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GeekNights Tuesday - Reddit's Idea of Strange Strategies
Today, we pick through an entertaining Reddit thread on strange strategies in tabletop games. Beyond that, the G2A game codes scandal is pretty awful, and matchmaking is an interesting problem in Overwatch.
Come see us at ConnectiCon 2016! Much of the schedule is online! And the GeekNights Patreon continues ever onward!
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My wife played Bohnanza with a group of my friends. I am generally very cutthroat with my trades, even giving people a 3 second count down sometimes before cancelling the trade, but she was not doing that. If people asked for beans, she was just giving them away. Sometimes shed get beans in trade, but other times, she said she was just doing it to be nice. I tried explaining that wasn't how the game was supposed to be played and she said if it wasn't against the rules, she didn't care. She wanted to help people.
People started giving her beans in return, also for free. She wound up winning by a 2-3 points and afterwards, I asked her about the strategy and she said she was just dumping useless cards out of her hand and getting goodwill. She also raised more ire against me in the game which caused more people to NOT trade with me. It was very fun.
This has proven good against games of me, Rym, and other loud mouth, cut-throat traders. See: Frank.
NJ beaches run the entire length of the cost, not just in the southern region where they have barrier islands. The northern beaches are awesome because they exist in that NYC sphere of influence that can support awesome downtowns and culture very close to the beach, whereas the southern half is all unoccupied for half of the year.
Sandy Hook is the best, and is indeed a pain to drive to unless you happen to live directly west of it. It was a small factor in where I finally decided to settle down: right across the water from the southern tip of Staten Island, in a 10min circle where 7 major highways converge, including the east-west route for access to the northern shore. Sandy Hook is in a several-way tie for closest beach to me (yes, there is a Raritan Bay beach in my town but it is *literally a Superfund site.* Only ocean beaches count)
The county where Sandy Hook resides (Monmouth) is known for having specialty county high schools. One of them is a marine biology academy, and I got to go to a summer prep camp there during the summer of 7th grade, although I didn't wind up going there for high school. It was fucking awesome.
If you are interested in former military sites along the shore, just a bit further south from Sandy Hook is InfoAge, a computer and radio history museum on a converted former Army installation
We played it last weekend and it went better than the first time (cards were better shuffled), but my one friend had a brilliant "unusual" strategy. One round he got five illegal goods through, like five crossbows or something high end like that. Of course after that everyone was wary of him, and that wasn't helped by the fact he intentionally acted shady as fuck every round, but he had all legal goods after that round. A few people called him on it and he got a lot of gold.
He also as the Sherrif tried to trip me up on my story one round. I said five bread because I was going for king of bread, but he tried to trip me up by asking "so you said four apples?" Or somesuch, and I confirmed, only, he himself forgot so he didn't check my bag (which I don't think it's exactly illegal to mix up your story if there's no illegal goods but eh) so I got five bread through when he thought I said apples.
His wife actually tried the strategy of being perfectly innocent until the one round she tried to slip some mead by. I caught that as I was the Sherrif.
If you've got a substantial points lead, you can just make safe plays. 4 Apples. 3 Bread. Even 2 Chickens. What can anyone do to you? It doesn't matter, you're going to get points. All they can do is to choose to give you even more points.
If you're behind, you have to start doing crazy stuff. Go for it on fourth down. Onsides kick. 3 Pepper, a crossbow, and the king's bread. If you went with legal goods, it's not enough to catch up. If you get caught, you were going to lose anyway. Your only hope is to sneak in the contraband.
So what do you do as the sherriff? That's tough. If you are playing with really stupid people, you try to determine their psychology. If you know that they are following a particular strategy, like the one I described above, you can open the bags of the players who are sucking and not the bags of the players in the lead. That will help you catch up, but it will also widen the gap between the winners and losers, making it harder for you to catch up if you yourself aren't leading.
That's why, when I'm the sheriff, I open bags almost entirely at random. That way, everyone is on their toes when it's my turn. Knowing there is going to be random bag inspection is like the TSA. People are going to play more conservatively in general when I'm the sherriff. It will be, on average, a lower scoring round. And that's what I want. The round I can't play cards I need the other players to score fewer points. Let the high scoring rounds be the ones when I'm no the sherriff.
The other is Silverball, which is the same idea but with pinball. That one's right on the Asbury Park Boardwalk and beach. Both are about 20 minutes or so from Sandy Hook, though I different directions.