Yesterday’s game session was motivated by cider. Some local pubs have cider weeks right now and being such a cider fan as I am, I wanted to check out their real cider — it was called Broadside or Broadwinds, don’t know for sure. It was good (though not superior to Weston’s Old Rosie), as were Stowford Press Supreme (very smooth cider made from organically grown apples) and Hard Core (pretty standard British cider, except it’s from the USA).

As for games, we played Cosmic Eidex and Mhing. Cosmic was good, it was an excellent match. Very close: we were first tied at 2 points, then at 4. When the time was to tie the game at 6 (Olli was leading 5-5-6), I tried to score all tricks to win the game right away, but the distribution of trumps foiled my plan and Olli got the game 7-6-5. It was all very close and exciting.

Next time I think I’ll try playing with a regular deck of cards, because while the Cosmic Eidex deck is pretty, it’s also distracting. The sixes and nines are particularly bad, as are some aces.

Mhing was fun, it was completely new experience to Olli and Robert had only played Mahjong. Both caught up with the game soon, and we had a nice, close match. I think we played something like eleven rounds and the wins went 4-4-3, with Robert left behind. The rounds were mostly low scores, just a few 64-point hands. In the end, I won the game by two points.

I still think Mhing is the best form of Mahjong. It could probably use few more special scoring hands to make the winds and the dragons a bit more attractive. Right now they’re quite useless. Of course, they tend to be the first things to discard in regular Mahjong as well, but there you have more special hands and the winds are more valuable with the whole concept of personal wind and of course as they tend to give you multipliers (well, Mhing credit is kind of multiplier, actually, but it doesn’t feel the same).

Maybe even something as simple as giving two credits for a honor triplet? That should make them more attractive. I’ll have to think about that, I expect Johanna would like to try that because she has complained about the weakness of the winds and the dragons as well.