Hugo Plans

We decided as a couple that we would like a little more exposure to some of the awesome sci-fi that's out there. Unfortunately, sci-fi is seriously hit or miss so we wanted a little bit of guidance. Enter the Hugo award winners. We decided not to go with the Nebula award winners since that list seemed to be a little high browed and not that much fun comparatively. So the plan is to read two Hugo winners a year. One old winner and the most recent winner. Our very first read will be Demolished Man.

And as it turns out, even award winning books can be hard to find. We didn't think Demolished Man would be hard to find since it was the first Hugo award winner, but apparently it's not that popular of a book. We ended up going with a Kindle Version of the book. If we buy hard copies of every Hugo award winner, we'll have trouble storing them. Fortunately, digital storage isn't near as much of a problem.

So here's to embarking on what I hope will be an awesome journey into great sci-fi books simultaneously with the hubby.

Cold Days: Comprehensive Review

Finally finished up Cold Days. And I loved it. This most recent addition to the series was definitely a little different. It seems like the scope of the conflict is always escalating to the point where I wonder how Butcher is going to step it up a notch. Turns out he seems to always manage it. Of course, I seriously doubt the scale of the conflict will manage to be grander in the next book. Kind of harder to get biggere than the stake of the universe. It might be a nice pace to have things ramped down to a more personal level in the next installation.

So my specific yet general impressions of the book...

First off, the writing style maintained that fresh Butcher inner monologue that I'm always looking forward to when I crack open one of these books. I kept laughing out loud at the references the characters would make. Which was a nice contrast to the gravity of the situations the characters were in. The other freshness came from the introduction of new villains and a completely new perspective on some classic "villains".

I didn't particularly care for the ramped up sexual components of the book although I understood the use and context. It's actually kind of nice to have a character that recognizes the strength of sexual... temptations, for lack of a better word, and the power that can come from standing strong and maintaining focus and dedication.

Spoilers ahead!!!!!

The most heart wrenching moment of the entire series was at the conclusion of this book. It was hard enough when Dresden had to kill the mother of his daughter in the heat of the moment. It was so much harder when he had to watch the life and even existence of his apprentice and daughter of one of his best friends ripped away. I actually cried. And for the first time, I'm a little apprehensive about how this new development is going to affect his interpersonal relationships in the upcoming Skin Game.

Overall, I really enjoyed this novel and am both excited and nervous to continue reading the Dresden Files.

Tales of the Arabian Nights

We spent this last weekend camping with some family that we adore and took advantage of the evenings after the kids all went to bed to try and play some board games.  Unfortunately, it turns out most board games require really good lighting for all players most of the time. Who would have thought? On our last evening together, we discovered that Tales of the Arabian Nights is a great camping game because everyone is interacting, but you don't all need great lighting all the time. Now if only we had discovered this on an earlier night...

So here follow my general thoughts on Tales of the Arabian Nights.

Components
To begin with, it's published by Z-Man Games of which I am definitely a fan.  They also published Pandemic, which was our first serious foray into hobby board gaming as well as exposure to a cooperative game. Both Arabian Nights and Pandemic have solid components with appropriate artwork. Arabian Nights has much more thematic and gorgeous artwork with a feel that even seems authentic to the source material.  There is a board with a world map (okay both games happen to have this but I'm only talking about Arabian Nights from here on out) drawn in an old world style complete with mythical as well as real world locations. There are also several decks of cards including statuses, encounters, quests, and treasure cards. My in-laws, who own the game, bought baseball card sheet protectors (at least I think that's what they're called) to organize all of the status cards since there are a lot of them, and you never know which ones you're going to need. In addition to the cards, there are also player reference sheets, player tokens on stands depicting individuals from the Arabian Nights, dice, skill tokens, a matrix sheet for making choices, and THE BIGGEST RULEBOOK EVER!! To be fair the rule book is really a large scale Choose Your Own Adventure playbook that everyone uses. But it can be pretty intimidating to first time players to see that big honkin' thing on the table. Of course the number of different components in general can be a little intimidating. In a very creative approach to organizing the skill tokens, my in-laws also purchased on of those daily pill organizers as it turns out they fit in there perfectly. Overall reaction? The components are high quality but a little complex for ease of organization during play itself.

Gameplay
At first glance, this game appears to be an RPG following the theme of the Arabian Nights. As it turns out, this game is in fact more of a party game with almost no strategy involved and highly dependent on the people playing the game. (Sidenote: my in laws make this game awesome!) Each person plays a character from the Arabian Nights and embarks on quests and seeks encounters that will provide treasures, statuses, skills, and (most importantly) destiny and story points. The latter two things are the victory points of the game. After acquiring a number of both destiny and story points set secretly by each player at the beginning of the game, players attempt to return to Baghdad and declare victory first. What makes this more of a party game is the fact that the choices you make at each encounter (Choose Your Own Adventure Style as previously stated) have almost no predictable outcomes. You might choose to pray to wild Efreet thinking that your piety skill will get you someone when in fact you need either courtly graces or wilderness lore. Or you might choose to rob a destitute beggar just to be mean and realize he's some evil dude that you can defeat using your luck skill. Seriously, no strategy. Instead everyone has lots of fun guessing and telling stories and stringing together the most ridiculous plots that each character is living out during the course of the game. And if you have the right people willing to do voices, use emotion while reading, and throw in their own flavor of improvisation every now and then, it can be totally awesome!


I would recommend this game for a group of people looking for a casual board game experience that love telling stories.

Overall Rating: 8/10

Starting Up Cold Days

Even though I know that I will get more hours of enjoyment out of a book than a movie, I seriously have a hard time paying more than $8 for a book. College textbooks? No exception. Which means that time of the semester was always pretty emotionally challenging for me. Anyway, I finally got my copy of the new Dresden Files book, Cold Days, in the mail from Books-A-Million as it has hit paperback. Yay!

So I'm only four chapters into reading this book. Why am I already writing a blogpost? Because Jim Butcher is amazing with this series. Fourteen books into the series and four chapters into the book itself, I'm still laughing out loud and also getting really intense. How does he do that? I'm sur a big part of it is the fact that I seriously love the character. I mean Harry Dresden rocks! He tries to always do the right thing but knows when he's crossing a line even if its for the right reasons. And he is both humble and arrogant at the same time. Harry can be brutally honest with himself and paint uncomfortably accurate pictures of situations most people would shy away from. And of course his sense of humor is totally my style.

Sadly I can't really say a whole lot more about Cold Days right now since I'm only at the beginning of the fourth chapter. But I promise (myself since I know from the stats attached to this blog that no one else looks at this) that I will give a detailed and (let's be honest) raving review of this book once I've finished reading it.

Animal Crossing: New Leaf

My husband is always on the lookout for a new game for me to enjoy.  He definitely struck gold when he landed upon Animal Crossing: New Leaf.  In reality, I am a casual gamer.  All of hobbies and interests get cycled through depending on my mood and schedule.  And video gaming is one of those hobbies that gets cycled through.  Which is one  of the reasons I love Animal Crossing: New Leaf.  It's a game that I can play for several hours in a day several days in a row or just check into for a  few minutes every few days or so and have a great time regardless.  There's even a setting that accommodates the infrequent gamer.  This is right up my ally.  Here's a few of my favorite things about the game.



Collectibles
I call them collectibles for lack  of a better word.  You can collect insects, fish, fossils, and artwork all to be stored in the museum.  And then there are a host of other things that you can collect and display in your house (furniture, novelty items, wallpaper, carpet, etc) or throughout your town (flowers, trees, etc.).  And if you collect duplicate items you get to sell them to increase your cash reserves.  With so many different ways to collect and display items, it makes for a great collectibles component.

Mini-Games
Every day you can leave your town to go to the island and play lots of mini-games in addition to the other types of collectibles that are a lot easier to find on the island than in your own town.  Although the mechanics are all pretty simple, the variety is pretty extensive, and the selection changes every day.  And of course there's the flexibility of playing any amount of mini-games that you want including the same one over  and over again.  Playing the mini-games also gets you rewards that you can use to purchase items that cycle through on a regular basis.

Town Management
There are very few town ordinances that you can put into effect, and only one can be active at any time.  However, there are lots of ways to micro-manage the town.  There are improvement projects that provide increased functionality and/or aesthetic appeal such as bridges, fountains and additional floors to buildings like the museum.  These are funding both by yourself and your townspeople.  Speaking of townspeople, the other part of managing  your town is having personal interaction with your citizens.  You can simply chat with them or complete assigned tasks so that they like you more.  Sometimes you even get to eavesdrop on their conversations with each other.  I like that these very simple characters actually seem to have a real personality as the game progresses.

Customization
There is so much customization you can do!  Now this overlaps with the collectibles of course, but it still has a life of it's own.  This week I've been planting patterns of flowers around the river and pond shores--just because I can.  And my house changes weekly just because I like the variety.  And my character's wardrobe is getting a little big even though I haven't been playing the game all that long  yet.

Overall, I'm loving this game and looking forward to many hours over the next couple of years just casually picking it up and exploring this little world of mine.

Under the Dome: Pilot

Because I loath both cable and commercials, my access to currently running television shows is pretty limited. It takes quite a bit for me to even be willing to watch a show on Hulu because of commercials sometimes. So I was thrilled to learn that Amazon made a huge deal with CBS to make available new episodes of Under the Dome on Amazon Prime. That means that my Amazon Prime membership gets me access to a current television show commercial free without having to pay and additional cost (we have purchased other currently running shows in the past, but it adds up). Sweet!!

So how did I feel about the pilot? Well, I am super excited to watch this show. I love creators (whether they be novelists, screen writers, or some other variant) that use science fiction and fantasy as a vehicle to discuss meaningful, relevant, and thought-provoking topics. The source material gives ample opportunity for the writers of the show to explore some exciting themes, and the pilot leads me to believe that the writers are going to bring these ideas to the big screen...er...living room screens.

Side note: the name of the first episode is "Pilot"? Really guys?

My only concerns center around my sensitivity to graphic images. Nightmares after the pilot? Yeah, they happened. But I also understand that when you remove the images from situations you end up neutering the concept. The first example that comes to my mind is Hunger Games movie vs book.  You lost so much of what the book was about in making it PG-13 (although I understand it was somewhat necessary in order to reach the target audience). I haven't read Under the Dome the novel, but I can imagine that the situation could be similar here. However, I'm really not certain why the sex scene (I just can't use the word love in this case) had to be as overt as it was. This scene in particular had me checking what network was airing this show because it seemed a little risqué for prime time but nope. CBS.

SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In the pilot we are introduced to a town that at first seems fairly typical of rural America. But as things progress, we are treated to some increasingly intriguing aspects of Chester's Mill including propane stockpiling, the burial of a dead body with the accompanying attempt to flee the scene and mysterious cell phone call to some apparent accomplice, and a conspiracy involving some of the Town's leadership. The creepiest town reveal is probably the kidnapping of a youthful candystripper by her new ex who seems to know a lot more about what's going on than he should.

After we feel a sense of a attachment to the town, the dome descends. And suddenly we have an adult treatment of what would seriously be happening in a situation like this no holds barred. Animal deaths, human dismemberment, some spectacular vehicle crashes, and all of the human drama you can handle. The fire department is on the other side for a parade so the emergency services of the town are already pretty depleted before any further episodes introduce new catastrophes. Loved ones are separated either by the dome or chaos. And of course most teenagers simply see this as another opportunity to party. This last one is a cliche that I personally don't buy into based on my personal experiences as a teenager and how we reacted to various tradgedies and disasters, but I understand I may be unique in my perspective.

Outside the dome we know that things are really just as crazy as inside the dome because if something like this really happened, it would change the entire world. And people would be scared spit-less. Both inside and out. So we end the episode really only just beginning with the presentation of the scenario. Can't wait to see where it goes.

Nerd Art

My husband and I recently acquired some awesome artwork to decorate our newly finished downstairs.  Because we are nerds (hence the blog), we decided to decorate the downstairs in the fashion that WE like instead of what we see when most people decorate their homes.  To start off the collection, we decided to order some art by James Hance. He is very talented at taking two themes and meshing them together for some awesome results.  We particularly like The Dark Starry Knight and "Till Luke Said...".  The first one manages to take Van Gogh painting that every college girl seems to have in her dorm/apartment and makes it awesome.  The second is a much more subtle depiction of a childhood favorite ("Where the Wild Things Are") with a Star Wars twist. In fact, it is so subtle that my grandmother said she loved it but couldn't see the Star Wars in it when I pointed out what it was.  I love Hance's art in general and highly recommend his work.  To boot, it wasn't even super expensive.  We spent three times as much framing The Dark Starry Knight as we did buying the print!

I would include uploads of the prints, but it would be better to just click on the link above and enjoy perusing the site. Enjoy!

Biden and Video Games

In case there is any confusion on the matter, I am not a registered Democrat or Republican nor am I affiliated with any political party.  So what I have to say about Biden has nothing to do with his political party.

I cannot believe that people are blaming violent video games for Sandy Hook.  To begin with, the shooter never played anything that the masses would even necessarily term in any way violent (StarCraft is a strategy game where you never even fire a make-believe gun).  And no one has ever been able to conclusively show that there is a link between violent video games and violent behavior.  Whatever people in the media may say, when you look at the actual research, it simply isn't there.  If you want me to sound off on research that may even show that there conclusively is NO link between violent video games and violent behavior, feel free to ask in the comments.

So, to invite the leaders of the video game industry to a meeting in an open letter in conjunction with working on a proposal to give the President/congress is something that I view as a cowardly, political act.  When he actually held the meeting, he said he was "agnostic" about the link between violent video games and violent behavior and that regardless of the truth that the companies needed to work on improving their image for non-gamers.  Agnostic?  He doubts whether the link exists and is unwilling to commit to a side despite all of the research that exists clearly showing, which side is correct?  To me this just sounds like someone that wants to appease all of the pollsters that blame video games for violence in general by appearing to do something while knowing that there isn't really anything that can be done on that  score.  Then he tells the representatives that they could be part of the solution?  By improving their image?? I'm all for making the gore and language filters more apparent to non-gamer purchasers, but I'm not sure what this has to do with the topic at hand.  This just seems to me like another example of a politician choosing to find something that is easy to blame and appear to be doing something when the truly effective course of action is too long term and/or difficult.

Another example of this would be the way the local police reacted to an accident on our street.  Our street is very narrow and full of lots of blind curves and hill tops.  Recently, there was a collision involving two vehicles where it appeared that at least one vehicle was speeding and at least one vehicle drifted out of its lane.  Now even if both vehicles were speeding, they wouldn't have hit each other if they were both in their lane.  But how have the police reacted to this accident?  By putting up a speed checker on a hill nearby (not even the one involved in the accident).  The real problem is that people have a dangerous habit of drifting  into the other lane on this road.  I have several times had to slam on my brakes or honk  my horn because the only other option when a car is coming down the road towards you is to go off the road into a steep ditch.  Not a good plan. But because this is too difficult to address and fix, they instead choose to address something ineffectively that isn't even the real problem.  Sounds familiar..

I'm looking forward to to the day when politicians and the media pick something else to focus on as a scapegoat besides video games.

DC Comics: Deck-Building Game

My husband and I are DC fanboys.  I need to admit that right now.  So when the DC Comics: Deck-Building Game came out, of course we bought it... and loved it! To support my love of the game, I wrote a review on boardgaming.com and have decided to share it below. Enjoy :)

The theme of this game (obviously DC comics) was very well implemented including lots of New 52 artwork, the most recent run of DC comics.  There are villain, super-villain, hero, super-hero, power, equipment, weakness, vulnerability, and location cards with the super-hero cards being the only ones that aren't added to your deck.  The latter provide you with special abilities that you as an individual can use throughout the game. The only issue with the theme is that you can being playing as Wonder Woman using your heat vision while driving the batmobile in Arkham Asylum with Mr Freeze at your side fighting against the Anti-Monitor. My husband and I took advantage of this situation to add some role-playing in the form of weaving an entertaining story as to why this would  ever happen, which added a huge element of fun to the game.

The mechanics of the game are the basic deck building mechanics with one type of currency used for everything (purchasing cards as well as defeating super villains) so it's a great game to teach the mechanics of deck building.  My only difficulty was remembering when to shuffle my discard pile because of the complexity of the conditions and how it can really impact game play if you do it at the wrong time.

The overall goal of the game is to defeat the chosen number of super-villains before the source deck runs out of cards for everyone to buy.  Players can play as many cards as they have in their hands and buy as many things as their "power" total (the game's currency) allows in any given turn.  This means that you can move through the deck of source cards a lot quicker than you would expect.  However, I have played this game with 2, 4, and 5 players and as well as the maximum number of super-villains without coming close to running out of cards from the source deck before defeating (buying) all of the super-villains.  It seems like there are just so many cards! As such, it seems this other end game condition is just one that the creators of the game included for an "in the unlikely event..." situation.

Overall, a fun game that scales well from 2-5 players including a more interactive experience when it is not your turn (due to the high number of cards with an attack aspect) than a game like Dominion. Fanboys of DC will probably love the theme although people not as familiar with the DCU might not appreciate  many of the cards.

9/10 stars

Di Renjie Review

My husband and I have recently gotten very into funding Kickstarter projects.  In particular, we have enjoyed funding board/card games.  Like most people in the US, we grew up playing the basics like Monopoly (this game still makes me cringe whenever I think of it), Sorry!, and Clue.  We had no idea there was an entire board gaming culture out there filled with wonderful possibilities for fun and thinking.  Our first realization came when my husband stumbled across Pandemic.  We ordered it out of curiosity and have been hooked on awesome board and card games ever since.  Fortunately, there are a lot of them out there.

One way that we have chosen to engage in this community is by supporting start up games on Kickstarter.  It's always awesome to see a game that we helped fund the production of show up in brick and mortar stores (e.g. Flashpoint).  But not all of them do (e.g. Di Renjie).  So I've decided to share my feelings about Di Renjie on my blog.

First, some background.  When I turned 10 or 12, I realized that you could use logic and strategy to almost always win at Clue as long as you didn't share this strategy with everyone.  So even though I got this game for Christmas one year, my family quickly stopped being willing to play this game with me.  Plus it needs at least 3 players to be a reasonable gaming experience.  Cue the appearance of Di Renjie on Kickstarter.  My husband saw the game come up and immediately thought of me always wanting to play Clue but never having the opportunity.

So the game.  Di Renjie is a deduction based card game where you are an inspector trying to determine the target, weapon, and location of an impending assassination.  It is cooperative in the sense that all of the players collectively must guess the correct combination in order to stop the assassination.  Yet it still has an element of competitiveness in that you gain points in a few different ways and can be the most successful inspector in a group of victorious gamers.

What makes this game superior to Clue, other than an more intriguing theme, is the mechanisms of the game. In Di Renjie, the mechanisms of the game make it difficult if not impossible (meaning no one I've played it with yet has managed this) to know the entire solution to the game before everyone is required to do so.  This drastically reduces the possibility that I will come up with a strategy that always wins me the game making it no fun for the other players.  If the outcome is always known and always the same, a lot of the fun is lost.

Another superior mechanism is the ability to deceive within the constraints of the rules.  Sometimes, deception is even mandatory!  So even when you gain information and clues about the targets, weapons, and locations, you don't always know how reliable the information is.  There is a way to investigate the reliability of the clues, but you can't use it very frequently.

And I also love that this game actually works well with 2 players.  Since our son is only 2 1/2 years old, my husband and I are a little short on available gamers.  We are always looking for games that scale well with 2-4 players, and this is a game that clearly accomplishes this.

Of course, this game also has an element of randomness that drives a lot of game play as well.  So this a competitive cooperative game requiring lucky strategies.  Lots of fun and definitely a keeper.  Glad we funded it and can't wait to play it with even more people!