DaveSumm

Just got back. Yea it looks amazing, of course it does. But there’s an awful lot of sequel set up here, if they focused on just this story you could trim an hour at least out of it. Overall the story feels exactly as you think it would; massive amounts of stalling so Cameron can make 5 movies when there’s enough story for a trilogy at absolute max. So much like the first one, it looked great and I’m glad I watched it at the cinema in 3D, but I fully expect the next one to roll around and realise I never rewatched it. I watched the first film for the first time since the cinema this morning, for some reason subjecting myself to 6 hours of Avatar in one day.

Kinda skimming the thread cos I’ve only read the first era of Mistborn, and not sure how spoilery it is. But just wanted to say, I wasn’t super looking forward to reading Elantris cos everyone said ‘oh it’s his first book, the writing isn’t as good’. But I’m really impressed so far, I think it’s a fair way better than Mistborn. The world building feels smoother, the character interactions are more natural, it just generally feels a lot more polished. I could maybe see how someone wouldn’t find it as exciting, it doesn’t have cool metal magic. But honestly would never have guessed Elantris was written first of the two. I’m working my way through this Cosmere reading order, a ways to go yet but I’m really hoping the other works feel as strong as Elantris.

Speaking of board game art, this video had me in stitches: Particularly this one, in which the artist finished all but the faces, then got ill, and it was finished by … *ahem* … ‘less accomplished’ artists. https://boardgamegeek.com/image/378777/heads-state

It’s weird isn’t it, I love Gloomhaven but we did the same thing on our second campaign, left it too long and then the thought of figuring out what was going on and digging through so many components just puts you off. You could make good money on a flip though, it’s retailing for so much more that you could sell it, buy Jaws of the Lion and still be left with profit. I do wonder if they’ll ever release an updated GH to bring it in line with the other games. At the moment, I’d recommend starting with Jaws, and then probably…? Go to Frosthaven, as it looks to be much better at keeping everything on track with the campaign and seems to be just an all round better game. Which is a weird thing to say for the #1 BGG game, play the other two and don’t bother.

Ark Nova has some fairly mean cards, my wife and I use the solo mode alternatives printed at the bottom as a non-mean option. Fantastic game. It does run quite long but it holds my attention the whole time, and always feels exciting throughout.

It looks like X-Haven Assistant does most of what GHH used to, basically running all the enemy cards for you so you don’t have to shuffle and track their health and stuff. There’s a ton of others (scenario viewer, attack deck manager, campaign manager) but the enemy tracking is where it’s at.

Are you using any apps to help with admin? I think if you do, you can lose the monster cards and it juuuust fits back in there. Having said that, when I played Gloomhaven Helper was the only game in town but since then it’s been taken off the App Store (that’s a whole story), Cephalofair are developing their own for Frosthaven and a few others have sprung up. So I’m not 100% on what your options are at the moment. Cannot wait for Frosthaven, a few people in North America are seeing theirs, I think for UK it’ll be touch and go if we have it by Christmas.

Skimmed the thread so not sure if it’s been mentioned, buried at the beginning of the episode as it was, but after the wedding fight that Criston started and got away with … he straight up murders one of the small council. OK it was an unusual circumstance, but nah. White cloaks can’t just murder the small council regardless of how convenient it might be for some present. ETA: yes it’s been discussed, nvm.

Yea it makes sense. To be honest, it wouldn’t even need to be SHUX specifically, just a con that had the same ethos of paying through higher ticket prices to allow more free play tables, as opposed to what most other cons seem to do which is publishers paying for space to demo their games. I usually watch a few Essen Spiel blogs on YouTube and it’s kinda cool, but I just don’t see the appeal of bringing home a boot load of games I didn’t get a chance to play fully first.

That came up at a Q&A funnily enough, basically everyone assumes because they’re British that most of their audience is, but it skews 70-80% North American. When they started SHUX, Paul Dean lived in Vancouver, even though he’s since left the team. Then there’s just how nice Vancouver is, and the convention centre itself has a huge canopy over half of it so you get naturally lit tables. They mentioned how nice everyone was in Canada and whether that fed into the vibe of the convention, then asked if anyone had come from England - I expected a bunch of people to raise their hands and it was literally just me and my wife. I would love for there to be a UK SHUX though, we got kinda lucky that we still had a bunch of Expedia vouchers and airmiles that paid for most of it but yes, Vancouver is expensive. I imagine you’d struggle to do the trip for under £2K given flights and hotel prices that close to the con. They were quite cagey about whether there’d even be another SHUX at all, but then I guess we’re still in a pandemic so it’d be stupid to go around spreading optimism that there would be. I met some people who attended 2019 and then said it felt like about 80% of that attendance, but you’ve got Covid, the fact that they enforced masks and vax status, could all play a role.

Got back to the UK today after attending SHUX last weekend, and it was sooo much fun. It’s the only con I’ve ever been to so I can’t compare, but I kept hearing about how much emphasise there is on playing games at SHUX and I have to say, if other cons are mostly like the Expo area, I don’t really get the appeal. I wanna play games at a games con. There was an enormous library of games, a huuuuuge amount of free play tables, and a really useful balloon system; blue balloon, you’re looking for more players. Orange balloon, looking for a teacher. And so many of the attendees are just wandering around waiting to join, so they really work. Not once did we not successfully fill up a table or get someone to teach (one was Spirit Island, 7 minutes after the con opened, with literally one guy even close enough to see the balloon … and sure enough, he taught, stuck around for a first round, came back an hour later to see how we were getting along). Such an incredible vibe there where everyone’s just so happy to help others. I have to mention the best gaming experience I think I’ve ever had; we played a ton of Blood on the Clocktower. 3 games at a pre-event, then 1-2 a day at the con. I’d never been evil, then lost one of the pre games as evil so I was nervous I was just a bit shit at being evil. Friday night game, I was the demon. I was hungry, tired, jet-lagged, stressed, terrified I’d blow it for my team (this was a 16 player, so 3 minions). Every ‘night’ I’d close my eyes and my heart was hammering. But the game just went so beautifully; the type of demon I was poisoned a neighbour and the good team based a lot of info off of that, and my minions worked perfectly to reassure them. To reach game end and then have the good team unanimously vote for the one other guy it could’ve been is the jackpot, it’s as good as you can get and holy shit, all that stress just morphed into such joy. I was absolutely buzzing the whole rest of the night, grinning my stupid face off. Really recommend the No Rolls Barred videos if anyone’s curious, they’re easily the best production values of all the YouTube playthroughs. How To Play Live and Imp-person | NRB Plays Blood on the Clocktower

Eh, I think that’d over complicate things. Seems like they made an effort to clarify things in the opening episode, so we know which family member is from which universe. And then took away the portal gun to ground things a little. Although I’m still not sure if Rick really is C-137, or if that’s the universe he started in (so basically, is it Morty C-137).

Fair enough. These scenes have a strange vibe to them, like I’m supposed to know something I don’t from not having watched the last few season of GoT. Maybe they’re shooting for a “if only this pesky Dance didn’t happen then GoT wouldn’t have happened” or something? It just feels odd, the Long Night was what, 8000 years ago? And the knowledge made it 7800 years and then got forgotten? ETA: so reading a little into it, I’m guessing the show repositioned the prophecy as originating from Aegon the Conqueror?

OK, but it sounds like Dany knew about all this because her ancestors have been telling their kids for … some obscene amount of time. Or have they just been passing this dagger around which says “hey, listen, Others are totally gonna attack soon…”?

I’m not sure how to frame the question, but is there a non-spoilery answer as to what all this prince who was promised stuff is for someone who didn’t watch past Season 5? It sounds like there’s some secret knowledge that was passed down from Aegon, or a dagger… did GoT borrow bits of Rhaegar’s penchant for prophecies and give it to Aegon? And by spoilers I mean spoilers you think are probably book spoilers (ie Winds and Dream), if GoT pulled all this out their ass I don’t really care.

So Rick C-137 starts off in his universe, travels to Morty’s universe sometime before the show starts (I’m not sure if C-137 is the designation of Rick’s original universe?) and everyone exists there until Season 1 Episode 6, when we get a whole new cast except for Rick and Morty. Then Season 2 Episode 2 we get a new Jerry, so we’re on Rick and Morty 1, everyone else 2, Jerry 3. We were in the correct reality for those ‘everyone else’, and now we’ve moved again. So this is the fourth reality that Rick’s lived in for some period of time, as far as we know. Phew.

Was it the one where they dropped him off at Jerry daycare and mixed the tickets up? I might need to start checking out some YouTube explainers, I’m kinda lost who the hell belongs to what universe now.

I think there was an AwSHUX preview of My Fathers Work a few years back and it looked intriguing … it sounds like the story is only snippets to move the gameplay along? I’m always wary of huge chunks of text, simply because I can’t recall a board game that’s ever had an engaging story. I’ve held off on Sleeping Gods for the same reason. I love Gloomhaven but it can’t be overstated how completely disinterested in the story I am. I received my first proper Kickstarter recently (i.e first one that was a complete shot in the dark and not based on something I’d already played); The Transcontinental. I really like it, it has some of the best player interaction I’ve seen in a euro in a while. Euros often struggle to find that sweet spot between ‘multiplayer solitaire’ and ‘just mean’, but here all the players load everything they own onto the same train. There’s a whole bunch of rules around how you load and where which you have to be careful of, and when you finally deliver the goods, you give all players with goods behind you the opportunity to do the same. So you have to always be mindful of accidentally doing an action that benefits them more than you, but it never feels like anyone’s been mean especially. Can’t remember if I mentioned in the last thread but my wife and I are heading to SHUX next month, very excited to finally play Blood On The Clocktower in person after watching a ton of No Rolls Barred play it.

Why did the show give us two characters called Dani and Danny in the same location? Really weird and unnecessary choice. Molly: a good exit? Really? I get what Ran was saying, but really they seemed to just run out of budget to show what that explosion had actually done. It seemed to just generically ruffle up all the rooms, but we had no sense of where things were in relation to the press (other than the one shot of Aleida in Margo’s office). But I don’t see how ‘a good exit’ and ‘maybe the rooms just collapsed later and we didn’t see it’ are compatible.

I didn’t pick up on that reference. Did we have time to read the paper in any detail? What did she die of exactly?

Oh good, it’s not just me. Look she’s being a hero! She’s leading fully sighted people out of the building and going back for more! Oh and she died. Yea basically. Can’t be bothered dredging over all the stupid, it was pretty stupid.

Even if we accept the existence of the recorder, I don’t understand why the President would ever talk about stuff like her husbands affair, or how they could maybe just delete the tapes. Even by the shows internal logic, there’s either a recorded conversation about destroying recorded conversations, or there’s a gap in the records, and they state in the episode that those are both problems. But they’re just … doing it again? And still talking freely?

I’d forgotten about that; is this correct, that there is a tape recorder in the Oval Office that’s recording 24/7, and the President knows about it, but they still talk freely there, and they can listen back to the tapes anytime (while, it should be noted, talking freely about how they could destroy the tape)…? What if someone gets hold of that tape? Or is that literally the recorder, so there’d be a gap at that point? Does this make any sense at all?

Honestly I didn’t even mind the Korean guy at the end just cos it was something other than the soap opera back at base. I do worry that this show has too much of a formula and won’t keep my interest for much longer. What made the first season so good was that we could still recognise ourselves in it, it still resembled the 60’s even though things got more advanced. That’s what makes scenes like the Russian shooting the window so striking, because internally we know how fucking horrendous that’d be for international relations. But the more things deviate, the less familiar things become. And ultimately it’s plots are built on disaster; Season 4, one assumes, they’ll head to some other moon even further away? And it won’t go smoothly? And there’ll be some interpersonal conflict between a badly aged-up Danny, and someone’s kids or something? This could get old fast. I enjoyed the press conference scene, as again, this is returning to the shows core premise - the space race keeps us all focused on a better future. And I love when they intersperse it with real historical footage. But I’m not sure how much they can draw from that well either, once we move into the next millennium.

I have to say, as much as I’ve hated the Danny plot the last few episodes, I don’t mind the angle that he feels responsible for Shane and has been trying to live his life. I’m hoping they can just turn a corner with it now and stop moping around. But we need some stupid on the show! How about, a professional and intelligent NASA astronaut just fucks around up there without condoms? I mean that should be fine right?