The City

In accordance with my continuing prejudice against cards games, once again I was pleasantly surprised by one that was actually fun to play. It was at a board game party couple weeks back where people both that play board games usually and those who don't gathered around a table to play something. It was either Catan (which I don't like) or something easy for others to learn quickly. The game I brought was quickly dismissed, much to my disappointment, but the picked alternative, the card game The City proved to be a fun game in itself.

Building a city is awesome and anyone that has ever played SimCity will attest to it. However, the complex nature of it suits computer games better than board games which results in city building board and card games being usually based on something other than balancing RCI. Sure, there is Alhambra with its many expansions but that is not really a city building game either. It's laying tiles to each other so that they connect with walls. More like a logical puzzle, I'd say.

The City is not about balancing RCI either but it's more city building than any other board game I've played. As with most of the card games, the luck plays a large part here. You are dealt some cards and for the couple first rounds, as you're building your first buildings, you try to set a specialization of your future city. Each building has some attributes and most of them react to other buildings in your city, so of course, you are trying to create such building combinations that give you some very nice bonuses.

Village

I'm down with a nasty case of tonsillitis and most of my day I just roll around in bed, hurting everywhere and sweating like I was on a treadmill. First couple days I couldn't do much but now when the antibiotics have started to work, I decided it would be nice to write something about the game I bought last year since in my current condition I can't bake anything.

I hadn't heard about Village before I stumbled upon it in an online shop. The description said it won several GOTY awards and BGG claimed it put a twist on the worker placement scheme that I like. So, I was quite looking forward to trying out something new, unfortunately Village didn't turn out the way I expected.

After spending about an hour sticking numbers on countless figures and skimming the rules, I was ready to play the game. But with whom? My parents didn't like the complexity of the rules, my friends weren't exactly thrilled about its theme. It wasn't until about a month later that I played the game for the first time. And I have to say I was less than happy about my latest purchase. Village seems to me as a game that tries too hard to re-invent the worker placement genre, or better to approach it from a different angle, that it just ended up being quite unpolished around the edges.

Cantuccini

There was this Italian guy on TV with his fancy cooking show and actually it wasn't half bad. Obviously, if you're a chef, you know something about cooking and if you're an Italian chef, Italian food is probably your expertise. Or it should be when you're on TV.

This one time, he made cantuccini, an Italian biscuit-y thing with nuts. They're pretty hard and crunchy and you're supposed to serve them with a dessert wine. I made it once before I even had the blog and they were quite nice but I think I left them in the oven for too long because they were practically inedible without dipping into hot cocoa.

So for my second attempt, I decided to add a bit of oil into the recipe. Believe it or not, the chef's recipe had no oil or milk in it. It was just the eggs! I guess that must have been the cause for the hardness... Anyway, you still want these to be more crunchy than chewy, so I recommend baking it twice. First 20 minutes, then cut into pieces and then 5 more minutes just for the added crunchiness :)