A Grande Evening!

This past week I sat down for a rousing evening of El Grande with my wonderful wife. She provided the milk and cookies, I provided the game set-up.

Pictured (Left to right): Milk Castillo, Actual Castillo, Salt Castillo

I will confess that on this occasion I won the game using a tried and true strategy: pull out a game that she has not played in at least six months and exploit my superior knowledge of the rules. I bet that if we played again tonight she would probably whoop me.

Card Games by Dennis

I would like to take a moment to announce the beginning of a side project that I have just begun, entitled "Card Games by Dennis," in which I hope to post a new card game every week or two weeks that is playable with regular decks of cards. Go to this link to see the first game!

"Life is Beautiful"

In an inspiring look at the human spirit, personality, and sacrifice, Life is Beautiful, an Italian film from 1997 that my wife and I watched this week, also features beautiful application of game mechanics. If you haven't seen the movie, I would highly recommend it, and I will try not to spoil it here, but I found it particularly interesting how the main character, played by Roberto Benigni, spends much of the film fictionalizing the horrors of WWII concentration camp into a game to help his family survive. Although I think the movie is only just based on a true story, it serves as another possible example of how useful game mechanics could be.

Muggins, A dominoes game

My wife and I rediscovered a dominoes game called "Muggins." I had remembered playing a dominoes variation several years ago in which players score by making the endpoints equal to a multiple of five. When I searched for the rules, I found this page at Wikipedia, which seemed to be what I was looking for, and it was.

The rules in brief are as follows:
-Use a set of double 6 dominoes

-Draw 7 tiles (5 if 4 or more are playing)
-Player with highest double starts
-Players play off the starting double in up to four directions (from its endpoints and from its sides)
-Whenever all the endpoints equal to a multiple of five, player earns that amount of points

-Doubles are played perpendicularly (so their sides match with an endpoint). Count both sides of a double for adding up a score.

-Only the starting double is considered a "spinner".

-If you can't play, draw a tile from the bone-yard

-Round ends when a someone goes out (plays their last domino).

-All other players add up the values of their remaining dominoes. These points go to the player who went out.

Endpoints equal 11 (no score).

But wait! Wife adds a domino to the right side to make the endpoints equal 10 (Wife scores 10!)

These were the rules that my wife and I played at first, but when I looked in the rule set included in our box of dominoes, I found two rules variants:

1. When a player does not have a domino that is playable, they must draw from the bone-yard until they draw one that they can play.

2. Even if a player has a domino that is playable, they may still draw from the bone-yard.

I admit that the reason I went looking for Muggins, was because I wanted to find a domino game with more strategy than Mexican Train, so I felt free to use whichever rules added the most depth to the game. Question: Which of the two additional rules, then, did I add? The answer: Rule number 2. I quietly ignored ruled 1, since I think that rule would exacerbate moments when a player is unable to play, increasing the margin between victory and defeat. Rule two, on the other hand, gives players an interesting choice. On any turn they can play according to their hand, or increase their potential to score more points, by increasing the risk (remember that any unplayed dominoes are added up and awarded to the player who plays all their dominoes first). This rule also adds an interesting amount of opportunity cost associated with taking on extra dominoes instead of going out sooner.

In conclusion, my wife and I played Muggins again, but this time with Rule 2 from above added. The depth of game play was improved moderately, and I believe that the distinction between luck and skill has been widened, something I usually like.

Hooray for Muggins!

Res Life Wasabi! Picture

Here is a picture of the "Menu" that was made for our Res Life Wasabi game. Each week, a new menu is sent out to all of the Resident Adviser's with new rolls that they can complete. I have conveniently blacked out the actual e-mail addresses.



As much as I would like to claim the design of these beautiful menus I cannot...