Gotta Sink the Bismark

Table Talk

Oh RJA, the fun we shall have.

Kung Fu

My test is postponed until January. There's no way I can be ready by Saturday; this is a huge test. I need time to prepare, to keep from bringing the suck.

My lovely wife had her first class in a year tonight. She did very well. It's got to be a very difficult and scary thing, being away that long, and knowing the long hill to be climbed. She's pretty awesome like that.

Xmas Status

Baking is proceeding at an amazing pace!

Shopping is coming along. Serdic and I are going to do some more shopping on Thursday which should hopefully move the ball closer to the end zone. RJA may even join us, if Serdic is still willing to let him in the car.

Game Night

So, with Serdic, Prime, Mr. T and the redoubtable Null (deeply missed during his absences) we got Game Night underway. Dinner was in the form of a huge tortierre. Mmm, tortierre.

The second game of magic was quite a bit more fun than the first one, mostly (I suspect) because we played with the star-arrangement 2-enemies layout. 2 red decks and 3 black; I played a huge black fattie deck which just got obscene once Serdic dropped a Howling Mine. When I'm dropping a 5/5 every turn, well, things aren't going to end well.

Null cloned my Stuffy Doll, twice. The nerve.

We also got in a game of Eve (Serdic, Null and myself). I'm not terribly impressed. Since I'm working on a CCG for my own amusement, I wanted to figure out what it is about Eve that turned me off in our last game. I think I have it down to two key points.

1. There is no player interaction outside of combat that I can see. You put out regions, build them up, build ships, and collect revenue, but each player does it more or less in a vacuum.

2. Combat is too simple. Because the attacker picks which location to attack, you know what enemy units you'll need to fight. Because combat is basically power vs damage on both sides, with no special abilities, tricks, reactions or anything else, you can pretty much look at the table and figure out whether you'll win or not. Fighting is actually somewhat secondary to the sterile mental mathematics.

In Magic, by way of comparison, you have a fuck-ton of ways to mess with people without actually attacking them, and attacking is such a huge question mark that you frequently can't make more than an educated guess about what might happen until you go for it.

Note to self: ensure lots of opportunities for player interaction outside of combat, and make sure combat isn't obvious/too simple.

What a Relief!

Knowing that I don't have an imminent test hanging over my head, with everything else I still need to do this holiday season, has put a bit of a spring back in my step. The xmas break is rapidly approaching, the festive season is upon us, and massive quantities of food and alcohol await consumption.

Good times, good friends; does it get any better than this?