Gili Power

Gili, Kate, Eszter, Nadine

Hanafuda (flower cards)

Nadine+, Gili, Kate; Gili+, Kate, Nadine

Gili brought a set of small cards which her mother-in-law, now in her 90’s, obtained when she spent the war in Vietnam, she’s originally from France. The card patterns are confusing so it takes a while to get used to the groupings. There is some resemblance to Mahjong tile pictures. Gili says her family calls the game chana, it’s a Yakuza game, I didn’t know they had games. We weren’t using much strategy as we tried to get used to the cards, and Gili worked on remembering the game and the set-up for 3 players. I was lucky the first game, and I guess Gili was the second game. With familiarity you can figure out which cards are out, I don’t know how much of a difference that can make.  You either  take a card on the table with a matching one from your hand or put down a card, then do the same using a card from the draw pile. The cards have varying values with some overriding win conditions.

Power Grid

Gili 17/16 +21 Eszter 15/15 +24 Kate 16/15 +0 Nadine 14/14 +16

First play for Eszter, Kate has the game and wanted to try a map she hadn’t played on, so we used France, the bottom 4 regions. Kate started with 3 cities in Paris. Kate was ahead with money and cities most of the game but had a harder time with plants. Gili got a 6 plant earlier than everyone else which helped her get ahead in capacity at the end, and she was able to build the 3 cities she needed to end the game following our first Step 3 auction. Eszter started out slowly but then was getting the most money. I didn’t have enough money to buy one more city on my last turn, even though I could have powered it. If Kate hadn’t bought her last city, she would have had more money than Eszter and come in second; Eszter would have bought another city but was short $1. That is what the rules say as a tie-breaker, money then cities, but it doesn’t seem right.