I need to teach all of you Hanafuda! It's an awesome Japanese card game.

Although the first time I was at Yaohan in Chicago, I stepped into a Japanese bookstore to look for some cards. They, all offended, told me "We wouldn't sell that kind of game here." Hee. It's a gambling game. But I didn't know! I liked it.

Anyway, it has Buffista ties, because during the first F2F in Chicago I ducked out to make a detour to J. Toguri's to pick up a deck. And then Betsy and other folks trailed me in there, so I ended up dragging you into a Japanese store.

So it's a flower card game. Twelve suits, one for each month, four cards in each suit. Two cards have value and two have zero points. The basic play is a matching game. You have cards in your hand which you try to match with those on the table. Then you flip one over from the remaining stack, still trying to match the table. It's a partners game, and highest point total wins.

So at that level it's simple to learn. But then there's a whole 'nother level where there are several sets of three cards of different suits (three red flags, for instance) and if you gain all three then the opposing team must subtract fifty points. So there's all this strategy around getting those cards, particularly corner cards, and preventing your opponent from getting them.

Then there's a wildcard.

I love it because it's simple on the one hand and deeply complex on the other.

Fun fact: Nintendo originally started as a maker of these cards. My sister still has a set from them. They're shaped like western playing cards and also have the point values and english translations on them. Mine are smaller and harder (the better to smack dramatically on the table) and more traditional, so it's harder to teach as you must recognize the suits. Which is not too hard; they're all decorated with the same flower.

Well, some of them were from Pennsylvania. That doesn't count as midwestern, right?

I count myself as an Easterner, even with most than half my life spent in Utah.

Oh, and what I meant to say was, Nintendo now denies they ever made the cards. It's, like, excluded from their corporate history somehow. But they did! It says Nintendo and the logo clear as day on the cards!

I have this really weird thing where I cannot unscramble letters well.

I have the flip where I can't card count for shit. I had to stop playing partner card games because I was such a dead weight.

I joined the Gamer's Guild in university with a girl from my residence floor. We joined a move-a-week game of Diplomacy without telling anyone that we knew each other, and set up a behind the scenes affiliation. God, we were evil. I totally smoked their asses and remember it with glee 20 years later. I was gracious about it to their faces, though. But the duplicity was fun.

The theatre group would get together and play Illuminati and those were really ugly evenings. I can't remember the game for shit, but it was highly divisive and intensely fun. No one ever wanted to take a pee break.

I have a set of Hanafuda from Nintendo!

I can't remember where I got it.

My mother's family played a card game where you collected cards with partial quotes from Japanese literature that you had to complete. Apparently, my grandmother was excellent at that game.

I have a set of Hanafuda from Nintendo!

Hee! Awesome!

My mother's family played a card game where you collected cards with partial quotes from Japanese literature that you had to complete.

Ooh. That sounds like a great game.

My MiL plays Mah Jongg, which I believe is the official Jewish-Lady-of-a-Certain-Age game.

Hubby and I love a game called Chronology, where you have to place events in their proper place on the time line. It's great for history geeks. The game says to go until you have 5 cards in the correct order. Hubby and I agree that this is what wimps do and play to 20 cards. We just need to find more people to play it with.

If I'm ever in the neighborhood, I'd love to play. My friends in law school stopped playing Trivial Pursuit with me when I identified Patty, Maxene, and Laverne before they finished reading the question. Probably a fair result, but they picked the wrong trigger. I mean, I did my undergrad honors thesis on popular music during World War II -- of course I'd know who the Andrews Sisters were.

I've tried to throw a game or two in my time. Mainly to a very cutthroat roommate -- either he didn't realize I was as good at the game as I really was, or we both didn't realize that I didn't understand the rules. I survived gaming with him by shifting my goals from "win" to "do better than expected."

My family was all about pinochle. My folks babied the kids until we were up to speed, and then it was every person for his or her self. We generally went with 3-person instead of 4, because we'd rather bid on the pot than team up. When there were only two people around we'd usually play cribbage or backgammon. We weren't competitive to the point of tears, but we generally played to win. Still, when my folks were ill, I'll admit to not focusing as much on winning as usual.

Now I have a whole lot of games, including a lovely mah-jong set a friend brought back from China, that hardly ever get used. My local friends and I keep saying we'll have some board game nights, but it hasn't happened yet. Wiis are also becoming a thing. There are four of us in my apartment complex, two of whom have wiis and one of whom will be buying one this month. We're talking about setting them up so we can play one another from our own apartments. An introvert's heaven!

"Nice" and "razor-sharp wit" are not mutually exclusive, my dear.

Well, yes, but niceness mitigates the willingess to draw blood.