Left, Right, Center, Screaming Nephews!

After months of promising to visit Carrie's big brother & his family and life getting in the way, we finally made the trip across the mountains this weekend. Off to the desert of Washington we went for some family time!

Almost Uncle Michael, Malia, and Aunt Carrie, just your average bunch of weirdos!

While we were there we spent some time relaxing and going on a few little adventures. Jason, Carrie's brother, took us to a little craft bazar; Carrie and Jason spent lots of weekends as kids at events like this one with their Grandma Dot, so wandering the tables was nostalgic and fun thing to share with Michael and Jason's kids. Of course we had to get snow cones and hot dogs before heading home!

Malia and Carrie and drawings!

Through the afternoon, Carrie and her niece spent time drawing together, while Michael got his butt kicked in football with the boys. He claims the ref was biased, but Jason and Carrie know better... We ate tacos (made by Carrie, so they were delicious!) and enjoyed more family time with Grandma Jo and Aunt Sherry, then caught the Tri-City American's hockey game. Before we headed off to the game, Jason's wife introduced us to a new game: Left, Right, Center!

L, R, C dice and candy markers!

The game is very simple, you have 3 dice to pass and each player starts with 3 markers. The game comes with little plastic chips for markers, but we played with candy instead (the nephews were VERY excited about the candy)! Each die is marked on 3 sides with dots, and the other sides are marked individually with L, R, and C, which stand for left, right, and center. So you have a 50/50 chance of rolling a dot or a letter on each die.

"Lucky bananas!"

To play, you roll as many dice as you have pieces of candy in your pile, so 3 to start. For each letter you roll, you must pass a marker to either the person on your left (L) or right (R), or place it in the center (C). Markers that get placed in the center are out of the game. For each dot rolled, you get to keep a piece! Throughout the game, the markers will be passed back and forth between players and the "pot" of markers in the center of the table will grow. The last person with a single marker in front of them wins! Not only does that person get the joy of beating every one else (as Carrie's nephew, JJ, would say, "Ba-Bam!") but they also win the pot comprised of all the center pieces.

"Candy, candy, candy!"

"Ba-Bam!"

Our games always ended with the last 2 pieces being passed around the table for a bit with loud nephews cheering for which ever side of the candy they were currently on, then when that last "C" was rolled cheers and screams! JJ, the youngest of Jason's kids won almost every time; he was rolling in the candy! Lucky little dude!

With a table ranging from Grandma to my 7 year old nephew, this was the perfect game to get everyone involved and excited without things being too complicated! The biggest struggle was keeping the dice on the table when the boys got worked up, but seeing them having fun was a blast! This game is excellent for family get togethers and given the simplicity of the rules (and the obvious tie to gambling) one can make this fun for a group of adults as well (just throw in some money and maybe some booze in the mix and you've got yourself a party!)

Hockey games are good times for brother snuggles.

The nephews won a few, Carrie won a few, and the Tri-City Americans won, then we made it back across the mountains in the rain! Successful weekend in our eyes! Check back soon for more games and explorations!

=^.^=, Carrie and Michael

New Subscription Enabled!

Hello everyone, this is just a quick post to say that you can now subscribe to the blog by email or via your favorite RSS feeds (see right panel). More posts to come soon!

First Post! Acquaintances and Abalone

Hi! We're Carrie and Michael!

Michael is an astrophysicist and Carrie is a restaurant manager by day, an artist when the mood hits. We live in the PNW with our divo cat, Banjo! We're a pretty average nerdy 20-something couple, who love comic books, games, and science, but our interests don't stop there! Food, beer, art, cats, music and successful adulting are just a few of the things we tend to geek out over. We've decided to write a blog together in order to share our adventures as we explore our interests, whether it be something we already love or a new passion we've discovered.

Carrie and Michael!

Along with ourselves, we'd like to introduce one of the first games we enjoyed as a couple. Abalone is a fantastic strategy game for 2! While wandering a brain game store, a clerk gave us a demo and we've been hooked ever since. Little marbles act as an army forcing your opponent off the board. The rules are simple, but the strategy can get pretty deep.

The object of the game is simple: be the first to knock 6 of your opponents marbles off the board. Each player takes turns making a move. Marbles can move one space per turn in any direction. Each turn, you may move a single marble, or a contiguous, aligned group of 2 or 3 marbles. A group must be moved in the same way, i.e. forward/back, or side to side and remain in the same configuration.

The game! Plus a kitty.

The Rule book! Pretty straightforward. That's part of the reason why we like it! On the left you see a diagram describing the different types of moves you can make.

You can move your marbles into your opponent's marbles. This is like a "battle" and is how the game progresses (i.e. how you are able to push your opponent's marbles off the board). If your moving group has more marbles than your opponent along your intended direction of travel, then your side "wins"; your marbles go forward one space and your opponent's marbles get pushed back. However, if your opponent's marbles are of equal to or greater number than your advancing group, you are not allowed to make this move and must make a different choice.

Moving the three wide marbles into the two black marbles causes the black marbles
to be pushed back. The black side loses one marble in the process

Of course, when you "attack" by pushing your opponent's marbles with a large group, you could leave your "unit" open to a counterattack flanking. A three-marble group is pretty strong along its front and back, but on the side it only takes a two-marble group to slice it into weaker groups. So, strategies revolve around moving your marbles as a larger group, choosing formations that allow easy maneuverability and balance defense and offense, and knowing when to best attack your opponent. In particular, it is generally not a good idea to leave marbles isolated. Lone groups of 1, 2, or even 3 marbles can be quite susceptible to attack and easily out-maneuvered. Attacking your opponent's pieces so as to split up their marbles is a smart strategy, as it can waste precious moves to bring back marbles once they have been isolated from the larger group.

Near the beginning of a game, Michael likes to choose a side and move his pieces all as a group toward that side. Loosing some pieces at the beginning of the game is fine if it means winning a better position on the board. He tends to look for places where he can bisect a group of marbles. This is nice because your opponent cannot push your marble if it is against some of their own, so this decreases the chance of a flanking counterattack. Carrie is generally good at stopping Michael's strategy, though lately Michael has learned how to use her counterattacks against her and push Carrie's pieces into a corner. She is not a fan of this.

Funny enough, for a long time both of us were under the impression that the game ended when ALL of your opponent's pieces were off the board. The game was still fun, but it took a whole lot longer. We also found out that Carrie is quite good at playing guerrilla warfare with a smaller army. So, even when Michael was winning, Carrie would still be fighting with her scrappy band of rogue marbles. She also enjoyed playing a little game she calls "hide and go fuck yourself" when she had clearly lost, but still had one or two marbles on the board. Basically, she would force Michael to re-group his whole marble army in order to finally pin down her flailing final pieces. In retrospect, this strategy is likely why the game isn't suppose to go down to that few of pieces.

So there you have it, Abalone in a nutshell of sorts! Simple, yet logically complex in the most delightful way! We hope you enjoy our little introduction and game synopsis! Check back with us soon for more fun and games!

=^.^=, Carrie and Michael