ScottVee Gaming

The 2048 and 2K48 games I mentioned a few posts ago advertise a lot of similar games, and I do try some of them out, usually ending in disappointment about how simple they are or how annoying the ads can be.  There are a lot of games where there is a big grid of numbers already filled in with powers of 2 and you drag long lines to match up snakes of those numbers.   248Link goes a bit further, where your snake of numbers can either be a simple match or an ascending group of numbers.  So, you could choose a path of 2-2-2-2 or 2-2-4-4-8.  The new block that is made gets higher as you choose longer combinations.  As the game continues, you unlock higher and higher numbers, going up into the stratosphere, beyond the millions.     The first power of two after a trillion is not 1T as expected, but 1a, setting us on the widely used path of higher powers of 10 being represented by a, then b, then c.  The named powers after a trillion are a quadrillio...

Anne's family gatherings are always fun.  Everyone is nice and friendly and there are some serious gamers in the group.  Oddly, the Holiday game night this year had a whole layer of extra rules, and there was a trophy of sorts that the winner would keep until next year.  The trophy from last year had apparently been destroyed in a dog-related accident, so we got to admire the new creation as the core group was gearing up to win it. I think the scoring system was explained to us all about five times, and I still doubt I can write it down correctly.  But here goes: - for a two-player game, it's just one point to win - for a 3 or 4 player game each player gets 1 point to participate and another point to win - for more than 4 players it's double the 3-4 player score There was a leaderboard of sorts written on a notebook page next to the plate of cookies.  And I did hear that somebody won the trophy later on.  Other than that, I have no idea what was actually go...

Just like last year , we had another holiday gift exchange.  This time some new rules and twists were tried. Instead of picking numbers from a hat (because that was too much work to set up), we all passed around a small tray and rolled two dice.  If you rolled doubles, you got a turn in the regular gift exchange, using the regular rules: steal an already-opened gift or unwrap a new gift.  Even though there were about 15 people, I immediately saw that this could take a while.  In fact, there's no guarantee that ANYONE would roll doubles.  Sure, 15 people in a row not rolling doubles would be rare, but the chance is non-zero.  It could quite possibly take hours for 15 people to roll doubles.  It could theoretically never end at all.  We could still be there failing ... way off the deep end of the Bell curve. As expected, the first time through the circle, I think only two people rolled doubles.  After another loop, the person in charge decided ...

We stopped at a grocery store last night (Dec 17) and saw quite a line-up of board games right up front.  It really stopped us in our tracks, built from the floor up to eye-level.  Very distracting.  Games for the holidays, I suppose.  It was nice seeing them put out so carefully as a suggestion of things to do with the family.   Of course there was Monopoly, Sorry, Trouble and Scrabble, but also Connect 4, Wordle, Life, some little jigsaw puzzle stocking stuffers.  Plus Hungry Hungry Hippos and even a Robo Turtle.  They sure packed a lot into that prime retail space between the pies and soda.

Staples (a major retail chain that we generally think of for office supplies) had a big new section for board games when we stopped for some padded envelopes in November.     They had an interesting mix of games, though the games blend right in to the educational stuff for kids.  So the section has flash cards at eye level and a variety of science kits mixed in. The games are sprinkled throughout, running from the standards like Clue and Monopoly and Jenga to Jumanji.  I even spotted Cat Crimes, which is the game that kicked off this blog series a few years ago.  It's a really odd selection.

My 6x6 game of 2K48 finally hit a roadblock and ended.  As expected, I was trying to push forward but had a jam of 128 + 256 + 512 + 1024 + 2048 + 4096.  One more 128 and a few moves would have overloaded the whole sequence up to my second 32768, but there was no space left to move.  That's the challenge, trying to push each block up to the highest possible block, but at some point we do need a second 2048 which means a second 1024 which means a second 512.  I probably could have managed it better and not had so many low values hanging around, but I'm glad it's over.  It takes too much time.  Just a few minutes here and there at home, bathroom breaks, a little bit before bed, and while waiting for things to happen in real life, just the in-between time -- it's still too much.  I should probably uninstall that darn time-sucker and move on to other things.