Gaming Session

Fall semester now back in swing, it is game night again! There were many in attendance, so some played Shadow Hunters while I taught a group to play Danish 21, one of my favorite card games from my mission in Denmark. Everyone is dealt 7 cards an values are normal, except 8 is considered the highest card above an Ace. You can trade in a few cards if there are some in the remaining deck. In turn you lay a card opn the pile, it has to be equal to or higher than the previous card, or you MUST lay your lowest. The goal is to have the lowest card in the end. Down to the last card everyone reveals, whoever has the highest card "loses" and keeps that card. The deck is reshuffled and the next round you get as many cards as the number of the card the last person lost with. You keep playing rounds until one person has cards that they lost with that totals 21 or more.

From there we then played a similar card game called the Great Dalmuti, another game that works with larger numbers. In that deck there is one 1, two 2s, three 3s, etc. up to the number twelve. In this one you lay down as many of the SAME card that you have, and the next player lays down the same amount of a number lower than the previous or passes. When everyone passes the player with the last cards on top "takes" it and gets to lead out. Who ever goes out first is the new one to take the position of Great Dalmuti and sits in the order of how you went out: Great Dalmuti, Lesser Dalmuti, Merchants (any number), Lesser Peon, Greater Peon. You try to move up out of the lower classes for a higher poisition, and other rules in the game make that hard to do. I have always love that game.





I was also able to teach the game Hawaii that I liked so much from Strategicon. We played with four players and I went for a boat/island strategy to earn points and ended up swamping the others. Of course I was the only one that had played it before. Again I like the variability in playng the game, and there are many pathways for victory points.

My collection of villages

We did have a special visitor tonight, a stupid fly that keep landing on our game boxes and rolling over. We thought it was dead, but everytime we moved the box it would hop up and then fly away only to later come back on the box and roll over. Freaking me out.

GAMING SESSION: Light & Serious

Holiday gaming at its finest. The Family & Friends edition found the Great Dalmuti (one of the better group card games) to be the hit. We also like to go full out with this game: We wear hats according to rank: The Dalmuitis (greater & lesser) are royalty, the Peons (greater & lesser) are fools, and the rest are Middle working class. Seating also includes a padded chair for the Great Dalmuti, and a bucket for the Greater Peon. The Peons also serve the rest of the group - it's good to be the king! We had quite a few work their way up in the ranks, while some experienced a serious fall in the social strata.

Turbo-Scrabble worked also well in the larger groups and got multiple plays.

When it got serious we broke out Puerto Rico and Bibliotheke. PR is a brain-burner with the many decisions and options at your disposal, and I was locked more than once in some serious AP (analysis paralysis). Considered a gamer's game and one of the highest ever ranked, PR groups many mechanics and innovative game ideas into one. Early quarries and a late surge in production and buying the Guild Hall sneaked out a close victory here.

With Bibliotheke we discovered some more good feedback and areas to slightly improve, especially in how the Black Market works and action point balance. It depends on the group of players, but I am considering putting in more direct attack opportunities. Victory points in the Event stack, using the Black Market and going for higher point books was the key in this session.