Undead Delight

Every Halloween my friends and I put together a horror-based roleplaying game just to have a bit of fun. Generally, people die, and much fun is had. A few years back I ran a particular game about a zombie apocalypse. It began with everyone creating each other as characters, and then everyone got to play themselves. I, being the GM, was the first person to be killed and their first introduction to zombies. Appropriately, I think Mary killed me, both hating zombies and in particular being my nemesis. The group had to escape Brian and Mary’s house, find transportation, and then navigate the dangerous route to escape. I had no long-term plans, just put them in a world of zombies and see what happened. They headed for the airport. In a fight near a fueling station at the airport, Dan was killed and came back as a zombie. Things got hectic, the fuel ignited, and I don’t remember how many people survived.

I don’t know what it is about zombies, but I love the concept of them. It might be my fascination with post-apocalyptic stories or survival stories or dealing with a situation that seems so hopelessly beyond your ability to survive and somehow coming out alive. Whatever it is, I can’t seem to get enough of them. I wanted to talk about three treatments of zombies that I consider among the best out there.

First is the movie 28 Days Later. For me, this was the trigger to my really enjoying zombies. Before this they were just lame horror monsters, but this was the first movie I saw where I was really freaked out by the zombies in it. It was pretty much exactly what I look for now in a good zombie adaptation. Focus on a small group of survivors and the terror that they particularly go through. The zombies form a backdrop for the story and help propel the characters forward and through different scenes, but the focus is really on the characters. I still can’t listen to the soundtrack (In the House – In a Heartbeat) without my heart racing. It spawned a few follow ups, but none of them came close to the original.

Second is the comic Walking Dead which started being published in 2003 by Image comics, a year after 28 Days Later came out. I can see the similarities and style. While Walking Dead has more traditional zombies that shamble slowly, again, the focus is entirely on the characters and how they deal with an impossible survival situation. Often times, humans are far more dangerous to each other than the zombies themselves are. People die all the time and sometimes in very unexpected ways, and through it all, the characters keep struggling to survive.

Finally is the book World War Z by Max Brooks. I admit I never read the book myself, I only heard the abridged version on the books on tape. But even with that treatment, it was fantastic. It’s a book that takes the form of a documentary. The author is interviewing people from all over the world who survived the zombie apocalypse that ended just years ago. Each person recounts their own horror stories and how the world responded to such a bizarre situation. Humanity is stripped away and many people cringe still at the things they had to do to just survive. Some of the parts are not for the faint of heart.

If you are a fan of character-driven stories and zombies, all three of these are musts. Enjoy!

Urban Rivals Happenings

Laura's gone this weekend, so I'm left home as a bachelor. So what do bachelor's do? Well, in my world, they drink beer and play video games all night.

I got home and decided to hit some more Urban Rivals. I wanted to complete a few more missions, so I started out by hitting the first tournament that came up with my Elo Ulu Watu deck. I was doing fantastic, holding my own and keeping up around 30th-50th place after half the tournament. I had gone 7-1 with another tie in that span. Then came a game against a Skeelz deck. We had both split the first two rounds and were tied in life while I was one up in pillz. I took a conservative path with my character, but right before I hit "submit" with my move, I realized I could win it. I took a moment, made a few quick calculations, and then the screen flashed "TIME EXPIRED - YOU LOSE". I was shocked - I've never had that happen before, and I wasn't taking a long time. I learned later that when you're at the top of the pile, your time to make your moves drops significantly (I think from 20 seconds to 10 seconds). Instead of winning and gaining 20 points in the tournament, I forfeit the game and LOST 20 points. That put me way out of contention and I ended up in aroun 170th of 3,000.

Still, it was my fifth tournament that I ended up in the top 1/3 of, so I got a mission complete for that one. I also managed to spend a total of 250,000 clintz, reach level 25, win 15 games with at least two Freaks, and max level 250 characters. Not a bad haul for a single night.

My favorite part of the night, though, was probably when I put together my new Ulu Watu deck. I have an Elo version of the deck (restricted deck construction rules), but I wanted to make a solid power deck. Type 2 allows anything to go, so I put together one of those. Ulu Watu are high power characters, and have a bonus that gives them +2 POW. I wanted a deck that I could combine a lot of different ways to make a two-person kill. Here's the deck:



Buck - I just love the beer-belly dude. On a good day, he's a 9/7, and easily makes 1/2 of the kill punch. Besides, he's got a mission associated with him to do 300 damage, and I'm getting close to pulling that off with him. He's in my Elo deck too, and the number of matches he's done the final push for me makes him make the cut here. Plus, he's only 4 stars, so when he's facing all the 5 star people that litter Type 2, he has the tiebreaker.

Gaia - Probably my weakest character in the deck. She makes a 9/4 with a minor reduction in attack. Three stars is beneficial for the same reason four is good with Buck. If I had another high-pow character, it'd probably bump her out of the deck, but right now she's good filler.

Shayna - Weird fish-looking girl. Another four star character, and this one having the potential to hit 11/5 if she attacks. Not too shabby! She can anchor a lot of two-hit KO's, and is usually a strong start. Most people see 11 POW and don't want to bother to take it on. I can get a solid 5 damage out of one or two pillz, and if they want to stop it, it takes a lot more on their side to keep me away.

Stanly - The only common card in the deck, and my first five star. He's an 8/8, which means he can pound a lot of life out of my opponent, but he's also got the wonderful +12 attack if I won the round just before his. Usually I will win a round or two, so he's almost always got that bonus. He makes a great finisher or bluff card - people will almost always go all-out to stop him with his massive 8 damage.



Hikiyousan - Since he's five stars, he doesn't make the cut in my Elo deck, but man, he's a beast! With his ability and bonus going off, he's a 10/7 and nobody wants that coming their way.

Nanook - She's a solid 10/4 with no ability, and only three stars. Most times when she hits play, people underestimate her. With no ability and everyone else having pretty good ones, they look at her like she's not that great a card and don't play hard against her when she attacks. Often she'll slip through when people aren't expecting it, and the 4 damage puts my opponent in striking range of a lot of Fury-ed characters.

Tanaereva - He's why I decided to play a Type 2 deck. I picked up him yesterday and man is he worth it! A 10/7 damage reducer. That means he can go toe-to-toe with the big bads in my opponent's force and if they go all-out to win against him (which a lot of people do - he's a metal man with a bucket on his head!), they're still dropping by two damage. I use him as a bluff and a finisher in equal measures.

Wee Lee - Pretty much the same as Tanaereva, only a little weaker. He comes in at a 9/6, but is only four stars. It's funny to think of him as a wall, but that's kinda his role in the deck. If I manage to crack through my opponent, I'm halfway to winning. If I don't, I'm not taking as much damage. Win-win.


So there you have it, my new deck. It's only been out for five or six games, but won a fair margin of those. Still figuring out how to play in Type 2. It's a bit different than Type 1 and Elo with all the power cards on the table. I'm wondering if I should mix a Leader into the deck, but if so, not sure which one.

Strengths Finder 2.0

Having graduated from college with a degree in psychology and then joining the human resources field, I have taken my share of personality profiles. Sometimes they were taken to check my personal makeup, other times they were taken to see what my business profile would turn out like. Since I started taking the Myers Briggs some 20 years ago, I have not strayed far from my initial results: INTP. In the DISC profile, I came out solidly as a C. More recently, I have taken the Strengths Finder profile.

Unlike most personality tests, this one is keyed around specific areas of strength for your personality type rather than finding the type as a whole. I guess it's designed to be more applicable than theoretical. While every personality test will give you an idea of what you can do to better interact with the world, or ways that the world can better interface with you, the Strengths Finder one is specifically geared with that goal in mind.

After taking an online test, you will be given a series of five strengths for yourself. If you took it honestly, you should recognize yourself in those strengths. One of my coworkers just took a brief class on it and was suggesting that our group take it together. I had bought it for myself and Laura a couple years ago for Christmas and we took it together to see how we came out. In order from highest scored, the top five strengths that I came out as are:

Strategic
People strong in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues. “What if?” and “Then what?” are the definers of those with a strong Strategic theme. They generate numerous options, determine available resources, including people, time money and materials then implement the best choice.

Individualization
People strong in the Individualization theme are intrigued with the unique qualities of each person. They have a gift for figuring out how people who are different can work together productively. They are good observers and listeners, they pickup insights and information and the distinctive qualities that make people unique.

Ideation
People strong in the Ideation theme are fascinated by ideas. They are able to find connections between seemingly disparate phenomena. Innovative concepts, theories, and solutions are the essence of Ideation. People with strength in Ideation are quickly able to find the basic concepts of complex events.

Analytical
People strong in the Analytical theme search for reasons and causes. They have the ability to think about all the factors that might affect a situation. They demand proof. “Show me how what you are claiming is documented and true” is their mantra.

Relator
People who are strong in the Relator theme enjoy close relationships with others. They find deep satisfaction in working hard with friends to achieve a goal. Deep relationships are nurtured and close bonds are maintained.


There are four different categories of strengths with 34 total strengths among them. The categories are Impacting Themes (used to motivate others to action), Relating Themes (used to effectively create, develop and sustain relationships), Striving Themes (push self and others for results and get things done), and Thinking Themes (used to analyze, process and study data and information). Interestingly, my five strengths fell into only two of these categories: two Relating Themes (Individualization and Relator) and three Thinking Themes (Analytical, Ideation, and Strategic).

New Models for Malifaux

Over the weekend, I decided I should finish up basing all of my Malifaux models. I had three Silurids, the avatar form of Pandora, and the new Doppelganger that Dan had picked up for me (thanks Dan!). I wanted to try basing them from beginning to end myself instead of relying on Laura's (admittedly superior) green-stuff skills.

So I started with my Doppelganger. Unfortunately my camera didn't take a good picture of the model, so I don't have one to show. But I'll do my best to explain what I did and then get a picture for it later on down the road. I wanted the model, which looks like it's just shed its skin and is trying to reheal itself, to have a sheathe of skin somewhere around the base. I had bought a small pack of bits to add to bases and pulled up a perfect one - it's a small dead tree with an owl on top. The middle of the tree V's out so I took some greenstuff and made a really thin flat piece. I was going to try to cut it to look like it had some human-ish parts to it (arm, maybe a face), but it was too sticky and kept sticking to my knife. I'm going to have to rely on the painting job to get the point that it's skin across. Overall, I'm happy with the way it turned out. And Dan's offered to paint it for me, which is awesome because I really like the dark gritty look his guys are coming out with.



Next are the Silurids. I was really at a loss for what to do with them. I ended up just making interesting texture to the bases with green stuff and then adding random bits I had floating around to each one. So we have one with a turtle, one with an aligator's skull, and the last one with a small piller with several human heads stacked up on it.



Finally, the last one was the avatar version of Pandora. While I can't use her anytime soon (it sounds like Henchmen are going to be in the next book, which I assume means avatars will be in the one after), she's a pretty cool model. I wanted it to look like there was a massive magical energy that was lifting Pandora's box into the air and awakening the spirits within. I think I did pretty well at that.

Poison and Life

I decided to try to put together a deck from scratch for Urban Rivals and seek out the specific cards I wanted for it rather than see what I could build with the cards I already had. I knew I wanted to make an Elo deck (a specific tournament format that limits the card selection and the number of stars you can have in your deck to prevent decks of all power cards), and I wanted to try a new strategy. My other decks had revolved around increasing my power/attack, and enjoying the gimmick-ey magic users and their numerous abilities.

I wanted to do another duel-faction deck. Creating a mono deck was fun, but difficult and sometimes lacks the ability to react to an opponent's abilities. Additionally, I wanted to try a new strategy. Where normally I've been playing aggressively and trying to kill my enemy quickly, I wanted to create a more defensive-oriented deck.

The first faction I picked were the Freaks. Their bonus is that once they hit their enemy, they start doing 2 damage to them every turn until they're down to 3 life left. It doesn't stack, unfortunately, but it's a nice way to wrack up some extra damage if you hit them early.

So if my plan was to do damage early and bleed with poison, I needed a faction that would be able to help keep me alive. I wanted a deck I didn't currently play, so that counted out the Pussycats (with their -2 dmg bonus) or the Ulu Watu's (with their increase to POW and their decent spread of damage reducing cards). Instead I went with Junga, the animal-people. Their bonus gained me life every time I managed to win a combat. Not too bad. So while they're bleeding out, I'm gaining life and sprinting the other direction. There was my concept: 25 stars of 4 Junga and 4 Freaks.



Boris - He was one of the later additions from the Freaks for me. His stats are not great, but his ability can make up for that. Dropping an opponent by 4 POW to a minimum that's below Boris' POW is quite a boon. It means he can take on an 8 POW character with an advantage, and can face up to a 9 without missing a beat. His 4 damage is on the high end for Freaks too, so if I get him to strike early, he can amass up to 10 damage by the end of the game with Poison.

Hula - She's my safety net. There are plenty of characters and factions out there that eliminate Bonuses, so I pulled her in to combat them since her poison also doubles as her ability. Besides, she's a 7 POW character costing only 2 stars. That's a bargain.

Olga - The highest natural POW any character has in the game is 8, and she's got that at three stars making for a solid character. Also, her ability to drop my opponent's POW by 2 means she can challenge some fairly high POW characters out there without missing a beat.

Olga Noel - She came into the deck for similar reasons as her counterpart. She's three stars still, and while her POW is 2 lower, her ability bumps it up to a 9. I favored her over some other characters in Freaks because of her low star count.

The reason for the low stars in my Freaks deck was two-fold. First, in the event of a tie score during a fight, the tie goes to the lower star character. It doesn't happen often, but it happens often enough. Winning most ties means my poison will start that much earlier. Second, I like the idea of the Junga characters more, so I wanted to save more stars for their faction. So at the end of the Freaks, I had used up 11 of my 25 stars leaving me with 14 for my animals. That meant I might be able to squeeze in a five star character if I was careful.



Pegh - Moving into the Jungo, I knew I wanted to concentrate on defense, and I wanted to make sure I could get a big character into the mix. Pegh fit both roles very well. He was two stars, so he gave me 12 stars left for three character. His ability reduced damage coming at me, giving more time for poison to work, and his POW was high enough that he could threaten to win a fight. While he'd only do one damage to my opponent, he'd gain me two life in the balance and let me stay alive long enough for poison to work.

Scopica - What's not to like about this character? He's only three stars, has 8 POW, and the potential to gain me 4 life if he hits. Regardless of whether someone can stop my ability or my bonus, he'll still gain me some life, and buys me that much more time for poison.

Niva - Having only taken 5 stars for my first two Junga, I had 9 left which meant I could hit the higher-level characters for some really good ones. For my four star character, I chose Niva. Her ability helped control my opponents' damage again, and doing four damage while gaining two life meant that I was potentially throwing a 6 life swing here. Eight POW is gravy.

Ongh - So with five stars left, I took a look over the high level Jungo and found King Kong. A threat on so many levels. With his six damage and life gain, he can cause an 8 life swing. He reduces high POW characters to 6, and he's hefting around a solid 8 POW to boot. Plus, he just looks intimidating.

So there's my deck. I've played it a bit and done pretty well with it. It took me through the first Elo tournament that I played through from start to finish and left me in around 400th place of 30,000, enough to crack the top 1/3 easily. I made it all the way up to a score of 1093 before tumbling a bit at the end of the tournament and ending up back down around the 1050 level.

Overall, a fun deck. I enjoyed putting one together based on what I wanted to build rather than what I had in front of me. I'm already designing a new one, but I'll need to figure out what cards I need to sell to get the points to buy the cards I'll need. Maybe my Rescues. I leveled them up and played them a bit, but they left me fairly unsatisfied.

Never Too Early For Football

With the 2010 schedule coming out on Tuesday and the draft starting tonight, it's getting a bit more exciting waiting for football to start up again (though with all the movement in the off-season this year, it's hard not to consider the possibilities for Washington).

I took a quick gander at the schedule for the Redskins this year.

Wk 1 - Dallas
Wk 2 - Houston
Wk 3 - at St. Louis
Wk 4 - at Philadelphia
Wk 5 - Green Bay
Wk 6 - Indianapolis
Wk 7 - at Chicago
Wk 8 - at Detroit
Wk 9 - BYE
Wk 10 - Philadelphia (MNF)
Wk 11 - at Tennessee
Wk 12 - Minnesota
Wk 13 - at NY Giants
Wk 14 - Tampa Bay
Wk 15 - at Dallas
Wk 16 - at Jacksonville
Wk 17 - NY Giants

Looking over the schedule, we have seven games against playoff teams from last season (Eagles twice, Cowboys twice, Vikings, Packers and Colts). I'd expect we can beat the Eagles and Cowboys once each, but that's already five losses wracked up against us. We did pull the Rams, Lions, Bucs and Bears, so I'll count those as wins giving us 6-5 with the Texans, Titans, Jags and Giants twice. I'd expect we can take the Jags and either the Texans or the Titans. The Giants always seem to have our number, so I'd mark both of them up as losses and come up with an 8-8 season. Compared with a 4-12 last season, that's a nice improvement.

Of course, the draft could change all this, so take it with a grain of salt.

Vacuum Packed Meat

Last night Laura and I went by my mother's place to watch LOST as we're want to do. (Great episode last night - finally started drawing things to a conclusion... but so much more to learn!).

But I'm not here to talk about LOST. Before we settled in to watch, Laura and I went by my parents' neighbor's place. She makes her own sausages and we went by to pick up some fresh-made ones for Brian's upcoming birthday party. While we were there, she invited us in to take a look at her whole kitchen area.

Since they bought the house behind my parents', I've been wanting to head over and see what they added. They put an addition off the back that my mother described as a massive kitchen where she does all her cooking. Intrigued, Laura and I went in to see what it was all about.

She has tons of refrigerators lining the walls, each one filled with either meat to be prepared or packages of sausages ready to go. We picked out a few of her special recipes (a mild one and a moderately-spicy one) and then she started talking to us about other things she was starting to work with. And here's where I saw the coolest thing...

She's starting to package pre-marinaded flank steaks. I was kinda interested - I always like a good marinade and while flank steaks aren't the best, they're not expensive either. Then she showed me how she sets up the marinade.

There's a large metal drum, probably 5 gallons or so, into which she puts the steak and the marinade and seals it up. At the top is a valve. She affixes a hose and sucks all the air out of the drum. Evidently the meat expands when it's in a vacuum, so the marinade is able to permeate inside the meat. She then takes the drum and puts it on a couple of rollers that slowly spin the drum for about 20 minutes. Once that's done, she reintroduces air, the meat compresses, and the flavor's locked in. My mother swears by these things, evidently.

So Laura and I got three steaks, one of each of the flavors she makes. Tonight we'll be trying the lemon steak - my mom's favorite.

Too Much of a Good Thing

Can you imagine two of this guy?

I was having a conversation with Dan about how much I'd like to be able to clone myself so I could do two different things at once. Ignoring the whole illegality of the plan, I started to wonder what would happen if I did.

If I had two different activities I wanted to achieve at the same time, how would I determine which one of me would do which one? Clearly there's an option I would want to do more than the other, but that means my clone would also want to do the same option more. Not just an abstract "more", but equally "more". He'd also be equally as unwilling to do the second option, would have the same breaking point, and the same stubborn level. So how would we determine who does what? Presumably we'd both say at the same time that we want to do the action that we'd rather do, so we couldn't figure it out that way. And all the thoughts I had before we were cloned, he'd also have had, so he'd know my plan to speak up first.

And it's not like I can spend all my time before being cloned thinking about wanting to do the less desirable thing so that when we're cloned, I can pick the more desirable thing, because my clone would already be doing the same thing.

Hmm... maybe cloning me isn't such a great idea after all...

Isvekata!

Last night Laura and I were flipping through channels and happened upon a show called 'Three Sheets' on the Fine Living network. The show follows a guy as he travels from country to country and learns about the various forms of alcohol they have there, and their customs. We're kinda interested when we hear his next destination: Lithuania! The home-country of the Kelmelis clan! So of course we had to watch.

It was pretty fun - they have a liquor called 999 (three nines) that blends 27 different ingredients together to create a strong blend of vodka. For centuries, it was also used as a medicine to cure stomach ailments.

Later he visited a spot where they make a 50 proof mead and the guy who owns the place accepts regular arm-wrestling challenges from his patrons. He even has a full padded table set up where he'll fight person after person. Evidently he's the strongest man in town and has yet to loose a match. I should buff up and head out there... show him a thing or two.

But the most bizarre stop came when he started looking for the strongest mead in the country. He found it at another bar. I wish I could remember the name of it, but it's a 150 proof mead. He found a local band to drink it with and he was down before the band even seemed to notice. I guess they build up a tolerance for it or something.

He also took a tour through some of the religious aspects. Formerly being a pagan country, Lithuania had several different gods and goddesses people could pray to about beer, wine and liquor. They even had a stone out in the middle of the city that was dedicated to one of them. People head over there to drink and pour out some to the god for good luck and fortune.

News Flash: Unscrupulous Characters on the Internet

I've been playing this game, Urban Rivals, for about a week now and have been having a blast with it. Takes about five minutes to run through a match and there's no shortage of players out there.

So I was working on a new faction and happened to get a second of one of the most powerful characters in that deck. Unfortunately, you can have only one of each character, so I took some time to level him up to the max to make him a little more valuable and put him up for sale on the auctions. It didn't take too long, and it was no real effort on my part. The game has a training room where you can go to just grind through a few matches to get your characters to higher levels. So within a half hour or so, he was maxed out and I put him up for sale.

Not too long later, I had a message in my box offering a trade. He posted up one of the really good characters for another faction I like, and I thought, hey, why not. So I wrote back and said "sure" and pulled my card off the auction. Then, with a lapse of judgment, I asked him what to do to effect a trade. Privately sell it for the minimum amount, he said, so feeling a little unsure, I did anyway. Of course we know what happens next. He buys the 13,000 card for 50 and then doesn't sell me the other one in exchange. Instead, he blacklists me so I can't send him messages or see him any more.

It was my stupidity that let him get away with it, so I wasn't really that mad. In the end, he cheated me out of an imaginary card. I had a second copy of it, so it's not like I lost anything, and in perfect karma, later that day, I opened a pack and got the guy he was supposed to trade to me. Not too shabby! Still, it was disappointing to have someone be a jerk like that.

Note to self: don't trade in the game. And if you're going to, make sure they send you the card first.

Avengers Assemble!

Evidently the director of the new Avengers movie has been selected and it is none other than our very own Joss Whedon. Hopefully it will be more of the Dollhouse/Serenity/Firefly/Angel/Buffy TV show Joss Whedon rather than the Alien Resurrection/Buffy movie Joss Whedon. Time will tell, but this news makes this particular Marvel fan happy.

The Godfather, Part Two

Over the past weekend, Laura and I took a trip up to New York to see Peyton Zusmer's baptism, and I became her godfather. She spent the entire weekend doing what she does best: being cute and spitting up over everything. Congratulations, Peyton!

Her brother, Cormac, was quite amusing too. He's learned how to say "hi" and thinks it's the greatest thing in the world. Whenever he spots someone, he'll say "hi". If the person doesn't respond, he'll start saying it louder and louder until they say "hi" back. Then, satisfied, he'll move on to the next person he spots. If no one else is around, he'll go back to the first again.

German Railroads Are Fun!

For Christmas, Joe sent Laura and me a copy of Ticket to Ride (the German map) since he was absolutely floored that neither of us had played it before. Over this past weekend, I decided to bring it up to Josh's house and we got our first game in. Overall, a very fun game, and remarkably simple rules-wise. Since most of our games tend to be of the Fantasy Flight variety, we are used to 24-36 page rulebooks. Learning how to play Arkham Asylum was a several-hour process, let alone getting the game started. But the rules for Ticket to Ride clocked in at just six pages. Even in my infirm, exhausted state, I was still able to figure out how the game worked.

The game is a points-based game like most of Days of Wonder's games. You gain points by building railroads, by completing continuous railways between two cities on the map, and by sending your three passengers along the railways, picking up points from each city they visit. When one person is almost out of rail pieces, everyone gets one more turn and then the game ends.

Every turn, you have one of four different things you can do. You can draw up to two cards from the deck, you can build a railway if you have the right cards for it, you can draw new destination cards (which are how you figure out what two cities you want to connect), or you can move your passengers down the line.

Drawing cards is simple: draw one card from the five face-up or draw one from the top of the deck. If you draw a face up locomotive (wild card), you cannot draw another one. Otherwise, you draw a second card. There will always be five face up cards.

The cards are important because they are how you build railways. Each railway on the board is a certain color. You need the same color and quantity of cards as the links in the railway. Simply discard the set of cards and build the railway.

Destination cards are a risk. At the end of the game, if you have a continuous line between the two cities on the card, you gain points for them. If you don't, you lose the number of points on the card.

Moving passengers is a part of the game that was added for this version. Everyone has three passenger tokens and anytime you build a railway, you can put one on one of the now-connected cities. During your turn, you can opt to move one or more of your passengers down your line, stopping at each city to collect points tokens. Also, there are cards in the deck that allow you to discard them to use an opponent's railway for one link, gaining that many more points.

That's pretty much all there is to it. Keep playing until one player has only 0-2 rail tokens left (you start with 45, I think), and then everyone gets one more turn before the game ends. We were able to polish off the game in an hour and a half or so, and Laura ended up winning by about 10 points. Close game, and a lot of fun. We'll have to pull it out again.

War Without End

Dan and I played another game of FSA yesterday. We were both off from work, so we got an early start on it. Rolling randomly, he was the attacker and he went after Tarnag again. We rolled up a battle, and then randomly got the War Without End mission. We decided on 1000 points and went forward from there. My secondary objective just gave me an additional 100 points, but gave me no benefit if I won the mission, so with my 10% discount for not controlling the system he attacked, we both ended up back at 1000 points.

The mission was that each of us could put our ships within 16" of our back edge. Then, as ships and squadrons were destroyed, they could replenish the field on the following turn, provided we had the ships available on our register.

Dan hit the table with his Sorylians, using a battleship, two groups of four cruisers, and four groups of four frigates. I came in with two battleships and five escorts, two groups of three cruisers, and three groups of three frigates.



Dan deployed first, putting his ships as close to the 16" deployment line as possible, trying to take my long ranged guns out of the game as fast as he could. Seeing his strategy, I deployed as far back as possible.

From the first movement, he crashed the my front lines, closing into Band 2 as fast as he could. On the right flank, I pushed forward with both groups of cruisers against his cruisers and battleship. A lucky shot from one of my cruisers rolled a critical, and then double-ones on one of his cruisers, destroying a second, already wounded one, and damaging the rest of his squadrons there.



His retaliation was swift, though. Two groups of frigates came around the side and blew up one of my cruisers and started closing in on another. Soon thereafter, they tried to board my cruiser. The fighting was fierce and when all was done, the two groups had fought each other to a stalemate. The ship was left listing with no crew, but no assaulters were left to take it.



On the other side of the field, my two battleships, escorts, and frigates were facing off against a few groups of frigates and a group of cruisers waiting for an opportunity to launch an assault. His frigates came in and did damage to my battleships, but their effectiveness was soon cut down by my escorts.



By the end of the first turn, the battle was in absolute chaos. Our lines had met and ships were being removed wholesale.



The battle stretched on with Dan gaining the upper hand early, destroying nearly twice as many full squadrons as I was able to do of his. His battleship was damaged and couldn't turn, but another of mine had already taken six points of damage. As I destroyed the last of one of his groups of cruisers, he came on the table with another one, charging straght towards one of my battleships.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the table, my cruisers pulled alongside his battleship and attempted to board him. He had already launched his assault boats to try to take down another ship, but had failed. Two turns of fighting and I captured the Sorylin battleship!



Not to be outdone, his cruisers attempted to board my battleship. After shooting down a bunch of his pods with my point defense and having the advantage over his attackers, I felt confident. I killed five of his assaulters, but he managed to score a hit on every die he rolled, slaughtering the entire Dindrenzi crew.



Both captured battleships shunted off the table the next turn, as did my second battleship which had taken 6 of its 10 damage, only managing to heal one of it from a repair card.

The battle wound into its final phases. My reinforcements in came in the form of two battleships, three cruisers and three frigates while he brought in four frigates and four cruisers. I took the opportunity to even up the kill points a little, destroying the last pieces of several squadrons. The battleships rolled through and blasted several Sorylian ships trying to turn away from the field to give worse shots.



In the end, between the two fleets, there were 39 destroyed frigates, 21 destroyed cruisers, 2 lost escorts and 2 lost battleships. I had destroyed more ships of Dan's, but he had destroyed more full squadrons of mine. In the end, what pushed him into the victory was the battleship I had shunted away. A massively bloody battle which left both of our fleets wrecked. We both opted for reinforcements with all of our appeals and made them all, building back up 600 points for both of us. That left us each with a net loss of about 400 points for the battle.

Josh Wastes More of My Time

When I was up in New York this weekend, Josh took some time to show me Urban Rivals, an internet-based card game. You join for free getting options for one of three different group types: the attack people (who are military and police folk), the cool people (who are beach bums and DJs), and the evil people (who are nightmares and monsters, I guess). I tried out the cool folks.



The idea is that you get a set of characters to build a deck of at least 8 people with. During a game, you'll randomly be dealt four of your people and your opponent will randomly be dealt four of his. Then you go back and forth for four rounds choosing someone to attack with and then choosing someone to defend against his person with.

Each person has a Power and a Damage score (so the weird-looking woman who's slightly forward on the lower group has 5 Power and 6 Damage). When he chooses someone to defend with, we have a fight. If my total Attack (my Power times multipliers plus any bonuses) is greater than his, I do my damage (plus bonuses) to his life total. If he beat me, he does his damage to me. Each person has 12 life. The game goes to KO or to the end of round four. If nobody won by round 4, the person who has the most life left wins.

The most important twist to the game is the Pillz (or some other weird spelling of it). Each person starts with 12 of them too. When you attack or defend with a character, you can devote a number of pillz to the character too. Each one is a multiplier to the person's power. So if I sent that woman forward with three pillz, she would have 20 Attack (5 to begin with, plus 3 more pillz times 5 makes 20). If my opponent blocked with the guy who has the 6 Power and 6 Damage and only added two more pillz, he'd lose, 18 to 20, and I'd do damage to him.

Finally, the last piece to consider in game are the abilities and bonuses. Each faction (denoted by the blue waves or yellow t-shirts in the lower left corner of my cards) has a bonus that stretches across everyone in that faction so long as at least two characters from that group are in play on your side. So for my t-shirt guys, they each gain +8 Attack, and my blue wave guys each gain +2 Power. The abilities are similar to the bonuses, except they're always active, regardless of how many characters from your faction they have.

The games go fast (about 5 minutes or so) and you can start to wrack up experience for your characters. Some characters get better the more you play them, boosting their power, damage, or unlocking abilities. At the end of each game, you tally up points for different missions you're on. You'll usually have dozens going at once. They can be "Do 400 damage" and "Win 25 games" and "Win 15 games with two people from X faction," etc. As you complete these missions, you'll gain new characters or points to use to buy characters for your faction from the auctions.

There's a way to spend real money on the game too to get more characters, but it seems like a waste to me when you can do a lot for free.

Overall, a very addictive game. It's fast so you can get a lot of them in, and the combination of math and bluffing suits me well. Give it a try!

Just Because You're Undead Doesn't Mean You Can't Be Socially Conscious

I was over on CNN and found this article about a charity walk done by the living dead. Way to take part in the society that feeds you!

Reminds me of the time Laura and I happened to find a ninja marathon when we were on vacation. If only we'd brought our garb.

I Wonder How Much All That Cost

So yesterday in an HR meeting, our HR VP confirmed something to us that we had long heard rumors about: the headquarters for our particular group is moving from Reston to Tyson's (again). Which means that the head of our sector is moving back to Tyson's. Which means my group is moving back to Tyson's. After I got over my initial disappointment (I've moved on to my mid-range disappointment now), I started to figure out just how many times my Company has moved me, and compared it to my other two companies before this one.

State Department Federal Credit Union (15 months) - They brought me in out in Old Town Alexandria and kept me there for the entire time. Never once moved.

Quest Diagnostics (2 1/2 years) - They brought me in over in Chantilly and kept me there for the multi-year stretch.

Northrop Grumman (4 years and counting) - Here's where it starts to get insane...

I started in Dunn Loring where I remained for about two months. Before too long, I was moved from there to a building out in Merrifield. I had a nice long stretch there (about half a year) until I was moved from Merrifield to Herndon. We had a month there before we crossed the beltway and went to Tyson's. I got to enjoy the long, grueling commute for almost a year before I was moved out to Chantilly. By then I had my new house, so the commute was actually pretty nice. I must have stayed there for about a year and a half before people realized they had not moved me in a while, so they moved us to Reston earlier last year. I've been here for about a year and sometime this year, we're moving back out to Tyson's. So in a little over four years (by the time we move), I'll have been in seven locations.

The argument for all this movement is it makes business sense and it will help cut costs. But I can't figure out how we're cutting costs if we have to keep paying to move people.

Second Group of Fighters

None of them are painted yet, but last night I put together the second batch of six fighters. These ones have a distinctly Aquan look to them (thought backwards).



The box I had came with an extra two fighters, but no flight stands for them. So I'll have to find something else to mount them on. It should look pretty cool when a bunch of actual fighter models are swarming the table too.

And Another Piece of My Childhood is Destroyed Forever

This.

I don't even know what to say.

Fighters Fight

Yesterday after work I stopped by the Game Parlor to pick up a few things. It's been a couple of weeks since I made the trip, so I had a bit on my list: No Quarter, small square bases to start working on mine counters or fighter counters, and check out their small fighters to see whether there were any I liked that were relatively cheap. I managed to grab all of those things, plus a few bayou-themed pieces for my Malifaux models and a Warhammer 40k scenario book that I intend to farm for ideas for new Firestorm Armada missions. So far, after looking at only a couple of them, I already have ideas for new stuff to toss out.

When I got home from the store, I decided to try to put together the first box of six fighters. The bases were all wrong for the FSA system, so I knew I'd have to be a little creative with how I was going to assemble them. Overall, not too bad, I don't think. They're short enough that they can still sit on the bases of their "parent ship" without hitting them, and they look far cooler flying around the table than the counters do. Just have to figure out how to get more of the same kind of fighters, I guess. Throw on a little paint and they'll look awesome!

Aquans First Flight

For Brian's birthday, Ryan, Jay, Dan and I got him a bunch of painted Aquan ships, some painted terrain, a piece of cloth to cover the table, and the cards for FSA. Last night Brian and I got in the first game where he played his ships. We decided for a small game - 550 points - so he could play his entire fleet. Since I was attacking and chose a location he wasn't owning, we had to increase the point level by 50 to let him take his full fleet.

I had my basic box (battleship, three cruisers, six frigates) with three escorts and an Interceptor helping along. He had the basic box configuration.

We rolled up a Cruiser Clash. It's a basic fight with the added mix of escape pods being launched from medium and large ships as they're blown up, and of capturing them granting extra victory points. The map was set up with two small planets, a large asteroid field, and a meteor passing along the map between the asteroid field and the orange planet. Any ship it collided with was destroyed.




He started off by moving most of his ships into the cover in the middle of the map while the oncoming meteor forced my ships to move up past the half-way line or risk being destroyed. A very solid strategy on his part.



Unfortunately, some days dice are with you and some days they're not. His shots bounced ineffectively off my ships while I was able to come through and destroy things I had no right to hit. My frigates on one flank took some shots at his, destroying one, and then decided to throw their four dice into an asteroid field-protected Cruiser. Not only did they hit, they scored a critical hit, catching the ship on fire.



On the opposite side, my battleship, escorts and second squad of Frigates joined around the blue planet and prepared to make a strike against his battleship before it reached the safety of the asteroid field. Awesome dice rolls on my part scored a double-crit with my battleship which took out his engines, and my escorts finished off the group of frigates he had protecting that flank.




Unfortunately, this is where my camera ran out of batteries, so I don't have any more of the mission in film. The frigates that were with me on that flank came around and shot at Brian's battleship again, also scoring another critical hit, putting his damage to 6 on the ship. He shunted it, not wanting to lose the ship, and I brought my battleship around to finish off his burning cruiser. At this point, I had lost a single frigate and he had lost his battleship, a cruiser, and four frigates. We called it there.

With repairs, most of the destroyed ships were brought back. Neither of our fleets were hit too hard by the raid, so we both decided to try for something other than reinforcements. Brian went for a refit on his ship and got Improved Astrogation Charts on his battleship, which allows it to shunt immediately after being given the order. I went for a Special Tactics card and rolled the necessary 5+, and picked Targeting Sensors. Soon my battleship will be blasting through planets and asteroid fields! Huzzah!

Rome and Tudors

Laura and I just finished watching Rome a few weeks back, and after a brief stint watching the first season of Terminator, we're now moving on to the first season of the Tudors. Since both Rome and the Tudors are sexed-up versions of historical time periods (the Julius and Octavian civil wars for Rome, and the Henry VIII story for the Tudors), I figured I'd take a minute to compare the two.



In Rome, you have two likable characters in Titus Pollo and Lucius Veronis. They both have their faults (Titus is a bit violent and Lucius is a bit stubborn) but they make likable characters. Throw into the mix Marc Antony, Octavian, Julius, Attia, etc. and you have a whole mix of characters, each of which feels like there's a depth to them and they're moving around in a rich world.

On the other hand, the Tudors has suffered from a simple problem: there's nobody to like in the world. The main character, Henry VIII, is pretty much a tool from the beginning. Not surprising considering the things he did in history, but it makes it hard to root for him. Then he's got his friends who are all spoiled, entitled brats who push their position around to get what they want. There are a lot of advisers on his staff, none of which really seem to have much going on with them. There are really only two characters I like: the cardinal, because he's the one who is the most evil and actually seems to know how to politically manipulate situations (everyone else just bumbles around having sex a lot), and some philosopher guy whose name I can't remember, because he's the only good guy in the cast. Unfortunately, the philosopher spends the entire time making suggestions that promote goodness in the world and then getting shot down by everyone else.

Oh, I guess I like Anne Boleyn too, but that's just because she's cute to look at (she'd be the one in the picture above).

I'm only four or five episodes in to Tudors, but so far I haven't seen the same depth to it that Rome had. The costumes and sets are equally impressive, but take down all that dressing and Tudors has a bunch of disgusting people doing nothing. Rome at least had two "everyman" kind of characters we could identify with.

I'll finish out this season of Tudors. I'm hoping it improves a bit before the end. Knowing history a bit means I know where the story will be heading (get it? be heading... beheading? HA!) - it's just a matter of whether they can tell it compellingly.

When Gaming Takes Over

So I'm heading in to work this morning and I come to a two-way stop sign with the cross street having the through traffic. Across from me is a school bus that has the right of way, having reached the stop sign well before I did.

This particular intersection can be annoying in rush hour. Sometimes it takes a while for traffic to ease to the point where you can cross. So a few seconds after I reach the intersection, it clears, and I see that if the bus goes, I can then go after it and have plenty of time to go on. Only the bus isn't moving at all. And I think to myself, "What are you waiting for? You have the initiative!"

The funny part is I know I meant to say, "It's your turn to go," but somehow my brain translated it to gaming terms.

It's not the first time something like that has happened either. When I was watching Fellowship of the Ring the first time, I remember when they were fighting the cave troll and thinking, "The GM clearly set the challenge rating of this fight too high." Which, in an abstract sense, I guess works, but the fact that I would even consider the larger gaming perspective just baffles me.

Another time in college, a friend and I were trying to decide where to go eat for dinner. We had two choices and couldn't decide. So what did we do? We took out an eight-sided die and rolled it to figure out: odds, one place, evens another. Oh, maybe I should mention we were in a crowded mall and decided to cast the die down one of the side paths and took off after it to figure out what our planed eatery was.

What about you guys? Ever have moments where gaming takes over your life for a moment?

Dindrenzi Fail at Raid

Last night Dan and I got in our first game in the new campaign. We didn't have a lot of time to play, so we agreed on playing a raid from the onset - the smaller of the two game types. Rolling up our mission, we had an ambush where I was coming in with a force half as large as his and trying to do more damage to him than he did to me. With all the rules tallied in, he had 500 points (two groups of three Cruisers, two groups of three Frigates and four wings) and I had 225 points (a group of two Cruisers, two groups of two Frigates and a wing). Early on, I pulled in reinforcement wings so I had four Interceptors running around trying to keep my ships alive.

The mission was this: his ships were coming through and my fleet, smaller, ambushed him. I had to do more damage to him than he did to me. I had less resources, but all I had to do was kill as much of his stuff as I had and it would be pretty good. Also, he set up first facing a single direction.



Meanwhile, my ships hit the table from any single table edge and I got the first turn. He outgunned me more than two-to-one, so I had to make my surprise action and my better positioning count. I stuck two of my squadrons behind an asteroid field to give them a little protection from counterattack while the first squadron I was going to activate took prime position.



A pair of Frigates moved out and took shots on two of his frigates, destroying one and damaging the other. I was hoping for two destroyed frigates, but it was still not bad for an opening. As long as I was able to capitalize on each of the turns like that, I should be okay.



Unfortunately, that's about as good as I did the whole game. I moved out another pair of frigates and failed to kill a single enemy ship. My cruisers came around and did manage to destroy one of his cruisers (his ships had just come through a meteor swarm on the way in and two of his cruisers were already crippled), but his fleet was fast and maneuverable and managed to swing back into position by the end of turn one. By that point, I had destroyed one of his six frigates and one of his six cruisers while he had destroyed two of my four frigates.



Now outgunned five-to-two and with Dan having twice as many activations in a turn as me, I was really hurting. By the end of turn two, he had destroyed my last two frigates and was starting to put some damage into my two cruisers.



A quick calculation on my part and I realized I would have to finish off two more cruisers and a frigate before I lost my crippled cruiser and fully fixed cruiser. The obstacle was a bit too high. I shunted my ships in the end and Dan let them go.

Conversation afterwords revolved around trying to figure out how best to change the mission to make it more competitive. Evidently Dan and Jay had played this mission before, but they had misread the mission and used even points on both sides and it made for a pretty good match. Rather than making it a straight-up fight, Dan and I came up with a few other ideas. Give the ambushing force 2/3 the points of the defenders, and have the ambush be on a fleet that is leaving a different battle, so they're all slightly damaged. The defending force would start the game with d3+3 damage tokens spread out among their fleet for every 500 points (or part thereof), just to keep the mission a little more unique in flavor.

Anywho, I still managed to get a couple of renown points out of the mission, even beat down as hard as I was. Both Dan and I rolled up reinforcements and our fleets are bigger now than they were when we started the mission. Not too shabby.

Flashback to the 90s

I was up at my brother's place a few weeks back and he was showing me the New Super Mario Brothers Wii game. I have to say, it was finally a game that made me want to go out and get it for the Wii. I have a lot of memories of hanging out in my room with my brother playing the Super Nintendo and Super Mario Brothers 3 with a pizza set out between us. It was always annoying when he was so drastically better than me, so he'd run through and complete four maps before he'd die, and then I'd come in and get killed in the next five minutes. The new version allows side-by-side playing so we can both run on the same map.

Of course, it also allows fun things like grabbing another player and throwing them in a pit. They come back immediately in a little bubble and have to get tagged by another player to be brought back into the game, so it's not like you're out forever if you die.

Probably the most fun I had with Eric was when he started hunting my guy. He'd grab me and throw me in pits. Finally, I figured out how to do the same to him and my response was to chuck him in a pit and then run as fast as I could to get away from his bubble so he couldn't come back in the game. We had one particular level with a roller coaster. I'd kill him, jump on the roller coaster and try to dodge his bubble while heading through a massive lava-filled roller coaster track. Of course I never made it to the end alive, but man, it was fun!

Dindrenzi Fleet Breakdown

What with the new campaign starting up for Firestorm Armada, I've been getting excited about the game again. Escorts hit the streets, the images for the new Heavy Cruisers were posted, etc. I've painted up some of my terrain and Laura's painted up all my Dindrenzi ships and a couple of my civilian ships. All in all, a good time to play FSA.

I figured I'd talk a little about what I thought of each of the different ship types. I've had probably a dozen or so games under my belt now and feel like I'm getting a handle on them better. There are some new tactics I'd like to try out, so all of this is subject to change in the future, but here are my thoughts currently:

We'll start with the Conqueror Class Battleship, the biggest ship on the line so far. This ship boasts a massive 16AD Rail Gun, the best attack dice in the game from a single ship at the moment, and the flexible Gun Racks that allow me to shoot either starboard or port each turn. While it lacks the flexibility of, say, the Aquan battleship, it makes up for it by pricing in at the cheapest ship of its type while still being among the hardest to destroy (best CR and HP) and the hardest hitting with its Rail Gun. It runs into problems in that its main gun is fore fixed only, and it's a little on the low side of crew and assault points making it more vulnerable to boarding actions than most, but between its massive gun and its solid torpedoes, it can pick a target and wreck it pretty solidly. I've had games where a pair of them moved together to blast in 4-6 points in opposing battleships in a single round of firing. However many of these things I can pick up based on points, I'll have.

I feel like where I lose some ground is with the Fury Class Cruisers. They've got a decent gun, but they cap out at three ships per squadron and are outclassed by both the Sorylian Cruisers (due to their better guns and two of them) and the Terran Cruisers (due to their shields and equally solid guns). Even with their disadvantages, though, they'll still make it into almost every fleet I run based solely on the fact that, ignoring everything else, cruisers are the best class of ship in the game. They move fast enough and turn fast enough that my fore fixed rail guns are never a liability, and they combine for enough dice to really hurt any enemy ship. They carry over the high CR of my battleship, so they're not as quick to drop as other ships. Also, starting in band 3 and into band 4, my cruisers have the best firepower. They may not clock in high in band 2, but they'll do a lot before you close in.

Wrapping up the main ships is my Hammer Class Frigate. I'll start with the bad: they cost 5 more points than most frigates, and they're the only faction that can't get more than 3 in a squadron. Okay, that's the bad. Now for the awesome: they have AP 5 main guns with AP 4 secondary guns, they have 2 PD, and they have a CR of 6 instead of 5. That last part means where most frigates get blown up in a single shot, mine are usually taking a point of damage instead. I may have sub par cruisers and a middle-ranged battleship, but I have the best frigates in the main factions, easily.

Okay, on to the second set of ships. The Claymore Class Carrier. Sucks. First, the ship design itself doesn't look all that great. If you take a close look at the back of the ship, you'll see that all the engines are on those top two decks of the ship. The bottom deck, which is more than half of the ship, has no engines. So if I press the engines without any compensation, I'll just be spinning around end-over-end. I'm sure there are some minor compensators spread out among the rest of the ship to allow it to avoid this fatal flaw in the design, but they must not be very powerful because the ship can't move very fast - 5" a turn. That may not seem bad until you realize that due to the fact the ship is large, it must move 2" before taking the 1" turn. So it can turn only 45 degrees each turn. Like the rest of the ships, I have fore fixed guns. But with a single turn, they're easy to avoid. Add to that the guns aren't very good in the first place. The only reason to take this ship is as a holder for six wings of fighters, which you have to buy in addition. 100 points is the cheapest carrier, but still far too expensive for a floating piece of scrap.

My Buckler Class Gun Escort, on the other hand, is another awesome ship, carrying on my tradition of having the best small ships in the game. It's the only escort currently out with guns on it, and the guns aren't bad. Hitting up 4 dice at the port and starboard sides, it can actually do a number against trailing frigates. Also, their PD adds in to help block against those annoying assault runs, shoring up some of my big issues with the Dindrenzi battleship. Finally, they're on the cheap side of the escorts as they don't focus on PD or Mines. All in all, a solid choice. I've only used them once, so I'll have to try some more, but so far I like them.

Finally, my heavy cruisers. Alright, I admit that I have no idea what they do yet, but man, they look awesome. I just had to get a picture of them in my blog again. Compare them to the regular cruiser above. I think these guys are going to come out with very strong port and starboard guns, maybe even hitting as high as 9 AD. Mix one of these into a squadron of regular cruisers and they're going to be pretty harsh.

So those are the ships of the Dindrenzi fleet. Hoping to get a quick game in tonight, but we'll see how that rolls.

McNabb Comes to Town

I am more optimistic about the Redskins than I have been in years, and that's probably not a good thing. They have a tendency to let me down. They were getting ready to do it this year with the draft - all the calls were for them to use their 1st round pick (4th overall) to grab a new quarterback. It was insanity! Grabbing a new QB was just going to leave us with the massive hole in the offensive line we've dealt with for years.

But now, McNabb is coming to Washington. Which, I have to admit, I still don't understand. I'm happy about it, but I don't understand what Philly was thinking. Sending him to a rival team in the same division? That just doesn't make sense to me. Unless the offers from other teams were significantly lower, how did McNabb end up traded to Washington?

Doesn't matter. Now that we've got a QB lined up (and for a fair price too, I think), that frees our first round draft pick back up. And since we got ourselves a solid QB, we'll want to protect him, and that means draft a frickin' o-lineman! Finally!

Quick question if anyone knows - I know McNabb has only one year left on his contract and there's been some concern that we may only have him a year. Can we franchise tag him next year to keep him around? If so, what does that mean for us?