For Lack Of A Game

I have not played a game in two weeks! This is not for lack of wanting, but because two of my players have been busy and then also some of my other players are unreliable! [1] This would make me upset except that I have been filling the space with many other things!

I have been reading webcomics!

Some people binge on seasons of their television shows. [2] Pshaw! Child's Play! You ought to be binge-reading webcomics!

"Webcomics," scoffs the cinemaphile, "are the last resort of the failed artist, and are nothing more than the chortling playthings of insular dudebros who write about video games!"

That's mostly true! But not all of them. Nimona, for example, is about a shapeshifting girl who teams up with a supervillain to topple a heroic Institution that's not quite what it seems! Hemlock is about a witch with a checkered past in a darkly Scandinavian fairy-tale world! Hark, A Vagrant, for all two of you who haven't read this, is a fanciful retelling of history's most interesting stories, told in the silliest way possible! Nedroid is, like Seinfeld, a comic about nothing. Just kidding! It's about Beartato and Reginald the bird (?) and their adventures through silliness! I've been reading Kid With Experience, an autobiographical comic about the charming Jess Fink! I've been reading other things, too, that I can't remember! [3]

Nimona has a short temper for many things

I have been reading actual things!

Mother Night is a fantastic book, and it's odd reading Welcome To the Monkey House because it's all snippets of stories I'd read online "somewhere" and had completely forgotten about, because Kurt Vonnegut gets reprinted everywhere, endlessly, and for good reason. He's probably as good an author as America can ever produce and if somebody from another country said "what are Americans like, anyways, your television shows are all weird" then they should read some Vonnegut because we haven't changed from the 1960s nearly as much as we like and some of his stories are set much later than that anyways, thank you.

Also good is "FILM CRIT HULK," because when Hulk is talking about movies, Hulk is actually talking about stories, and stories are literally what every human being lives for. Hulk is talking about you and me and life itself, and when you can get past the stylization and unique voice you're finding a person who knows and loves very deeply and passionately. Reading Hulk is like being hugged in your brain. It's a blog, go read it now.

Girls Read Comics is fantastic, in that it got me to consider my previously-unconsidered views on the absurd sexism in comics! I'd never much liked the female superheros common in most Marvel or DC offerings, excepting Black Canary and Hawkwoman [4] in Justice League Unlimited- they were such weak and boring characters. They never did anything exciting or had interesting back stories and just kind of stood around in the back. Even Wonder Woman was like this! I wondered how anybody could be a fan of these women. And then, reading Girls Read Comics I realized that they were boring because their authors were sexist idiots and they always stood in the back because they were supposed to play second fiddle to the "important men" that stood in the foreground and suddenly everything clicked!

I've been playing games!

Tabletop games with my brother! It's pretty cool. My wife isn't as big a board game enthusiast and doesn't like playing them via computer so I'm usually about out of luck, but my brother is a big fan and he's here so we've been going all out.

We've played Darkest Night, which is a decent but flawed game I'll probably review in more fullness later. I want to like it, but it's slow and grinding and really, really random and there's just not enough meat on the game for me. There's a lot of bits and bobs but the game isn't delivering it for me.

A real surprise was Death Angel Space Hulk, which he picked out at random and it turned out to be great. You're Space Marines clearing out this half-wrecked spaceship that's full of vicious aliens, and you're marching ever onwards through corridors while blasting everything and doing your best not to die. It's complex at first but that's just because everything is symbols. It is smooth as hell in play and a really slick design.

Seriously, look at this! Onirim, you done good.

Onirim is a simple card game that is all about hand management and set collection. Your objective is to explore this dream realm and use a key to open doors, or to play three symbols of the same color in a row. Getting in the way are Nightmares, which can slow down or reverse your progress, and your own awful luck. You can pick through your deck using keys, but it's risky, as you're also thinning your deck at the same time. Works great as a solo game, probably alright for two players too. Did I mention it's beautiful? [5]

7 Wonders is a fun civilization building game. There's a dummy with two players, but I find that it actually adds to the depth. This is another one I'll be writing more about in the future, since it's a fairly big game. Smooth in play, slightly Byzantine scoring, great art. Only played one and a half times, so we'll see if it's got longevity.

Red Orchestra: Rising Storm isn't a board game but it is a video game about World War 2. The really cool part is that it's not a big and macho game where it's this big manly heroic thing, it's a really realistic game where you're scrabbling through foliage only to get shot by a guy you didn't see and then you respawn and next life you're machine-gunned down while you're running for cover and then next life you're pinned by machine gun fire and you can hear somebody running and you hope it's backup but nope! It's an IJA and he bayonets you and your squad leader! And for what? To lay claim to a bit of land in the middle of a bombed-out and ruined village on an island nobody's heard of. Really great stuff.

That's it, I guess!

This was really long but a lot of fun to write and it's nice to look back at what I've been doing and realize that I'm not completely wasting my time even if I'm not working on something or (some days) even leaving the house. Life is grand and everything is good.

Oh, hey, if you have any recommendations for good webcomics or board games, let me hear them, because I need to put more things in front of my eyeballs and inside my brain. Thank you very much, and goodnight!

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[1] If any of you are reading this, I mean that your attendance is unreliable in general. You are all very good at telling me that you won't be there, but it is unpredictable. This means that the net effect is that when I look at my calendar I can't predict when you'll be around and when you won't. You're all beautiful people.

[2] I do too, actually. Me and my wife would watch entire seasons of Futurama, Scrubs, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, True Blood (don't judge me), and on one particularly cozy afternoon/evening, Adventure Time. I guess you could call watching Band of Brothers or The Pacific "binging" but the goddamn episodes are like an hour long each and they're really emotionally draining. At least the Pacific is. If you're looking to join any part of the military that has anything to do with being anywhere near combat you should watch that show and then think about whether or not you'll be there. I'm not saying my experience was nearly as bad as that show, obviously, but for some people it probably was.

[3] There have been a lot, seriously! You don't have to read tripe like Penny Arcade or whatever Buckly's B^U comic is called. Real-life comics can be funny and sexy and highbrow and don't just have to be jokes about dicks and video games featuring talking heads or capes and neither do webcomics! (And if you like that sort of thing that's fine too, I'm just sayin' there's more out there)

[4] Black Canary was always so cool because she'd be off doing her own thing, in a normal-ass costume, beating up punks and showing up at random moments like "oh damn Black Canary, what are you doing here!" And then the Huntress is like "You should join the Justice League!" and Black Canary says "Nah, it'll just cramp my style," and then BC leaves, presumably to go kick more villains in the mouth. What a great character! And then Hawkgirl was neat because she was from ancient Egypt or whatever and she actively rebuked her wanna-be husband/lover because he was awful to her, and she didn't need him around for anything because she was with a dude who respected him. And she always wanted to smash things. She smashed the crap out of things like, all the time. Although now that I'm reading the webpage it turns out she was just a pawn of her husband and then she betrays everybody and then re-betrays everybody and I guess she isn't that cool in the later episodes. Well, bummer.

[5] Why are "dreams" such an underused concept for games and media, anyways? The only things I can think of that use it as a theme are Onirim, LSD Dream Simulator, and the role-playing game Lacuna. At least Inception got people thinking about that sort of thing, even if nothing really happened about it except that people talk about dreams-within-dreams sometimes if it comes up. That reminds me, I need to figure out lucid dreaming some day.

Arkham Horror, or How I Got Murdered By An Old One

Me and the wife were playing Rayman Legends for a while yesterday. She was playing by herself first while I was playing Sim City, but the game is more fun with another person. So I hopped in and we gathered Lums and saved Teensies. Pretty fun. For a while.

I got tired of the game, but we still wanted to play something together. Why not Arkham Horror, I suggested? It's gathering dust and besides, I'll make you a drink.

She said yes, and away we went.

We played for a solid four or so hours. That's two games in a row. It includes getting wasted, goofing off, and explaining all the rules and how to win. It was a great time.

Our first game we squared off against Ithaqua. She was the researcher (which looks a lot like her, believe it or not) and I decided that plucky salesman Bob Jenkins was my speed. We lucked out and both somehow managed to start with Tommy Guns and off we went, spraying demons with bullets. I explained that we have to close the gates before Ithaqua comes out to see what's crackin'. She asked how we do that.

"You gotta go through 'em and come back!"
"I have to go to The Great Hall of Ceelano?"
"Well I'll be going through that one, but that's the idea."
"Oh, cool."

We forgot that Ithaqua brings icy winds that reduce your stamina when you stand out in the street, but we had a hell of a time anyways. The Elder Sign I used to close the portal in The Woods turned out to be a serious boon; every other Mythos card tried to re-open it. The Witch House ended up being home to a couple of Warlocks almost the entire game. The researcher went unconscious due to some poor rolls against a Dhole. Some good portal closings got us rid of most of the more nightmarish monsters, and good sneak rolls got us the rest of the way.

The streets were drowning in monsters. We were down to our last handfuls of sanity and hoping beyond hope that the seals were enough to keep the doom at bay. We finished the game when Ithaqua was two doom markers away from coming to visit.

Six seals down. That'll do it. We saved the world!

But the night was still young-
so we played again!

This time it was the scientist (me) and the student (her) stopping Yig, with his serpent cultists. I picked out Yig since he had such a small doom track and he got extra doom when you killed a cultist. I figured battling an old one might be a good change of pace from the skittering scurry of avoiding him.

It turns out that we got screwed by luck- an early Mythos draw accelerated the doom track unless we sacrificed an Ally. It was the second turn and we didn't have any Allies. We fling ourselves through portals and do our best, but it wasn't enough. Yig comes.

It smashes half of our items and gives chase.We have to make more and more difficult speed checks or we lose stamina and sanity. It wasn't long before we are overcome by our eldritch enemy.

So two games- one win and one loss. Not bad. Here's to hoping next game comes soon and we can squeeze out a win. I'm thinking Azathoth next time, or maybe Nyarlathotep. Azathoth is cool because when he awakens you automatically lose (he destroys everything immediately) but at least you have time to stave him off. Nyarlathotep is neat because he has unique minions although I don't much like his depiction in Arkham Horror. Oh well.

Anyways, it was a great evening and I'd do it again any time.


One last thing: It's still totally bullshit that she travelled to the Plateau of Leng to take a nap and find two bucks. I'm running through monster-ravaged streets, machine-gunning eldritch horrors while she goes on a vacation. I go to the the City of the Great Race and am driven nearly mad by the unending horror. She goes to the R'lyeh and it's a little smelly and then she gets more items. Why can't Bob Jenkins get a break?

Seriously, where would you even get money here?