I’m an architect in Las Vegas, with my wife and daughter.
I like asymmetry and systematic variety. A saber and a box of chocolates.
This is the old one, a big sprawling mess and in serious need of editing.
I’m an architect now living in Las Vegas. I used to think I was into intense games, but I’m starting to make peace with the fact that I’m more of a fluffy gamer. I like games that become relatively mindless with practice (such as Tien Len or Mah Jong). I enjoy heavier games, but they aren’t “relaxing” in the same way (duh?). I can put up with a lot of luck in my games, most likely why I don’t mind Risk or Monopoly (played per original rules).
For what its worth, I just switched my rating system to the BGG standard. I don’t like the 10 point granularity, but I’ll live with it and I’m tired of trying to keep track my own stupid system. The only difference is for expansions, which are judged in how well they enhance the base game — which means I am kind of liberal with 10’s, even if I might not like playing the game or expansion all that much.
It has been was kinda rough over the years…there are games that I’m supposed to enjoy that have dropped down lower and lower. On that note, my Top 10 list takes “nostalgia” into account – I’ll acknowledge the fact I don’t think it’s a great game in my ratings. However making me feel warm and fuzzy inside is part of the top 10 calculus.
I have typically enjoyed elegant, streamlined, lighter games, but lately found myself interested in heavier games. I don’t mind a bit of randomness and chaos in my games, but I find myself liking it less and less. What I really love is controlled chaos, instead of pure strategy, I like directed improvisation. I think that is why I have enjoyed Troyes more than Caylus (I learned both games this year). A better example may be my love of climbing games such as Tichu and Tien Len. There are definitely times when you get dealt a crap hand and there’s nothing you can do about it, but in most games there is something you can do, even with a weak hand…or something you can screw up, even with a really strong hand. One thing I absolutely really dislike is having to plan too far into the future, chess being a prime example. This also includes most worker placement games such as Dungeon Lords, Glenn Drover’s Empires: The Age of Discovery, and Dominant Species all of which utilize the “place a bunch of workers first, then resolve everything at once” mechanism. Caylus gets a pass because of its elegance.
Things I dislike in games: lots of moving parts, memory, and simultaneous action selection where there are dire consequences for guessing wrong (ala Witches Brew or Dungeon Lords). I suspect that I like auction games way more than I ought and dislike worker placement games more than necessary. I appreciate games with a strong spatial quality…maybe something coming from my architecture background – and I certainly love sleek “elegant” game mechanics and interesting graphic design.
10 – I love it love it love it!! 9 – I love it love it!! 8 – I love it! 7 – I really like it! 6 – I like it! 5 – Meh. 4 – I don’t like it! 3 – I really don’t like it! 2 – I really really don’t like it! 1 – I HATE it!
After my daughter was born, I have not had many opportunities to attend gaming events, so my life is now centered on two player games. This made me rediscover some old games and look at them in a new light. It might not be the same experience with two, but they can be fine games in their own right.
This past week I drafted a conceptual toolkit for retrofitting multiplayer games to play well for two players. Not all the examples are super successful, but they were all successful enough for someone to propose on a forum, if not publish in the rulebooks.
The toolkit can be broadly divided into two categories, SETUP CHANGES and MECHANICAL REVISIONS.
SETUP CHANGES
One Less Chair: This most basic of this category, almost not worth mentioning, is to just deal one less hand, such as in Poker…or Glory to Rome, Dominion, Hanabi, etc. Setup Mechanical Twist: Sometimes a game uses the same components and plays the same as the original game but includes a slight mechanical twist in the setup, for example, Spades for two which adds a drafting mechanism. Another example (though not for two) is in three player Tien Len where the last card dealt is thrown face up on the table and the player with the lowest card may trade for it. More or Less: Some games pretty much use the same components but deal out a slightly different amount of goodies, such as money in Caylus or the amount of available goods in Puerto Rico. Pandemic:OTB reduces the quantity of event cards. Hanabi changes the quantity of hand cards between 4/5P games and 2/3P games. Reduce Components: Sometimes you take out specific items from the multiplayer games as in Agricola, or in Hansa where you remove some colors of goods altogether. Add Components: And sometimes you add something totally new, such as in China: Das Duell. The original Mamma Mia! plays fine for two, but I’ve found the game greatly improved by playing Mamma Mia Plus, where the the expanded card mix compensates for the reduction of players. Modify the Map: And sometimes you change the board. Ticket to Ride does this by disallowing parallel track lays. Ra reduces the Ra Slot, TransAmerica only deals out the cards with the border. Power Grid reduces regions. Only one of each violet building is available in Puerto Rico.
MECHANICAL REVISIONS
Dummy Player: Though much reviled in general, it seems to work fairly well in some games. Dirk in Alhambra with is a primary example. Its also been proposed with positive reactions for Trias. And its been way too long since I played Nefertiti to comment knowledgably, but the official 2P rules in the expansion include a Dummy player. This unofficial Niagaravariant proposes adding a third paddle (along with reducing the gems in the setup). Play Two!: This is the other obvious drastic mechanical revision fro 2P games. There are some strong proponents of playing Puerto Rico with two boards and its even been tried in Chudyk’s new game Impulse. The official Hare and Tortoise variant also does this (in my opinion it is brilliant, but it is not liked on BGG). This was also proposed for Trias, as well as High Society with a slight twist when a bad card comes up. I guess you could say this is also the way you would modify the number of players in Scotland Yard, though its core essence is a two player game that was designed to accommodate multiple players. Remove Mechanisms: Sometimes a mechanism is just unnecessary, Caylus dumps the turn order Mechanism. Add Mechanisms: I don’t think its particularly successful in Bohnanza, Uwe essentially added a new phase in the game to simulate trading. Also not particularly successful is the variant of Acquire where you draw a tile during a merger to simulate a dummy banker (this differs the main “Dummy Player” tool because it is random and is an instant non-permanent effect). I haven’t played it myself, but a promising Dixit Variant has the storyteller selecting a card, drawing five more off the top of the deck and adding three to the tableau along with throwing in a random card. And I’ve heard two player Niagara is playable by merely adding the Beaver Mechanism that comes with the Spirits of the Niagara expansion. Tweak Existing Mechanism:Fairy Tale has a billion variants proposed because the base two player game is unsatisfying. Most of them tweak the number of cards drawn and almost all of them involve discarding a card during each phase of the draft before giving the hand to your opponent. The most recently proposed Fairy Tale Variant involves drawing cards off the top of the deck each round. This unofficial variant for Basari (along with modifying the length of each round) does this by conflating the Jewels and Points actions to force more bartering. Action Quantities: The official rules for Trias reduces the number of actions a player may take from four to three. And Puerto Rico gives each player multiple actions before the round ends (and the official variant is structured to create a particularly significant change by removing the craftsman angst). Modify the Game Length: This was a simple variant proposed for Fairy Tale. And is also the source behind some of different variants for Puerto Rico, since the quantity of Colonists and VP’s affect the length and thus balance of the game. Love Letter changes the number of hearts you needs to capture before victory. And Troyes does this very neatly with their event card reveals. Change the nature of the game:Dixit isn’t really that competitive so someone decided to make it fully cooperative.
I’m not particularly versed in boardgame theory so I’m certain there is a lot rough edges and maybe even a complete conceptual realignment in order before everything is said and done.
If I’m going to be playing primarily two player for the next few years, this might be fun to explore. I know there is a good two player game in the Bohnanza deck, just waiting to be designed.
The spoon was quite a luxury. I bought it on my wife’s fake birthday and it was a pricey little fellow hand carved from a tree in Jasper, Texas that had been taken down due to Hurricane Ike. It was a brutally hot July noon in Houston at the farmer’s market at City Hall, but an interesting conversation and a memory worth way more than $50.
Seems that an autofocus lens and a bounce flash can make you some decent food porn.
Thanksgiving had a duck, cheesecake, mashed potatoes and minestrone soup.
Saturday had porkchops with apples and portobello mushrooms. The recipe came from Mark Bittman’s Basics – which is really a nicely structured book – with a couple modifications, instead of onions I used mushrooms and in lieu of wine I just used apple juice. I was surprised how all these came out. Maybe I’ll be getting into cooking or something now. I think my wife would appreciate it!
It seems that our house hunt has been a balancing act of Price, House (lot and building), and Neighborhood (schools, etc).
Its hard enough to get 2 out of 3, but seemingly impossible to get all three. This conundrum seems to be common, as an architect the saying is price, quality, speed. And for my health care management friends its affordability, quality, accessibility.
The other day we went to the planning commission public meeting because one of our clients had a variance request. It was a long tedious affair…and yet insanely interesting. I’m not sure its something I would do on any basis other than as required for items that directly affect me or my clients, but its certainly interesting to have a window in the lives of those around us. From adding a liquor section to Walmart, to a guy who got caught building without permits, there were little glimpses everywhere you looked.
Just coincidentally, I sent off my thank you notes and paid off my credit card bill, today. We had a very simple wedding, so fortunately we won’t be eating interest on the extravaganza, it just happened to be the lag time between reception transaction and final bank autopay withdrawal But wow. If you ever want advice on having a relatively cheap but decent wedding in Las Vegas we’d love to help. Cause even a simple wedding gets expensive fast!
Aside from that, just thanks to everyone. Everyone who came and everyone who wished us well. And to our parents. Cheers!
I am a big Dixit fan. I’ve purchased six copies of this game, three that I have given away (a copy of Dixit 2 and Odyssey to my sister, and a copy of Journey to my game night host who introduced me to the game). I have not yet purchased Journey for myself, because I’m always playing the copy of at my host’s house.
I originally did a quick write up of how I think the family interacts and I thought I’d turn it into a slightly longer review. As an architect I think about this stuff way too much….
Initial thoughts that got derailed into the auxiliary stuff
For me the original Dixit is the granddaddy and I still think it has the best art (I am particularly fond of the Cat and Fishbowl). Because Marie is the artist for Dixit 2, I think the two make the best pairing. For any normal human being that is just about right. You don’t need more cards than that. Since Dixit bogs with more than 6 players, you really don’t need the extra chits that come with Odyssey either.
However, Odyssey’s score track is nice, and it is nice to be able to add a couple extra player bunny tokens if you want to have more players. However the voting placard stinks and we never use it. Instead we just use voting chits from Dixit 1, and if there are more players we use dice from other games (2+6=8).
Journey has the nice “feature” of adding more voting chits, unfortunately they used the same colors as in the original Dixit. That was an unfortunate oversight because they could have been really nice supplemental voting chits for 7+ players. Even so, we’ll still use the Journey chips if we have more than six players. And of course we completely ignore the stupid plastic pawns of Jinx.
So in summary we use the Odyssey score track and bunnies (since they sit better) with the Original Dixit and Journey voting chits. But really, who loves Dixit for the scoring?
We love it for the Art.
Journey has turned out to be an excellent expansion. If you are happy with your Dixit 1 and Dixit 2 cards and you don’t feel the need for more, then you should just stick with that pairing.
However, if you’re a Dixit hoarder like me, then you most likely purchased Odyssey. Because the penciller was a different artist, the Odyssey cards really stuck out like a sore thumb, even though Marie was the colorist. I also think the depictions in Odyssey was not open ended as the other sets, which is why I consider it to be the weakest of the bunch.
For Journey, they came in with with a completely different artist and art style. You might have a similar visual discombobulation if you slipped Journey into a 1+2 deck, but it works really well when you include it with Odyssey. The deck now has enough visual variety to eliminate the irritating uncanny valley-ness of the Odyssey cards.
As for Journey on its own. The cards are quite excellent, though quite different from Marie’s original art work since it is all digitally painted. That said, the colors are gorgeous, the art is beautiful, and the depictions are open ended like the first Dixit. Our first couple plays of Journey were as a standalone game and we were “oohing and ahhing” all the new cards. If I had to judge each deck individually I’d put it just a hair ahead of 2 but behind the original (my absolute favorite). However, if you were to get two decks, 2 pairs better with original.
Recommendations
My base recommendation would be for the original plus the Dixit 2. It is nice to have two decks worth of cards and they make an excellent pairing. Any other pairing would make for an uncomfortable visual dissonance.
If you want to add more cards, then you should get both Oddesy and Journey at the same time and really turn the deck into a variety pack.
If you want only one Dixit, then just start with the Original, it’s got great art and bunny meeples. What else do you need?
Postcripts
If you need to have the game tonight, I suggest you go to your local big box Target or Walmart. They’ll almost certainly have Journey and you can’t go wrong with that. Maybe Barnes and Noble would have the Original Dixit?
If you live with very conservative folks, I would recommend considering Journey because art is a less dark than that of original Dixit. This is quite subjective, but I remember someone watching us playing it a couple years ago and remarking how spooky it was.
My host got a copy of Dixit Jinx for Christmas. I’m excited to try out the game but I have not done so. As an architect who has been brainwashed into Modernism, I suspect that I will quite enjoy the abstract art of Jinx, but would not be surprised that people who loved the rich art of Dixit find Jinx disappointing.
Like most rescue buns, his early history is long lost to memories of another household, who most likely bought him as a cute little baby bunny without realizing he would quickly become a big white rabbit with a strong personality. They then dumped him at a local shelter, who couldn’t get him adopted and when a spot opened up at the House Rabbit Society, he was brought in at the eleventh hour before being euthanized. He got his name there, the vet named him Badger due to his long sharp face and his propensity to nip people without warning. I originally adopted him to be a third wheel with another pair of rabbits. It looked promising at first; they all seemed to put up with each other in their initial meeting. But in actuality the pair was in shock from being driven to the shelter and being introduced to a new rabbit, and once they realized this was supposed to be a permanent arrangement, they made it very clear it was not acceptable. Even though Badger was almost as big as the other two combined, they fought him tooth and nail for a month before we finally gave up. Badger still has a little scar on his nose, nothing obvious, but if you looked closely, you would have seen a slight part in his fur.
So he was consigned to live for his first four years as a single bunny. Even after I broke up with my own partner and the pair moved back to California, Badger still had the occasional rabbit visitor in his house from friends in grad school. He never seemed that interested in their company, and though he was always the biggest bunny, he still managed lose the couple fights he managed to get into. I don’t think he ever had that deep fire, that true anger that made him proficient at actually fighting. He appreciated attention, but he never craved it. He enjoyed company, but to a point. He had a quick temper, you could pet him for a while, but once he had enough he would nip your hand without warning and hop away. As long as he had his water, pellets, greens, and hay, I think he was reasonably happy. Really, he loved his food. I remember the time he broke into a bag of tortilla chips and it took a year before he stopped pestering me whenever sat down to each something crunchy. And there was the time he knocked over a trashcan and tried out some rotisserie chicken! A nice middle class existence for a big white bunny.
Life intervened as I was wrapping up my master’s thesis. My girlfriend’s coworker found a lovely little harlequin bunny at Herman Park on Christmas Day. Unfortunately, this coworker was also the owner of a few snakes, so having a precocious rabbit riling up the big reptiles was not a good sustainable situation. With this prompt, I realized it was time to push Badger into having a friend and so Peppercorn ended up in our apartment. It took a few months before we could start bonding the pair – she had to grow up, get spayed, and drain out her hormones – and even with the long wait it wasn’t love at first sight, I think Badger was a bit too comfortable being by himself. But some after some persistent effort by Jing, he warmed up to this annoying little one who would eat all his food and hog the attention of the humans around them. And hump him. And demand grooming while rarely reciprocating. Their love only knew two boundaries. Whenever Badger thought she was getting too much human attention he would hop over and nip her in the butt so he could have his time in the spotlight until he got bored, nipped the human, and hopped away. And given a chance she would eat all his food; Badger was the heartiest eater I knew until we met this ferocious devourer; though with any unfamiliar fruits and greens, Peppercorn would let Badger try it out a couple times before she’d jump in herself.
Well, Peppercorn lost her food taster on Saturday. Over this last month he quickly declined due to arthritis, e. cunniculi, cancer, and infections. It was just a matter of time. He had lost almost half his weight and the use of his hind legs. After he began to have trouble sitting up with his front legs, I made plans to to take him in this week, but his body decided a little earlier. A couple days before he passed, I gave them some cilantro but when she threatened to inhale the whole bunch at high speed, I put her back in the cage so he could eat in peace. For the first time ever, Badger stopped eating until I let her back out to join him. I always fed them separately and he never waited for her before. I think he knew he did not have many meals left, and he wanted to share it with his lady – even if she would eat most of it. On Saturday morning he ate with gusto, but by the afternoon his appetite disappeared, and in the evening he was no longer with us. I have never been through something as heart wrenching as watching my Badger travel the passage out from the living. He no longer had the energy to sit up, and his body was convulsing as he went through his death throes. In our years together, he never spoke a word until he moaned in pain that night. Then he quieted down, his mouth opened, and life departed from his body. We were fortunate to all be sitting around him, me, Jing, and Peppercorn, but that final journey was one Badger had to take alone.
He now rests in my friends’ backyard. Even though they had a young newborn at home, my friends graciously stayed up late so Peppercorn could have her vigil with Badger. So late on Saturday night, we took him out of their cage, wrapped him up, went to our friend’s house, dug a small grave, and buried his body. But really the hardest part for us was coming home. For the first time in five years, Peppercorn was sitting by herself, and it tore our hearts out. Jing used to always ask me who I thought was was the cutest bunny ever. And I’d reply, Badger by way of seniority. Well Peppercorn’s got seniority now. And she doesn’t have a competitor for food either. Its just her world now, she no longer has to worry about the unfairness of life as Badger was fed unlimited pellets while she got only an eighth of a cup.
I never viewed myself as a sappy guy and so I always thought I had a distant relationship with the buns: I would feed them and in return they would provide entertainment by just being rabbits, doing their thing (destroying stuff) around the house. But when I came home to a quiet house, when I realized I couldn’t say “stay out of trouble kiddos” in the plural, I realized I had invested in him way more than I had previously imagined. As with most relationships, enduring strength is built on the small accretion of daily life, and every day I had given him a little bit of myself. Every time we let them out the cage and he’d just plop himself under the coffee table. Every time I chased Peppercorn away so he could eat in peace. Every time we sat together for a short moment. Every time I fed him, and he acted like he had never seen food before. Every time, every little act, every day I deposited a little bit of my heart into him. So when he finally passed away, it felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest. I had no idea how much he meant to me – I thought I just liked the guy cause he was soft and silly and entertaining. But no, I cared for him because he had soaked up so much of me in him. As pet owners, I think we like to map our own traits on those who we’ve chosen to spend our lives with. But of the four bunnies I’ve had the privilege of living with, I think I felt the most kinship with Badger. He was a big lug, a bit silly, loved food and sitting around, would display occasional bouts of joy, got lucky with a nice lady, and had a bad temper that would manifest itself unpredictably. He was my big boy and every day we shared more than just food and water.
I would have loved to keep him a little longer, and maybe there would have been some drugs that would have kept him going. But really I can’t complain, his health was stellar his whole life until the ravages of time suddenly made itself known this past month. And honestly, if he was quietly suffering, I’m happy he didn’t have to wait another week before traveling to the great beyond. As I washed down his litter box one last time (truly, god is with us in the most mundane of tasks!), I realized the interconnectedness of this world; whatever life force that left him Saturday night is now free to do what it needs to do for someone else. Even though the body is in the ground, I could sense Badger all around me, as surely as he will always be a big white bunny hopping through my memories.
Like most rescue buns, its a bit hard to pin down his true age, I’d guess its been ten years and I was very blessed to have been there for nine of them.
