First night of Chanukah

Bill, Shirley, Liza, Mace, Shlomia, Shachar, Nadine

Mace flew in from Australia; Liza is a friend of Bill and Shirley's, who also flew in for a few weeks.

Dreidle
Bill won, beating Shirley by 3 points. Shirley started, Bill was second, which is an advantage when the pot is only refilled by ante. We played with m&m's, two or three rounds. First time playing Dreidle for Bill and Shirley.

Train of Thought
By the end, we managed to get faster at it. Mace did particularly well and was the first to be willing to be timed, he got 2.5 in the two minutes. But it's not easy, and again everyone said it didn't really feel like a party game.

Lo Ra
Mace 13,13,29; Liza 12,19,29; Shachar 1,6,20; Shirley 7,7,20; Bill 0,-7,9.
I asked Bill to get this out of the drawer. He couldn't find it until Mace pointed it out, I forgot that the title is in Hebrew. When Liza arrived I let her take over for me, Shachar and Shlomia teamed up. Two ties and Bill, at least he didn't end up negatives. He had a lot of Tribes but not much else. Disasters didn't show up til second and third yovels, but then a lot did of course. Some suspense at the end of yovels waiting for the last mosaic. First play for everyone, they got it by the second round but were slightly hurt by not understanding everything at the beginning. It worked well with five, everyone liked the game.


Shadows Over Camelot
Rather than caring about winning, everyone's goal was to be the traitor. Mace played very cagily at the beginning, in case he became the traitor. We passed out the cards at 5 swords. Liza had left, so it was 6 cards out of 8. After that everyone was cooperating well, and Mace committed himself to winning as a team, and as we suspected, there was no traitor. We won with 7 white swords. Shlomia did well, winning Excaliber and the solo knight quest, Shachar got the grail.


Upcoming: Mini Chanukah game day on Sunday at Gili's, and regular games next week on Wednesday.

December 14, 2011

Gili, Emily, Eitan, Eszter, Nadine

Glen More

Emily 50, Eitan 41, Nadine 31, Eszter 22, Gili 16

Emily and Eitan got this game last week and played it once, which helped them. Gili was hit by a card misinterpretation which lost her a lot of points. This is a complex and interesting strategy game with a lot to consider, and explore. I took the fewest turns which didn't help me enough. It takes a while to understand the mechanics, scoring, cards and options. Emily got a Distillery right away and used it well.

Train of Thought

Gili brought over my new games, yay! We didn't want to learn the rules to a new game from scratch, but figured it would work with a party game. We played more seriously than it seems to expect. You get words and give three word clues to get the others to guess, with required start words. There is a two-minute sand timer. It took each of us at least two minutes just to think up our first set of clues. We did make it harder by requiring the required word to be used first instead of anywhere in the phrase. And we didn't use the timer. Because Eszter wasn't sure of the meaning of a word, Gili introduced us to a distracting cool phone app, Camdictionary, that reads and translates words in images. Emily got the most cards for guessing. Gili did the best at having her word used in the next clue phrase, which gives no points but was impressive. The game is fun but challenging, but we didn't really see how it's a party game.

Previous Plays

Gili hosted while I was away. Apparently, Jake and Daphne, who met at our Sukkot games day, showed up together once, and Jake came another time on his own.

Settlers of Catan - Jake+, Daphne, Emily, Gili, Ezster

El Grande - Eszter and Eitan tied for first with Emily a close second, Gili third.

Key Harvest - Gili, Jake, Emily and Eitan started as a team, then Emily took over when Jake left while the game was in progress, the team won.