August 29th
My sister's son Simon and my friend Carolyn's daughter Elliot celebrated their second birthday. Well, rather, we all celebrated their second birthday and they seemed vaguely aware that something exciting was going on, but point is a bunch of our friends met at a lake/picnic area on a scorchingly hot (around 100 degrees) day in San Jose to celebrate. After the party, I went to Carolyn and Gabe's (her husband) house to hang out for a while and hydrate before trecking back up to San Francisco.
While there, I pulled out Bohnanza, thinking it would be a good, fairly quick game to play before heading out. I was joined by Carolyn, her twin sister Linda, and their neice Jesslyn, who I think is almost 9. Linda and Carolyn had played the game once before, and it was new to Jesslyn.
In Bohnanza, players are collecting sets of matching cards that they "plant" in front of them then "harvest" for points. The unique thing about the game is that you cannot change the order of cards in your hand - if there is a card coming up that you want to get rid of (because you would have to harvest a field in order to plant it), you have to trade or give it away.
With a new player and everyone pretty tired from a day in the sun and distracted by the siren call of preseason football, the game moved a bit slower than I anticipated. Usually the game is played until you've gone through the deck not once, not twice, but thrice, but as we were getting through the first time, it was clear that trying to push through the whole thing was going to be unwise, so we decided to call it there, over mild faux-protest from Linda that her strategy had anticipated going through the deck 3 times. The way the game had started off, it's not terribly likely any of us were going to catch Carolyn anyway.
Scores:
Carolyn - 14
Linda - 9
Chris - 8
Jesslyn - 7
Game Time: 40 minutes
My sister's son Simon and my friend Carolyn's daughter Elliot celebrated their second birthday. Well, rather, we all celebrated their second birthday and they seemed vaguely aware that something exciting was going on, but point is a bunch of our friends met at a lake/picnic area on a scorchingly hot (around 100 degrees) day in San Jose to celebrate. After the party, I went to Carolyn and Gabe's (her husband) house to hang out for a while and hydrate before trecking back up to San Francisco.While there, I pulled out Bohnanza, thinking it would be a good, fairly quick game to play before heading out. I was joined by Carolyn, her twin sister Linda, and their neice Jesslyn, who I think is almost 9. Linda and Carolyn had played the game once before, and it was new to Jesslyn.
In Bohnanza, players are collecting sets of matching cards that they "plant" in front of them then "harvest" for points. The unique thing about the game is that you cannot change the order of cards in your hand - if there is a card coming up that you want to get rid of (because you would have to harvest a field in order to plant it), you have to trade or give it away.
With a new player and everyone pretty tired from a day in the sun and distracted by the siren call of preseason football, the game moved a bit slower than I anticipated. Usually the game is played until you've gone through the deck not once, not twice, but thrice, but as we were getting through the first time, it was clear that trying to push through the whole thing was going to be unwise, so we decided to call it there, over mild faux-protest from Linda that her strategy had anticipated going through the deck 3 times. The way the game had started off, it's not terribly likely any of us were going to catch Carolyn anyway.
Scores:
Carolyn - 14
Linda - 9
Chris - 8
Jesslyn - 7
Game Time: 40 minutes
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You're very close on Jesslyn's age, she's about to turn 9! No second "e" in her name, although you pronounce it that way. I think she enjoyed this game.
ReplyDeleteMy strategy *did* depend on three rounds, at least as I envisioned it! I think we will never know who truly won this game! :P
Fixed Jesslyn's name and her age. Thanks! Yeah, I think she was enjoying herself, but she didn't always seem liked she knew what was going on, but I think that had a lot to do with being tired and a little distracted.
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