to call a certain number. We also had no way of resolving auction ties (with the clock, the first person to slap it wins, which should result in fewer ties).

David pointed out that the auction is actually similar to blind bidding, since each person simply chooses what bid they want to make before the auction starts. Our group isn't too keen on blind bidding, though (I kind of like it). It could probably be played with either turn or free-for-all auctions, as well.

The rest of the game is somewhat better, but still has some problems. For one thing, at different points in the game, certain cards are simply much better than others. If you draw them when you want to, you're lucky. If you don't, you're unlucky. That's the problem with many card games, but not all card games. There should be a more equitable distribution of cards so that all players can get roughly the same opportunities. Otherwise, the game simply devolves to chance.

The game looks like it has a decent progression. The beginning is investment, with payoffs on your investments coming later in the game. That seems to work. And there are just enough areas and types to make the choices of where to place what interesting.

Nadine didn't like that the time track moves forward at random times, especially that it disrupted people's turns. The cards themselves were repetitive; not actually that bad if the game moves quickly, but nothing really special.

It took all I could just to get everyone to agree to finish to the third scoring year, and then they all happily quit. Oh well.

Agricola

Binyamin 55, Nadine 32

Binyamin is till trying to figure out the game, and this was his first two-player game. He was not interested in winning, per se, but in pursuing a particular strategy. This game, the strategy was to get lots of bonus points. He succeeded, with an incredible 21 bonus points (to Nadine's 2). He also had all five members, and a 4 room stone house. He didn't plow once.

Nadine had a more traditional farm layout, but most of the game only 3 members, a simple clay house, and not near enough of everything else.

Pillars of the Earth

David 52, Jon 50, Gili 38

Meanwhile, we played our own worker placement game and had a great time. David was a little reluctant to play, remembering only sort-of amused by the game, but when our game ended, he said he really enjoyed it and would play again. Excellent. I didn't change my opinion, in that I still really like it.

However, I do note that the worker drawing mechanism really makes a big difference to the game if you're really unlucky/lucky, and it seems to be happening in nearly every game. I need to think if maybe something needs to be done about it, when some player gets drawn several times in a row for costs 6, 5, and 4.

In our game, I was doing super conversion and thought I was going to end well, but I realized at the beginning of round 6 that David was going to beat me my a few points. It was the first game that I acquired one of the "convert gold to points" craftsmen, but I wasn't able to use it in either 5th or 6th rounds. The other one wasn't bought. That makes the first time in my four games experience that one of these cards didn't swing the victory.

I'm not entirely sure how David won the game in the end.

Bridge

David/Jon, Nadine/Binyamin

We played a few hands, and the other guys got all the cards.

January 13, 2009

Participants: Jon, Nadine, David, Gili, Avraham

Game night moved to Tuesday, as I had an event on Wednesday.

Carpe Astra

Nadine 12, David 10, Gili/Avraham 10, Jon 5

First play for all of us, we took a little time to learn the rules as we started.

OK, rather than slam the game here in an open forum, I'm going to write to the publisher to see how many ways we screwed up the game. Suffice to say, our first play did not go well. Look for a review on my blog sometime soon.

Magic: the Gathering

Jon++, David+

Played at the same time as Carpe Astra and Bridge. A very rare win for me this evening; David usually wins.

We drafted as usual, and I just couldn't drop down to 2 or 3 colors, so I ended up playing a four color deck. I had 3 to 6 lands for each color, depending on requirement, plus three other cards that gave mana bonuses, including one that gave a multi-color mana bonus. Incredibly, I had no mana problems whatsoever during the game.

David played White/Black. He got the white from negative drafting against me, but his white cards weren't as good as mine. And he never plays white.

First game went down to the absolute wire. David won by a single point with an instant that boosted one of his creatures by one point. I would have taken him out on the next round.

Second game I slaughtered him, getting out an early 7/7 creature, and then making him a) fly, and b) every time I hit him with the creature, I get a number of 1/1 green creatures equal to the amount of damage I did. He resigned when I had 14 1/1 creatures.

Third game again came down to the wire, but was most unusual. I knocked him down to 3 points and then couldn't get any more through, which is when he began hitting me slowly.

The unusual part was that we both made a number of plays to help the other players creatures, for a a variety of reasons. I had a piece of equipment on one of my creatures, and I really wanted it on another creature, so I attacked with it, hoping David would just kill it. David couldn't afford to let it through, so he blocked it and then healed it.

Then, I cast my enchantment that makes a creature fly and also gives be baby 1/1 creatures for every point of damage the creature does onto David's creature that had been poking me. This neutralized him, as he could not now afford to give me swarms of creatures.

And so it went. I finally left my defenses open, and David took the chance to kill me by attacking with everything. Then I played an instant which canceled all combat damage and left his creatures tapped for an extra round. That let my 1/2 creature walk through for the final 2 points of damage that I needed to give.

Fun game.

Jambo

Gili 62, Avraham 58

Played at the same time as Carpe Astra.

Solitaire

Nadine ?

Played during Carpe Astra, while David and I played Magic, and Gili and Avraham played Jambo. Lot of downtime in Carpe Astra.

Bridge

David/Nadine+, Jon/Avraham

David and I also played Magic while playing Bridge. Second play for Avraham.

David and Nadine got the cards and did well, making a slam, and a doubled contract. In the other hands, Avraham made a number of beginner errors; he still plays well for a new player.

January 7, 2009

Participants: Jon, Binyamin, Nadine, Gili, Avraham, David K

I lost my notes.

Trias

Binyamin 26, Jon 24, Nadine 20

I simply love this game. Honestly, I was expecting to thing that it was an ok filler. But it's elegant mechanics and chaotic patterns are exactly my style. In the first game you have no idea what you're doing and why, but it soon begins to come clear.

Unfortunately, everyone else I've played it with at the group doesn't feel the same way. Especially, there are some people who take a very long time to take their turns, ala Carcassonne. Nadine is one such person. She also claims that it's simply not her style of game, being too spacial (yet somehow, she always seems to beat us at El Grande).

First play for Binyamin, who is especially irked when other people take a long time to play. I would like to play it 2-player a couple of times.

Jambo

Avraham+, Gili

Gili taught Avraham. The Kosmos two-player series is Gili's type of game; I think they're ok filler games. They didn't have time to finish, but agreed that Avraham was probably winning.

Antike

Jon 9, Avraham 8, Binyamin 7

My third game of Antike, and another game that I simply love a whole lot more than I expected to. Possibly it's because I'm playing with not too aggressive players; if I played with war-gamers I might feel differently. As for now, the game seems to be perfectly balanced, where the victory mechanics don't favor aggression over non-aggression, or vice versa.

Binyamin's first play, Avraham's second. I decided to try setting the victory condition to one less than the book indicates. It does make a difference. That one extra point would have dragged the game on into a lot more forced combat situations and probably close to another hour. We finished our game in under 2 hours.

I started with gold and the first Know-How, but Binyamin quickly stifled my hopes of getting a landslide of those. I played Arabia, and pretty much had my side of the board to myself for most of the game. Just once, Avraham who played Greece conquered one of my outlying cities in the south. And I won the game with a quick unexpected strike to destroy one of Binyamin's temples in the north.

Binyamin started with two legions and expanded into 12 or 13 cities as his first several rounds. He then hit up against Avraham who attacked a number of his cities. He then concentrated on acquiring the rest of the Know-hows (he got 6, I think) and building temples. But he was too slow to win. Avraham also expanded early, but he spent too much time on expansion, building no temples and achieving no points through know-hows. He was still poised to win the game two turns after me.

Year of the Dragon

David 74, Nadine 55, Gili 45

A favorite of all three of them, they consider it a tighter and less random version of Notre Dame.

Traders of Carthage

Avraham 15, Jon 14, Binyamin 12

Avraham taught this game to both Binyamin and me. It's a light filler game. To me, it seemed to fit into nearly the same space as R-Eco, with its point in four goods, piles of cards that appear and disappear, and low scoring. It's also fairly chaotic and low on the planning side, with just enough planning to make you feel that you have some relevant decisions to make. This is probably exacerbated in a four-player game, and lessened in a two-player game, like all similar games with chaos.

In our game, I probably should have one but I made two mistakes. The first one cost me a card. The second one gave Binyamin the shipment and lost me several cards and point opportunities. But Binyamin didn't quite grasp the right plays. Between the two of us, we let Avraham take a close but smooth victory.

Bridge

Jon/David 990, Binyamin/Avraham+Nadine 0

Avraham hasn't played this (he's played online? read the rules?), so he teamed up with Nadine to play one position with Binyamin as partner. I ended up with all the points over four hands. I played the first three hands, and Avraham insisted on stealing the last hand, but went down two.

July 30, 2008

Participants: Nadine, Jon, Binyamin, Zvi Yehuda, Amir, Hillel, Yitzchak

Last minute change of plans forced the game night to Nadine's house. Amir came for a first visit, although he's moving to Modiin so won't be back much. Hillel has come once or twice before. Yitzchak also won't be coming back much more, as he's now engaged again (mazal tov) and moving to Ramat Beit Shemesh.

Year of the Dragon

Nadine 108, Jon 107, Amir

I don't remember the exact scores. Nadine was convinced I was going to win. I felt like I was doing ok, but I was severely behind in end-scoring points, and I figured Nadine would catch up to me. Lo and behold, she did, and won the game by one point.

YotD is a good game, but it's pretty balanced and mechanics-oriented. Constantly losing people makes for a nice tension element. In our game, I opened with the Double Dragon, which I'm not sure is the best opening move, actually. Later on I used the triple book a few times, ignoring the ladies and the builders. Nadine and Amir took early double dragons as well, and some ladies. Nadine's ending monks were what did me in.

Texas Hold'Em

Binyamin, Jon, Zvi Yehuda, Hillel

Zvi Yehuda wanted to play this, and Binyamin pretty much cleaned up. We played with a 1 token ante and a 5 token maximum bet for each hand (after which all cards were simply revealed). Z"Y bet high a few times in weird ways. I simply pulled crappy cards. I'm not a big fan of this type of poker, anyway.

Hillel took over for me when he came, as I was playing this and YotD at the same time.

Metropolys

Binyamin, Zvi Yehuda, Hillel

This is a new game from Ystari which Binyamin brought. I didn't see much of it. Binyamin claims it's a deeper version of Mykerinos.

Alexander the Great

Binyamin, Zvi Yehuda, Nadine, Jon

This is another new game which Binyamin brought. It's a hidden resource allocation / area control game with somewhat vicious mechanics (tied players receive nothing, first player loses resources equal to 1 + the second player's resources).

I played this simultaneously with Princes of Florence, so this may be why I found the game wholly uninteresting. In an hour, we progressed through 2 of 6 epochs. The decisions were very heavy calculations - not based on high math, but based on wrangling the mechanics to benefit you: "If I go here, I cause a tie, which means no one loses anything, so when I go here and lose, she'll lose resources, so that I can go here and win, and we'll both gain 3 points overall."

It felt excrutiating to me, but overall I think it's probably a good game. There's tons of strategy and tactics, and little in the way of luck, so many of my group will probably like it. You have to learn the patterns to enjoy it.

We abandoned the game after the second epoch, with Binyamin in the lead.

Princes of Florence

Yitzchak 58, Jon 57, Hillel, Amir

First time plays for Amir and Hillel. PoF remains an excellent game, but my luck remained poor. I thought I played an excellent game. I picked up 2nd and 3rd jesters on the last two round at dirt cheap prices, and won best work in both rounds. The third jester boosted a bonus card, and secured me my prestige card (6 points).

For all that, Yitzchak had two prestige cards worth a total of 15 points, and ended up beating me by one point. Sometimes I don't know why I bother.

Both the newbies played very well, although they both had a bunch of builders and lost (by less than 10 points), so there you go.

Bridge

Binyamin/Zvi Yehuda, Jon/Nadine

We played Bridge for several hands, and my highest hand was 10 points. Most of my hands were 6 or under. I still ended up as declarer three times, making two of the contracts.

Aside from the first hand where Binyamin opened 3 hearts and his partner bid 4 NT and they made a slam, the rest of the hands were all partials. One was even passed out.

May 21, 2008

Participants: Jon, Bill, Nadine, Jonathan, Sergei, Daniel, Max, Binyamin, Ari

Bill came back even though we didn't have a quorum for role playing again. Luckily, he plays board games, too. Max came a few times before with Jack (who only came a few times). Max and Jack were running a Russian-speaking game group in downtown Jerusalem for a while, but it petered out. Max brought with him Daniel and Sergei.

Robo Rally

Ari+, Jon, Binyamin, Jonathan, Max

This was a first game for Max and Binyamin. I picked a single board and a single flag. But it was the Maelstrom board, nearly entirely covered with concentric circles of walkways moving at different speed and depositing into a central pit. And the flag started out on one of these walkways, so moved one space each phase, too.

Needless to say, it looked like it was going to be wild and fun. For some reason, I calculated that the best way to get to the flag was to skirt the opposite direction to the walkway's movement around the edge of the board and then try to rush in. Ari, instead, jumped onto the faster moving walkway which took him right opposite the slower moving flag in one turn. He won on turn two.

Jon+, Nadine, Sergei, Bill

Later in the evening we played again. This was the first play for Sergei, and second (?) for Bill.

We also used a single board and flag, but a simpler one, and the flag was stationary at the far corner. This time I won in two turns, by virtue of having hands full of Move 2 and Move 3 cards in both turns.

El Grande

Nadine 122, Daniel/Jon 104, Sergei 103, Bill 98

This was the first game for Sergei and Daniel, I believe. Daniel unfortunately had to leave after the second scoring round, so I took over while also playing Santiago.

When I took over, Nadine was well ahead of every other player, so she obviously neglected to inform them that she usually wins big time and they should all gang up on her. By the time I got there, it was too late. On round 8 she took an interim scoring opportunity which essentially sealed the game.

Round 3 scores: Nadine 37, Bill 37, Sergei 41, Daniel 35
Round 6 scores: Nadine 89, Bill 73, Sergei 74, Daniel 77

Saikoro

Jon+, Ari

After Ari won the first game of Robo Rally, we played two more rounds to see who would come in second. To keep Ari occupied, I played Saikoro with him.

It's still a lovely game. I had no trouble cornering Ari for the win, as it was his first game.

Santiago

Binyamin 72, Jon 62, Ari 45, Jonathan 43, Max 43

I love this game and have wanted to get it out for a long time, but I haven't had the opportunity since some of the other club players don't like it. But, with a new audience, I was finally able to do it. This was the first play for Max, and second plays for Ari and Jonathan.

Both Binyamin and I got in on an early potato field, while I also got an early sugar field, and he got a later pepper field. He had one more guy on the potato field, however, and managed his cash just a bit better, so as to earn a victory.

Race for the Galaxy

Binyamin 23, Jon 18, Nadine 18

Yes, very low scores, entirely because Nadine built low cost buildings on every single building phase, ending the game in some eight or nine rounds. Nadine knows the brown building strategy and isn't happy when she doesn't get those buildings. Binyamin says that he has tried the game with variants where you build up to twenty buildings (instead of twelve) and increase the vp chips, which he likes better than the standard game, as it ends too quickly.

It's Alive

Sergei+++, Jonathan+, Max+

When they finished playing this, I thought they had played only one game and I asked their score. When they said that Sergei won with three, and Jonathan had one, and Max had one, I was confused, until I discovered that that was the number of games they had played, not the point counts. They played five games back to back in the time it took us to play Race for the Galaxy.

And after all that, Max said that he found the game somewhat repetitive. I'm guessing they liked it enough to play it five times, however.

Bridge

Jon/Max, Binyamin/Nadine

We got in two hand of Bridge at the end of game night. This was Max's first plays, and he kept comparing it to games he was familiar with.

Games Day: April 24, 2008

Participants: Jon, Saarya, Nadine, Adam, Binyamin, Tikva Shira, Zvi Yehuda, David Klein, Avi Klein, Yarom, Maayan, Maya, Yardena, Yedidya, Yitzchak, Jonathan, Roie, Omri, Rachel A, Yosef, Dylan, Ben, Gili, Dvir, Shimon, Ari, David B, Pini, Yosef B, Richard, Vera, Raphaela

I'm Jon and Saarya is my son. Nadine, Adam, and Binyamin are group regulars. T"S and Z"Y are Binyamin's kids. David is a group regular. Avi is David's kid. Yaron has been playing games in other parts of Israel for many years, but rarely gets out to my group. Maayan and Maya were his guests. Yedidya and Yitzchak are Yardena's kids. Jonathan is a new group regular. Roie and Omri saw the ad on Tapuz. Rachel A is my wife. Yosef saw the ad on Janglo or my blog, I think. Dylan is a group regular, Ben is my brother and a group regular, Gili is a group regular. Dvir, Shimon, and Ari saw the ad on Tapuz. David B is my other brother and Pini and Yosef B are his kids. Richard, Vera saw the ad on Janglo, and Raphaela is their daughter.

32 people is record attendance. In fact, if we get this many or more in the future, we need a bigger place.

Amun-Re

Binyamin 51, Roie 42, Ben 38, Omri 31, Zvi Yehuda 531

Ben doesn't get to play this game in his community because his gamers object to the other deities and sacrifice.

Nadine 54, David B 39, Yosef 38, Ben 34

This was first game for David and Yosef. David thought it was a good game but the -3 card (stealing 3 gold) wasn't strong enough to overcome the loss of a free item.

Anagrams

Jon, Yardena

I went easy on Yardena at the start of this game under the assumption that I would be much better than she was, since she had Scrabble experience but not Anagrams experience. After a few words, however, it turned out that she was excellent. After that I played as well as I could and we both ended up with about the same number of words.

Bridge

Nadine, Ben, Binyamin, Zvi Yehuda

They played a few hands toward the end of the day.

Cities and Knights of Catan

Yitzchak, Yosef

Played a two-player game to learn the rules, I believe.

Yosef 13, Jon, Jonathan

I started off pretty well, but Yosef relentlessly hit me during the game and rose over my back. He got a quick early metropolis, and another one soon thereafter. He won the game with Longest Road.

Colosseum

Zvi Yehuda 83, Gili 80, Tikva Shira 65

This is a big sprawling game with busy graphics. I played it once and thought it was a typical Euro.

Cosmic Encounter

Binyamin, Pini, Yosef, Zvi Yehuda

I think I have the wrong people written here, except I know that Binyamin got bored by the game since he didn't think the aliens were interesting enough (he had Void/Zombie).

Go

Adam+, Jon

Adam slaughtered me by capturing a large central area on an 11x11 board. I still love the game, but I really really suck at it. I started with two stones.

Jon+, Yardena

I taught Yardena how to play on a 9x9 board. Even by the end of the game, she wasn't quite sure she had grasped the rules of capturing groups. She started with a two stone advantage.

Imperial

Binyamin brought this and taught it to several groups of people, but no one took him up on the offer to actually play it.

Magic: the Gathering

Jon++, David++

David and I did our usual Rochester draft. Both of us ended with serious difficulties in cutting down colors for our deck. I had more Red, but I settled on Blue as my third color. There was no way to cut it down to two colors. I did BGU while David did BRU.

I lost the first game. The second game, I was distracted by some other events around me and forgot to say I was casting a blocker from my hand, so I lost, but David said I should have won (I recorded it as his win). In the third game my deck worked and his didn't. In the fourth, we were well on a repeat of the third so he resigned.

David+, Pini

Pini used my deck to play David while I was eating dinner and lost.

Pirate's Cove

Tikva Shira, Zvi Yehuda

I saw them playing this two player. Binyamin heard the rules and wasn't interested because of the excessive dice rolling. I sympathize, but I like the game anyway, for some reason.

Power Grid

Dylan+, Dvir, Shimon, Ari

I taught the latter three this game and then stepped out for Dylan to play. I forgot that Dylan's grasp of the rules wasn't perfect. As a result, they forgot that you couldn't have more than three power plants. I'm sure they got some of the power plant rotation rules wrong, too. Dylan won on the tie breaker.

Puerto Rico

Rachel+, Roie, Omri

Omri and Roie brought two games, PR and Princes of Florence, both of which I have. They sat down to play with Rachel. I was thinking of warning them that they don't know what they're up against, as she is a killer.

She ended up winning, but not as badly as I won against inexperienced players the day before at the Beit Shemesh club - something like a 10 point spread. She said it was fun, especially when she had no idea what her opponents were going to do, unlike when she played with us regulars.

Race for the Galaxy

Yaron, Maayan, Maya, Jonathan

This was the first time for all of them (2nd for Jonathan?). It took them quite some time, as first game are want to do.

David B 29, Pini 25, Yosef B 15

I taught all of them how to play and then left them to it. As a result, they were often confused. David realized that their was a lot to the game, but the other two were somewhat frustrated. They all would have enjoyed it more if I had played with them as well; I'm sorry I didn't.

Nadine 42, David 32, Jon 29

We three wanted to play this at the end of the evening. Nadine won using her usual brown world strategy. I started with the military world, which I think is a poor strategy in comparison.

David 64, Jon 45, Nadine 41

I tried a brown world strategy, but David took it from me and did it better. He also had yellow worlds going. it was obvious a third of the way into the game that he was going to slaughter us. Which began to make me resent the game. Once I was losing and my initial worlds turned out to have been the wrong ones, there was no hope of catching up and a whole game to know that.

RftG is therefor a fascinating puzzle, but somewhat frustrating as a game.

R-Eco

David 17, Jon 3, Nadine 2, Avi 0, Adam 0

My only points were from not dumping. David pulled the 4 and 5 of red in his last two moves.

Avi 16, Nadine 8, Yardena 6, David 5

Yardena liked the game because the rule set was simple and she didn't have to think too much (she thinks a lot during work, generally).

David B, Pini, Yosef B

I taught them this and they all liked it for what it was.

Yosef, Gili, Binyamin

Played near the end of the day.

Robo Rally

Jon+, Nadine, David, Avi, Adam

This was our opening game and it was fun. We played on one board with two flags at opposite corners. David, Nadine, and I were all close, with Adam right behind. This despite my opening turn as nothing but left and right turns. As usual, chance played heavily in who was able to get the second flag in the final stretch.

Yaron, Maayan, Maya, Dylan, Jonathan

I taught them all how to play, and warned them that a typical game, even on a short board with one flag, takes a good hour and a half. Dylan then won on his second play.

Santiago

Maayan+, Yaron, Maya, Jonathan

This was another new game for all the players.

Settlers of Catan

Roie, Omri, Yosef, Yedidya/Yitzchak

Y and Y really wanted to play but there wasn't enough room so they shared a position.

Shadows Over Camelot

Gili, Tikva Shira, Saarya, Richard, Vera, Raphaela, Jonathan

I taught some, and some had played once or twice. Richard, Vera, and Raphaela came in just as we were about to start and I included them. This was their first game, and they didn't make it through to the end, even though Vera told me that it was much better than Monopoly. Still, it's a fairly complicated game for your first game, though the mechanics themselves are pretty easy.

When they left, three players finished the game three player, each with two roles. Gili inherited the traitor (or started as the traitor). he game ended with seven white swords, but then two flipped because the traitor was still in the game, so the company lost (and Gili won).

Winner's Circle

Binyamin, Zvi Yehuda, Tikva Shira

The opening game for them.

Year of the Dragon

Nadine 104, David 84, Gili 77, Tikva Shira 58

David and Nadine had both played Year of the Dragon once, and David had won that time. Tikva Shira knew the basics, and it was Gili's first time. This game is played in preference to Notre Dame, being considered nearly the same game but better (though ND is a fine game).

March 26, 2008

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Binyamin, Ben, David K

Another typical, lightly attended game night.

Race for the Galaxy

Nadine 45, Jon 40, Binyamin 39, Ben 30

It may be San Juan on steroids, but it's a lot more interesting. The ability to ensure that you can always get the phase you want and the privilege, too, gives you control. The Production and Consumption phases only doing things for you if you have the abilities to utilize them is hard to wrap your head around, but cool. And the seemingly vast number of different paths to victory is intriguing.

The latter may simply be due to the fact that I've only played twice. It may be that a few paths dominate others. Your ability to choose which path is severely curtailed based on the cards you draw. Therefore, if a few paths really don't work versus others, you're not going to win if you're unlucky, which could make any particular game frustrating.

In San Juan, there are not that many different final destinations that will win. In this game, it seems that you can work with not only different synergies but different end points. I'm eager to try again.

In our previous game, Nadine killed us with a straight Brown strategy. Luckily, she didn't get the cards for that one again. Neither I nor Ben could pull a 6 point card to save our skin, but I realized in mid-game that I was the only player producing goods; everyone else had windfall worlds. That's when I realized that I had to start shipping big time. It caught me up, although not enough to win.

The card that let's you build military worlds for discards instead of conquest is a super card, and also helped.

Year of the Dragon

Binyamin 114, David 104, Jon 97, Ben 79, Nadine 76

Binyamin taught us all this game, which turned out to be another excellent Euro strategy game. Binyamin claims that it's like a less lucky version of Notre Dame; I think that's a bit of a stretch.

Anyway, he neglected to mention how difficult the game is to those with the least initiative, so I started off feeling a crunch. On the other hand, Binyamin won even though he spent the last half of the game in last initiative place.

David tried a straight victory point through books approach, gaining 9 points every round for half the game and pulling way ahead of everyone else, and looked like he was headed to complete victory. But Binyamin's dragons were eventually giving him up to 7 points a round, and his people and statues added enough bonus to overtake David's lead at the end.

All in all, quite interesting.

Bridge

Ben/Binyamin 600, Jon/Nadine 130

We played a few rounds. Actually I played three hands, and Nadine played the fourth. Our biggest loss was down three doubled in the last hand.

March 12, 2008

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili, Bill, Binyamin, David

Bill is from Kansas City and just moved to Israel for one or two years with his wife. Both of them have RPG and board game experience. Bill and I had discussed starting up a new RPG campaign. Because he has to go back to the US several times over the next few months, each session was to be (is to be) a single night's play.

Unfortunately, his wife was held up negotiating a lease so she never got here, and Bill was called away to help right when we were going to start the RPG so we didn't get to play that this evening.

Race for the Galaxy

Nadine 72, Jon 38, Gili 32, Bill 30

This was everyone's first play except Nadine's. I only wanted to learn a few round before Bill got here but we ended up playing out the entire game. Even though I hadn't played before, I ended up explaining the game while Nadine piped in with strategy advice she learned from her previous game during the process.

First games are about learning the mechanics, so all of us were just playing around with the cards. In the meantime, Nadine built nothing but brown worlds and bonus cards. Not only did every building count for her three times at the end of the game, she was making 10 or 14 points during each consume phase. As you can see, she slaughtered us.

Meanwhile, I tossed out my early high point cards but then couldn't drawn them again later.

RftG is still a lot like San Juan, but I like the double building opportunities and the choice of trading or shipping which is missing from San Juan. While the interaction is pretty low, I can see how you get more when you start to think about what the other players are doing and how to thwart them. Still, it's pretty close to solitaire.

Once I know all the cards and abilities, it will remain to be seen whether the game is really any more complex than San Juan or if it will feel "played out" like San Juan does (at least until we get an expansion for it). As of now, I'm happy to play it again and several more times after that.

Magic: the Gathering

David+, Binyamin

David and Binyamin played this and were going to keep playing this if we had started our roleplaying. As it was we had to drag them away from it to play a five player game when Bill left.

David won by one point, I hear.

[DK: Binyamin was going to kill me on the next round (I had 2 life). I needed seven points of damage, but even with my humongous trample creature, I could only get through with six. Then I noticed a d6 which represented a piddly 1/1 token creature...]

Notre Dame

David 81, Nadine 77, Binyamin 68, Jon 55, Gili 41

Binyamin wanted to play Year of the Dragon but Gili didn't want to learn a new game and really wanted to play this.

I decided to give the Hotel area a go since it's obviously the worst area on the board and can't possibly win. I figured to at least try to see if I could do something useful with it. Unfortunately, conventional wisdom is correct and there is now way to make any use out of it. By the time you're up to three cubes, you've so fallen behind that you begin losing them to the rats or losing out on the rest of the bonuses everyone else is getting.

Meanwhile, David won with a straight VP area win, scoring the region three times in the last round (twice with cards, and once with a purchased favor).

[DK: FOUR times in the last round. Three with cards and once with a favor :-). With park, 8+7+6+5 for 26VP]

Nadine used a combination of money for Notre Dame and park bonuses; one early Notre Dame score shared with me helped her gain an early lead over David, but not enough. Binyamin tried park and VP scoring.

Mr Jack

Jon (Detective)+, Nadine (Criminal)

We played this while Binyamin and David finished up their Magic game and then while we played Bridge. I got two characters eliminated in round one, and then three more in rounds two and three. It was not hard to win in round five after that.

Bridge

Jon/David, Binyamin/Nadine

We played a few hands, all of which seemed to start with 1 club or a preempt.

March 05, 2008

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Yitzchak, Gili, David, Yardena, Yedidya, Yitzchak the Smaller, Binyamin, Ben, Dylan

I'm back in Israel. Yardena is a great friend of mine and Rachel's from when I first moved to Israel; she also worked with Rachel on occasion. She brought two of her children, Yedidya and Yitzchak the Smaller, in search of better games.

Before the Wind

Binyamin 50, Nadine 44, Jon 36

I played this game at the BGG.con. I really liked it; it's sort of a card game version of the shipping part of Puerto Rico. Let's call it San Juan II.

When I played it at the con, we played incorrectly so that the core action distribution rules seemed broken. But even as we were playing it, we knew that it shouldn't work that way, and we were right.

It's very different from our typical Eurogames. It's very interactive. The action distribution has a very strong take-that mechanism; but unlike other games with take-that mechanics, it doesn't feel like the game is brought down by it. That's because there are too many things that you need to do at the same time, so you can't spend all your time hosing other people.

It's very challenging to move forwards when people are arrayed against you, but they are also not moving forwards when this is happening and you can work that into your game play. It's challenging and fun.

I seem to be pretty bad at it, which is all the more challenging for me. David sat beside me as I played, and he immediately noticed some of my major goof-ups as the game went on, such as trying to by Binyamin's card which I couldn't afford instead of trying to buy Nadine's which I could have.

Ben sat in at the beginning of the game but immediately decided that the game was not for him when we started playing.

Settlers of Catan

Ben+, Yardena, Yedidya, Yitzchak the Smaller

So Ben went to teach these guys how to play their first Eurogame. They had a good time, and promised to come back, even though Ben beat them (stealing Longest Road, I believe). Yedidya actually looked more interested in playing the Arkham Horror game which was going on.

Arkham Horror

Yitzchak, Gili, Dylan, Jon (sort of)

Yitzchak was trying to get a group to play this for sometime, and we finally agreed if it was the shortest boss-guy. It only took three hours and a bit, which included some explanation to Dylan and Gili.

I was allegedly playing as well. However, I couldn't start until my Before the Wind game finished, which ate into about an hour of game time. And then I called myself away to play Blue Moon with Ben who would otherwise have had no one to play with after only twenty minutes or so.

Yitzchak didn't seem to mind, as he had played the game solitaire a number of times and could easily play my character at the same time. In fact, even when I was playing, I wasn't doing much. I made a decision as to move or attack, but otherwise rolled some number of dice when I was told to and how many.

Which is my problem, really. In order to know what to do, you need a vast knowledge of how the game works, and you have to remember at every stage what modifiers are in effect on every card in play around the entire table. This is laborious and probably no one has ever played a game without forgetting something or messing something up.

And in the end, you're rolling a lot of dice, which is exciting and fun, but not very much in the thinking department. You roll well you succeed, you roll poorly you don't. I can't see that there's much difference between good play and slightly better play. Obviously, it helps to maximize your dice chances. I think I'm just not cut out for this type of game anymore.

Blue Moon

Ben, Jon

I taught this to Ben. he took the Vulcas and I took the Hoaxes. We worked through our decks trading battles back and forth. I managed to get up three dragons near the beginning of the game, but I then lost them. After that, Ben got and lost one dragon a few times until the game's end, which was a tie. We started another game, but abandoned it midway.

Many people think that I gave Blue Moon a short shrift in my BGG review because I said it was basically a typical Knizia number game with special ability cards added for flavor. The special ability cards do more than add flavor, complained they, as they add all of the tactics.

I don't deny this, even though it doesn't really change what I said. It's still a dry kind of number game. Though numbers figure into Magic, too, Magic doesn't feel like a number game. It feels much more like a sorcery combat game.

One thing that probably improves Blue Moon after several plays is getting to know your deck. In that way, you're no longer doing what's best for each battle, one after the other, but able to plan ahead to future battles. The name of the game is not to win a particular battle, but to win four more than your opponent or to be ahead when the game ends. Which adds a lot to the strategy.

Race for the Galaxy

David 43, Binyamin 42, Nadine 33

I didn't get to see this, known as San Juan III, but Nadine said it had even less interaction than San Juan. I hear that as you get to know the game better, your role selection choice becomes more interactive, so we can reserve judgment. They liked it, however, so we'll try it again.

Magic: the Gathering

David++, Jon

David and I dealt out 68 cards each from the new card I brought home. I crafted a neat deck with nearly all Elves and Shapeshifters (G with B and R). It was pretty cool, but it wasn't as strong and David's deck (U and G). So I lost, as usual.

Bridge

Yitzchak, Ben, Nadine, Binyamin

These guys seem to like getting all the other games out of the way so that they can end the evening with this.

January 16, 2008

Participants: Jon, Binyamin, Nadine, Ben, Yitzchak, Gili, Cliff, Raphi

Nadine invited Cliff, who lives in our area. Strange that he's never come before, as he has experience with many Euro and war games. Not only that, but he brought his daughter Raphi who also plays. Hopefully, they will begin coming often. (Nadine says that he has four children and thought the game night ended earlier, which is why he hasn't come sooner.)

Blue Moon

Binyamin+, Jon

I took out Blue Moon to learn how to play it. As I read the rules, I began to get a sinking feeling.

I like Knizia's board games, but I find his card games to be too simplistic. Lost Cities, Flinke Pinke, and so on are clever and diverting enough for a child, but not for me. They are basically number games; throw the numbers around and hope to end up with the right ones. The decisions are usually fairly trivial and entirely too mathematical.

I honestly expected Blue Moon to be something entirely different, given its rich theme and comparison to Magic-lite. Yet, upon reading the rules, it became clear that this was just one more game of numbered cards and little else.

To make matters worse, the price of the game was inflated, as often happens, with fancy bits of useless pieces; it's a card game, and could be sold for four dollars if created simpler. To make matters even worse, the pictures on the cards are horribly sexist and borderline pornographic. This is a common complaint about the game, but it's still true.

Nevertheless, I gamely decided to try it out with Binyamin, looking at the rules as we played. We played around halfway through one game until wee essentially got the rules, and the restarted a fresh game.

Thankfully, the game turns out to be better than expected. Far better than Lost Cities, anyway.

Each round, you must place a creature or withdraw from the battle. If not withdrawing, you can also play a booster card on your creature or a support card. Any creature you play next round covers up any previous creatures and boosters that you've already played.

Each creature and most support cards have two sets of numbers on them: fire and earth. The first person to start a battle decides which number will be used for comparison during this battle. Every time it's your turn to play, you can only play if the relevant number of the creature you put down plus support cards will at least tie the corresponding total of your opponent.

Some cards have special abilities that boost the numbers of other cards or cancel cards of your opponents, so long as they're in play and uncovered.

So the essential mechanic is: if you put down your high card first, your opponent might withdraw and you'll win. But if he can answer your card, you will have to cover over your creature with another one which might be lower, in which case you would have to withdraw. So you might be better off placing a lower card first, rather than a higher one, saving your higher one for when you really need it. Or something like that.

After every battle, the person who won gets one or two points and all cards played are discarded. The game ends when someone has three more points than his opponent and is about to get his fourth. Otherwise, when someone runs out of cards, the score at the end of the game is your point differential over your opponent. Play a number of games until one person has won five points.

It's an ok game. There is unexplored tactics and strategy still to discover, which I'll happily do when I play again. The real interest in the game appears to be in buying the expansion sets and then creating decks, ala Magic.

Mr Jack

Jon (Criminal)+, Binyamin (Detective)

Binyamin wanted to see how to successfully play Criminal. Unfortunately for him, he left everyone in the dark at the end of round three, and it was then possible for me to escape at the beginning of round four.

I've come to appreciate the possibility of Criminal to win by simply not trying to escape. It's more of a puzzle than a game. And it's a bit frustrating that your strategy is entirely dictated by the card flips. If they flip one way, you have to do this, and if they flip the other way, you have to do that. It's a nice game, however.

El Grande

Nadine 132, Yitzchak 117, Ben 113, Gili 96

A high scoring game, as you can see. Nadine ended up ahead by the end of round three, and so it was expected that she would win by the end of the game, as she usually does. And so she did.

Round three scores: Nadine 52, Yitzchak 38, Gili 34, Ben 31
Round six scores: Nadine 86, Ben 74, Yitzchak 72, Gili 59

Magic: the Gathering

Binyamin+, Jon

This is rather pathetic. Binyamin and I Rochester drafted with some of my new cards. I ended up with a far, far, far superior deck of white flyers and tons of red direct damage. Binyamins was a basic hodgepodge of creatures. I lost the one game we played because I didn't draw a red land until I was down to 6 points, and my non-land cards were all red. Pure mana screw.

We didn't have a chance to play another game.

Power Grid

Cliff 11+, Jon 11-, Binyamin 11--, Raphi 10

I taught them this game, as it's a good game to get into for people who already know some gaming. We played on the easy US Eastern seaboard. I pretty much started out well and stayed that way.

I decided to end the game by building six cities right before Stage 3 started, as I had a reasonable hope that I would win on money anyway. Binyamin, Cliff, and I could all power 11, and Raphi could only power 10. But I had lots more money. Still, at th end, I was left with 30 and Cliff still had 49 or so.

If I had waited one more round, it would have come down to auctioning over the three 6 city power plants that were available. And that meant leaving my fate into the hands of others' possibly irrational actions.

Bridge

Ben, Jon, Binyamin, Yitzchak, Nadine

Binyamin and I both took up hands during Power Grid with the other three players.

December 27, 2007

Participants: Jon, Nadine, David, Binyamin, Ben, Yitzchak, Gili

A very ordinary, but enjoyable, game night.

Down Under

Jon+, Nadine

Nadine 32, Jon 30, David 21, Binyamin 21

This little game was sent to me as a gift. It's about the size of my game It's Alive. It's a boardless tile laying game for up to four players. A second game is also explained in the rules, using the reverse side of the tiles.

On your turn, you have access to all of your tiles, which means that there's no "luck" in the way of tile drawing. Each tile has a road of your color, a separate road in gray, and an animal on the gray road. You place one of your tiles so that the road of your color on your tile extends your route. Your route includes all previous tiles you placed of your color, and any gray tiles that you managed to include in the route by connecting to them.

The board can only grow to a certain width and length. When no one can't place any more tiles you count the length of your route plus sets of animal combinations on your route to arrive at your final score.

It's actually quite nice and fairly quick. I enjoyed both the two-player and four-player game. None of the other players seemed to like it, unfortunately, except Nadine seemed to like it a bit. It seems to work two, three, or four player equally well.

I found some of the rules a bit hard to understand, especially the "cap" pieces that you are able to play at any time, but don't make sense to play until the end of the game, and don't do anything anyway. I couldn't figure out how or why they did anything.

Power Grid - Benalux

David 15, Jon 12, Nadine 10

This was our first play on one of the new boards. Benelux is a very cheap board, and the power plants cycle very quickly, making the game pretty short. In addition, oil is cheap and plentiful, while coal is expensive and scarce.

David managed to tap into the oil well and maintained a lead because of it throughout the game. He also expanded quickly into my cheap territory. A pretty easy victory on his part, but still fun to play.

Taj Mahal

Binyamin+, Yitzchak+, Ben, Gili

This game hadn't come out in a while. Ben had to have the rules refreshed to him. In the end, Binyamin and Yitzchak tied when the cards were added to the interim scoring.

Cosmic Encounter

Binyamin+, Yitzchak+, Ben

After Gili left, they got this game out. Wild as usual, but the game didn't last long and I think they weren't keen to continue it anyway, for some reason. Binyamin and Yitzchak managed a joint win on a deal.

Bridge

Ben/David, Jon/Nadine

Ben/Yitzchak, Binyamin/Nadine

A usual evening-ended, sometimes for more than an hour, like this evening. They don't seem to tire of it.

Magic: the Gathering

Jon+, David+

Binyamin actually wanted to play Magic, too, but Ben preferred Bridge. David and I continued to plow our way through the new cards I brought back from Canada. I think I had the stronger deck. We split the games, but I only lost the second game because of mana screw.