Saturday, September 26, 2009

Anti-Social Chickens

**7PM and it's almost dark out. Every day the light creeps further and further into the house as the sun sinks closer to the southern horizon. I don't like it. It makes me feel uneasy on some base level that I don't quite understand. Summer was almost non-existent, but the planets continue to move through space as they have done for who knows how long regardless of my opinion concerning the inadequacy of the past season.

**Finished the Adventure mode of Plants Vs. Zombies. The music video in with the credits was hilarious! 'I got butter on my head'. When I heard that I laughed so hard I racked my knee on the bottom of the desk! ....Well......I guess you had to be there......

**So, the statement has already put forward that someone who lives in my house and is not me will not be putting up with me being mopey during my vacation at the end of October. The solution that was suggested for this was a return trip to Las Vegas. I'm not quite sure how those two things relate to each other in an oppositional manner. Mostly it revolves around me never being satisfied with how a party goes, no matter how much people say they enjoy it. I think I would like to do another full-blown Halloween party, but I doubt my ability to attract party goers. Then there's the large shadow being cast across the holiday by the intrusive presence of Christmas stuff, and the lack of people who really enjoy this particular holiday. On the flip side of all this is the idea that I'm not too enthused about the thought of going to Vegas, odd as that may seem. Yet another thing to consider is that a big reason to get the basement done was to be able to have people over. Still, it seems silly to have a party if you know people aren't going to show up. So, if history is any judge of the situation, I'll just flip back and forth on what I want to do until it's just too late to do either, at which point I will feel that my mood funk is justified. Not a very fair or fun way to approach a vacation, but if I don't get my head in order by whatever means are needed, it is likely to be the outcome. And the thought of that just sucks...

**OK, if it's gonna cost $1500 bucks and result in a hole being put in my roof, I think I am perfectly justified in thinking that the other member of the household should be just a tad more enthusiastic than they seem to be regarding the entire project. Ergo: that project is now on indefinite hold.

**What in the heck made Morgan such a prominent part of Dreamville last night? And Why were we in Vegas??

**Another question put to me recently was if it was possible that Hawaii could be considered as a destination for the celebration of my 40th birthday. I have no idea what to think about that.

**Pink leopard print. Hmmmmmm....

**The first of what will hopefully be many game night gatherings happened Friday night. Attendance was in the low single digits, but we manged to get 3 different games onto the table in the space of 4-5 hours. Gemlok was the warmup game, and was well received by everyone. Instead of being a mindless dice fest, there proved to be a decent degree of strategic thinking involved, especially when the center of the board started to get clogged with pieces. The first house rule to be thought up for this game: endless pawn bumping. That we may just try out next time around. The running score after 3 complete games (30 rounds) had Neil out in front with me second and Forrest within spitting distance of me. Since Gemlok had been my choice, I opened the table for suggestions, and Neil opted for Galaxy Trucker. Since I hadn't done anything more with this game than pawed through the box and looked at all the bits, I set to busily punching out parts while Neil perused the rules and tried to educate us all as to what exactly all the bits were for. We jumped right into constructing our first ships (because the rulebook said we were supposed to), and our stint as outer space deliverymen was off and running. We stumbled our way through the introductory game with near constant references to the rulebook, and endless amazement at how badly we had constructed our first ships. Forrest had plenty of engines, but only 2 batteries to power them. Neil had no space for cargo, and I had nearly half of my ship connected to the rest by only one component. But we forged ahead, encountering smugglers and abandoned ships along the way. after we had played the 8 adventure cards in the introductory game, it struck us as odd that every single one of us finished the game well behind where we had started. Our obvious conclusion was that we had done something wrong, but even with three of us flipping back and forth through the rules, we were unable to figure out exactly what we were doing wrong. After deciding that it would be best to confer with BGG before attempting this game again, we moved on. Forrest bowed out at this point, having already worked a long day before arriving and looking down the barrel of having to work again in the morning. Once again, I had Neil choose what our next game would be, and he opted to try HeroScape. So while he scanned the minimal basic game rules, I dug through my boxes of terrains looking for what I needed to build the Table of the Giants map. I was still in the midst of locking tiles together when Neil finished glancing through the rules. He had reached the same conclusion that I had: the basic rules weren't so much basic as they were remedial. But since neither one of us had any actual game experience with HeroScape, we decided to give the basic rules a go. Neil commanded the red team, and I ran the blue. After far too much dice bouncing and far to little strategizing, I managed to eke out a win, leaving only one of my Tarn Viking warriors standing. Since we were both less than impressed with the basic rules, we decide to play a game with the master rules on the same map. To make things somewhat fair, we did a blind draw of the units I had up to a 400 point cap. I wound up drafting Jotun, the Airborne Elite, and the Marro Warriors. Neil got Agent Carr, the Krav Maga Agents, Ne-Gok-Sa, the Zeitan Guards, and the Ashigaru Spearmen. Needless to say, his starting zone looked like a waiting line at ComiCon. In the end, I somehow managed to wade through the hordes of opposing figures, which included 1 Krav Maga Agent who simply refused to die, and gain the victory. Thanks to the Water Clone ability of the Marro Warriors, I ended the game with that squad intact. Half of the Airborne Elite squad managed to hold one of the high ground areas for about the entire game and pick off numerous enemies from a distance. Neil and I both agreed that the basic rules just weren't for us, and that HeroScape was a game we would definitely be playing again. And thus ended the evening.

**I still can't figure out why my car smelled like cookies the other day.

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