We're off to Hawaii in a couple of days for the rest of 2009, so I am unlikely to be posting much. There certainly won't be anything game oriented that I'm going between now and then (iPhone games excepted).
My 2010 Gaming Resolutions will come out after I get back. I have a list but I want to tailor it a little before posting, but probably my first post of the new year. I'll also be looking at The Battle For Normandy (new GMT monster) and a few other new titles as January rolls on.
In the meantime, I wish all of my readers (all twelve of you) a very Merry Sequence of State-Sponsored Holidays, and may the time you spend with family and loved ones sustain you over the coming year.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
Gaming Resolutions 2009 - Recap
Good Goddess, another year come and gone. Along with my eyesight and... uhm, never mind.
Last year I came up with ten resolutions for gaming in 2009. How did I do?
- Play through the SPQR Deluxe battles using Simple rules. Fail. I may try this again at some point with the regular rules. Simple is nice, but it was hard to use the light troops effectively and the battles all started to feel very samey samey after three plays. Definitely too ambitious.
- Team Monster Game. Fail. To my credit, we had this lined up for WBC West, but the scenario choice and Chuck's sudden legal adventure in CA killed it. This will probably resurrect itself for 2010.
- Contribute back to the hobby. Sure. Maybe not in the ways I've intended, but I did do some work on this blog with the excellent D-Day on Omaha Beach solitaire game, and have tried to give my impressions of many of the games that I got this year. I will continue to praise companies that do well and critique those that don't respond when I ask them for a fix. However, this won't be a "goal" per se in 2010.
- Try New Companies. Success. DVG, Victory Point Games, Khyber Pass, even Perry Moore's company. I even ended up with a Fifth Column game in Where There is Discord. The market remains small and this will not be a goal that carries over to next year.
- Play a full campaign game. Success. Surprisingly, I had thought this a fail until I remembered my campaign game of Combat Commander: Stalingrad with Matt R. OK, perhaps not by definition what I was trying to do, but close enough. This will probably remain a goal for 2010.
- Play at least one naval game. Success. I got through most of two Flying Colors scenarios, and a good chunk of a Second World War At Sea game with Eric. However, I find that anything other than strategic level loses me to some extent.
- Burning Blue. Fail. What can I say? After seeing how little the Germans had to do in RAF: Eagle, I can see why this has been so difficult to pull off.
- Play two long term games on VASSAL. Fail. All the games I started died within a few days or weeks. Must be my breath. Seriously, I find that while VASSAL is a great system, I really prefer the feel of cardboard and a person sitting across the table from you. This goal won't propagate either.
- Get through the Conflict of Heroes scenarios. Fail. This one may pop back up. I'm planning a major event at GameStorm in March, perhaps that will get me motivated to get through the system. Now it would be via the Storm of Steel version since it has new rules.
- Attend an out of town con. Not really. I did get to Lorna's EGG mini-con in Eugene, as well as WBC West nano-con in May, but nothing out of state. I didn't even make it to the March GameStorm because of events that had been planned for me. There's a NY's Resolution, no more letting other people plan my life. This year, I intend to return to WBC, the "real" one, hell or high water. Maybe a GMT Games West as well in October.
That's a 40% success rate, which indicates that I shot high. Part of the problem was picking goals that *seemed* like good ideas, but really weren't. SPQR is a great example - I had little experience with larger scenarios and knew the shortcomings of the Simple GBOH system, but picked it anyway. Having games that didn't fit in poster frames but needed to be set up for more than a few days was part of the problem as well. The same goes for VASSAL - online games are a distant second to face-to-face gaming for me, so pushing to settle for second was a bad choice, even if I had trouble getting opponents out to Wilsonville regularly.
I'll put up my 2010 gaming resolutions in the next day or two after I've let them percolate for a bit.
So You Think You Can...WTF?
I blogged about the reality dance competition show So You Think You Can Dance at the start of the season, and now that the results are in I think it worthwhile to take a look at my early picks and how they did.
Here's the original post:
Right now, I have four favorites. I apologize for not getting names down just yet, it's a little hard to follow this many people. Tops is Jakob, who dances like I wish I could sing. My sentimental favorite man is Russell, the above mentioned crumper. Get that man some training, and he'll take over the world. A special mention to Ryan, the bodybuilding ballroom dancer, who will also go far.
All four of these men made the top six, which means the finale week. In prior seasons, the show got down to four people, but I think they realized that they were killing the four dancers and this year devoted the extra show to showcases so that we could get familiar with the dancers, which was a very good choice. Ryan took sixth, and Jakob and Russell were the last two dancers standing for the win.
Let me be clear - Russell is a crumper, with little or no training. He did a fantastic job throughout the series, taking on style after style and doing pretty well to amazing with all of them. Jakob, in contrast, is a phenom. He will become a showcase dancer in just about any company he winds up in, and it was patently clear that if the show was about the best dancer, he would win by a landslide.
However, the winner is determined by the public, which is always a bad idea, and they gave the win to Russell. I felt he was the fourth best dancer in the final six, with Jakob the top. Have no fear, Jakob will get a *lot* of work.
In the women, I did not want to like but was very impressed by Kathryn's dancing. She squeaks when she talks, and burst into tears more or less regularly during the later parts of the audition process, but she can dance. My sentimental favorite is Ellenore, who has a great sense of humor in her work, but was quite good in her dance with Ryan this past week. I also think Karen, the Venezuelan Latin dancer, will do very well - a gay judge on the show spoke of how his eyes went all AOOOOGGAAAA when she was dancing, and that's not the usual reaction he has to... well, it got a little fuddled after that.
Continuing my prognostication results, both Kathryn and Ellenore made it to the final six, taking third and fourth respectively. Ellenore was the female equivalent to Jakob, although not *quite* as amazing. Their work together was stunning. The person who really surprised me, though, even though I named her first, was Kathryn. She did a vintage number where she channelled Cyd Charesse (no idea if I got *that* name spelled correctly), and the final four weeks she was the single dancer besides Jakob that I looked forward to the most. Her only shortcoming that I could see (as there was no more squeaking through the rest of the competition) was that her eyes looked a little dead when she was looking at the audience. Not so much when she was dancing, though. I felt that she and Ellenore were pretty close to a tie for second, with Kathryn taking the nod.
The sixth finalist was Ryan's wife, Ashleigh. She was a very good dancer, surprised a lot of people, but got into the finale thanks to a certain amount of sympathy when she wasn't allowed to dance the previous week due to a dislocated shoulder (and her husband Ryan begging the audience to vote for her). Molly was the victim of that, although to be fair she went home when she should have. The person who went home too soon was Molly's buddy Nicole, who amazingly ended up in the bottom two with Kathryn a week before.
Karen was the victim of too many good women dancers, and got knocked out right before the top 10. She was my only pick who didn't make the top six.
This year saw some fantastic choreography - a little less of NappyTabs (a good thing, I agree with Dave on this, and in fact one of their routines was dissed by the judges), a little more of newer choreographers who really did some good work. I'm happy to see the choreographers getting rototilled a bit, as it keeps interest in the show.
On the controversial side, the attempts by Nathan (an early strong dancer unfortunately paired with another very young dancer Molly) to seek sympathy from the public with some strangely chosen tears were hard to watch. He was voted into the bottom three the week they chose the top 10, and the exec producer and judge Nigel Lythgow clearly wanted him off the tour, but the other judges apparently felt that he was going to sell tickets and so he made it in. He also seems to have really pissed off the hairdressers those last couple of weeks. Protip: be very nice to the costumers and make-up people, they have a huge effect on how you are presented.
All in all, I was happy with the format changes that were made, unhappy with the new venue (too large of a stage for the duo numbers, too much business), very pleased with the dancers in general, very pleased with the choreography, and slightly displeased with the final result (but just a titch). Also, putting Adam Shankman up as the permanent third judge - brilliant. Lose Mary Murphy (who is fast losing her appeal - do we really need to see glitter on the chest of a middle-aged woman? Really?) and bring back Lil' C. I do like the idea of permanent judges for the first five weeks of competition, which means consistent evaluation of the dancers (and I know how much a single judge can skew results in arts competitions). Also, someone else needs to choose Cat's shoes. She looks like a gladiator in those things.
I'm not sure of what the plans are for this show in the future (continue in the fall lineup or go with a summer replacement show - I think it will do well in either slot, although the constant changing of times and due to the freakin' World Series being on the same channel was annoying). Even if you aren't a fan of dance, this program will educate you and touch you in ways you never expected. In a year where there has been some very good television, this show held it's own, and remains the only reality show I will watch intentionally.
Here's the original post:
Right now, I have four favorites. I apologize for not getting names down just yet, it's a little hard to follow this many people. Tops is Jakob, who dances like I wish I could sing. My sentimental favorite man is Russell, the above mentioned crumper. Get that man some training, and he'll take over the world. A special mention to Ryan, the bodybuilding ballroom dancer, who will also go far.
All four of these men made the top six, which means the finale week. In prior seasons, the show got down to four people, but I think they realized that they were killing the four dancers and this year devoted the extra show to showcases so that we could get familiar with the dancers, which was a very good choice. Ryan took sixth, and Jakob and Russell were the last two dancers standing for the win.
Let me be clear - Russell is a crumper, with little or no training. He did a fantastic job throughout the series, taking on style after style and doing pretty well to amazing with all of them. Jakob, in contrast, is a phenom. He will become a showcase dancer in just about any company he winds up in, and it was patently clear that if the show was about the best dancer, he would win by a landslide.
However, the winner is determined by the public, which is always a bad idea, and they gave the win to Russell. I felt he was the fourth best dancer in the final six, with Jakob the top. Have no fear, Jakob will get a *lot* of work.
In the women, I did not want to like but was very impressed by Kathryn's dancing. She squeaks when she talks, and burst into tears more or less regularly during the later parts of the audition process, but she can dance. My sentimental favorite is Ellenore, who has a great sense of humor in her work, but was quite good in her dance with Ryan this past week. I also think Karen, the Venezuelan Latin dancer, will do very well - a gay judge on the show spoke of how his eyes went all AOOOOGGAAAA when she was dancing, and that's not the usual reaction he has to... well, it got a little fuddled after that.
Continuing my prognostication results, both Kathryn and Ellenore made it to the final six, taking third and fourth respectively. Ellenore was the female equivalent to Jakob, although not *quite* as amazing. Their work together was stunning. The person who really surprised me, though, even though I named her first, was Kathryn. She did a vintage number where she channelled Cyd Charesse (no idea if I got *that* name spelled correctly), and the final four weeks she was the single dancer besides Jakob that I looked forward to the most. Her only shortcoming that I could see (as there was no more squeaking through the rest of the competition) was that her eyes looked a little dead when she was looking at the audience. Not so much when she was dancing, though. I felt that she and Ellenore were pretty close to a tie for second, with Kathryn taking the nod.
The sixth finalist was Ryan's wife, Ashleigh. She was a very good dancer, surprised a lot of people, but got into the finale thanks to a certain amount of sympathy when she wasn't allowed to dance the previous week due to a dislocated shoulder (and her husband Ryan begging the audience to vote for her). Molly was the victim of that, although to be fair she went home when she should have. The person who went home too soon was Molly's buddy Nicole, who amazingly ended up in the bottom two with Kathryn a week before.
Karen was the victim of too many good women dancers, and got knocked out right before the top 10. She was my only pick who didn't make the top six.
This year saw some fantastic choreography - a little less of NappyTabs (a good thing, I agree with Dave on this, and in fact one of their routines was dissed by the judges), a little more of newer choreographers who really did some good work. I'm happy to see the choreographers getting rototilled a bit, as it keeps interest in the show.
On the controversial side, the attempts by Nathan (an early strong dancer unfortunately paired with another very young dancer Molly) to seek sympathy from the public with some strangely chosen tears were hard to watch. He was voted into the bottom three the week they chose the top 10, and the exec producer and judge Nigel Lythgow clearly wanted him off the tour, but the other judges apparently felt that he was going to sell tickets and so he made it in. He also seems to have really pissed off the hairdressers those last couple of weeks. Protip: be very nice to the costumers and make-up people, they have a huge effect on how you are presented.
All in all, I was happy with the format changes that were made, unhappy with the new venue (too large of a stage for the duo numbers, too much business), very pleased with the dancers in general, very pleased with the choreography, and slightly displeased with the final result (but just a titch). Also, putting Adam Shankman up as the permanent third judge - brilliant. Lose Mary Murphy (who is fast losing her appeal - do we really need to see glitter on the chest of a middle-aged woman? Really?) and bring back Lil' C. I do like the idea of permanent judges for the first five weeks of competition, which means consistent evaluation of the dancers (and I know how much a single judge can skew results in arts competitions). Also, someone else needs to choose Cat's shoes. She looks like a gladiator in those things.
I'm not sure of what the plans are for this show in the future (continue in the fall lineup or go with a summer replacement show - I think it will do well in either slot, although the constant changing of times and due to the freakin' World Series being on the same channel was annoying). Even if you aren't a fan of dance, this program will educate you and touch you in ways you never expected. In a year where there has been some very good television, this show held it's own, and remains the only reality show I will watch intentionally.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Pulling The Train
Boy, I seem to have gotten a lot of train games in lately. Last Train To Wensleydale (or whatever it is), Steam (the "proper" version, according to McDeans), and Lancashire Rails from Winsome's Early Rails set. Three Tuesdays, three trains.
First up was Lancashire Rails at Mike's two weeks ago. This was a three player game with me, Mike, and Greg. Heck, all three games were three player! I had played this about 10 years ago at the very first (or second) Sunriver euro retreat, way back in 1998 or so. At the time, it was a huge departure for me, and the low quality of the components did nothing to endear me to the game. Nor did getting locked out almost immediately. So this time, I was ready to do better, and better I did. I grabbed one of the early two connections, but nothing was really working for me the next couple of turns as Mike and Greg grabbed a lot of the southern routes. My strategy? Go North, young man. So I did, and by game end I had pretty much locked up the trunk route running from Lancashire to points south. Of course, this game turns on how the goods cubes come out, and that helped, but it was clear from the midgame that this was mine to win or lose, and I wiped the floor with the other players. Nevertheless, a better experience for me than the first time I played. Oh, the other part of my strategy - aggressive debt management. I had no debt the second half of the game, while everyone else was digging out. At the worst, I had taken out a max of two certificates at any one time.
The next week, Chris and Mike and I played Last Train to Wensleydale. Sorry, I'm not sure how that last is spelled, but I remember there was cheese. And rocks. I did much worse at this game, completely blowing my last few turns by simply not considering what I needed to do to stay in the game. I will say that the game did not give me a favorable impression, but I'm told that it shines with four rather than three, and I'm willing to give it another go. To be honest, other than Automobile, I have not been terribly enamored of any of the new Wallace games. They feel like just another collection of mechanisms built around a theme rather than interesting games, and I hope that Martin isn't just putting games out to generate income to cover his legal costs after the great FRED brouhaha. The game has the very interesting feature of channeling very specific moves in the middle of the board (which looks like scar tissue for some reason), but it didn't grab. Perhaps it will with four (as McDeans swears). I came in dead last by a huge margin, and I saw that coming from the midgame.
Then there was my first time out with the latest incarnation of Age of Steam, called simply "Steam". We played the Standard/Advanced/Proper version, with bidding for player order. The biggest different I noted was that the randomness of the cubes coming out as the game progresses has been eliminated, turning what was a very good game into a killer title. In fact, this makes me look at AoS as I do at Agricola - a very good game marred by what appears to be an arbitrary chaos factor that doesn't sit well with the rest of the game. In comparison, Steam is more like Le Havre, where there is a lot of randomness, but at the start of the game instead of a heavy element as the game progresses. This will be the version I play. We had a great game with Mike, Matt G, and myself, with me in the south part of the US map, Matt in the NW, and Mike in the NW but mostly in the NE. I took a very long look ahead in the game, and saw that there were going to be some really great chances to do things late, but made a couple of dumb errors. Still, at the end I was able to squeak out a win by one point over *both* Matt and Mike, mostly by making sure that I had good cube runs at game end when everyone else was struggling to figure out where to put things. I would have won by more had I gone for a choo choo improvement in the penultimate turn, as well as bidding for the start position on the last turn instead of building a lone link (for a lone point). A fantastic game, so much so that I bought the base set today and will pick up Steam Barons in the very near future. It should be easy to retrofit maps, all you need to know is how many cube pools you establish at the start of the game, so my old AoS maps can work with either.
Had I gone to Chris' place on Saturday, I could have played even *more* train games. Really, though, this train may have been enough to tide me over through the rest of 2009. In fact, this will be it for gaming for me for the year, as I'll be in Hawaii with a ton of people who don't get boardgames at all. Sigh. Have a Happy Holiday anyway.
First up was Lancashire Rails at Mike's two weeks ago. This was a three player game with me, Mike, and Greg. Heck, all three games were three player! I had played this about 10 years ago at the very first (or second) Sunriver euro retreat, way back in 1998 or so. At the time, it was a huge departure for me, and the low quality of the components did nothing to endear me to the game. Nor did getting locked out almost immediately. So this time, I was ready to do better, and better I did. I grabbed one of the early two connections, but nothing was really working for me the next couple of turns as Mike and Greg grabbed a lot of the southern routes. My strategy? Go North, young man. So I did, and by game end I had pretty much locked up the trunk route running from Lancashire to points south. Of course, this game turns on how the goods cubes come out, and that helped, but it was clear from the midgame that this was mine to win or lose, and I wiped the floor with the other players. Nevertheless, a better experience for me than the first time I played. Oh, the other part of my strategy - aggressive debt management. I had no debt the second half of the game, while everyone else was digging out. At the worst, I had taken out a max of two certificates at any one time.
The next week, Chris and Mike and I played Last Train to Wensleydale. Sorry, I'm not sure how that last is spelled, but I remember there was cheese. And rocks. I did much worse at this game, completely blowing my last few turns by simply not considering what I needed to do to stay in the game. I will say that the game did not give me a favorable impression, but I'm told that it shines with four rather than three, and I'm willing to give it another go. To be honest, other than Automobile, I have not been terribly enamored of any of the new Wallace games. They feel like just another collection of mechanisms built around a theme rather than interesting games, and I hope that Martin isn't just putting games out to generate income to cover his legal costs after the great FRED brouhaha. The game has the very interesting feature of channeling very specific moves in the middle of the board (which looks like scar tissue for some reason), but it didn't grab. Perhaps it will with four (as McDeans swears). I came in dead last by a huge margin, and I saw that coming from the midgame.
Then there was my first time out with the latest incarnation of Age of Steam, called simply "Steam". We played the Standard/Advanced/Proper version, with bidding for player order. The biggest different I noted was that the randomness of the cubes coming out as the game progresses has been eliminated, turning what was a very good game into a killer title. In fact, this makes me look at AoS as I do at Agricola - a very good game marred by what appears to be an arbitrary chaos factor that doesn't sit well with the rest of the game. In comparison, Steam is more like Le Havre, where there is a lot of randomness, but at the start of the game instead of a heavy element as the game progresses. This will be the version I play. We had a great game with Mike, Matt G, and myself, with me in the south part of the US map, Matt in the NW, and Mike in the NW but mostly in the NE. I took a very long look ahead in the game, and saw that there were going to be some really great chances to do things late, but made a couple of dumb errors. Still, at the end I was able to squeak out a win by one point over *both* Matt and Mike, mostly by making sure that I had good cube runs at game end when everyone else was struggling to figure out where to put things. I would have won by more had I gone for a choo choo improvement in the penultimate turn, as well as bidding for the start position on the last turn instead of building a lone link (for a lone point). A fantastic game, so much so that I bought the base set today and will pick up Steam Barons in the very near future. It should be easy to retrofit maps, all you need to know is how many cube pools you establish at the start of the game, so my old AoS maps can work with either.
Had I gone to Chris' place on Saturday, I could have played even *more* train games. Really, though, this train may have been enough to tide me over through the rest of 2009. In fact, this will be it for gaming for me for the year, as I'll be in Hawaii with a ton of people who don't get boardgames at all. Sigh. Have a Happy Holiday anyway.
The Christmas Wars
Another holiday season, another spate of political correctness and intolerance all at the same time. With that in mind, here are some thoughts for everyone busy trying to "take the season back".
Note on terminology: I will use the term "Christian" to refer to those who feel this is a Christian holiday that has been taken by other groups. I understand that there are many Christians out there who have considerably more perspective, but it's a convenient term for my purposes. Also, I use the term "Christmas" to refer to the time of year, which coincides with the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. I do not use it because it has more legitimacy, but it certainly does have more market penetration.
Note on terminology: I will use the term "Christian" to refer to those who feel this is a Christian holiday that has been taken by other groups. I understand that there are many Christians out there who have considerably more perspective, but it's a convenient term for my purposes. Also, I use the term "Christmas" to refer to the time of year, which coincides with the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. I do not use it because it has more legitimacy, but it certainly does have more market penetration.
- Christmas is old. Very old. A lot older than Jesus, in fact. Even the fact that Christmas occurs where it does has more to do with trying to convert pagans to Christianity than it does with an actual calendar date when Jesus was born. The turning of the seasons and the arrival of the shortest day of the year (counting daylight hours) was a matter of hope, nay, survival in the ancient world, because that meant that the sun would eventually return, and with it the growing season. Christians can celebrate it in their own way, but they do not own it (other than the term "Christmas").
- The season has, if anything been taken over by commercialism. I have friends who are retailers, and this is the biggest time of the year for them. The season allows them to be in business the rest of the year. While I am right out in front in wanting to vomit when I walk into Costco on October 15th and see Christmas regalia, I also recognize that our economy not only has a major benchmark in how much people spend at Christmas, but also a major transfusion of capital.
- Christians speak of being singled out when public institutions put up "holiday" trees and avoid the use of religious imagery or terminology. Is it a little silly at times? Yes. At the same time, if Christians thing they are being singled out, consider everyone else. And yes, they go to the same public schools as Christians do. Imagine if you grew up as a Christian and all everyone talked about was Ramadan, complete with whatever religious imagery and terminology goes with that time during the Muslim calendar.
- At the same time, taking offense because someone wishes you well is ridiculous. If you don't celebrate Christmas, and someone tells you Merry Christmas, smile and wish them whatever is appropriate back (and if nothing is, you can say Happy Holidays). And vice versa. This is a time of hope and giving, not complaining that your interpretation of the holiday isn't getting it's fair due in the media and the public square. If that's how you think you "win" as *any* faith (or lack thereof), I think perhaps you don't have a very good idea of what your faith is really about.
- Finally, remember that the reason we seem to have this brouhaha every year is because this is the *only* public holiday that coincides (intentionally) with a sacred holiday. And those reasons, as outlined above, are commercial rather than theological. Were the founding fathers Christian? Yes, but they were almost certainly not evangelical Christians keeping score about how many souls were going to God rather than Satan. They were rationalists living in a homogenous society, and many of them thought of God as an abstract rather than personal. So that's not really an argument.
The real problem with Christmas is that we all seem to put so much stock in it. Perhaps it's because this was the time of year as children that we all got that thing that we really wanted (or that our parents scraped for months to buy for us, even if it wasn't *the* thing). I know that as a child I started getting excited about Christmas two months in advance, and I loved the decorations, but I never got into it as a religious holiday. Clearly, I still don't. In fact, I dislike Christmas more every year. Call it the price of too many choir rehearsals in October singing carols from Norway and really hating it when people are so stressed out by the season that they can't be bothered to notice that *anyone* is in their immediate vicinity waiting for them to move their cart out of the middle of the aisle at the store because they're arguing over the phone over who was supposed to get the tinsel. I'm pretty sure that the season is *not* about killing ourselves to buy love from our children and family, but it gets worse every year.
In other words, whether anyone likes it or not, it is both a religious holiday as well as a secular holiday. There is nothing wrong with you celebrating the day and the season in whatever manner you wish (within the standard rules, of course - human sacrifice is probably not going to go over well with the general population). You want to celebrate it your way, I wish to celebrate it in mine. I'm at a bit of a loss to figure out why Christians should win this one other than that for a very long time in this country, they won everything else. Except that this is *still* to this day not an officially Christian country. And all of those Founding Fathers wanted it not to be officially anything. I think that was a pretty smart move, because that desire means that you can celebrate it as you wish.
So the next time you think that you get to decide how we all celebrate Christmas, I suggest that you try moving somewhere that everyone agrees with you. Like 12th Century Italy. I hear that was a great time to be alive.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
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