Games for Shabbos

R’ Moshe seems to asser puzzles if there’s any chibur (attachment) whatsoever. This teshuvah (O.C. 1 – 135) is quoted by Shmiras Shabos K’hilchoso (16 – 23, 62) and Orchos Shabbos (15 – 13, 23). R’ Shlomo Zalman Auerbach is similarly quoted as being machmir.

Check out games by Ares Games and/or Fantasy Flight – both are leading companies in the “niche” board game market.

A favorite of mine is War of the Ring – strategy game based on Lord of the Rings – about 2-3 hrs. Eclipse (space strategy game) is another good one. There is a large web site devoted to board games out there (some Googling can get you there) check it out and see what speaks to you.

Board games in general CAN come with halachic ‘baggage’ when played on Shabbos – anything that might come to mind (borer, for example) should prob be addressed w your LOR (obviously).

Thx

CODA is a good short strategy game.

Famous story about Rabbi/ Dr. Twerski, copied from Ohr Somaych Web site:

I once heard Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski, shlita, tell a beautiful story about a rebuke that he once received from his saintly father, the Hornesteipel Rebbe, zt”l. He told this story at the 10th anniversary of the passing. He told it as an example of rebuke that makes its point and expresses love at the same time. The story took place on Rosh Hashanah when Rabbi Twerski was a young boy. Staying at their house was a man who should have known better, but asked the young Abraham Twerski if he would play Chess with him. The boy felt that there must be something wrong with playing Chess on Rosh Hashanah, but the man assured him that there wasn’t – “What could be wrong with a game of Chess?” So, they played and the young boy Checkmated the older guest. Later that night after Rosh Hashanah ended, young Abraham Twerski was told that his father wanted a word with him in the study. Nervously, he entered. His father, never taking his eyes from the book that he was studying, chided the boy “You played chess on Rosh Hashanah?” The tone said that he knew him to be above this kind of behavior, and that he was disappointed with him. The rebuke struck deep in the little boy, who felt very ashamed. When the father was certain that he had made his point, he lifted his head from the book he was studying, picked up his glasses and with a twinkle in his eyes he said to his son, “Did you win?”

Monopoly (although many people don’t play it on shabbos), and definitely articulate!

The things people come up with…

I assume the art in most of these games would keep us from

playing them, but they might amuse you to read about.

Kings of Israel is a board game taking place in Israel (the Northern Kingdom) during the reign of its kings up until Israel’s destruction by Assyria. Players are on a team, with each person representing a line of prophets that are trying to remove evil and idols from Israel, while building altars to help guide Israel in the upcoming difficult years. If the players are able to build enough altars before the game ends, they win. If the game ends by either the team running out of sin cubes or idols, or by Assyria destroying Israel, the prophets lose.

A typical round has four phases:

1. King’s Godliness Phase: During this phase, if a bad king is reigning over Israel, the players must draw a Sin & Punishment card, which means bad things occur in Israel because of evil or in response to evil. If during the reign of a good king, the starting player receives a Blessing card.

2. Sin Increases Phase: Location cards are drawn and sin increases at each revealed location. This can possibly cause idols to appear or sin to spread further if sin increases at a location with an idol.

3. Prophets Work Phase: In this phase each prophet gets to use four actions to accomplish their goals. They may use their actions to move, remove sin or idols, draw resource cards, build an altar, make a sacrifice at an altar, or to give resources to another player. A prophets may also play Blessing cards at this time if they have them. In expert mode, after all the prophets take their turn, the false prophet takes his turn.

4. End of Round Phase: The starting player changes to the next player and the timeline token moves down to the next king chronologically. In easy mode, any player who had made a sacrifice that turn then draws a single Blessing card.

The family version of Kings of Israel is available on the game’s website. This version eliminates the King’s Godliness phase, Abilities, and the Blessing cards, which makes for an easier, quicker, and more simplified game.

_________________________________________________

Kingdom of Solomon is a worker-placement game with a few new twists and turns. Do you claim a resource space, an action space or throw in all your remaining pawns to grab a powerful Bonus Space? Will you spend your resources to extend Solomon’s kingdom, take some points in the Market or add to the Temple? These and many other choices await you in this highly interactive game.

You play Kingdom of Solomon in rounds of four phases.

You start the round placing your pawns to get resources, take actions or get a bonus. In this placement phase players take

turns, each placing one pawn at a time. After all pawns have been placed, players resolve what they get from placing their pawns. This is called the resolution phase, and each player, in turn,

resolves the placement of all their pawns before the next player.

Next the players can go to the Market to sell or buy resources. In this market phase, like the placement phase, players alternate

taking turns, except that players take turns in reverse order. The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.

Finally, you build in the building phase. Players, one at a time, can build a building, roads and add blocks to the Temple.

When you place pawns to take actions, you can get an additional resource for a resource space, trade one resource for another, steal a resource from an opponent, get victory points or draw

Fortune cards. You can play Fortune cards at any time. Fortune cards provide resources, victory points or special actions. Bonuses your pawns can gain for you include one of every resource, three Fortune cards or victory points with a rearrangement of turn order so you become the new first player.

The game ends at the end the round when a player places all his building tokens on building sites, there is a building token on each of the building sites, or the Temple is complete. The player with the most victory points wins.

(Kingdom of Solomon is infamous for its rulebook’s “numerous instances of ambiguity or omission” – additional documentation is necessary to play properly.)

__________________________________________________________

QuestZion (The Game of Israel)

The object of this educational game is to enter Jerusalem and place a ‘Note’ in the Kotel (the Western Wall).

The board is a (disproportionate) map of Israel and is broken up into 7 regions. When a player passes through each of the first 6 regions, they earn the corresponding Activity Diploma that is

required to enter the final Jerusalem region.

Depending on the space that the player lands on, they must either: 1) Answer a question; or, 2) Draw a Yesh/Gevalt card and follow the instructions.

By answering the trivia questions, players learn about Israeli history, Hebrew, Judaism, Jewish heritage, and Jewish traditions.

__________________________________________________

In Nehemiah, players take the role of Israeli leaders who help to rebuild the Jerusalem wall (Ed: see Sefer Nechemiah). The game is based on a unique, worker-placement mechanism:

Players will place their workers on ever-changing labor cards.

When a player activates his worker, he may activate other labor cards in the same row of cards that have already been activated. Doing this will cost him gold, but it may help him utilize his

resources better.

When players are not watchful, the row of labor cards may be changed before they have a chance to use their worker(s), so it’s important to place new workers on good cards, but also to use

the workers already placed.

__________________________________________________

Promised Land: 1250-587 BC is a history of the Promised Land from Joshua through to the Babylonian captivity. Players compete in two teams, out of which just one individual will be

crowned the winner. Hebrew units are split between Northern and Southern kingdoms, but Hebrew players will have the opportunity to use both these factions through the game. Similarly there are eleven Heathen kingdoms for the Heathen players to use. Play happens at an individual, human level as well as at the movement of nations level.

Each player has two Farmers, two Merchants and two Priests. A number of these can be placed after conquest into lands occupied by the kingdom just played. Farmers collect two bronze coins

for plains and one for hills. Merchants collect two silver coins for ports and one for roads. Priests collect two gold coins for temples and one for cities. Players may have only one of their Patriarchs in any one land. Players may share occupation of a land, but only one type of Patriarch may be in each land.

Players use the coins generated by their Patriarchs to buy artefacts that influence game play but can instead choose to secure objectives on the Kingdom track to highlight the development of the nation and score victory points of course!

A variety of strategies are available, and players must

make choices throughout the game in order to emerge victorious.

Listed among the components are:

Canaanites, Philistines, Arameans, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Edomites, Ammonites, Midianites, Moabites, Assyrians, Babylonians

Joshua, Gideon, Samson, Saul, David, Solomon, Omri,

Jereboam, Hosheah, Zedekiah (and more)

“The Ark (of the Covenant, not Noah’s)”

__________________________________________________

Package Has Arrived / ????? ?????

A game from 1965 designed by the famous Israeli writer Ephraim Kison, describing the bureaucracy around receiving a package from the Israeli post office in the late ’60. Players roll the dice, advance their markers on the board and follow the instructions while collecting all the necessary documents.

__________________________________________________

A Reign of Missiles is a low-complexity, solitaire simulation game of the Gaza Missile Crisis of November 2012. The player takes on the role of the Israeli military high command as it attempts to fend off the missile strikes launched by Hamas from Gaza.

__________________________________________________

Last but not least, there is, (not making this up) The Settlers of Canaan.

(And that’s leaving out all the wargames based on modern Israeli wars…)

Whats wrong with monopoly

tana – depends who. I play Monopoly on Shabbos, but many of my cousins and friends don’t.

Monopoly is probably more assur cause of bitul zman than anything else. Also, a message to Comlinx: Cholent is not a game.

cholent is not a game. cholent is a derech hachaim. the card game creators are guilty of motzi shem ra.

You’ve been getting attacked by a lot of people tonight, so I won’t call you out on being choshed biksharim, motzi shem ra, etc. Maybe take a break from posting and let the steam out… I can’t help but ask, though: what about liking cholent (and expressing that like in a humorous, over-the-top way) makes you think I’m a fraud? You seriously think that someone would only say they like cholent *if and only if* they are lying about their gender/level of frumkeit?! Shtus v’hevel.

Sorry – a great card/board game

Perpetual commotion is a fun card game to play with the whole family.

Re: http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/games-for-shabbos#post-454036

Really, Yserbius…

Agricola, 7 Wonders, RaceftG, and Dominion are not gateway!

Are you still playing? (Have you tried Roll for the Galaxy or

7 Wonders Duel?)

Chanukah gift guide? (Probably won’t happen…)

As for Shabbos issues, Rav Ribiat in his 38 Melochos series goes into detail for several toys and games. He is OK with most puzzles as long as they’re not built in a frame. For something a little more specific, a talmid of Rav Yosef Berger from Baltimore published a kuntrus on his psak halachos of toys on Shabbos and he goes into detail on games and puzzles.

Don’t quote me on this, but I recall one or both paskening that there’s no halachic problem with a game that has play money, it’s just something people don’t do.

>It wasn’t me who suggested Eclipse.<

The new Forbidden game is called Forbidden Sky.
It includes batteries (you build an actual electric circuit during the game).
I think it’s been getting mixed reviews.

Did I really just say 38 melochos?

(facepalm)

(Please review the following on the basis of informative/useful you found it:)

Carcassonne
2-5 players / 8-10 and up / 45 minutes(?)

Players build an old French town together, trying to control different
kinds of areas so that only they score when those areas are completed.
On their turns, players must draw and add a single tile to the board so
that it matches any nearby tiles, and may put one of their pieces on it
to take control of an area no one controls yet. When an area is finished,
the controlling player gets some points and all pieces there go back to
their owners. “But how could more than one person have pieces in an
area according to what I just read,” you ask. The answer is that while
you can’t get into a controlled area, you can place a tile in such a way
that multiple areas become one.
There’s also permanent piece placement for end-of-game scoring
that you should start playing with after a couple of games.

Some notes:
The fewer players, the better, according to the gaming community.

A widespread house-rule that makes the game faster without really
changing it: Players draw their tile at the end of their turns instead
of the start of their turn, letting them think on other players’ turns.

An expansion is a separately sold box that adds elements to a game;
Carcassonne has a ton of them. “Traders & Builders” is probably the
first one you should get should you choose to go down that road.
(There are also numerous alternate versions* of the game, each with
its own little twist. However, they are not generally compatible with
the expansions – even if they were, the visuals wouldn’t match.)
There’s even a much-simplified kids’ version, My First Carcassonne.

As a variant, you can have players draw 3 or 4 tiles and only draw
another 3/4 after playing their last tile (make sure the number of
tiles in the game is divisible by [player count]x[hand size]).

(Get the MacGuffin, to be precise.)

It seems the first 3 editions of the base game each had a different set of rules for farmers.

We’ve been playing Azul using 100 Ticket to Ride trains and paper boards
I made myself with pen/pencil and markers. I’ve just taken a good look at
the new Stained Glass of Sintra version; making its double-sided
columns out of paper doesn’t seem like a great idea.

Kingdomino and its sequel/expansion Queendomino are excellent games.

Hey, Yserbius and Milhouse. 3 words: Machi Koro Legacy. :):):)

Meh. Machi Koro is OK, but if I’m going to play that sort of game I’d rather play Dominion.