I played some games with my brother yesterday.

• Let’s Catch the Lion is a cute abstract game. It’s a very small variant of shōgi (Japanese chess), with a 3×4 board and just four pieces per player. The action starts right away. It’s a quick game and it didn’t take us long to play four rounds. It’s a neat little puzzler, nothing too heavy. It won’t stand for repeat play forever, but then it’s time to move on to a bigger version, like the 7×7 tori shōgi. There’s also Dōbutsu Shōgi in the Greenwood, which is proper large-board shōgi with the cute animal art. If the kids like this a lot, that might be an interesting option… I had a shōgi set before, but the barrier of entry with regular shōgi pieces is just too high for random play, and in any case I would very much prefer cute animal art to Japanese characters.
• Yinsh has been a part of my collection for a long time, but I’ve managed just couple of plays before (Helcon III in 2004, another game in 2006). Now we played three games back-to-back, which is always a good idea with a game like this. We talked too much while we played, which caused some ‘oops, didn’t notice that’ moments, but part of it is also straight unfamiliarity with the game. It’s an odd game, but not quite as bad as Zèrtz. Quite fun, actually, and my assessment holds: it’s one of the better games in the series. Next time I play with Ville, I should probably give Gipf a go.

I also proved my inability to succeed in Roll through the Ages, and managed to get my butt kicked in Archon (the NES version, played on a proper arcade cabinet — nice!).

Here’s an interesting food video: Epic Meal Time: Meat Salad — not for vegetarians!