Weekend Roundup
Friday was pretty busy. I spent the morning at Softitler for a morning of training and aptitude testing (more on that later), then I went home, fussed around the house, and sat down and tried to match wits with my Spider-man PS2 game. Dina came home, we had a light dinner, and then she went over to Suzie’s for an Eicon reunion evening.
As you know, I eventually finished the game, but not before I took a two-hour break to record Firefly and John Doe, read through an early Morrison run on JLA, and generally had a very lazy boy’s evening.
Dina eventually came home at about three o’clock in the morning. This meant that Saturday was entirely lazy. Well, almost. We eventually stirred at around eleven o’clock, I tidied the apartment in anticipation of Dan and Libby’s visit later in the evening, and we tried to figure out what to get Dina’s godson, Colin, for his fifth birthday.
In the afternoon, we went to the nearest Toys R Us to shop, and, after much scanning, we found a perfect gift. Then, we went to the nearby mall for some grownup shopping, which for me, curiously, featured another visit to a toy store. There’s a toy/hobby shop in Carrefour Angrignon that has a wide selection of old RPGs, board games, overpriced CCGs, and whatever is the current hot kid’s collectible toy. They have the oddest inventory, but they never mark it down to reflect the fact that the game has been cancelled or the company dissolved (well, that’s not strictly true: it did take them about three years to discount their Dragon Dice booster packs by 50%, at which point I bought them all [grin]), and they won’t negotiate.
When I visited them, they didn’t have time to negotiate. The store was full of kids and parents looking for the new version of Battle Tops, marketed around another Japanese kids show called Bey Blade. There entrance to the small store was blocked with begging kids and disbelieving parents. I made only a cursory examination of the shelves that interested me, saw that neither the inventory or the prices had changed, and left.
When Dina finished her shopping, we went home, had a quick bite of lunch, wrapped Colin’s gift, and then jumped back in the car to deliver the gift. It was a tractor-trailer/toy car carrying case, with twenty little cars included and space for twenty more. Colin was in a five year old boy’s version of heaven, and he was nice enough to let his three year old brother play with some of his new cars. He spent the rest of the afternoon pushing the trailer from one side of the living room to another, ferrying cars from the gas station by the television set to the garage under the coffee table. His imagination had full reign.
However, he did have some trouble understanding that the gift was for his birthday. Because his actual birth date was Tuesday, he thought that we were only “pretending” that Saturday was his birthday. Very cute.
After the visit, we went home, changed, and met Dan and Libby at our favourite Indian restaurant for a terrific evening. They had just come back from a European vacation (they missed the flooding, thank goodness, though the places they visited certainly showed evidence of the horrible summer), far away from Indian cuisine, so they were thrilled to be reunited with their favourite dishes. The food and service were, as usual, friendly and relaxed, and we had a good time of catching up and hearing about their plans for their upcoming move to New York (when I say upcoming, I mean Tuesday).
They came back to our apartment for an allergy-abbreviated visit, and we watched some clips from the Schoolhouse Rock DVD I picked up a couple of weeks ago. Dan didn’t own it, and Libby had never seen any of these cartoon informercials. Naturally, we started her out with “I’m Just a Bill” and then worked through the best of the rest. She was in stitches–especially when Dan hummed along with the songs.
Sunday was cold and grey. After another lazy morning, where we watched our taped shows, I walked down to the video store in search of a new videogame to occupy my spare moments. There was nothing new or interesting to buy, but I was able to rent Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat for a week, and I’m having fun playing it. It feels a little like Medievil II, but there’s the added bonus of naval battles, so there’s plenty of opportunity for me to quote 7th Sea cards and shout “Argggh!” when my cannon shots go astray.
Of course, there aren’t any instructions, so I’m just winging it.
In the evening, we watched The Matrix on TV. Dina had slept through most of it the one time she tried to watch it at Scott’s apartment, so I fielded questions, pointed out missing parts of the film (they took out the first “There is no spoon” reference, but left in Keanu’s quip in the elevator shaft. Oops!). Dina particularly appreciated the moment when Neo sees the Matrix code inside the Matrix. Now we’re both looking forward to the sequels.
But not quite as much as Agent Smith’s other venture–the Lord of the Rings.
After Work
Week Five
On Friday, I went to Softitler for an aptitude test as a captions transcriber/editor. I was less interested in the job, which paid only a fraction more than EI, than I was in the process. Maggie works there once or twice a week, and it sounded like an interesting process. I’ve always been interested in the process of translation and adaptation of texts to different modes and media, and closed captions are certainly a different media: the captions have to identify characters by name, maintain that identification by placement and repetition, and indicate dramatically relevant sound effects (and even song lyrics in the background).
Then there are issues of representation and style: do you caption “going to” when the character clearly says “gonna?” Do you caption every stutter in a documentary? How long should the captions last on screen?
The testing had three parts: transcription, editing, and then general grammar and punctuation. The transcription and editing portions were pretty straightforward, but it was interesting to realize how actively I had to listen to the audio tracks and how, in the editing portion, seeing a mistake in the caption made me “hear” the correct audio track incorrectly. The human mind dislikes dissonance, and tries to reconcile discrepancies any way it can. That realization was worth the morning’s time.
The grammar and spelling test was amusing, as usual. Most of the errors involved the your/you’re and its/it’s discrepancies, but I had a bit of a chuckle when I corrected the spelling of “erraticsism” as “eroticisim.”
If nothing more comes of the morning than a funny story, then that’s okay with me. If I get a couple of days’ worth of work each week, all the better.
Ritualized Tuesdays – Thursday Edition
So, after I had blogged about the Wednesday gaming night, I went to the dining room, set out my cards, and started work on revamping my 7th Sea decks. I had finished modifying my Amiralty deck into a General Gunner deck, using the wrong Montaigne captain, keeping three allies, and using about every cannon adventure I could find, and I was about halfway through my final crew selection for my Explorer’s Control deck when Jon called.
He wanted to know if I was free to play. I certainly was, so I gathered up my cards and went.
The occasion was two-fold: one, I wanted to test the changed decks, and two, Jon had received a box of Strange Vistas boosters that we had agreed to split. After opening our share of the packs, wherein I found some of the cards I didn’t have (Torvo Espada and Imshi, in particular), trading for rares and uncommons that we both needed in multiple, we fielded our decks.
First, the General Gunner deck faced the Black Freighter/Robert Mechant deck. My deck won both matches pretty easily, because I could fire cannons at a distance, use cannons to end boarding attacks, and launch cannon attacks immediately when the Freighter entered my sea. This proved fairly effective.
Then, we played my Control deck against John’s Der Kire deck. Control decks represent an alternate victory condition in 7th Sea: rather than sinking my opponent’s captain, I’m trying to attach a Control Sea Attachment to each of the five seas, and end a turn with all five in play. Each attachment costs between 10 and 12 points of a specific skill to put into play, and can be discarded by my opponent if he pays an equal amount of a different skill, or uses a card effect to discard the attachment. Once in play, the Control attachment gives me a specific bonus, and allows me to search my deck for another Control attachment.
I chose Explorers as my faction because they’re pretty fast and versatile faction: Captain McCormick can be used to search my deck for an artifact or item adventure, and the Hurricane ship (not his ship, mind you) gives all crew a +2 bonus to a skill if they have an adventure that increases that skill (so, a +2 cannon adventure on a crew with 0 cannon skill means that that crew can produce 4 points of cannon skill, thanks to the ship).
In theory, I can build up five crew to produce 10-12 points of each skill fairly quickly, and then I can use artifact adventures to move quickly and lay down all five Control attachments in a single turn. If my opponent isn’t prepared to produce the large numbers of skill required to discard those attachments, I’ve won the game.
It didn’t quite work out that way, but I did manage to lay down four such attachments in a single turn, and I was one sea away of laying down the last (the only person who could sail the ship was also the person I needed to play the attachment). That delay allowed Jon’s ship to sail up and blow me to smithereens.
Of course, that was only the first version of the deck. The current version of the deck should be even faster. I think.
Clearly, the Controller Wasn\’t Defective
I’ve just defeated Spider-Man: The Movie for Playstation 2 [hurrah!] and I’ve accomplished a couple of personal firsts:
- I finished the game at the normal, rather than the easiest, level of difficulty.
- I didn’t use a single cheat code.
(I know that isn’t saying much, but bear with me. After all, I’m terrible at video games.)
It wasn’t always pretty, but I got through it. The toughest levels had to be “Race Against Time” (where I had about a minute and a half to defuse seven bombs and not be killed by marauding robots) and “Oscorp’s Secret Weapon” (where I had to destroy ten targets while being chased by homing missiles and more marauding robots). Curiously, I ended up beating both levels when I put the TV on MUTE–I guess the sounds of the explosions shook my game [grin].
So, what shall I play next?
Ritualized Tuesdays – Wednesday Edition
The Tuesday Night of Gaming was postponed to last night due to the STC Wine & Cheese (however, aside from the Wine and Cheese, it was a poor excuse for a postponement). Naturally, some of the other regulars couldn’t attend on the new night, so the event was entirely retro in nature: just me and Jon, with a rotating system of observers: Cecil, Chris, then Ramsay.
Jon had been inspired since we last split a pair of boxes of Horizon’s Edge, so we played 7th Sea. I hadn’t touched my decks since my Sunday games with Francois, but I thought myself equal to the task of putting up a good show against whatever Jon had in mind.
I was, as ever, horribly wrong.
Jon’s first deck used the first unaligned ship and captain combo available in the game: Der Kire, a holy Eisen (that is, German) mercenary with his ship, the Eisen Dreizack, a nearly indestructible little vessel, and bunch of Die Kreuzritter secret society members. Essentially, it was a deck full of powerful duelists, with a ship that could absorb lots of damage thanks to damage attachments, which represent events like broken masts, or holes in the hull, and yet could repair the damage very quickly.
I played my zippy little Explorers deck, which built up astonishingly quickly, yet couldn’t muster the raw firepower needed to put a significant dent in Der Kire’s crew (or the Eisen Dreizack’s hull, for that matter). I was loaded for bear, but as soon as Jon’s ship mounted a boarding attack, he simply absorbed my damage with damage attachments, and then marched forward and smashed through my crew like so many clay figurines. Ugh!
In the next game, I played my Admiralty deck against Jon’s new and improved Black Freighter deck. He tried something different with this one: he used the Black Freighter (the big ship) along with Robert Mechant, the other Black Freighter captain. Robert is the “wrong” captain for the Freighter, because he can’t sail the ship on his own. However, Robert has an excellent special ability to bring skeletal crew into play for nearly no cost if he has at least three non-skeletal crew in play. This ability is of limited use, because his proper ship only has a crew maximum of 7. The Black Freighter, however, has a crew max. of 13.
Jon didn’t have any trouble sailing the ship. I tried to set up my usual blockades and allies, but, once again, I couldn’t deal damage in sufficiently large amounts to slow him down significantly, and his crew devoured mine.
(After the gaming evening, we discussed the strategy of mismatching captains and their ships. It made a huge difference when I played Melinda Gosse as captain of the Uncharted Course in my dueling deck, but it obviously improved the Black Freighter deck. Then Jon mentioned the prospect of using the General (the other Montaigned captain) on the Predateur des Mers (the Admiral’s ship). Using the General would mean that I could keep an extra two crew on board, reaching a crew max. of 12 if I used the Hammocks card, which I almost always do. Perhaps that’s an idea for next time.)
Our final 7th Sea game pitted the Admiralty deck against Jon’s Tyle/Sea Dogs deck. This game was another loss for me, due largely to an unpleasant discovery about Tyler’s power as Captain: If he performs a Cannon attack that kills one of my crew, he can tap a crew to untap another one of his crew with Sailing of 5 or more. Likewise, if he kills someone during a boarding attack, he can tack one to untack another with a Cannon of 5 or more. Naturally, everyone meets these requirements–especially Tyler.
The catch: the ability has no limit. He can do this for as long as he has untacked crew–and since he has a big ship, and doesn’t attack until he’s loaded, then that means I was staring down the barrel of quite a few 15-point cannon attacks.
When we both realized this, Jon said I could stock the full complement of Purple Heaves cards against him, and he couldn’t complain once.
But that wasn’t the end of the evening, though it was certainly the end of my excursion on the seas. We then played a game of Warlord: I used my newly-trimmed (and legal) Terak Justicebringer deck against his new Tepheroth/Slovien deck. The key to Jon’s deck is Slovien-a cleric who gains a hit point every time he kills a character with a melee strike or a spell. There aren’t many offensive cleric spells, but with Tepheroth as his warlord, all his elves can cast first-level wizard spells such as Blast, Magic Missile, and Curse of Heartless Lies. One Slovien reach six hit points during the game.
However, my slimmed Terak deck performed very well. I had him armed and in the front rank by the second turn. Had I drawn an earlier Charge, he could have been there in the first turn. I didn’t have the capacity to inflict multiple wounds and I had a dearth of ranged strikes, but I had just enough defense, and just enough offense to win the game.
I drew through the deck pretty quickly, played most of the important characters (specifically Vogurn and Garth Drac), and have some definite ideas about how I would play the deck differently in the future. I might consider adding an extra Warlord, such as Sir Robert, for additional melee strikes.
Now, I’m heading back to the drawing board for 7th Sea. I’m going to convert my Explorer’s deck into a Control deck. I think that might mean a mismatched Captain and Ship.
Spinner Rack
You may not have noticed, but I own a lot of comics.
A little under 3000, and getting littler every week.
You don’t see most of them because they’re stored in about twelve long boxes in the jumbled office of junk (I remember when my entire collection fit at the foot of my bed). Sure, you can see the graphic novels on the bookshelves, but a lot of the treasured books are bagged, boarded and boxed away…and this, despite the fact that I own a spinner rack.
You know what I’m talking about–those pentagon-column carousels that you see in drug stores, newstands and flea markets. They’re really expensive to buy, even second-hand, and I acquired mine from someone’s trash pile during moving season (garbage-picking is a rare activity for me, but this was obviously a treasure waiting to be claimed). All that it needed was a supporting pin and a large washer, and a little dusting. It very quickly became a conversation piece in my apartment.
This model rack has fifty slots, which hold about six bagged and boarded comics each. There are also thirty slots sized for paperbacks (or Archie Digests). Back when my monthly reserve list numbered at least twenty books, I used the rack as a preliminary filing system. Everything went into the rack, and, at the end of the year or thereabouts, I’d clear the rack and restock it.
I think I’ve had that spinner rack for six years, now that I think of it.
Then I moved three times in two years, and the spinner rack saw very little use. I lugged it around from place to place. Finally, it has a quiet little nook in the living room, away from the flow of traffic, between the window and the fireplace. It’s something that people remark up when they see the living room for the first time. Unfortunately, it’s basically empty.
Not any longer.
I finally found the energy/inspiration/boredom today to dig out all twelve long boxes, rummage through them, and pull out about 300 of my favourite comics. I aimed for a representative sampling of the things I liked over time, and books and mini-series that I thought other people might enjoy browsing through. I didn’t include anything that I already have in trade paperback format (most of the early Valiant stuff, for example) or that I intend to buy in trade format–though I suppose that’s one way to induce change in the display.
So, what made the cut? I was surprised by the choices. Very little Vertigo, a hodge-podge of Valiant, and quite a few books that I enjoyed before I started collecting books–titles such as Simonson’s Thor and the Jim Shooter/George Perez cira 200 Avengers run. There are a couple of titles and storylines I’m waffling about including, but by and large, it’s a good set of books.
Oh, you want specifics? Well, come over and see for yourself!
Odd-Hour Annoyances
Every other night, for the last two weeks, Dina and I have been jangled awake by the double-ring of my fax machine. We’re on someone’s persistent fax broadcast list (advertising cruises, cottage rental, and other out-of-demographic products), and we don’t like it one bit.
Unrelated item: For the last two days, Videotron’s DNS servers have apparently been down, preventing me from enjoying my usual morning browse on my computer. in the late afternoons, however, all is well.
Puzzling.
Weekend Roundup
I’ve had a surprisingly active time since my last post. Nothing job related, unfortunately, but certainly enough to fill the day.
On Wednesday, I negotiated a fairly significant Buffy CCG trade with the local Watcher (tournament coordinator and general game promoter on behalf of the CCG). I say this is a significant trade because I’m fairly certain I got the better end of the deal. In fact, I know this to be true. I’ll have to make up the difference with him later.
We met downtown for the exchange, and I listened to the Watcher complain about the difficulties of getting the regulars at various gaming stores to show up at another store for a tournament. Gaming politics are tough to manage, as I remember from my involvement with Middle-Earth, and he’s a Buffy fan rather than a CCG fan, so he was having trouble bridging the gap–or accepting that the gap couldn’t be bridged. Plus, he gave away an insane number of prizes at his tournaments entirely at his own expense, and without charging any cover fees. Such generosity can easily sour when it’s not reciprocated.
Later that night, I received an email informing me that he had quit as the Watcher, devolving the tournament coordinator responsibilities to the individual store owners.
Hopefully, he’ll come back ’round, and I’ll see him at a few games. I owe him cards!
After the trade, I dashed off to Paragraphe Books to attend the early portion of the STC Executive meeting. As Past President, my duties are almost entirely ceremonial–I pick up the mail, and answer questions about what decisions were made in the past, but above all, I’m to let go and ease myself out of the volunteer position. This is the first time in three years that I haven’t been involved in the planning of the regular meetings, for example. It’s high time someone else had a turn.
Unfortunately, I had dinner plans, so I couldn’t stay. I raced back home for dinner with Dina (turns out, Guislaine was feeling under the weather and couldn’t make it), and so we watched Monsters Inc on the PS2 DVD player, and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.
On Thursday, I sorted through half a box of starters and half a box of boosters for the 7th Sea CCG, which had been set aside for me by the good folks at Quantum Cards. The other halves of the boxes were set aside for Jon. I spend much of the morning happily sorting through the various rares and new uncommons, putting the extras aside for the next time I wanted to bribe someone into playing the game (I’ll let you have the first one for free…heh-heh-heh), and thinking up new deck ideas. But first, I had to tweak my existing decks, and let me tell you that these new cards fit the bill perfectly.
In the evening , I brought the cards over to Jon, and hung around with Dave and his friends as they prepared characters for their bi-weekly D&D game. As always, it looks intriguing, but complicated and vaguely arbirtrary. Of course, I could just be flashing back to my own early memories of playing the game–but those memories are almost twenty years old (gasp!).
Later that evening, Jon emailed me a list of cards he was missing from his part of the cards. We’re about three cards short of having two complete sets in those two boxes. Now, that’s neat!
On Friday, I spent the better part of the day trying to get past a particularly annoying mission in the Spider-Man: the Movie video game. It was primarily a stealth and puzzle mission, and it was fairly unforgiving. However, it wasn’t nearly as unforgiving as the subsequent stealth and puzzle mission, so I really shouldn’t have complained so much at the time. According to the walkthroughs (which haven’t been helpful in the least, by the way. The main survival tip is “don’t die,” without even a mention as to how I should accomplish this task [grin]), I have about five missions left to accomplish, and then I’m done.
This is actually the first game I’ve tried to finish on the normal difficulty setting, as opposed to the easy or kid mode settings, so I’m pretty happy with what I’ve managed to accomplish. Already I’ve started looking around for another game to buy or rent. I’m considering a true RPG style video game on the order of Onimusha 1, which has just be released at a discounted price. Of course, I’m open to suggestions.
Friday evening, Dina went over to Jen’s to join some friends in a Pride and Prejudice marathon. Actually, it was a Colin Firth swoon-a-thon. While she was out, Dave and Andrew came over. We ordered pizza, played a couple of games, including Roborally, which I haven’t played in about a year, and basically just stayed up until Dina came home.
I managed to win the game of Roborally by default, as is usually. The game is never about winning as much as it’s about mistaking left for right and falling of the side of the game board. Which Dave and Andrew did often enough for me to win. Very odd.
Saturday was a very lazy day, as Saturdays have been of late. We watched TV. We shopped. We watched some of the news shows which we’d recorded. We wondered why the VCR sometimes records show, and decides to ignore the programs at other times.
Sunday was the Buffy tournament. I went to the store with about half an hour to spare. Only, the store wasn’t open yet. Fortunately, I’m enough of a familiar face at Quantum that they took pity on me and let me in a little early. I wasn’t alone for long. It turned out to be a very busy day at the store, with a group attending a DC Heroclix tournament, casual Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh players, and us four lonely souls playing at the Buffy tourney.
My Buffy deck performed fairly well, but I was caught out by a Book Learning, which changed the trait used in a Buffy-Angel fight from butt-kicking to smarts, and so what should have ended with Buffy winning and getting a victory point instead ended in a tie and a loss of a point, and I was also unprepared (again!) for Francois’ play of Oh, The “Other” Cemetary, which moved my Buffy-only challenges to a different location. But, despite this, all the games were close on points, so I can’t complain–I can only adjust my deck for next time.
I met a new player, and saw some disturbing new strategies at the tournament–the new player plays in the harsher, more cutthroat environment of Hyper Borea, where if the card or strategy isn’t broken, then it shouldn’t be played. I don’t like playing that way, myself, because it’s neither friendly nor fun, but I can certainly build my decks with those strategies in mind.
The only down side to the tournament was that no one remembered to bring rules or a copy of the latest rulings, so we had to negotiate some of the trickier rule points. Normally, I’m much more organized.
I placed third of four, Francois placed second, and everyone left with participation prizes. It was a pleasant afternoon.
The afternoon spilled over to the evening as Francois came over for the usual post-tourney gaming. We had dinner, and then dissected the day’s Buffy games. Finally, we played some 7th Sea and Warlords. I played my modified Admiralty deck against his Unaligned Crew/Avoid Fate deck, which should help him absorb up to 12 points of damage each turn with his captain alone. It didn’t work quite as well as he thought it might, but it was only the first iteration. My altered deck worked pretty well, but I know how I’m going to alter the deck for Tuesday’s events.
In Warlord, I played my Terak deck against his Elf deck. The results weren’t pretty for me, in either game. In the first game, I got back into the game thanks only to a stroke of bad die rolling that saw Francois flubbing eight consecutive attacks on my spent Warlord. The ninth attack, however, worked just fine.
I’m considering paring down my deck from the current 62 card count to the 50 card minimum. This time, I’ll account for my Warlord.
After Work
Week Four
Now that my speed record for finding new work has lapsed and I find myself in the middle region of my distance record, I’m only going to give weekly updates on the search for a new job / contract.
So, this is it. This marks the beginning of my fourth week without employment. The weather’s fine, I’m catching up on my projects, and I’m scanning the usual employment sources (online, print, networking, etc.).
Midnight, Mass. #6
The villain of the piece is a collector of magical artifacts who is jealous of both the Kadmon’s collection of artifacts and their involvement in the realms of magic and power. He’s nothing more than a hobbyist, with no training and talent, but only a dangerous acquisitive desire.
When two of the three Sisters of Kali bring him the contents of the Kadmons vault, he unwisely attempts to wield the items, and suffers a fate appropriate for a dilletante.
Fortuntely, the Kadmons are able to halt the damage before it becomes extensive. the collector dies, and the final page of the issue describes how his possessions auctioned among other collectors–including items more dangerous
Again, Rozum excels are crafting little vignettes of the weird: a tea kettle that whistles Rachmaninoff tunes, a haunted spoon, half a doll (the other half is in another dimension, held by a missing girl), and, as a gag, a perfectly-ordinary tiki sculpture picked up at a New Jersey garage sale. He’s also connecting Midnight, Mass. with Xombi by referring to Dr. Sugarman–a villain from the early issues of that Milestone title.
There are two more issues of this series. It wasn’t designed to be a limited series, and I hope that DC continues to publish it, or that Rozum finds another venue for it.