Shadows over Camelot

Shadows over Camelot is an odd game, as it is generally co-operative, where everyone plays a knight of the round table, and you go on various quests to defeat the forces of evil (or, in a couple cases, the forces of "not you"). As you succeed at quests, you gain benefits, the most important are white swords. White swords are important, because you need them to win. Black swords are awarded when you fail a quest. Once 12 swords of any color are placed, the game ends. If the players have more white swords than black swords, then they win. Otherwise, they lose.

There are other ways to lose, as well. If all knights are killed, the game ends. If 12 catapults are placed around Camelot (generic representation of the growin strength of evil forces), then the game ends. But as long as the knights are on the ball and doing their jobs of completing quests, then things will be all right.

Well, that would be the case, except for the way the game works. Every turn, the player whose turn it is has to do something bad. They can lose a life point from their knight (putting him closer to death), they can place another catapult around Camelot, or they can draw a black card. Black cards always cause something bad to happen, usually related to one of the possible quests. The way the quests work is that they "build up" bad cards until you lose. A couple of the quests are tug-of-war style, where bad cards move something closer to the losing end, while good cards move something closer to the winning end. The others just build up bad cards. Either they fill up and you lose, or they fill up and are compared to your cards, highest total wins.

To win quests, knights have to move their tokens to specific quests, and then play cards on those quests. This might be playing certain numbers of Fight cards, or laying grail cards on the Grail Quest, etc. It ends up being a pretty neat mechanic, because bad things are happening all over the place, but you have to focus on one thing at a time. Sometimes other players can help you on the same quest, but sometimes you are all on your own, and you need the right cards in your hand to win the quest. Yes, winning quests is done with the playing of white cards, which are one of the possible knight actions each turn. You can move, you can draw new cards if in Camelot, or you can play white cards where you are. It leads to fairly tense games in my experience, where the knights are trying to get the right cards to the right places while they slowly lose ground in everything they aren't actively engaged on.

One neat potentiality, which I've never actually seen happen, is that one of the knights can secretly be a traitor, working against the other players. The traitor wins if the knights lose, because he is actually an agent of evil. Each player has a 1/8 chance of being a traitor. This adds an interesting dynamic to the game, because you are never quite sure who is actually a traitor. You can accuse other players of being a traitor, but you better be right, because being wrong flips a white sword to a black sword, which is pretty bad.

I've played this game twice now, and both times the knights have come close to winning, but lose a few turns before they would be able to win. It has been pretty tense all through the game, and I have to say the game is fun to play. I can see how some people might not like it, due to its non-standard setup and game play, but it is worth trying out if you get a chance.

Celebratin' my 35th

Well, I know what I'm doin' on my next birthday. What are you doin'?

And more importantly, do you think they saw my address and gave me the ticket with Scott Rolen's picture on purpose, or is it happenstance?

Stupid Birds

There is this mated pair of starlings that keeps trying to build a nest in my dryer vent. They worked at it last year, and they are back at it again this year. A few weeks ago I went out to get a vent cover, but my stupid dryer vent is some fancy thing that none of the vent cover models will fit. So I just kept cleaning it out by hand, but then recently I had this idea. I had picked up a pack of little adhesive dots at a craft store (I was thinking they would work well for putting shields on wargaming minis). I didn't want to have to try to glue the vent cover into place, but I could pre-place the dots and just stick the cover over the vent. In theory, it should work.

So, that is what I did late this morning after church. I did it while actually running the dryer, as I wanted to make sure I didn't have starlings attacking my head while performing the operation. I am happy to report that it seems to be working great. I went out this afternoon to check on it and make sure it hadn't fallen off, and a very depressed starling was sitting on it staring forlornly at the dryer vent. It made me smile.

All Things Must End

I recently learned that Yahoo! will be shutting down their Geocities website service at some point later this year. My first online experience was with Geocities (back before it was a Yahoo! service), and I still have a website with them. I haven't done much with it in recent years, to be honest, but it is still a little sad to see it go. With its forthcoming disappearance into the aether, I have been looking into new online tools to do similar things. My first success was yesterday, when I was looking for some sort of widget I could add to this blog to showcase the books I am reading. I landed on the site Goodreads, which lets you keep a virtual library, rate and review books, and also produces a handy widget to either show what you are reading, or produce random views into your "bookshelves," which is Goodreads' way of letting you break your collection up in different ways. All I need now is one of these bad boys for comic books and I'll be set.

More Fortune Cookie Adventures

"This week, you have a good head in matters of money."
China 1, Twin Oaks, MO