Home Stretch

Tonight kicks off the first of the final four episodes of LOST. I'll be a little vague with details because I know a lot of readers of my blog don't watch LOST and I don't want to spoil them too much. If you're one of those readers, I suggest you stop reading now. There are a lot of mysteries to LOST and I don't want you to have any revealed this way.

So we're to the people who are watching the show now? Good.

As I said, we're coming down to the last four episodes. I have a lot of thoughts about how the season is going so far, but rather than focusing on that right now, I thought it might be fun to look back at some of the other seasons and put them in order as far as how much I enjoyed them.

Season Five - This is one of my favorite seasons of any television show out there. Starting out strong with the time flashes and side-effects of moving the Island before things are finally steadied and Locke finds himself on a journey back home. Meanwhile, the Oceanic Six are dealing with their return while Ben tries to get them all back together to head back. The acting by Ben, Sawyer and Locke were all top-notch. There was finally some measure of peace for some of the best characters in the show (before Kate shows up and screws it all up again... who likes her anyway?) and... Faraday's story, LeFlur, Ben and Locke... this season was non-stop awesome straight through. Just thinking about it makes me want to see it again. Very tight.


Season One - The season that started it all. From the beginning shot of Jack's opening eye, then the fading in sound of screams and terror, to Jack's first view of the crashed plane, I was hooked. For the next ten minutes, we caught glimpses of almost all the main characters we'd grow to know over the next year as they moved around in the crash wreckage. Some in shock and unable to really function, others immediately jumping to help others. When it's finally over and as many people as possible are saved, the weight of what just happened starts to dawn on them. This episode had a bunch of mysteries that held true for seasons later, and some which still bear relevance today. Watching the first season again makes you realize how far these characters have come. Boone's episode still leaves me with chills. The season also introduced Danielle Russou, who I maintain is the most tragic character in the entire series (the only one close might be Faraday). Getting to know these characters through flashbacks and realizing that not everything is as it seems - every episode was a new mystery. Good times.

Season Four - During the writer's strike, this season had to be cut by a good number of episodes and what resulted may not have been the initial vision, but it was still fantastic. Picking up where the previous season left off, this episode introduced a new set of characters, but unlike Niki and Paulo, they were introduced well and were compelling characters. Watching the split of the two factions - Locke's and Jack's - it was great to watch the actions they were doing on the island and then the long-term effects of them play out in the flashforwards. Seeing Ben beaten but unbroken was great and watching his return to relevancy after what happened in Season Three was fantastic and a testament to the character.

Season Three - The last handful of episodes were fantastic, and the first two thirds were immensely pointless. It had one of my favorite episodes of all time, the finale of the season. The twist of the flashback, Charlie and Desmond in the Hydra, Jack's conversation with Ben... all fantastic moments. But weigh those against the terrible first part of the season with the cages and the Eko with the bear, etc., and I have trouble putting this season above the likes of 4, 5 and 1. Plus, this season had Niki and Paulo. Nobody likes them. On the flip side, it introduced Juliet. I think the weird love-triangle/square/whatever they tried to do with Kate, Juliet, Jack and Sawyer was pretty lame, but fortunately it didn't go anywhere.

Season Two - The season started out pretty well dealing with the discovery of what was in the hatch and finding Desmond inside, and had some awesome episodes in between (Henry Gale, Eko and Locke, Sawyer and the guns, introducing the Others), but overall, when I finished watching the season, I had to wonder what the point was. The big focus of the season was irrelevant by the end. The new characters were gone by the end. What did we just spend all this time on? I feel like this season was when the writers didn't realize how big LOST was going to be and were struggling to figure out what was going on. The series didn't find its feet again until midway through season three, which is about when they announced that the show would have a set number of episodes and would end after season six. Once they got something to work towards, they were just fine. Took a while to get there is all.

So what do you all think? How do you rank the seasons? And where do you think season six is going to end up in the list? Right now I have it between seasons one and four, but we'll see if it rises or falls in the next few weeks.

Hat Trick

For the third post in a row, I'm going to mention zombies. Every red-blooded male considers what might happen in the event of a zombie uprising. It may be a passing thought, or it may be a full-fledged day-dream. But for this guy, it became a massive (and well-thought-out) plan. I can't imagine someone coming up with a better 15-step plan to survive and thrive in the zombie apocalypse.

I Am Legend (the book)

When I'm getting ready for a long drive, usually I like to have a book set up on my iPod. Music is fun, but tends to get a little mindless. Books keep me engaged and awake throughout the whole trip. This weekend I was making the short jaunt up to my brother's place, but I thought it would be nice to have a new book. After my post about zombies, I figured I wanted a horror or supernatural book of some kind. My first thought was to try the Dresdon Files series, but when I pulled up the first book of it, it was $20! Not really interested in spending that much. Dejected, I putzed around until I saw the poster for I Am Legend somewhere online. I decided to pick up the book, since I knew it was based on a book. Popped it in, it wasn't too expensive, and I downloaded it.

Written in 1954 by Richard Matheson, it was a pretty quick book, finishing out in about 5 hours. I had never seen the Will Smith movie, nor Omega Man, nor Last Man on Earth, so I didn't really know anything about it other than it was post-apocalyptic and involved vampires (or zombies, depending on who you asked).

The book was really solid, obviously relying heavily on the strength of the main character, Robert Neville, since most of the time he's alone and dealing with his thoughts. It opens talking about his repetitive days - waking up, repairing the damage done to his house by the vampire attacks the previous night, and then, depending on the day, working on other projects. Making wooden stakes, gathering supplies, or heading out into the city to seek out vampires and kill them. In daylight, they go dormant and he finds as many as he can and puts a stake through them. Then, when it gets close to nightfall, he heads home and stays in his house until the next morning.

The vampires know where he is, but he's done a lot to make his house secure. As the book goes on, it explains why the vampires are choosing certain tactics over others, and leaves me satisfied that in the world constructed, he could actually survive.

Eventually after several fits of depression and particularly bad drunk nights, he decides to try to learn about the vampire and how everything happened. There are flashback hints as to what was happening during the time just leading up to the outbreak of vampirism, and throughout the story, clues are scattered that you can put together to come to your own conclusions.

I don't want to tell too much in case anyone wants to read it for themselves, but I have to say I really enjoyed it. I was a little worried early on that dealing with Robert's mind for five hours would become tedious, but the author keeps it fresh and while you can watch him going slowly insane and slowly losing his humanity, Robert's thoughts are always interesting and I kept wanting to know what he'd do next. If you're interested in a quick read that gives a new perspective on the whole vampire/zombie thing, give this one a try.

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.