Banned. Really? I can't imagine what I might have said.

The temporary Google group a person is directed to banned me at some point. That’s quirky! I don’t recall saying much of anything on that group, which is usually just full of posts that are similar to: “Is it up yet? No. Day-um.. I’m jonesing for the Geek!” At least, I don’t recall saying anything anybody got upset over.  I also don’t think Scott Alden, the wizard in chief of BGG, is in the banning and kicking business.. he’s never seemed the kneejerk type.

It’s no big deal, I’ll live without access to a google group of people complaining that a site is down, but angering someone so much they would ban me seems unusual for me.  I guess I’ll never know, since you can’t email the admin of a Google group with a “banned? whaaaaaaaaa?” style email.

The App, itself

Now this was the surprise.  I’ll admit something here that’s going to make me look like a heretic showing up at the Christmas Party.  I’m just not a huge fan of the deck-building mechanic.  It’s clever, yes, I admit that.  But it never grabbed me, it never really caught me up in the enfolding narrative of the game itself.  To me, it’s just putting down cards and hoping for a good combination, and I can do that with other card games.  So I really haven’t pursued owning Dominion as a real physical card game.  Why should I? My friend Steve Gibson owns every expansion ever made, and if I want to play Dominion, I’ll drop by and he’ll pull it out and set up a game. But I haven’t had the jones to play Dominion in a while.  The Dominion bug never bit me like it bit Steve.  And that brings me to this app.  I played it.  I remembered how to play Dominion readily enough, but I was rusty.  I played a game versus AI opponents and was soundly thrashed.  Interesting.  Then again.  And a similar result.  And again.. and again.. and suddenly I noticed something.  This Dominion app is a good time!  I was enjoying myself!  It was doing something that the real, flesh and blood game failed to do.. allowing me to enjoy the game experience itself.  I’m not a fanatic or anything but the app, at least, is a very worthwhile investment, even if I consider the purchase of seven or eight boxes of cards not to be.  Are we on to a new paradigm here?

Opening Screen

Artificial Intelligence opponents.  I have played the game solo so far, more because not many people own it than desire to play AIs.  However, the AI is decent enough for beginners.  I was challenged against two players, and definitely am getting the better of them now after about five games, though I have yet to win a game.

The Game Interface is economical, elegant and consistent with real life gaming experience… a game table is represented in miniature here.  The screen is a little crowded and I’ve already read a good post about how to economize on screen space on BGG, but that is a piddly little gripe.  The app has several iterations or sets of cards to choose from at the onset of a game.  I have only used “Random” so far, but I imagine these correspond to the many published expansion sets put out for Dominion.

In-game Help Functions (in the case of the picture above, the tutorial) are sparse and economical, and perhaps not as descriptive as possible. I had a little previous game experience to draw from, so I wasn’t really confused at any point, but I could see a rank newbie to the Dominion game asking.. “yeah, but what’s the point of all this stuff I’m doing?” Which isn’t really answered well.

More of the Tutorial in action.

Playing with Internet Players

I found this a little puzzling.  You can HOST or JOIN an online game.  Hosting seems easy enough, just hit the Host button.  And the status bar, at that point, says “Mister Nizz is hosting…” however, nobody jumped in and played a game, though there were other people out there apparently looking for a game, from what I could pick up from the status screen.  And when THEY were hosting, I tried to jump into THEIR games, and I really didn’t know how.  Since Game Center support is incorporated, I tried writing down the player’s handle, going to the Game Center, and friending them, since the only way I could initiate a game with a specific individual, that I could see, was via the Gaming Center.  Observe:

Me requesting a game from the always reliable Todd Goff, whom you may have seen mentioned on this blog before.

Auto-Match, via the Game Center, yielded absolutely nothing. This means nothing, though.. maybe nobody was on or not a lot of people have picked up the app, yet. Yet, according to the little status screen, there people online, at that moment, looking for a live game. So what gives?

And here is that Online games status screen I was describing. Lots of people online at that moment, none of whom could I communicate with in any fashion. I hope this gets fixed.

Conclusions  When I say “Run, don’t walk, to get this Dominion app..” I’m not engaging in hyperbole.  This is good design– elegant, functional, and it conveys the game experience wonderfully.  Add to this the fact that due to Rio Grande coming out with an official product in almost no time whatsoever (so they say, anyway) I predict it won’t be on the market for long.  So jump, froggy!  I was going to make this a Lightning Review, but I’m glad I gave it a longer look (mostly because there’s really not a lot of screens to capture to make a LR review with, but anywaaay).. Dominion for the Ipad made me realize that here’s a gaming experience for which I have very little paper and cardboard experience, and I’m enjoying it more than I enjoyed the physical game.  I had a similar response to the Puerto Rico app for the Ipad.  That’s something new in my experience.

Look for Dominion for IOS at the Itunes App store.  You may have to search for the string ” Donald X. Vaccarino’s Dominon” to find it.

Image via Wikipedia

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I shuffled along with this morning to watch my son Gar participate in his school’s area wide are Lego Mindstorm Robotics competition.  Gar is on his Middle School team and wants to be on the HS team next year when he moves up.  For today’s competition, Gar’s school hosted several other middle schools and two HS teams.  The prize at the HS level was a 3D printer, individual prizes were Mindstorm kits, upgrade kits, t-shirts, and keyhchains. 

Gar and Steven Yucking it up

Garrett’s team did its very best, but other teams (from Langley) prevailed.  Kudos to the winners!

Course Details

And wide shot of course

The Team Robot

Robot Box.

Pre-Competition Team meeting

• Northern Virginia’s Own Crazed Killer Legend! and
• Incident at Bunnyman Bridge

Now that you are caught up, I am pleased to notice that someone, somewhere noticed our little errant serial killer (well, myth of a serial killer) the Bunnyman.  Apparently the visual of a crazed axe wielding murderer in a bunny suit was too hard for the entertainment industry to resist, and they made a movie about him.

Click here for the BUNNYMAN trailer on Youtube. 

(the embedded version was hanging up the browser for some reason)

Of course, the locale looks more like Oregon instead of Northern Virginia.  In every respect, this movie is about as horrific as you would expect out of a low budget scare flick, with distinctive 80′s style horror tropes, including:

• The gang of stupid young people on a car trip
• Crazed killer in mask
• Somebody’s oversexed
• Somebody’s an insensitive jerk
• Somebody’s sensible and sensitive, and of course, sympathetic
• The hillbillies are sullen, hostile and oversexed
• People walk off by themselves so they are easy to kill
• Lots and lots of screaming
• A Chainsaw.. of course
• A woman is the last one left
• The Serial Killer listens to classical music on a record player

You know the drill.  It’s poorly lit, poorly shot, the dialogue is terrible, and the action sequences are laughably bad.  There’s some car vs. truck sequences early on in the film, stolen directly from THE DUEL, and they are shot at what appears to be 14 miles an hour.  At one point, one of the stupid people is under the car “fixing” something that inexplicably broke (they cut something out, it’s not quite explained what happened).  The truck drives slowly up and literally taps the bumper, it’s not even dented very hard.  This apparently kills the dude under the car instantly and obviously, as his friends look under, get up and just walk away.  You didn’t even check for a pulse?  Reach for a car jack and try to get his body out?  Really??  The rest of the movie is entirely predictable along these lines, with an attempt at a couple of twists  and very lame jump scares.  It’s not scary, it’s not even particularly in the category of “so bad it’s good”, but it IS based on Northern Virginia’s home boy, so it was worth one viewing.  AND ONLY ONE VIEWING!!! (and only if you are from Northern Virginia).  Friends… can I call you friends?  If you want to watch a movie excellent in every respect that mocks movies like this, seek out the Anti-Gore film, Tucker and Dale versus Evil, which I think is still available for rental on Itunes.  You will not regret it.

The REAL Bunnyman Bridge, located only a few miles from my house. Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Play the Boo here:

In July 1921, A sherriff’s posse raided a still in North Carolina. In the ensuing gunfight, A deputy was killed. Although he swore he was innocent of firing the shot, the police captured and tried David Marshall Williams for murder. Rather than getting the death penalty, he received a sentence of 30 years hard labor.

Williams was bored in prison, so he secretly designed a rifle. Rather than discourage what doesn’t seem to be an ideal pastime for a prisoner, the warden, H.T. Peoples allowd him to build the weapon. Peoples recognized that Williams was a nascent mechanical genius, and he began to encourage him to design more weapons. During his years in prison, Williams built six rifles and invented the short-stroke piston, a device that captures the explosive force from the firing bullet and uses it to load the next one.

After 8 years in prison Williams received a pardon from the Governor of North Carolina. he started to build weapons for the Government and patented his ideas. In 1941, Williams was working for the Winchester repeating arms company when the US Army announced a competition for a new lightweight semiautomatic rifle. The winner was a model designed by Williams that featured his short-stroke piston design. That rifle design became the M1 carbine. Over 6 million were manufactured between 1940 and 1945, which made it the most produced service rifle of World War II.

David Marshall Williams has gone down in history as “Carbine” Williams, the jailbird gunsmith.

Now for next week’s question. And it’s a simple one, just requiring a little research. So warm up google. WHO WAS THE FIRST PRESIDENT BORN AFTER THE CONSTITUTION?

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Legendary Blues Performer Robert Johnson, who didn't have a quaint blues name.

A good blues name always has a physical disability, a fruit, and a dead president’s name in it. A recent snippet in the paper codified this principle into a handy tool for generating blues musician names.

Attached is a link to a spreadsheet I redid, based on a very blurry photograph that was cut out of the newspaper. I’ve got it shared out in Box.net, so if you have MS Office or Open Office, it should open up on your machine.

Handy Visual Aid

BLUES NAME GENERATOR

It’s pretty self-descriptive.  Take the first initials of your first, middle and last names and apply them to the labeled sections on the spreadsheet.  Then you have the complete name.  Enjoy.  And for the record, my Blues name is “Screaming’ Bones King” using this utility.  Feel free to post yours in the comments box.

Blind Willie Jackson, Image via Wikipedia

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I certainly hope that Uwe Eikert takes notice of this app and considers releasing it as a commercial product. There’s money in them thar hills, Uwe!

Still, the animation is clean, silly and anime like in style.   It’s very cute for a freebie.  Or “Kinda” freebie.

Verdict: the basic game is great and loaded with anime-style fantasy combat goodness, but  in app purchases may unbalance this game.

Updated: I was contacted by Robot Entertainment about this review.  They object to the characterization of Hero Academy being unbalanced, and perhaps I have pushed that point a little hard in all this.  So I’ll say this: Perhaps the game is balanced, perhaps I am just a poor player.  In my experience, after repeated plays, the dark elf purchased team consistently does more damage, and broader based damage, then the free human team.  This is the crux of of my comments about purchasing victory.  This result in no way detracts from enjoyment of the game.  Hero Academy is still lots of fun with the plain vanilla human starter team.  I have not purchased the upgrades because, frankly I had a poor reaction to the intense commercial nature of Hero Academy.   Therefore, a full up statistical analysis of win/loss, best comparative tactics between humans and dark elves, etc. remains beyond my grasp and available time.  As a lightning audio review is simply an impressions piece, not a full up analysis and review of the game, there would not be a payoff point in presenting this review as anything but a quick reaction piece.   I will say this– Many of the upgrades for sale are visual and thematic in nature– buying different avatars, custom colors, taunts, etc., and theoretically that shouldn’t effect combat outcomes.  I don’t know for certain, because I’m not going to buy them.

Related:

Robot Entertainment

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Image via Wikipedia

A recent post on Hibernia: the March to Victory on BGG intrigued me enough to purchase the boardgame.  Hibernia is a game nominally set in in Iron Age Ireland; the description suggests that four tribes are vying for the high kingship of Eire.  The theme is established with the introductory historical quote:

“A mighty host was now assembled by the men of Connacht, that is, by Ailill and Medb, and they sent word to the three other provinces, and messengers were dispatched from Medb to the Manè that they should gather in Cruachan, the seven Manè with their seven divisions…Thus the four provinces of Hibernia gathered in Cruachan Ai. They pitched their camp and quarters that night, so that a thick cloud of smoke and fire rose between the four fords of Ai…and their poets and druids would not let them depart from thence till the end of a fortnight while awaiting good omen.”
- The Táin Bó Cúalnge

This quotation, from “The Rising-Out of the Men of Connacht at Cruachan Ai“, establishes the notion that there will be four sides to the game and what the ultimate prize is.  Very economical.

Garrett and I played it three times last night and even the longest, learning the rules session was absurdly quick, like 20 minutes at most.

Box Cover

The bits are quite colorful, although I thought the publisher was ripped off by the color separators on the map board. Color is important in this game, for both movement and scoring reasons. Yet at first glance, one can barely discern red from yellow on the map. It becomes obvious after the first game but the proofs shouldn’t have been signed off in their current state.

mapboard: somewhat washed out colors

The map is just a happy to glad criticism; the game is eminently playable as is. Moreover, I give the designer and publisher very high marks for the compact nature of these game components. When was the last time you could lay out a game and play it– comfortably– while eating Chinese? Even Zombie Dice takes up space. I was impressed.

The four tribes were represented by piles of red, green, blue and yellow cubes.  Our mutual command of gaelic being somewhat rusty, we dubbed them the O’Neills (for the “Red Hand of Ulster” of course), the O’Haras (for the Gold Lion and Green field), the O’Malleys and the Borus (B for blue!)

Hibernia pieces: the four tribes

Setup is easy enough: Each player takes a set of warriors in 1 color. Each player puts one of their warriors on the start space (Upper Left: Brown Rectangle with Celtic symbols) of the scoring track. Take one warrior from each player and use these to randomize a start player. Then randomly place these warriors on the 4 spaces marked with castle icons on the game board; this creates the starting position for each player. The first player places 3 warriors on the shield space in the upper left part of the game board, the second player places 2 warriors on the shield, and the third places 1 warrior there (I think the designer stipuates that to counterbalance the effect of going first). From the rules, as far as I can tell, the Castle/Celtic Knot area is some sort of Irish Valhalla where the souls of the departed go to await resurrection. But we’ll circle around and visit that one again. Play proceeds left from the start player.

Game 1 was uneventful

From that point onward, it’s a mere matter of marching, hence the subtitle of the game. A player rolls the dice, which has colored dots on it– red, green, blue, yellow, white and black. The obvious colors represent colors on the map– if you roll these and have armies (cubes) adjacent to a county that is the color rolled, you may move into that space with a force as big as the one you are marching from. Example: an empty yellow county is next to a green and red county that has 1 green army in each. The player, when active, may attack the empty county with TWO armies, since two armies are adjacent.

There is also a white and black side to the cube, the white dot on the cube allows the player to move anywhere on the board, and the black dot moves his score marker along on the score track.

Combat is pretty simple and hardly problematic. If you march into a county that is occupied by enemy cubes, you exchange them on a 1 for 1 basis– so it’s a good idea to invade occupied real estate with more than they have present. Dead cubes go to the Valhalla like island, to be reinforcements at a later time. The active player can use 1 die of any color, or their wild play, to return all of her own warriors from the shield space to her supply. All other players return half their warriors (rounded down) from the Valhalla area to their supplies when the active player takes this action.

Second Game of the night, far more decisive

Scoring is the perhaps the niftiest.. and most frustrating element of HIBERNIA. There is a track around the map where each player can move his or her score marker, but only on the matching colors. As you can see from the map, they are staggered all over the map semi-randomly. Each turn, the player ends the turn and advances the score marker along the track on the matching colors the same number as counties they control. The fact that the scoring track leads to some bizarre strategies– for one thing we interpreted the rules to mean that once you “lap” the starting position, a score marker has to go as far as it can for that turn and then it’s there for the rest of the duration. So it’s quite possible to see how a game is going to end, and what a player has to accomplish to achieve victory, far in advance. I found myself attacking my opponent (Gar’s O’Haras) at the end game turn because I knew he would need a certain amount to pull ahead of my already stalled O’Neill score marker. As it was, the yellow score keeper marker advanced from last to second, simply because of the score track configuration!

In summary: Well, I love the subject and I enjoyed the game quite a bit, but that doesn’t mean those two factors have much to do with each other.  I have read where the designer, Eric Vogel, likes to refer to Hibernia as a very light wargame with Euro mechanics. I don’t quite see it that way. I see it more as a Euro-style area control game with a wargame theme. If you can sort that phrase out. I liked the asymmetric scoring track and I loved the attempt at historical themes, but at the end of the day it’s extremely simple and a time-filler game.  I had fun moving little cubes around the map, but I didn’t’ get a strong sense of game narrative from Hibernia.  There’s not enough flavor there.  A player does have a significant amount of choices to make, which I like, but movement is largely dominated by the color choice of the die roll, which is completely random. Random dice rolls are not the easiest bedrock to formulate a strategy on.  For what it is, it is pretty good– I just wouldn’t be expecting a lot of depth (or really, a game much about Irish History) if I were you.  Gar and I were ignorant of the official two player variant and just played two tribes against two tribes which worked out reasonably well.  It is obvious that this game plays best with four players.

I would not hesitate to recommend this game at the price I paid for it, which was fairly affordable.  A great game to take along on outings or picnics.. but probably not long car trips.  Enjoy!

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Image via Wikipedia

Here is another one of my fan made scenarios for Command and Colors: Napoleonics.  This one focuses on the Battle of Castalla, late in the Peninsular War.   Marshal Suchet is endangering Wellington’s line of march by threatening to join up with other French armies in the Peninsula.  Wellington had to find a way to keep the Marshal busy, and succeeds with a polyglot command of Sicilians, British, and Spanish troops under the overall command of General Murray.

Castalla mapImage via Wikipedia

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