Been so slammed at work, I'm out of the loop on regular life and all the things that make living worthwhile.  I'm forgetting the taste of strawberries...

As for Kickstarter, that is news to me.  They did try a different game earlier, but it got pulled due to questionable content.  Prudes...

mmm... hentacle...

The game was a card taking game with a really dull mechanic.  So if anything, it deserved to get pulled for bad design.  But content?  People, this is the internet!

| Castles of Burgundy

Found a great new Eurogame that my wife and I have been greatly enjoying, The Castles of Burgundy. You're princes trying to build the most fancy estate. You each get a player board that represents your estate and there's a central board where everyone is acquiring buildings and other tiles to bring to their land. Each turn your roll 2d6 and that determines what actions you can take . Pretty basic stuff but you have a lot of different ways to plot for victory points. Similar mellow vibe as something like Kingom Builder although its denser. There's some iconography to get familiar with.

Conan

Screw the haters, I really liked the Conan remake from last year. It got horrible reviews but it's a gory blast. Khal Drogo is great and the action is really good. It's fucking CONAN! I don't know  what they expected. Much more interesting than the Scorpion King flicks or the Pirates of the Caribeeans.

Jacket askers

Is hackmasters auto corrected. What up with the online gamin?!

| Free RPGz

KenzerCo has made HackMaster Basic available for free! Definitely worth checking out -- this is the game that the Knights of the Dinner Table play.

I definitely hope to play this one sometime. Dungeon Crawl Classics is sort of the over-the-top version of Basic D&D, HackMaster is the over-the-top version of AD&D 1st ed. Both good things in my opinion.

Sorry to bum you out, Rude.

These awesome Kickstarters for minis just keep coming:

An enormous shitload of Reaper minis for $100.

| Minefold

Rood asked how do u even play in Minefold Minecraft servers, here's how:

 - Add the following server to your multiplayer servers:  theendoftheworld.biggdork.minefold.com
 - Profit!

End of the World Update:  I have located the closest Stronghold, built a lit road to the Stronghold right between the cow-slaughter-for-leather-for-books-for-bookshelves-for-enchantment pen and the Nethergate.  I found The End portal and have one of, I believe, 12 slots filled with Eyes of Ender.  Once all 12 are filled, the portal should open and we should be able to dance with the Enderdragon!

Bastard! :)

well, in that case, I think it's time to retire in summoner wars.  =D

| SNL Celebrity Jeopardy

Here is a consolidated list of all the SNL Celebrity Jeopardy skits. You're welcome, Buck Futters.

I agree that SW is better than HA, in fact I think SW is the best multi game for iOS. Compared with HA you do more in a turn, so the game takes overall fewer turns while still giving you as many choices. And deckbuilding is cool.

But, I have to disagree with your blanket statement that turtling is the only win condition in HA. If you recall, we played, like, three games. In the third I started exploring anti-turtle techniques that I think were starting to work pretty well, and then you "quit to preserve your winning record." Bastard! :) So I think the real winning strategy is"quit while you're ahead." :)

Paging All Pumpkins

All right man, fess up, how much have you pumped into this Kickstarter?

| Heros Acad vs SW

Out of the both I'd say SW is the hotter apple pie.  But then HA is just a psuedo game designed for rugrats with Ios and unused brain waves.   The best thing about SW is that the game doesn't allow you to camp for too long, as it doesn't give you any incremental incentive to wait too long.  There's also ways where the opponent can goad you in attacking.   Not to say there are still times where playing "defensively" does come into play but generally if you are the stronger side, you will be inclined to attack.  In HA, it was all turtle even if you have superior numbers.

Jael and I had an awesome game today - his Fallen Kingdom vs my Cloaks. He pulled out the win but it was very close. The two main things going on were we had walls across the whole map except for one open space at the end. He was in a corner and I was pressing with a champion and commons but his summoner kept pulling off that "greater raise" skill which lets him summon 3 commons from his discard pile. So eventually I was worn down and it came down to our summoners in a shootout with me having 1 hp and him 2 I think - he got me first. Cloaks are great - it seems like they can be pretty versatile, so I'm having fun trying to figure out their different strengths and weaknesses. Fallen Kingdom did great against them. I've also got my ass kicked by goblins pretty hard. After I burn out the Cloaks, I'm probably gonna jump back to Phoenix Elves and try to get good with them. I love their "precise" events - those put on a champion can be BRUTAR.

You know, I'll bet you they'll make an adaptation to that movie if you finish your turn and not forfiet the game due to inactivity.    There's only a few turns left at most, cuz your dwarf  or my summoner is gonna get whacked this round

| The Great Gatsby

You know which novel is screaming for a modern-day film adaptation in 3D, no less?  That's right, The Great Gatsby.

I really hope there's a studio out there that recognizes this tremendous need and gives the American people what they are (unknowingly) screaming for.

PS 9/1 is Whatstodaybordayitslabor Day weekend - still up for some gaming travels, or do you have other plans?

Once I got the iPad, my regular computer use has fallen off big time. I get on their to pay bills and occasionally blog, but haven't touched Steam or any of my old computer stuff in ages! Also, having a sweet pool in crazy hot weather is too much fun. Most of my free time during my "week" is spent swimming before I have to sleep for work. Watch out for those mother fucking spiders! They got gills.

8/25 = Bad
9/1 = Good

I like my nuts, and besides I will be out of town 8/25 anyway.

ja -El, I like that you have grades of wood to describe your morning erections. Makes me giddy, "no-homo".

Shop-vac. Good thing, eLzar white listed you. Otherwise you would be the wrong color for our elite group of Minecrafters. Speaking of Minecraftiness, eLzar and I dug up enough Blaze Rod and eLzar murdered enough Enderman to make Eye of Ender. Two steps closer to The End.

D>M>

Well note that I'm volunteering enr0n for those weekends - his consultation was neither sought, nor desired. What say you enr0n, is either weekend preferable?

One additional term, you will be required to provide a birthday cake reading "Happy Birthday jr0n and enr0n" - at that point your bday will be in the past and hardly worth mentioning.

Let me know how the lawyers react and we can work out which weekend and where (WC might work better to avoid vice-nuts).

Now to work! Holy shit is this week going to suck.

| Vice, Nuts Within

Enron and jr0n: how would your nuts NOT be in a vice with the Mrs.'s if you both go to GenCon and then invade my house (or WC) for a game day right afterword?

Think it through, people.

And yes, I would be in for either weekend (I think, we do have a number of weddings for people that I don't know coming up).  I will consult with my legal team regarding your terms as stated, and will get back to you shortly with our counter-proposal.

| The man who never sleeps

I sleep only about 6 hours these days, not including the time it takes me to doze off.  I'm not even old yet sheesh, in my mind at least!   And no kids... Maybe it's just the clock thing.  And I find the morning woods off and on somedays, and rather than of pine stock, sometimes it tends to be of generic Ikea composites.

In all fairness, I think I've only played 1 shade and 2 Orc teams against Eric, cuz I think we've only played 2 games and finishing a 3rd lot!    Play more turns Hoss!  =)

Since Rude and Jon have been playing so many games with me, it's come to a point where I think the advantages I enjoyed earlier are not there anymore.  I find the games getting really close and not so lopsided.  There are numerous times where (as rudy mentioned almost getting me) wasn't far off the mark.  There's probably more truth to that than not, but then a little fortunate die rolling got me by.

Gotta go watch DKR now after all this glowing reviews.  Rudy if you want to watch it again, let me know!

You're like the 80's Robot of SW gossip, dude! Jael's domination is pretty team unspecific - He stole my sweet Jungle Elf build and used it against me! And I've seen Enoto play with quite a few different teams as well (and just kick my ass AGAIN - i don't think you lose as often as you think - we ALL lose to Jael, so we gotta just accept that).

One of my SA friends who I play KILLED me so hard today with a tricked out Fallen Kingdom team. I'd honestly never messed with their reinforcements or even SEEN many people use that team, but this dude drained my soul SO HARD. There's a common they have that you can roll a die when it's adjacent to an enemy common or champion. On a 6 or more, you take control of that other card (and discard your dude) - so I sent my bad ass champion right up on the FK boss and all the sudden, he now has that champion. Made me so sad.

| My 2 Cents on SW

Change yer faction up, yo.

I think I have only played against you as the Phoenix Elves, is that right?  Their style might not be your cup of tea, and each faction plays totally different than the next.  Much like jael has success with his Tundra Orc (does he play anything else?!?!? I kid, I kid....), you might find that the straight forwardness of the TOs match your style better than the sort of finesse of the PEs.

Just my two cents, and one jab ;)

I liked DKR a lot! I saw it twice and actually liked it even better the second time around. I appreciated how ambitious the movie got, and how cool is it to see one of these superhero franchises actually end, rather than just peter out? And it ended on a good note too.

Weirdly, I couldn't shake the feeling that Bane looked like enr0n's brother. "I liked the part when Joker punched you into the applesauce!"

Update: re Summoner Wars: although I pull out the occasional win here and there, in general I'm finding SW to be a demoralization app, especially against ja-el! And he always goes within 5 seconds of me finishing my move, no matter what time it is! Holy shit man, have you uploaded your consciousness into the Plaid Hat servers or something, leaving your meat flesh behind? Anyway, I'm sure you guys could do well for yourselves at the tourney, but there's no way I'm spending that much of my day to get clobbered by people who *might* even be better than you guys! See, this is why everyone needs to go to GenCon. :)

I'll stick to bringing my physical copy and teaching the guys how to play -- maybe I can score a win off two off their n00bishness before they inevitably learn to destroy me.

| Death:TheRise

Saw Batman:therise AKA Dark Knight On The Rise this past week. It was excellent. The 2nd movie in the trilogy is probably my favorite, just because that Joker was so friggen creepy and awesome, but this latest chapter was pretty kick ass itself. I'd like to watch it again, but I'll wait for TV for that. It was deeper and darker than The Avengers, but not as much fun. Still, it wasn't fully emo'd out and had some good action and moments of levity.

Also rented The Muppets 2011 and watched it yesterday. Loved it! I don't remember much of the older Muppets movies or even the show, but it was just really happy and funny and heart warming. It's funny because while I was watching it, some of the original songs so EXACTLY like Flight of the Conchords songs. I was thinking "wow, their style of funny song writing has really made an influence." Turns out though that Brett from the Conchords was the music supervisor and wrote 4 of the 5 original jams. It's totally their songs, it's uncanny!

Also saw recently Haywire which was pretty good. Sorta like Hanna but a little more mainstream. The action was SUPER brutal. Contagion, which was just so-so. It didn't seem dark enough. Spoiler alert, it's about a wide spread pandemic or whatever that kills millions, but it never felt as grim as I imagine that shit would really get if it happened for realsies.

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Great Summoner Wars games going on. Jael is a goddamn brute and always seems to smite me even when I'm THIS close to smacking him down. I have some major tunnel vision with that game and seem to plan all my strats in a vacuum where the other player never summons on their turn. "Ok, next turn I'll move these dudes here and there and BLAM, I'll get him!" Next turn, opponent summons shit in all my lanes and presses my Summoner, jacking up my plans! Gah! Gen Conners - I still think you should do the tourney there. I imagine the 5 hour time limit is if you're winning and going all the way to the finals - not that you can't do it, but let's keep it realsies.

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Never been stung by a bee, let alone a HORNET! Or a wasp? I don't know which one is supposed to suck that most but none of 'em sound fun.

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All you Action Team parents, have fun with the teenage years! It's REALLY FUN. Trust me, it'll be a total cake walk. /emowristslit