Alfred Wallace: Brain Dump

Ever had a day when all you’ve had are partially-formed thoughts?  When all you can do is get something started and then—

Anyway, yeah, I thought I’d hit a few topics in succession today.

I’m back in Springfield for a little while—at least until the 23rd or so.  I think I’ve got a moving company worked out.  The estimator declared my apartment one of the “denser” ones he’s seen.  There’s a certain justice to that; I have over 2.25 games per square foot, after all, with a thick protective layer of books over that. 

This hasn’t quite stopped me from buying games, of course.  My latest purchase has been Zooloretto.  Two reasons.  First, I liked Coloretto; second, it has a panda on the cover.  Pandas are traditionally effective salesmen for many products, but I bet Abacus et al wish they had a polar bear on the cover, so as to capitalize on Knut-mania. 

Anyway, I played Zooloretto over at Metagames Wednesday night with Mike and Al, neither of whom had played Coloretto before.  The game explained quickly anyway, and we were off and going in no time.  We liked it a lot.  It has a kind of kids-game feel to it, but there’s just a little bit of a sting, just enough potential for nastiness (good-hearted, of course) to satisfy.  It’s good.  It’s going on the pile of games I’m singling out to introduce to my fellow grad students.

Right now that pile includes (along with Zooloretto) Samurai, Settlers, Taluva—and I have half a mind to include Conquest of the Empire or Age of Empires III.  Not as a first game, but they’ve got some historical flavor there, plastic bits, and some good gameplay.  We’ll see how it develops.

We also played Cockroach Poker—listed in the ‘Geek as Bug Bluff, which is odd since that’s neither the official English name nor the original German name.  (It’s the French name.) The game sounds like it shouldn’t work.  There eight cards of each of eight suits.  The cards within each suit are all the same.  Each suit corresponds with one or another kind of creepy-crawly, ugly beastie.  You deal the deck out, and somebody starts.  They select a card, and pass it face-down to another player, along with a claim as to what the card is.  (“This is a cockroach.”)

The passee has two choices.  First, they can say “I believe you” or “I don’t believe you”; if they’re correct, the person who passed them the card takes the card and puts it face up in front of them.  If the guess/deduction is wrong, then the passee takes it in front of them.  Their other option is to pass the card on to another player, with their own claim as to the card’s identity.  They can take a peek first, if they so desire, and they can claim the same or a different animal.  And so on.  If the card gets to the last person to have not seen it, then obviously they have to make a guess.  Whoever ends up with the card starts the next card going.

The first player who takes four of one kind of animal, or has to start a round but doesn’t have a card, loses.  Everyone else wins.

It’s pure bluffing.  There is nothing that is not bluffing.  It seems like it should be totally random.  But all the same, it produced a pretty intense situation at the table.  I happened to be one of the winners.

As others have said about the game on the ‘Geek, it’s “not for everyone.” (What is?) I think it’s great, though, especially if everyone knows each other.  We played with some table talk—not explicitly allowed in the rules, but it helped mess with people’s brains, which is a lot of the fun:

Mike:  “Here you go.  That’s a spider.”
Alfred:  “You’re probably right, but I’m going to pass it along anyway.  [peeks] OK, Al, you’re getting this fly.”
Mike:  “He’s right.  I was lying.  It was a fly.”

Meanwhile, it’s a toad or something, who knows?  Maybe it’s more of a “gaming experience” than a game.  There aren’t many other games it feels like—I had fun, but this game could be just brain-locking madness for some people, or pointless drivel for others.  I must say, too, that the art is really nice; this could have been a very minimal effort, but I like the look a lot.  Well done to Drei Magier for this one. 

Finally, a couple of updates from last week’s peek into the colonial American gaming scene.  It drew lots of good feedback; I’ll definitely be doing more sometime when I can’t think of anything else to write about when I have the time to do some good research.  Rick Heli wrote in, suggesting that “Merry Andrew” cards are those used for what is today Three Card Monty (which I think goes back to the reign of the Pharaohs, when it was Three Card Menkare or something).  As likely as not, but I wonder why they’d need special cards?  “Merry Andrew” seems to have also been a generic term for a clown.  Needs more research.  (And thanks to Rick for doing his bit.  If anyone knows anything about this stuff, let me know.)

I also mentioned that I didn’t know what a colonial backgammon table might cost.  As it happens, a little bit of poking around turned up a probate inventory from 1761, which listed a backgammon table worth fifteen shillings.  According to the historical economists who work such things out, that’s about $200 today.  Meanwhile, in modern Williamsburg, an official Williamsburg reproduction gaming table will run you about $500.  Make of that what you will.

Finally, two brief biographies.  James Rivington, who had published that 12th edition of Hoyle, turns up later in history.  During the Revolution, he became a prominent Loyalist publisher in New York.  However, unlike most prominent Loyalists, he was allowed to stay in the country—likely because he was also a spy for George Washington.  Fascinating character. Gerardus Duyckinck, of the Universal Store, was (as near as I can tell) the son of another Gerardus Duyckinck, one of the more prominent artists in colonial Philadelphia.  The younger Duyckinck was also the brother-in-law of Henry Livingston, a major in the Continental army and, according to recent scholarship, the true author of “Twas the Night Before Christmas.”

And now you know.

© 2007 Alfred Wallace

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Nice column, Alfred.  I believe Zooloretto originally had a polar bear on the cover, but they decided to change it to a panda.  Since I’m totally ignorant about Knut (and may be the only person in the Western World who is), I can’t say what effect this will have on sales.  But it’s hard to see how they could have done better than that great picture of the panda.  They’re just so darn cute (not to mention non-carnivorous)! Cockroach Poker made an appearance with the DC Gamers a while back and I quickly avoided it.  Bluffing with no point of reference is one of my all-time gaming pet peeves, so it sounds like I chose wisely (I’d be part of the “pointless drivel” contingent).  But I’m glad you guys enjoyed it. Posted by Larry Levy on Jul 13, 2007 at 09:49 AM | #

Thanks for the Cockroach Poker tip. It looks like a lot of fun. My group are a bunch of shameless bluffers, so they’ll find it a fun diversion. Posted by Iain Cheyne on Jul 15, 2007 at 04:29 PM | #

I tried Cockroach Poker awhile back with my kids (I got it from my BGG Secret Santa).  I didn’t really think about playing it with the game group… I may have to try it.  It worked fine with the kids, although my then 4 yr old kind of messed with our ability to bluff.  She was honest all the time, so we kind of let her do whatever.  Of course, I always lose when we do that :). Posted by Ryan Olson on Jul 15, 2007 at 10:01 PM | #

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