Year: 2018

Coffee shops

This page isn’t done yet. I’ll probably add another little sketch to the bottom right.

Waiting…

Stillman and Birn Pocket Alpha, Super5 fountain pen, Rohrer and Klingner Lotte SketchINK and Schmincke watercolours.

Tel Aviv food scene sketches

Three sketches of three different quick food spots in Tel Aviv, before and after applying watercolour. The sketches were done in 5 minutes (for each one), over the past three days. I then took reference photos and applied watercolour at home. The point is to draw more even when I know I have no time to draw.

I used a Stillman and Birn pocket Alpha, a Staedler 0.7 pigment liner (for the first sketch, in the middle of the page), and a Super 5 0.7 fountain pen filled with Rohrer and Kilngner SketchINK Lotte (which is black and permanent). A waterbrush (because I’m going for quick and dirty here, and the Alpha can’t take much water anyway) and my Schmincke watercolours did the rest of the job. The photo came out too dark, but the scans I made of the page were consistently out of focus, so this will have to do for now.

This week’s long run: how to run when you really don’t want to

My mom has some very serious health problems, and that (coupled with some travel) has  made me put my running on a two week haitus. Except for an “angry run” of 4k that turned into 6k, I haven’t been lacing up lately, and that’s not good.

Yesterday I put in a 4k, and as usual after a break, it was pretty rough. Not as rough as I knew this morning’s run would be. It was scheduled to be a 10k, but I dropped it to a 7k, knowing that all things considered even that would be a challenge. I would have to fight my lizard brain all the way through this one, so I would have to use all the tricks I had to get through it:

Trick #1: Remove all obstacles to getting out the door. For me that meant setting an alarm, setting out my workout clothes, and charging my headphones the night before.

Trick #2: Promise yourself something nice once you complete the run. For me it was breakfast at my favourite cafe.

Trick #3: Distraction, distraction, distraction. This is the most important thing, and why I chose a new route, and I saved my favourite podcast (Do By Friday) for this run.

Trick #4: Give yourself a break. I allowed myself to stop for breaks, so long as they were only for a few seconds, and I went right back to running again. I needed to decide this in advance so I wouldn’t feel bad about taking the breaks that I knew that I would need. The point was not to beat myself up for something that couldn’t be helped.

It worked, and I got rewarded with some pretty nifty new views:

Get out there and run. You can crush it, no matter what the little lizard says.

Sleeping cat

At my parents’ house, sketching their cat sleeping.

This week’s long run: clear skies, birds and unbearable heat

Started out earlier than last week, because of the heatwave we’re experiencing now, but still had a hard time running, especially during the last kilometer. Last night’s 5k was also difficult, as it was super humid outside. Breathing water while running is no fun at all.

Started out a little after 6:00 AM, to clear blue skies.

Since I set out earlier than last week, I did get to see some birds out and about. This little egret is a Tel Aviv Port regular, waiting for unlucky fishermen to throw it their little fry.

Near the halfway point I saw a hoopoe, with its unmistakable crown, poking around the grass for insects. It’s our national bird, which is a bit funny, since hoopoes generally migrate to Israel on during the summer.

8 km done and dusted. I had to stop a lot, drink a lot of water, and stop twice to top up my water bottles from water fountains, it was so hot. I’m pleased I got my run in, but I can’t wait for cooler weather. It’s only the beginning of July and the blast furnace that is August still lies ahead… 😅

7 Wonders Duel: A Board Game Review

Finding board games that are great for two players is more difficult that you’d think. Two player games tend to have very simple gameplay, as trading, cooperating and complex card tactics are difficult to build into a game for just two. This is especially pronounced in games that are two players or more. They either don’t have special rules for two player gameplay, and then you’re sure for a duller game than a four player game, or they create complex “dummy” players or partial decks that end up never really simulating a multiplayer game. The game ends up not being as fun.

“7 Wonders“, a wonderful strategy board game, has a two player ruleset that makes use of dummy players. It doesn’t work great. The trading element is huge in this game and just doesn’t work with two players, and the game becomes much less complex when you only have another player’s strategy to worry about. You end up spending most of your time thwarting the other player, or just trying to barrel your way into as many easy points as possible. Red and green cards take the biggest hit out of this kind of gameplay. That’s a shame, because the game is gorgeous, very clever, and very fun and interesting to play, especially if you enjoy strategy games.

So I was very happy to find out that Asmodee came out with “7 Wonders Duel“, a “7 Wonders” game rewritten for two players.

The basic “7 Wonders” rules are the same. Each play tries to rack up as many victory points as possible. Blue culture cards give you straight victory points. Yellow commerce cards give you gold, resources, or more favourable trading rates. Brown and Grey cards are resource cards, and are much rarer than in the original “7 Wonders”. You are going to find yourself really squabbling for resources, or spending a lot of gold on them. However, it’s in the Green science cards and Red military cards that the game truly differs.

Green and Red cards can bring in an early victory condition, but unless the other player is really inexperienced, I doubt that it’ll happen. They are more interesting precisely because you don’t need to rack up a large amount of them to make the other player sit up and take notice. Two Green science cards with the same symbol on them allow you to pick a bonus chip from the top of the board, each one giving you a significant advantage.

Red military cards make the red marker advance towards the edge of your opponent’s board. At first you gain victory point on them, then they start to lose gold, and finally they can lose the game outright. You’ll tend to spend the game near the middle of the board, but the Red and Green cards are what make you more engaged with the other player’s strategy. If they’re racking them up, you need to start playing defensively, or you’re going to lose pretty quickly.

The game still goes on in three ages, and you still benefit from building wonders – especially those that give you an extra turn or more resources. You can still chain buildings – gaining free builds if you’ve built an earlier building with the required symbol. Especially with Red and Blue cards, you’ll want to keep on eye on what you’re opponent has, because in this super resource constrained version of “7 Wonders” a free build is a big help. Trade is with the bank only, which means that you can always trade – but trade gets more expensive if your opponent has the resource you need. Guilds are as powerful as they are in the original game, and wonders are even more important – and if your opponent builds his four first, you can only build three of your four (there are only 7 wonders after all…).

 

“7 Wonders Duel” is about 30-40 minutes play time, with another 10 minutes to setup and pack it all up. The box is super well organized, and while not compact, can totally slip into a backpack quite comfortably – unlike the huge “7 Wonders” box. It’s a game with engrossing tactics, very beautifully made and fun to play. Each turn is quick, so there’s very little downtime, and you can’t just focus on one aspect of the game (Wonders, Greens, Blues, Reds or Yellows), or you’ll very quickly lose. Even though there’s no trading with the other player, you are constantly looking at each other’s builds, trying to figure out and thwart their strategy, and changing your in response, so there’s no isolated play possible – a huge plus over the two player version of the original “7 Wonders” game. This gets a big thumbs up from me.

This week’s long run: clouds and sunshine

Managed to leave the house earlier than last week, but still not early enough to entirely skip the heat. Thankfully it was a windy day, so the heat wasn’t too unbearable, which meant that I could speed up my run a little bit.

The clouds were gorgeous, edged with morning light. It almost looks like a winter morning (Tel Aviv winters aren’t very grey and rainy) because it was so overcast.

There’s usually a lot more wildlife around the park, but since there are more people out this time of year (running, walking, doing yoga, playing with their dogs), only a few ducks and geese were around the boat docks.

8K done today, 4k done yesterday, and it looks like I won’t have time for a proper run tomorrow, so rest and stretch day it is. That’s the floor of one of my favourite coffee places, by the way. My machine is on the fritz and I haven’t had to fix it, so I’ve got to schlepp a bit for my brew nowadays.