Board games last night went well. specially because we played with slotzo.com/card-games — we learned a new quick Japanese game, Hanabi, which is sort of an odd combination of the kids’ game Hedbanz and solitaire. It’s cooperative — you’re working together to build stacks of fireworks out of your hands, but you can’t see your own hand, and rely on the information other players give you. Fun, would play again. Could play with older kids, I think.
After that, some rounds of Slash, which I particularly appreciate for the chaotic time in the party when people are coming and going, since it’s so easy to step in and out of the game. The game consists of many many cards with characters out of literature and pop culture, name and brief description, and you’re trying to make romantic pairings out of them. Very silly, lots of justifying why, for example, Gandhi and the Obelisk (from 2001: A Space Odyssey) would make a good pairing. Or, more typically, the Highlander and Moriarty.
Took a break to build a fire, though it was almost too warm for it — this weather, weird. It’s going to be a high of 80 tomorrow. Still, enjoyable — took some music out there and hung out for a while, helping people toast marshmallows and hot dogs. Anand pronounced the hot dogs ‘as good as the ones at school’ and devoured an entire one, so I’ll call that a success. We could use a little more light out there, though — it’s hard to see what you’re doing when you’re s’more-building with just the campfire to see by. I lit our two tiki torches, but they only helped a little. More torches? Possibly. Fire good.
And then back inside to a game of Settlers — we had six players at that point, so we broke out my expansion set for the first time. I actually think I may like Settlers better this way — it feels like it moves faster with the extra special build phase. Elliott stomped us, though in my defense, my strategy kind of got blown up because I didn’t know a rule — I didn’t realize that if someone builds a settlement in your road, it ‘breaks’ it, so you can’t use both parts towards ‘longest road.’ Two critical points I could’ve used! Ah well. Sort of funny that in my prior games of Settlers that’s never come up, but I think I’ve only played a dozen or so games total, so it’s not that surprising.
Got to bed around 11, which is late for me, so I’m moving a bit slowly today, but I have Survivor anthology editing + stacks of paper grading, so I’d better get going. Turning off Facebook to concentrate, so have a good Sunday, folks!
Have you ever played Kriegspiel? When I was a grad student at Michigan State (1965-67) we played it almost every day at lunchtime, but I have not found anyone else interested in it over the years.
Nope, don’t know that one…
Here is the wikipedia article on the game. The only real differences between our rules and the ones listed here were that each player had a set of the opponent’s pieces to use for guesswork; pawn tries were announced to both players, not just the one whose move it was; and promotions were announced (i. e., a pawn becomes a piece when it reaches the eighth rank) but not what square nor to what piece.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegspiel_(chess)