Category Archives: Non-video Games

Dominion

I bought Dominion. That’s the first Eurogame I’ve bought. Okay, I played a bunch of other Eurogames before at a board game shop (while they are opening and hence playing is free; they didn’t have Dominion, though), but none of them was bought. On retrospect, I should have bought some; they are probably cheaper than this $40 for Dominion, but oh well.

Here as college (university, whatever) students, we need break time. While I do play computer games and what else often, sometimes it’s good to play board games with friends. This has never been a regularity until when I brought Saboteur and Bang! from home, though; added with Catan that my friend bought and the usual French deck of cards for some general fun, we started playing regularly.

At some point, we discussed about buying another game, because why not. A few came to my mind. Carcassonne was rejected by a friend because he has played it and it wasn’t fun. I didn’t even propose Paperback because nobody would play an English-heavy game. I played Quantum on Board Game Arena quite often, and I enjoyed it, but it’s probably difficult to teach. Also, it’s awfully expensive on the online market here, and international shipping is equally expensive. Other Eurogames didn’t quite come to my mind, so we settled with Dominion. It was initially mostly a joke, but the more I thought of it, the more I wanted to get my hands on a physical copy of it. Also, it would be the first time ever I bought a Eurogame.

And thus the deed was done. I actually ordered it a few days ago, and it arrived yesterday. It will be left there until the midterm week (next week) is done, though, because my friends are busy studying. (I’m also studying, but not as much; after all, I’m still typing this post.) Let’s just hope I don’t have the impulse to buy much more and drained my money that’s supposed to be for my life here…

Also, just because, I observed that the most common confusion for novice Dominion players is the text “+1 Action” (and “+2 Actions”). Most players think that you need to pause your resolution on that card to play another action immediately. (It actually means you get one extra Action you can use later in the turn, but you need to finish the card first before using it.) Which just means I should play my first game with some tokens to represent Actions and Buys.

Six-Player Card Games

Recently, I’ve been playing cards with my siblings and cousins. The total number of players is six. There’s not a lot of games that can be played with six people but only uses one standard deck of cards (maybe with paper and pencil, but preferably not), so I’ve been inventing random stuff. Here’s a (probably incomplete, if I missed stuff) list of those random inventions. Note that these are certainly prototypes, although some are of better shape (read: playable) than others. I might add a few more ideas here later.

Perudo

(In fact, works pretty well with 2-7 players. With more players, reduce each player’s starting life count; keep the total less than 40.)

Initially, each player has five “lives”. Usually people will just be honest with their life count, but if necessary, keep track with paper and pencil. Your objective is to be the last person with lives.

In each round, deal each player as many cards as they have lives. They can see the cards, but shouldn’t show them to anyone else.

Each player, starting from some agreed person (usually the one after the last person to make a bid in the previous round, or just choose somebody for the first round), declares a bid containing a number and a suit; this is a bid that “among all cards dealt, there are at least these many cards of this suit”. Bids may not go smaller. A bid with higher number beats a bid with lower number; for bids of equal number, a bid of “stronger” suit beats a bid of “weaker” suit. (Suits are ranked in some predetermined fashion; I use Big Two’s diamond < club < heart < spade, but there’s actually no difference.)

At any time, a player may challenge a bid. In this case, everyone opens their cards. If the bid is met (there’s enough cards of the given suit), the challenger loses a life; otherwise, the bidder loses a life. Only the latest bid can be challenged.

Optional: To each bid, you may also declare “exact”. If this is challenged and there are exactly as many cards of the suit that you stated, you also gain one life. If there are more cards, you lose one life. A normal bid and an exact bid are of equal strength; you cannot reply “eight hearts” with “exactly eight hearts”.

Partners

(Better for 4.)

Just a trick-taking game. The objective is to meet a bid contract.

Discard one rank (for a 48-card deck) and agree on some scoring system. Examples:

  • Aces worth 4, Kings worth 3, Queens worth 2, Jacks worth 1. Discard Twos.
  • Aces worth 1, Twos worth 2, Threes worth 3, Fours worth 4. Discard Tens.
  • Each trick is worth 1 point (read: each card is worth 1/6 points). Discard Twos.

Deal 8 cards for each player. (For 4 playing, don’t discard a rank and deal 13 to each. It’s possible to have 5 playing, although I’ve yet to figure out a good way for the cards; maybe remove two Twos and deal 10 each? Add 3 jokers and deal 11 each?)

The first phase is the auction. Each player may make a bid that beats the previous bid, or passes; if a player passes, they cannot bid again. A bid is an amount of points, together with a declaration of a trump suit (or that the deal is played at no trumps). Like above, larger number beats smaller number; for equal numbers, no trump beats trump, and suits are ranked in some fashion (again, I use Big Two). The bid is a declaration of getting at least that many points, with the given trump.

After everyone but one player passes, the last bidder is the declarer. Their target is to meet the given contract. They have partners, however; they declare two cards that they don’t hold themselves. (If 4 playing, declare 1 card.) The holders of these cards will be the declarer’s teammates (although the cards are not revealed); at the end, points counted by them will be counted for the declarer. Each player plays a card just like in trick-based games (follow suit if possible, but anything if not; highest trump wins, otherwise highest in the suit led wins).

After all tricks are played, count the points in the cards won, and add up the points in the partnership. If the contract is met, then the team is successful, otherwise the opposing team is successful.

If both called cards are on the same person, they score double (they only need half of the points to reach the contract). (Optional: bad luck; they need to work around having a two-man team for a contract designed for three.)

Bridge Puzzles

Revisiting an old Bridge puzzle posted in this blog about 9-11 months ago, now generalized to 8 variants.

Optimize: Get the total HCP held by a partnership as low as possible, such that there exists a pair of hands with a total of that much HCP and a) for any, b) for some configuration of hands that the other partnership is holding, and given a) best play, b) worst play from the opponents, you can always get a contract of a) 7S, b) 7NT.

My solution for aab (for any, best play, 7NT) was 19 HCP. I’ll try to get all solved.

Blog productivity rises to an all-time high

Yeah. I can even think of the genres for Puzzles 34-35. I might also clean up my blog (remove unused categories, add tags, etc).

Anyway. Recap of things.

I recently played BANG!. The game was pretty insane 😛 But I liked it. And Wikipedia has an article for it. Cool.

Also, I recently played Monopoly Deal. A bit of stupid imbalanced stuffs (seems like too much luck), but a good idea for a card game.

Even another one. I recently played Trump and Rummy, two card games using the standard French deck. They are said to originate from Indonesia. Really? If curious and want to compare, ask me about the rules.

Yay. Card games ftw.

Long time no post

And hence I should let my readers to know that this blog is not dead.

Things I learn:

– Double negative (2C – 2D!, 2H – 3C!) is bad for games. 3H is down 1, although we hold like 8 or 9 hearts (I forgot) and stoppers in two side suits. Yeah, only two side suits. The other has two losers before I get it void.

– In Virtual Villagers 5: New Believers, HEATHENS CAN DIE. I’m not sure where my Heathen Master Scientist went, but it certainly made me unable to complete the puzzle involving them and another involving the Chief. Which means no earthquakes. Ugh, I don’t even get revive. No fish + 43 people = 0 food. Currently restarting.

– In osu!, streams are hell. In Pachelbel’s Canon (Funtastic Power!), Canon difficulty, I failed at the last 5 seconds of the song because apparently I sped up my rhythm during the last stream, missing the later notes and eventually the attempt. 😦

– Making sufficiently hard geo problems is hard 😦 Making sufficiently hard combo is easy though 😀 (written by the mind of a combo-lover-and-geo-hater olympiad math person)

– I can’t make good room designs 😦 This means I will rarely post Surveyors Heyawake. I’m absolutely sure it has more tricks than what I have in Puzzle 4 though.

– Yay. What do you call it if you have a memory card filled with DS games? Whatever it is, here’s a story. I have two DS, and I also have a MicroSD-to-computer “hub” or something. So, I copied my save data of Pokemon Platinum to computer (and also backed up the contents of one memory card), then do a trade (well, eight trades to be precise) between my Pt and HG. Later, after I finished moving all I want to HG, I’ll see the result of replacing back the back up as my actual Pt data. So, cloning in a new form perhaps? The Pokemon that will disappear along with the temporary Pt are worthless ones. Oh hey I haven’t caught a Magikarp in HG.

– Also in conjunction with above, I used whatever the “cheat-by-toggling-which-cheats-you-want-to-use-when-you-load-the-game-by-the-OS-(or-whatever)” to get the three event items in Pt (Member Card, Oak’s Letter, Azure Flute). I caught Darkrai and Shaymin, but Arceus is Lv80 and my team is only Lv74 at most 😦 Whatever. And hey Shaymin. Yeah I sent it to my HG too. Currently training.

– I decided to recruit people as “development team” of URLQuest 3. If you have ideas of what to make a good online riddle website, e-mail me. Did I write my e-mail in the About page?

1NT-5

Because I can’t stand not to post a funny bridge game.

N ♠73 ♥T765 ♦AJT932 ♣8
E ♠KT8542 ♥AK8 ♦Q6 ♣K9
S ♠J96 ♥Q9 ♦K8 ♣AQJ652
W ♠AQ ♥J432 ♦Q754 ♣T743

Bidding: E1â™  Snb W1NT Nnb Enb Snb

West is dealer with 1 NT.

Guess what happens… Hint: Notice the long suits both I (South) and my partner (North) hold.

Trick 1: ♦J from North takes
Trick 2: ♦A from North takes
Trick 3: ♦T from North takes, South discards club (bad play after seeing the hands; we could get 1NT-6 here)
Tricks 4-6: Cashing diamonds, West discards one club

Trick 7: ♣8 from North, South takes with ♣J
Trick 8: ♣A from South takes
Trick 9: ♣Q from South takes
Tricks 10-11: Cashing clubs

Tricks 12-13: Gave up against East’s â™ K and ♥A

Yay. Besides the obvious miscommunication of going NT instead of spades (2â™  would be met here), luck because East’s ♣K is finessed, and misplay because West discarded one club before the run of clubs starts. If West didn’t discard a club, we could only cash three clubs tricks.