Happy Birthday, Dad!
A toast to your birthday!
Oh, heck, let’s have another!
Where Did All the Time Go?
Oh, now I remember…
(And I’ve only had the laptop for a week!)
Mom Thinks the Baby Looks Like Me…
I knew she had X-Ray vision. I knew it!
Ritualized Wednesdays
Oh, last night�s gaming event was good for so many reasons. Three, in fact:
1.) Warlords Call to Arms came out: Yes, the player-designed expansion with cards that do nothing but increase the power curve in the game finally arrived at the local store. I picked up my usual allotment, this time promising myself that it would be the last such allotment I�d buy, because my two little card boxes are finally full. I don�t know what
I picked a fair assortment of cards, then I helped Jon open his cards, and finally, we made some trades. I did manage to pick up a card that fits perfectly with my Black Tom deck: an assassin�s apprentice who is strong than Tom in combat, but who can�t perform any actions of any kind while Tom is untapped. Plus, he�s non-unique, so I�ll need to trade for two more of him.
2.) Dina came for a visit: Ritualized Wednesdays were once Ritualized Tuesdays when Dina and I would meet Jon for coffee. This worked out best when we all worked downtown, but Dina�s been an infrequent visitor since she�s been working out in the West Island and other parts. Well, last night she worked late and fancied a coffee before going home (she�s back on coffee in modest servings).
So, she came by, chatted, had a coffee (which got the baby all sorts of excited, she reports), and then left us to our games.
Unexpected visits from Dina always make me happy!
And last, but not least�
3.) Jeremiah Now won a game: Yes, I played the newest version of Jeremiah Now against Jon�s Vesten deck, and I won the first game thanks to a barrage of small cannon attacks, preceeded by one big cannon attack. I lost the second game in the face of Jon�s powerful weather cards, including a revamped Theah Eats the Weak that inflicts hits equal to my ship�s move cost +4. Absorbing 7 points of damage when I�m not ready wasn�t easy. In fact, it was impossible! And the third game came down to a duel between the captains, and it could have gone differently if I�d played my boarding attacks differently. I did, however, manage to lob grenades at his crew, which I thought was hilarious.
In other games, Jeremiah Then proved more than a match for Captain Reis� cannon-happy crew, thanks to a timely boarding followed by an enhanced post-boarding cannoon attack. The only card I added to this deck was a copy of the Sea Dogs patron, Queen Elaine, which can be sunk to allow me to take two actions in a row.
Then, we played Warlord with some of our new cards. Jon�s Terror deck decimated my assassins by the third turn, but I drew enough cards to reinforce my ranks if only I could have won intitiative. I lost, and should have lost the game, but we decided to play it through. The game lastest eight more impressive turns. Jon was soon reduced to just his warlord, but I couldn�t attack it with my dozen front-rank characters because I didn�t have any weapons attached to my characters. In fact, I didn�t have any weapons at all in the deck, which was a conscious design choice on my part.
All in all, a very strong evening of gaming.
Happy Birthday, Mom!
Have a wonderful celebration this weekend! Wish we could be there with you!
Closure
Well, the long wait is over. After eight years, I�ve finally been compensated for my last week of work at the Fete aux pays de l�erable.
And, as foreseen, I received pennies on the dollar, which amounts to little more than a bus pass for April.
My losses are negligle compared to most other people who worked at that failed enterprise, and especially those who are owed months of back pay and received a pittance for only a fraction of their unpaid labour. The settlement only covers the last round of paycheques to bounce, but some people never got paid at all.
And the fun part? I�m pretty sure I have to declare this as employment income on my taxes.
Full schadenfreude disclosure: At least I can take comfort in the fact that the three partners�the bankrupt, the lawyer, and the guy who hides all his assets in his wife�s name�are busy suing the pants off each other.
Closure II
A year ago, I moved my blog to Blogger Pro to take advantage of more options and greater stability. I looked at the year-long subscription as payment for past and present services.
However, despite its benefits, Blogger Pro isn�t really full-service, so I�ve decided to jump on the Moveable Type bandwagon. Not only will this transfer save me money, but I�ll also have control over my own content and comments.
Closure III
Not only am I a Past-President of the Montreal STC, but I�m soon to be a former Senior member. Yes, I�ve finally reached the benchmark of being a paying member for five consecutive years, and have earned/bought the rank of Senior member.
I�ve also let my STC membership lapse in the face of terrible exchange rates and the absence of employer subsidy
Amusingly, the lapse was finalized five days after the STC announcement my new rank as Senior member.
I can�t believe it�s been five years already. Oh well, this doesn�t mean that I�ll disappear from STC events�all this means is that I�ll have to pay full price at those STC events!
A Positive Sign, of Sorts
Last year, I volunteered as a playtester for the Lord of the Rings trading card game out of a desire to see what the playtesting process was like, and to have a chance to get in on the game on the ground floor.
At the same time, I paid attention to the promotional articles appearing in gaming magazines to drum up support for the game. One of the recurring points is that Decipher was positioning Lord of the Rings directly against Wizard of the Coast/Hasbro�s Magic:The Gathering in terms of gameplay appeal, tournament structure, and popularity.
Well, I can�t speak to those points because I haven�t played Magic for more than six years ,and I don�t particularly enjoy Lord of the Rings, but I can say that Decipher has achieved at least one point of similarity:
Lord of the Rings now has a banned list Which means that the game has some cards that are overpowered and appear in far too many tournament-level decks, which implies that there are enough people at the tournaments to complain about the homogeneity of deck construction, which means that there are enough casual players to have a percentage of
So, in that sense, Decipher has achieved its goals. On the other hand, it means that there are now fifteen unplayable cards in everyone�s collections, which is too bad.
And I�m not just saying that because they�re some of my favourite cards, and that I have them in the only two archive decks I own [grin].
Comments Are the First Casualty of Warblogging
As the war goes on, I find it interesting to see how some of my regular blog reads have changed. Writers are going out of their way to fight the propaganda battles for their beliefs, sometimes using the most skewed/lapsed logic I’ve ever seen.
Ordinarily, I’d try to point out some of their excesses in a comment, but such is their fervour that I risk engaging in a protracted debate full of willful misinterpretations and inflated rhetoric, and I don’t think I have that energy for constant, prolonged arguments.
So, I find myself skimming more sites than I read, never leaving comments, and thinking about this list of rhetorical tactics.