There is a deck building game (for definition of deck building game, see google) called Dominion. It has many expansions, but the basic game in itself is a good game. A friend, GAMESDUDE, has a game store – not an arcade, but that old fashioned place where people can go and buy games, play games, indulge in magic or d&d or what-have-you tournaments, buy cheap 99c Arizona Iced “Tea” and similar ilk beverages. It’s a good location, and a great escape, although to the uninitiated it does have the gentle reek of nerds (which works out ok for the Caustic One as her sense of smell with regard to some of the more sulfur and ammonia products was destroyed by an ammonia-based blueprint maker in a room with inadequate ventillation many years ago). It was at this location that Gamesdude taught the CO Dominion.
(As an aside, Dominion was actually the second game with which the CO fell in love, the first is Agricolae, but Agricolae is a space-intensive, many pieces board game that, while a fantastic game, takes longer to explain than to play. Dominion is great b/c the learning curve is much shorter, the space more manageable, and, well — let’s be honest. CO’s German still pretty much sucks. Her game companions are pretty good in English, but Agricolae would be too much. And the apartment is soooo tiny, that the space management superiority of Dominion is a real plus).
So, anyway, back to Dominion. CO loves this game. Time spent in the US with ExtrovertBabe and Dancing Mom playing was always time well spent. SO, as a gift to the CO for heading off to Germany, ExtrovertBabe and Gamesdude gave the CO a shiny new copy of Dominion. After a few attempts at gathering a core group of interested players, it’s a regular once-a-month, every-three-weeks -ish event in Witzenhausen. Generally we have four players, although we do stretch and go with six occasionally. Dominion is supposed to take 30 minutes to play, but we take literally hours. Like, maybe the shortest we’ve done it has been 2 hours? 90 minutes? We don’t play Dominion like gamers. We play as collaborative socialists and talk about life, the universe, and everything. We also help each other “you know, you get another buy”. “Remember, the point of the game is to get the green cards”. Generally the points are close. We just have fun. Maybe in real life we are competitive, but we are all into agriculture and sustainability in some way, be it marketing, research, farming, social impact, etc. so perhaps we’re all just more cooperative than conquerers.
Generally speaking, we chow down on tea, or wine, or fruit juice and a huge tin of popcorn seasoned with Morton’s Seasonings. Oh. Yum. Yesterday the popcorn was accompanied by salad from the CSA share and a few doctored-up frozen spinach pizzas (why do they NEVER have enough cheese on them??). Panda Purralicious finds one person who looks like they will share a chair and ingratiates herself — possibly just to keep warm.
It’s also one of the ways in which the CO forces herself to keep her apartment reasonably tidy. Not perfect. Dusting — oh. Now, there’s another post.
Anyway — these evenings really are great for sanity. Nice people, fun game, good conversation, language learning for all of us — English, German, a bit of Czech… Quiet lovely. I remember when I was a child, my parents were part of a group of four couples that got together on a periodic basis to play Sheepshead*. Maybe this is a genetic need!
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* if you don’t know what Sheepshead is, maybe Schaffskopf? Or reverse Euker? Well, google is your friend.