Midwestern Wanderer

The Joys of Rediscovering Old Music

2012-02-05T15:49:00.001-06:00

So this afternoon I was scrolling through my iTunes library to find something to listen to while reading comic books, when I spotted a couple Matt Wertz albums. "I haven't listened to those in a while," I thought to myself. Clicking on the album Everything in Between showed that it had in fact been over two years since I had listened to it. So I cranked it up and jammed out to some great tunes that I had pretty much forgotten about. Funny how that happens, isn't it? We get so wrapped up in new things that we can forget how great what we already have is.

It is getting easier to be an Arsenal supporter

2012-01-30T21:38:00.000-06:00

As some of you may know, I am a fan of Arsenal, the London football club. Just a couple years ago my only real option to see them play was Fox Soccer Channel. The Premier League is big business, though, so now I can also catch some occasional matches on ESPN 2 on Saturday mornings, and just a couple weekends ago the main Fox channel showed the match against Manchester United on Sunday morning. I'm not sure if this accessibility will continue or not, but I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

Recently, however, I discovered ever more Arsenal to be available to me. When I got U-Verse TV service, I signed up for the expanded sports package to have access to Fox Soccer Channel. This package gives me access to pretty much every regional sports network throughout the country, though any live matches are blacked out since I am "out of area" for those. I just recently learned that YES, the Yankees network out of NYC, has not one, but TWO Arsenal weekly shows that they have every week: Arsenal World and Arsenal 360. While I find Arsenal World to be a little too unfocused for my taste (I don't really care to see interviews with random fans before and after matches), Arsenal 360 is a pretty good summary show, though I noticed that it seems to be delayed so that it is coming out a week after it comes out in England. Ah, well, I'll take it, anyway.

Men of Iron

2012-01-29T17:50:00.000-06:00

As we continue to journey through my game collection, we next come to Men of Iron, a hex-and-counter wargame from GMT Games, published in 2005. It includes six battles from the "renaissance of infantry" period in the late middle-ages. I have played two of these battles, Falkirk and Courtrai. Falkirk is essentially a "training scenario," as the Scottish side basically sits in position until the English shoot them with arrows, while Courtrai has more for each player to do, but not much more. The reason for that is the way that these battles were fought in real life: one side set up in defensive terrain, and then stayed there. For example, at Courtrai, the Flemish set up with their pikemen behind these water-filled ditches, and wait for the French to come at them. Due to the nature of the ditches (hard to charge your mounted knights through there), the standard advantage of mounted knights is negated, so if/when the knights to attack, they die like dogs. This is what happened historically, and is pretty much what is going to happen in the game. I can see how some people wouldn't find this to be much fun, though. I haven't played all of the scenarios, but from reading the scenario setups they all look to be of the same nature, with a mobile force attacking a dug-in infantry force. With pikes. Probably in a shield wall formation.

I have two problems with normal hex-and-counter wargames. First, they are often quite complex (Great Battles of History, I'm looking at you...), such that it is a major pain to learn and then remember all of the rules. Second, many of these games feature status counters, placed on top of the military unit counter. You can literally end up with half-a-dozen status counters on top of the main counter, and then you have hundreds of unit counters, so you've got hundreds of status counters, and then you accidentally bump the table and counters go everywhere. It is no good. Thankfully, this game mostly dodges both of these problems. The rulebook is a total of 12 pages in length, including diagrams and play examples. And while there are some status counters, they are not frequently used (unless you put all of your pike into the fore-mentioned shield wall status), so I can tolerate them. Combat is pretty simple. A unit is either in standard order, disordered (flip the counter to show disordered status), retired (retreats), or eliminated. That's it. You don't have to figure out how many hit points the unit has left, or anything like that. While charging with mounted knights is a bit fiddly, the rules work smoothly and the game plays well.

One interesting feature of the game is the lack of turns. Per the scenario rules, one side starts the game by activating one of their sides "commands." A command means a leader and all of that leader's units, as denoted by the colored stripe on the counter. That command can move, fire, and fight with all of its units (as long as they are within the leader's command range, in hexes). Once that is done, the player designates another one of his leaders, and rolls a ten-sided die. If you roll a number equal to or lower than that leader's command rating, his command activates. This continues until a die roll goes over the designated leader's command rating, at which time command switches to the other player, who activates one of his leaders, and play continues in this way from there. However, whenever a side attempts to continue with a new leader, the other player can try to interrupt with one of his leaders. The upside is that if you win that die roll, you get to move instead of the other player. The downside is that if you fail the die roll, the other player doesn't have to roll the die to see if he activates his new leader; it automatically works. This introduces a nice dynamic of balancing whether you want to try to steal the initiative yourself, or wait for the other guy to botch his roll and take it that way. Since it is all reliant on the roll of the dice, there is no obvious correct answer, and it all comes down to what the odds are of getting your way.

Overall this game is pretty good, but it is somewhat let down by the tactical nature of the battles included. Battles where one side is in obviously-better position and just waits for the poor fools on the other side to run into their prepared defenses aren't necessarily fun for all players. While each scenario has special rules in place to try to make the games more competitive, it takes some luck of the dice to really break through. Still, this is a solid game and a worthy part of the collection.

Mini Squadron

2012-01-05T21:33:00.000-06:00

I first encountered the Mini Squadron game in the iTunes store, where you can purchase the game as an app for your iPhone/iPod/iPad/iEtc. It is a simple game where you fly your plane around in a 2D side-scrolling environment and shoot down other planes. The gameplay is pretty simple, but the designers gave the game a goofy sense of humor (flying cats? really?), very bright colors, and a pretty cartoony sense of design (in a good way). My only problem with the game is that I had trouble really controlling my plane properly using the touch-screen controls The game would just work better with a real joystick, I though.

Thus, I was pleasantly surprised this evening when I was rooting around in the PlayStation store on my PS3, looking at new years' sales, and I saw that you can play Mini Squadron on the PS3! And PSP! Best of all, the game costs just $0.99, which is exactly what the iPhone version cost me. And I can say from experience that the game works MUCH better with an analog stick. Aerial domination, here I come!

Arkham Horror

2012-01-02T15:52:00.000-06:00

The next random game from my collection to discuss is one that I have lots of experience with, Arkham Horror. This board game is based on the stories of H.P. Lovecraft, many of which dealt with the creatures of what is now known as the "Cthulhu mythos" after one of the more memorable of the writer's monsters. The game board depicts the fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts, at some point during the prohibition era. The players all control one investigator, chosen at random from the 16 different characters that come with the game. During play, the players move their characters around the town, visiting different locations, finding clues, and having encounters with the townsfolk (or worse...) in order to stop the invasion of eldritch horrors from beyond time and space, just like is done in many of H.P. Lovecraft's stories.

One of the things that really sets this game apart from others is the cooperative nature of the game. All of the players must work together to do what needs to be done in order to beat the game. Either everyone wins, or everyone loses. At the beginning of the game, you determine one a dozen different big bad guys that is trying to break through to our world. Every turn, the player whose turn it is must draw a card from the "mythos" deck, which describes where an extra-dimensional gate opens, releasing monsters into the town. Other events can also happen based on the card draws, such as shops closing, or police raids, or dozens of other possibilities. After this is done, the players move around the town visiting locations, which have their own separate decks. For each player character at a location, the player draws a card from that deck to determine what happens to their character. Characters can also encounter the monsters released from the gates, either fighting them or trying to escape from them without fighting. Some characters are better at the combat aspect, and some are better at finding the clues needed to close the gates, so part of the strategy of the game is assigning the right roles to the right player/character combos.

To win, the player characters have to close and seal seven different gates. It's not as easy as it sounds, as you either have to have an Elder Sign (a unique item in the game) or five clue tokens, collected from around the game board, that you have to give up in order to seal the gate. Of course, while you are working on getting this all together, new gates keep opening and monsters keep entering Arkham. If too many gates are open at the same time, the big bad monster shows up. You get to fight him, but the odds of winning that fight are not good. Also, if too many monsters are on the board, people start to leave town, resulting in the closing of the shops on the board, which cuts down on sources of new items. So it is a race against time, with it never being clear exactly how much time you have left to close seven gates.

The best part of this game is the tension that comes into play as the players try to work together. There will be lots of yelling, and bartering, and general interplay between all of the players as they try to win the game. Every time a mythos card gets drawn, the tension is just delicious as the players wait with bated breath to hear what terrible thing will befall them this turn. And if the players win, the high-fives and cheering are pretty unique to this game.

The publisher, Fantasy Flight Games, has published over a dozen different expansions for this game, of which I own some. Some of them add new towns beyond Arkham that can be traveled to, but they all add new rules and encounter cards to change up the game some how. With these expansions, the game should never get old. I consider this game to be one of the best I have ever played, and I always look forward to getting to play it again.

Cable Car

2011-12-25T22:14:00.000-06:00

Long time no write! While I have had a number of ideas for blog posts, to date none of them ever got past the draft stage, as they either ended up not being as interesting as I first thought they would be, or they were related to a current event and I didn't write them in time to matter to the conversation. The good thing about reviewing board games is that they're always just there, waiting for you to play them. And that was the situation with Cable Car, it was just waiting for me to actually get it back on the table so I could write about it. I wasn't able to do that until yesterday, but now that I've done it let's look at this enjoyable tile laying game.

Cable Car is a re-implementation of the game Metro. There are two differences between the games. The first is that Metro has the theme of rails in Paris, where Cable Car has the theme of rails in San Francisco. The second is that Cable Car comes with an expansion called "Cable Car Company" that changes the way the game is played. I have never played with this expansion, so I will only briefly touch on it at the end.

The game is played on an 8x8 grid, which is entirely open except for a 2x2 section in the middle of the board. Around the edge of the board are 32 rail houses. Depending on the number of players (the game handles from 2 to 6 players), each player will have a number of cable cars starting around the board, along with 32 rail terminus stations. Each turn the players will place a tile on an open space on the board, with each tile representing a variety of rail layouts. As more and more tiles are laid, cable cars get connected to rail terminii. When that happens, you look and see how long the route is, and the longer the route, the more points the player scores. If you happen to connect a route to the power station in the 2x2 section in the middle of the board, you score double the points. Thus, competition to get to the power station can be fierce.

The real trick to this game is in the way that you have to focus on your own routes as well as the routes of the other players. To win the game you will have to play tiles in such a way that your routes are lengthened while giving the other players short routes. This isn't easy, especially when playing with experienced players. A good game of Cable Car will have a fair amount of griping and sniping around the table, as each player messes up the other players' plans in turn around the table. Still, even if you get hosed, a game shouldn't take much more than 30 minutes, so you can always give it another shot.

The "Cable Car Company" expansions changes the game such that each player doesn't control just one color, but all colors are used, each representing a different cable car company. Players then buy stock shares in each company. You still lay tiles to complete routes on the board, but you are trying to make sure that the companies you have invested in have the best routes. I haven't played this version of the game, so I can't speak to how much it changes the base game.

I got this game because while I have a number of heavy games in my collection, I don't have a lot of quick, easy to learn games. Metro fills that role nicely, and is a quick, enjoyable game of strategy with a "screw your neighbor" mechanic. The only bad thing I can say about the game is that the box it comes in is almost twice as big as it needs to be, so it takes up more shelf space than it should. If that is a game's only problem, I'll happily take it.

Adventures in Ingredients

2011-11-05T13:11:00.000-05:00

I recently made a discovery: McDonald's french fries contain milk. You can look it up for yourself if you don't believe me. As crazy as this is, it got me thinking about what other unexpected ingredients are in the food we eat? I have food allergies, so this is relevant to me from a health perspective. Even if you are one of those lucky people who can eat whatever you want without any ill effect, it can be surprisingly interesting to see what ingredients are in things.

For example, let's look at the ingredients listing for White Castle. Much of this looks pretty standard, though I'm not sure why it takes about half a page to list the ingredients for Buffalo Chicken Rings. What surprised me the most, though, was that with White Castle, ingredients can change depending on where you are in the country. For example, with my allergy to milk, I can't eat sausage patties in St. Louis White Castles (I'll leave the question of why I would want to unanswered for now), but I can in Louisville, KY. And in Minneapolis, MN they have a Spicy Sausage Patty instead. Why? I don't know. Of even more interest to me is the fact that "select regions" sell Sweet Potato Fries. I love sweet potato fries! Why don't you sell them in St. Louis, White Castle? I demand an answer. In fact, I can promise that if you start selling sweet potato fries in St. Louis, I will double my frequency of eating at White Castle. Admittedly, I eat at White Castle maybe once every two years, so that isn't a large increase, but it is something. You want to make your customers happy, right? Do the right thing White Castle.

It also turns out that White Castle sells Clam Strips in "select regions" as well. That doesn't sound like a very "White Castle" kind of thing to me. I wonder where these regions are? The Northeast? Strange.

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

2011-09-05T14:25:00.001-05:00

Historically, whenever I have purchased a new computer, I have always purchased at least a couple new computer games to install on it to push its up-to-date graphics capabilities. I purchased a new computer a few months ago, but I have yet to purchase any new games. Recently, I have actually installed The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and have been playing that. I got this game ~5 years ago and played it to pieces, though I never actually finished it. During my re-play, I have been reminded of two things:

How beautiful the game is, with expansive environments and wonderfully imaginative detail.
How much fun it is just to walk around the environment and interact with all of the NPCs and explore all of the ruined towers and caves and stuff.
How little fun it is to have to close Oblivion gates. Seriously, This is like half the game and it is just so tedious and annoying.

So while I will probably never actually finish the game, it sure does run butter-smooth on my new rig.

Battle at Sarlacc's Pit

2011-09-01T21:50:00.000-05:00

This time the random game selected for me write about from my collection is a real oddity. Being almost 30 years old, Battle at Sarlacc's Pit is a board game loosely based on the fight among the sail barges at the end of the first part of the movie Return of the Jedi. The defining feature of this game is the 3D gameboard, allowing you to dump defeated enemies into the Sarlacc's pit. I was a child when this game was released, but I remembered seeing it in stores and thinking it looked pretty sweet. I swore that I would one day own the game. During the mid-90s, when I was at University, I found someone selling the game in a Usenet auction and was able to snag it. I fulfilled my oath and now owned the game.

The game proceeded to sit on a shelf for, oh, fifteen years or so. Seriously. This is what it looked like when I pulled it down to finally do something with it.

Yes, you are seeing that right; the box has been wrapped in saran wrap for ~15 years. I didn't even know if the game was complete or not, though as it turned out I had nothing to worry about on that front as the game had never even been played before. See, the figures hadn't even been separated from the sprues!

This is the first game I have ever seen that actually makes use of the game box itself. The box provides the base for everything as you build a cardboard Sarlaac's pit and then mount the cardboard sand skiff on top of it. The player characters (Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia Organa, Han Solo, and Chewbacca are the options) start on one end, Jabba the Hutt sits on the other, and a bunch of Gamorreans stand between the two. Players score points by knocking Gamorreans into the pit and advancing towards Jabba. Boba Fett and some other dude whose name I forget are also in the game, as guards worth an extra victory point. The game continues until someone defeats Jabba directly using a "Force" card, at which point the game ends and you count up your points for defeated enemies. Thus, it is possible for one player to defeat Jabba but someone to win. Since Jabba is worth a lot of points, though, that isn't likely to happen.

At the start of the game each player starts with four "Jedi" cards. These cards will either contain a number, Jabba, the Force, or some text allowing for a special action. During a player's turn, he plays a card to take an action. A number card lets you move your character that many spaces on the board. A Force card lets you move anywhere from one to six spaces (and lets you beat Jabba at the climax of the game, and move when Jabba is "in your lane"). If you end your turn next to a guard, you draw another card to fight. If it is a number, you knock the guard into the pit and claim a points card for them. Otherwise, you are defeated, the guard stays put, and you go back to the start.

After playing this game, I must admit that it feels very luck dependent. There is not much strategy to the game, as you just move up to the next enemy and hope that you draw a card that lets you beat them and score points. You can't improve your odds of winning a combat by hand management or any other skill; it is all luck. The only redeeming feature of the game is the somewhat impressive 3D gameboard, which really is kind of a kick to play on. Knocking guards off the skiff and into the pit is entertaining, but I'm not sure that it would continue to be very entertaining after a few plays in a row. So, in the end this is a gimmicky game that may never actually get played again. With the right group, though, at the right time, it might see some time on the table. Probably not, though.

Sun and Storms

2011-08-23T07:01:00.000-05:00

Greetings from sunny Palm Beach, FL. I am forced to be here due to training, as the Institute of Internal Auditors forced me to come here for my class. I am staying at The Breakers, which is the same place the class is being held. This place is kind of ridiculous, and totally out of my usual socio-economic situation. Case in point, the bathroom mirror has a TV built into it. Yes, you read that right. On the downside, there is a hurrican heading towards Florida (maybe), so later in the week, when I'm trying to drive from Palm Beach to Orlando, things could get potentially interesting. It's always something.

Back in the Mountains

2011-08-15T19:24:00.000-05:00

Greetings from Beckley, West Virginia, the home of Tamarack. No, I've never been there. Nor am I likely to rectify that oversight on this trip. I'm here to audit financial controls at my company's Pocahontas mine just a few miles outside of town. It is cold and rainy here, so I'm thinking that my decision to only pack short-sleeved shirts isn't such a great thing. Ah, well, such is life. On the plus side, the local Fox Sports affiliate is in Pittsburgh, and the Cardinals are playing the Pirates currently, so I can watch Cardinals baseball on the TV at the hotel.

Thoughts from Gillette

2011-08-11T21:55:00.000-05:00

I am sitting in my hotel room in Gillette, WY watching football on TV and trying to figure out what I really think about Gillette and eastern Wyoming. Here are some thoughts in no order.

There are no trees in eastern Wyoming, at least, not naturally. It is all rolling plains here and there just aren't any natural trees around here. That is very strange to me.
Potentially related to the above, the 50+ mile drive to the mine site every day is pretty boring as there isn't much to look at. Scrub, more scrub, some grass, more grass, cows, horses, elk, that's pretty much all there is.
Elk are pretty cool. They're a bit thinner then deer are, or at least the ones in St. Louis.
There's no farming around here, all ranching. And coal mining. There are a lot of coal mines around here. In the airport at the baggage claim, literally all of the advertisements are for mining equipment and mining software.
Speaking of the airport, it is a glorified hallway. I'm not kidding, it is just one rectangular building with the rental car counter and baggage claim on one end and the gate on the other end. It is the smallest commercial airport I have ever seen.
Gillette, WY is the only place I have seen Bundaberg ginger beer for sale in a gas station. That is coolsville.
Highway 59 heading towards the coal mines has movable gates like railroad crossing guards that they can drop across the highway when they close it because there is too much snow. I am glad I am here in August.
Speaking of August, we have had highs in the upper '70s or lower '80s this week. That is a nice change of pace from dangerously hot St. Louis.

A Mountaineer is Always Free

2011-08-08T06:58:00.000-05:00

Greetings from Charleston, West Virginia! I am here for a day of training before flying out to Gillette, Wyoming on Tuesday. I'm staying at the Marriott in downtown Charleston. Yes, Charleston has a downtown. They even have a mall and movie theater and everything right downtown, which is more than I can say for St. Louis. My colleague Tony and I took advantage of the movie theater to see the Captain America movie last night. It was pretty good, if even more unrealistic than I expected it to be.

Random Sports Thoughts

2011-07-29T14:59:00.000-05:00

1. Bradley out, Klinsmann in for USMNT - This has been coming for a while. While the team performed relatively well in last year's World Cup, there has always been an underlying concern with Bradley about his development of younger players, and by that I mean his seemingly complete lack of interest in doing so. And the team kind of stunk up the joint this year, having trouble beating Guadalupe in the CONCACAF Gold Cup. Guadalupe doesn't even have 1 million citizens in the whole country, and we can barely muster the talent in a country of over 350 million to beat them? Really? Patheticness. Juergen Klinsmann is a proven winner who has run soccer camps in California for years, so he is familiar with the US program and the development of young players. As far as I am concerned, even if things don't pan out with on-the-field wins right away, this is an excellent move. The timing is odd, but it probably came down to whenever Klinsmann was ready for the job, it was his. He is now ready, so Bradley got the axe.

2. Colby Rasmus is now a Blue Jay - A great move by Alex Anthopoulos, the Jays GM. Once LaRussa decided that Rasmus was more trouble than he was worth, he was all but gone. According to reports, the Blue Jays have been after him for a while, but they didn't have available what the Cardinals wanted to get in return. So, the Jays went out and got Edwin Jackson from the White Sox so they could get Rasmus. While it is completely possible that Rasmus is a head case who will never play to his potential, if he does figure it out and play to his potential in the future this will end up being a great move, because at the end of the day what did the Jays give up for him? Some good but not excellent relief pitchers, a bunch of random pitchers with smallish contract,s and some random position players. The downside on this move is not very large, and the upside is bigger, so this is a good gamble.

3. Mike Danton is back, baby! - You mean you don't remember Mike Danton? All he did while he was playing for the St. Louis Blues was try to hire a hit man to kill his agent. Note to all the kids out there: when hiring a hit man, don't hire an undercover police officer who is only posing as a hit man. That kind of thing doesn't end well for you.

Revolution!

2011-07-16T08:48:00.000-05:00

Next up in my random walk through my game collection is Revolution! I first encountered this game almost two years ago at Archon. I was playing another game with one of Steve Jackson Game's "MIBs" and once that game was complete he really wanted to show us all Revolution. It turned out that the game was pretty fun, though different from most other games I have played. The overall theme is that you and the other players are fomenting a revolution in a country to overthrow the government and put yourself in place as the new leader. However, the mechanics are generally abstract and the theme just lays on top of the underlying mechanic.

Revolution's primary mechanic is blind bidding. Every turn each player starts with at least five resources. You can have gold (pretty easy to get a hold of, but not very strong in bidding), blackmail (always beats gold), and force (beats everything else). Because force is the best resource, it is pretty scarce and hard to get a hold of. Each turn, the players bid all of their available resources to gain control over up to five of the town's twelve possible areas of influence. If you control an area you can put one of your colored wooden blocks in that building (if it has one; not all areas do), which can provide extra victory points at the end of the game. Each area also provides you at least one specific benefit, whether that be extra money, blackmail, or force tokens for the next round; victory points (which you need to actually win the game); or the ability to move around your own and/or other player's colored blocks. The game play consists of multiple rounds of resource bids while you try to both earn victory points and gain control of strategic buildings on the board to earn more victory points during the final scoring at the end of the game. The game continues until all locations on the board are fully controlled.

The game itself plays pretty quick once everyone knows what they are doing. It can take a while to get going as people figure out what bidding strategy they want to use, but once the game is understood bidding rounds can go quite fast. Some people don't care for this game because they don't like the bidding aspect of the game, and some people don't like the rather thin theme to the game. Admittedly, the theme could be ants collecting resources for their queen so they could have the best ant colony and the mechanics could be very similar, but I find the underlying bidding mechanic to be quite fun. The trick in this game is the ever important "knowing your opponent" concept. If you can get inside your opponent's heads then you will have a real leg up on them, as they can start second-guessing their bid strategy (the infamous "I know he knows I'll do this, so I'll do that other thing, but what if he knows I know that he knows and he'll guess that other thing, then he'll do that third thing, so I need to do this fourth thing, but what if he knows that I know that he knows that I know that he knows..." syndrome). If you can get your opponent chasing their own tail like that, you've already beaten them.

This is the only game I own that utilizes this kind of bidding mechanic, so I'm sure I will have it for a long time. Not everyone likes it, but I find it is a nice change of pace.

Carcassonne

2011-07-06T18:05:00.000-05:00

For my next venture into my game collection, the random selection gives me one of the better games of the last 10 years, Carcassonne. Carcassonne is a "euro" game originally published in Germany. I don't own a lot of these games, owning primarily wargames, but Carcassonne is a bit hit in my family. A couple years ago for Christmas my father even got the "big box" which includes the base game and the first five or six expansions, so that you never have to play the same game twice. While the game does have over a dozen expansions available for it, this write-up will focus on just the base game as available in the United States.

At its core, Carcassonne is a 'tile laying' game. On your turn you pick one of the available tiles randomly from a bag or from face down piles and then play it to the playing surface. The tiles will have on them a combination of parts of fortified towns, roads, and abbeys. You then have a choice of whether you want to place one of your seven followers (the Carcassonne community refers to the follower pieces as "meeples" for reasons I can't fathom) inside a town (giving you control of that town), on a road (giving you control of that road), in an abbey (giving you control of that abbey), or in the open field (giving you control of all contiguously placed fields). Followers placed in towns, roads, and abbeys score you points when such places are completed (or, in the case of the abbey, when all surrounding spaces are filled with tiles), and you get your follower back so that you can play them elsewhere. Followers placed on fields never come off the board until the end of the game during the final scoring phase. Thus, you have to be thoughtful in how and when you place your followers, as placing too many too early can leave you unable to take advantage of a favorable tile later in the game.

The above rules summary omits one important thing: If another player already has a follower in a town or road and you place a tile that builds that thing out, you can't place your own follower in there as well, as the other player controls it. However, if you place a follower on a tile that isn't part of a town or road already controlled by another player, but the two things end up getting combined through the play of future tiles, then control (and victory points) are determined by who has the most followers. In the case of a tie, all tied players score equal points when the thing is completed. Fields work this way, as well. Thus, a good way to earn victory (and upset the other players) is to play your tiles and your followers in such a way that you "worm your way" into their towns, roads, and fields and score points when they score points. Other players will try to head you off by putting up their own additions a little bit off the main section and put a follower on there, so that when everything gets combined they will have more followers, but that ties up their followers, so sometimes you can win by just making another player think you are moving in on their turf so that they put too much emphasis on playing defense. It is a really good design mechanic that keeps the game interesting and means that, barring some ridiculous early luck with tiles, a player is rarely hopelessly out of the game until the last tile is played and final scoring begins.

I have played this game dozens of times since my younger brother first picked up his copy oh so many years ago, and it is always a good time. Well, except for that time when Mark and I combined didn't equal as many points as my Father had, but that hardly ever happens.

The Blues Are Serious

2011-07-06T17:47:00.000-05:00

Today the St. Louis Blues signed both Jamie Langenbrunner and Jason Arnott to contracts for the 2011-2012 season. Both deals are for one year, $2.5 million plus bonuses. With these two signings, the Blues show that they are serious about seriously pushing for a playoff spot this year. The Blues didn't need both signings to get them to the salary floor for the coming year, so this shows commitment by the organization to take things to the next level and be more competitive.

Jamie Langenbrunner, while the player I am less excited about among the two, is a very interesting signing. He has only previously ever played for the Devils and the Stars, so his signing in St. Louis means one of two things: either nobody really wanted him and he was just looking for the best money he could find (a realistic possibility), or he really thinks that St. Louis is ready for a break-out year and he wants in on it. He is a leaership guy, so it is entirely possible that his money won't be earned with points production on the ice, but in the locker room. It is possible that Langenbrunner was brought in to help show T.J. Oshie what it means to be a professional and to give your all to the cause. If that is true, and he can help the young firebrand to get more responsible, then this is likely money well spent.

I am quite excited about the Arnott signing. Arnott has been a serious stud for years, one of those guys who will never lead your team in scoring but provides tons of leadership and plays very responsible hockey. He has no trouble mucking it up to make a play and, as long as he isn't over the hill at the age of 37 (which he will turn around the start of the season) he should easily earn his paycheck. He is another guy who can provide a lot of good leadership to the youngsters on the team.

So while the Blues don't have a realistic shot at making a deep playoff run this season, they appear on paper to have a very solid team to make a serious shot at the playoffs; if David Perron is available to play this season, that makes things look even better. Dare I be optimistic for this coming season?

I Don't Always Think Things Through

2011-07-01T20:25:00.001-05:00

Earlier this week I got a new vacuum cleaner. I got it by cashing out Marriott Rewards points, as I had roughly 180,000 points in the bank and I wasn't planning any trips soon. And if I do, I've got about 240,000 Hilton HHonors points I can use. Marriott sent me a catalog in the mail kindly showing me how I could use my points to buy stuff, so I took them up on the offer and got a $100 B&N gift card and an Oreck Platinum Pilot (which came with a portable vacuum, as well).

So today I decided to test that puppy out. First thing that I learned is that it is self-propelled. The second thing that I learned is that this vacuum is way more powerful than my old vacuum, a small Dirt Devil cannister my parents got me way back in 1998 when I moved to Arlington, VA. Yes, I have been using that sucker straight through for nearly 13 years now. I learned how powerful my new vacuum is when I happened to get it close to a piece of speaker wire that I have running from my stereo, under the cocktail table, to one of my rear channel speakers in my 5.1 setup. As I was moving close to the wire my brain began to register that this could possibly end poorly. Unfortunately, my brain was not as powerful as the vacuum. Before my brain could register what had happened the vacuum had snatched up the speaker wire, pulled both ends out from the receiver and the speaker, and wrapped it all up around the agitator. This took maybe half a second, if that. That wire got pulled so fast the speaker, mounted on a speaker pedestal and not all that sturdy, didn't even move.

With a bit of effort I was able to free the wire from the vacuum and get it re-attached. It seems to work fine, so no harm done. Still, it was a nice little warning that my new vacuum is quite powerful/potentially dangerous. Well, either that or that my old vacuum is a weak piece of junk that I should have gotten rid of six years ago. Maybe both.

Weekend Plans

2011-06-30T20:57:00.000-05:00

I'm sure that most of you out there in the interwebs have big plans for this coming weekend (well, you do if you live in the USA, anyway). Th 4th of July weekend is a big one for searing cow flesh on the grill, blowing things up, and getting sunburns. I, however, am planning on spending a fair chunk of the weekend in my basement.

When I moved into my current home in 2004, it was the first time that I lived anywhere with a basement. I had all of this space in which to store my junk, and at the time it seemed nice a spacious. After six-and-a-half years of accumulating even more junk than I had when I moved in, I can now say that it doesn't look all that big anymore. So, it is time to wade into the piles of boxes (some of which I know are simply sitting there empty) and organize it all. Or, at least, make a serious dent in it. I want to try to organize the games properly on the shelves so that it is easier to actually find one when I want to play it, as well as getting some better organization with the boxes of books, CDs, and other stuff sitting down there just waiting for a flood to ruin it all. I need to at least make better use of my shelving and get that stuff elevated.

Maybe once that gets done it will even be time to start thinking about painting down there. I can't say that those bare concrete walls are enticing, and the time I was stuck down there while the tornado sirens kept wailing was a bit dull, except for when the water starting coming through that crack in the wall. Maybe I should seal that while I'm at it...

Federation Commander: Distant Kingdoms

2011-06-19T19:05:00.000-05:00

About a year-and-a-half ago I wrote about the game Federation Commander. Distant Kingdoms is another expansion for that game, and is the first one to completely "leave the reservation" of the original Star Fleet license. Where the original game is based on the ships of the original Star Trek series, this expansion uses ships and intergalactic races made up from whole cloth by the game designers. This expansion introduces the Lyrans, the Hydrans, and the Wyn Star Cluster.

This expansion is important to me solely because it includes the Lyrans. Back when I played Star Fleet Battles, I quickly settled on the Lyrans as my race to play. Is it because the weapons and ship systems fit my standard tactics? Well, no, not really. Is it because I really liked them in the original TV show? Well, no, the game designers made them up. Is it because their unique weapons system is just so gosh darn cool? Well, no, it's an energy shield that detonates enemy missiles before they hit you, which isn't too exciting. So why is it? I love the twin-hull ship designs.

Isn't that just totally sweet looking? You bet it is. Lyran ships are the bestest.

Anyway, as far as the game goes, Lyran ships are very similar to Klingon ships. Phasers and disruptors are the primary weapons, but instead of drones Lyrans have Expanding Sphere Generators (ESG), which create a semi-physical sphere of energy that surrounds a ship. You can use it to ram another ship (hardly ever done in practice) or as the best drone defense in the game, as when drones hit an ESG, they just explode harmlessly. This makes Lyrans the best race to use to fight Kzinti, but not so hot against races that don't use drones (like the Romulans or Gorn).

As mentioned above, Distant Kingdoms also includes the Hydrans, which are interesting primarily because they make significant use of small fighter craft. I don't like playing against Hydran ships because it can be really hard to keep track of all of those pesky little fighters. They can't take much damage, but they distract you from the mother ship with its hellbore cannons. Hydran weapons can take down a shield that is facing away from them, which is completely unfair. Lastly, the Wyn Star Cluster is really just a bunch of ships from the other races that have been mildly customized to have some different weapons. I can't think of any real reason to play Wyn ships outside of established scenarios that make use of them.

While the Distant Kingdoms expansion isn't in any way important for a casual Federation Commander player, it has my favorite race so I had to get it. While the new races make for some different games (as you get to figure out how best to use the new ships and weapons systems), I can't say that it significantly changes the game at all. Since the base game is so fun, though, just minor tweaks are all that is needed.

Battlesuit

2011-06-14T21:02:00.000-05:00

This time up in my random walk through my game collection we come to a game that I have not played since probably 1993, Steve Jackson's Battlesuit. This game is set in the overall 'universe' as the game Ogre, but instead of focusing on giant cybernetic tanks, Battlesuit focuses solely on infantry. Granted, in the game it is 2085 and infantry wear powered armor that lets them fly through the air and shoot tactical nuclear weapons at each other, so it is nothing like modern infantry combat. Or, at least, on the surface it's nothing like modern combat. But how does it hold up as a game?

Battlesuit was sold in a plastic "clamshell" box, which Steve Jackson Games used a lot in the 1980s for their games. Within that box is a one-sided paper map with some generic-looking hills and forests. The only real thing of interest on the map is whereas Ogre used an industry-standard hex map, Battlesuit's map consists of hundreds of evenly spaced dots. While these are set up in a hexagonal pattern, the use of dots allows for more careful plotting of line-of-sight than a hex grid would. In addition to the map, you get ~250 card stock counters that you had to cut out yourself with scissors, and a rulebook.

The basic conceit of the game is that you will have a group of infantry, and will try to kill the other player's infantry. There are a variety of scenarios in the rulebook, so sometimes you are just trying to get guys off the other end of the map, or you know you're gonna die but you win by holding off your opponent for a certain number of turns. In the end, though, the game generally comes down to killing the other guy's units. Each infantry unit has an attack rating, an Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) rating, and a movement rating. To make an attack, you take your attack rating, subtract the target's ECM rating, and add and subtract other modifiers to arrive at a final attack rating. You then roll two dice and look up your roll on the combat results table to see what happens. You can kill a target outright, do varying degrees of damage, or just 'shock' the unit, which limits target's ability to act on their turn while not actually damaging them.

The game is more involved than that, though. While you move your own units, they can be shot at by your opponent's units, so just running pell mell across the landscape is going to get your guys good and dead in a hurry. You have to use terrain to your advantage to keep your guys from getting picked of as they move into position. You can also use one of your units to "target" another unit. Whereas most units can attack twice on their turn if they don't move, a unit that "targets" another unit only gets one attack, but gives a bonus to every other one of your units that attacks the targeted unit. Some scenarios also give you robot drones that you can use in various ways; some are scouts, some have guns, and some are just big bombs. There is really a lot of tactical variety to the game and it can get quite tense.

While this is actually a pretty good game, if I want a tactical infantry game I'm probably going to play another game in my collection, like Combat Commander. Something about Battlesuit makes it slip to the back of my mind and not get played. I'm still keeping it in the collection, though, because it is the only sci-fi infantry combat game I have. And you never know when you are gonna need one of those.

Technology is a Funny Thing

2011-06-05T16:20:00.000-05:00

I have had two situations this weekend that led me to ponder the vagaries of modern technology. First, as some of you may be aware, back in April the PlayStation Network got hacked, and Sony took the whole thing down while they scrambled to figure out exactly what happened and how to keep it from happening again. The network was down for weeks. While I hardly play any games on my PS3, and therefore wasn't missing the inability to blow up random strangers in war games online, taking the network down did mean that Netflix was unavailable through my PS3, which was a bit of a bother. A few weeks ago Sony finally started bringing the network back up, and they promised some freebies as a "mea culpa" for their inability to keep people's account information from getting stolen.

Well, they finally got around to releasing the free games on Friday. You could download two free PS3 games, as well as two free PSP games if you had a PlayStation Portable to play them on. I happily grabbed four games and have putzed around with two of them so far. I can't say they are anything that I would pay full price for (though I have heard good things about inFAMOUS, which I haven't tried yet), but, hey, they're free, so I'm not complaining. I have put the most time into Wipeout: Fury, which is a futuristic racing game with gravitic sleds instead of cars. While not as much fun as Demolition Racer is, you can pick up weapons with which to blow up the other grav sleds, so it does scratch the same itch to a degree. So, in the end, a major technical problem for Sony turned into a minor annoyance for me and four free video games. So, yeah, I win.

The other technical vagary I dealt with was my new printer. I got a new computer back a couple weeks ago, and with it I purchased a new printer, with wireless connectivity. When I first set everything up it worked fine, but when I came back from Florida last week I couldn't connect the computer to it because it couldn't see it on the network. No matter what I tried (power cycling the printer and the computer, uninstalling and reinstalling the device, downloading driver updates) the stupid thing wouldn't connect. The printer was on my wireless network with a valid IP address, but my computer refused to notice it was there. I ended up solving the problem by dropping ~$30 at Best Buy for a USB cable, and now I'm back to printing the old-fashioned, cabled way. At least it works now. Ain't technology something.

Freedom in the Galaxy

2011-05-07T08:39:00.000-05:00

I don't own a lot of what are known as "epic games." These are games like The Third World War, which took 8 hours to play maybe three turns; Rise and Decline of the Third Reich, which just intimidates me to no end; and Barbarossa to Berlin. The only game that I own that rises to the level of complexity and time commitment of games such as these is Freedom in the Galaxy. Originally published by SPI, the version that I have was published by Avalon Hill Games in the early '80s. I you have ever seen the original Star Wars trilogy, then you know what this game is about. The game is for two players, with one starting with an entire galactic empire of 51 key planets, lots of ground and space forces, Imperial Knights to lead said ground forces, planetary defense bases, and on and on. The other player starts with 14 rebel characters, four spaceships, and smattering of other potentially useful items, and then spends the entire game trying to take down the empire through the flames of rebellion. This game is just epic, and scratches all the right itches for me: sci-fi, character-driven adventures, and it feels a lot like Star Wars.

There are two downsides to the game, though. First, the game is very complex. There are actually three "levels" of rules that you can play with. The first restricts you to a single solar system of three planets, and is really only good for learning the basic rules. The second expands the game to an entire sector. Again, this is really just to teach you the rules. The third level is what you really want, where you play with the entire game universe of five sectors and 51 planets, planet secrets, etc. But there is a A LOT to keep track of when playing the full game, and it can get quite tedious. The second downside is the fact that the game can be very, very long. The Rebel player gets victory by putting enough planets into rebellion to score 26 points by end of turn 20. sector capitals and the Imperial throne world are worth bonus points, so you don't have to get 26 planets into rebellion, but you will need close to half the game board. And good luck making that happen quickly. The rulebook suggests that you will need 20 hours to play the full game all the way through to the end of the 20th turn, and my experience has been that this isn't far from the truth, even if both players know the rules well and don't have to spend a lot of time looking things up.

Another downside, though not as significant as the others mentioned above, is that the game can get tedious. You will spend a lot of time running missions with your characters, which consists of drawing a series of cards from the Action card deck. You then look to see if your mission code is on the card, indicating a successful mission. Events on the cards can interrupt the mission, though, from getting attacked by creatures or security droids to inadvertently causing a civil war. It just takes a while to work through all of the missions every turn. I do have a computer program that helps a lot with this by automating the action cards, but it can still be a chore to run through a bunch of missions each turn.

That said, the true genius of this game is in the stories that emerge from gameplay. Because both players have specific characters to lead their armies and go on missions, it isn't just random cardboard counters doing things, it is Imperial general Barca leading his elite forces against his rebel foes, or Adam Starlight and Zina Adora stealing secret information from an Imperial army base, or Ly Mantok and Boccanegra sabotaging an Imperial army brigade, or Imperial Knight Els Taroff assassinating a pesky rebel diplomat. You can get really attached to your characters, and it can hurt when they die or, even worse, get captured and interrogated. Of course, if someone has been captured you can attempt to free them with your other characters, which is only genre appropriate.

So this is not a good game for casual play. I would need to find a friend willing to give up an entire weekend, at least, to get this thing on the table, and even then it can be a chore to get through all of it. But the stories that come from the game just might make it all worth it.

Philosophy Referee Signals

2011-04-18T12:05:00.000-05:00

Link provided for future conversations with family members and friends that start to go off the rails.

Pricing

2011-04-17T20:12:00.000-05:00

Good evening from Price, UT. This is my first time in Utah, and I have to admit that it kind of looks like northern New Mexico. Tomorrow my colleagues and I get to drive to Dugout Canyon mine, which requires us to drive SE from Price to Wellington, UT and then get on some dirt road of some kind and drive up the mountain. Excitement. I should get my first journey down into the mine at some point this week, which should be quite an interesting experience. I don't promise any pictures, because I'm not sure how well my phone would like all of the coal dust. Further bulletins as events warrant.

The State of the Blues

2011-04-12T16:58:00.000-05:00

As the St. Louis Blues face another post-season of enjoying their golf game while others try to win a championship, let's look not to the past, but to the future. A future filled with more golf in April, for a few different reasons. Seriously, this team won't be contending next year. How do I know this? One word: 'budget.' The team is up for sale. This means that unless a new owner shows up within the next couple months with big bags of money, there will be little action by the Blues in the free agent market, keeping the Blues near the bottom of the league salary-wise. And do you know what happens to teams in the bottom of the salary tables? They don't make the playoffs. Let's check the math.

Using NHLNumbers, the bottom ten teams in salary in the NHL are as follows (in millions):

New York Islanders - $45.54
Colorado Avalanche - $46.59
Atlanta Thrashers - $46.60
St. Louis Blues - $48.14
Florida Panthers - $48.51
Edmonton Oilers - $49.66
Carolina Hurricanes - $51.2
Dallas Stars - $52.15
Nashville Predators - $52.21
Columbus Blue Jackets - $53.29

Of those ten teams, only Nashville is in the playoffs. It isn't that you can simply buy a championship. If that was true, New Jersey would be in the playoffs and not dusting off their putters. But of the six division winners, only Detroit isn't in the top 10 teams rated by salaries. That's because it takes solid veteran players to win in the playoffs, and that takes money. Money that the Blues don't have. Ah, well, maybe next decade things will improve.

Panzer Leader

2011-04-12T16:31:00.000-05:00

The next game randomly selected from my collection is Panzer Leader. This game is as old as I am, being first published in 1974. The game is considered to have been pretty revolutionary in its time, bringing a lot of new players into the wargame hobby through its generally simple rules for a wargame of its time. While my copy of the game may actually date to 1974 (it has that "old paper" smell to it), I picked up my copy in the 1990s though a usenet auction.

The game covers ground combat during World War II in the western European theater, so the game features German units vs. Allied (American, British, Canadian, etc.) units. The scale is 150 meters per hex and each unit representing a platoon of men, vehicles, or artillery. The game comes with four playing boards, all of them being tall and narrow. Each "situation" (i.e., each specific scenario) has the players set up the boards in different ways to provide the terrain being fought over.

Each counter contains all the information you need to know about it: Its attack value, defensive value, movement value, firing range, type, name, and unique counter identifier. Combat is straight-forward enough: You total up the attack values of all attacking units and compare that to the target's defensive value to get a ratio of 3:1, or 1:2, or whatever. You then roll a six-sided die and look up the result on the Combat Results Table (CRT). You can either eliminate the unit from the game, disrupt it, or do nothing to it. A dispersed unit loses all ability to move or fire for a turn, representing the unit being pinned down and scattered. Thus combat is pretty simple, and this same combat system has been seen in many games since, including simple little games like Ogre. Of course, they couldn't just leave things like that. Instead, fire combat becomes more complicated (and, admittedly, more realistic) through the application of a separate chart that you have to consult to determine any impact from different types of units attacking each other. For example, an "I" unit (for infantry) firing against an "A" unit (for armored vehicle) only attacks at half strength, as rifle bullets don't really do much against tanks. This chart also introduces special cases, such as the fact that infantry sitting in a town hex are considered armored for all purposes, so infantry firing on infantry in a town halve their attack value even though firing at infantry. It can get a bit confusing.

It is also quite hard to eliminate an enemy unit unless it is stupid enough to get stuck out in the open and surrounded. For example, the first situation involves US paratroopers on D-Day trying to take one of three objectives (which is secretly selected before the German player even sets up his units, so he doesn't know quite where you are attacking). The US infantry have an attack value of "2" but a defensive value of "6." The main German infantry units have an attack value of "3" and a defensive value of "8." Thus it would take four US units attacking a single German infantry unit just to match attack to defense and get a combat ration of 1:1. And unless you have some special thing going to lower the die roll (lower rolls are better when attacking), at 1:1 odds you can't even kill the target, just disperse it. Thus, it takes a LOT of firepower (tanks and very large-caliber artillery help quite a bit) to take anything out.

Another special case is the use of indirect artillery. To have an artillery unit use indirect fire you go through a whole separate thing from direct fire (i.e., I see it, so I shoot it). With indirect fire, you have to have a unit from the same side that is "spotting" the enemy target (and there are rules about that). Then the target has to be in range (silly me has messed that up before). Then you write down the fire order on a piece of paper, and the actual attack happens next turn. Yes, you read that right. You plot indirect fire one turn in advance. So, you get to guess where your opponent will have his units one turn down the road. Even if you guess right, there is still a good chance that your shots won't be that accurate, as there is only a 1-in-3 chance that you hit the target hex, a 1-in-2 chance that you hit one of the six surrounding hexes, and a 1-in-6 chance that your artillery scatters so badly that you attack nothing. It's a bit of a bother.

While the game is a decent design, it's not my favorite game of this nature. This is probably due to the fact that there have been ~37 years since this game was designed, and improvements in game design have occurred since then. Still, there is good variety to the included "situations," and when I bought my copy the seller also included an expansion set that adds 10 new situations representing the German invasion of France in 1940 and about 150 new counters to play those scenarios. So while it doesn't see hardly any play these days, it's still a keeper.

Diskwars

2011-04-03T11:28:00.000-05:00

This entry in my journey through my game collection is a game I have conflicted feelings about, Diskwars. I first encountered this game at the Origins convention in 1999, where I got to play a demo game. Essentially, the game is a fantasy wargame that takes a lot of cues from miniatures gaming. However, instead of having hundreds of miniature soldiers that you move around the table, you have a number of disks printed on heavy cardstock. Each disk represents a different unit or individual. Each disk has ratings for Attack, Defense, Toughness, and Movement. Some disks have special abilities, like the ability to take multiple wounds, or the ability to fly, or the ability to fire missile weapons, etc. Game play is in a "back and forth" style where each side activates and moves three disks, then the other side activates and moves three disks, and so forth until both sides are done. Then missile fire happens, then melee combat, and then you reset to the next turn.

Overall the rules are quite simple and generally work well. Movement is handled by "flipping" the disk end over end a number of times equal to its Movement rating. This can be a little deceptive and take some getting used to, as larger disks (like, for example, an Ent) might have a lower Movement number, but because the disk is twice the size of a unit of skeletons, it moves farther than the skeletons. To make an attack, you move one of your disks until it overlaps the disk you want to attack. During the Melee phase, you compare the Attack rating of the attacking disk to the Toughness of the defending disk, and if the Attack is equal or greater to the target's Toughness, then the target takes one wound, which will kill most units. Simultaneously, you compare the defender's Defense rating to the attacker's Toughness, and if the defender's Defense is equal to or greater than the attacker's Toughness, then the attacker takes a wound. Thus, it is entirely possible to have a mutual destruction combat where both sides eliminate each other. You have to pay attention to the ratings of enemy units to ensure that you are entering fights you can win, though sometimes an enemy unit has a special ability so annoying that it is worth sacrificing a unit to get rid of it.

Melee can get a lot more complex that that, though, multiple disks are all piling into the scrum. In such situations, you start at the "top" of the stack and work down. Thus, a unit that you were counting on to kill a unit underneath it can itself be killed if enemy units move on top of it. Because of this, timing of when you activate a unit is very important, and figuring that out seems to me to be a key aspect of the game system. You can also have one unit attacking multiple defenders at the same time, or multiple attackers all attacking the same defending unit. So while the basic combat system is simple, it can get complex with multiple layers of attacks.

The other method of combat is missile combat, where units armed with bows, or magicians with fireball or lightning spells, can attack an enemy disk within range. This is handled by taking the appropriate number of missile counters and putting them on an unused disk. You then hold that disk 12 inches over the target disk, and you then drop the missile counters. Wherever they land, that is what unit gets hit. In my experience, this can get kind of crazy, with you killing off your own units accidentally, or hitting enemy units that you weren't even targeting, as the missile counters can bounce and roll once you drop them. I have never liked this aspect of the rules, as it just seems both too random and too dependent on manual dexterity in a game that otherwise features neither of those things.

In fact, the main thing that annoys me about this game is that there are no dice to roll. While this makes the game simpler than other wargames, everytime I play it I feel like adding in some dice rolls would really spice things up. Or, at least, I want to roll dice for missile fire rather than dropping counters from the sky. So, while there are things about this game that I like, there are some that I don't, as well. It seems like every year I think about trading or selling all of my disks, but I never seem to actually do it, because the game is just good enough to keep around, even though I never really play it anymore.

Diskwars was first published in army sets that cost $10 per set. There were eight different armies in the game, and I ended up buying at least one starter set of each army. Each set came with eight heavy card sheets that contained unit disks. These sheets were semi-randomized, such that you always got a few of the same basic units and the rest were random, including units from other armies all together. Thus, the game had a collectible aspect to it like Magic: The Gathering or Pokemon. Later the publisher came out with "Legions" starter sets which provided you two pre-built armies to get started with. There were also a number of different expansions that provided randomized sheets of disks to expand your armies with new units. The game has been out of print for years, but you can still find people selling their old disks on eBay or other auction sites.

Google Chrome

2011-03-30T13:11:00.000-05:00

For whatever reason, the version of Internet Explorer that comes standard with my work computer is a giant pile of poo. I will open up, say, MSNBC and the browser will completely choke on all of the embedded video and the sharing buttons and only God knows what else from the site code. After many different crashes and forced closings of the browser window, I got fed up and downloaded Google's Chrome browser. It has taken a little getting used to, as the way that you handle bookmarking favorite links is different from IE and Firefox (what I use at home), but at least it doesn't choke to death on a web page. It also has a nice, clean browser window which I guess I should have expected from a Google product.

The Annoyance of New Technology

2011-03-30T13:05:00.002-05:00

A little over two months ago I got a new cell phone. My previous phone (a Blackberry) had been paid for by my previous employer. Since I was now "on my own" I could get whatever phone I wanted. After some research and testing out different handsets I landed on a Samsung Continuum. The phone itself has been fine. I even can make phone calls with no signal bars showing, though I have no idea how much of that is the Verizon network and how much is the phone's antenna. One part of the phone was really annoying, though - the Android operating system.

It isn't that I had a problem with Android itself, per se, but I had no real way of learning to use it other than trying stuff and waiting to see if it broke. Just last week I was convinced that the phone was piece of junk because it had gotten stuck on some processing routine that was sucking battery life at a ridiculously fast rate. It wouldn't eve make it an entire day without running out of juice. If I was on the phone all the time that would make some sense, but I was hardly even looking at it and the battery would be half drained after less than five hours. One day, I got frustrated and just turned it off, not restarting it until the next morning.

That magically seems to have done the trick, as it is now quite stable and can go multiple days without needing a recharge. So what had I originally done wrong? I have no idea. Why did turning it off and back on again fix the problem? I have no idea. Is there anything I can do to keep that problem from occurring again? I have no idea. I don't like being ignorant like this, and it would be nice if Samsung or Verizon would provide me with an Android user guide, since being able to use it properly seems to be vital to properly using and enjoying the phone. Alas, such is not to be.

The Blues are Losers

2011-03-05T16:31:00.000-06:00

Wow, what a giant pile of poo they left on the ice today. Whatever their talent level on paper, the Blues are playing like the worst team in the league. Are they under secret orders to get as high a draft pick as possible? Do the players just laugh all the way to the bank as they cash their checks for playing like garbage? What do I have to do in order to get Barret Jackman off this team? Why is he still here? Is it because nobody else wanted him at the trade deadline? Does he have secret dirt on someone in management? I'm beginning to think the hot start to the season was all scripted to get suckers to buy game tickets, and now they're showing their true colors. The colors of LOSERS!

Thoughts on Spielbox

2011-02-26T13:26:00.000-06:00

Last weekend I picked up the November, 2010 issue of the magazine Spielbox. As you may be able to guess from its name, it is a German magazine about games. As the tagline says, "All about Games in a Box," which means it covers boardgames, cardgames, dexterity games, and pretty much all games that aren't either athletic games (like soccer or hockey) or electronic games (like Final Fantasy or Doom). They have been publishing an English version of the magazine for about a year, now, and I noticed that the November issue came with a Carcassonne expansion, so I figured this was a good issue to pick up and see what I think about it.

The magazine itself is full-color, and printed in the European standard A4 paper size. I can't say whether all issues are the same, but this one is 64 pages. Some of those are advertisements, though I didn't find there to be too many ads in the magazine, and therefore it is mostly content. Again, I don't know if this is standard or not, but a little over half of the magazine appeared to be review of various games, which I liked. Because this is simply an edition of the magazine printed in English, and not a separate magazine with the same name targeted at the US market, the reviews mostly cover games available in the German and greater European market. The ads also appeared to be heavily German-focused, with a few exceptions for US internet retailers. Outside of the reviews there were two interview-style articles, one with a game designer couple and the other with an artist who does a lot of boardgame art and has started getting involved with game designs. There also was an article looking at the evolution in design principles used by Martin Wallace in a series of games, a survey of a number of recent Carcassonne expansions, the rules for the mini-Carcassonne expansion that comes with the magazine (very smartly placed in the middle, so the rules are easily removed without overly mangling the rest of the magazine), an article about a German publisher in the '70s and the games they produced, an article about the evolution of word games (Scrabble, Boggle, some German games I'd never heard of before, etc.), an article about design in economic trading games, and a one page writeup of the 2010 Wizard world championships.

In case you missed it earlier, this is a German magazine. Even though it is in English, you occasionally find "Germanisms" sneaking in. For example, the designers for one game reviewed are referred to as "Aron West, Ryan Amos, und Marc Kelsey." It is easy to figure out what they mean, but it is still noticeable. Even more noticeable is the Carcassonne article where they list out every single expansion ever published for the game, and every name is in German. Thus, to know what they are mentioning, a little bit of German is needed. I can work some of it out, like "Der Fluss" is "The River" and "Wirstshäuser und Kathedralen" is "Inns and Cathedrals." "König & Späher" might be "King and Bandit," but I'm not sure. You have to be able to deal with stuff like that to get the most out of the magazine.

The downside of the magazine is that it sells for $15, at least at Game Nite, which is where I purchased it. While I enjoyed the magazine, I can't see myself spending that much money on a regular basis for it (I believe it publishes bi-monthly). I very well may pick up another issue that comes with an expansion for a game I play, but I generally don't own and play enough 'euro' games to make this a valuable magazine for me.

Sound System Solution

2011-02-26T09:23:00.001-06:00

A couple months ago I wrote about my swap of a PS3 for my old DVD player, and how everything about it was great except for the sound. Well, yesterday while reading the instruction manual for Soul Calibur IV I found a section where it gave me step-by-step instructions for getting my awesome sound back. I just needed to get a digital optical cable and properly modify the settings to take advantage of it. The hardest part of the process was moving the entertainment center around so I could access the rear panel of the PS3 and the receiver. I now have my crisp and loud 5.1 signal back, which I am going to enjoy very much. Yes, it is probably true that a proper reading of the system manual up front would have identified that solution, but why dwell on the past? Forward to the future!

Thoughts on the Blues Moves

2011-02-20T19:30:00.000-06:00

This weekend was quite busy for the St. Louis Blues, as they traded away three players in two different deals. First Eric Brewer, the team's captain and senior Defenseman, was sent to Tampa Bay for a burger and fries... I mean, for a third round draft pick (the burger) and a prospect I had never heard of before (the fries). That being said, I can understand this deal. Barring a major miracle, the Blues won't make the playoffs. This is going to cost the team money, as management was so convinced the team would make the playoffs that they sold a bunch of season tickets for 50% up front, 50% when the team clinches the playoffs. Oops! So trading Brewer for an unsigned prospect and a pick will save ~$1.5 million, which will help off-set the lost ticket revenue. And Brewer was a free agent at the end of the season, and the Blues probably weren't going to sign him. And Brewer had a no-trade clause, so any trade had to be with a team that he pre-approved, which limits choices. All told, a depressing but probably fair trade.

Erik Johnson and Jay McClement getting traded, though, that one came pretty much out of nowhere. Granted, Erik's name had started to get batted around in trade rumors because it was becoming increasingly obvious that he wasn't progressing as well as you would expect an overall #1 pick to develop. While he will probably turn into a super stud in Colorado and make team management look like a bunch of morons, getting Chris Stewart in return is actually quite a nice swap. Stewart is a very energetic power forward who has tons of potential, and the Blues had absolutely no offensive depth before the trade, while they have defensive depth, so I can kind of see it. Still, this is the kind of trade that in three years will make Doug Armstrong look like either a genius or a flaming moron, depending on how well each player continues to develop. I don't really know much about Kevin Shottenkirk, the other player the Blues acquired, but he was a 1st round pick a few years back and is an offensive Defenseman, which the Blues don't have a lot of in the system. The kids over at The Hockey News are panning this one pretty heavily, but it really does look like a value for value trade, at least at this point.

The Downside of Netflix

2011-02-05T22:24:00.000-06:00

I have been using Netflix for over two years now, and it is pretty great. Most of the time. In general, their service is great value and I really enjoy using the website to find new films, as their suggestion system works quite well once you've rated over 100 films. Recently, though, I've hit a quandary. See, I've current got the 3rd disc from the 2nd season of Avatar: The Last Airbender sitting at home. It's been sitting here for over 3 weeks. I just don't really feel like watching it. I watched one of the five episodes on the disc about a week ago, and... it just sits here. At some point I'll feel like watching the rest of it, but how much money will I spend on monthly charges until that happens? I don't want to send it back, though, because that would feel like failure. So instead I pay a monthly fee to let this disc sit here and mock me with its presence.

World at War: Eisenbach Gap

2011-02-01T18:05:00.000-06:00

This time through the random game from my collection is World at War: Eisenbach Gap. This game is a fairly recent wargame design from small publisher Lock 'N Load Publishing. It is an "alternate history" game purporting a Warsaw Pact invasion of West Germany in May 1985. World at War is actually a series of games, each with expansion packs, but Eisenbach Gap is the first game in the series. The series is platoon level, with each counter representing either a platoon of infantry or a platoon of Armored Fighting Vehicles (whether tanks, or armored personnel carriers, or some other vehicle, whether thin-skinned or armored). This game comes with six scenarios, and I recently played through the first two of them to remind myself how the game plays

Each scenario grants each side, either Americans or Soviets, with a set number of forces, from one or more units. The units are either placed on the board per scenario setup rules, or they are brought in from a board edge on the first turn. The board itself does not represent any actual location in Germany, but is intended to be a generic representation of West German terrain. This is important because the same board is used in every scenario, but the variety comes from the fact that you usually are not using the entire game board. Most scenarios restrict game play to specific sections of the board. For example, in the play picture below, the rulebook has been placed over the section that is not in use for the scenario, meaning roughly half of the board was not used. This helps provide some variety in terrain from scenario to scenario, but it also means that once you have played a few of the scenarios the board starts to get quite familiar. A modular board setup would have been nice, and there is an expansion for the series that provides that, but in this game we've got only the one board.

This is the situation at the end of the first turn in the second scenario. The Soviets have moved their forces near the hill by the largest town on the map, but they have already taken some losses from American TOW missiles (hence the "wreck" market in the lower right). The white cards are artillery cards I printed from a file uploaded to the games page at boardgamegeek.

On each turn, initiative is determined through drawing counters from a cup. At the beginning of each game, you place the activation counters from each unit involved in the scenario, plus the "end turn" markers in a cup. Then one of the players draws a counter to see which unit activates next. If a unit's counter is drawn, all of the platoons in that unit get to activate if so desired. If an "end turn" marker is drawn it is placed to the side until all such markers are drawn from the cup, at which point the turn ends. This provides randomness to the initiative, such that you never know who is going to go next. There is even a chance that one side, or even both sides, won't activate at all in a turn, though the odds of nobody activating is low, and the rules don't allow a unit to miss two turns in a row. I really like this turn mechanic, and it provides a nice differentiating factor between the American and Soviet forces. The Americans pretty much are always outnumbered, but they have better C3I capabilities so they get two activation counters per unit, while the Soviets only get one. Thus, it is possible in a turn for the Americans to activate twice. Thus, while they have fewer units, they can do more with them. Well, if the right counters are drawn from the cup, that is!

Combat is pretty simple. Ranged combat has each unit rolling a certain number of dice, trying to roll a certain number or higher. For example, a Soviet T-65 tank firing an armor piercing round rolls three dice and hits on a four or higher. Armored targets, and soft targets in cover, roll one or more dice to try to "save" each hit from enemy fire. Thus, both sides get to roll dice, which is always fun. If you have ever played any of the Warhammer miniatures games you know exactly how the save mechanic works. While it is a bit "gamey," it does lead to lots of tense dice rolling, and it is always fun when the enemy scores a bunch of hits on one of your units but you roll really well and make all your saves and don't actually take any damage. There are three damage states for a unit. The first hit makes a unit "disrupted," which limits their ability to take offensive actions but can be removed with a successful morale check. A disrupted unit that takes a hit is "reduced," which means you flip the counter to its other side, which has weaker guns (reflecting that a few vehicles or men in the platoon have been eliminated). A third hit eliminates a unit from the game. While disruption effects can be removed, once a unit is reduced it stays that way the rest of the game (unless it is eliminated, of course).

There are a few more aspects to the game, but that is the core of the rules. The game plays fairly quickly, and I enjoy playing it. The scenarios in this game usually consist of hordes of Soviets attacking badly outnumbered American forces, but the makeup of the scenarios usually ensures a tightly-fought contest with the victor not being decided until the scenario is near or in its final turn. Once you learn how to read the counters (which admittedly have a lot of numbers on them) the game moves well and shouldn't take more than two hours to play through. This is a game I plan on keeping in my collection for a long time to come.

Dragon Age

2011-02-01T14:36:00.000-06:00

Right before Christmas I purchased a PS3. One of the big reasons for doing so was that I really wanted a device that would allow me to stream films from Netflix right to my TV, which the PS3 does. In addition, the PS3 is also a Blu-Ray player, and that would be useful, as well. Granted, it is a video game system at heart, so I couldn't get no games for it. I picked up three games for it within a week of getting the console, but roughly six weeks later I have still only played one of them, Dragon Age: Origins.

I think this might be the best electronic role-playing game I have ever played. One sign of how much I like it is that I have over 50 hours logged in my first play through (still not done with it yet), and I already want to play it again with a different character to see what changes that results in. See, the game allows the player a lot of freedom to make different decisions, such as where to go, what to do, who to allow in your group,etc. Yes, you will always be working on the overall quest that the game revolves around (in that way it is different from the Elder Scrolls series, where you can happily ignore the underlying plot and just do your own thing) but the results of your conversations with various people and decisions you make can have a noticeable impact on how the story evolves.

And, you know, you get to stab monsters, which is pretty fun. Let's not forget about that.

Another One Bites the Dust

2011-01-19T15:22:00.000-06:00

So Jeff Cooper has shut down AC St. Louis. Just about everything this guy did in 2010 made MLS look really smart for rejecting his application for a team. He folded St. Louis Athletica in the middle of the season and now folded AC St. Louis after only one season. So, basically, the guy that wanted to build that new park in Illinois costing hundreds of millions of dollars can't even collect funding to keep a 2nd-tier pro team running? The guy that organized the group that almost killed the top USL division can't even keep his own team going. I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry.

Hero: Immortal King: The Lair of the Lich

2011-01-11T21:52:00.001-06:00

I picked up the card game Hero: Immortal King: The Lair of the Lich during a sale at my local comic book store for $5, a significant discount from its $22 list price. The basic concept will be familiar to anyone who has played any version of RPG: there is a bad guy hiding in an underground dungeon, so you collect your band of heroes and proceed to kill everything in said underground dungeon between them and the bad guy. There are three games in this series, but in this particular game the big bad guy is a lich, which is an undead magic user. Not that it really matters, because all of that is just window dressing for what is primarily a resource management game.

There are two ways to play this game, either two-player or solitaire. During a two player game, one player controls the heroes, while the other controls the bad guy and all of its minions. During this version, the bad guy player primarily manages his Fear Tokens, little discs of black plastic that are accumulated as the heroes screw up and roll poorly. These are spent to make bad things happen to the heroes. I've never played the game with two players, because it sounds like it would be really boring to play the bad guy. Instead I've played the game a few times solitaire. It took me a while to get the hang of it, but I can now slam out a game in 15 minutes.

While playing solitaire, you play the heroes. There are a small number of heroes that you can choose from at the start of the game. To build your hero team you select a total of five cards, including characters and equipment cards. All of the characters have a special ability they can activate, and the equipment cards provide certain bonuses to combat rolls or other events during the game. Building a workable combination of characters and equipment is critical to success, and choosing a bad mix can lose the game before it even starts.

Once you are ready to venture into the enemy's lair, you build the dungeon by sorting the 48 dungeon cards into three different decks of 16 cards, face down (though one of the characters lets you build four decks of 12 cards each). Each turn you choose which of these three 'paths' you want to venture down, and then you flip over the top card to see what you encountered. Some encounters are relatively easy, while some are totally impossible to defeat without using special abilities. According to the rulebook the other games in the series include traps as well as monsters, but this game only comes with monsters. To fight a monster you roll a six-sided die and compare the number rolled to the monster's Strength. If you equal or exceed that number, you win and take the card. Otherwise it smacks your team around and they retreat, causing you to lose one of your Courage tokens. If you ever run out of Courage tokens, the hero player loses the game.

So, the game consists of trying to find the path of least resistance to reach the lich while being as miserly as possible with your resources of courage tokens, mana tokens (used to activate some character abilities), collected monster cards (used to activate some equipment cards and some character abilities), your equipment, and the number of Fear tokens the bad guy is accumulating. Proper management of these resources will lead you to victory, while squandering resources (or really bad die rolls) will lead to defeat.

Really, this is a pretty simple game, but one that is mildly entertaining if I'm in the mood to play a short game but don't want to think too much about it. It was worth the $5 I paid for it, but if I had spent the $22 list price I would have felt cheated.

All Things Zombie: The Boardgame

2011-01-09T16:41:00.000-06:00

It's been quite a while, but it is time for another dip into my game collection. This time up is All Things Zombie: The Boardgame. Normally boardgames don't have to announce what they are right in their name, but this game does that because it is based on the miniatures game All Things Zombie. The boardgame shares many of the rules, but instead of requiring you purchase and paint up a bunch of zombie and human survivor miniatures and then build a miniature town to fight in it provides you cardboard counters and playing maps to use instead.

The basic premise of the game is that a group of human survivors have fled Las Vegas, and are trying to survive in the surrounding areas. The game comes with six different scenarios, which loosely link together to tell a story of a group of survivors. Whether they die or not is up to you as the player. Well, it should be, but sometimes the rules don't work in your favor. This is a solitaire game, designed to played by one person, but you could play with multiple people as long as you are playing a scenario that provides enough survivors for each player to control one. I've never played it with multiple people, so I can't speak to how well it plays that way, but I don't think it would all that fun. See, many of the survivors, and all of the zombies, don't have full freedom of action. Instead, whenever you want to do something that might be dangerous (or when danger is thrust upon them), they have to take what the game calls a "reaction test" to see what they do. For example, if a zombie charges into a survivor's hex, the survivor throws two dice, compares the results to their "reputation" score (a number, higher being better, that says how good they are at everything they do), and determines how many successes they got. Then you look at a chart to see what the reaction is. In the example given, two successes allows the survivor to fire a weapon before entering melee, one success doesn't allow weapons fire before entering melee, and no successes sends them running off in a random direction while screaming their head off. Certain survivors, known as "stars," don't usually have to roll and they can just do what they think is best.

One mechanic that is kind of nice is that zombies are attracted to loud noises. Like the kind caused by firearms. Thus, you can't just run around the map shooting everything that moves. Or, I should say, you can, but you might not like the result. With every shot you take there is a 50% chance that new zombies will show up on the map, attracted by the sound. In addition, exploring buildings is usually a source of new zombies as well, as the first time a character enters a building on the map they will find from zero to six zombies, determined by drawing a card from the zombie deck. The benefit of searching buildings is that once a building has been cleared of zombies it can be searched. To accomplish this, you pull a card from the building deck to search deck. Many of these show an empty building, but you could find new weapons, or medical kits, or other useful items to help you in killing zombies.

Each of the provided six scenarios has you playing with different survivor characters and having different things you need to accomplish in order to win the scenario. For example, the first scenario involves two survivors looking for new weapons. To win, both survivors must keep from getting killed, must each find a weapon while searching buildings (or must search every building to prove there aren't extra weapons to be found), and must safely exit the map board. Many, many zombies will oppose you. Other scenarios involve finding more survivors and other kinds of activities.

The problem I have with this game is that it is kind of boring. The zombies all move automatically at full speed to the closest survivor (which makes logical sense), and while you control the survivors, you don't control their reactions to things. When I play the game, I seem to be rolling dice all of the time: to fight zombies, to shoot at zombies, to see what characters do when they get charged by zombies, when characters want to charge zombies, to see if more zombies show up in response to weapons fire, it just goes on and on. It just doesn't really feel like I am playing the game as much as I am a neutral observer sitting in a helicopter watching these automatons running around doing whatever the dice tell them to do. It doesn't feel like I have a lot of interesting tactical or strategic decisions to weigh. I haven't owned this game all that long, but it is going in the trade pile, as I don't see myself playing it much, if at all, in the future.

Audio-Visual Arrangements

2011-01-06T10:28:00.001-06:00

Right before Christmas I purchased a Playstation 3. Partly it was to play games, but the primary motivation for this purchase was two-fold: it provided a Blu-ray disc player, and it came with a Netflix app that allowed me to stream shows and movies from Netflix right to my TV. I am proud to say that the Netflix app works exactly as advertised and is a joy to use. It is fast and looks great. The Blu-ray function also works great, and the player seems to play DVDs just fine with no degredation in visual quality.

I have experienced a degredation in audio quality, however. Admittedly, this isn't really due to the audio components within the Playstation 3 unit itself, but due to limitations on cable jacks. My previous setup, which I had used since November 2004, included a DVD player that was connected to the TV through an S-video cable and to my stereo receiver with a digital coaxial audio cable. Thus, the audio was fed directly to the receiver such that no sound was passed to the TV at all. My PS3 is connected to the TV using one of those five-prong HD cables whose name I can't be bothered ot look up, and I then have a stereo audio cable running from the TV to the stereo receiver. Thus, I don't have to use my receiver for sound in games or movies or TV shows watched through the PS3, though I can when I want to. There is a noticeable difference, though, between the standard stereo cable and the digital coaxial cable. Enough so that I am wondering if I should setup my DVD player again just so I can watch DVDs with improved sound quality. If the PS3 had a dedicated audio out port that allowed the use of a digital coax cable that would solve my problem, but alas, it does not.

Epic Win

2011-01-01T11:32:00.000-06:00

It should not come as a significant surprise to any of you that I like playing games. This includes RPGs, those games where you start with a character who is a putz and then have adventures to develop skills and experience. It also should not come as a surprise to people that doing various chores and house work is not my favorite thing in the world. Sometimes, you just need some motivation, which the prospect of clean windows do not provide directly. At times like these, I need a little more.

A couple weeks ago, while listening to an episode of All Games Considered, the hosts of the show mentioned an iPhone app called Epic Win. This app is essentially a "to do" list, where you can input all of the stuff you need/want to do. However, it is done up like it was a RPG. You create a character (I have a little skeleton), and as you complete tasks your character gains experience, going up in levels, finding interesting items on his quest, and so on. It is a lovely way to motivate me to do things like vacuum the house, because if I put vacuuming on the to do list, then my character gains experience whenever I do it.

Back in the Saddle

2011-01-01T11:26:00.000-06:00

After thinking about it for a while and talking with a few folks, I have decided to keep this blog going. Posting will be less frequent than before, as general "what is Aaron doing" updates will now be on facebook, and those kinds of updates aren't as important since when I start my new job in 9 days I won't be traveling as much, but there will be times that I will want a more "long-form" outlet for my thoughts. So, look for new posts shortly. Like, in five minutes.

Hiatus

2010-12-21T10:48:00.002-06:00

I have joined Facebook, so this blog will be silent for a while as I figure out what to do with it.

Greetings from Columbia, MO

2010-11-18T15:53:00.000-06:00

Greetings from rainy and cold Columbia, MO. I arrived yesterday at 8AM, having driven in from Kansas City earlier in the day. Yesterday was a little bit special because it was my 7 year anniversary with PricewaterhouseCoopers, my current employer. After a busy day of meetings, we retired to a local Thai restaurant to celebrate my longevity. Feeling a little emboldened, I actually ate a fried frog leg, as one of the guys had ordered some frog legs as an appetizer. It turns out that frog tastes a little fishy. In case you were wondering, it does not taste like chicken.

In other news, I'm wondering again whether I should shut this blog down and just join Facebook. Decisions, decisions...

For My Father

2010-11-09T15:50:00.000-06:00

Dad, maybe this will make more sense to you than it did to me.

Bank of America Stories

2010-10-30T11:30:00.000-05:00

Some of you may remember stories I have told in the past about how Bank of America never charges me for cashier's checks even though they should. The first time was around six years ago, when instead of charging me for the service they sent me a thank you card in the mail. The second time was close to two years ago when the teller simply waived the fee for reasons unknown. Well, on Thursday, it happened again. I needed to pay for something at work by check, and I forgot to bring my checkbook with me. Since my company office is in the Bank of America plaza in downtown St. Louis, there is a branch right in the lobby. I headed on down there to get a check made out for me. While there, the cashier pulled up my info on the computer and declared that while I should be paying a fee, she would waive it. Why? Because Bank of America has my mortgage now (they got it when they purchased Countrywide a couple years ago), which means that I really should be in a different checking plan, that they offer especially to mortgage customers. This special plan means that my checking account will earn interest with no minimal balance required, I get unlimited cashier's checks, I get free personal check printing, and a free safe deposit box. They were bored on Thursday afternoon because it had been a slow day, so they happily upgraded me on the spot. So, now I am getting lots of free stuff and earning interest where before I earned squadoosh, and I am paying nothing for the privilege. It's good being me.

Sports Despair

2010-10-25T13:11:00.000-05:00

One of the interest things of being a sports fan and a pessimist at the same time is that I am always on the edge of (or fully immersed in) despair about something related to my team(s). Let's use the St. Louis Blues as an example. Prior to this weekend's home stand, they had a record of 2-1-2 (for those of you not in the know, that means they had won two of five games in the season, with two of those losses being overtime/shootout losses, thus earning one point in the standings, as opposed to two for a win). This is quite respectable in the big scheme of things, but to me it means that we lost more games than we won, and thus the team was a pack of losers. After two solid victories this weekend, the Blues are now 4-1-2. This is good, right? Ten out of a possible fourteen points in the standings is quite respectable.

Feeling relatively good about life, I recently checked the standings on NHL.com. And what did I see there? That EVERY SINGLE TEAM in the Central Division has a winning record. Even Columbus. And Nashville hasn't lost a game in regulation time yet. Even with this quite respectable 4-1-2 record, St. Louis is in 4th place in its division. Granted, if you look at the overall Conference standings, Of the top eight teams in the Western Conference, EVERY SINGLE TEAM in the Central Division is in that top eight. So, while the Blues might be an improved team this year, SO IS EVERYBODY ELSE. Thus, I despair.

Yeah, Google, Get On It!

2010-10-13T08:17:00.000-05:00

Where would the world be without British humour?

On a more serious note, does this company even have a master strategy, outside of taking over the world? Or is still just a bunch of engineers doing whatever they think is cool and having the good fortune of having a cash cow inside the company (internet search) funding literally everything else by itself?

Getting Decked

2010-10-08T17:53:00.000-05:00

I've been on vacation since Tuesday this week. While I have done some laying around, reading, and watching TV (hockey season has started! Wooooo!!!), the big thing I did was strip and re-stain my deck. Basically, I got tired of it looking like I swiped the deck from an abandoned property and just bolted it to my house, and wanted a deck that looked like its owner cared about it. I worked around 3 hours a day on it, on average, for the past four days, with the end result being a very nice looking deck that hopefully will last for at least 3 years this time. I applied some lessons I learned the last time I stained the deck, and I put two coats of stain on all of the horizontal surfaces, in the hopes that the sun won't be able to bake off both coats within one year. It will be very nice to be able to sit out on a good looking deck over the weekend, and enjoy the fruits of my labors with some iced beverages and a good book.

No New Games - an update

2010-10-08T17:50:00.000-05:00

At the beginning of July, I had decided that I was not going to buy any new games for the next six months, taking me through the end of the year. I have enough games sitting in the basement that I haven't played a lot, so why get new ones just to stick them in the basement and not play them? That was the logic, anyway. It has been over three months since this experiment started, and I am proud to report that I have been "almost perfect" so far. This past weekend was Archon, which has some room set aside for nothing but dealers to sell you stuff. While I bought some books, the only new game I purchased was a gift for my friend George, so that doesn't count. I did buy some special dice for the Arkham Horror board game, but that isn't buying an actual game, just an accessory which technically can be used with any game, so that also doesn't count.

Today, I bought some new games, and this is where the only breakdown has occurred. Back in late June, I had received some American Express gift cheques from work as a "good job" reward. I had never spent to date, and decided that I needed some new games. This is perfectly acceptable per my rules because I'm not spending my own money out of pocket, just using a gift cheque which was always intended for me to use for my pleasure. So, I drove over to Game Nite and picked up an Arkham Horror expansion set, Pandemic, and TransAmerica. Pandemic, especially, I am really looking forward to playing, as I have heard a lot of good things about it. Unfortunately, with tax this cost a little over $100, which was the amount of the gift cheque I was using. So, I did spend a bit of money out of pocket on new games, but it was totally unavoidable. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Archon

2010-10-03T08:02:00.000-05:00

This weekend was Archon, the St. Louis science fiction/fantasy convention. In recent years it has been held in Collinsville, IL, but this year it moved to Westport, which is noticeably closer to my home. While it is a sci-fi convention at heart, they do have a significant block of scheduled games, which I have taken advantage of this year. While last year I played some games that I had already played and enjoyed, this year I focused on playing newer games that I had no experience with. Somewhat sadly, while I did enjoy myself in some of those games, I didn't play anything that I felt I needed to add to my collection. In fact, the only new game I have purchased at the convention is a gift for one of my friends; absolutely nothing new for me. Well, nothing new game wise. I did pick up some books at Glen Cook's table, including one by the author himself that I got signed, which was a nice touch. I have to say that I do feel like the Westport facilities aren't as good for this convention as the Collinsville facilities, just due to the fact that the Westport convention center is too small, resulting in some events being in one area, while other events are in another area in a separate part of Westport. It is kind of annoying.

Zulus on the Ramparts!

2010-09-28T10:50:00.000-05:00

At the beginning of the year I was travelling to Detroit every week for work. To entertain myself in the evening, I wanted some small (and thereby, portable) board games to bring with me. Through some internet research, I discovered the game Israeli Independence, which was a quick-playing solitaire game where you played the nacent Israeli armed forces in 1948 defending your country against attacks from multiple directions. That game used a newly developed game system called "States of Siege." While I didn't find the game itself to be that much fun, I did like the system, which involves drawing cards or counters to determine which of your enemies (from none of them to all of them) advance on your position that turn, as well as how far they advance. Since I liked the mechanic, I went looking for other games that use it.

I ended up getting two more games from designer Joseph Miranda that use this same system. The first of them, Zulus on the Ramparts, I will be discussing today. The game covers the battle of Rorke's Drift, a rather famous battle in British imperial history where a small group of British soldiers fought off thousands of Zulu tribesmen. The game puts you in the role of the British commander, while the game system has four different groups of Zulu warriors advancing on your fortification. Each round you pull a counter out of a cup, and it tells you which group of Zulus to advance, as well as how far to advance them. If a group of Zulus ever reaches your inner fortification zone, you lose the game as the defenses are over-run. To stop this, you get to take actions during your turn. Actions generally involve the play of cards from your hand: volley cards let you roll a certain number of dice to try to kill or drive away Zulus before they reach you; character cards let you bring specific named characters into the battle, all of which have special abilities; you can build an inner fortification line (such that the Zulus have to move deeper into your fortification to defeat you); you can distribute ammunition (necessary after any large volley); form a reserve platoon (required to play certain volley cards); etc. This is one of those games where you usually want to perform multiple actions per turn, but the game limits you to one (some characters have special abilities to allow additional plays, though always at a cost), so you have to decide which of the many things you want to do is most important. All the while, the Zulus continue their implacable advance.

The game is, as all good solitiare games should be, hard to win. I have about a dozen plays of this game to my credit, and I have won maybe 4 times. There is luck involved in how fast the Zulus actually advance, and from which direction they advance, so sometimes I get jumped by a fast-moving group before I really have a chance to get my defenses set. Sometimes, I just roll really poorly on the dice for my volley fires, and the Zulus just over-run me without even taking any hits. Occasionally, though, you can get really lucky attack rolls and actually kill off a bunch of Zulu attackers. One game I even killed all of the attacking units, and won the game outright, instead of barely holding on for the relief column to arrive (which involves running the deck of play cards down to the bottom).

I consider this to be a very good game. It takes roughly 30 to 45 minutes to play once you have set it up, and it stays tense throughout, with that constant sense that disaster could befall you at any moment, but you just might pull yourself out of the fire in time. If you have an interest in the battle, or in solitaire board games, this is worth checking out.

New Design

2010-09-27T14:58:00.000-05:00

After over four years of blogging, I have decided it is time to update the look around here. I don't know if this dark, depressing color scheme is what I will end up with, but it is stark enough to get me serious about figuring out how I want things to look. Expect some more changes over the next few weeks as I keep tweaking things.

New Kicks

2010-09-25T14:38:00.003-05:00

Today I took advantage of a Macy's coupon and bought myself some new dress shoes for work. In the process, I discovered an interesting advantage to the orthopedic insoles I have to use in all of my shoes now. In the good old days, buying shoes was a massive pain in the rear end, because my feet are smaller than 99% of the male population of the universe, at least according to shoe companies. The end result of this is that I had to buy shoes, usually by custom order, from high end, expensive shoe stores. The upside was that I had some very nice shoes. The downside is that I would pay at least $275 per pair, and that was on sale.

Ever since I got my special insoles, though, I have to buy bigger shoes. Now, I can buy normal shoes at a normal store, because once I put in the inserts my feet now fit in a regular size 9 shoe. This means that the shoes today cost me under $70 each after the coupon. When you consider that I paid about $225 for the insoles, let's do some quick math.

Buying two pairs of shoes in the old days, on sale: $275 x 2 = $550.
Buying two pairs of shoes in the new days, plus cost of the orthopedic insoles: $225 + ($70 x 2) = $365.

Even with the added expense of having to buy the custom insoles, I saved $185. Thanks custom orthopedic insoles! You're saving me money!

Let the Fiesta Begin

2010-09-21T21:16:00.002-05:00

Today I watched parts of the Flyers/Devils and Leafs/Senators games on the NHL Network. Just a few more days...

Lightning Strike

2010-09-20T12:49:00.003-05:00

Being under the weather today and having a day off from work, I figured this was a good time to discuss another random game from my collection, Lightning Strike. Lightning Strike is a bit different from most of the games in my collection in that it is a miniatures game, rather than a standard board game. The board for this case is whatever surface you are playing on, usually a table. A lot of miniatures games use pieces of terrain to make tactical maneuvering of your forces more interesting, but since Lightning Strike is simulating battles in the dark void of space, you generally don't have to worry about that. I have the 1st edition of Lightning Strike. There is a 2nd edition of the game, but the rules are not fundamentally different. The primary difference is that the 1st edition game comes with lots of card stock counters to represent the starships, fighter craft, and exo-armors that are fighting in the battles; whereas the 2nd edition doesn't include those because they expect you to buy and paint the miniatures the publisher wants to sell you. While I'm sure the miniatures look really cool, I am perfectly happy with my counters.

Lightning Strike is the space combat game for the Jovian Chronicles universe, which is set in the early part of the 23rd century. The set-up is that all of the inner planets of the solar system have been colonized and at least partially terraformed, and there are even colonies around Jupiter and Saturn. Due to a series of unfortunate events, the Jovian Confederation and the Central Earth Government and Authority (CEGA) are at the brink of war, and you get to use the game to play out their battles for supremacy of the solar system. Expansions to the game add in the forces of Mars, Venus, and more, but the basic game just gives you the Jovians and CEGA forces. This is enough to play many games, though.

The basic games system is not complicated. All units have a movement allowance given in centimeters, and they can move that far per turn. Small units can fly in any direction and pull off crazy stunts as desired, but warships use vector movement rules that attempt to follow Einsteinian physics (i.e., if a ship burns its engine enough to move 15cm per turn in a direction, it will keep going at that speed in that direction until it burns its engine in another direction. Units have varying weapons; when they take an action to fire, the player chooses the weapon and measures the range to the target. Each weapon has varying range bands; the closer the range, the more damage you can do with a successful hit. To make an attack (or perform any other skilled action) the player rolls a number of six-sided dice equal to the unit's skill rating. The highest die roll is the result of the roll, though each six after the first one adds one to the total. For example, a skills 3 unit that rolled 1, 2, and 4 would have a final skill check result of 4. A skills 3 unit that rolled a 2, 6, and 6 would have a final skill check result of 7. Certain things can modify those rolls (like taking careful aim, or taking evasive maneuvers, or overburning your engine), but the system itself is pretty simple. The defender also makes a skill check. The attacker's total is then compared to the defender's total. If the attacker's total exceeds the defender's total, then the attack hits. The damage is the difference between skills rolls multiplied by the weapon damage at the range band. This means that beating a defender by 1 isn't near as good as beating them by 5. This damage is then compared to the defender's armor rating. A successful hit can either do no damage, stun the defender (have to spend an action point to remove the stun before any other actions can be taken), cripple the defender (move at half speed and weapons do half damage), or kill them outright. So each side rolls some dice, and you compare the results to the attacker's weapon and the defender's armor. It goes pretty fast. Large ships have multiple systems that can be destroyed without destroying the entire unit, but exo armors and fighters go down all at once if you kill them.

For a set of miniatures rules, there is a surprisingly large amount of content here. Not only do you get some basic background on the Jovian Chronicles universe (I think that is removed in the 2nd edition of the game, though) and stats for close to two dozen different types of units, but there is also a set of campaign rules included to provide you with a framework for playing out a series of battles between Jovian and CEGA forces. It is a nice rules set. The game itself doesn't appear to be very popular. At least, I have never known another person who has ever played the game, but I hold out hope of one day finding someone to play a campaign against. Even though I almost never play it, the game is such a complete package (and the mental images of 50 feet tall mecha flying through space stabbing enemy warships with plasma swords are so awesome) that I'll probably always have it in my collection.

My Brother Makes This

2010-09-15T18:53:00.002-05:00

My older brother, Christopher, helps make the software for this.

Crimson Skies

2010-09-11T13:28:00.003-05:00

Wow, it has been many months since I have written about a game in my collection. The reason for that is because the game that got randomly selected was one I had just recently purchased, the old Crimson Skies boardgame from the gone but never forgotten FASA Corporation. Those of you who play video games may remember that back in 2000 Microsoft released a video game for the Xbox and PC called Crimson Skies, and the video game is set in the same game universe as the board game. The board game itself was first published in 1998, during the summer before I moved to Washington, D.C., and I never played it, or even actually saw it played, back then. In early 2001 FASA ceased publication, and the Crimson Skies boardgame was a victim of that time. Nothing new has been published for the game in about 10 years, but early this year I had a chance to buy almost everything ever published for the game for $15, and I just couldn't pass it up. Battletech, also published by FASA, is one of my favorite wargames ever, so at such a low price it was worth picking up Crimson Skies to see how it compared.

But first, a discussion of the game world for Crimson Skies. The setting for the game is in the later 1930s of an "alternate history" United States of America that shattered politically when the Great Depression started. By 1937, there are 19 separate nations where once one had stood. Because of this, land-based transportation like rail, and especially automobiles, have lost in transportation priority to airplanes and dirigibles. In the game you play pilots flying fighter planes against your opponent's fighter planes, and in some scenarios you are either attacking or defending a dirigible against the enemy. Granted, these dirigibles mount flak cannons and machine guns to defend themselves, and thus you can play out scenarios like that pictured on the box cover, which shows air pirates attacking an Empire State dirigible while Blake Aviation Security attempts to intervene. This is all very much in the vein of "pulp" adventure stories from that time, when men were men and women were women, which basically means that you are supposed to play the game in a daring and dashing manner, as if Errol Flynn was flying the plane in an action movie, fighting against sky pirates to save the beautiful dame in danger. Something like that, anyway.

The game itself is played with either cardboard counters or painted pewter miniatures on a hex map. Five different maps are provided in the boxed game, and at least two more came with expansion sets. For the most part, the maps are for looks (fighting over downtown Manhattan or just open sky has no bearing on the game), except that some maps include high-altitude terrain hexes, which are (probably) impassable to your planes. You can try to fly through it, but if you fail your maneuvering roll get ready to hit that obstacle head on at 200 miles per hour. There are a few aspects of the game that are worth pointing out, so let's get to it.

First, this is not a "pick up and play" game. First you have to decide what scenario you want to play, which can be one provided with the game or a supplement, or one the player's design themselves. This can be as simple as "let's each take two fighters and dogfight" to "let's do a zeppelin raid over Manhattan, and the zeppelin is picking up special cargo, which the pirates must try to grab with harpoon rockets without damaging the container. There will be 12 pirates and eight defenders, and the defenders will be elite and the pilots are built with 500 points instead of 450." It can get even more complex than that. Notice that comment about "500 instead of 450" for the pilots? Before each game, unless you are playing in a campaign with persistent flight crews, you have to build your pilot from scratch. There are five skills plus a Constitution rating for each pilot, and you spend your points to buy their skill levels and any increased Constitution you want. This can take a bit of time, but it does allow you to match your pilot's skills to the plane you are flying. Ah, yes, you also have to select your planes. The base game comes with 14 different models, plus the rules to design your own, and expansion sets came with more plane types. Once you select your planes, you have to decide what ammunition they are using and what rockets/bombs are mounted on the hardpoints. Only once all of that is decided are you ready to play. It can be a quite a bit of work to get that all set up and ready.

Second, movement in the game is simultaneous and mostly blind to your opponent. All movement orders are written at the beginning of the turn, and once every plane has an order then they are all carried out simultaneously. The only exception to this is if one plane is tailing the other. In that case, you add up some modifiers to determine exactly how much information the tailed plane has to provide to his tailer about that plane's movement. This mechanic is actually quite common in aircraft board games, and I have run into it before with both World War I-themed games, as well as modern air combat games. It works OK, but it does take some getting used to if you aren't familiar with that mechanic. It also makes the game about impossible to play solitiare.

Third, the way that weapons do damage is both really interesting and kind of gimmicky at the same time. Each plane has a damage diagram, which is really a collection of small boxes organized to represent the layout of the plane's mechanical components. Whenever a plane takes damage, either from enemy fire or from failing to properly perform a maneuver that exceeds the plane's flight capabilities, you use a special stencil to identify the area of the plane that got damaged, and then you blacken all of the boxes not covered by the stencil. You can see an example of the end result in this picture. The specific stencil you use is determined by the caliber of the gun you are firing as well as the ammunition you loaded it with. Different types of rockets also have different damage layouts. As you take damage and blacken boxes that represent different aircraft components, those components break. In the case of guns or rockets, you can't use that weapon anymore. In the case of wing struts, elevators, flaps, and the like, your plane becomes less maneuverable, which can be a very back thing indeed if your opponent can now literally out-maneuver you. Hits to the cockpit canopy can stun your pilot, hits to landing gear make it harder to land safely (yes, you can lose a pilot and plane to a bad landing) at the end of a mission in a campaign game, etc. Hits to a fuel tank just lose you fuel, unless you were hit in the fuel tank by "burning" ammunition, in which case you explode instantly into a nice fireball.

Fourth, the game appears to be really intended for campaign play, where each player (or each group of players) controls an entire squadron of planes and pilots, which then fly multiple missions against each other. The biggest clue to this is that during missions, pilots gain experience points for successful kills of enemy aircraft, as well as other actions. After each mission, surviving pilots can spend their accumulated experience points to improve their skills. The end result is that a successful pilot in one mission literally gets better before the next mission. This can have an affect on game play, too, as you try to make sure that your really good pilot doesn't get cut off and shot down by enemy planes.

In the end, while Crimson Skies is an interesting boardgame, I doubt that I will ever play it again. It really demands campaign play to get the most out of it, and even if I did know other people that wanted to play it, who has the time to devote to that? Certainly not I, at least not these days. However, if you ever decide to play the game and want to get additional plane counters, I highly recommend grabbing the files from this site and printing them out. The counters work very nicely.

Muddy Blues

2010-09-06T13:00:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, since the weather was so good, my friend George and I decided to take in the Big Muddy Blues Festival being held at Laclede's Landing here in St. Louis. The music was good, though I would have preferred to hear more blues acts than soul acts. It's only got "blues" in the name, is that too much to ask, for actual blues music? Ah, well. Before we actually headed down to the Landing, since I had to park by Keiner plaza, we decided to stop by the Arch (i.e., the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial) and check out the displays of the proposed upgrades to the park grounds, which are currently being considered. I found it interesting that all of the proposed changes made significant use of the low lands on the Illinois side of the river, which is currently just sitting there being an eye sore. While a number of those ideas looked good in principle, they all looked to be quite expensive; I wonder where the money is supposed to come from to pay for it all?

Doin' Work

2010-09-04T21:38:00.002-05:00

It has been "plant cutting" week here around the house. On Tuesday my father came up for a couple hours and cut some limbs off of the tree in the front yard. That tree hadn't been trimmed back in a few years and it was really getting too big, so it was good to thin it out a bit. Then, today, I did some work in the back yard cutting back on the lavender bush and some other plants in preparation for re-staining the deck later this month. The plants that were put around the deck had simply gotten too big, and I couldn't have painted parts of it if I didn't cut those plants back (or, in the case of what looked like weeds, remove them entirely). In the process I also found a couple wasp nests, but they must have been old and not in use anymore because dousing them with poison didn't produce any angry wasps. So it was a week of doing things that needed doing.

Refund

2010-08-24T16:44:00.002-05:00

I had a new experience this week. Last month, after Spain had won the World Cup, I had purchased a Cesc Fabregas Spanish national team jersey off of eBay. It was supposed to arrive within a couple weeks, but it did not. In fact, it never arrived, and I couldn't get the seller to respond to my queries. So, I opened a case with eBay about the auction. The whole process was rather painless. I explained the situation in my submission, and I got a response email saying to wait a week while they tried to contact the seller to see what was up. A week later I got another email from eBay asking if I had heard anything from the seller. I hadn't, so I let them know that. Less than 24 hours later I was issued a full refund for the price of the item plus shipping. So, while I still don't have that Fabregas jersey I wanted, I do have my money back, which is the next best thing. Now to find something else to blow it on...

Game Party

2010-08-23T15:13:00.002-05:00

My friend Chris Fawcett turned 51 yesterday. To celebrate, we played games at his house all weekend. I wasn't there for all of it, but I got a good 8+ hours in over a couple different days. I finally got to play Struggle of Empires again (I was in the lead after the first two turns, but after the final turn I had dropped to third place. Drat!), and I got introduced to Silverton, an interesting blend of rail game and economic speculation game. I got destroyed in that one, but I had never played it before, and everyone agreed that I did about as well as could be expected when none of the card draws were favorable to me.

And, as luck would have it, Chris' house was about a mile from where the YMCA book fair was going on, so I was able to pick up some nice hardback sci-fi books for dirt cheap.

Dog-Sitting

2010-08-19T15:01:00.003-05:00

Today I begin a week-long odyssey of watching my parents' dog while they are in Florida enjoying the company of their grandchildren. Sam the dog is already trying to cop an attitude with me. Hey, if you don't pee, you don't get any carrots or green beans. You can mope about it all you want but I really don't care about what you think should be happening. Did you pee? No? Then no treats for you.

Game On!

2010-08-12T17:04:00.002-05:00

This only really makes sense if you have experience with Bollywood movies and have at least passing familiarity with MMORPGs, but this is pretty well done.

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-us&brand=v5%5E544x306&from=sp&vid=8cb424dc-cbdb-40be-90c5-8fb450462d2f" target="_new" title="Season 4 - Music Video - ">Video: Season 4 - Music Video - "Game On"</a>

Seeing Old Things As New Again

2010-08-05T09:15:00.002-05:00

You may remember a while back when I noted that I had burned my entire CD collection to iTunes and boxed up my CDs, such that when I want to listen to music on my stereo I just plug in my iPod and go to town. One of the interesting things that has arisen from this action is that older CDs, which I had not listened to in years because they were buried in the depths of my CD racks, are now coming back to my attention because iTunes gives all albums equal screen space. So, I have been spending some time recently listening to albums that I have not listened to in years; in some cases, well over five years. It has been an interesting experience. I have also realized that while some of these older albums are quite good and I should not have shunted them to side as I did, some of them were not listened to for a reason, as some of the albums just weren't that good or were purchased during one of my "open minded" periods where I was trying new things only to learn that I just don't like some things. The end result of this is that some of those old albums are going to get deleted from iTunes entirely, as I can't imagine ever listening to them again. On the other hand, there are some albums that have a handful of really great songs on them, with a lot of "meh," so I just need to create some good playlists to include the good stuff and leave the lame stuff behind forever.

Heat

2010-08-03T12:29:00.002-05:00

I am done with Dallas for the time being, and am back in St. Louis, where I hope to be for a good six or seven weeks, if all goes according to plan (it almost never does, unfortunately). This is conveniently timed so that I can be in town as we breach the 100 degree mark today, which is lovely. I kind of feel sorry for the guys that mow our lawns, as they get to work outside all day in this heat. Yet another reason to go to university and get a degree, so that you can get an inside job with air conditioning. I don't really have anything new to report, just work and general life stuff. I'm trying to get caught up on some reading during my time in town, and I got a couple books finished off over the weekend. So far, I am surviving my "no new games" ban, which is in place until the end of the year, just fine. Maybe something will break my will power over the next few months, but I'm feeling pretty good about it so far. I've only found one game that I really want to pick up, so as long as the number is small I should be able to manage it.

Back in the Saddle

2010-07-26T19:18:00.002-05:00

Back in Dallas for a few days. Last week when I tried to leave on Friday I had the distinct pleasure of getting my flight cancelled. See, right when our plane was supposed to land a shade of the Biblical flood decided to open up on DFW, causing them to shut down the airport for about 40 minutes, with no planes allowed to land or take off. After circling for ~25 minutes, my plane got re-routed to another airport entirely for re-fueling, and then we got word that our crew was on another plane that got re-routed somewhere else, so we were hosed. So, I didn't actually get home until about 10AM on Saturday morning. It could have been worse, of course, but I was operating on ~4 hours of sleep, had a headache, and just wasn't in a good mood the rest of the day. Ah, well, such is life, I guess.

Greetings from Dallas

2010-07-21T07:58:00.002-05:00

Hola from Dallas, TX. I am here all week doing an audit at an aviation parts distributor. Did you know that Dallas' road system was designed by rabid squirrels? I can't provide any documentary evidence to support this claim, but all you have to do is try to drive on the roads around here to figure it out for yourself. Maybe instead of being rabid, the squirrels were just high on weed; I guess that is another possibility. Anyway, something was wrong with those squirrels.

Even though Dallas is having temperatures in the high '90s, it still feels nicer than it does in St. Louis right now, because the humidity is modest. Dallas is also quite flat, or at least the area around the airport where I am working is quite flat. Maybe the downtown area is more varied, but out here the only rising land are the freeway overpasses.

Wherein I Answer the Internet's Questions

2010-07-21T07:54:00.004-05:00

Occasionally the Internet asks me questions, so I thought that it might be fun if I actually start answering some of them on this blog. Why? Why does anyone write anything on their blog? For attention, of course.

Here is today's question, picked up in an advertisement on ESPN.com
Answer: Quite easily, thank you very much. While I'm sure that certain people would find that their lives are meaningless when they are not wearing ugly shoes on their feet, I have found that I prefer rather classic footwear, like non-flashy sneakers or a pair of cordovan leather laced shoes. Thanks for the question.

Best. Blog. Ever.

2010-07-16T10:09:00.002-05:00

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you the greatest blog of all time. I could lose days looking at all those concept drawings... so good...

Fireworks and Jack-Booted Thugs

2010-07-05T12:09:00.003-05:00

Last evening my friend George and I went to the Manchester city fireworks show at Schroeder Park. It is a pretty good show, and much easier to navigate than heading downtown for Fair St. Louis. However, whoever they have responsible for music during the fireworks needs to be sacked. About 1/3 through the show, they started playing the Imperial March from Star Wars in the background. Now, I try to be a reasonably open-minded person, but on a day to celebrate American freedom, we're playing a song about intergalactic oppression? Really? Is that the best you can do? Maybe it was intended as some kind of subversive statement, but most likely the poor sap handling the music just doesn't know any better.

Man, I Really Like The Economist

2010-07-01T13:57:00.001-05:00

Leave it to the British to take their own language to task in an entertaining and informative way.

No More Games (kind of...)

2010-07-01T08:28:00.002-05:00

I have decided that I will not spend money* on games for the rest of the year. Why am I taking such a drastic step when playing games is my primary hobby? Well, it turns out that I own a lot of games. This wouldn't be such a big problem if I was playing them all the time, but it seems that I spend most of my time playing other people's games, and not my own. I have a relatively small handful of games that I play using my own copy, so I figure why spend money on something that I'm not going to play? This is also a way to attempt to get some actual play from the games that I already own.

*"money" is defined as cash/check/credit card. If I get a gift card, and thus can buy something without spending actual money out of pocket, then that is a totally acceptable loop hole. :)

Vuvuzelas for BP

2010-06-30T16:24:00.003-05:00

If you have watched any of the world cup matches you will have heard what sounds like a swarm of insects in the background. This is not because South Africa is being invaded by a horde of locusts, but rather because the locals like to blow on cheap plastic horns for two straight hours. Seeing how annoying this is, a forward-thinking individual decided to gather some money to hire people to blow vuvuzelas at the BP headquarters in the hopes of annoying the poor people who work there.

Part of me thinks that this is hilarious, and part of me thinks that this is just mean. Let's be honest here, it is the poor sods that work the trenches that will have to bear the brunt of this, as the executives can just jet off to Cabo during the whole thing and say it is a "strategy session." But, still, the idea of expressing displeasure by blasting vuvuzelas at someone is pretty hilarious.

General Update

2010-06-30T16:18:00.002-05:00

I don't usually go almost two weeks between posts, but there hasn't been many exciting things going on. First of all, I'm working in St. Louis for the next three months or so, so I don't have any new travel stories to share. Second, I've been watching a fair number of world cup matches and while they are generally fun and interesting, putting up a blog post getting all excited about the latest David Silva goal really isn't my style.

Something interesting did happen last weekend, though, as I turned 36 years old. Oh, and on Monday I had a CT scan done of my head as one of my doctors thinks my sinuses are all messed up. But blogging about medical conditions is boring. Maybe I'll find something interesting to write about soon.

Worst Case Scenario

2010-06-17T15:29:00.003-05:00

From xkcd.

Back when I was younger, my father liked to play a game with my brothers and I where we would try to figure out the "worst case" of whatever possible thing we could think of. If I remember correctly, the ending was always the world being destroyed in a massive fireball. That doesn't happen in this scenario, but you have to admit that James Carville riding a burning alligator is a pretty awesome image.

100,000

2010-06-17T15:14:00.002-05:00

My trusty Impala finally got to 100,000 miles this morning on the way back from Gold's Gym. To be honest, I figured I would get here quicker than 8 years and 2 months, but it is what it is. I hope this isn't some kind of secret code to the car to start completely falling apart.

Greetings from Seattle (again)

2010-06-14T22:26:00.001-05:00

I am back in Seattle today. I flew in this morning, did some work, ate dinner at Naan 'N Curry, and am now at one of the two Marriott Courtyards in Tukwila, WA. The thing is, it isn't completely clear why I am even here. The people I am auditing are in St. Louis, which is where I live. You would think I could audit them from there more easily than from ~1200 miles away, but I go where the client tells me to go. I'm only here for a few days, though, as I fly back to St. Louis on Wednesday. It's kind of one of those "much ado about nothing" situations where you head all over the place so that someone can watch you sit at a desk. Just watch, next week I'll be in St. Louis and be auditing people in Seattle. Ain't life something?

A Significant Change

2010-06-05T14:19:00.000-05:00

For as long as I can remember, I have been a pretty musical person. I have sung in choirs, I have played three different instruments, and I have purchased lots and lots of recordings over the years. When I think of past events, I tend to hear specific songs in my head that are indelibly linked to those prior events. So it might seem kind of strange to everyone that this afternoon I boxed up most every CD that I own and put them in the basement.

Why would I do such a thing? Well, it turns out that having all of my music on my iPod, and hooking said iPod up to my stereo via a simple audio cable, is a simpler way to listen to music. It also frees up some space in my living room, which is no mean feat. I got the idea to do this about three weeks ago when I took down all of the pictures and posters off the walls in my home in preparation for having a new roof put on (no use in having them fall off the wall with the constant banging and vibrations from the roofers). Rather than just putting everything back up in the same place it came from, I am taking the opportunity to redecorate. Down comes the old family picture from 1998, up goes the photo of my brother, sister-in-law, and nieces as just one example. So, I figured, while I was doing that, maybe I should deal with that pile of CDs that I really wasn't listening to anymore since I had everything on my iPod.

The only CDs left are most my anime and video game soundtracks, which were stored in a different CD rack than the others. I've got about half of those ripped to iTunes, and once I get them all (well, the ones that aren't lousy, anyway) they will also go into boxes and then I will have no music CDs left for general listening. The only impact this is going to have is on my music listening in my car. This would normally be a big sticking point, but recently I have found that I spend most of my time in the car listening to the 101.1 ESPN radio station here in town, and if I'm not listening to that I'm listening to KDHX or some other music station. So, I don't think this is going to have much of an impact at all, actually. This also means that if I can't get it digitally, I'm going to think twice about purchasing any new music on a physical CD, since I have nowhere to put it anymore.

Small World Syndrome

2010-06-03T19:21:00.000-05:00

The hotel that I am staying at this week in Renton, WA is literally around the corner from the world headquarters of Wizards of the Coast.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled internet surfing.

Problems

2010-06-01T21:50:00.000-05:00

My A/C died over the weekend. I noticed last week that it was having trouble cooling my house, and then on Sunday I realized that it wasn't putting out cold air anymore. In a brilliant piece of timing, I am in Seattle this week, so I can't get it fixed until over the weekend. Which also means that I will miss my second cousin, Stephanie Nelson, getting married in Paola, KS next weekend. Then, today, I was flying to Seattle for business. Fog kept us from landing in Chicago for about two hours, which meant I missed my connection, which meant I got to sit in the Midway airport for six hours, so I completely missed what I was coming to Seattle to do, anyway. Ain't life grand?

The European Economy Explained

2010-05-27T17:12:00.000-05:00

Leave it to the British to properly put this in perspective.

Understanding the Gulf Oil Spill

2010-05-25T10:16:00.000-05:00

I have personally found the reporting over the Deep Horizon oil rig leak in the Gulf of Mexico to be quite lacking in technical details of the actual problem. I mean, why can't you just drop some bombs on the hole in the ground to plug it? The most recent issue of Economist has a nice breakdown of the technical difficulties facing the recovery team, as well as the various methods that are being tried to deal with it. I found it to be informative.

Charts are Fun

2010-05-21T09:14:00.000-05:00

I like charts like this.

Car Issues

2010-05-21T09:10:00.000-05:00

I have recently been having problems starting my car. I took it to a local auto parts store on Monday and had them test the battery. The guy said the battery was fine, but that it sounded to him like the starter was weak and/or putting too much of a strain on the battery. Well, whatever the actual problem is, yesterday after work when I went out to start my car, it just wouldn't go. One call to AAA later, I got my car jumped by a towtruck, and it started up, but the towtruck operator noted that it sounded like the starter was "hesitant." I had a coworker drive me from my hotel to the worksite, and he will take me back to the hotel to pick up my car this afternoon, and then we'll see if it will start on its own or not. Hopefully if it needs a jump we can just do that again, but either way it is going straight to the shop once I get back to St. Louis. Then I can find out if it really is a bad battery, or a bad starter, or both, or a bad wire, or a corroded connection, or what. Oh, and get the trunk opener fixed; that's annoying.

So This Is Pretty Awesome

2010-05-17T14:10:00.001-05:00

Remember that scene in The Empire Strikes Back where Han finds a freezing Luke in the wastes of Hoth and uses Luke's lightsaber to cut open his dead Tauntaun and then puts Luke inside? Well, did you know that you can sleep in your very own Tauntaun right now? This is both "freakin' sweet" and kind of creepy at the same time. Hopefully it doesn't actually smell worse on the inside, eh?

Speaking of awesome, this past weekend I got to see my younger brother graduate with a PhD from the University of Iowa. Way to go, bro! Now finish that paper and make it actually official!

A Sign of the Times, Perhaps?

2010-05-13T08:31:00.000-05:00

Here is an interesting story about the upcoming WWII victory celebration that Russia is planning, which for the first time will involve soldiers from the Allied nations (USA, Great Britain, etc.) marching in Red Square as part of the military parade. Whatever you think of the underlying reasons (an actual acknowledgment of historical ties vs. a cheap political play), having US soldiers marching through Red Square isn't something I thought I would be hearing about any time soon.

Redecorating

2010-05-11T15:18:00.000-05:00

This past Sunday I took all of the pictures off of my walls, in preparation for the roof on my building getting replaced. It was recommended by the Homeowner's Association that if you didn't want your pictures falling off the wall during all of the banging and hammering during the roofing work, you really should take them down yourself. So I was looking at my bare walls and I realized that this is a perfect opportunity to re-think my wall decorations. The last time I made any changes at all to my wall art was 2 1/2 years ago, and most of the stuff that was up there has been up there for close to five years. So, I'm putting some thought into changing what pictures I have on the walls. I know my nature photos (spider rock and 'yellow day') are going right back where they came from, but everything else is up for review Does anyone have any suggestions for me of stuff that I should look into?

So, Should I Join Facebook?

2010-05-05T20:26:00.001-05:00

I've been doing this blog for almost four years now, and I have almost 500 posts in that time. However, I am wondering if anyone still reads this. Should I just join the 21st century and join Facebook like everyone else in the known universe and give up all of my privacy? I'm not sure.

I Really Want to Drink a Fanta Now

2010-05-05T20:19:00.000-05:00

Admittedly not as awesome as the Brawndo ads, these Japanese Fanta advertisements are completely awesome. I especially like the DJ and Soap Opera ones.

North Korean Jokes

2010-05-05T08:41:00.000-05:00

The original listing has a notation up front that the jokes aren't actually funny, but the one about the fish is hilarious, and I also like the one with the two guys in the subway car. I guess Kiwis just have trouble with black humor.

Over There

2010-05-01T19:33:00.000-05:00

Ready for 2010 World Cup yet?

Goin' South

2010-04-26T14:35:00.001-05:00

Greetings from sunny Orlando, Florida. I am down here for a week to visit my nieces. I'd say I was also visiting my brother and sister-in-law, but let's be honest here and acknowledge up front that they are not the actual reason for the trip. My nieces are about 3 1/2 months old at this point, and they already show different personalities and preferences. I got to see them for the first time in person at Easter, when they were in St. Louis, but I only got a few hours with them at that time. Now I get a whole week. Rumor is that I will be put to work doing various things while I am down here, like helping to move furniture around the house, but that just goes with the territory.

Clean Up Time

2010-04-19T18:16:00.000-05:00

Today is the first day of my two-week vacation. Many people plan far in advance all of the cool things that they will do on their vacation. I, however, spent most of the day organizing and cleaning in my house, to get ready for the carpet cleaning crew coming in tomorrow. I figured this was a good excuse to do some cleaning up and sorting of things, which did not happen much during my three month stint in Detroit. I'm not totally done, but I got through a lot of it. Tomorrow I am going to go through my clothes and select stuff to give away, as my church is having its twice annual "community closet" this coming Saturday, and that is a good way to get rid of stuff I no longer need but is still perfectly usable. Once that is done with, I should be pretty much done with that. Then I can really just relax for a few days, which should also include some hiking in local parks, something that I don't do enough of.

This Joke Almost Writes Itself

2010-04-14T15:26:00.000-05:00

In the "headlines I never expected to see" category: Russian leaders to visit St. Louis to examine government. It's because our city government is such a model of openness and civility, I'll bet.

Ignore This Post

2010-04-11T15:58:00.001-05:00

I'm just getting an image up on the web for linking from another site.

Baseball is Here

2010-04-06T10:43:00.000-05:00

I don't care if the Yanks and the Sawks played the first game of the season on Sunday, just about everyone else played their first game on Monday. That is also the day of the first Blue Jays season (a major choke job of a game, I must note), so I'm declaring that the first real day of the baseball season. My hometown Cardinals out-slugged the Cincinnati Reds, so people in the Lou are pretty happy today. I mean, Albert Pujols is on track to hit 324 home runs this season, so what's not to smile about? Also of critical importance is the fact that the Cubs started their season with a sixteen run performance! Don't get too excited, this IS the Cubs I'm talking about; they gave up those sixteen runs, they didn't earn those points themselves. Thus, all is right with the world.

Not in Detroit

2010-04-05T11:54:00.001-05:00

For the first time in almost three months, Monday morning today did not find me flying to Detroit for work. Instead, I got to simply get in my own car and drive to my own office in downtown St. Louis for work, instead. It was a nice change, I must admit. Not much else to report; I had a nice weekend with the recently expanded family, but I was also sick, so I have a bit of a hazy memory about parts of it.

Bracketology

2010-03-31T10:02:00.000-05:00

Even though I don't really care about college basketball, I still filled out a bracket this year on ESPN.com. I don't follow college basketball, so most of my picks were made with about five seconds of thought. Interestingly enough, I checked this morning and found that I was in the 94th percentile of all brackets on the ESPN site. There are a number of possible reasons for this result:

I am some kind of college basketball savant
I am unreasonably lucky
The tournament committee had no idea what they were doing when they set up the brackets this year
The rest of the world isn't near as smart as it likes to think it is.

I leave it up to you, dear reader, to draw your own conclusion.