F@#$ The Newsroom

F@#$ The Newsroom Season 2

This is a review for people that either like the show or are trying hard to like the show.  I read the salon.com’s recaps, and the author of those CLEARLY despises this show.

If you cannot get past a liberal slant and news retold after 18 months of context and perspective, if this regularly breaks your suspension of disbelief, do yourself a favor right now and stop reading and watching.  The Newsroom will only provide unhealthy blood pressure increases.  Accepting (not necessarily agreeing with) Aaron Sorkin’s world view is a pre-requisite for enjoying this show.  I call this alternate world Sorkinland.

Season 2 follows Operation Genoa, loosely based on OperationTailwind, an investigation that CNN botched about 10 years ago.

This is an improvement over season 1, which followed no story.  So we follow people running down leads, vetting the story and then having the story fall apart within 48 hours after broadcast and the repercussions of falsely accusing the US Military of war crimes.  If find this a compelling plot, so no criticism here.

There are two major problems with The Newsroom; The characters and the pacing.

The characters are a mixed bag.  About half work, another quarter don’t hinder and the remaining quarter drag the show down.

The Good:

Olivia Munn as Sloan Sabbath

Thomas Sadoski as Don Keefer

Dev Patel as Neal Sampat

If you are looking for West Wing parallels, “in my opinion” Munn is most like First Lady Abby Bartlett, Sadoski is most like Josh Lyman, and Patel is most like Sam Seaborn.  This might seem like a left-handed compliment to compare these characters to Sorkin’s best show, but it really is praise.  The classics are classics for a reason, and there’s a reason why tropes are recycled.

The Okay

Sam Waterson as Charlie Skinner

Jeff Daniels as Neal McAvoy

John Gallagher as Jim Harper

Sam Waterson is Leo McGary from West Wing and Jeff Daniels is President Bartlett.  Both of these characters have great moments, but also turn in some frustratingly bad performances.  Sam Waterson in particular in Election Night Part 1 and Part 2 delivers ham-fisted over acted lines.  John Gallagher is also Sam Seaborn, but not nearly as believable Dev Patel. 

The Awful

Emily Mortimer as Mackenzie McHale

Allison Pill as Maggie Jordan

Mortimer should be CJ Craig and Pill should be Donna Moss given the West Wing Archetype Theme.  <TM>.  But the problem is they don’t work at all.  They end up as bumbling incompetent Mandys.  If you only peripherally watched West Wing, Mandy was written out of the show after season 1.  The Newsroom is still giving Mack and Maggie air time.

I don’t care about half the cast and at any given time that half is dragging down the show.

The Pacing.

Season 1 took place between April 2010 and September 2011, or 17 months.  Season 2 took place around September 2011 till November 2012, or 14 months.  There’s 10 episodes per season, so there’s quite a bit of fast forwarding, and top stories are given the montage treatment.  It is my opinion that this show would benefit GREATLY to slowing down the pace.  Sorkin should not race ahead to whatever story pissed him off in the real world timeline; he should actually develop the Genoa investigation instead (which I felt was sadly neglected).  I compare that to “All The Presidents Men…” Redford and Hoffmans portrayal of Woodward and Bernsteins’ Watergate investigation.  That movie showed the dead ends as well as the story nuggets, and ended up a much better story.

I have some minor quibbles too with Sorkinland too.  Like the fact that the fall out is centered on the producer editing the raw footage of the interview and ignoring the ONI spokesman who forged Genoa paper work and deliberately and maliciously fed a cable news network disinformation.  To me, that’s kind of a big deal.  But that arc has been dropped like 3^rd period French.

Summary

This show remains a tease.  There’s usually a couple scenes in every episode that I thoroughly enjoy, and then either spazzy characters or Sorkinland bring it right back down.  If the show is picked up for season 3 I would probably still watch, but at this point it would not sadden me at all to see this show cancelled.

Agricola - iOS

Agricola (Latin for Farmer!).  I'm a little late to the Agricola party, but hey, I made it.  iOS versions of these types of games is such a boon for fans.  Playing these games every day really allows you to appreciate the replay-ability of an "elite" board game.  Downside is that I've probably well out paced my usual gaming group ;)

Brief Overview - In Agricola you play a 17th century farmer who, with the help of his family, builds up his farm over the course of 6 years (harvests).  You get points for developing the farm, accumulating livestock/crops, and building improvements...and let's not forget building a ginormous house and a big family.  It's worker placement, using each member of your family.  And like any worker placement/development game, by the time you finally get things rolling, the game's over and it's time to score.  I'm assuming most of you are familiar with the mechanics.  The important thing to remember for the discussion below is that there are a set of spots placed to start the game, and on each of the 14 turns of the games (split into 6 harvests) a new spot is opened up.  The initial spots vary based on number players, the turn based spots are always the same but come out randomly within a given harvest.

Most of my experience is in 2 player, which can be a wonderfully hateful little chess game.  Once you get up on your opponent, I can't put into words the satisfaction that grows each turn you're able to keep him squarely over the barrel. And it's equally dispiriting and frustrating to be obstructed at every turn by an opponent who got just one turn ahead of you.  I really love it :)

This all takes some practice, but my usual opponent and I are fairly evenly matched (you can tell because we both hate playing each other) so we have some pretty fun battles.  But it's when playing the random opponent off the interwebs, and applying this style of oppressive denial, one can feel a tinge of guilt at subjecting them to this level of hate...but then you win, the guilt passes, and you're left with the warm jubilance of victory.  Ahh.  Makes me want to go find some sucker right now.

There is also a "Solo Series" challenge.  In the physical board game, it's just 8 games, but in the iOS, it goes and goes, as long as you can reach the targets.  Here's how it works:  in the first game you start with 7 occupations and a point target of 50 points.  If you achieve that, you can keep one of the occupations you played and start the subsequent game with it.  In the next game you start with only 6 random occupations (plus the 7th one already played) and target score goes up.  Eventually you have all your occupations (usually after 7 games), and just keep trying to reach every higher and higher point totals.  I'm about done with this twist of the game, here's my best effort:

Thirty-five games baby!  I broke 100 points in game 10 when I got the quarry and a couple other choice minors.  That was about my third effort, by then I had decided the occupation combination I felt was optimal.  Super fun, but not again.

I've played a couple of 3 player games, and at this point I can only comment on it in the context of 2 player.  3 Player is a certainly different, the resources that are most highly contested change.  In 2 player you have 14 clay split between 2 players over the course of the game.  That's actually plenty.  In 3 player, you have 28 clay, which is an over abundance by the end of the game, but does allow for a nice little battle for the fireplace/sheep early food engine.  Compare that to reed, where there is the same amount of reed in a 3 player game as there is in the 2 player version.  The hate/denial level of 3 player is significantly less.  I think this is typical of similar games.

I suspect most would agree what makes this game special is the Occupations and the Minor Improvements handed out before the game (and lots of them - each player gets 7 of each, more than they could ever play).  The occupations are bit more complex in their implementation (than the minor improvements) because the subset of occupations dealt is dependent on the number of players.  This means that additional reed (for example) can be made available with occupations in games of 3 or more, further tweaking the volume of each resource.  And more importantly, changing the strategy of those playing the occupation and those playing against it.  There's no point in denying wood if your opponent needs significantly less with Carpenter, and there's no use in denying reed when your opponent has a free supply of it with the Reed Collector.

To me, that's the dimension of the game that ranked it #1 for so long.  They are enough to direct your strategy, but not typically enough to give a significant advantage.  And in two player, you can let your opponent commit and contort himself to denying you one resource or another, only to surprise him with an occupation or minor improvement that turns the game on it's head.  "Your turn on the barrel my friend."

4 and 5 player versions are different still, with more varied spots to open the game (and more attractive ones).  Playing this online doesn't work for me personally because of the inherent latency between turns...I can't keep track of what I was up to and rethinking through it is tedious.  I'll save these versions for live play.  And my lack of experience in these versions should keep it more competitive between me and my usual gaming groups.

As I said, most of my experience is 2 player, so moving to 3 player (and beyond) means additional occupations are added to the mix keeping it fresh.  The game currently only includes the E deck (the original deck), however the I and K decks will be coming this Fall for a small fee...and you can bet I'll be happy to pay to give Playdek my money.

Oh, and if more cards for the iOS version of Agricola isn't doing it for you, maybe THIS will make you drool a little bit:

That's a screen shot of Playdek's next humble offering to lucky board game fans, Lords of Waterderp, I mean deep, due out "later this year".  TAKE MY MONEY.

F@#$ Iron Man 3

More movie reviews.  And keeping with the pattern I only see movies with hobbits or super heroes.  Apparently the best movie ever made will star a hobbit super hero.

I liked Iron Man 3 lots.  I maybe liked the original more, but IM3 was light years ahead of IM2.

IM2 was the classic example of comic book character multiplication.  We got Ironman, Whiplash, Justin Hammer, Black Widow and War Machine.  You only have so much time, its impossible to give everyone a story in movie-time allotment, so pick a villain and pick a sidekick and move on already!  IM2 also went Michael Bay, substituting effects for story.

IM2 was ok, because Downey remains the perfect choice for Tony Stark.  But overall the movie was totally forgettable.

So compare to IM3.  IM3 followed the Extremis story line.  And if you don't want spoilers don't f@#$ing google Ironman Extremis.

ok harsh, actual spoiler tags coming when I stop speaking in general and/or things comic nerds already now. 

The best thing about IM3 was there's an actual story. Ironman has to piece together a mystery. Crazy sh!t's going down and Tony Stark has to solve it, but its not like the bad guys left directions to their underground lair.

spolier'd.  Set the background to black, select the text to read.

The next best thing about IM3 is they found a way to get him out of the armor for most of the movie. I think this might be a one shot, otherwise they risk a nudge nudge, here we go again, the suit's malfunctioning running joke. It's like knocking out Mr. T on the A-Team so Murdoch can fly them where they need to go. But I digress. Having Tony Stark act heroic or whatnot without the suit was loads of fun.


some more spoilage

The Mandarin might not necessarily be done.  I mean he might be but AIM dude and dudette both referred to him as the master and it didn't really seem ironic.  And Mandarin is the type of villain to act dumb and pass on blame.  The point is, they left a window if they want to recycle him for IM4. AIM Dudette might not be done too. We saw her shot, but she left camera view.

I didn't care for the finale.  But you gotta end it somehow and make it bigger and badder than the last movie.  Or something.   Besides. GP in a sports bra!.

F@#$ making a game part 1 cards and game board.

So those of you who don't know yet I am designing a game.  I'm not going to post specifics here on the blog, because tricksy little hobbitses are always after my precious.

Instead I am going to write about how the hell do you make a prototype game.

I've play tested games before, and the materials weren't very good.   Card stock just doesn't have the feel of playing cards, and your dice collection is a poor substitute for meeples.





The game has run through 3 prototypes now.

Prototype one was a disaster.  The board was hand cut and hand drawn from 22X28 card stock.  (10pt Carolina C1S for any print nerds out there.  no?  just me?)






Now, you may think your hand writing is bad, but I guarantee that mine looks like yours while riding on a bus.  Add to that I created some kind of short hand for game terms in my mind, and put those on the board without suitable explanations.  Whoops.

Next I attempted to make cards real playing cards.  I had catalog referencing what does what, like 2 of diamonds corresponds to such and such actions.  This was also awful.  It slowed the game way way down referencing every which thing.  A conundrum!

Which was solved by doing my taxes this year.  You can deduct crap for a hobby business.  Since I eventually want to sell my game I can spend money on prototype materials.  Huzzah!

I bought some print labels for the next game, and stuck these onto playing cards and that worked much better.  I printed the board on 13X19 Carolina C1S card stock and that was almost adequate.  Here's the problem.  There's no good way to carry  a 13X19 game board.  Sure you can fold it, but you still have a 13X9.5 rectangle which still doesn't fit into most folders.  You can tube it, but then it doesn't lay flat.  I think next try I am doing to print on 8.5X11 plain paper and mount on cardboard with spray adhesive.  Updates to follow.

F@#$ Castles of Burgundy

castles of burgundy

back after 2 months of no posts.  I apologize.  Either for not posting enough or posting again, take your pick.

Plot:

hmm.  That's tough.  Build up your Duchy in Burgundy?  Sure.  Why not.  The theme is very stamped on (in fact, even though the tiles are all named, very few of them are known by the players.  In fact we make up names because it matters that much)

Game Play:

You get a minimum of 50 actions split into 5 rounds, so ~10 actions per round.

At the beginning of the round, roll two dice.  Each die is an action.  Now this is important, the number on the die, limits you on what actions you can take.  

General Actions:

#1:  Take a tile.  There are 6 tile reservoirs numbered 1-6.  A die value of "1" can take from the "1" reservoir and so on.

#2:  Play a tile:  Playing a tile requires to actions, first to get it, the second to play it.  The die roll corresponds to numbers on a map.  Play like colored tiles on corresponding die rolls, and they have to be adjacent to a previously placed tile.

#3:  Trade goods:  Trading earns you VPs and money.  There are 6 trade goods, which strangely correspond to the numbers of a die!

#4:  Take workers:  This is the ONLY generic action available in the game.  Spend a die and get 2 workers. 1 worker allows you to adjust a die roll +/- 1.  There is no limit on workers you can spend and the die wraps around (a 6 becomes a 1 with only a single worker).

#5:  If you have cash, you can buy 'center' tiles.  These still need to be placed, but $$$ = a free tile draft action.

Ok, so dumb game so far.  You may as well roll two dice 50 times and see who gets the highest total.  What makes this game fun is the tiles have powers that activate once you get them on your tableau.

So there are 6 colors.

Beige are buildings.  In general buildings give you extra actions.  They aren't as versatile as dies, but hey, they are free.  Things like after playing a this building, you get to take a blue or light green one.  Or after playing this other one, you get to trade goods for free.

Grey are mines.  At the beginning of a round (not turn), mines give you cash. 

Blue are ships.  Ships help you go earlier and acquire trade goods.

Dark Green are castles.  Castles give you a free die!  Use it for anything!

Yellow are knowledge.  Knowledge may - 1) give you some ability that helps placing, drafting, trading or some other ability, - or 2) give you victory points at end game.

Light Green are pastures.  Pastures hold animals.  And you want to group like animals together to get lots of victory points.  The most boring tile ever.

How do you win?:

It's a game about victory points.  The bulk of your victory points will come from closing sections on the tableau.  The earlier you close them the more victory points, and the harder they are to close, the more victory points. 

When you play a pasture tile, add up connected like animals.  So if you have a 3 chicken tile adjacent to a 4 chicken tile, you get 7 points!  These are big points, when you consider animals plus closure.

When you trade goods, you only get a dollar no matter how many you trade.  (remember a die roll determines what you can trade.)  But you get double VP for trading 2 and triple for trading 3 items.

Yellow tiles may give VP, along the lines of "get 4 VP for each <building type> you have in play."

Finally badges.  Look at the map above.  There are 2 badges for each color and these are awarded to the player who completely fills out the corresponding color's section earliest.

A winning score is around 225.

Review:

The interactions of the tiles is what makes this game.  It's not necessarily getting the most actions, its getting the right ones.  Everyone is going to get plenty of beige building actions, the trick is finding the right combination.  Something I haven't come close to figuring out.

Anyways, I really like this game, and it has stood up for well for a half dozen replays.

F@#$ Slacktivism

DOMA is in the news lots.  And FB has gone nuts posting the pink equality sign and its many counter parts and parodies.

this is my favorite parody by the way

My beef with this is not with the showing of support to the LGBTMD community, but thinking it accomplishes...well anything.

See, this is slactivism.  Signing an online petition or liking something on Facebook has absolutely zero influence on policy makers.  But it makes you feel like you did something.  It's the same sort of enablement that I hate in Conspiracy Theorists.  See a conspiracy buff blames everything on hidden sinister forces, but won't get off the couch to help because "what can you do, its the CIA".  Slactivism participants also fail to get off the couch but act like they did something substantive.  Real change takes effort, not a mouse click.

More over, a Facebook like is a commodity.   Release a funny picture, or some point-counter point thoughts in a graphic and start sharing.  Once your FB page gets about 50k likes, it has a cash value.  Don't believe me?  here's a screen shot off searching for Facebook Likes

So yeah, I am pretty cynical about the motives of these pages circulating these graphics.

Now here's an excerpt from an e-friend on why he changed his profile picture.

I didn't change my profile picture because I thought it would make any difference to the Supreme Court. And since all of my FB friends are in support of marriage equality, it's not like my advocation is going to change any minds there.

Here's why I did it: because I have friends who are gay, and some of those are married, or want to one day be married, and I want *them* to know that I support their marriage. Whatever the Supreme Court decides: I believe in you, and your relationship, and the life-changing choice you made. Whether you were married in Canada or Massachusetts or Seattle, in a church or city hall or under the stars with only the moon as your witness -- your marriage is yours to define. Those far-away seniors won't change my mind any more than they will change Rush Limbaugh's.

Hear hear.    I'm just not going to put it on FB, because its Slactivism.

and its still coming down

F@#$ games I don't like one bit. Not one bit at all.

Top 5 least favorite games

So spurred on by my favorite games list, the other side of the mixed metaphor, games that I don't really like.  There are rules for these selections.  They have to be decently rated on BGG list.  Top 500 at least.  If they are ranked 6000th, well let's face it, no one really likes it.  They also have to have been released post Settlers of Cataan.  I can go on for pages about what a crappy game Car Wars is, but it's also 30-35 years old and the context really doesn't apply anymore.

First the dishonorable mentions.

Samurai ranked 89th

This actually barely made the mentions list.  The core mechanic is basically playing dots and boxes, which I don't like at all.  But it plays 3 quite well and quickly.  So I won't say I will never ever never play this again, but there's got to be pretty specific circumstances.  #1, there has to be only 3 people playing.  #2, I have to not want to play the other usual suspects we typically break out for 3 player.

Tobago ranked 252nd.

The game play is actually pretty cool, but the scoring has problems.  There's a lot of variance and something you invested 6 moves in can be worth a lot less than your opponent's 3 move play.

Stone Age ranked 36th

2nd player to move has one hell of an advantage, and since we have started informally tracking victories, Player 2 wins at least 3/4's of the time, and maybe as much as 9 out of 10 games. 

Credit where credit is due, Juan came up with an auction-based house rule on who gets to be player 2 that I am positive would balance the game.  But it's simply not a good enough game to play test this house rule to confirm that.

#5

Glenn Drovers Empire: Age of Discovery ranked 54th

This actually isn't an awful game.  I just don't want to play it again.  It takes 3 hours and the most successful strategies are way too similar to one another.  That's way too long for such narrow victory paths.  It did have some decent replay until I figured that part out.

#4

Fresco ranked 137th

The problem in this game is a convergence of scoring and turn order.  Cash turns into VPs at game end, but doesn't influence turn order during the game.  So you can hoard money (delayed VPS), and still get the advantages of being in last place during the game.

Now we can probably house rule some patches for this game, but like Stone Age it's not a good enough game to bother play testing and trouble- shooting fixes.  In fact, Fresco is a lot less fun than Stone Age.

#3

Thebes ranked 198th

A game I've only played once.  It does have a clever mechanic.  The primary thing you have to manage is time, you have 2 years worth of moves.  And whoever is furthest in the past goes, which means you can manipulate the game so you can take multiple turns in a row.

The problem is the scoring.  You invest a lot of your time into "digs" which in game turns means pulling tiles from a bag and hoping that some score.  There is way way way way way way way too much variance in what you pull.

#2

Genoa ranked 188th

I've also only played Genoa once, and that was enough.  It's got one neat mechanic.  The game board is a gridded map, and you roll two dice to see where this turn's move starts.  You get 5 moves from that spot to pick up various assets.

The problem is every asset is trade-able and every move requires negotiation.  This destroys pacing with endless contract talks and makes the game experience a lot like buying a used car.

#1

Smallworld ranked 69th

I haven't played Smallworld in over 2 years, and apparently am still carrying the scars.  This game has a lot of problems.  

A) the pacing is atrocious.  I'd probably only dislike this game and not despise it if played in 30-45 minutes and not 75-90.

B)  some of the badge-tribe combinations make unbalanced power combos.   So either that guy wins or the table unites to gang beat him down.   Either way, I don't find this fun.

C)  the core mechanic is calculating a provinces defense and adding 2, then sending the appropriate amount of soldiers.  The game is centered around counting.  Effing Lame.

F@#$ Top 5 lists.

Bill C. requested I give my top 10 favorite games.  This is actually quite quite hard for me, because (and this is strictly my perspective, insert your own Darren hates every game joke here) I find most games adequate(read greater than 50%), a not insignificant minority poor, and a few brilliant.

Honorable Mentions:

These are games I like a lot, that just don't quite make the cut for a favorite list.

Galaxy Trucker

I like this game a lot because for half the game, everyone is participating simultaneously.   Plus you might get to hear some funny running commentary from Mike.  Oh!  That's a good one!

Now the game has problems.  There is quite a steep learning curve.  An experienced player playing with n00bs is going to the zoo to shoot goats.  And a n00b at a table of veterans is the proverbial blood donor.   Similar skill levels really need to play one another.

Dominion

This is a really really good game that unfortunately had a great, intuitive implementation on BSW at a time when I wasn't playing board games every week.  So I OD'd on the BSW version.  I feel that I know all the secrets from the first 2 expansions and am reluctant to invest further time and money in playing the follow up expansions that are likely to radically change what was an awesome game.

Dixit

Dixit is quite fun but might be better categorized as a party game and not a hard core nerd game.

Ra


Ra is a solid game that is very well balanced, and has several ways to win.

The problem with Ra, is that it is a pure auction game.   Auctions are a perfectly reasonable mechanic, but when that's all the game is, it has pronounced limitations. 

I still really like this game, but the auction only mechanic places this in the play 2-3 times a year category.

Race for the Galaxy

We played RftG regularly for about 18 months so it has immense replay value.  We just hit the wall.  And the follow up expansions broke the game.

The list:

#5

Space Alert.

This game is amazingly innovative and with the right group loads and loads of fun.  Here's the thing:  Its cooperative and difficult.  What that means is one bad mood or one flaky player at the table and this game becomes stressful and not fun.  Still it makes the list because in our early plays when we were able to laugh at our mistakes, these were among the best gaming nights I have had in the last 2 years.

#4

No Thanks

Ok this is a filler card game.  Play a hand or two at the end of the night or while waiting for the other table to finish their game.  However, this is the best filler game I have played.  It remains in regular rotation after 2 years of weekly play and that is really an amazing feat.

#3

Notre Dame

There's nothing unique about this game.  It's a pretty generic worker placement game.  But all the parts come together quite well, and I have an appreciation for well crafted game design.

#2


Alhambra

A tile laying game that I like lots with any number of players.  There is legitimate criticism that as the amount of players increase the tactical options decrease because there are way too many moves in between your turns.  I personally don't mind the chaos and welcome the improvisation that the 5+ player game fosters.

#1

Brass

I have come full circle on Brass.  At first the web implementation was 500 times better than the board game implementation.  But board games are meant to be social, and waiting 6-10 hours between turns eventually turned me off to the online version.  That's not to say that the face to face version doesn't need tweaks, but that's not in game play.  The tweaks are needed in the materials.

Your currency is given in gold and silver coins. Gold is worth 5$ (maybe 10, doesn't matter) and silver is worth 1$.  Ok so far.  Except that it is quite easy to spend over $50 in a turn and have $150 banked.  How much you spend determines turn order, so its quite a big deal, and the pile of coins in the cash spent spots on the board is far from ideal.  If I were to play face to face again, I think I would insist on pencil and paper records of cash on hand and how much you spent per turn.

The other problem is end game.  There is a loan cut off, based on how many turns are left.  The cut off is the last turn that you refill you hand with new action cards.  So there are cards left when you start the turn and its quite easy to forget that this is your last turn to get quick cash.  NABD, if you think about that at the start of game.  Place two piles of cards.  One that announces the cut off, and then the final replacement cards.

F@#$ Robo Rally

Robo Rally

Plot:  you are a bored super computer idling the nights away at a automated factory.  for your own amusement you stage races against other super computers using the factory's robots.  The theme has decent implementation.  The boards are chaotic and dangerous like a factory...

Game Play:  There are 5 moves per turn, which you must plan out ahead of time.  You get 9 cards to do this with.  The cards moves are things like turn right, move forward 3 or back up.  Your robot has to negotiate obstacles to get to race goals, so planning your move correctly is the game.

Robots shoot at each other, and if you get damaged, you receive less cards to plan your move.  Lose too many cards, and your 5th move gets locked.

Game end conditions can change from game to game, but generally its something like whoever tags three goal markers first.

Review:  I do not like this game.  It was released in 1994, so its 20 years old.  20 years ago, it might have been okay, back when board game choices consisted of Risk, Advanced Civilization and Car Wars; it has not aged well.

The game has way too much luck involved for the time investment it takes to play.   BGG lists playing time as 120 minutes, and I find that incredibly optimistic for anything larger than a small play surface.

The skill of planning your turn isn't very hard to master, so really the game is who draws the best cards.  Now there are quite a few games that I like that can be described in this manner.  Most of them play in 45 minutes or less.

F@#$ Planet Money

Onto a Podcast review!

The skip to the end sentence:  I love this podcast, listen to it if you can.

I first found Planet Money while listening to This American Life.  The Planet Money staff did a stripped down explanation of the 2008 mortgage crisis, and it was clever, humorous and informative.  So I subscribed to the Pod Cast.

Stripped down is their modus operandi.  The PM staff has a knack of explaining complex issues into easy to follow language. 

This is not to say they come up with definitive conclusions, like ever.  Economics revolves around competing opinions and values.  Economics is inherently messy.  I contrast that with Freakonomics.  Freakonomics, while also asking interesting questions, is run by rock star economist Steven Levitt.  And while Levitt has novel/intriguing stories, Levitt rarely admits possibility of error.

PM is run by laymen reporters.  Reporters who routinely look for the divergent opinions. 

PM also has an endearing DIY attititude.  A couple years ago, they wanted to do a story on toxic assets.  Whats the best way to handle that?  Well to buy one of course.

So they did, named it Toxie and did a series of stories on what made Toxie toxic.  From the purchasing of it, the tracking down and attempted interviews with the distressed mortgage holders within it, and the byzantine way the money was paid out.  Long story short for toxie, besides people getting behind on their mortgages, there were about 90 levels of payment priority.  Toxie was in the bottom third, so as payments dried up, Toxie stopped paying out earlier.

From the remaining Toxie money, they bought some gold.  And did a series of stories on the crazy gold inflation of the past couple years.  Like how did gold become a currency anyways?

PM has also explored manufacturing by forming a company to make T-Shirts.  They also explored off shore corporations by forming one.  Located in Belize, they named it UnBelizable.

Anyways, the Podcast that inspired this post was #430, were they looked at V!agra spam.  The most surprising thing, is that these black market pharmacies actually sent the correct medications.  They did recommend NOT ordering from this, leaving aside the illegal to buy without a prescription issue.  You surrender information to sketchy companies, including your phone number.  And they relayed a testimonial from a person who quit ordering from these pharmacies and had to stop answering their phone due to the volume of harrasing sales calls.

F@#$ Bang!

Bang!

Plot:  Spaghetti Western.  Kill the Sheriff and the Deputies if you are the Outlaws, kill the Outlaws if you are the law, kill everyone if you are the Renegade.  The theme is fun, the cards reference Western movie cliches, and everything is written in Italian with English subtitles.

Gameplay: 

Only the sheriff is known.  Every other role you have to figure out via actions.  The mix is set depending on how many players, I played 7 player, and the role distribution is 1 sheriff, 2 deputies, 3 outlaws, and 1 renegade.





Besides your role, you also have a character.  The character provides some kind of exception, my first character allowed me to pick cards from the discard.  This was amazingly powerful.  My second character allowed me to draw immediately if I ran out of cards.  This was pretty meh.



A turn consists of drawing 2 cards, playing whatever you can, then discarding down to your current health.

Most cards are self explanatory.  Draw new cards.  Force someone to discard.  Steal a card from someone.
 
Shooting someone requires some explanation.

First, you need a Bang! card.  Without specific exception cards (gear or character) you can only play one Bang! card a turn.

Second, target needs to be in range.  Default range is 1, so that means your left and right hand neighbors only.  There are gear cards that increase your range.

After revealing a Bang! card, target gets a chance to reveal a Missed! card.  If no Missed! card is revealed, you do 1 damage, and get to raise your hands in the air as if there are no repercussions.

Review:  This game plays 7+ well, which is a pretty rare feat.  Also, the table I played at was pretty fun.  People were very likely to just start shooting, which speeds up the game.  With the wrong table this game may really really suck.  There's not much to the strategy except to make sure you draw good cards, so long analysis of who may be who can make a beer and pretzels game drag.  But as long as no one takes it very seriously, its nicely paced with just a hint of strategy and tactics.

Tips:  The only thing I have figured out really, is that if you are a deputy, it's worth your while to start shooting immediately.  In 7 player, you have a blind 80% chance of hitting someone opposing you.  Outlaws should be more cautious but the law should spray the lead.

F@#$ Giving Hints

a theoretical.

You are teaching or are way more experienced at a game than the majority of your opponents.  How much, if any, help do you give?

This is practical.  Next Saturday I will be attending game night with my NEW FRIENDS.  I will most likely be teaching at least 2 games and/or playing Alhambra with 5 other people who have played once.

So if I was there to win, I wouldn't give any hints.  But I'm not there solely to win.  Winning against players who are struggling to make moves isn't very fulfilling.

Ted Nugent, once said of hunting, that it is the experience.  It's not the killing, if he wanted to kill animals he'd buy a chicken farm.  It's the practice, the patience and the stalk all leading to a seminal moment.  Now I find Ted Nugent an ass, but he stumbled around a pretty good philosophy here.

The experience is more important than the outcome.

or

The journey is it's own reward.


So I like to give hints.  I don't want to just win, I want peoples best game.

But how many hints and how often?

It's quite the difficult question.  Too few and you are back to shooting animals at the zoo, too many and your are playing everyone's turn.

What's the happy median?

I "think" next week I will outline the broad strategies and what things you have to manage, a couple of tactical tips, and let the table figure out the rest.



I am specifically thinking of Notre Dame as I write this.  So my beginners guide to Notre Dame.

There's 4 ways to score points in ND.  Go to the church, go to the incremented VP location, hiring towns folk, and getting messages via carriage house.  To have a chance, you have to get significant points from two sources.

There are 3 things you have to manage, in order of importance.

The rat-track:  get a plague value of over 9 and you lose a previous play off the board AND 5 points.   I have never seen a game won by a player getting the plague.

Money:  Money is used to hire townies, and to go to the cathedral.  The more you spend on a cathedral move, the more points you score.  Hiring townies is really important, I have never seen a game won by a player who ran out of money during the buy townie phase.  Money for the big church is less important, but it makes the church moves more efficient.

Influence counters:  If you run out of dudes in your active supply, you move them around the board instead.  I have seen many games won by people who had to relocate influence counters instead of playing a new one.

Tactical moves:

Avoid the park and hotel as much as possible.  It is unlikely that you will avoid both the entire game, but both these moves have the worst returns.  A hotel is more versatile with one play, and the park is better long term, but too many plays there means a long game.

F@#$ The Hobbit

movie review time again!

The Hobbit, the Tolkein foundation of almost everything nerdy. 

Bottom Line:  This movie was meh.  It wasn't awful, but it wasn't good either.  There were a few scenes I liked a lot, a couple scenes I despised, and a lot of scenes that could have been better.

Big Picture Problems:

#1:  the conception.  There simply is not enough finished material to make a good Hobbit trilogy.  There's the original book, which was for kids, and unfinished works rewriting this for an adult audience.  I haven't read these unfinished works, but usually things are left unfinished for a reason.  So the action gets played out longer, the scenes exaggerated further.  To me the movie feels like an unfunny, overlong sketch at the end of SNL that only got air time because they had nothing better.

#2:  the tone.  Is this a mad cap adventure with bumbling, squabbling dwarves or a grim quest to retake these Dwarves homeland?  It usually plays to the latter, but there are attempts at comic relief.  When its the dwarves amongst themselves it works, but when it's a newly eviscerated Goblin King it doesn't. 

#3:  Deus Ex Gandalfina.  Apparently Gandalf is the only one capable of solving a problem.  Which would work fine with the bumbling version, but in the grim quest version it makes Thorin's company impotent.

Annoyances:

in order of importance

all the battle scenes are mottled and confusing.  Since the last 45 minutes is one long running battle this is kind of a deal with me.  It gave me a headache.

 Rock em Sock em Stone Giants.  Ok this should be so minor that it shouldn't make it to a review.  But this is where the movie went off the rails for me.  They looked so absurd, and they added nothing to the story.  I hated, hated, hated the Stone Giants.

Radagast the Poo Stain.  Another something minor.  He wasn't in the film much, but every scene he appeared in was agony for me. 

Things I liked:

the Elijah Woods intro, the first Bag End dinner and Riddles were all well done.  Riddles especially.