somewhat averted

[eclectic_boy]

Tonight Psi Phi held a board gaming in Parlors. I went, since it was the first one of the semester (aside from inauguration, which I couldn't make). When I arrived people were still waiting to see how many would come. So we spent 15 minutes playing Miles' cool variant of Class Struggle/Dalmuti/whatyouwill. Then we decided to start playing real boardgames, and various people described what they'd brought (I had Modern Art, Evo, and Carcassonne). There was uncertainty and dithering for five minutes, then someone made a push for critical mass to play Risk-2150. Five people headed off to that, and immediately the remaining four said "let's play Magic" and peeled off to another corner of parlors and started playing. I just sat there by myself for a minute, as everyone else started setting up, feeling ignored. I got on my coat and said I'd head off.

Miles gave a sympathetic look, which made me pause and come over to his game, and then my unhappiness was averted, because I suggested to them that I might play a two player game with someone while four played Risk-2150. Orion agreed, and we played Polarity, which I'd only ever heard about - it's a skill game involving disc magnets which you try to position on a board so that they're not lying flat, but lean on a diagonal in the air, held up by the other magnets already on the board. It's tricky but pretty fun and very cool looking. It took 20 minutes, by which time two people I didn't know had come in and gotten interested in gaming, so we four played Chrononauts.

After that Orion took over for the departing Jamison in Risk, and Annie arrived, so I put off leaving long enough to play a couple of games of Lost Cities. I'm glad gaming happened, and I'm even glad I went, but it was a close call.

Comments

[uncleamos]

I played Chrononauts for the first time last week. Hilarious!

[jaipur.livejournal.com]

::phew!!:: That was close. :)

[irilyth]

What's Miles's cool Dalmuti variant?

[eclectic-boy.livejournal.com]

He used a regular deck of cards, and the usual - howevermany tuples are led, that's how many must be played that round (i.e. if you play two sixes, the only thing that can be played on it is another two-of-a-kind, of an equal or higher number). Suits are irrelevent, as in Dalmuti. But, and this made for some fascinating steals, if there are n (n<4) of a given card lying on top of the played-cards pile you can toss in the remaining 4-n of that card, making a book (at least, that's the term for it I know from Go Fish), and you instantly win that round and get to start the next one.
For example, if A tosses a 4, B puts on a 5, C puts on another 5, and now D can finish the book of 5s by tossing down the other two of them (the only condition under which you can violate the must-be-the-same-tuple rule). Sweep the table clear and D leads to begin the next round.

It was especially powerful when we played double-deck with six players; it still only required a book of 4 to instant-win a round -- do-I-break-up-this-set is an extra tricky question.

Quirky additional rule: in this game '2's are higher than aces, so the worst card in the deck is a three.

[tirerim.livejournal.com]

Since it uses a regular deck of cards, I would call that an Asshole variant, not a Dalmuti variant. The big difference between Asshole and Dalmuti is really the distribution of the cards. 2-highest is standard Asshole rules; allowing equal rank cards to be played (rather than strictly better) is fairly common; and I think I've played with the book rule (don't remember what it's actually called) at some point in the past (though I've played Dalmuti much more than Asshole in the past 9 years or so, so my memory is hazy).

[eclectic-boy.livejournal.com]

That was the other name I couldn't think of, Asshole. I know it has lots of names, which is why I called it "Class Struggle/Dalmuti/whatyouwill".