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.

June 10, 2009

Participants: Jon, Elijah, Nadine, Ben, Max, Abraham, Gili, David K

A few early birds showed up and started playing in the living room. The flow of games that were played confused me; I'm hazy on anything played in which I didn't.

Mr Jack

Nadine, Elijah

Nadine re-taught this to Elijah, but she wasn't interested in finishing it as other people came in.

Dominion

Max 32, Jon 30, Abraham 27, Ben

First play for Ben, who didn't manage to find synergy (or, in his words, had very bad luck).

Thief was in the game, as was Festival, Feast, and Library, all of which should lead to the Festival-Feast-Library and no treasure strategy. Abraham headed that way, but he got there by means of Remodels. Somehow he got the synergy going too late, though it was doing nicely at the end.

I did something of the same thing, but I also added some silvers and golds. I lost a silver to an early thief, but as the game went on, thieves are used less which made the treasures safer bets.

Max used thief and Gardens to rack in coppers. He only made it to 30some cards, but it was still enough to squeak out a victory. For one thing, his point accumulation started earlier than ours did.

Ben tried a thief without success. He managed to get an early Province, but then his two silvers were stolen by Max and he never recovered.

Boggle

Gili, Nadine, Elijah

Meanwhile, these guys played this quick filler while waiting for David to show up.

Tichu

David, Gili, Elijah, Nadine

When David showed up, we only had ten minutes left to Dominion, so they played a hand of this.

Agricola

Jon 50, David 42, Nadine 35, Max 35

First play for Max. Max requested to play this, as he had bought a copy and hadn't been able to get it to the table where he plays, fearing that it would be too complex. After playing, he realize that he was right; he liked the game, but it's too complex for his group.

David complained early on about how poorly he was doing, as usual, even though Nadine and I saw through him. He was also convinced that my few early occupations (gain a vegetable when I take one of the food spaces; add two items when I sow) put me majorly in the lead. I admit that they were decent.

However, I gained nearly twenty points in the last two rounds. If two of these had gone awry, or one of them and David achieved some other sudden coup, the end would have been different.

In my last rounds, I added my fifth clay room (+1 for the room, +2 for a minor improvement that gave me +2 for a five room house), converted to stone (+5), played an occupation that gave me an additional +1 per stone room (+5), solidified having the most/tied for most number of occupations (+3 due to an earlier played occupation), and gained a wheat (+2).

David thought he stole back the most occupations on the final round, but he hadn't noticed that I played one on the penultimate round as well, so he only tied him. This gave him +3 as well, but didn't prevent me from getting my points.

I had my vegetables and a stove, but I usually had to take at least one action before each harvest to ensure I had enough food. David had fantastic wheat and baking running at mid-game, and so didn't need to worry about food the second half of the game. he also had a pasture with a bunch of each type of animal (minor improvement let him mix animals). Unfortunately, he was exactly one animal short of 3 points in each one.

Nadine expressed dissatisfaction with the artificial limitations of points for animals and produce and so on, as well as how 1 sheep is the same as 3 sheep, but different than 4 sheep. This leads to all sorts of annoying calculation that shouldn't be necessary.

Nadine spent a very long time calculating on round 12 and 13, and in the end it didn't matter that much. Max had good pastures, produce, and animals, but his house and bonus points were small.

Cosmic Encounter

Elijah+, Gili, Ben

Elijah always like to play this, and I thought it might make Ben happy to play something he's familiar with. He still lost, though.

This was Gili's second play, but had been so long since her first play that she had to relearn the game. She hadn't been too impressed with her last play; this one she enjoyed somewhat more.

Ben played Void and something, Elijah Machine and something, Gili Visionary and something.

Traders of Carthage

Gili, Ben, Elijah

First play for Ben, and probably second or third for Elijah. Ben enjoyed this game which is weight-wise on par with R-Eco.

June 03, 2009

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

Elijah had no play practice, or school tomorrow, I'm guessing.

Dominion

Jon 42, Nadine 39, Elijah 33

First play for Elijah, who liked it. This time Nadine didn't believe in the power of Chapel. I took it and used it thoroughly. It was still hard to get rolling, because there were no cards that gave any bonus coin (except Market) or bonus actions other than +1 (Market, Cellar, and Spy). I ended with 6 Provinces, 2 Duchys, and 1 Estate.

Nadine did much better than I expected, having slowly taken 9 of the Duchys, as well as 1 Province.

Magic: the Gathering

Gili, Abraham

I taught this to Gili last time (or the time before), and she came back with a lot of rules questions to clarify. Abraham showed up and helped her through many of them. They played with some random cards until we finished Dominion.

Antike

Jon 9, Abraham 5, Elijah 4

First play for Elijah. I figured it would be his type of game, and he liked it. Abraham also was willing to play, and we were splitting into 2 games of 3 players each, so that worked.

I played Germanic, Elijah Italy, and Abe Greece. I moved forward 1 level in Know Hows for defense, production, and army movement, and then built a massive army. Elijah built one temple close to me which I sacked, and then I move on to Abe.

Abe concentrated on temples, building 6 temples for his 6 cities, and moving to second level in defense. He couldn't build any more until he expanded. I built a temple opposite his and massed armies. He couldn't defend all of them, but thought to lure my armies off to one side and them strike back into my territory. Unfortunately, he miscalculated his defense. I had just enough movement and armies to sack two of his temples at once, and doing so put me over ten cities, for a net gain of 3 point in a single round, which was enough to win immediately (we played to 9 points).

After I sacked his temple, Elijah spread out to Africa and the Spanish coast, largely trying to avoid conflict and hoping that Abe and I would kill each other.

Power Grid

David, Gili, Nadine

While we played Antike, they player Power Grid on the Eastern coast of the US (wussies). I don't know the results, but I know they skipped straight to phase 3 from phase 1. And played with our house rule of the top four cards of the deck open for inspection.

[DK: I won by powering 17. I think Nadine and Gili both pwered 16 with Nadine having more cash. Nadine could easily have built more cities, but she couldn't increase her power (6 plants ran out). Gili could power 18, but couldn't afford more than 16 cities. I ended with about 70 cash (before powering). Throughout much of the game Gili had tons of cash and thought she could afford to pay top bucks for power plants. In hindsight she overpaid.]

It's Alive

Abraham 51, Jon 49, Elijah 35

Abraham suggested this. I know it sounds ridiculous, but after playing the game again I really liked it. I've played it hundreds of times, but I still feel like I'm finding new strategic ways to approach it. I considered my point counts with coins near the end of the game, for instance, and evaluated whether it would be worth it to end the game with no coins but get the 5 point bonus, which is what I did.

But I lost to Abe, who had a smaller board but a hoard of cash. I actually lost the game on his turn, right before my turn, by buying a card from him instead of letting him take his own auction.

Path

Elijah, Abraham

I introduced both of them to this, just to see if they liked it. It's not easy to get into, because of the huge decision space available at the beginning of the game on each move. They didn't get to finish the game.

Atlantic Star

David 47, Nadine 44, Abraham 37, Jon 36, Elijah 31

First play for David, Abraham, and Elijah. Elijah had to leave mid-game, so we tried to play out his hand for him as best we could.

No one ever wants to play this, so I asked if I should get rid of it. I didn't realize that so many of them hadn't ever tried it. In the end, there's certainly a lot of luck, more so as the game goes on, but still enough decision making and money management to make it fun. I think they enjoyed it well enough to play again (if not suggest it).

David won, despite having accidentally bought a high valued card for a route he had already completed about mid-game.

May 27, 2009

Participants: Jon, David K, Gili, Abraham

Night before Shavuot, Nadine is away, so low attendance expected.

Path

David+, Jon

Path is a new route planning abstract (think Metro, TransAmerica) from an Israeli publisher for two players. The board is a cloth board of 9x9 squares. Pieces are plastic (Bakelite-ish) with routes and colors.

Each tile is unique, other than the black starting tiles and the black blocking tiles. Each tile has four corners, each of which is in either green or orange. Each tile has silver or black pathways crossing from side to side, between the colored corners. All possible variations are also represented. Paths are silver; black indicates no path.

Your job is to create a path from your starting point to either of the two opposite corners.

Nine black tiles with silver paths are place on the board to start. The remaining tiles (color tiles and black blocking tiles) are drawn randomly from a bag. The center tile has four silver tiles leading into it, but a black obstruction in the middle, so cannot be used as a crossing point.

On your turn, you have four random tiles to place (think of what to do with them on your opponent's turn). Each tile must be placed so that it continues your path from your starting tile (eventually the two players' paths may merge), so that adjacent colors match at corners (black counts as both orange and green), and so that paths match (black to black, silver to silver).

You must continue to place all of your tiles, as long as you can. However, you may choose to place them in an order that does not let you place all of them. If you have no legal moves at the start of your turn, you may rotate or replace a tile on the board (it must still be legally placed), or you may place one of your tiles off of any black tile on the board (I doubt that this action will ever be chosen).

That's it.

Reactions: Hard to tell after one game. The majority of our time was trying to figure out what our legal plays were. Having to match both corners and path colors is hard enough, let alone having to do that with four pieces in a row. And that's before considering if the plays are more beneficial to yourself or your opponent. For us, it was all tactical. With players who are very experienced and can count which tiles remain in the bag, I imagine that there will be actual planning involved.

Both David and I are reasonably intelligent, and were also willing on our first game to offer advice to our opponent if we saw better moves than the ones made. It should be noted that the four tiles that your opponent will play on his turn after yours are public, and therefore also must (if taken seriously) be considered when placing your tiles.

So there is room to explore. On the one hand, it didn't really give much of a bang. Most of the time was spent figuring out "what" you could do, not "whether" to do it. On the other hand, tile laying and route planning is one of my favorite mechanisms, so I'm happy to try it again. It's not one of David's so I don't think he enjoyed it as much.

A note must be made about the rulebook: it pretty much sucked. For pete's sake, non-English speaking designers, get your translations and rulebooks done by professionals. We ran into a number of questions that the rulebook didn't answer or only obliquely hinted at. Like, where we could put the blocking pieces, whether a tile could be placed that adjoined your tiles but didn't extend your path, and a number of others. We eventually figured most of them out, but on some we're still scratching our heads.

La Citta

David 34+, Abraham 34-, Gili 28, Jon 27

We played with a random setup, and Abraham managed to snag not only a prime food location (2 spots with 5 food), but a prime mining location (2 spots with 2 mountains each). David managed as well as he did because he was somewhat of to the side, and only lost people from his dead middle city; Abraham had to fight with both me and Gili a number of times in the middle.

I thought I was doing reasonably, but David and Gili managed to kill one of my cities and I had a hard time recovering from that.

Dominion

Abraham 33, Jon 16, Gili 16, David 12?

We played with (2) Chapel, Moat, Workshop, (4) Thief, Militia, Feast, (5) Festival, Market, Library, and the guy that draws 4 and everyone draws 1.

I had never played with Chapel and was eager to abuse it. In my first game, I was way too tame in my abuse. I dropped 2 estates, but nothing else. There were a bunch of thieves walking around which discouraged me too greatly in getting silvers and golds. I took a Festival and a Militia, which did well. In the meantime, Abraham took silvers and golds, two libraries, and a few thieves of his own, and was able to clean up.

Abraham 38, Jon 34, Gili 31?, David less

I realized my mistake, and asked to play the same set again. This time I dropped estates and coppers, leaving myself only a few golds and silvers, some moats, and some festivals and one library. I did much better, but I should really have had two libraries. I might have won, then. Actually, I might have won also if Gili hadn't militia'd me when Abraham had a library in hand (and so didn't care) and I didn't have a moat, or had David not ended the game right before my play.

David claims that the following is the correct strategy: buy libraries and festivals and NO treasure at all. Chapel away every single estate and treasure. Use only the Festival bonuses for buying. Every round should give you a Province, assuming that you have at least four Festivals (could pick up a militia if they run out, I guess. This strategy is immune from the thief and the militia.

May 20, 2009

Participants: Jon, Hershel, Gili, Abraham

Small game night. Also game night has been moved back to 7:00 pm until mid-August.

Dominion

Jon 16, Abraham 6, Gili 5, Hershel 5

We played with Witch and no card whatsoever that could block or mitigate the Curses: no Moat, no Chapel, no Remodel, nothing. I took here early on, and began toasting all them. I ended up with 3 curses, which was nothing compared to their 8 or 9 each.

Otherwise, the set had no two cost cards, and only Bureaucrats for other attacking. Plus Village, Mine, and Market and maybe Lab. Once the curses were done, we realized that that was one of the three piles completed toward the game ending, and the Duchy and Village finished it.

Hershel 41, Jon 32, Abraham 21

We played another game to close the evening. Witch again, but this time there was Remodel. Also Thief, Feast, Adventurer, Throne Room. No 3 cost cards. Hershel had much of his copper stolen, and then played Throne Room/Adventurer at least three times, which was incredibly powerful. Throne Room/Witch a few times, too.

I played Throne Room/Feast to snag two Duchys at least once, and bought a slew of other Duchys. Ended with Estates, Duchys, and curses.

Pillars of the Earth

Hershel 45ish, Abraham 33, Jon 32, Gili 26ish

Having complained about the luck in Stone Age last week, especially in contrast to this game, I decided to pull this out to show Abraham how it's done. First play for him.

Boy was I made a fool of.

The luck in this game revolves around a) which professionals are available for purchase in phase 1 versus available by means of Master Workers in phase 2, and b) the order of the Master Workers drawn in phase 2. I've had a little trouble with a) a few times, but nothing to write home about. b) can get a little annoying and tight with money on occasion, but generally speaking, even if you miss first chance to get what you want, you usually have a chance to get something decent. With really bad luck, you get screwed for an entire round.

I got screwed THREE TIMES IN A ROW, in rounds 4, 5, and 6 (out of 6). With my three pieces in a bag of twelve Master Workers, mine didn't get pulled until after AT LEAST 6 others were pulled each time. In one of the rounds, only after 8 others were pulled. There is simply nothing you can do with that. Nothing at all. I'm amazed that I scored as well as I did.

Hershel got the professional who give money for wood, and so had flush cash the whole game, which let him buy things with his Master Workers every round, even at the higher prices. Abraham and Hershel both converted cash into VPs at the end. Gili lost out to my buying all the stone out from under her once, and then she did it to me when I was already dying a slow death, anyway. Otherwise, she doesn't understand what she's doing wrong.

May 13, 2009

Participants: Jon, Hershel, Nadine, Abraham, Bill, Max

All regulars. Nadine is off to the US for two weeks after tonight.

Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation

Jon++, Hershel

I taught this to Hershel. In the first game, he played black. Already near the beginning of the game it was fairly clear that he wasn't doing too well. Black typically kills a number more characters than white. In my case, Gimli killed the Orcs, Boromir took out Sauron, and Gandalf killed something like 5 black pieces as he stormed into Mordor. Black had one piece left to my five, with no chance of finding Frodo.

We switched it around. Gimli still killed the Orcs (on the third move, or something), but his Gandalf only managed to kill one or two dark pieces. After half the cards were gone, the Black Riders rode from Mordor nearly all the way into the Shire and began picking off the weaker characters. Finally he came to the Shire and found Sam, Frodo, and Legolas. Sam tried to save Frodo, but the Black Rider killed them all, and that was that.

Stone Age

Jon 198, Nadine 187, Hershel 152

Hershel brought his copy. This was my first play.

Stone Age is a worker placement, resource management, and set collection game. It artistically and mechanically resembles Pillars of the Earth very closely, but it's a bit lighter. Instead of paying taxes, you have to pay food, which requires a bit more effort.

There's no master builder phase. Instead, the big gimmick here is that the number of workers you put onto an area determines how many dice you get to roll to see how many resources you collect from your location. There are 5 things you can collect, each numbered 2 to 6. When you try to collect the resource, you roll a number of dice equal to the number of workers you allocated to the collection area and then divide the number you rolled by the number of the area, rounded down. For instance, food is 2; if you roll a total of 11 in the food area, you'll collect 5 food. Gold is 6; roll a total of 11 in the gold area, and you'll collect 2 gold.

Therein lies my first and major problem with the game. Dice. Over the course of the game, dice will kind of even out, but not entirely. And the type of decisions you make seem to be full of strategy, but in the end your success is pretty random. There's no trading resources to make up for bad rolls, as there is in Settlers of Catan.

See our final scores? Would it surprise you to learn that I rolled the best, Nadine rolled slightly less well, and Hershel rolled poorly? There you go.

The winner is the one with the most victory points. You gain points in two major ways:

1) by collecting action cards which are available each round. Each action card has a cost of a few resources, gives some immediate benefit, and also gives a point bonus at the end depending on what else you collect. For example, some give you a certain number with which to multiply against the value of your automatic food production at the end of the game. If you get three cards of that type with 2, 1, and 1, and your food production is 8, then you gain a bonus of 4 times 8 at the end of the game.

Some of the cards just have symbols, and you get the square of the number of different symbols you collected in bonus points at the end of the game.

2) by collecting bonus tiles. Each bonus tile requires a certain combination of resources, and gives a bonus in victory points equal to the number value of the resources required to buy it. For example, a bonus tile that requires a gold (6) and two bricks (4 each) to acquire gives a bonus of 14 points when you buy it.

There are ways of increasing your food production (so you pay one less food per round), tools (so you can add to your dice rolls each round), and number of workers (pay one food per worker each round or lose 10 points for each unfed). And each resource area, other than food, only allows 7 workers per area, so occasionally you may be locked out of a particular area (which rarely makes any difference).

The game ends when either the cards, or one stack of bonus tiles runs out. One player can rush the game end by buying tiles from a single stack. That's not unfair, but I don't really like that mechanic too much.

You basically decide to concentrate on one of the few sets to collect. If two people go for the same set, you're both probably screwed and someone else who is trying for something uncontested will win. In our three-player game, we were all acting pretty independently, but people will probably clash more in a four player game.

The master workers drawn from the bag in Pillars of the Earth supplies a tad too much luck, but it's not in the same category as Stone Age. Planning in PotE is more rewarding and more interesting than in this game. But this game is still a decent game with ok mechanics. If a certain strategy is known to be dominant, this will balance out because more than one player will be trying to get it.

I would be much happier to play the game without dice: with dice rolls available for purchase with workers (roll 12 dice, and let players buy the dice rolls with their workers each round) or with each player drawing a random set of how many resources are available to them or to everyone each round, or some-such. Dice. Shudder.

In our game, I estimated the value of the cards versus the tiles and decided against trying for the card collection sets. Instead I took only cards that gave bonuses for the number of tiles you had (and some for the number of people you had), and then took 8 tiles. This gave me the regular points from the tiles and additional card bonuses for the tiles. And I rolled fairly well.

Nadine and Hershel each had a complete set of the card symbols (64 points each, or 8 points/card). Nadine also farmed a lot of gold with a lot of people and took a few tiles that netted her some 40 points for each one. Not enough.

Dominion

Abraham 54*, Max 34, Bill 16

First play for both Bill and Max. Abraham taught the game using the standard introductory set of cards. But he played the Villagers incorrectly, effectively playing them without using up actions to do so, and ending up with far too many actions than he should have. Bill noticed this mid-game. So his final score doesn't really count.

I receive the two BGG bonus kingdoms in the mail, but we haven't played with them, yet.

Cosmic Encounter

Hershel 4, Nadine 3, Abraham 3, Bill 2

Bill hasn't played this since 1991, and this was the first play for Hershel. I tried teaching Max, too, but his head wasn't into it. Too late, too complicated, and too crazy.

Hershel played Anti-Matter, Bill played Bully, Abraham played Vampire, and Nadine played Vulch. I don't usually think of Anti-Matter as very strong, but everyone else did, and he won (they played to 4 bases).

Traders of Carthage

Jon+, Max

First play for Max, first two-player play for me. Everything went along docilely for some time, and no ships were pirated after scoring until mid-game. At that point, I managed to score a 5 point ship alone, and then shortly afterward a 6 point ship alone, at which point Max resigned. He was too tired to be playing anyway.

May 06, 2009

Participants: Jon, Gadi, Hershel, Max, Nadine, Abraham, Gili, Claude

Gadi is the guy who organized the Board Game Studies Colloquium in Israel a few weeks ago. He came to return my games that I had left for the colloquium members to play, to learn how to play Ark of the Covenant, which someone had left him, and to learn a little more about the game group. He is starting a Board Game Studies department within the folklore department of Hebrew U. He dropped by early, around 5:30.

Claude is someone who spoke at the conference about four pretty wooden games that he developed - all abstract or word tiles - and which he is now trying to get manufactured. Turns out that he is also a friend of Gili's. This was his first time enjoying games longer than a half an hour.

Ark of the Covenant

Jon+, Gadi

I'd never played this version of Carcassonne, but it took me only a few moments to learn the rules. It's closer to Hunters and Gatherers than it is to regular Carc. The main changes are a) and ark piece you can move around when you have nothing better to do, and each time it passes a meeple that meeple gains a point; b) single-tile cloisters (or keeps or something) where the person with the most people on or adjacent to it when it is surrounded by tiles on all four sides gains 7 points; c) a double-scoring meeple that you can use once in a city; and d) unfinished items score at the end of the game: full points for roads, half points for cities and cloisters.

On a few of the tiles it was unclear when a road ended or continued, and whether a road that was broken in two by rubble meant that the two sides of the road should be considered a single field or two distinct fields.

I had no problem playing, having played versions of Carcassonne many times. Gadi played around half a game and didn't quite figure out the strategy in that time. We stopped when many more people arrived.

Jon, Abraham

I enjoy Carcassonne but rarely get to play it with my group, but Abraham was willing to try this version. He had played other versions before. When scoring the end of the game, we removed meeples too quickly, and thus are not sure whether Abraham had control of a certain field or we both shared it. So I can't tell you who won.

Dvonn

Hershel+, Dvonn

First play for both. I figured that the best first introduction for Claude would be an abstract. Nadine had borrowed Yinsh, so I gave them this. I think they both liked it, although it will of course take several more games to get a good feel for any sort of strategy.

I saw the last few moves, and on the last move Hershel could have won with a complete victory (total elimination), but he missed it. Instead he won something like 20+ to 3.

Claude

Hershel+, Claude

Yes, Claude named (temporarily) one of his games Claude. It's a pretty wooden game based on Crossword Squares, but each player places three dead spaces before the game starts, there is a limited supply of letter tiles, and you score only if an entire line (wall to dead space, or wall to wall) is a word, 1 point per word length.

I enjoy Crossword Squares, so I enjoy this game, and the components are really nice. of course, it helps if you are fluid in English, which is not the case for Claude.

Gili, Gadi

Or Gadi.

It's Alive

Nadine 50, Max 40, Gili 37, Gadi 33

This is a great gateway game. First play for Gadi, and probably not too many more for Max. I didn't see the game progression. Gadi complimented me on it, afterward.

El Grande

Max 117, Nadine 111, Abraham 102, Hershel 101

It took a while to decide what to play next with newbies in the group, but a few jumped when I mentioned El Grande. Nadine usually wins, but she claims not so in four player games; she nearly won anyway, and anyway I don't believe her. First play for Hershel and Abraham, I believe. Only second or third for Max.

Max was slightly ahead after the first third, 35 to Nadine's 34. By the second third, he was way ahead, 93 to 77. This gap closed considerably at the end, as you can see. But the order didn't change throughout the game.

Settlers of Catan

Jon 10, Gadi 9, Gili 6, Claude 4

While they El Grande'd, I broke out the big guns for Gadi and Claude. Claude had some trepidations about a game that took longer than half an hour, but we assured him that that was because he wasn't playing the right games, aka games that are actually fun to play the whole way through.

Gili gave a lightning explanation all in Hebrew; apparently she's done this for SoC many, many times.

Both Claude and Gadi were suitably impressed by the game; for the first time this evening, Gadi actually came close to winning. On the last round he stole Longest Road from Claude and could have won if his development card was a VP, but it was only a soldier. Claude actually traded him the card he needed to steal Longest Road, much to his chagrin. I was guaranteed the win when Gadi finished, turning up a soldier to claim Longest Army.

It was a crowded board, as it normally is with four players. As first player, I placed my second settlement in the second best remaining spot instead of the best one - the best one would have nearly entirely choked Claude off right from the start of the game, and I didn't want his first game experience to be entirely frustrating. I think I make the right choice.

I ended up forgoing Ore because of that, but I was able to trade for it when I needed it. Wheat was in short supply in the early game, but eventually I built cities and more settlements on the wheat hexes and pulled in 5 at a time. The robber also played a part - I blocked off Gadi's 6 Ore hex several times, while the 8 didn't roll when it was on my 8 Brick hex. So yeah, there was some luck.

Magic: the Gathering

Gili+, Jon

First play for Gili. I taught her how to play in about five minutes, and then I pulled a random bunch of cards from my commons collection; lots and lots of junk. I had to toss half of them just to get anything resembling playable cards. Then I tossed 15 lands and 25 cards to Gili (blue and green), took the same for me (red and white), and we played.

We both had to struggle to come up with anything good to play, but eventually Gili got out a Craw Worm and an Illusionary Forces. I tried to Fissure the Worm, but Gili could Power Sink me for more than I could pay. I sacrificed a lot of little guys for a while, but eventually succumbed.

I gave Gili the cards to take home. I think I need some more lands. If anyone has MtG lands lying around, I could use some extras (especially swamps).

Fairy Tale

Abraham 45, Max 39, Nadine 37, Hershel 34

First play for Max, and possibly Hershel as well. Yeah, the game is pretty random in the end, but it's still a quick and decent filler.