Weekender

[jere7my]

K. and I went to see the Oberlin Gilbert & Sullivan Society's production of HMS Pinafore on Friday. It was a tiny space, completely sold out, and the production itself was an odd mix of charming community theater and stunningly polished vocal talent. (The latter was provided by students of the Conservatory. Wow. Kids got pipes.) Their Ralph Rackstraw was charming and a bit hobbity—I murmured "It's Frodo!" when he appeared—and their Josephine was beautiful, dulcet-toned, and very very funny. I was quite taken with many of the sisters and the cousins and the aunts, though the cutest of all were the girls dressed in drag to play sailors. Great fun; I'm glad we went, although I couldn't get Sideshow Bob out of my head throughout.

I purchased a packet of Buttercup's sweets during the intermission, which I mention here because they included two peppermints, one of which I ate. The other went missing—missing, that is, until I went in to take a shower and found myself staring down quizzically at the strange pink mess dripping into the drain. "We have no soap of that color," I thought. Of course, Gus-Gus had found the mint on my desk and carried it proudly into the shower stall, where the red stripes melted right away. She's fascinated by the drain, and will pad into the shower after I turn off the water just to stare down it.

Saturday night I played quite a few online games at Brettspielwelt with SWILfolk. (If you don't know about BSW, they have an excellent online portal that allows you to play games like Settlers, Puerto Rico, etc. for free against other people over the net. Mac people will need to download the standalone application.) I learned that Cartagena just baffles and frustrates me, though I'd be willing to try it again. I also learned that Piranha Pedro is absolutely bizarre, strangely addictive, and good for some proper bellylaughs at 2AM. (Short version: it's communal RoboRally, with everyone controlling the same robot, only instead of a robot it's a hapless Mexican trying to avoid being eaten by piranha. Fun for the whole family!)

K. and I bought lovely Christmas lights today: candles for the windows, icicle lights for the porch, and strings of little white lights to twine about the porch columns. I really love having a house to decorate for the holidays. We've about settled our holiday plans, which will permit us to see her family and my mom, attend the APA so K. can interview for jobs, and hang out in Swarthmore for Hogmanay. Woo! I'm looking forward to seeing many of you, very much.

Comments

[zorblak.livejournal.com]

I really like Cartagena; it's one of my favorite games. (I do find that it's only fun when you play the Tortuga version, where everything is face up. Otherwise it's too much card-counting and not enough strategy.) What do you find baffling about it?

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

I found it impossible to tell who was winning at any given time, and, since I couldn't figure out what "winning" meant, what actions I could take to improve my own standing. Even having a lot of guys in the boat doesn't seem like a good idea, since you then don't have enough guys to do anything on the board. carpenter ended up suddenly winning, even though her men were chiefly concentrated in the first half of the maze. When my turn came around, it was essentially a random choice as to what I should do (unless somebody had screwed up and left a big path, or left a cluster of two men behind one of mine, which rarely happened). Moving guys forward used as many cards as I gained by falling back, since it was a one-to-one trade; it was like watching Brownian motion. Trying to set up paths for myself just guaranteed that everyone else would get to use them before my turn came around again.

I'm happy to hear arguments in its favor, but it seemed pretty random (and not fun-random, like Piranha Pedro).

[zorblak.livejournal.com]

Were you playing with cards face up or face down? With cards face up, it's not really random, because you can see what cards are coming up (so you know when it's worth falling back), and you can see what cards other people have (so you know that if you occupy two daggers, for example, the next player is going to fly across the board). With cards face down, it's not a great game, I think.

You're right that putting men in the boat isn't necessarily a great idea early on. I've found that the best strategy involves keeping my men close together, slowly moving across the board. That way, (1) I can set up good fall-back-for-2-cards positions, and (2) when it's getting close to the end, I can burst forth from my clump and quickly move to the boat. (Note that it's good to hoard one symbol for this strategy.)

As for telling who is winning, it's not clear when you're first learning, I think, but you can start to notice things like who has made the most total progress, who has a lot of cards stored up, etc.

[jere7my.livejournal.com]

We were playing with the cards face up, but it was still baffling. I've played it again now, and I think I was trying to find complexity which wasn't there; this time, I played straightforwardly and obviously, not thinking ahead too much and taking whatever was the best move left to me, and I wound up within one turn of winning.