When I heard we’d be playing a game called Three Sisters, a line immediately flashed into my head:
Ta ra ra boom de yay, sit on a stone I may.
This has nothing to do with the board game Three Sisters. It’s a line from Anton Chekhov’s play Three Sisters, Act 4, though translations from the Russian vary widely.
Why does this stick in my mind? It comes from me hanging out with actors at the NY Ren Faire. One of the things I learned is part of what an actor does: They look at the words they have to say, and develop a character around someone who would say them.
That line is notorious among actors because it’s hard for them to come up with a reason to incorporate it into their performance. In later years Chekhov himself regretted writing it.
Now that I’ve gotten that tangent out of my system, let’s look at the game.
The term “three sisters” refers to a style of planting. It’s been used by Native Americans for centuries. (The planting style, not the game.)Three Sisters is a roll-and-write: A player rolls dice, and records something on a piece of paper based on those dice in order to accumulate points. In the upper left is the Action board; in the lower right are two sheets of paper representing your garden. (The pencil is not included with the game.)Here we see A pointing to the main board. After the dice are rolled, they are placed on successive action spaces, depending on the number rolled. When a player takes a die from the board, it determines which field they can cultivate (see next photo) and which action the player can take.The state of my sheets about 2/3rds of the way through the game. In the upper right you can see the fields in which I planted and cultivated corn, string beans, and pumpkins. I adopted a strategy in which I emphasized gaining as many Goods as possible (lower left). Every time I checked off a star, I got an addttional Action.My sheets at the end of the game. As you can see, my score total was 68 points, mostly from growing Perennials.However, it was M who won. She observed something that I missed until it was too late: There was a big chunk of points that one could earn by creating a Carving Kit in the Shed (middle right).
We played one other game last night. We picked something short that we played before: 3 Chapters.
3 Chapters is a game of hand management. It includes drafting, trick-taking, and planning for end-game scoring. I’ll refer to my previous write-up for details.J was the winner. He did a good job of drafting cards that worked well together.
We hadn’t planned for it to be a “three-game” night; that is, we played only two games, but they both had a 3 in the title.
It was a pleasant evening. I have a vague memory of not enjoying roll-and-writes, but I liked this one.
When I got home, I played Baldur’s Gate 2 (not 3!) for a little while. Real Angela pointed out that this means that, for me at least, it was a three-game night.
When I got home, I played Baldur’s Gate 2 (not 3!) for a little while. Real Angela pointed out that this means that, for me at least, it was a three-game night.