Game Night: 12/05/08; Dominion

Last Friday, our gaming group met as usual to play board games. As I have a friend in my other gaming group that posts the results of his sessions, I thought it might be a fun thing to do, just for kicks and some geek pride for the winners.

We had a short crowd Friday. Tim and Rob made it over, and the 11-year-old (David) sat in. Lee was flamencoing (or ball-rooming, or tangoing with his wife), Ben was Volitioning (he works a LOT of hours during crunch times at Volition, the local makers of several neat video games including Saint's Row and Red Faction II), and Dave was vomiting (his blog entry title for last Friday was: Number of Days Since I Last Threw Up:, and the one-word blog was: Zero).

I received my copies from ThoughtHammer of Pandemic (which has already sold out over there and is on Backorder), Power Grid: China/Korea maps, Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm, and Dominion, a game my friend Dave L. told me about.

So in sum, here is how the evening transpired:

Game 1: Dominion
Players: Brian, Tim, David, Rob
Winner: David
This was our first try at Dominion. The rules and game play are well done, so we jumped right in, using the suggestion for a first-game Kingdom Card array. David went the Topher route and started buying up a disproportionate number of Militias. This in and of itself did not win the game for him, as the rest of us started buying Moats to fend off the Militia attacks. David did, however, see the endgame coming quicker than we did. When he started buying Duchys and Provinces, we took notice, and saw 3 of the Supply stacks had grown short. By the time we realized that David was actually playing the game well, it was too late. So the 11-year-old soundly defeats the Institutional Research Analyst with the B.S., the WILL (local PBS affiliate that Barfing Dave also works at) IT guy with the Masters, and the Assisstant Head of the English Department at U of I with the Ph.D. Go David!

Game 2: Dominion
Players: Brian, Tim, David, Rob
Winner: Brian
After seeing the really neat play Dominion offers, we had to play again. This time we went with 10 random Kingdom cards. And we could tell, this was going to be harsh. There were no protective cards like the Moats, and there were 3 attack cards - The Witch, the Thief, and, I believe one other I cannot remember (edit: Tim reminded me we also had the Bureaucrat in play; can't remember if it's an Attack card proper or not, but he's right) . David started Tophering again and went for cornering the Witch market. We did have Cathedrals though, so I suppose there was a protective factor there. Rob bought a large chunk of these. David kept hitting us with the Witches, and at some point, Tim said what we all expect him to say about every game he plays: "I *hate* this game!" I saw the combo of Thief/Moneychanger/Cathedral to thin out the deck (even trashing some 1-point Victory cards), and saw the beauty of the Gardens, which led me to a victory.

At that point, it was a bit late to start a game of Pandemic, so we called it a bit early, but a fun evening. My friend Dave L. thought I would like this game, and he was wrong - I love it. After 2 plays, I see why people like this game so much: easy rules and simple gameplay execution, but the variety of combining the 25 Kingdom cards into a whole lot of variations leads to very high replayability. Trying to figure out what combos work well together for the 10 that get selected for a game is great, great fun to me. I want to play again.

Wii Little Hitler

Wii have discovered the silly fun of the Mii Channel for the Wii. When David got a Wii for his birthday from my mom and sister (mom is trying to get into heaven now), we created Miis for all 6 of us. It was pretty fun in and of itself.

A few weeks later, the kids and I go to the Mii Plaza to look at what other people have created. To my amusement, my friend Dave had a Hitler on his Wii, as well as Jackie Chan and other celebs. I looked for a Hitler, and the offerings were, in a word, disappointing.

Now I get tired of people's negativity at times, in terms of nitpicky criticisms that just make people sound bitter and angry. It's tiresome. And yes, I am being a bit of a hypocrite here, as I have a few buttons (religion, egocentrism and others). But astill, I thought, this is the best people have done? Granted, creating Miis is not intended to be Poser/Maya realistic, but how hard could this be?

Well, a bit harder than I anticipated. You only have so many eye/head/hair shapes to work with. I did my best and uploaded the thing, as I didn't think it was bad. It is our most popularly DLed Mii that we have made.

However, my friend Ben was over and observed the Hitler Mii I created and said it looked much more like John Hillerman of Magnum PI fame (he played Higgins/Masters; pictured above). OK, then. I had fun creating it though. The Hitler in the graphic above is not mine, btw. I just don't know how to grab my Hitler off the Wii and post, and even if I could, it's not worth the effort.

I must admit I find it incredibly amusing to see our various Miis stuck in crowds or part of teams while playing games on the Wii. I was almost cackling when Hitler was pitching to Jesus in baseball during the same game where Napolean Dynamite made a great outfield catch and a scary Jack Black hit the game winning homer...off of...Jesus. I am far too easily amused by such things.

Shotguns & Vampire Baseball

I saw Twilight with Megan on Sunday, who decided to bring a friend.

Not as awful as I thought it would be actually. Megan, of course, thought the book was much better, and the movie missed out out on the humor the book had, which was mostly why she enjoyed it (as far as I understand). She still liked it, but it wasn't an overly impressive movie for her. It was good dad/daughter time though, and that's what made it fun.

I did noticed many more mom/daughter duoos in the cineplex than dad/daughters, but there were some.

There was a funny joke around the dad, a local sheriff in the movie, cocking his shotgun in prep for his job, coincidentally before meeting the daughter's new boyfriend. Predictable yes, but funny nonetheless. What was very funnt to me though, was the timbre of the laughter was noticably different from the other movie jokes: it went down an octave or so (well, a bit of writer's embellishment I suppose, but still noticable enough), and the recognition that it was dads who were laughing at the joke made it greatly amusing to me.

The 1st half of the movie was beyond expectations, in a good way. Good setup, and intriging. Oh, people can nitpick if they choose, but who cares. It was fun and mysterious.

Then the romance part came, and as you would expect, it went downhill just a wee bit. Cliched and predictable, it did not appeal to me, but you have to go into it with those expectations. To its credit, it only had one severe roll-the-eyes moment (the 'you are now my whole life' bit, which was disconnected and not remotely believable). A few others weren't good, but it wasn't palpably awful.

I did however, really like the vamp baseball bit though. I am not actually a baseball fan, as I think it's a boring waste of time, but the reason they played baseball only in thunderstorms grabbed me for some reason. The playing was neat to watch as well. Decent and fun moves.

I obviously don't have a connection with this movie, but it was neat to hang out with Megolas, and who am I to criticize her if she did. Good times.

Pandemic Has Been Quarantined

Those who know me know my passion surrounding board games: playing them, talking about them, occasionally creating some, and so on. One of my friends named Dave (more on that in a bit) bruoght over, many months ago, this neat game called Pandemic by Z-Man games.

I am not a big fan of co-op games, and this is one of them, as co-op games in my experience, usually involve an overbearing person *telling* many or all people what to do. Granted, the game is usually beaten, as that person knows how to beat the game, but beating a co-op game in this fashion is like trying to "win" at D&D: if you play that way, you're missing the point, and the group as a whole has a less fun experience than playing the game in truly co-op mode.

That said, I love this game. It's not perfect, and I won't regurgitate the rules here, but the gist is, 4 diseases have broken out in various locales around the world, and you and your team of specialists must contain them before the world becomes overrun wuth them. When we played, I don't think we actually won any of our first 3 games. Two were very close and one we just got flattened. Great fun though, and there are various parts of the game which lend themselves to humor, at least in our group.

As an unnecessary aside, I know more Daves than any other males of any other name. There's my son David. There's Dave the program director for the local PBS station, who is part of the usual gaming group. There's Dave in Massachusetts, who I used to game with and still keep in touch with. There's the Dave that I was in a jazz/funk garage band with for years (who is now the local school board pres). I know 3 more Dave's, and I'll just stop there.

Back to Pandemic. I placed an online order for this game on May 02, 2008 via ThoughtHammer. I have had a good experience with them. I still haven't received the game yet. Apparently, Z-Man used a dubious printer in China to get a 2nd print run of the game. There have been more delays.

I don't blame ThoughtHammer for this, as this stuff is out of their control. It does make me pretty wary of Pre-Orders though. So I emailed them Friday, asking if they had any tidbits on where the shipment was at. Here was the response I got:

"We have just recently learned that the shipping container carrying the November '08 Pandemic print-run is now in a U.S. port. Unfortunately, however, this container has been selected by the Department of Homeland Security for x-ray inspection, which could delay movement of the container by anywhere up to a month."

I was disappointed and slightly amused, as you could consider Pandemic in Quarantine, so to speak, I emailed one of my friends named Dave (the program director one) and told him of the delay. I was greatly amused by his response:

"Hilarious. Thank you, Bush Administration, for protecting us from boardgames."

I do hope I get this before Xmas.......

*That* Guy

After a couple days of political and religious commentary, I thought I would go back to my usual postings on nothing truly relevant. It was rare I posted much on either subject in my old blog, let alone post two days in a row AND use those subjects.

So I strive to be THAT GUY. Being THAT GUY is not always a good thing (like a "look at *that guy*" [and a bunch of explicative or explicative substitutes for those with kids] who cuts you off on the highway, has his car music so loud it hurts your ears in your car with the windows up, has crap hanging off the car after a car wreck he didn't fix, who has duct tape on the mirrors, etc.). Here, I want to be THAT GUY in a fun context.

While I do not personally know the man, the guy pictured above is Mike Haile from Champaign's Lite Rock 97.5 Radio Station. He runs contests each weekday morning on music trivia, and I find it quite fun while we drop the kids off at school and head to work. You can only win every 30 days, and on most months, I win a couple days after my time to NOT wain has passed. I also recognize several consistent winners such as myself. There's Parkland's Admissions Colonal, Mike, who is a neat guy. There's Steve, my old boss at my old workplace who is a *case*, and the main reason at least a half a dozen people left that place, and others I know. It is a fun ritual.

When I call Mike and am actually trying to win, and can tell he needs to be about his business, I usually don't belabor the point and try and be self-described clever. But if I call and he already has a winner, (it's neat he will still entertain calls before the answer is given out and let you guess and tell you if you got it or not, and provides the correct answer if not). sometimes I try to be funny. Self-described funny, mind you.

The first time I made him laugh out loud was unintentional. I got the wrong answer for a question they already had a winner for. I was actually confident my guess was correct, but I had forgotten about another album the group had done. I just said, "I am shocked by the monkey of Peter Gabriel that I did not get that." His hearty laughter made me want to make him laugh again. That way, I could be THAT GUY. The clown that makes him laugh, and when he hangs up, he might think, oh, it was THAT GUY again. No worries, Mike - neither a stalker or taking this too seriously. Just having some light fun here.

I made him laugh a few times, and got a few noticable guffaws from him. The last one involved a question on Faith Hill. I listen to a wide array of music. All except Maynard Thumbtwanger country (bonus points to anyone who gets the ref), and rap/sexist hip-hop. So The question was along the lines of, name one of her one-word albums after he listed all of her other one-word albums. Ruthie and I had no clue. So I called up later than usual, in trying to be THAT GUY, but he didn't actually have a winner yet. My answer for the remaining Faith Hill one-word album title? I offered "Crap", acknowledging I had no clue. He guffawed loudly, and indicated, in gentle words, he also was not a fan of Faith Hill. Ruthie, at that moment, pondered, "I wonder if the title is Faith?" So I offered it up as a random guess and it was actually correct. I gave her credit and he used her name on the air. I want to be THAT GUY.

On a slight tangent, people who know me know my sight is awful, and because I have Choroideremia (Google it if interested), you never know how long the practical vision will last. It sometimes stabilizes for years on end. Well, a couple weeks ago, it took a nose-dive, and to be quick, I could now claim for disability (which I will not do until I am forced to). I have been told by my wife (and a few others) I should go into radio, because they like my voice. I don't necessarily get that, though when I go monotone, people can find it soothing. It took me aback the first time Ruthie leaned close in bed and asked me to talk to her so she could get to sleep, but I get that now. I picture a Brian Counter Death Drive show, running 1am to 5am, where my monotone voice lulls people and truckers to sleep on the highway at high speeds.

I have no training whatsoever, but the idea is appealing, especially since my eyes are truly going out now. I am great at games, and have enough music trivia in my head to run fun contests for years. I'd love to start an All-Contest radio station, but obviously don't have the capitol to start. Any takers for THAT GUY radio, WGEK? (GEEK RADIO) Call me.

Ahhhhhhhh........

I am simply relaxed and relieved and content to no end that we elected Obama last night. I thought McCain's concession speech was wonderful and deserves praise as the example for the future, in that he did attempt to bring people together toward a spirit of cooperation, not Gingrich/Limbaugh/Colter/Moore/Sharpton hate profiteering. That's the McCain people like - even if you disagree with him on something, progress is more important than party edge. Perhaps if his campaign wasn't managed by the vipers of red, he may have had more success.

I loved Obama's speech, in that it was sombre, straightforward, and realistic about mistakes being part of the improvement process toward real political change. I was moved a couple times during the speech, and seeing the raw emotions on TV of MLK's old church was fantastic. I did make my wife laugh pretty hard though - when they showed Jessie Jackson tearing up, we questioned the sincerity of the tears as not being as genuine as Oprah's, and I said, "Let's see you cut off his nuts now, Jessie", in reference to that quote of his from a while back when he was angry at Obama. Good times.

One other event last night horrified me, then settled into relief. I was mortified that Elizabeth Dole accused her opponent of being a godless evil person in her red attack ads. Turns out, the other candidate is a Sunday school teacher. I always knew the day would come when myth-believing Christians would attack non-believers just because it riles up the emotions-based myth believers, but actually seeing it unfold was still disturbing. It became relief when the election results and commentary showed it backfired. While an atheist, I generally do not *push* my beliefs on others, even if I engage in debate in such topics from time to time. I'll make comments like I just did on occasion on myth believers, but that's usually in reaction to an obnoxious xenophobic simpleton. Glad that worked out towards common sense. Shame on you Elizabeth Dole, and the moron(s) that decided the attacks were a good idea.

Obama's win is a great feeling, and I truly hope that Obama, over time can dismiss the fear-based rants on a certain station with cult-like followers simply by helping bring this country back to a better place. Fox, anyone? Perhaps a station name change to The Inflexible Egocentric Redneck Bitter News would be more appropriate.

Oh, happy day.......

Voting for a Black Man

Today, I happily voted for whom I thought was the best US presidential candidate - Barack Obama. For the first time in my adult lfe, I am voting FOR a candidate, instead of voting against an a$$chunk, or the lesser evil of two a$$chunks. I fully realize his strengths are in charisma and rhetoric, but I do have a real hope he will surround himself with people more interested in progress than party control idiocy, which has plagued our country for far too long. I also hope he can break the stereotype of the incessantly-taxing-Democrat, and we'll have to see about that one. I, unlike some of my friends, do not think this country would go to hell in a handbasket if McCain was elected. I don't agree with him on several major issues, and he has the reputation of working with 'the other side' well enough. However, if he died, the country would indeed go to hell in a handbasket if Palin was president. What a right wing hypocrite, full of xenophobia and fear-mongering for self-benefit, let alone insistence on pure emotions-based mythologies.

My reasons are long, but I'll stop there. My main reason for this entry was to discuss the fact we here in the US insist on calling Barack Obama a black man.

Black or African American as terms make no difference to me or to my wife, who is black. I am white. We have two kids, who have a really nice permanent tan.

It disturbs me at some level we keep calling Barack black. Technically, he, like my kids, are bi-racial, or multi-racial if you prefer.

Now I understand the foundations of why we haven't matured as a culture, and insist he is just black. In the old days (and still in the South today - sweeping generalization, I know), if you had any African genetics in your blood, you were black, because part black just means black. It was meant as a very negative concept, as if being part-black was just as bad as being all black. What a bunch of moronic simpleton bunk! We still, as a society, are immature in that we don't feel like processing reality as many complex shades of gray - people are too lazy to think through things as the complex issues that they really are.

I applaud the fact that a multiracial candidate is likely to become our next president, given he is partially black, given our country's horrible treatment of blacks even in the recent past, and more predominant in less educated locales where irrational hate and fear oft fester. This isn't white guilt either - it's about time we got past that fear and hate and accepted a candidate for who he is. Like him or not, he's just a guy, regardless of skin pigment. Sure there are legit cultural differences in this country, but I hope with him as our next president, we can mature a bit and just refer to him as such - our next president, not our first black president. Historic it is, yes, and deserves recognition, yet simultaneously, I hope something like this isn't that big of a deal in the future.

(pardon the large-bold font for those that don't know me; not yelling - just legally blind)