BONUS: Weekend Gaming

I typically only post when we play a game for the first time, but for quite a while now we've been re-playing favorites and can't seem to get back to the "counting all our games" idea that initiated this blog.  We got a particularly good amount of gaming in a couple of weekends ago, however, and we did play a new game - just not one that's on our shelves, so I thought I'd put up a post.  The photos above and below are of some of the choices that were available, contributions to the stacks having come from us, our two youngest sons, and my brother.  We ended up playing Agatha Christie's Death on the Cards, The Quacks of Quedlinburg, Barenpark, and Rook.

The first game, Agatha Christie's Death on the Cards, was a new one to us, but it belongs to my brother, so it isn't part of the count.

In this game each player has a hand but also some secret cards that are face-down on the table.  One player is the murderer, and there can be an accomplice as well.  

Once the murderer is identified or once the card deck runs out, the game is over.  If the card deck runs out and the murderer hasn't been identified, then the murderer wins (the accomplice too if you are playing with that card).  If the other players identify the murderer before the deck runs out, then they win.

During play, secret cards in front of players end up being flipped up.  On one of the secret cards is the fact that the person is the murderer and on the other is the fact that that person is the accomplice.  Other secrets are more along the lines of really bad social faux pas or criminal tendencies of the character.  These cards basically act as a buffer for the murderer and accomplice, as a player can generally choose for themselves which card to reveal when required to do so by the action of another player.

Next we played Quacks of Quedlinburg, which seems to be quite a favorite of David's.  He takes a lot of time making decisions about which chips to purchase each turn, but then he's very "meticulous" about strategy in any game that involves such.  I do like the game, but I almost invariably lose this one, and I cannot figure out why.  I try to mix it up with my strategy from game-to-game, but it seems I'm never the leader in any turn and am also never close to being the winner at the end of the game.  The frustrating thing is that I just can't figure out  what I'm getting wrong each time - and also since the luck of the draw (and not just strategy) is a big component in the game.

We also played Barenpark -- always fun to build one's own zoo!

And, the old family stand-by, Rook.  Now that we've been vaccinated we're back to playing card games with my parents rather than Liar's Dice, for which everyone has their own game pieces and no one is handing things back and forth to others.  I think that if David had to choose only one game he could play for the rest of his life it would be Rook.  I think it's just the purity and classic nature of a card game involving trump.

Since we play on Sunday nights after evening church service and a pizza dinner we don't have time for a lot of hands, but we get in as many as we can.  My dad won this particular week and the next week, but Mom won last night, with Dad in close second.  My mom almost never takes the bid, but the high cards tend to gravitate towards her in the deal somehow, and she is often called as partner!

Aside from the games played during the weekend I focused on above, we've recently played 7 Wonders, various formats of Magic the Gathering, Splendor, Cribbage (a particularly good game for a hospital stay -- see following paragraph), Scribbage, and a whole lot of Camel (C)up.

This post took me a while to get up as it's been a rather eventful time around here both good and bad.  Prior to the gaming weekend in this post David had a heart attack and was hospitalized Sunday through Wednesday of that week (stents put in and all that).  It was completely unexpected, and he had no risk factors or warning signs whatsoever - and is only 55 years old.  He's doing well at this point and was so happy to be out of the hospital and playing!  His heart attack happened just before the second-to-last week of his school year, so he REALLY had to scramble to catch up on work once he got out of the hospital.  As an education coordinator for a home-schooling charter school he'd been in the middle of end-of-year meetings with parents and students and was finalizing all files and paperwork, and it all had to be completed before the end, so you do what you have to do  .  .  .  

On a more positive note, our third grandchild was born last week, and we headed out on the long(ish) road trip to southern California to welcome her and to try to provide a little help to our kids and grandkids as they settled into a new family structure with sweet baby Sophie.  We're sure hoping to see them quite a bit more this summer - both here in Nor. Cal. and there in So. Cal.  (Our oldest grandchild is 4, and his dad is already teaching him chess.  Both of the oldest two play the Tiny Polka Dot game and Candy Land, and I played Hi-Ho Cherry-O with my 2-year-old granddaughter who is already very good at counting and one-to-one correspondence, so I'm quite sure we have a lot of good family gaming to look forward to in the future!)

After this year of remote teaching I'm really focused in a lot of different directions and on a lot of projects I had to put aside over that period of time - part of that involves just the basics of getting the house and yard (and my body) back in shape - but a major part of what I'm putting my time into, rather than continuing my game-counting project, is research for a novel I'm writing that is set in the 16th century.  One character was a gambler/mathematician who ended up writing a book about probability relating to games of chance -- technically the first book on the subject, though Pascal and Fermat generally get credit for the first legitimate exploration of probability.  One of the games that was gambled on back then was the card game Primero, which was popular all over Europe at the time.  So one of my projects will be to learn to play Primero. No one is exactly sure how it was done, but I'm putting together what I'm finding as I read his book with what I see other people having pieced together online.  I want to play it in order, partly, to get insight into my characters, but also because I love the history of gaming!  So hopefully there will be a post about that reasonably soon!