The Festival of Lights

The most recent Gathering of Friendless coincided with Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights. This festival commemorates the legendary time when Rama returned to Ayodhya after helping Vishwamitra destroy the demons of the Dandaka-van and demolishing Ravana's army at Mithila using the power of the Brahm-astra. You must remember that. Anyway, it's something like a Hindu Christmas, and with our household being as Hindu as it is Christian (i.e. not at all), we lit some candles and got some Indian sweets and celebrated Diwali. That makes sense, doesn't it?

So the subtitle of the Gathering of Friendless episode was "The Festival of Lights". As the only "light" games I could think of were Nacht der Magier, which only takes 4 players and is played in the dark anyway; and Khet which is a 2 player game; we completely ignored the light theme.

We started with a two-team game of Bamboleo while waiting to see who might arrive. CyberKev made a mathematical mistake and took his team down very efficiently, leaving the team of Aaron, Hubertus and John to win 21 points to -1.

We'd all played Trans(Europa|America) but only a few of us had played the Vexation expansion, so we then played Vexation with TransEuropa. When I read the rules of Vexation I was sure I'd hate it - why take a great game and make it malicious? - but it's not malicious at all, it just has blocking. That I can cope with. Most of us didn't get the hang of the expansion at all, with the game only lasting two rounds, with Aaron on 12, me on 10, and nobody else above 1. Even Scrabblette, who is very good at the Trans games, did very badly.

We progressed to one of CyberKev's favourites, Frank's Zoo, which apparently takes up to seven players. There were six of us, and it seemed to me that the game was significantly weaker with six than with four. It wasn't likely that there was a pair of anything in someone's hand, and I found it hard to judge what might be a good play. Scores were very even for the whole game, with Scrabblette eventually winning on 24 and last place being up to 15.

We then played something we'd been hoping to play for months - Mystery of the Abbey. This is one of the four games I rate a 10 (Scrabble, Trias and Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation), and I don't often play it. CyberKev argues that it's too chaotic and the card-passing takes away from the deductive aspect; but I say that if the card-passing has much of an effect you're not very good at the deduction. Last time we played this at Critical Mass I stole the win from Scrabblette so there was some tension at our end of the table - she determined not to let it happen again, me determined to be even more cunning this time.

Very early in the game we discovered that all of the Fathers were in people's hands, so they didn't do it. There weren't many clear clues for a while then until the second round when the event at Mass was that novices were confined to their chambers. For this event each player places a novice in front of their cellula. Scrabblette didn't have one, so there were 5 novices on the board. A few people asked questions about the other novices and I realised that with 5 on the board, one in my hand, one in Aaron's hand, and none with anybody else, that there were two missing. There was one card in the Parlatorium, so the killer must be a novice. A good deduction I thought, but way too obvious and I was sure everybody saw it.

CyberKev immediately went to the Capitulum and revealed that the killer was a novice. I was trying to figure out how I could figure out which novice. I tried to get around to see as many of the face-down cards as I could in the round, but only managed to get to two of them, one of which I knew about already. That left 4 novices I hadn't seen. Then Scrabblette went to the Capitulum and revealed that the killer was a brother. HUH?

Scrabblette had figured out that there were 8 novices in play, so therefore the killer couldn't be a novice. Except that there are 9 novices. One of those completely stupid screw-ups that happen from time to time. But the best part was, at the second mass she was protecting her brother cards and so passed me a novice - the one from the Parlatorium. That narrowed it down to three! I was first player in the third round and hot-footed it to the Capitulum! I wasn't really clear who the killer was, but I had a suspicion that Hubertus had novice Guy, and I knew which of the other two novices Aaron didn't have... so I guessed that was the guy. Further questions between other players while I was on my way only served to confirm my guess, and when I arrived at the Capitulum I accused the correct killer.

In the post-game analysis, I think it was the novice in my hand that saved me. Nobody knew who he was, and Scrabblette, who was definitely smart enough to Figure These Things Out, was off on the wild goose chase with the brothers. Nobody else quite cottoned on that my novice was the last one who wasn't the killer, and maybe they hadn't seen the novice cards outside the cellula in the second round either. In the end, it was an honest victory to me, which is satisfying but not as much fun as stealing a win from somebody else.

The final game for the evening was Unspeakable Words which is becoming a comfortable favourite, even though we do keep discovering new rules. It's a quick and easy word game, and despite the die hating me I always enjoy it. As often happens, Scrabblette thrashed us.

My stats program tells me that this day was my best day of gaming ever. Here's hoping we can continue in that vein!

The Gathering of Friendless

I'm behind in my blogging but I should mention that I've started my new game event, the Gathering of Friendless. For the inaugural meeting Scrabblette was keen to play and the kid was with his mum so we invited people who liked to play word games and their husbands. The attendees ended up being me, Scrabblette, CyberKev, Jane and Hubertus, and we didn't play any word games at all.

We started with TransAmerica which ended up as a tie between Scrabblette and me. Then we moved on to Bamboleo which ended up as a tie between CyberKev and me. Then we played China which ended up as a tie between CyberKev and me until CyberKev managed to find, scribbled in the margin of the appendix to the codicil of the coda of the amendment to the German edition of the rules that if there was a tie then he won because he'd played the fewest pieces. Pah!

Then it was time to go to sleep, and we all agreed we should do it again.

They Have Some Really Good German Games In Germany (Part 2)

More games from the Magnus-Spiele catalogue.

Chinagold - this is a two player abstract that looks very pretty and that I'd really like to try. Only 26 Euro! Must be real gold, I guess.

Digit - is an older game where you draw cards that have stick patterns, and you have to adjust your current stick pattern to match what's on the card. Maybe something like Make'n'Break in Flatland? Only 9 Euro.

Dschamál - those wacky Germans are at it again with this one! You have a bag of bits. Two players simultaneously put their hands in the bag and try to find the bits they need. There's a camel-shaped bit and some other shapes and colours and you get points depending on the set you collect. Sounds interesting in the same way as Bamboleo and Bausack. For 25 Euro I expect the camel will clean up after itself.

Fragile - I'm a sucker for nice bits, and this game has got me sucked in Big Time. It's gorgeous. It's about dock workers in Shanghai pushing boxes around. I just can't stop looking at the photos. Only 44 Euro, but oh, so pretty!

Bring on the Hedonism!

Hedonism:

1.	the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the highest good.

2.	devotion to pleasure as a way of life

One of my favourite blogs is xkcd.com. Amongst the silliness and touching thoughts for the lovesick there are some pearls of wisdom such as this one:


It turns out that I'm going to be spending quite a few days over Christmas playing games. After all, I hope to play all the ones that I give at least once :-). But that's my reward for being a brilliant yet miserable and grumpy Java programmer for the rest of my life. If I could figure out how to arrange my life to increase the playing of games and decrease the misery, I would. I'd keep the brilliance and the grumpiness though.

It also means that while other people are buying investment properties and cars and food for their kids and so on, I'm buying games. I don't feel guilt about buying games - all I feel guilt about is not playing the games that I do buy! My collection is quite adequate now, and I think I'd like to focus more on the unusual games rather than the latest hot thing (except BattleLore, nothing will stop me buying BattleLore), and unusual games can be more expensive. So what? My money, my life... I've got the Settlers 10th Anniversary Edition, Hameln, Hamsterrolle, Bamboleo... all of the outrageously expensive ones that are just so cool! BTW, see my latest geeklist.

When I die I want the kid to remember me as a dad who was a hell of a lot of fun to be with. Bring on the games.