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].