Guest Board Game Ranking

I had five extra people in my house for just around three weeks and we played games on every night except four. I thought it would be an interesting exercise to list how I feel they ranked the games they played (they didn't get through my whole collection) just based on engagement and enjoyment (I didn't ask them to fill out a survey) as to compare with how I've ranked things previously. 

From worst to best:

Pandemic - too slow at 7 players and virus cube thing not just cutting it. Loss.

Kiri-ai: The Duel - seats only 2. too obtuse and hard to compete with other games that seat more.

Police Precinct - slow at 6 player and too easy. Win.

Operation Flash Point - 3 player. Was OK but too simple. Win.

Squid Game - 3 player. Better recieved than I thought, but too luck based.

Forbidden Desert - 4 player. Another mostly luck based game. Loss. My components here are getting frayed from years of play. :P

Ra - 5 player. Just "ok". Hasn't been rating high for any of my groups compared to the online accolades.

Horrified - 5 player. Fun and funny but still too slow for some.

Atlantis Rising - 8 player. Seats many is a plus but goes a bit long. 

Magic Maze - 8 player giggle fest, but got old after 2 games.

The Crew: Mission Deep Sea - 4 player mind wreck. Good but headaches occur over time.

Jaws - 4 player might have rated higher if the shark didn't win, but I'm a pretty good shark. :P

The Grizzled - 4 player multi victory. It was easy mode though as I forgot that multi supports cancel out

Lord of the Rings Duel - rated high with the visiting chess player even though he lost to his mom

Mikado "Pickup Sticks" / Jack stone / Tortoise Tumble - physical games enjoyed by many

Mancala - since its much like Sungka it was enjoyed by the visiting Sungka champ who won a lot

El Grande - 4 players. By the time they were working out the strategy it was too late to catch the run away victor (me) 

Black Orchestra - 4 players. Chess player killed Hitler hitting 4 out of 4 dice. OMG.

Risk: Elder Scrolls V - Skyrim - 4 player. Wifey won on victory points followed by chess man. My heroes were super short lived. :P

Darts - 3 players, round the world. My wife is too good at this. :P

The Mind - 8 players. Hilarious and always a good party game.

Klask - fast paced "air hockey" with magnets is always a winner. Seating only 2 is its downside.

Chess - well. When there's a chess player in the house, of course this ranks high. Been awhile since the board got this much use. I lost one blitz as white and won one long game as black using the Caro-Kann.

Escape from Colditz - 6 players. POWs escaped the German guards (played by me) and good fun was had by all. Being too long is its down side.

Lords of Waterdeep - 4 player. Awesome, and my wife still rules this game. 

Crokinole - Fun, fast and seats four. There's a reason its my most played game. 

Sequence - 6 players. The game they liked the best is something I didn't really rate as being that great.

Just goes to show that different games appeal to different people!

Echoes of Exile: The Prince's Pursuit

It's spruiking time as guildie Malkhia has released his fantasy novel Echoes of Exile: The Prince's Pursuit! If you're an avid reader please give it a try. Maybe you'll also enjoy Juris' The Golem City while you're at it. 

While we're doing all things guildie, I may as well up the link to Lyv's music youtube channel and the Dragonarm website where DL does monthly gaming posts or videos.

Sully, A Working Man

Two movies I watched with my guests!

Sully

After performing an emergency water landing of a passenger plane in the Hudson River, Captain Sully (played by Tom Hanks) faces the aviation review board who question if that was the correct course of action after simulations project his damaged flight being able to make it to two airports all while most of the public treats him as a hero. This "based on true events" film is a mostly talking one with heavy use of flash backs, but it is still pretty cool all up.

A Working Man

A retired soldier who now works in construction (played by Jason Statham) tries his best [not very hard at all] to leave his life of killing behind but when ridiculously over the top bad guys show up to mess with his place of business, what else can a guy do but blow them all away with high powered weaponry? Yep, this flick is one of pure "Statham taking out the bad guys" action with very little plot and set dressing to go with it. An easy one to turn off your brain and enjoy. :P

Risk: Elder Scrolls V - Skyrim

Here's a cut throat competitive game for 2-5 players that I originally just got awhile ago because I like all things "Skyrim" but haven't had a group to play it with until now. So, first of all it is RISK. A game of putting little figures on a map and then moving said little figures into territories of your frenemies to do some dice battle in a bid for map-wide domination.

Dice determines a lot of things here like who goes first and who survives combat. After "spawning" the map with your little dudes each player can then invade sending up to three of them into neighboring hostile territory (and some neighbors are connected by daedric portals). Attackers roll a dice per dude they sent while the defenders can defend with up to two. Compare the highest die pairs with defenders winning ties and remove the losing pieces. Then if there are still defenders, continue the dice rolling fest!

So far that's just regular Risk on a Skyrim map. What makes it more Skyrim though is that each faction has a hero and each turn other than gaining reinforcements you gain magicka which lets you buy and cast spells (all one shot) or buy important objective cards. You start with two of these and at the end of your turn if you've completed one you announce it and gain the indicated victory points. First to 10 wins, which is a lot faster than map-wide domination. For ridiculous hi jinks you can also shuffle in the "End of Game" card in the reward pile that people draw from if they won any territory on their turn.

Heroes are pretty tough with 10 HP each but they can only move where you have a little dude, and while enemy little dudes can attack them they can only defend against the little dudes (even if they were invading). Attack or defend, heroes always use max dice. Wait, if heroes can only defend against little dudes what do they attack? Other heroes (and heroes slain by other heroes get all their gear [you can buy armor and weapons too] taken by the victor).

Heroes can also fight dragons. There are four that randomly spawn at the start of the game and no little dudes can enter their territory without a hero to try slay the dragon. Dragons also have 10 HP and will only ever defend. Killing one grants the victorious hero a powerful dragon shout that they can use once per turn like, convince enemy little guy to become your little guy or Fus Ro Dah all enemy little guys out of a territory! 

Alas the rules need some interpretation and I house ruled only three invasions per turn to keep turns shorter and have each player engaged (which also invalidated at least two objective cards as they needed 4 and 6 successful invasions respectively). The VP win condition thankfully makes the game more manageable but it still took 4 of us maybe three and a half hours to finish. 

Better than I thought it would be, but it still doesn't beat El Grande or the always excellent and fast paced Lords of Waterdeep. 

Bracket City

Sorry I've been quiet for awhile. I've had some guests over for a number of weeks which has kept us quite entertained and busy! Here's some entertainment for you while I write up future posts... Bracket City!

(GR) Wildlands: Pardon

[Part of the Wasted Land story] 

Despite the recent set backs with my squad the cartel must really be hurting on other fronts with full on aerial assaults happening on their production lines as the cartel leader calls in to meet. After killing who knows how many people he has managed to negotiate his way to a Presidential Pardon and extraction to turn in other nearby cartels, but this doesn't sit well with the CIA handler assigned to this task force and she shoots him dead before fleeing the scene. Maybe there's some truth to Walker's intuition?

Nevertheless, we're sent to support an elite Splinter Cell operative Sam Fisher in catching her - at a Unidad base no less, where she's selling secrets to try make a deal to escape. She's already KIA by Fisher when we arrive, but he has to hack the database to purge the Unidad server of its intel (in the center of the base we just stealthed through, with a strict "drop no bodies" requirement) while we mount a defense at all costs (and kill everyone anyway - wtf) as the entire army is alerted and tries to get to us. 

Under barrel grenade launchers are great for helicopters and many Unidad soldiers go down for each Ghost Recon soldier that does the same. Eventually its just Sam and myself left as the wipe completes. We jump out a back window and run for the nearest car when an explosion erupts behind me, throwing me forward and into a wall. Everything goes black. [Seriously, I can't win this mission...]

(GR) Wildlands: Punisher

[Part of the Wasted Land story]  

The general is very forthcoming in his intel in regards to weapons Unidad has gotten their hands on, and so while other ghost teams are sent to steal their nuke chopper and disarm a dirty bomb, my squad is sent to a bunker black site hidden next to an abandoned train line to retrieve a captured engineer being used against his will to develop some new weapon.

Interestingly what we find within is a trail of dead bodies. Another operative: Walker "the Punisher", is already here and questioning the engineer we're meant to retrieve. The high tech drones the engineer was developing killed the rest of Walker's squad and he believes it was a government CIA spook that leaked intel that led to the hit. 

Didn't expect to run into this guy!

We manage to talk him out of executing the techie and giving us custody but sure enough the supposedly "under duress" engineer shows his true colors by calling for Unidad backup. Walker then shoots the engineer in the face and we fight our way out of there through a small army of soldiers to escape, splitting up with the disgruntled soldier who we learn later also survived but quit the military. Ultimately that's still a mission fail in my book. 

(GR) Wildlands: Private

[Part of the Wasted Land story] 

As the stew maker has cartel radio on 24/7 we go after its DJ next who isn't so hard to find - the downsides of broadcasting right? He spills the beans on a rockstar musician hired by the cartel to perform at a private and secret concert which is decently guarded in the mountains. Good thing this guy is a coward, as all it takes is a little gun fire to make him run to his car and flee out the only road to that place - away from the people defending him! 

We nab him after shooting his tires out and learn a little about who financed him. As expected the cartel financiers don't really trust each other so we lean on that, stealing one of their armored cash delivery trucks and delivering it instead to the garage of another cartel accountant. Soon enough this guy is getting death threats from his own organization and comes forward on his own to snitch on his superiors.

Assassin's Creed: Bolivia

Of interest is the cartel's contact in the Unidad military, an untouchable general based in one of the largest military installations in the country. His previous aide who he recently imprisoned is easier to reach though, and from him we learn about the general's private life including his weakness: his daughter. Getting her and then setting an ambush for her papa is a piece of cake.

(GR) Wildlands: Pozolero

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

I'm soon recruited and deployed with the Ghost Recon team in Bolivia who have been busy taking down the Santa Blanca cartel in the region [we were playing it coop until it started crashing on us], but the mission is a fail as our first capture target had already hung himself up in his own luxury house. 

With no intel about the people who have gone missing in the province to be found here, we team up with Rainbow 6 operatives Twitch and Caveira who are working another lead and use their breaching skills to defeat a group of barricaded suspects with some anti-cartel hostages at a factory. The freed hostages reveal that bunches of them had already been taken via "death trucks" away somewhere so while Rainbow 6 secures them our Ghost Recon four man team go intercept the truck and force the driver to tell us where he takes his passengers: a chemical plant out in the styx.

That's some scary face paint.

We quietly take out the guards while infiltrating and capture the man-child "El Pozolero" (the stew maker) who dissolves the corpses in acid. He claims he's never killed anyone himself and is just doing his job but that doesn't stop him from getting multiple life sentences (as per his real life counterpart).

(DE) Mankind Divided: Protection

[Part of the Wasted Land story]       

Intel found on site as well as what Miller discovered during his recon at Tarvos gives a solid indication of what Marchenko intends to hit next, a sort of peace summit that somehow hired Tarvos guards for protection - the same guys who are actually out to kill them!

Miller and I enter the event and have to dispatch the guards quietly as to not alarm the civilian guests but the heat turns up when Miller discovers Marchenko and his goons have poisoned the wine right about the same time Marchenko broadcasts live that he is about to detonate bombs in the residential apartments nearby.

Now going loud with shotguns Miller and I split up. He goes to warn the assembly about the poison but takes a bullet to the head for his efforts while I hunt down Marchenko while eluding his robot and drone guardians. He is very confused when his bombs don't detonate thanks to Chang's signal interference, and a shotgun blast to his face is all it takes to end the madman, live on television.

Due to the public nature of these events my unit was soon disbanded. Sometime later I heard Chang went on to do some Ripper / Hacking work the Breach movement and got himself arrested, but that line of work isn't for me [Breach mode sucks].

(DE) Mankind Divided: Prophet

[Part of the Wasted Land story]      

A gas bomb trap is what I find in the watch maker's apartment, but I also deduce she's joined some sort of machine cult in a tenement nearby. These nerds and their security cams are simple enough to sneak past them only to learn this woman also happens to be some high prophet and is about to "ascend" the cult members by putting their consciousness together like a new C-Consciousness and abandoning their physical bodies. 

She discloses that she made many bombs for her brother Marchenko right before stabbing me with the same poison that killed the ARC leader. Lucky I called for backup as the local cops arrest everyone and Chang manages to test out his synthesized poison cure which saves my life. 

There is evidence that Marchenko is paying the local Dvali crime gang for smuggling services so I visit them next in their domain of the red light district. These scum trade in everything including drugs and women so while I knock out the exterior guards once I sneak into their theater base of operations I hack their patrolling guard robots to join my side and then assist my new robotic friends in killing all the gang members within, including the bosses downstairs who get some surprise grenades for dinner.

(DE) Mankind Divided: Poison

[Part of the Wasted Land story]     

Tibor is grateful for the assist and takes me to the elevator straight to the edges of ARC territory. While he goes on ahead I'm temporarily detained by a big bruiser mechanic named Marchenko who warns that I don't belong there, before heading off to tinker with a downed police drone. 

Sure enough, just around the corner Tibor is warning his ARC buddies about my arrival and my intent to arrest their leader. Using the ladders to the maintenance ways and the tranq rifle gets me to my quarry with no one the wiser, but upon confronting the man he is adamant his group is being setup by someone else before suddenly convulsing and dying on the floor. Poison. 

I quickly take what evidence I can including a sample of this poison before the ARC guards come knocking with a blow torch. My exfiltration is anything but sneaky, and the bolt action tranq rifle really is really a disadvantage against opponents with machine pistols and combat rifles. Still, my opponents end up unconscious instead of dead. 

I make it back to the office later that evening and find Miller away, looking into some a potential link to the Tarvos mercenary security force, but Chang gives me a lead for the bomb maker from evidence Miller had "borrowed" from the police investigation team that points to a local watch maker.

(DE) Mankind Divided: Prague

[Part of the Wasted Land story]    

It's a beautiful city, albeit now one with a heavy police presence due to all the recent terrorist attacks. This doesn't seem to dissuade the Dvali crime gang from throwing their weight around though as, to get a certified clean bill of health from the local doctor after my previous gallivanting, I'm forced to sneak around a bunch of them shooting up a store. 

With that in hand it's time to head in to work. The storage and shipping shop front serves as cover for the hidden offices below where I meet colleagues Chang, a fidgety IT guy and boss man Miller, who is happy that I'm ready to be sent back into the field - specifically to some slums where the ARC activist group is based. I'm to take their leader in for questioning in relation to the bombings and all I'm taking with me is a tranq rifle, just to emphasize the no kill order given by Miller.

It takes some time to get to the cramped alleys where the homeless sleep beside the dead and of course Tibor, the contact I'm supposed to meet to gain access to ARCs HQ, has been imprisoned by the local police - and these guys don't play nice with other badges. Using vents and timing is enough to sneak in to find Tibor being worked over in interrogation so I knock the cops out, saving the guy in the exo suit armor for last as that involves throwing an EMP grenade at him to "double disable" the poor sod. 

Stalker 2: Scar

[Part of the Wasted Land story]   

My first stop in Pripyat is to assist the vanguard (another faction) defend their base from monolithians. Despite this their leader is very anti-ward and refuses to provide info, so Colonel K gets me to snoop around the vanguard's past operations and I find and report in details to an underground passage taken from a crashed helicopter (which I have to steal from a chimera who has made it his home).

There must be a leak though, because I soon come across hostile Spark forces vying for that same maintenance passage, led by Richter who meets his end in the gunfight. Colonel K and a squad of Ward arrive soon after, advising the now late Dr. Dalin was the traitorous snake. The next segment to get to the C-Consciousness requires lots running between bunkers between emissions, monolith defenders and two surprise bosses who get in the way as neither wants Ward to succeed:

Strelok himself, now wielding a powerful artifact is much like a wizard now - zipping around the chamber and throwing lightning anomalies left and right which really batters my gear. I end him from afar. And Scar, who has gone crazy after realizing his shining zone is not real, needs to be TV migraine induced to die just like Strelok did with Dark previously. With that Colonel K sacrifices himself to eliminate the C-Consciousness program, and I'm free to leave with a pretty decent report on what transpired within.

Duty above all.

Stalker 2: Surprise

[Part of the Wasted Land story] 

Apparently "FIBER" is the pass code that translates to "please kill me" or something, because all the Ward guards at the base immediately attack and I'm forced to murder them in self defense! Colonel K soon arrives to sort things out, explaining they are protecting the FIBER program (which implants missions like Dark's one) from those who would abuse it until they can work out how to track the affected people (some having already escaped the zone) and to shut it down afterwards.

With that regretful misunderstanding out of the way I'm next tasked to get through Yaniv station and on to Pripyat in the North but due to the increased monolith threat they won't just let anyone through, as the monolith themselves find out when they attempt to take Yaniv station and fail miserably (without any participation from me).

Richter is here too, upset with my Ward allegiance and voicing how he should have left me in that anomaly field all those weeks ago (because Ward wants to "kill the zone"). He still helps get the border open though by suggesting I trade passage for a special detector that only needs leg work (in the Red Forest) to retrieve. As a bonus, I also finally find an Exo-Suit of my size and can get it and my more advanced firearms upgraded with the Yaniv technician, Harpy. I believe she is the best in the zone, and she definitely invoices like it!

Stalker 2: Strelok

[Part of the Wasted Land story] 

The Doctor turns out to be a pacifist who lives on a small island in a highly radioactive lake and is horrified to learn the C-Consciousness project is still running so he reveals Strelok is somewhere at the Cordon, an area near where I first entered the zone! The boss of the rookie village there (who is also feared by the local bandits) partners me up with a capable stalker named Dark who is already on Strelok's trail, which leads to another abandoned underground lab full of anomalies and mutants, including a pseudogiant we manage to slay!

Surprise!

Soon after, Strelok gets the drop on us and kills Dark with a TV induced migraine - revealing Dark was an unwitting C-Consciousness assassin sent to kill him. As we're on the same side about "killing" this C-Consciousness he sends me to turn on another installation nearby, this one with ghostly type poltergeists in the way and a trio of burers down below. These mutant dwarves have powerful telekinesis and can use scattered weapons to fire or throw at their prey meaning it pays to fight them in "clean" areas.

After turning on the power I'm jumped by Scar and his Spark fanatics, who question my allegiance with Ward. I basically tell them what they want to hear, that I support their vision of a "shining land" to make the zone paradise for all to trick them into letting me go without harm. To help me see the "truth" about Ward I'm told to go to one of their bunkers and ask about "FIBER", which seems like a reasonable request.

Stalker 2: Subliminal

[Part of the Wasted Land story] 

After finally getting the helm (it's actually a helmet upgrade that can be installed in any armor) I regroup with Ward forces about to stage a second attack on Duga, with plans to blow up the base of the radio wall. Led by Faust, the monolithians put up a decent defense but the helmet is effective and after a decent fight with his illusory tricks he falls to my shotgun.

Dr. Dalin is interested in Faust's pendant so I deliver it to him at STC Malachite just in time to witness Colonel K, now in exo-suit armor to compensate for his helicopter crash injuries, execute Professor Ozersky who actually sided with monolith and activated the Duga radio wall from here to begin with! Using the pendant, a shaken Dalin puts us in contact with C-Consciousness : the minds of seven merged scientists uploaded to a server hoping for people to join them in immorality. No wonder Faust was a nutcase if this is who he spent all his time talking to.

It's decided that these creeps need to be turned off, but to do that means having to find the one man who has navigated the dark valley in the past: Strelok. After running down a bunch of false leads I finally get one that pans out for winning 5 rounds at the Rostok arena (head shot vs humans and jump up on crates vs mutants). "The Doctor", an associate of Strelok's apparently frequents the Red Forest, a place high in psi-radiation. Gotta pack those Psi-block meds since this helmet won't be enough.

Stalker 2: Science

[Part of the Wasted Land story] 

A monolith emitter is what I recover from the psi site and I'm tasked with lugging it across to the chemical plant where Ward has their main base. En route I stop by Zalissya to save (a handful of) them against a heavy monolith attack before completing the delivery and Dr. Dalin quickly works out that Faust is going to try use the Duga radio wall to brainscorch everyone into serving the Monolith. Not if Ward can help it!

I participate in the assault, complete with Col. K's helicopter support which goes very well until Faust shows up with his doppelgangers and activates the radio wall, causing Col. K to crash somewhere over the horizon and many Ward troops to succumb and die on the spot. I make it out alone and report in to Dr. Dalin who suggests a Professor Ozersky at the nearby STC Malachite might hold the key to overcoming Faust's powers.

The scientist asks me to do something for him first which is to reactivate the abandoned Mirror facility and connect it's systems to Malachite. This involves a trip through some zombies and their controller and then clearing radar tracks of any obstruction... which happens to be a chimera!  As the door has locked behind me at this point I'm forced to use a narrow door (cheat) to slowly whittle down the great beast until it is slain. For this Ozersky tells me of some special psi-resistant helmet hidden in an old lab, no doubt teeming with mutants.

Stalker 2: SIRCAA

[Part of the Wasted Land story]   

I'm welcomed with open arms at the SIRCAA research institute by Dr Dalin who is happy the device has finally made it to him in one piece. Colonel K and Ward soldiers are present too so I warn them about the impending Spark assault so we setup an ambush for the raiders and kill a lot of them, but are blind sided by additional Noontider troops now somehow fully back under the thrall of the Monolith who perform a secondary attack and throwing SIRCAA into disarray.

The retreat order is issued and while Colonel K and Dr Dalin manage to get to the evac chopper it leaves me and the remaining Ward soldiers behind as a pseudogiant joins the fray! The Colonel tells me there's another way out via some tunnels so I rush to that, leaving the pseudogiant battle to instead fight through an array of other previously caged mutants underground, like snorks who happen to be scary and hilarious at the same time.

The danger continues once I exit the tunnel as I happen to wander next to a chimera den, angering the two headed inhabitant which forces me to tumble down some cliffs to escape. While getting my bearings down at the riverbank Colonel K radios in saying massive psi-spikes were detected near my position and I am to check it out. It's a bit of a trek and the four blood suckers who ambush me on the road are more of a surprise than the Monolith troops now guarding my target location.

Stalker 2: Swamp

[Part of the Wasted Land story]  

On the hunt for the Clear Sky base I run into Richter again at the Sultansk loner base (and bar) who provides directions to get through the swamp to the distant village but warns about the defenses setup to protect it from outsiders. Sure enough, a number of psi-emitting towers need to be disabled before I can proceed - one guarded by a mutant cat in a dark church!

Even without them the swamp is a hellish place to traverse with all sorts of anomalies, mutants, and hyper radioactive water - but I make it to the ruined and empty village and find the scanner in a basement, but no Faust. Now of course I have to make the trip back and running face to face into a pseudogiant was not on my bingo card. I fight for a bit until it's apparent that I don't have the ammo to take this monster down so I jump a broken bridge and flee through a bubble anomaly field which seems to make it lose interest.

Exhausted, I try to rest up at the nearest ranger station but instead encounter the Sparker faction and their leader Scar, who know I'm on the way to SIRCAA with the device. They don't want to stop me, they just want me to open a door in an underground tunnel while I'm there. Before I can give a proper response, Ward troops arrive and begin a gunfight so I dash out the backdoor to let them sort it out while continuing to jog to the SIRCAA research facility. Good thing I'm loaded up with energy drinks!

Stalker 2: Sabotage

[Part of the Wasted Land story] 

The Ward badge grants me easy access to the Noontider base where they are having some leadership dispute due to recent sabotage. Luckily I can dodge that problem and just talk to one of their egg heads who claims he might be able to track down the SIRCAA device if he could get his hands on an inductor from the nearby Waste Processing Facility... which is now home to a controller mutant who uses mind controlled "zombies" as guards. This bastard is a tough cookie, more resilient than the kangaroo rat, blind dog and flesh packs I've been encountering so far but not as scary as those damned cloaking bloodsuckers (who for some reason look like Cthulhu).

With the inductor in hand I'm directed to install it at the Ward controlled Azimuth station and find the defenders all slain by traitorous Noontiders! A number of head shots and jammed weapons later I finally have the place to myself and use the plot device to boost the antennas strength, letting me eavesdrop on a conversation between Noontider Faust and a mole he has in Ward.

As Ward Camp Icarus was mentioned and is nearby I go there next and stop a sabotage attempt (by diffusing a psi emitter - with bullets) just in time before it can fry anyone's brains, then taking out the Ward traitor as he's on a call with Faust. Faust is crazy enough to then chat with me briefly, inviting me to find him and that scanner I've been trying to get back at the old Clear Sky base - if I can. Challenge accepted.

Stalker 2: Sheriff

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

Using advice from the local one legged technician I activate a number of radio towers to triangulate Squint's position (the idiot left his PDA tracking beacon on) and reclaim the Ward device he stole but not my own as he no longer has it, claiming he sent in on to his boss whom I learn (from Ward, in exchange for returning their doohickey) is some crime lord based in a depot at Garbage.

By the time I get there the depot has been wiped out by Ward soldiers led by a Colonel with a really long name so I'll just call him Colonel K, but the bandit boss man isn't among them. I offer to help track him down as it might be easier as someone without their badge and the Colonel accepts, suggesting I ask around at the neutral tenements of Slag Heap on his whereabouts.

Turns out he was captured by a rival crime lord so I end up fighting this batch of bandits to free the bozo, only to discover he has already expired in his cell. A hidden note on his person leaves a clue that he was dealing with someone from the Monolith faction and upon hearing this Colonel K deputizes me with a borrowed badge and sends me off to Wild Island, to get more information from the Noontiders... who are all ex-Monolith. This is because he is actually working with SIRCAA, and the scanner I was bringing was ultimately meant to get to them.

Stalker 2: Start

[Part of the Wasted Land story]

It was supposed to be an easy job, to infiltrate the exclusion zone around the Chornobyl power plant and get a report back. Using the cover of being a courier for a new scanner device handled the paper work while good timing and cardio for a night time run got me through the military border to the nearby mobile bunker lab where I was to drop off the device (and collect the report from the inside contact).

Everyone in that lab was dead, and before I knew it I got jumped by some goons who took the device and left me for dead in an anomaly field too. Lucky Richter the wanderer showed up and taught me how to disrupt said anomalies to make them temporarily safe to pass through, then pointed me to the small village of Zalissya where there is tension between the local stalkers and the members of the Ward faction (who seem to be like the police) who have taken up position in the town hall.

I managed to radio HQ from there but they've tasked me with scouting the zone myself, specifically the SIRCAA research institute which is only going to let me in if I can get that scanner back. Asking around town I learn about Squint, the local sticky-fingers who has gone into hiding for stealing something from Ward (and why they've moved in), might know where my own missing equipment has gotten to.

The Heavy Standard: The Black Dog

[Part of the Party Time journal]

After fighting the ring of soldiers guarding the Emperor's Spire, the party encounters Bun Bun knocking on the Emperor's door begging to be let in. Dr. Qwek Qwek grabs him by the hair and throws him out a window to twice kill the cross dresser. They then face the Emperor himself who explodes out of the door and kills a few more of their number before Eagle hilariously finishes him off with a pointy stick up the bum. The curse is now broken, but they have one more thing to check out - at the main floor they use the heavy standard to unlock a spiraling metal staircase into a dark cold chamber.

Niggi the black bulldog Juris saved much earlier runs off and is soon behind the glass in some control center powering up the space ship of world eating aliens. He thanks them for the escort and announces that they're going to lift off soon, giving them the choice of staying to be snacks for the soon to be awake monsters or to return topside and die with the rest of the island (which is all a space ship).

They chose neither and find a control panel that they have to work out how to manipulate (I used an easy star puzzle as my players have never played one before, and gave them more and more rules and hints based on successful rolls) all while Niggi released poison gas to eliminate them. They solve it easily and disable take off, then Agrellon plants his seed of water he took from the Painted City to sink the space ship (and collapse the Waiting plateau) and Juris casts teleport (putting him in old age now) to get them back to relative safety of the City of Babababa, ending the campaign. Other than the 4 players their surviving NPC followers were 6 other original 555s, 4 guards from the Daggerdowns and all 4 froggies (who I suspect were safe because I let them name them :P).

The end. We had a lot of laughs playing it, hopefully you enjoyed reading about it! :)

The Heavy Standard: The Standing Emperor

[Part of the Party Time journal]

The next tower they visit is the Library of Truth, which is in the shape of a book but constantly burning, as they were told the lord librarian here was actually helpful to the rebel cause (and they couldn't work out how to kill him). He is indeed a font of knowledge, sharing weaknesses of the others that he knows of and mentioning Emperor Hiatus is now known as "the standing emperor" as he no longer sits down but only after telling them that all of them are actually unwitting caretakers to an evil race sleeping beneath the plateau, and that the old battle standard still carried by Dr. Qwek Qwek actually has parts that can fold out to turn into a key that can be used at the main floor of the Emperor's spire.

After that info dump he takes a vial of poison and offs himself while the team heads next to the confront Bun Bun, the long haired and bearded master builder in a dress who they know they need to drop from a great height. The dice aren't with them here and Bun Bun escapes to (finally) warn the guards while they slink off to rest and head off to their next target, Admiral Sea King Glory on his exploded boat. Eagle just uses an exploding arrow to kill him and then snipes Lord Commander Hasner Been in the back (the only way to kill this back stabbed champion) as he rode around in his chariot.

The soldiers manage to catch up with them afterwards for a brief scuffle but they're soon on their way again to the Argilatory Prison to take out the Emperor's brother, Never. As his guards are busy fighting the apes who have climbed up from the hills they manage to catch him alone, Juris paralyzes him, Agrellon strip searches him, and then Eagle and Dr. Qwek Qwek take turns stabbing him in the heart to finish him off. Reading his scattered papers they learn he had previously attempted to kill his brother with a spear trap that launched up through the throne, but was confused when the Emperor survived it. Eagle rightly surmises this is why he no longer sits down! Armed with this knowledge the party head to his spire to break the curse once and for all.

The Heavy Standard: The Waiting Curse

[Part of the Party Time journal]

Feckless Licker, the first Nigian high mage of the empire, is upset about losing his tithe so he conjures a supply golem to face the team (they had a lot of supplies, so that became the HP of this monster), but the awkward construct and the stupid mage are no match for them. He quickly spills the beans about the curse he helped the emperor create: to force people to serve him forever any being that leaves the plateau is immediately engulfed in flames.

It is powered by the chosen nine (one in each tower of the city) who must each be twice-killed (and the second death must be exactly the same as the first for it to stick) to break their part of the curse. Agrellon tests this theory by beheading Feckless Licker twice, as he was dumb enough to reveal he was one of the nine and had not died a single time yet.

They then move on to the lightning blasted tower of Archmage Letalis (who enjoys calling out to the stars to see if something will answer) and accidentally release him from his prison of salt. Eagle uses the magnetic metal manacles to quickly bind him and the squad push him off the observatory where he is hit by lightning (more than once) ensuring that he is truly dead.

At the "sapling" of the elven great tree (its still a big tree) they face the imperial gardener and her two great eagles (one gets swatted by Dr Qwek Qwek using the Heavy Standard and the other gets turned into a cat) and Agrellon works out that this lady was hung from a noose, so they string her up by the very tree she was tending. This is witnessed by a pair of dirty disabled rebels who plead for help while giving some information on the remaining tower lords but are turned away as part of joining the rebellion is to get a part of yourself amputated to feed the community. They give that a hard pass.

The Heavy Standard: The Sword of Cats

[Part of the Party Time journal]    

Around a fourth of the 555 opt to remain in the peaceful Painted City, and the remainder are armed with Eastern type armor and weaponry as agreed by the Painted Lady. After passing through the Blue Forest and dodging a few jiang shi (hopping vampires) they come across an obliterated land scape with a mountain in the shape of a cracked egg in the center of a crater in the distance while the remnants of the Waiting magic academy lies in ruins closer to the plateau walls.

They opt to go to the academy and learn it was a good choice, as that mountain is full of hostile aliens that fortunately can't stand the sunlight. Nevertheless a skeleton looking mage-builder (he drank a flawed potion of permanent invisibility) hammering away on a bomb he is building requests they explode the thing, but they refuse - opting instead to simply buy his other wares which include bracers of magnetism (to each other), a variety of potions (that are all just soft drinks), and a sword of cats.

With this they proceed into the endless sandstorm of the Niga desert and happen to wander into the base of the Cult of the Grey, fanatic slavers who worship a tall gray alien who claims to have saved the world by shooting down the egg-mountain and continues to save the world by generating an endless sand storm so that other hostile races don't come visit. He says all of this while using a large metal spear-straw to impale chained captives and drink them like disposable juice canisters, crunching them up and tossing them away when he's done.

The team opt to slay him and his cult, setting the remaining captives free who help lead them to the Nigian city of Babababa which holds a gateway up to the Waiting City plateau. A small encounter with spider cacti lets Juris test out the sword of cats which turns defeated enemies into regular cats! At the city itself the surviving Nigians of the 555 get them past any security and they offer to escort the tithe wagon of amputated female slaves to their great wizard, Feckless Licker, up to his tower in the cursed land. To save the slaves from further pain, Juris stabs them with the sword of cats and turns them all into (full bodied) random cats too and lets them go free.

The Heavy Standard: The Painted City

 [Part of the Party Time journal]   

With the tower guardsmen now supplementing the 555s (along with the reluctant elves, dogs and 4 froggies) they use the main underground tunnel to make their way underneath the "ape tower" and onwards to the main shaft - a deep spiraling hole with many smaller tunnels branching off in every direction, at the bottom of which is another long corridor that ends in... a collapsed section dead end! They didn't run into anything on their way here but now trapped they here the unmistakable "laughter" of the apes as the army of monkeys flank them in the tunnel.

There's nothing to it but to fight their way out, and Eagle and the elves roll fantastically - easily clearing the path back to the spiral shaft. Here the apes, now coming from every orifice and throwing boulders from the high ground have a massive advantage and mercilessly kill every single elf in the unit before Juris puts up a wall of dust to aid in their escape. They exit at ape tower and encounter a huge silverback sitting on a throne of bones but Eagle shoots it in the eye and it just scampers off. They do the same as the barricades they put behind them are sure not to last very long...
 
Continuing Eastward they descend from the misty hills and find a great river controlled by a group of kappa bandits but Juris easily nullifies them by freezing the river, granting them passage to the Painted City - a society of artists, musicians and crafters who all worship the Painted Lady as their goddess, all safely tucked away behind a massive wall of a moving mural.

The only way forward is through but they aren't allowed to bring any weapons or armor through the city so they bargain with the Painted Lady, who agrees to provide them with equivalent gear after they convince some fishermen down at the docks to return to being faithful to her and not to listen to the voice of Lady Longwein telling them they are trapped in a painting. Agrellon still gets a seed of water from this exchange (they were meant to plant it in the Painted Lady's palace), and Juris also gets another deal with the Painted Lady of regaining some youth in exchange for forgetting his magic. He accepts.

The Heavy Standard: The Daggerdowns

[Part of the Party Time journal]   

Bad Horse and a number of braves accompany the 555 back through their destroyed camp to the Southern cliff face where they, Eagle, Dr Qwek Qwek and Agrellon rappel down to a large ocean facing cavern. Juris opts to stay up top with the rest but turns them invisible for added safety. It is winter again now and they find five of the flying serpents (dragons) asleep in the cave. With much stress and good rolling all are assassinated simultaneously.

A crevice not big enough for the serpents to fit through descends deeper and following it they find evidence that there might be more: cracked egg shells and eaten corpses of... something. From the underground lake appears Lady Longwein offering another seed of water to solve this danger before vanishing once more. Bad Horse eagerly takes the seed of water but is convinced by the 555ers not to use it immediately (1 year) and what it will do (from past experiences).

Not willing to continue to hunt they all return to the surface where Bad Horse and his braves return to his camp while the 555 push East, into the misty forested hills of Daggerdown where they were warned dangerous beasts lived. It isn't long before they are attacked by them: angry silverback apes who have no limit to their number! They run and run until they find a tower to hold up in. Juris even does a detour to save a black bulldog he names "Niggi" en route which he finds also being attacked by the apes.

The towers residents let them all in and quickly shut the heavy gate behind them buying some measure of safety. Here they learn they are in the second of three "Daggerdown" towers which are actually connected by mines to the Argillatory prison up on the plateau where prisoners conveniently get "shafted" down to the mines. This particular tower is now home to only guardsmen, having eaten all the prisoners and are now running low on water thanks to something lurking down below. The further tower is controlled by prisoners while the tower closer to the plateau is controlled by apes. Seeing an opportunity to reach the plateau, it's clear to them which way to go...

The Heavy Standard: The Whitelands

[Part of the Party Time journal]  

Rested up they abandon the Fool's March fort and meet up with their elven allies to continue North following the plateau wall into the lush rolling plains of Whiteland. Their mere presence deters a bandit attack on a merchant wagon mid-battle, making the bandits flee while the wary merchants tell them that the path up here has also closed from the great upheaval. The Emperor's Finger tower (fist with middle finger raised) high atop of the plateau is quite visible though (especially during sunrise), as an eternal insult to the people here.

They are also warned that any non-whites would not be treated kindly here, especially with the war against the dark skinned Nigians going on in the North. Some of the 555s are actually Nigian too as Emperor Hiatus Waiting had allied with them early in his reign. Even all the dogs except one which is pure white will be seen as evil. They journey North regardless, saving some kids from a wolf attack and returning them to their nearby town where they learn that they won't be allowed to pass the battle lines in the North.

This immediately makes them do an about turn back towards the swamp but are caught by a 100 strong force of white knights in white armor, white plumes riding white horses and carrying white lances and white flags. Seeing the filth of the 555 they attack! The battle goes very poorly for the poorly armed 555s until Juris does a big spell to make the white knights appear black. Blinded by their racial hatred they begin killing each other till only three remain, fleeing the field and letting the survivors loot their plate armor and weaponry.

They return past the frozen waterfall, past the empty Fool's March fort and up back up the winding rocky incline to the Southlands where they are surprised to find Bad Horse and his people camped nearby. The big man says they lost their territory, a lot of their people, and all the arrested folk from fools march to "flying serpents". The 555 agree to help him with this problem.

The Heavy Standard: The Fool's March

[Part of the Party Time journal] 

Meanwhile Eagle leads the others including Dr. Qwek Qwek and the elves South to the shore, away from where the wind was blowing. A strange woman floating on the water introduces herself as Lady Longwein (whose power is limited to the ocean she says) offers to help stop the spreading forest fire by using a seed of water she provides them before vanishing into the night. They just have to put it at a specific part near the frozen waterfall close to the fortress. The elves are obviously keen on doing this so they accept and circle around the forest fire inadvertently putting them back into the mirrored grove... the team members who had previously had hair taken by crows suddenly explode in flames and more crows arrive as a voice calls out that they broke their promise!

Dr. Qwek Qwek manages to locate the naked crow controlling witch in the mirror grove and Eagle shoots her dead, but not before she immolates a few more of their number. They then make it to the spot to plant the seed of water and upon doing so are rewarded by a massive earthquake which quickly cracks around the swamp region and in a sudden motion the entire burning swamp sinks under the ocean. A most shocking end to that forest fire!

The remaining elves state they will join the 555 on their quest to the Waiting City as it was told that the Emperor had stolen a seed of their great tree long ago and planted it up there, but for now they will make camp here and recover from the shock of losing their home while the highlanders return to the Fool's March fort and meet up with Agrellon and Juris to rest up... losing a few more people to a disease before Dr. Qwek Qwek can cure it.

Soon enough a column of mounted Skyriver braves led by Bad Horse (built like an ox) approaches. As the 555s are trusted friends as decreed by the Death Speaker they can sort the mess the fort inhabitants caused when they kidnapped, abused and killed the chieftain's wife I-told-you-so. They simply strong arm all of the forts inhabitants to be taken as hostages for the tribesmen to enact their justice on those deserving it.

The Heavy Standard: The Forest Fire

[Part of the Party Time journal]  

Inside the tree is a mind trip of chambered puzzles involving keys: leaving an item to take a key off a pedestal, finding a key reflected in a mirror that's not there, defeating a scarecrow whose powers the players themselves decide (easy as non-flammable wasn't one of them), and saving four strangers who happened to be themselves. The queen herself serves only as a guardian to her daughter's room - she bestowed upon her all the powers of the forest for her to make her own paradise. They convince the queen to let them through and beyond find her daughter: a lich.

It is a swift battle once they realize it is a battle, because I was just going on with flowery narration while they are being life drained before Agrellon woke up (by DL saying "hang on what?"). He then body slammed her to wake the others up who then set her alight... which set the entire tree alight. At this point they've lost around 14 of the 555s, and I give them the remaining 20 reinforcements to control evenly.

Regrouping outside they find the old elves and the outpost elves staring in horror at the magical forest fire about to spread and those of them gifted in magic hold hands and try to "kumbaya" chant it away - only to fail and each explode in a horrible scream of brilliant flame rapidly one after the other. This sends Juris' dogs running off into the woods and he gives chase with Flipper, while Agrellon and his frog man chase after Juris. Miraculously (good rolling, supply spending and inspiring Flipper lol), he gets them all back unharmed but are now cut off from the others due to the fire.

To dodge it they head back to the Fool's March fort encountering a murderous silver haired elf on the way who is executing a human female (the local healer at the fort) for lying about the elves spreading a disease in the fort. The kill him unceremoniously and make it there, only to learn there's more trouble coming in the form of a Skyriver raid!?

The Heavy Standard: The Green Swamp

[Part of the Party Time journal] 

As the cavalry leader, Sparrow-touches-trees, does not seem hostile and only wants the child returned Agrellon passes a diplomacy check on his own people to truss up their own legion leader who is so anti-Southlander he's willing to murder the child (and proceed to murder the entire camp as per the Emperor's standing orders). The boy is returned and the 555s are allowed to make camp near the Skyriver tribe's base where they are given some food and learn that its been 25 years since their initial battle. Since then a great upheaval has closed off the routes up to the Waiting City which the 555 are interested to return to. After learning the hills to the East are dangerous they instead go West, leaving the anti-Southlander with the people he hates (and they kill him, feeding him to their Death Speaker who then names the 555 as friends to the tribe).

En route Juris manages to tame a pack of 12 wild dogs on the prairie before they come to the rocky, winding slope that leads down from the Southlands to the a green swamp. Halfway down is a rickety old fort of Fool's March manned by other old "Highlanders" (people from the Waiting City) who got trapped after the upheaval. While playing some dice poker for supplies they learn that no one can exit the swamp, for other than the creatures within strange elf magic prevents them from leaving it. Juris convinces the wavering 555 NPCs to continue the journey rather than stay here and so they descend into the knee deep muck and soon encounter a frogman village.

The froggies are friendly, and Dr. Qwek Qwek helps the constipated chief of his illness: eating stones to stay heavy as the heaviest is the chief. They are each given a froggy ally for this, despite Juris' rejections as his one, Flipper, is very amorous? Lol. The froggies prove to be good guides and can at least give them a choice between passing a dry island of evil trees or a crocman nesting ground. They choose the latter and end up fighting through, then enter a mirrored grove where ravens snatch the hair of some of their soldiers. A voice warns them to leave and they agree, promising to not return this way - so they proceed unmolested.

Next they find some elves lying about in a glade, tripping on the lizards they're licking while one of them gets dragged away by a panther. They wake up and befriend these old guys who proclaim the end of the elves has long been coming: Emperor Hiatus' tactic of flooding their emerald forest and turning it into a swamp was effective and now their queen defies nature itself. They agree to escort the 555 to said tree, letting them pass a guarded elf outpost unchallenged up to the gigantic tree palace itself (now dying from over watering). Here the vines and vine controlled corpses are fought off with some losses as they push through to the large hollow to gain an audience with the elven queen.

The Heavy Standard: The 555

[Part of the Party Time journal] 

At the center of the isle of Atera is a tall and huge plateau upon which sits the sprawling and grey Waiting City ruled by its Emperor Hiatus Waiting. Having grown tired of other nations occupying his island, the Emperor drafts up large numbers of his citizens into his Waiting Legions among whom are doctor in training QwekQwek (Rose), Agrellon the novice swordsman (DL), Eagle the apprentice archer (mom), and Juris (as himself) the novice mage who happen to all be allocated to the 5th legion, 5th division, 5th cohort (aka "the 555") with other mainly civilian folk and after an inadequately short training period at the Southern Cross tower they are all given a club and a tabard, and Dr. Qwek Qwek gets the dubious honor of bearing the heavy standard of the legion: a red flag with a black figure of a sideways facing soldier stabbing themselves in the chest with elder speak writing along the border that translates to "Sacrifice yourself".

Their legion is then sent South with the young orange toga wearing wizard, Roland Lexington, to wage a winter war against the Southland Horselords who have been harassing the farms in the region. They witness Roland's power from a distance as he throws lightning at the masses of torch bearing, bone armor wearing, horse mounted natives but suddenly his position is consumed by a translucent black dome. After a moment of chaos, the 555s are instructed to enter the dome and retrieve the wizard - but first must fight through the horselord forces that get in their way. Juris has the good sense to transmute Agrellon's club into a sword and Eagle's club into a bow and arrows so they can make use of their abilities.

Worth noting I give each of my players 20 NPC soldiers at this point - each with a name and a one line personality trait, keeping a 20 "reserve" on me. For each point of damage they don't want to take, they can instead cross out names on their list. Indeed, some names are crossed out as they forge their way into the dark dome just as it solidifies into a solid black. In the center they find an old man in an orange toga - Roland Lexington (because magic in this world makes you age), his face frozen in terror as a bone spear stopped in mid flight begins to pierce his chest. Approaching it makes time slow for the individual who gets close, and even Juris' attempt at telekenesis causes him to be frozen in time.

Despite their best efforts (or due to their meddling) the spear is pushed forward into the wizard and suddenly time speeds up! The projectile spins wildly, tearing Roland into bits of bloody gore and with a flash of bright light the black dome shatters! Gone are the snowy night time fields they were warring upon and instead they see fields of spring time grass and a bunch of Southland children nearby looking at them in terror. They capture one who spills the beans about where their current camp is and head there, finding a sizable teepee village near the waterfall but a cavalry unit (no doubt warned by the kids that escaped) awaits them.

The Heavy Standard - The System

[Part of the Party Time journal]

We've finally played my home brew tabletop campaign so I'll be posting here how things go. :)

Definitely "Forged in the Dark" (inspired by Blades in the Dark), this is a fiction first role playing game that only uses D6 to determine action results. A 6 means you did it, 4 or 5 means you did it but something bad happens, and 1 to 3 means you failed badly and something bad happens.

Unlike Blades I'm trying to restrict the number of dice to 1, unless you have advantage or disadvantage which adds a dice and the result taken is the higher (advantage) or lower (disadvantage). If things are wildly in their favor or against though, maybe through a good idea or through sacrifice I'll give them a third die. To find out if someone has an advantage or not just roll a d6 and see if it is higher than the number of stars against the relevant skill. My players can pick any skill within reason (and in the setting) and they can spend 10 XP to add a star next to them (or add a new skill) to a maximum of 5 stars.

Character wise they just get a name and a few boxes: 8 harm, 8 stress, 6 scars and trauma. Harm is physical damage, stress is mental damage or spent to re-roll, and exceeding either of those gives them a scar of trauma in which case they are out of the scene. If scars and trauma is full the character dies, but 6 is super generous I don't think anyone is going to die this way. I'll even let them split the damage out as they like [except in certain situations] and can just sacrifice items or NPC allies (per damage). That's intentional as my players are unlikely to take kindly to character death. :P

There's also an "age" track with 16 boxes, the first 4 being "prime" and the last 4 being "old". People in their prime have and advantage healing, and old people have a disadvantage in healing. That's taken during the more mechanical "rest" action in which each player can do two things. Rest as above, gather "supplies" (which I'm representing by tactile gold coins, but they actually represent anything so if they "need" something I can say, sure - you have that: for x number of supplies), or use said supplies for research or construction of whatever. Resting and traveling are the main ways in which time moves, with each season having 10 boxes - I roll a dice when "time passes" and (6) 3, (4 or 5) 2, or (1-3) 1 time unit is filled in. For ease of remembrance they all have the same birthday to age up.

Not that my game will span years anyway... BUT the magic system does. You cast spells, you AGE. The stronger the effect the worse off you are. You fill up your age you die. I feel this is more acceptable than "a monster killed you because it rolled better than you" as the player is willingly advancing towards their own end by continued casting. I think the magic system should balance itself out this way.

Healing harm and stress is the main way to get XP, while I might throw a few extra points for well played segments or good ideas. This does mean XP tracking is done by the GM (me) though, as I'm not going to award silly self harming characters with XP.

I think that covers most of it... on to the game!

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning and Captain America: Brave New World

A pair of action movies!

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning

With the world facing a new threat Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise, still in good running form) is deployed again to do the impossible... defeat AI? Yep. Decent humor and action scenes (except one sword / knife fight with too much slash grappling instead of stabbing) can be found here, and an alright story to boot. I'm glad they dialed down the "this is what we hope will happen" scenes this time around and all up I do think its a stronger story than the previous one, but while it has all the necessary story arcs it certainly is still a "Part I", as it clearly warns in the title sequence. :P

Captain America: Brave New World

With the world powers in a race to claim the resources (adamantium, said to be better than the Wakandan's vibranium) from the newly risen Celestial Island (from the Eternals), new-ish Captain America Sam Wilson (played by Anthony Mackie) becomes tangled in a plot to try keep the peace. Much like the audience he's very self aware that he's not a super soldier, and humorously that Ant-Man kicked his butt that one time. Despite having improved shielding thanks to Wakandan tech his survival in this movie is more dependent on his plot armor and reliance on bad guys missing completely or definitely hitting the center of his shield with bullets. Better than I thought it would be, but still only recommended if you are an Anthony Mackie fan.

Dark Winds and House of David

TV shows with greater powers at work?

Dark Winds

This currently three season series follows tribal policeman Joe Leaphorn (played by Zahn McClarnon) as he and his colleagues investigate often fatal crimes that happen to have a touch (but the slightest, lightest whisper of a touch) of the supernatural. After all sometimes your medicine bag will protect you better than your six shooter? It's an interesting mix but one I feel isn't played to its full potential. I'm also a bit annoyed that our hero is very slow on the trigger but I have to keep reminding myself that that's a more reasonable / relatable character than one who just blasts everyone away. :P  I'll definitely keep watching it but am holding off on recommendations for the time being as the episode quality ranges a fair bit.

House of David (season 1)

This currently one season show follows David, the biblical shepherd boy destined to be king. Other than it being a lot more musical than I though it would be as David (played by Michael Iskander) sings a lot, there's a bit of royal drama mixed in with a few action scenes that really solidify this as an old testament story (there's lots of killing in there). It helps that the acting and story are decent which make us eager to watch season 2. I don't think its as good as The Chosen though, but it still has a lot of time to change my mind.

G20 and Tortoise Tumble

A silly movie and a silly little game.

G20

When greedy terrorists somehow take the world leaders hostage at a G20 summit, its up to the USA's military trained black female president (surprised they didn't make her lesbian as well right?) to save the day while wearing a dress  made of plot armor. This is quite the spectacle and the actors did a decent job with the predictable script they were given which makes for an OK enough movie. I'm guessing they were hoping to target younger audiences who don't know movies like Die Hard and Air Force One which also might explain their shyness in having blood and death on the camera. For everyone else, this is an ok "background" movie while you do something else.

Tortoise Tumble

This is a ridiculous little game that involves rolling two toy turtles onto a set of randomized tiles to score points. How your turtle lands gets points with being on its back giving you 0 to a head plant which gives you lots! In addition to that landing on a particular tile might be better than another, but missing entirely is a zero, regardless of how your turtle landed. Very silly, very shallow and very fast to run. Can't really recommend it though.

Stuff outside Tokyo

After leaving Tokyo... the Kyoto International Manga Museum is good for multi linguists but the section for English manga is small. Unless you are also getting your portraits drawn by the local artists (a cool service) it's not worth the entry fee.  

Onto Awaji Island - on the Western side is Hello Kitty Smile, a smallish building dedicated to Hello Kitty which we enjoyed much more than Sanrio Puroland. The smaller scale let them really decorate their rooms much better and somehow the gift shops are bigger!? The food here was also better in comparison. Nearby (in a car anyway) is the Hello Kitty Apple House whose main space is used for a stage show with dining. Live dancers and instrumentalists always are great, and getting the opportunity to "meet" Hello Kitty fulfilled one of my wife's life long dreams (as an aside, I'm officially taller than Hello Kitty lol). :D

The last theme park was my pick and still on Awaji: Nijigen no Mori. There's lots of attractions in this mountainous park including Naruto and Godzilla but the ones we did were Dragon Quest, Monster Hunter: The Field, and the Bleach: Night Walk, which is literally a mostly uphill walk through the forest lit by some cool lighting and screens playing scenes from a Bleach episode. It's a bit of a workout!

Dragon Quest was my favorite: a live action RPG where you help people in the town (by interacting with digital screens) to find stuff (physically in town, which includes opening chests and looking for secret doors) and fighting monsters which comes in 2 varieties: doing the correct pose to do more damage and furiously button mashing to beat bosses. It was super fun and has an ok story to boot! We even stopped by the Dragon Quest bar for a decent lunch (Awaji is known for onions, so expect that everywhere here).

Monster Hunter: The Field is more relaxed on the RPG side, letting you just wander the full grounds to find items / allies via digitally picking them up (you get a nice bracelet with a chip to interact with stuff in all the attractions I think) then returning to battle the creature you are hunting. The fight tech here is more involved as your team (of up to 3 only) gear up with a digitized gauntlet and belt and are set into a room with a 3x3 mat. Swing or shoot your weapon to do damage at the screen but also don't stand in the red (physically) and you'll actively have to duck and jump a few attacks to evade them. Pretty fun!

Definitely want to go back here, and back to the nearby glamping site of Grand Chariot which is spectacular in both accommodation and service, driving us up and down the mountain to the nearby Nijigen no Mori themepark and even providing a phone so to call for pickup. The heated floor yurt was amazing and so were the 7 course dinner and breakfast provided. Yes, it was really pricey but I'm willing to pay that again! If you need a cheaper alternative we also stayed at the Fairfield by Marriott Hyogo Awaji Higashiura which was pretty nice, but expect to walk around to find food. :)

Stuff in Tokyo

I covered off where we were in the last post, time for a bit more of what we did and since I already did a sweeping generalization of the temples and castles last post so what's left is... theme parks? Haha - something like that.

My wife is a big Hello Kitty fan so in Tokyo we visited Sanrio Puroland which looks great on the outside but is less impressive on the inside, simply having one big (but nicely decorated) main hall with little offshoots and a very small shop. The cafeteria gets crowded quick too, especially since the Japanese use the "if something is on the table it is reserved" methodology. As such I've seen people leave hand bags, phones, purses unattended which is very alien to my defensive "look out for thieves" brain.

The Sanrio character shaped foods are ok but nothing to write home about. You can get more desert type stuff of that at Sanrio Cafe Ikebukuro which is closer to Tokyo. Expect to wait in a long digital queue for a table there though. You know what else has long queues? Disneyland and Disneysea! Yes we went to both and while we didn't go for the rides, the old Disneyland just edges out Disneysea in terms of awesomeness. Both parks do sell large Mickey Macarons which were our favorite food item there. I think we ended up having five or six each!

The last in this set is Teamlabs Borderless. This digital art gallery is really cool and is staged in a labyrinthine set of rooms and corridors which encourages visitors to go exploring. There are many exceptional rooms here and its a good place to spend a few hours, but it definitely won't eat up your whole day (2 hours is plenty). Probably not recommended for people that get dizzy easily though as the displays on the walls are almost constantly moving.  

As an aside the food offered at the convenience stores like Lawson, 7 Eleven and Familymart are super affordable and pretty tasty (I miss Famichiki). We didn't worry about eating healthy there as we were racking up 20,000 steps a day!

So we went to Japan...

We were fortunate enough to visit Japan towards the end of last year which was amazing, so I figured I may as well do a few reviews of things we did while over there starting with the places we stayed:

Being the major international conduit, Tokyo is a busy but nice place to visit. Expensive shops and tiny streets with a spiderweb of train and subway services that make it easy to get lost around. Most importantly if you like Shiroi Koibito chocolates and are not headed to Hokkaido, the airport here is the only place to get them! Shinkansen bullet trains are an option to get you to another hub pretty quickly but again, not really something I'd do again because I enjoyed it - more just for utility. The Tokyo-banana snack boxes were nice though! Quick note on trains: we avoided the "sardine" crowd time by simply starting our days at around 4 - 4:30 AM (we didn't go there to sleep. Lol).

Kyoto has more traditional stuff and tight market lanes and hawkers. Our transport here is less trains, more cabs, and a lot of walking to get exactly where we needed to go. Might put a broad reaching categorization now: the old castles and temples (in all the cities) are ok and beautiful, but get underwhelming fast. As such I don't see a point in revisiting Kyoto. Funny that Starbucks is everywhere here, even beside ancient temples! Our favorite breakfast place quickly became the St. Marc Cafe chain which we visited many times, occasionally even for "2nd breakfast"! :P

Osaka is more modern with more upmarket shops and honestly, you might even forget you are in Japan here as it's just another crowded bustling metropolis, albeit with loads of maid cafes. Other than a day trip to Nara (to see the deer) and back by train, we just walked around a lot here in shopping malls. The Nara deer are cute but also stinky and a bit pushy when they see you have food. While I've no real desire to revisit said deer, there's another airport in Osaka which is useful for travel, even if you still end up flying to Tokyo first before heading elsewhere. Speaking of shops: Don Quixote (available in all the big cities) has a crazy amount of variety and its almost mandatory to visit at least one of them. I chuckled that their "toy" section covers everything from Pokemon and kid stuff right beside vibrators, fluffy pink handcuffs and kinky outfits.

Awajishima / Awaji Island holds my favorite spot of our trip. No trains go to this island and a cab would be too expensive so we took a bus and then pre-booked a rental car. People that know me know I hate driving but this island was freaking amazing. So few people and better yet, the winding mountain roads were almost all mine since I intentionally avoided the main highways that either follow the shore or cut right down the middle. This is the place we really want to come back to, as even when we walked around it was usually just us on the sidewalk - a huge difference from the other cities we spent time in.

Garden Story and Humankind

Of fruits and men...

Garden Story

This cutesy action RPG has you playing a fruit who is called to the service of guardianship against the night time appearing rot monsters that threaten each of the four seasonal themed villages in your grove. Easy controls and nice art make this nice to get into, but doing random quests from a board and grinding out money for gear, and then wrangling inventory space for said gear gets old fast. Ironically a victim of the Epic free games scheme because on its own I probably would have played more of it, but given a choice with a steady stream of things to try sorry - this one is left to rot.

Humankind

This civilization building game starts you out as nameless tribes in the Neolithic era and then as you collect "era stars" (which varies by era: in the first one its simply exploration and then moves to military or scientific achievements) and once you do you can progress to the next which lets you pick a culture to adopt which gives you specific bonuses. The Greeks are good at science, the Assyrians good at raiding and so on. While there are lots of systems running here none are immediately overwhelming thanks to the easy interface.

That is until you get to the "city cap". If you go over the city cap you start taking deductions that you might not even notice which can send you into an untenable position. A simple warning screen would have been nice. Eliminating enemy empires can also turn into a game of whack a mole (if you go via the conqueror route which I'm sure is everyone's first game :P) as they must be wiped out to the last city, outpost, and unit from the map which can feel unsatisfying - especially as that last unit will probably be hidden on one of their allies lands.

Still a decent game that I ended up playing more than I thought, even though its a type of game I generally dislike but yes, there are some nasty surprises that might catch you if you aren't looking out for them.

Spaceman and the Electric State

Movies with advanced technology?

Spaceman

On an important solo mission to see what's on the other side of Jupiter, cosmonaut Jakub (played by Adam Sandler) disturbingly discovers there's a passenger aboard his vessel - and its here to help him fix his deteriorating relationship with his wife? Yeah, as cool (and wrong) as the space stuff is this is definitely a study about a man who only thinks about himself and is ending up alone thanks to his decisions, conveniently reinforced by him being almost alone on his space ship. While the passenger is my nightmare fuel it certainly makes the movie. I'm not going to be watching this one again though!

The Electric State

In a world where robots gained self awareness then fought a civil war and lost, a teenage orphan (played by Millie Bobby Brown) goes on a quest with one such robot who claims to be her dead brother. While this certainly starts off weak it picks up as more and more action segments kick in (with some decent funny bits thrown in), showcasing a lot of cool CGI for the very goofy robots that really make the show. Does it pick up to the extent of making this visually entertaining flick to be a great movie? No, but decent enough for me not to mind watching it again.

Across the Obelisk and Mortal Shell

Games that expect you to die a lot.

Across the Obelisk

This cooperative fantasy rogue like has you control a group of heroes as they quest across a multi-path map and run into loads of combat that plays out like Darkest Dungeon - albeit with a merrier colour scheme and more humor, and action card decks per hero which eat up a variable number of "action points" to use (if you get lucky enough / built your deck well enough to draw them in the first place). Team wipes are guaranteed as that's the only time you get to upgrade things with currency you earned from the previous run. The result is a whole lot of repetition and not a whole lot of fun. Check points were invented for a reason!

Mortal Shell

This grim fantasy action RPG has you play as a thing that can take control of specific corpses ("shells") and plays a lot like Dark Souls, except there's a lot more bad guys in a lot less space making combat tricky and slow. The shells each have their own perks that you unlock as you get "familiar" with them. That is a cool system actually, as it covers consumables as well. Use a poison shroom the first time and you'll probably die (and lose your "tar"/exp/souls) but use it the next time and it makes you immune from poison. The third time and poison immunity lasts longer and so on.

Alas going is super slow especially at the start when you have no upgrades because of the packed environments and unforgiving combat. In Dark Souls you many more options of where to go and what to try where as here is mainly - run past these guys or fight well? Repeat because said guys are everywhere  and respawn when you "rest". With every direction feeling like a brick wall I still think there's a decent game in here somewhere, but I'm not patient enough to get to it.

Beyond Blue and Jurassic World Evolution 2

Where wild life is the focus.

Beyond Blue

This is an exploration game where you play a diver swimming around and scanning ocean wild life. The controls are easy and its a pretty good looking game but there's no danger to be found here, just story. I think I might have preferred if the game been one big map with plenty to see and scan (ala Skyrim) rather than the medium sized swim zones per level, separated by bits of "down time" on your small sub where you do things like make phone calls. Not a game for me.

Jurassic World Evolution 2

I didn't like the first one of these so it's no surprise I don't like this sequel which retains the sim-zoo feel. Dinos are on the loose and like pokemon you need to catch em all and imprison them in specifically determined man made zones. They retained the semi first person helicopter / chopper shooting part (tranqs only) which is cool, but I drew the line at having to make the first dinosaur 95% content. I'd much prefer to slay the dragons than trap them, but that's not the target audience for this game.

Warm Bodies and Venom: The Last Dance

A pair of corny movies.

Warm Bodies

This zombie comedy romance flick stars Nicholas Hoult as the protagonist zombie who falls for a very much alive girl.  This alternate view point is pretty original as its quirky nonsensical power of love plot. Might be a good pick for those of you who like the three C's in movies: cheesy, campy and corny but otherwise stay away.

Venom: The Last Dance

Closing out Tom Hardy's trilogy of Venom movies, this one has him on the run from both law enforcement and new alien scum sent by a bad guy who loves narration. It  certainly feels that they just wanted to get this over and done with many ridiculous scenes that should have ended up on the cutting room floor but I guess they really just wanted one last crazy ride with the anti-hero symbiote, so much so that they just whacked in a whole bunch of them in here to give them possibly their last chance of screen time. Definitely turn your brains off if watching this one. Not recommended.

Undying, Turmoil and Neko Ghost Jump

A trio of Epic freebies.

Undying

This zombie crafting survival game features a twist in that you play a mother already bitten in the intro, who must teach her young (and annoyingly useless) son how to survive in this apocalypse. Show him how to dismantle difficult machinery and defeat zombies, sure... but also show him how to get water from a fountain into a plastic bottle, how to water plants, and how to scavenge? He also whines A LOT.

While the game play is kind of ok but the stylistic character art is poor and it becomes readily evident that your main enemy in this game aren't the zombies - it's your own backpack and the lack of space there in. If you aren't keen on inventory management then this is not a game for you. Or me.

Turmoil

This 2D oil barony "almost" idle game is one with simple controls and simple decisions: after winning your desired plot of land from your competitors you send forth your hired dowsers to give you a hint of where to dig, then build the oil pumps to (hopefully) get the oil out and hire wagons to transport said oil to sell to the shops (where the price constantly fluctuates) or store in your own warehouse while waiting for prices to be more favorable.

Most of the action is automated, which lets you focus on how many things you have, where to place new things and if/where to selling to. Excess funds can be used to upgrade pretty much everything and that's the game loop. Surprisingly fun but gets repetitive fast.

Neko Ghost Jump

In this super silly platform game you play a cat on the cat planet trying to rescue his cat bride from scurvy space dogs. The main gimmick is that you must switch from 2D and 3D platforming because there might be tunnels you can only access in 3D view and then impossible diagonal jumps that become easy in 2D view.

I assume there's also some ghost mechanic as hinted by the title and intro cinematic but I never got that far as the game crashed on tutorial level 3. Not recommended.

Adolesence and Twilight of the Gods

Two Netflix series about killing!

Adolesence

This four episode British series starts off with the arrest of a 13 year old boy for murder and goes from there. It's a pretty heavy story in terms of content but also features excellent cinematography and acting, the primary reason for which is that each of the one hour episodes is all shot in a single take with no cuts. This is excellent TV and is high on my recommended list.

Twilight of the Gods (Season 1)

This Norse themed animated series has a high content of violence, gore, nudity and sex - definitely not for younger audiences! It follows a vengeful bride to be who goes after Thor with the help of Loki and more than a few other Norse mythological beings. I like the art style and the flowing animation but it suffers from characters passing the idiot ball which makes the tale far less epic than it's trying to be. I'll watch season 2 if they make it but am not so fussed if it never happens either.

Fridays IN SPACE!

It's been a minute since I've talked about our Friday night game sessions and they all seem to be taking place in space at the moment! The early night staple is Helldivers 2 continues to be fun and crazy with all the updates in both terms of gear and story. The Illuminates are back on the map now and there's a black hole eating planets as it slowly makes its way to Super Earth. Lol.

We've also recently finished Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr that plays a little bit like Diablo, just in the Warhammer 40k universe with DL going full sword marine, Jim running a psyker, and myself the stock standard Space Marine specializing in bolt guns. It's quite funny that the warp gets angry if Jim uses too much power though, as it starts sending tornadoes and demons after him! Lol. The story is not bad, and there are loads of enemy types "add on" mechanics and game modes that could potentially keep you playing this for a long time after finishing the campaign but alas the game play is very repetitive and dull.

Now we've just started Space Marine 2 which is set in the same play space but this one has higher graphic demands with the over the shoulder camera while fighting swarms of tyranids. We definitely need to be more on our toes here for timed button presses mid combat and so far it's been really great - apart from that I can't see the cut scenes since it doesn't like my graphics card and the exorbitantly long loadings times. Not that it matters, the missions play well enough and give enough info as to what's going on. So far it's a very entertaining game.