Skyrim: Adventure Game (Board Game) - The Cult

[Part of the Party Time journal]

Twenty five years have passed with DL becoming a blacksmith in Markarth, Sky becoming a fixer in Rifter, Rose becoming an apothecary in Falkreath and mom taking up a courier job in Hjaalmarch. Now weaker than ever (pretty cool mechanic), they must be extra cautious to avoid the Thalmor patrols on the roads (lousy mechanic) as once again their cover lives are examined by the authorities. Sky gets info from the thieves guild that this round of inquisition is stemming from the unhappy Dunmer refugees from Morrowind who have even concocted a plot to assassinate High King Torygg! Alas, they are too late to warn the king who is slain by Ulfric Stormcloak at Solitude's Blue Palace and instead are drafted into opposing sides of the quickly brewing civil war: DL and Sky for the Stormcloaks, mom and Rose for the Imperials.

When Ulfric's execution is prevented by the arrival of a dragon, each side is tasked with trying to slay the great wyrms but while DL and Sky do that to collect lots of powerful dragon bone artifacts, Rose and mom assist the Imperials in gaining dominance over the province and gaining a windfall in wealth. Despite the head to head, they collectively discover it is actually a cult to Boethiah that is behind the latest events and access their hidden temple through a series of skill checks (super cool) and learn of the cults Dunmer master, Oviron.

While mom is tricked by the daedric prince Sanguine to ransack Windhelm, DL recruits deranged crusader Giara to the cause while Rose and Sky battle the entire graveyard of Morthal where Rose becomes a Thane and makes friends with "Edward" the vampire (we just call him that, but he makes an amazing summon in battle). Their new allies tell them of Oviron's location at Hrothgar, and so the entire team heads there beating down cultists on the way (need to keep their numbers down) and face Oviron and his cronies. Giara dies in battle but Oviron escapes through an oblivion gate. Not willing to let their prey escape, the team jump in to pursue him just as the gate closes in on itself... which is the end of the campaign.

An excellent finale with some great fights. I'm not convinced by the cultists you have to kill / Thalmor you have to evade mechanic though because they always move towards the active player, which means most of the time they're just walking in circles. The random monsters that just show up and go for cities are more fun, and don't hang around like a bad smell like those guys do.

TESO: All these People Suck

Adventures of Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

While King Emeric recovers from his death in Bangkorai (lol) I head to Rivenspire next where there is a civil war afoot. Normally I'd let these people just kill each other but when it becomes clear the dominant Montclair faction is composed of vampires I definitely have to intervene. Just to semi complicate matters there are three "good" vampires too, but its because of their leader and an Ayelid doohickey atop Mount Doom "the Doomcrag" that this whole thing started. I am also annoyed to learn that this vampire is one of Emeric's closest friends. What sort of King lets vampires wander around? What a douche.

It comes complete with aircraft warning lights!

Ultimately I kill all the bad vampires and the lead "good" one sacrifices himself to remove the ayelid relic (that can just change people into vamps via gas) from the Doomcrag. How? By giving himself and the WMD to Molag Bal, who takes it into Coldharbour. WHAT? That's not a F*ING SOLUTION! Emeric himself shows up after the fact and then asks me to choose from the remaining surviving candidates on who should become overlord of this region, because having many equal people didn't work. I pick the devout and peace loving Baroness as to weaken the Covenant as much as possible.

In the process I also beat up a cave full of orcs (a rarity here) and prove to Malacath, the daedric prince they worship, that all orcs are worthless pieces of shit. In town I also am  surprised to find Captain Kaleen, stripped and tortured in a basement no less. Seems like the kinky Redguard spy she was hunting turned the tables on her. After helping her kill the bastard I take her back to the docks. I was headed there anyway to gain passage to the Alik'r Desert anyway. During this I notice that in all the scuffles with those vampires, one managed to get me good on my arm.

I'm sure it's nothing.

TESO: Convoluted by Design

Adventures of Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

When I get there, Windhelm is in the middle of a celebration for Jorunn's 10th year anniversary of being king. As expected, there is a party-pooper in the form of Fildgor, Jorunn's twin brother who resents the fact that he didn't become king. Fildgor's jealously leads him to start a civil war and making multiple attempts on his brother's life, each one stopped by yours truly, though Naryu does show up to help occasionally.

A Breton illusionist comes closest to slaying Jorunn with daedric poison, but thanks to a convoluted ritual involving dream walking and vampire blood he recovers fully. Does this mean Jorunn is a vampire/dhampir now? Not sure. Majorn the Ancient, the vampire who so willingly donated it to me after I helped him slay his son for making "sentient" thrall, seems to think so. Pity the game doesn't let me slay Majorn too.

After much chasing, I finally catch up to Fildgor at Sovngarde (of all places) and defeat him there where he is humiliated among all the dead heroes. I figure that's enough of a punishment for him and convince Jorunn to let him live. I also collect the final tome of Shalidor after one more silly trial from Sheogorath, and learn that the fighter's guild council has put out an arrest warrant for their current Argonian guildleader for he murder of their previous Nord guildleader. That stuff advances pretty slowly in the background.

I think Sheogorath's uncle was someone's stunt double in Resident Evil?

Captain America: Civil War

When there are no bad guys to fight, heroes must fight each other!

Thanks to more collateral damage while the Avengers are out doing their thing, the world has decided to reign in all these enhanced individuals to make them work for the UN. This divides the team on the accountability vs freedom front and one very lucky bad guy manages to leverage this into a more violent and entertaining conflict where heroes fight each other.

We're not fighting, I'm just repairing Cap's shield.

What's good? Marvel characters galore with quality acting, humorous segments that made me laugh along, nice action choreography and high budget CGI. Introducing even more characters in an already large line up seemed like a bad idea to me but they pulled it off just fine. I also quite like the idea they had behind the bad guy, who really is nothing special - a good contrast to all the powered folk of the Avengers.

On the negative side the biggest issue for me is that said bad guy was extremely lucky that so many things went his way for as long as they did. There's one bit where he would have had to get past a number of security check points AND somehow kill backup generators in what I'm guessing is a high level building, unless of course there are no backup generators in a world where they have underwater prisons and guys that fly in suits of armor?

It's not explained how he manages to do all of this, he just does, which is a bit annoying. The other problem will be for anyone who hasn't watched the Avengers or the previous Marvel films - you could get lost really quickly with "who is that again" even with the 3 minute intros. All up I enjoyed the film and give it 4 Vision lasers out of 5, even if it is a "moving pawns across the board for the next movie" sort of thing.