The Tao of Gaming

A night of gaming, some rest, and then another day. Life is good.

In general, all games that I've played before. The one exception? Dune. I think I like this, but our bizarre game ended on the second turn when a three way alliance forced a counter-alliance. I'll chalk that up to new players (which half or more of us were). Not many rules (almost a Euro, albeit one with lots of chrome). On the "try again" stage.

A few games of Notre Dame -- still enjoying that (and picking up the odd game on BSW). I have some ideas on strategy, and tend to do well. A few games of Phoenicia, including an embarrassing runaway loss (once someone has more income, VPs, storage and cards than you, that's a hint that you've messed up). A few two player games of Caylus MC, which feels fine with that number (now that I've got a game or two under my belt).

Marklin, Diamant, Ra rounded out the sessions.

Lots of classics, old and new, in this batch.

I managed to get in a few games on Monday. I tried a copy of Control Nut!

I'll need to try it again, but it seems quite interesting. Opinions are mixed, but this is worth another few outings, and I should have played it earlier. After Mu und Mehr (and a wave of card games), I really cut back on my card games. Really, they all seem alike. And, really, Control Nut is "just" a partnership trick-taking game with special cards auctioned off. But the mechanisms are novel.

Control nut is interesting in that a hand takes 10-15 minutes, because of the auctions. Apart from a 'standard' deck of cards (with AKQ changed into numbers, and the suits renamed as nuts) you have 8 special cards. You deal out hands, then reveal 4 special cards. Then those four are shuffled and auctioned off (one at a time).

Each bid is exactly three cards, and no two bids can match (a bids value is equal to the total). The winner gets the special card, and gives one card to each other player. The player who wins the most cards (or the last card in ties) gets to name trump.

Because hands will often run out of cards at different times, when one player/team has cards left, they claim the rest of the cards (divided into an appropriate number of tricks). Scoring is number of tricks times number of stars (with 1s and 7s having a star, and the 3s having two). The special cards are worth a bit of points, too.

And they really are special. Most of them automatically lose (although one wins any trick its played on) but do things like let you draw random cards from your opponents, name trump, sit out one or more tricks, add stars (or points) to its trick, played with another card to increase its value, and the like.

Apart from deciding which cards to win, the real question is -- "How to communicate via bids and build a winning hand?" Especially given that you are also showing cards to your opponents ... who may name trump.

Naming trump is a big deal, but then again, that's true of most games.