Saturday was the official date for my graduation. It is the date on my diploma, but Friday the 13th will always be a special day, and, lucky for me, everyone seems to notice that particular day. But only in August. You may continue to quake in fear during the rest of them.
And Saturday was Owl House Game Day. We had a few cancellations, but Dave and Marianne showed up and played two rounds of card-based games—one game each of Citadels and San Juan.
Wendy has been pretty cranked up by having guests over for the last few days, so when Dave and Marianne arrived—exactly on time, those accountants…I tell you—Wendy was a tiny human pinball between her grandparents and her English department fans. Dana quickly and wisely whisked her off to the Lincoln Children’s Museum (until about two years ago, I thought these were devoted to the history and weirdness of childhood, but no. They are indoor playgrounds filled with equipment and lots of random stuff—clothes, wooden food, ersatz tools, myriad balls—that’s simply not nailed down). The five of us grabbed some noshes (veggies from us, amazing muffins from Marianne) and I worked through an explanation of Citadels which I’ll summarize for you here. (Photo by Shadow Dragon)
Citadels is all about cards, the king piece, and gold, which in my copy looks very much like half-sized Brachs butterscotches. In the game, each player is building districts in a city. Each city comprises up to five districts (color coded: red, green, yellow, blue, purple…if you’re colorblind, good luck). Each district card represents a building in that district, and you can only build one of each building (one green tavern, for example, or one blue cloister). The cost of the building is also the final score for that building (mostly). The first player to build eight buildings ends the game. And then you see who built the best-scoring buildings,
and some players might receive an extra bonus or two. The game is driven, though, by the character cards. These eight cards are available each turn, but the choosing process is one of the great delights of the game. Whoever had the king card last (“It’s good to be the king”) (character photo by AngusBull), shuffles the eight cards, deals one (or more, depending on the number of players) face down to the center of the table, and then flips one face up next to the first one—neither one will be played this turn. The king then chooses one card to keep (secretly!) and passes the remaining cards to his left (or her left—sometimes, the king is a woman; there’s a women’s studies dissertation there, but let’s move on). Each player chooses a card. The last player will have two cards to choose from, and then they place the one they didn’t take face down—still secretly—next to the first two cards. The characters allow each player to bend the rules in some way—eliminating another player’s turn or stealing their money, but it’s important to notice that a character targets another character, not a player. So you might target a character that’s simply not in play that turn. The social intricacies of bluffing and (attempted) blocking deepen the otherwise straightforward play. I followed Dave’s strategy of high-end buildings, though it was my mom who ended the game with eight buildings. I managed to beat Dave by one point because of one bonus score.
We had decided before the first game to play two games with similar structures, so we pulled San Juan out for our second game (photo by the delightfully named mothertruckin). For San Juan, we’re in the age of exploration—well past the medieval period—and well into that later age. A Governor token rotates among the players, and character roles are chosen in clockwise order. Two other important differences: each character (except one) allows all players to act (the person who chose that character gets some bonus), and the cards have three distinct roles. The cards can be money (played face down to the draw pile to build a building), they can be played down as buildings (which produce goods, influence the production of goods, or yield victory
points), or they can be goods (produced face down onto your production buildings and then exchanged—still face down—for hand cards). The cards go quickly…and so does the game. Also, it only plays four, but Dana and Wendy had come back, so my mom went to hang out with them and get some knitting done. Once again, the first player to build the required number of buildings ends the game (Dave, in this case), but the winner is the one with the most victory points. San Juan is a little less constricted than Citadels inasmuch as everyone plays all the time, and you’re hoping for patterns of character deployment and not so distraught if you don’t get the character you were hoping for.
After San Juan, our friends took off for another entertainment, Wendy went to bed, and my mom and Dana settled in to discuss fiber arts. So my dad picked Chrononauts out of the stack of card games. At this moment in the narrative, I’ve gone on a bit about two games, so I’m going to cut this one short. But in Chrononauts, you’re influencing a grid of cards with dates and events on them. Some events are Linchpins that affect Ripplepoints throughout the grid. The active deck allows you to influence the Linchpins and Ripplepoints until you have a pattern (using a Patch card) that matches a goal card (you’re a time traveler trying to get back to an alternate history). You
can also collect three artifacts to win, including a videotape of the big bang…on Betamax. It’s fun, silly, and chaotic—a bit like Fluxx with a structure. And, yes, it’s made by the same company.
The last game of the evening was En Garde! a card game with a conflict/score board. Very simple game, but quick fun. For two players, each player plays cards to move their fencer figure up until they can move exactly onto the same square as their opponent (you can also move backward) in order to score a touch. First to five touches wins.
And that was the end of the Thirty Days of Games experiment as well as the night.
Dana went up to sleep, but I stayed up to talk about games with my parents. We talked about the social practice of games, the future of games as objects and virtual objects, our family’s history of games, and how games fit into my abiding interest in sustainability. Board games tend toward sustainability to the degree that they are replayable, and I stumbled into a conversational space where I suddenly realized that games are important for sustaining us as humans. Sustainability is an argument that’s been ghosting around this project, particularly as it applies to nourishing those parts of us that are not consumer-driven. But like any part of the human experience, games can encourage and reveal darker and perhaps unwelcome aspects—aspects that we need to confront and respond to if we’re going to move forward as individuals. I’m thinking about the ways that Dana and I approach games and how we’ve reacted to each other during this project. Games sustain our social practice.
And then this morning, as my dad and I accompanied Wendy on her morning constitutional, he said that he’d been thinking about another category of games: parlor games. So we talked about charades as well as two games that helped us start this project, Wits & Wagers and Dixit. Our little trio circling the block did a nice job of bringing this all metaphorically back home.
I’ll continue to post here as I sort out more of my thinking—and clean up the writing. I hope that if you get to this point, you’ll offer feedback, suggestions, topics and directions that interest you. And if you’re ever in Lincoln, look us up for a game!
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