Café sessions: Go, Gang of Four

Today was the first time our café group met on Monday and I'd say it was a success. Total of six people played games. Afternoon began with a 13x13 Go match, which I won. It was a close match, though.

Meanwhile our number had grown to four, so we started a game of my prototype. I've been thinking about different card game ideas and finally went on with a Sedma group game. Sedma is a Czech trick-taking game, in which tricks aren't won by the highest card. Cards can only be beaten by cards of equal rank. Finnish readers might know Ristikontra. Then there's Ukranian or Polish game Hola and Hungarian Zsírozás.

My game idea combines elements from all of the games. It is also played on a different deck. I used a slightly modified Gang of Four deck (removed all the special cards, mostly). It was certainly interesting, but I need to test the game more, I wasn't completely satisfied with it. It might also be because our team (it's a partnership game) lost... But, what's best, today I invented a cool theme for the game and the theme makes actually some sense. Very little, but it's better than most themes I came up with. It will be a pirate game... We'll see if I'll be able to put together a pirate-themed deck before board game club, which is on Sunday.

Well, since I had the Gang of Four deck with me, we couldn't avoid playing it. Ari had time for three rounds and hey, guess what, he won all three rounds! Second round was particularly spectacular. He had two gangs of four, which left the rest of us with 14 or 15 cards. Then Ari left and got replaced by Nestori and we played six rounds. This time Ilari was the King of Four and gathered just three points. He won all but one round. It's certainly an interesting and entertaining game.

Finally I played two 19x19 matches of Go against Juho. These were pretty fast cases, about five minutes each. We played fast and the situations soon evolved pretty badly for Juho. He resigned both games quickly. While Juho might be better than I am on 9x9, I'm quite happy I still reign supreme on 19x19. My superior skill shows there, as I can control the territories better. However, I pointed out Juho's greatest weakness to him (his opening moves were too small) and I expect him to play much better next time. He's fast to learn...