Picked up my copy of San Juan (recieved in exchange for a massive collection of rpg sourcebooks I no longer wanted, composed 40-50% of books I had recently received from
The last game of San Juan was blazingly fast. In it, I won with a ridiculous “strategy”. I started off with a smithy (small reduction in cost for production buildings, good to build early) and a guild hall (extra points for production buildings, important to have built by the end of the game). I kept the guild hall in hand throughout most of the game. I had 8 production buildings, most of which were useless decorations, one smithy, one quarry and the guild hall at the end. Half my points came from the guild hall. And I won by 1 point.
I still suck at the game, because I don’t build up a good income stream at the start. Sort of a metaphor for my life I suppose. =) Anyway, sleep now.
Afterwards, an abbreviated conversation with
I also applied for the summer research assistantship. And baked oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Overall, a good day.
What are San Juan, Tigris & Euphrates, and Gang of Four?
I was going to ask the same question, they almost sound like card games ?
I was going to answer his question, but I got caught up in checking out Attention Deficit Girl, and no, the irony is not lost on me. =)
Answers posted in response to‘s comment.
San Juan is a card game based off Puerto Rico. San Juan is much less complicated than Puerto Rico, though. In San Juan, you have a handful of cards, and these cards are potential buildings. You can build by spending other cards (also potentially buildings) from your hand. When you build a building, you lay it down in front of you, and get its benefits, usually a tweak of the rules in your favor. At the end of the game, when someone has built their 12th building, you total up the points for all the buildings you’ve built, and whoever has the most, wins. The mechanics get a bit more involved than that, but that’s the basic idea.
Gang of Four is a card game where you’re trying to get rid of your hand. You have to lay down the same number of cards as the person who went before you, but it has to be a better hand. You get points (and in this case, points are bad) based on the number of cards left in your hand when the first guy goes out.
Tigris and Euphrates is a board game, where you put down tiles, leaders, and eventually monuments on a board of various types: red, black, blue, and green, for spiritual, political, agricultural and mercantile, respectively. You get points of specific types/colors. Your score is based on the minimum of the different colors. For instance, 5 black points, 3 red points, 8 green points, and 2 blue points, is a score of 2, because your lowest was blue, which was 2. There are many more rules going on; it’s a fairly simple game to learn to play, but a complicated one to figure out how to win.
I picked up San Juan on Tuesday, but I haven’t had a chance to play it yet. The people who have played PR hundreds or thousands of times seem to approve of it, though.
I like it. Not as much as I like puerto rico, in part because it has so much more randomness, but I definitely like it. The bonus is that even people who are sick of puerto rico will play it with me. =)
Whereabouts in town would that RA job be located?
Why the lovely umn west bank campus. =) Wh