Dale/JaNate: Roll With It – the Opinionated Gamers’ Roll and Write Decathlon

As some of you may have seen on Twitter, this past weekend, Dale and James Nathan brought together a wacky idea that actually ended up with a pretty darn good result…  James Nathan had been toying with the idea of combining games or playing them simultaneously. He posted a mysterious picture of Patchwork pieces with Bamboleo on social media earlier in the week.  That picture got me thinking – what else could we mash up?

By Friday morning, I came up with the idea of playing simultaneous roll-and-writes.  I had just received my review copy of Corinth in the mail from Days of Wonder, and I had just chatted with Brandon Kempf about his roll-and-write review series.  Anyways, my brain is totally about rolling dice. I started to consider all the games in my Roll-and-Write travel kit, and I realized that many of them used the same dice.  So… what if we set up a system where you could roll the dice and then use the results across multiple games? This could be the ultimate challenge for dice chucking and dry erase markering!

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Dale Yu: Review of Narabi

Narabi

  • Designer: Daniel Fehr
  • Publisher: Z-Man
  • Players: 3-5
  • Ages: 10+
  • Times: 10-15 minutes
  • Times played: 6, with review copy provided by Asmodee NA

Narabi is a pocket sized cooperative game where players work together to “Create tranquility out of disorder”.  There are 15 stone cards, with ten of them numbered from 0-9 – and 15 limit cards, each with a rule printed on them.  There are also 15 card sleeves in the game, and to set up each game, a restriction card is randomly paired up with a stone card and placed in a sleeve so that you can read the restriction text on one side and see the stone on the other.  Try not to read the restriction text as you place the cards in the sleeves.

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Voices in Board Gaming: Interview with James & Sheila Davis

About Today’s Guests: This is the sixth interview in our “Voices in Board Gaming” series here on The Opinionated Gamers.  Today’s guests, Sheila & James Davis, are among the kindest people you’ll ever meet in the hobby. A husband and wife duo, Sheila and James have been doing this for decades, and they’re perhaps best known for their prolific game collection, which as we discuss below, tops 13,000 games. I met them for the first time at the Gathering of Friends, and I was excited to meet them after seeing them on the documentary Going Cardboard being interviewed about their acquisitions over the years. They’ve both answered questions below: paragraphs with “SD” are by Sheila, and paragraphs with “JD” are by James. Without further ado, here are 11 questions for two amazing gamers! 

(1) How did you both you get into the hobby?  What’s kept you in it for so long?

SD: I’ve been playing games since I was a kid.  My mom used to tease that I was a game collector since I had so many games (numbered in the dozens when I was living at home).  It wasn’t until I moved away with my first real job (about 30 years ago) that I learned that there really was such a thing as a game collector.  That’s when I began collecting in earnest.

SD: I like collecting and I like playing games, so it’s a perfect match.  And unlike many other types of collecting, I get to play with my collection.

JD: I agree. Having a game collection is the best of both worlds. Although having so many games does tend to lengthen the time our friends and I spend deciding what to play.

JD: My first clear memory of playing games was Pinochle with my grandpa and dad when I was probably around 10. But I got into the gaming hobby with high school friends. And I’ve never left because of the people. The folks in this hobby are amazing.

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Brandon Kempf: Three Games – Roll and Writes

I have a lot of games. A lot of games that are on my shelves, or on my table being played, that I have told myself that I want to review at some point, but for one reason or another, this doesn’t always happen. My goal here on The Opinionated Gamers is that I want to get at least one review out per week, but I would like to write about more games. So I’m taking a page out of Patrick Brennan’s playbook, and I’m going to start writing about games in threes, in snapshot form. This should be a good way for readers to get to know me and my gaming tastes a bit better, and also another way for me to talk about games that I maybe don’t really want to dedicate two thousand words to. Welcome to Three Games.

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Doppelt so Clever (Game Review by Brandon Kempf)

  • Designer: Wolfgang Warsch
  • Artist: Leon Schiffer
  • Publishers: Schmidt Spiele & Stronghold Games
  • Players: 1-4
  • Time: 30
  • Times Played: 6 (face to face) 105 (app, Average score 193, highest score 312)

The roll and write trend is going to calm down sooner or later, right? I mean it has to, we can’t just keep creating games with dice, where you write things on a piece of paper or dry erase board, that would be ridiculous. Until that dreary day comes though, I just hope that Wolfgang Warsch continues to be the most clever roll and write designer.

Doppelt So Clever is the follow up to last year’s Kennerspiel des Jahres nominated Ganz Schön Clever. Doppelt uses the same premise as Ganz, six dice, six different colors, six different scoring areas. How you score points has changed dramatically though.

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Jonathan Franklin – Notes from T5 (That Terrific Trick Taking Thing)

T5 Notes

I spent an incredible weekend in Covington, KY playing over 30 different trick-taking games.  Instead of rehashing them all and repeating what James Nathan has covered in his wonderful daily diary, The major elements were the location, a grand house on a grand street with lots of bedrooms and lots of locals. The event had a wonderfully communal feel, partly from the house, partly from the great people, and partly from all the work of the organizer(s) in getting snacks and drinks in advance.

picture of the mansion from the airbnb page

I thought I would talk a bit more about the games I particularly enjoyed for one reason or another.

Games that stood out

Bridge – Bridge stands the test of time, even with foggy memories and outdated bidding conventions older than the players.  We had a good run with a tremendously fun foursome of Joe, James, and Dale. Given the number of players whose names began with J, we really should start calling him Jale.  This game inspired me to try to get back into more regular bridge, even if not duplicate. My secret hope is the DeepMind takes a look at Bridge and re-envisions bidding, so the rest of us mortals can see the game through a fresh take.  Anyway, the emperor of tt definitely has the finest clothes.

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