DeeKow

Babies and Trees

2011-06-22T14:56:00.002-06:00

So, while I had expected to be blogging about gaming all the time... I'd sort of have to be gaming all the time to blog about it. Not having any gaming really to write about, I sort of just felt like there was nothing worth saying. This was fallacy, however, as I can write about anything I want to... While I'd prefer to blog about gaming, it's not all I have to say, and certainly not the only thing worth writing about in my life. I could title this blog "Rice Recipes" and blog about mowing my lawn, and really, that's my prerogative. Of course, it may alienate readers, and there's no point turning readers away when it's unnecessary. The nice thing about this blog, though, is that it's about me... so, if you're interested in what makes ME tick, then stay awhile and read my non-game related entry today. If you insist that it must be about gaming.. then you're already disappointed in the first place at the lack of content and should probably find something else more worth your time. I don't read other blogs, so I have nothing to recommend either. Good thing you're not paying for this service...

Anyway, one of the things about me is that I could relate almost any activity I'm doing with the quip, "I'd rather be playing a board game". One of the few things that isn't true of is taking my baby daughter for our daily walks. We just go once around the block just about every day... nothing too dramatic. But, while we can hustle and bustle about our lives and get caught in the tedium and anxiety of it all, that one little block every day is full of wonder and joy for my little 5-month-old (and me, truth be told). Every walk, there's something new for her to see or experience or learn, and every walk is truly an adventure in and of itself.

I spend every day worrying about our bills, whether I'm EVER going to get a job, pushing out resume after resume, helping my older daughter with school and life, dealing with student loans, fighting the feeling of worthlessness that comes from realizing I may have started caring about life and my path through it just a little too late... Morgana, on the other hand, doesn't care about any of those things at all. She's still innocent enough to not know how unfair life really is yet (excepting those nasty shots at the pediatrician... bastards). Instead, she gets to learn how to move her body (something substantial for her), make specific sounds, deal with trust, feel true passion (in the fight against the evil nap monster!), etc. And, she gets her daily walks.

We're usually cooped up every day in the house, and while that may be fine, it doesn't offer her anything new. So, I "got" why parents take their kids for walks, and joined the cause. Instead of a stroller, I have a sling that she sits in. It's not confining at all and rather lose (and thus, I ALWAYS have an arm around her), but it's at "grown up level" and lets her move around and see what she wants to see. It's strange to feel like I'm empowering a 5-month-old to learn at her own pace in her own way, but that's pretty much what I'm doing... and yeah, I rock for doing that. Not much else to give myself kudos for these days, so I'll take that personal little pat on the back, thankyouverymuch.

Today, the walk was just inspiring enough to break me out of the writing lull/shell and share with you the experience of it all. Every day she really does grow just a little bit and it's fascinating to see what she'll come up with next.

Today, I learned that she has some really good eye/ear coordination going. A really loud motorcycle started coming our way down the street... nothing really too new. What WAS new though was that she noticed what was making the noise, stared at it as it went by and then turned around in her sling to continue following it as it went on its way behind us. She's been pretty good with being aware of one of us behind her or hidden from view recently, so it was awesome to see the natural development of that particular skill.

The other, even far more cool thing, was the tree. Every day, I've been stopping at one particular tree just before the final corner coming home. We stop at this tree, I hold her out a little and she feels the leaf. Originally it was a just a new texture to check out. Then, it was something to feel and study for her. Then it became a lesson in JUST feeling it and teaching her to be gentle and try not to rip the leaf off. Today, about 10 feet before we even got to the tree, she saw it, started leaning toward it and shoved her hand out. I thought this pretty amazing, and just to take it a step further, I continued past the leaves she usually plays with for just a moment. Sure enough, she started fussing and tried grabbing for them. So, I went back to the leaves, let her play with one and even let her rip the leaf off (after a brief asking of permission from the tree) and play with it, being careful to be sure she didn't get it anywhere near her mouth.

So, yeah, nothing any parent who gives their baby true attention hasn't experienced to be sure, but to see my own daughter... even my second one at that... learn so much and actually become aware of her surroundings and to have her own little expectations... that's pretty amazing. No matter what else slams me in the face, I have a little walk with my daughter every day that is so far removed from all that that it's just as much an adventure for me as it is for her. I'm blessed.

Now, I really should take my phone with me next time to get some pictures... jeez, Dee.

Memorial Weekend: LotR and Dust Tactics

2011-05-30T22:09:00.005-06:00

Encouraged by the fantastic fun of Friday night with Last Night on Earth, the holiday weekend continued on with more gaming madness. Praxus and I both purchased the Lord of the Rings: the Card Game on Saturday in something of a minor coincidence (we both were chomping at the bit, so not a huge surprise). I took it home, cracked the box, and slobbered over brilliant cards and rulebook contained therein as any proper fantasy game nerdboy should. Somewhere along the way, I actually got J interested, and we played a couple rounds with the starter decks included.

Lord of the Rings is a Living Card Game (LCG) and to get the LCG uneducated up to speed, a Living Card Game is much like Collectible Card Games (CCG) such as Magic: The Gathering. The difference is that instead of buying one starter deck of ~50 cards (game depending) and then blowing gobs of cash on booster packs with random assortments of cards based on rarity or buying single cards direct from other folks, you buy the entire card set up front and build decks based on the selection included. Every month or so, more cards and/or objectives are made available in expansion sets and you both increase the cards available to make your decks that way, and have new ways to play the game. Everyone has the exact same card selection available to them and no rarity/luck issues involved. I'd estimate an average player to spend about the same on an LCG as they would a CCG. Someone who's happy with a minute amount of cards and such may not want to pay the up front investment required for an LCG, but you'd never need to be a diehard and spend your lifesavings just to build the perfect deck every single upgrade to the game. Or that's my take, at least.

So... there are games that don't live up to your expectations, games that are far more fun than you could have dreamed and then on the rarest of rare occassions, there's a game that is exactly what you expect it to be; Lord of the Rings is just such a game. I had high expectations, and they were met, it's as simple as that.

Included in the core set are 12 heroes, of which you can pick up to three. Each hero and most cards belong to one of four themes: tactics, leadership, lore and spirit. You take heroes of two or three themes, combine cards that hopefully have some synergy between the themes chosen and make ready to battle the forces of Sauron. That tricky Sauron has a deck of his own. There are three base scenarios included in the game, each with a series of three quests to overcome. The enemy "encounter deck" also is built from a few different sets of cards, scenario depending, so that different cards oppose you depending on the challenge of the scenario you're playing.

J and I took the starter decks, which only include one theme and are only 30 cards as opposed to the "legal" 50 card decks. This gave a really good feel for getting used to the game, but without having a full deck at your disposal, you're entirely limited and forget about taking on anything beyond the easiest scenario. Still, we had a lot of fun, figured out how to play the game, and made it safely through Mirkwood. Our attempt at the second scenario was very short-lived however, and we get our posteriors handed to us on a silver platter in no time.

After the game session, rules clarifications and experience in hand... I took a shot at building a deck based around tactics and lore that I dubbed "Assassination is Progress" based on the abilities of Legolas that give him the ability to progress a quest beyond what is typically normal every time he helps to kill something. I gave it a trial run that didn't do all too well, and ended up making some minor adjustments based on that experience and feedback from players at Board Game Geeks.

I took the revised deck to ye ol' Crib of Praxus the next day and prepared to do battle alongside my trusty companion with his mighty three-theme deck of leadership, lore and spirit. The easy scenario went down like a chump and there was much merriment. The real game began when we took on the second, more challenging scenario. Due to misunderstanding some rules, we had a harder time of it than we should have and couldn't quite beat the stupid thing. Once the rule was clarified, however, we nailed it, and felt very proud of ourselves, as we should have. It was a significant challenge, to be sure, and our pride was well earned. Then, we tried the third, and mightiest, scenario, got our butts handed to us, lost all self-respect and cried the bitter tears of defeat-by-Sauron. The end.

All in all, the game is exactly as challenging as it should be, in my opinion. The basic scenario fits the bill for people that want to play a game based on Lord of the Rings, and have a good time doing so. The second scenario is for players like me who enjoy the theme, want a fun game, and enjoy a challenge - it's very doable, but takes some effort to win. The third scenario is for the min/maxing metagame geeks who will tear the game apart, study the game theory mappings and pull off the more subtle tricks of the game the designers couldn't have even thought up, themselves. In short, it meets all game skill level needs and does so with some serious fun in true Lord of the Rings style.

But wait... there's more... after our sound and proper defeat, we took a bit of a pallet cleanser with Marvel vs. Capcom 3 via XBox. Buttons were mashed, lights flashed ... and I don't remember much else. Then, the icing on the cake of the day... Praxus brought out his other newfound treasure: Dust Tactics. DT is a fast (and I mean REALLY fast) miniatures wargame based on a World War II era earth that has been somewhat infused with alien technology. The rules (for the basic game) are extremely simple and did I mention the game is fast? I've always loved the idea of miniatures games, never had the cash for random boosters or hordes of armies, and never had the time to spend hours per turn figuring out movement rules and firing trajectories... in short, this game was the perfect introduction into miniature wargames without all the crap I really can't handle (my downfall, not the genres, believe me). The theme is fun and combat is simplistic in nature. Still, the rules and unit stats definitely make for a very strategic game that I can't wait to eek the living daylights out of. It's even got me considering attempting to paint my own squads... (those poor, poor miniatures).

Gods, I love holiday weekends...

Last Night on Earth

2011-05-27T23:21:00.006-06:00

Well, it's been... a long time. I'll go ahead and brush the dust off this blog and wipe the slate clean. For those catching up, WoW is long since gone for me, I've bounced from game to game, found a home in the guild called Coven, am doing the MMO thing in EQ2 and LotRO, and have found friends to do tabletop gaming with. I'm also getting ready to start my MBA with emphasis in either Project Management or Global Management next month. Oh, and YP and I successfully bred a Pixie-Kow. That's that.

Praxus, the guild leader of Coven, and I have started a tabletop gaming group out of a pure desire to roll the hell out of some dice. Fortunately, we both coincidentally live in the same city... commutes for board gaming are a bitch. Praxus has so many board games that there's really no danger of us ever running out of things to do. I also have my favorites and will be supplying games for some nights as well (though, really, he has a game collection to be envious of, and I just wanna play with his toys *shakes rattle*).

Tonight, we had our first pseudo-official get together with Fantelle, wife of Praxus, and two other folks I had the pleasure of meeting for the first time. Our poison of the eve': Last Night on Earth, The Zombie Game. We had initially planned on playing the Lord of the Rings LCG (living card game), but long-story-short, it didn't work that way. As the group got established faster than anticipated, we ended up improvising and the ease of set up and lack of space required (comparitively to other "grown up" board games) made LNoE a good choice.

We had the game up and running in very little time, with Praxus being able to explain the rules of the game fairly well on the fly. Simply put, one player plays the zombies, and the rest of the players take on the role of heroes combating the hoard of zombies, while trying to survive the night. There are actually various scenarios that you can play; ours was that we were required to find explosives and destroy three zombie spawning spots before the sunrise.

The hero characters each have their own abilities, which are augmented by many items, abilities and events that you can play throughout the game. Trouble is... the zombies have their own arsenal of cards to wreak havoc against you with, as well. The game play is fairly simple - the zombies play cards, move, fight whoever they are on the same space as, and then the heroes get to move or search the area, move, shoot, and fight zombies they are in the same space as. This simplicity of game mechanics makes for a very light system that is very playable straight out of the box. The added cards and sub-mechanics of each scenario ensure that the game is never played the same twice and keeps it very fresh and fun. Praxus also brought the characters and zombies to life very well with his fantastic painting of the miniature game pieces, to be sure.

The actual flavor of the game is what really sold me here, though. With all the flavor of the cards, characters and abilities, it's easy to get into the humor and feel of the game. The game itself really became a story that easily could have fit into any B-rate horror flick. We started out with some zombies, easy objectives, goals nearly complete... something I thought was turning out to be a wash. Then, a few simple rolls of the dice and cards being played and we were being entirely overrun by a mass of zombies coming from every direction. As you actually pick a new character if you die (and that character becomes a super zombie), we ran through a slew of heroes in no time at all. Then, finally, in a last ditch push to complete the objective literally at the very last turns of the game... I made a superbly timed movement roll, Fantelle destroys about 8 zombies en masse with a clever toss of some gasoline and a flare... the fact that she also took herself out in this blaze of glory is so gravy I can taste the turkey.

All in all, we laughed our asses off through the whole game, comparing most of it to the movie scenes we were easily playing out from start to end. The mechanics are simple, the flavor is fantastic and the fact that you can never really know what to expect from turn to turn keep this game rolling at a really great pace. Too much fun. Thanks for the fun Coven and Co... see you next Friday.