post-beach
May. 25th, 2010 02:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishMartin Gardner, RIP. Pop's copies of (some of) Gardner's collected Mathematical Games columns from Scientific American made math fun, although I never associated them with "math" as a discipline. (What do you mean, I could make that into a vocation?) And Annotated Alice is an absolute classic, and you are seriously missing out if you've not read it.
Last week was my gaming group's annual week-long beach trip. It's starting to feel a bit more, I don't know, like a normal thing to do. Like I can go and just relax, and not worry so much about being surrounded by people.
I played a lot of games, of course. I brought along a pre-release copy of Innovation and got a lot of practice teaching that, but not a lot of practice at actually winning. It's a moderately chaotic card game with a loose civ-building theme and a very neat mechanic in the form of 'splaying' piles of cards to get some use out of the ones on the bottom. It also lets you possibly blow up the world if things are going poorly. What's not to like?
I also played my first game of crayon rails. My second and third as well. These are economic/logistics games that have each player constructing a rail line across a map (I played "Sci-fi Mars," "Europe," and "Generic Fantasy Setting") between cities, and picking up and delivering goods to/from the cities. They're pretty much exactly the kind of thing I like: efficiency and pathbuilding and theme. For times when I'm not really all that interested in playing directly against other people I think they'll do well. (It didn't hurt that I won all three. . .)
The only other game of particular note I played was Stronghold, which I've been interested in for awhile now. It's a two-player game with one player assaulting the other's castle. The invader can do various things, like building catapults or casting spells, but everything zie does gives the defender more time to prepare, in the form of action tokens. After one play as the defender I think I liked it but I'm not sure how often I'll get a chance to play.
There was also beach-walking and swimming and thrift-storing and a pilgrimage to Island Books (the smaller one in Kitty Hawk, not the awesome two-story one up in Corolla), and crepes for breakfast, and donuts from Duck Donuts, and sleeping lateish and a big bathtub and good company and generally a pretty nice week off. I did not get badly sunburnt, thanks to grey weather for much of the week making it more exciting to stay inside. I also didn't get any writing done, or finish reading Anathem. Oh well.
It was. . . differently masking than usual. And nice to be able to let the gamer part of me out for an entire week. Even Origins doesn't really have the same vibe, there's too much other noise there, too many people I don't know.
We came home on Satyrday through the obligatory 95N traffic, which included a car fire this time. I don't think I've ever driven past a still-going car fire before. It was. . . kinda scary, honestly. The entire front half was engulfed in flames. I was a lane and a half away and I felt warm as I drove by.
The cats were more or less happy to see us. At least, they were both willing to sit on the couch with us Satyrday evening and most of Sunday, which I suppose counts as a welcome.
Work is very much not the beach. Even if they let me go barefoot most of the time.
Last week was my gaming group's annual week-long beach trip. It's starting to feel a bit more, I don't know, like a normal thing to do. Like I can go and just relax, and not worry so much about being surrounded by people.
I played a lot of games, of course. I brought along a pre-release copy of Innovation and got a lot of practice teaching that, but not a lot of practice at actually winning. It's a moderately chaotic card game with a loose civ-building theme and a very neat mechanic in the form of 'splaying' piles of cards to get some use out of the ones on the bottom. It also lets you possibly blow up the world if things are going poorly. What's not to like?
I also played my first game of crayon rails. My second and third as well. These are economic/logistics games that have each player constructing a rail line across a map (I played "Sci-fi Mars," "Europe," and "Generic Fantasy Setting") between cities, and picking up and delivering goods to/from the cities. They're pretty much exactly the kind of thing I like: efficiency and pathbuilding and theme. For times when I'm not really all that interested in playing directly against other people I think they'll do well. (It didn't hurt that I won all three. . .)
The only other game of particular note I played was Stronghold, which I've been interested in for awhile now. It's a two-player game with one player assaulting the other's castle. The invader can do various things, like building catapults or casting spells, but everything zie does gives the defender more time to prepare, in the form of action tokens. After one play as the defender I think I liked it but I'm not sure how often I'll get a chance to play.
There was also beach-walking and swimming and thrift-storing and a pilgrimage to Island Books (the smaller one in Kitty Hawk, not the awesome two-story one up in Corolla), and crepes for breakfast, and donuts from Duck Donuts, and sleeping lateish and a big bathtub and good company and generally a pretty nice week off. I did not get badly sunburnt, thanks to grey weather for much of the week making it more exciting to stay inside. I also didn't get any writing done, or finish reading Anathem. Oh well.
It was. . . differently masking than usual. And nice to be able to let the gamer part of me out for an entire week. Even Origins doesn't really have the same vibe, there's too much other noise there, too many people I don't know.
We came home on Satyrday through the obligatory 95N traffic, which included a car fire this time. I don't think I've ever driven past a still-going car fire before. It was. . . kinda scary, honestly. The entire front half was engulfed in flames. I was a lane and a half away and I felt warm as I drove by.
The cats were more or less happy to see us. At least, they were both willing to sit on the couch with us Satyrday evening and most of Sunday, which I suppose counts as a welcome.
Work is very much not the beach. Even if they let me go barefoot most of the time.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-25 07:32 pm (UTC)Crayon Rails: I think this is one of the cases where I got turned off of a type of game based on the people who play it, rather than the game (which I've never actually tried). I would like to try it if it's as you say, since I really like things that aren't confrontational now. Part of why I like Loyang so much is that about all you can do to someone else is not give them as good a card as they'd like.
I'm very interested in what you think of Anathem. How far along are you?
no subject
Date: 2010-05-26 01:33 pm (UTC)There's a bit more interaction/confrontation in the crayon rail games than in Loyang. There's a map, so there are some routes into cities that are cheaper/faster/better than others, so there can be competition for those routes. Plus only a limited number of people can build into the smaller cities. Even accounting for that, the stress mostly comes from trying to run your railroad as efficiently as possible.
Anathem is pretty good stuff. I'm getting towards the end; I'm at the (I think) third Messal, after everyone's been given ID tags and assigned to cells in the event of another strike from the Geometers. Will have more to say once I'm done with it.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-26 05:58 pm (UTC)Crayon rails sound a little like Transamerica, or Power Grid. Which I guess makes sense.
Good, then you've gotten past the boring bit where he's at the north pole.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-27 06:07 pm (UTC)There's a lot less overt blocking etc in crayon rails than there is in Power Grid. The track building is a bit like TransAmerica if you couldn't build off other people's track. I imagine we can find one to try out at Origins.
And, yeah, the 'over the pole' bit took /forever/. Now they've just gotten into the ship and moving quickly.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-27 06:09 pm (UTC)Glad to know I can check things out; I won't have to worry about trying to pack Dungeon Lords into my suitcase. Which reminds me, I need a suitcase. I tossed mine when I moved (it was quite old and busted).