Hello all:

My apologies if this has already been posted, but I could not find anything like it in the fora.

I've had an idea for playing Sails remotely that only requires a smart phone, or a tablet, with the free app Zoom on it. A tablet is probably the better choice.

Basically it goes like this:

Two players set up an identical game, as if there were going to be two games going on.

One player starts a zoom meeting, and the other player joins it. The first player to move changes their phone to use the camera on the back. This shows the other player the game. The moving player displays their card and moves the ship. The other player uses the same card to move that ship on their table as well. Once the first player is done, they change their phone back to the front camera and the other player swaps their's around and completes their move in the same fashion, alternating until the game is finished.

I have not tried this yet, and am looking for another person to give it a try. PM me if you would like to try it. I am at home like most of you and can adjust my schedule to play anytime between 8am and 10pm US east coast time.

Zoom is a video conferencing app that allows two people to hold meetings with no time limit. You can hold meetings with three or more people, but those meetings are limited to 40 minutes. Setting up a meeting takes about a minute, so the time limit isn't that big of a deal for multiple player games, assuming it works for two player games. Zoom also allows you to record the meeting, so sharing the experience is simple.

One word of CAUTION, should you try this yourself. "Zoom bombing" is when someone not invited to the meeting determines the meeting ID and joins anyway. The easy way to avoid this is to assign a password to the meeting (an easy step) or require the meeting host to approve anyone joining the meeting, which is a little more tedious. You can do both, of course.

If I can find another interested player, I will post an AAR.

Michael