January, July, what's the difference?
Jan. 19th, 2014 06:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spacealien_vampThe hot, sunny weather this past week has been great for people who want to spend time outdoors, but I'm dreading what it's going to do to the environment. I started pruning my grape vines and fruit trees on Friday, and I'm hoping I can get the rest done before the plants all start waking up due to the recent warm temperatures. Fortunately, my yard hasn't suffered too much from the drought (yet), but I hope we get at least some rain this year.
My ume tree is already beginning to bloom. I'm hoping that it's old enough now to start producing a few fruit. I also planted a new grape vine, this one with red grapes.
Yesterday a couple of friends came over for a day of games and sushi. We started off with Citadels, which they both picked up quickly and enjoyed. Then we played Machi Koro, which they both loved instantly and asked to play a second time. It didn't bother either of them that they couldn't read a word of Japanese. Each of them won one game, thus beating me soundly both times.
We moved on to Dominion next, which they had both played before, but I added in the Prosperity expansion, which had new cards for them. Some of the new cards threw them off balance at first, as did the fact that it was a randomized set that didn't necessarily have all of the elements they had played with before (such as cards good for making long action chains). Once I explained some of the strategies with the new cards, though, they got back into the groove of the game.
I tried introducing Race for the Galaxy next, though I warned them multiple times in advance that it was very hard to learn. They still wanted to give it a try. (In hindsight, I should have done Eminent Domain instead.) We played with open hands and player aids, but they still found the game extremely confusing. One picked up on the general strategy after about three or four rounds and was mostly making her own decisions on what to play, but the other just couldn't grasp how to play at all. She didn't know why to choose which cards or what bonuses she could get from which action, and that really frustrated her. She also hated that "goods" were represented by face down cards rather than little tokens, which she would have found easier to understand. We ended up cutting the game "short" (ending sooner than victory conditions called for, but we had been playing well over an hour).
After taking a break for supper, we finished off the evening with another round of Dominion, which one of them managed to dominate by leveraging a Throne Room/Mine combo to good advantage. She had a bad habit of playing her cards directly onto her discard pile, though. We tried to break her of the habit, particularly when she nearly reshuffled one of her played Grand Market cards back into her draw deck, but she didn't want to change. At that point, I just figured that as long as she was enjoying the game, it didn't matter enough to make a fuss over it.
It's back to work again for me today. The warm temperatures are likely to continue the rest of the week, so I guess I should enjoy it while it lasts.
My ume tree is already beginning to bloom. I'm hoping that it's old enough now to start producing a few fruit. I also planted a new grape vine, this one with red grapes.
Yesterday a couple of friends came over for a day of games and sushi. We started off with Citadels, which they both picked up quickly and enjoyed. Then we played Machi Koro, which they both loved instantly and asked to play a second time. It didn't bother either of them that they couldn't read a word of Japanese. Each of them won one game, thus beating me soundly both times.
We moved on to Dominion next, which they had both played before, but I added in the Prosperity expansion, which had new cards for them. Some of the new cards threw them off balance at first, as did the fact that it was a randomized set that didn't necessarily have all of the elements they had played with before (such as cards good for making long action chains). Once I explained some of the strategies with the new cards, though, they got back into the groove of the game.
I tried introducing Race for the Galaxy next, though I warned them multiple times in advance that it was very hard to learn. They still wanted to give it a try. (In hindsight, I should have done Eminent Domain instead.) We played with open hands and player aids, but they still found the game extremely confusing. One picked up on the general strategy after about three or four rounds and was mostly making her own decisions on what to play, but the other just couldn't grasp how to play at all. She didn't know why to choose which cards or what bonuses she could get from which action, and that really frustrated her. She also hated that "goods" were represented by face down cards rather than little tokens, which she would have found easier to understand. We ended up cutting the game "short" (ending sooner than victory conditions called for, but we had been playing well over an hour).
After taking a break for supper, we finished off the evening with another round of Dominion, which one of them managed to dominate by leveraging a Throne Room/Mine combo to good advantage. She had a bad habit of playing her cards directly onto her discard pile, though. We tried to break her of the habit, particularly when she nearly reshuffled one of her played Grand Market cards back into her draw deck, but she didn't want to change. At that point, I just figured that as long as she was enjoying the game, it didn't matter enough to make a fuss over it.
It's back to work again for me today. The warm temperatures are likely to continue the rest of the week, so I guess I should enjoy it while it lasts.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-01-19 06:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-19 06:41 pm (UTC)