jack

The CTS squash was good. It was about the same size as last year, and fewer members, I think, but many freshers were enthusiastic, and joined, and intend to come back. I hope the society has new life this year, now quite a few people have moved away from cam.

For the record, I am not an old mainstay of the CTS, even now, honest :)

It's always nostalgic meeting freshers :) They don't actually look that young, not more than when I was third year, but I find myself in conversations I first had six years ago, except now I know where they end, and can reliably out-pedant first year trinity mathmos by remembering what the comeback I worked out at great length last time :)

There are types (not all drawn from CTS). The tall thin slightly shy black-T-shirt-with-a-small-logo Trinity mathmo. The sweet waiflike girl who's going to take the assassins guild by storm. The guy with bushy hair who talks to everyone. The slightly shy one just on the edge of each group.

I stopped at games evening on the way back, and again confounded people who can play Blockus by playing intuitively, getting stymied and trapped on one side of the board, and then filling in all the gaps and ending up with one T-piece left at the end.

Yesterday was fun.

I was thrice accused of not being a cycling person and was glad I had a book. I met Amerys at science park lunch, but got there before anyone else, and lounged reading in the science park bar, and confused them by not leaving my bike outside, it having been a nice day and having strolled, reading, from work thence.

I met some tolkien people for an innmoot at the carlton, which was a bit quiet, and my had impugned my masculinity, again, and my cylingity, again (for carrying a tote bag full of Vorkosigan).

Then I stopped at Alex's on the way back, with board games with LASERs and with GRAVITY. And became embroiled in games of magic, wherein he drew large numbers of minute creatures designed to have synergistic effects, and I drew Ink-Treader Nephilim, designed to do REALLY INSANE THINGS AND PUNS, but lacking any other combo both beat the other to death with them instead.

OK, that wasn't anything to do with bikes or books. The first paragraph sounded better like that :)

Being before term, tuesday was another games evening, to see Susan and Pete, and do something with my mind.

N-tropy: I think I got the awful pun right. Rather like Jenga with millions of massive toothpicks, you place a rod on a growing construction, losing when it falls over, or taking any few that fall off, and winning when you run out. Much fun making impossibly precarious situations.

A cross between plasticine modelling and 20 questionsI'm not good at this sort of thing, though guessed a couple. I do very much like the concept of designing a model to be guessed neither early nor late, but somewhere in the middle.

Arc of the Covenant: A modified Carcosonne. I didn't play, but I think it was enjoyed, if mainly for exclaiming woefully "That's not how it happened in the book of Samuel!"

I don't know what a perfect Carcosonne would be. I think I remember a Simon version?

Spit Racing demon is in its own post, but in place, I give you spit, another reaction-relevent card game. (Though our rules were slightly different). Does anyone else remember this? We had quite a craze at school; quick-reflex and bright people both liked it.

It was nice that most of the time it was quick, but occasionally the other player would stall, and you'd suddenly play as cautiously as you ever do to continue without letting them in.

Octiles and Quoridor Both pleasant some strategy games that I somehow managed to win. Well worth a look.

With the absense of CTS, I went to games evening. This always leads to an episode full of pseudojokes which just aren't funny.

Q. Did you hear about the guy who sat there like a chump -- literally[1] -- for six rounds?
A. No, what?
Q. He dealt 16 points of damage and own[2]ed the game in one round because he had two attack-twice-for-four-damge-if-you-have-this-other-card cards, and this other card.

Q. Did you hear about the guy who put his last Carcossone piece on a road, and then turned up a cloister and couldn't use it? Twice?

We played magic, castles in the air, and carcossone. Public Service Announcement: farmers are good for the environment. I don't know how representative my experience is, but both games I won by being the only person with m/any farmers. Though this game I was ahead even before that because I unfairly stole a place in the great big city two other people were building, and negated their advantage; though we did move the fourth player back rather than three forward, putting her unfortunately negative. (*hugs Jaqueline*)

[1] Chump blocker: a small creature that dies to deflect a big creature. One of our opponents had a deck of many little glass beads being put under out control. Also useful against anything for which card art is an effect. And good for 'colourless weenie' jokes.

[2] Won. But "own" that was a typo and I thought it was funnier. I *so* need an acronym for that, that isn't PNI.

In CTS, we set sail and helped Beowulf kill grendels and dragons and pick up two cards with symbols on. After a long and dangerous picking up two cards with symbols on, we had lots of fame and gold, and eventually Beowulf died, and we all ~~picked up two cards with symbols on~~ fought to the death.

I was the most famous, but got deaded, so Naath won.

Then I sloped off to (Alex Churchill's) games evening, and played a round of magic with him and Peter. Mmm, yes. it was interesting, and went ok, though with a bit too much dithering, until we had two "number of spells since" cards start interacting, when I just got way too confused. But it was fun.

I realise I have 200+ useless business cards because of us moving building, they should have playing card something inscribed on the back.

And then to games evening.

* We played Carcassonne. So that's what people were talking about. I thought I was losing, but at least we were playing fairly quickly, but then my farmers ~~gained power and mana in proportion to the number of other farmers~~ scored lots of points because I'd put one in the middle and made sure that field was connected all the cities everyone else was busily finishing. Sorry, Jacqy.

I should be able to make a Carcassonne fairly easily with a printer, glue, and cardboard, right, and could be trivially reworked to be a CTS game by painting orcs on stuff. Eg. Battle of the five armies, players become armies, roads become ridge lines, cities become spurs of mountain, farms become armies beseiging spurs of mountain, seminaries and the river bcome key events in the battle.

The other idea was you each represent a different chronicler, and everything was about making plot. (With the gameplay still modelled on an exisitng variant. For instance, no point using the same orientation of tiles to make things easy for old players.)

Unfortunately due to budget cuts we were unable to film several episodes of Greenenders but because of continuity issues and popular request (*hug* miss_next) had to find some compromise, so are presenting several as concept sketches and plot summaries.

Ep1. Angelfriends at the Rainbow: In which Angel has a birthdayish dinner at the Rainbow, and other new people are met.

Cast: Angel, Jack, Theo, yrieithydd, the_alchemist, emperor, Mark and Naomi, choir people I didn't know before, atreic, Richard.

Epsiode notes: Sorry to Angel and Richard for Mao. It was nice to meet lots of people. It was amusing when we were retiring to emporer's and scooped up Richard going "Hold on, how do all these people I know know each other" because I'd already walked Angel to the station by then, and we'd picked up some other people by walking past a peterhouse choir party.

Ep2. Wallace and Grommit

Cast: Me, and the old friends from Trinity.

Episode notes: A good film. Mainly an excuse to save budget by sticking to one location and showing a canned film as part of an episode.

Ep3. Games evening

Episode notes: An effort at a product tie-in and making introducing a game to create some suspense: Pete finally introduced me to Magic: The Gathering.

I used Pete's simplest and coincidently most powerful deck, his beginner's having been left at home because it was never needed. I'd picked up most of the basic rules before, and put it together ok, I think, though I spent a lot too much time dithering and supplicating strategy advice.

The first game I won despite not having any land from random, the second I thought I was going to lose, getting shredded by interacting artifact golems, but then managed to bootstrap into mana and get half a dozen elves lined up with a couple of artifacts that made each proportionally as powerful as all of them and Pete saw 35 damage coming next turn and said it was over.

Continued next episode...

I bowed out of strategy europe-conquering game, but participated enthusiasticly in arguing about the applicability of conquering the EU references and made a lot of teutonphobic jokes.

I met Peter, which was great, and another example of small world syndrome, for I knew him from college and dancing, and didn't know he went to games evening, and hadn't seen him since he returned to cambridge (lit: europe).

Pete and I and two others played pictionary for a bit. I've played related games a lot, but never actually played real pictionary before. Many things were easy, though it's embarassingly easy to get started on the wrong track. Pete and I did well from knowing each other fairly well, though occasionally overdid it with too much perfectionism: "Shine! Proper motion! Fuse! Scintillate! Oh, twinkle! Doh!" and "I would have been quicker, but I thought you might guess Radiands before degrees."

Then people arrived and Pete, Louise, Jacky (sp?) and I started a game of Munchkin Foo, which was correctly billed as mainly funny. I would like to play again now we have some practice so the game can be jokes about being monks, etc, unrelived by constantly checking the rules, though most of us were reduced to paroxsyms at the confusion at several points.

Susan turned up, who I knew went to games evening, but hadn't seen last time, and joined in, and had massive hugs with Louise and Jacky, which I embarassed everyone a bit by joining in when I don't actually know people that well, even Susan really.

This lasted a long time, Pete finally winning after twenty minutes of people 9/10s of the way there not finding anything to fight, or finding cards reading "This is a weenie, but throw away approximately twenty boring cards from everyone's hands and it'll win" or "This is ambiguous in several ways."

Then we played VisualEyes again, provoking some humour, and some wrangling and phrases only one person had heard of[1], and the occasional patter of applause as someone scored a really bad pun.

[1] Damnit, I did enjoy Enid Blyton. If I can admit self-harm I can admit that.

I went to games evening. It was fun. I met several old friends I haven't seen for a while (particularly Neil, but also Tom and others) and met new nice people. Ian swears he's seen me there before, but I don't *think* I've ever been.

We played a pattern-matching game which I was awful at. Visualise, where you have a score of dice with pictures/glyphs on and have to form phrases from them. I started badly but ended ok, with even a couple of puns.

And Apples to Apples. Last time I was hopeless, but here I got the highest score or nearly highest score, partly by ruthless psychological tactics such as physics arguments, blatant flirtation, and reverse psychology.

I have become a loud person. I used to be painfully shy. I remember at a ?MO event spending literally minutes trying to make myself speak to someone I didn't know. Now I talk a lot. But it's overcompensating, too much sarcasm and innuendo, and not enough interest, and not enough talking *to* other people. Can I change *again*?

Magic: The Gathering. I spied on several people's magic game. I'm always intrigued by it, but I think I don't want to wate time now learning. But it's still funny. And there actually *is* a "wrath of god" card: when Cryponomicon proposed cards like "ex-USSR nuclear arsenal" and "Yahweh" I thought it was *joking*. OTOH MD *did* explode a nuke in a roleplaying campaign, to not much effect, though if we'd been a bit more secretive about it it might well have been a marvellous kamikaze run.

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