BONUS: Gaming Early 2022

 

Well, we continue to play games I've already "counted" and games that aren't on OUR shelves, so the count remains on hold.  David and I played a new game tonight, a game that my brother left here for us to try.  I'd been grading midterms all week, so it took us a while to get to this.  It was a nice way to end the week - very fun game - also very pretty, which is always nice.  We played two rounds.  David won the first, and I won the second.  I can see that the more we play this game the more it is going to change on us as we guard against each other and try to out-strategize each other.  One issue to work out is whether to try to play as many cards as possible as fast as possible or to try to get things set up so as to be able to play higher point cards, but always with the fear that the other person will mess up the grid if you try to do this over a couple of turns.  Each card has a point value.  You get to play the card if the picture on the card matches part of the set-up of the grid.  In order to alter the grid (by flipping a card or interchanging two orthogonally adjacent cards) you discard a card; you get to make one change per discarded card.  So it's continually a matter of deciding what cards to keep, what cards to discard, and whether or not the things you try to set up are going to remain set up reasonably well for your next turn.  The game ends once a player has laid down 10 cards but with each player getting an equal number of turns; whoever has the most points wins!


Below is my win: 23 points.  (There are a couple of ways to earn bonus points.  If you're worried about my arithmetic here in terms of how I got 23, it's because I played the most cards worth 1 point.)
A week or two ago we play Karuba, which is a game on our shelves, but I've counted it in a previous post.


Splendor - also on our shelves - also already counted - is one we keep coming back to recently.  David CRUSHES me every time we play!
We played this next game, Citadels, on Caleb's Golden Birthday weekend earlier this year.  We had some friends of Caleb over to help celebrate, and this was a fun way to get to know them.  I don't have much to say about this one, at least not for now.  I'd have to play it another time or two.  I think I just had too much going on that weekend to really process this one - and it's been more than a month ago at this point.  I've been very lazy about posting.  (Now that I think about it I realize we play at least one other new-to-us game that weekend; I think it was a Sherlock Holmes mystery game.)

Here was are with Karissa, Brenda, and the guys.  Happy Birthday, Caleb!
Gaming is what we do with friends and family.  Over the President's Day weekend we had a chance to get down south and see our oldest son and his family.  Here's a very casual picture.  I find that when we get together the time always ends with me saying, "I wanted to get a family picture," and it never happens -- so this was very casual -- just, "Hey, guys, go stand together there!"  They were kind enough to oblige.
Here too Splendor came out.  We played two nights in a row.  Brianna won on Saturday night, and I won on Sunday night -- rare wins for the ladies.  Go ladies!!
We do continue to play Rook every Sunday with my parents, my brother and Jacob and Caleb.  Here too a rare win for me this past Sunday!
David has raised score-keeping to the level of an art, and we have a whole archive of them!  (Again, as you can see, we keep coming back to our beloved classics, so it's hard for me to finish the "count," which was the original purpose of this blog!)



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