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Continuing my series of how to play board and card games, I now present Splendor.

I don’t have this game yet, but was introduced to it by my brother-in-law. And now it is on my birthday present wish list.

1. How do I win?
You win by being the first player to reach 15 points.

2. How do I get points?
You get points by buying cards with point values on them. Not all cards have point values, but you might have to buy some of those in order to afford more cards. There are also a limited number of Nobles available, which you can win by having certain combinations of cards. So the pointless cards can help you get points that way.

3. How do I buy cards?
You buy cards with gems. Each card displays its gem cost. You pay that combination of gems and you get the card.

4. How do I get gems?
You draw them. On your turn you can either draw 3 gems or buy a card. If you don’t have enough gems to buy a card, then your choice is simple.

Another thing to note: the cards you buy not only have a gem cost but they also have a gem value. You may pay 4 gems for a card, but then that card is worth a gem later. Gem chips are drawn and paid – the chips physically move from the bank to your hand and back. But cards count as gems and do not leave your hand. As you accumulate cards, you accumulate their gem values and can thus afford higher-worth cards.

5. How do I play defense?
I simplified the rules earlier. On your turn you can do one of three things: draw gems, buy a card, or reserve a card. If you think someone is going for a particular card and you want the thwart them, or maybe you want the card but can’t afford it yet, you take the card without buying it. This has the added benefit of giving you a piece of gold (a wildcard when it comes to gems). It has the drawback of costing you a turn, since you must use one of your later turns to pay for the card. Or you can hold it in reserve indefinately, in which case it never counts toward your hand. You could consider that a draw-a-wildcard-gem turn.

Not related to the question, but related to the simplification of the rules: on your turn you may draw gems – either 3 gems if they are different colors or 2 gems if they are the same color. But you are not allowed to draw 2 of the same color if that will result in there being less than two of that gem in the bank.

There, now go play Splendor.

Settlers of Catan is a fun game. It can get involved though, which is another way of saying lengthy. And when you’re playing with a 6-year-old, it can be too long.

So, between me and Gamma, we came up with a few ways to make the game go faster. If you’re not familiar with SoC, then this won’t mean anything to you.

House Rules for Settlers of Catan

• At the beginning, draw cards for each of your initial settlements, not just the last one. So you start with 6 cards.
• The minimum distance to build is 1 road segment, not 2. So you can build close together.
• You can build a city by itself – it does not need to replace a settlement.
• Rolling a 7 has no effect until the first city has been built. Just pretend it didn’t happen and re-roll.

It does reduce some of the strategy involved, but there had to be some tradeoff.

This is the next installment in my series of The Five Hows

Dominion is an interesting card game my sister and brother-in-law taught us. It has a variety of money cards and victory-point cards and action cards. The learning curve is a little steep, and it took a couple of hands to catch on, so I thought it would be a good candidate for an explanation here.

1. How do I win the game?

You win by having the most points at the end of the game.

2. How do I get points?

You get points by buying the point cards with the money cards.

3. How do I get money cards?

You get money cards by buying them with money cards.

4. That doesn’t make sense. Won’t I end up with the same amount of money I started with if I use my money to buy money?

That’s not a How question.

4. Ok, how do I get more money if I have to spend my money to get money?

That’s better. And this is a key part of understanding the game. Whenever you play a card (either spending money or effecting an action), you don’t lose those cards. You discard them after use, but your discard pile gets shuffled and you keep those cards to play later (when your draw pile is depleted).

In other words, with each round your hand of cards grows. You play cards until your draw pile is gone, but then you shuffle your discard pile and it becomes your draw pile again. “Spending money” isn’t really the right term for the money cards, since the money stays with you. It doesn’t go to a bank or another player. But “spending money” or “buying money” is what everyone ends up saying since it’s close enough.

5. How does the game end?

There are piles of cards to be drawn from during the game. The game ends when a certain pile of victory points is gone (i.e. enough people bought them that there are no more left). Or when any two piles of action cards are gone. When that happens, each person counts the number of victory points in his hand and the highest number wins.

And that was The Five Hows for the game. It didn’t delve into the mechanics of playing, like how many cards you start with and when you shuffle and stuff like that, but that you can get from the game’s instructions. This was the big-picture view.

This game is fun, and it went pretty fast because we trusted each other. There’s a lot that can happen each turn, so if you don’t trust your opponent and try to verify that everything he’s doing is legal, it could take a while. So don’t play this game with cheaters.

For a variety of reasons, I moved the Australian accent generator to its own site.

At the site Accenterator, you can generate not only an Aussie accent, but also Irish (needs work) and Mock Swedish (no one can tell if it’s wrong anyway).

Go visit the Accenterator and try some phrases.

There has been a word search puzzle generator over at Some Fun Site for a while, but not everyone wants to generate his own puzzles.

So we added some pre-made puzzles. Starting off with some basic geography and Bible stuff – 50 states, capitals, nations of each continent, books of the Bible, sons of Jacob, etc.

Any other topics for some good word search puzzles?

Any other types of puzzles that need a generator site?

When I visited Cedar Point in early June of 2014, I saw the Slingshot was under construction. When I saw the description, I figured since it is a reverse bungee jump, it would be made of bungee cords.

Nope.

Now I have seen it in action, and it does not use bungee cords. It uses steel cables and springs. Actually, I don’t know that they are steel, just that they are non-elastic.

In case you are curious as to the Slingshot, here’s a summary: one moment you are at ground level, and 3 seconds later you are 300 feet in the air. This GIF might help explain:
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Kids – do you want a fun, safe place for your parents to play and learn more about God?
Are you concerned about what your parents will do during their vacation days this summer?

For one week this summer, you can drop your adults off in the morning for hours of songs, snacks, games, and lessons. You will need to pick up your adults by noon (lunch not provided).

No, our church doesn’t really run a vacation Bible school for parents. Sorry to disappoint you. But don’t be too discouraged, because there are places that do. They just don’t call it that.

Every summer, our family spends a week at a place that bills itself as a Bible conference center. That’s a boring title. I decided they should market themselves as “VBS for Adults”. Maybe there should be exclamation points involved somehow. Adults don’t have attention spans like they used to, so extra punctuation helps keep them focused.

The conference center has kids programs – it’s like a cross between summer camp and VBS. And the same applies to adults too. They have tennis courts and shuffleboard and a pool and a beach on a lake. There are contests and activities and crafts for all ages. And services with singing and an offering and a Bible lesson.

My main disappointment is that the adults do not have an offering contest. They need to split up, like boys versus girls. Take the offering in pennies and weigh it and see who wins. But nooooo, they just do dull stuff like checks and receipts for tax deductions.

Another thing I’m going to suggest is that they have off-brand, watered-down coffee for snack time. Each adult gets a small paper cup filled only halfway with coffee. I suggest that only because I don’t drink coffee. Other people might not be as amused by that as I would be.

And golf. I don’t know what the equivalent would be in a child’s VBS program, but they have to involve golf if they want to attract adults these days.

Of course, it wouldn’t be VBS without a theme. Right now it looks like the two most popular are the 401k theme (“God has a wonderful retirement plan for your life”) and the crime drama theme (picture of the empty tomb with the phrase “Crucifixion Scene Investigation” stamped on it).

What other ideas do you have for VBS for adults?

This was a guest post I wrote, intending it for SCL. I think I never actually submitted it, so you got to read it here instead.