Listing Details
| ID: | 87 |
| Title: | Yehuda |
| URL: | http://jergames.blogspot.com/ |
| Category: | Recreation: Games |
| Description: | A board games and gaming Weblog from Jerusalem, Israel. |
| Shabbat Gaming - 2012-05-20 11:04:00 |
| A new guy Ken and his son Oren came over after lunch to play with me, Abraham, Sara, and Nadine. They were cool. Ken and co live in Raanana and have a large Eurogame collection and have played for a while, but this was his first attempt to contact other gamers in the area. Weird. There are little pockets of gamers everywhere it seems. Abraham taught them Container, which they liked. Meanwhile, Nadine, Sara, and I played Troyes. Nadine scored heavy scoring yellow and white cards and a strong cathedral presence which I realized was victory already by round 3. I came closer than I expected: 44 to 38 or so. I had strong red and utility cards and so was short in money. I fought a few events - which no one else did, so we had piles of events by the end of the game. After Ken and Oren left, Sara and I teamed up against Nadine and Abraham for Tichu. They took the lead and won every hand until the last one. There were a few multi-Tichu calls: by me and Abraham and by me and Nadine. In the last round I won my Tichu against their Tichu loss; they were still winning but we had to end.  |
| Ignorance Sucks - 2012-05-10 23:18:00 |
| Not knowing things irritates me. I may be in the minority on this. Exhibit A: Snaps Last sukkot I was introduced to the bar puzzle/gameSnaps, one of those hilarious "in-the-know" games enjoyed by the people who know the rules and supposedly challenging and frustrating for those who don't. The game is allegedly about trying to guess a word given clues by one player, but it's actually about figuring out how the clue system works. Something to do with snapping fingers. To some people, this is entertaining; if you're one of those people, don't clink on the above link. I was simply irritated. You would think that a game-player like me would be interested in trying to figure the game out, and I was for about four minutes. After that I got bored and wanted the answer. The person leading the game was not tuned into this; he thought it was unsporting to give away the answer, so he just kept playing new words. After unsuccessfull trying to persuade him that I was no longer interested in guessing, I used my smart phone and looked up the answer. This might be construed as cheating, except that I never agreed to participate in the game in the first place. Exhibit B: Books (and films, and other media) I enjoy books, movies, etc a lot more when they've been "spoiled" for me. To me, the enjoyment from art isn't the anticipation and suspense of not knowing what is going to happen. It's from the artful way it is done. I've downloaded movies just to watch them at home before going to the cinema to see them. I read plot summaries online before reading a book, watching a movie, or even a television episode. If it's good art, I like to watch or read it more than once. The term itself - "spoil" - implies that I'm out of touch with the common folk on this one. It's not spoiling to me; it's getting the plot out of the way so I can concentrate on the enjoyment of the media. Exhibit C: Dice For some, the anticipation of the unknown and uncontrollable is a thrill, for me it's a pain. I feel that the game is over right before the die is tossed: in the planning and the strategy that brought us to that point that matters. Once it's tossed, it doesn't even feel like playing to me anymore; it's like punishment. The win isn't exciting; the loss is irritating. It's a no win scenario for me. Oddly, I don't mind at all when an opponent does something unexpected. In fact I love it; that's playing. I love talking to people who say unexpected things. In fact, I love the unexpected all over the place: random encounters in the real world, serendipitous discoveries in stores or on the radio. In other words, I'm happy to continuously discover the interesting and good. Withholding knowledge just for the sake of withholding it is not my idea of fun.  |
| Movie Reviews: Battleship, The Hunger Games, The Iron Lady - 2012-04-30 00:06:00 |
| Battleship:So far, this is the only Hasbro property originally licensed to Universal that has seen the light of day. It cost $250 million to make. Was it worth it? Battleship is like a bowl full of vanilla ice cream when you're wanting dinner. I can only imagine the director giving his instructions: "Walk here!" "Swim here" "Jump here!" "Say this line!" It doesn't much matter who the actors are or what they do, so long as they do it passably, which they do. Not one of them has a personality of any consequence. All that seems to matter is the Armageddon love setup and the mcguffin plot around which to hang lots of CGI transformer space ships, cybermen, guns, missiles, explosions, hokey technical jargon shouting, and beams of light. It's all put together ok, I suppose. In fact, the movie depicts the aliens as never firing until they are fired upon; they are always assessing threats and not instigating violence unless a threat is detected and immanent. Despite the opportunity to give the movie a moral edge based on this (like in District 9 or Super8), no such edge is given. Instead we get to blow up the aliens, yay us. The little elements of the board game - the grid firing and the peg shaped artillery - are kind of funny, but not as funny as the constant and forumlaic deux ex machina. So it's not a colossal disaster, but neither is it a shining success. It is what it is. E5. The Hunger Games:In contrast, this is a shining success of a movie, undoubtedly the best adaptation of the books that could have been hoped for. It's the story of a girl who volunteers in place of her sister to fight in a game to the death with other children as spectator sport for the ruling Capitol oppressors. The book seriesis an odd one: the first book The Hunger Games is an oddly set up thrilling adventure: the games are depicted as horrible enslavement, yet the great majority of the book revels in the adventure of the games. True, it also covers senselessness, starvation, hopelessness, sacrifice, and so on. But it doesn't give any sense of rebellion or real world change until the very end. Only in the second and third book does the rebellion start, and even a lot of the second book spends an awful lot of time in the thrall of a game. By the third book, the rebellion, casualties, cruelty, and loss pile up so high I was in shock. I couldn't believe anyone would write a story like it for entertainment; I think that's part of its brilliance. Meanwhile, the movie stays fairly close to the book, but also includes very briefly a little bit of the world reactions, politics, and rebellion that is beginning outside of the game that forms the center story (these elements are taken from the second book). Interestingly, Roger Ebert complained about the lack of rebellion and politics in the movie, which is ironic since the movie actually has slightly more than the book does. The movie is fantastically acted and directed, beautifully sequenced and shot, and thrilling entertainment. The little bits of rebellion and politics are very important additions and expand the scope of the movie just enough to bait you for the sequels. The Iron Lady: This is a Meryl Streep set piece, and she is brilliant, as usual. The movie, however, is rather odd. It focuses on Margaret Thatcher looking back at parts of her life, which is all well and good, but it spends nearly half of the screen time in the present for no apparent reason other than to watch Meryl act old. The historical parts are much more worth the screen time and they suffer for being the lack of focus. Instead we get only bits and pieces of the historical story, which feels like only part of a movie.  |