Musings

- Played two raucous games of ASL last weekend with Glenn, one of the guys I met at the ASL con. He drove down from Pasadena and we got 2 great, great games in on Saturday. As the mostly conscripted Russians, I successfully defended my buildings from his Elite German Warmachine in the first game. And in the second game, my awesome firepowered, yet TERRIBLY motivated Americans failed to even claim one victory point (out of 25!!!) before I called the game for reasons of frustration (I rolled all 11's and 12's, thereby breaking all my MG's as well as removing my flamethrower in the first turn, which was vital to taking VP's) and lack of focus. For some reason we thought playing a larger, two board game second, after a 5 hour one board game, was a good idea. Anyway, it was awesome!

- Played a WWII themed cardgame with Peter this weekend too. I threw in the towel the first game when Peter had an untouchable battleship, as well as at least 5 to 10 times more forces than I had in every battle, and when the great "equalizer" card event was drawn, which is Bitter Cold, and makes all units suffer attacks from cold, I, as the Russians, lost 75% of my forces and Peter maybe lost 5%. Not quite historical, and a bitter pill to swallow. The next game was a landslide, or so it seemed, in my favor as I had superior forces the whole game, but this time, the Bitter Cold card destroyed the Russians again (historical my ass!) but at least I was in the lead, so it let him back in the game. We quit when Denis arrived, but it looked like the game has promise, though it may be landslide at one point, it seems to perhaps balance after some time. With balances, I could see it being a LONG ass game too. For cards anyway.

- Played Runebound with Denis and Peter this weekend too! Fun, mindless, Talisman Ripoff game, and much better without Laurie around! Eventually, we fizzled out and moved straight to "Tired of This Game, Endgame Phase" where we just started drawing the final encounter cards to see who would survive longest! Eventually Peter prevailed!

- ALSO(!!!!) picked up Dungeon Twister and played that with Peter. VERY interesting game. There is no luck involved at all however, so it plays a little like Chess, if you know what I mean. The only luck is the randomness of the board setup, but beyond that, you use action points to interact with the board, and use cards for combat. Like LotR:Confrontation, you have a finite set of combat cards so you can count which cards have been played by your opponent, and inturn make attacks where you are certain of the outcome because your opponent has no more 6 or 5 power attack cards, for example. Peter was slow as molasses, so it took FOREVER to actually meet each other on the board, but when we did, combat was clever, interesting, and Peter won with a super tricky-dick move, which is sort of the way the game is meant to be played: Use your custom teams special skills to create crazy moves and be super tricky. It's a fun game, I would like to play again!

- I will be a dad in less than a month, no two ways about it! Go time!

- Playing Might and Magic II again. Man. What mindless fun. Way better than WoW, which I have again stopped playing!