So, Natx had this gigantic TV. Of course he lives on the third floor of his elevatorless building.
Luckily, I have my two big strong buddies Jjam and Pottse to help lug this mofo down the three flights, and out into the rain. Thanks fellas.
It’s not the most exciting upgrade, but it should make the Donkey Konga sessions and Double Dash races a little bigger.
Coming soon… the convergence circuit repair!
Well, I failed at convincing Mrs. G to buy me Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party for The Wii, but I did the next best thing… I bought it myself for only 40 bones! (Special thanks to Stub for finding it at Outpost.com!)
Anyway, all I really needed was some information. Most importantly… what kind of connector does the bundled pad have?! In the pictures, it looks like it is wireless… If so, I would be screwed. I was very concerned about tearing apart a semi-technologically advanced piece of gear, especially since it is likely that I will screw it up.
Luckily, after receiving the box and opening it up, it was apparent that it was nearly identical to it’s cousin from the Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix
So, I went out and found the cheapest, most versatile pad that could be bought at a brick and mortar store, the imaginatively named “Universal Dance Pad“, from Gamestop for $20.
It’s as ugly as you expect it to be, but who cares, we love it for its brains. It worked perfectly in-game.
The grooviest thing about it? I can ditch the crappy Cobalt Flux control box altogether, as well as the Xbox adapter I needed to make it work. Also, I never found anything that made Mario Mix work correctly with it. (I have never played Mario Mix for this reason.)
Opening it up is a snap. Just seven screws and no silliness.
There are no moving parts on the control box, so nothing will fall out or get lost.
Removal of the pad is also easy. It is very goo-free. It almost seems more technologically advanced than the Madcatz 360 pad. It definitely is a lot cleaner. However, there are no hints as to which switch is which.
Below the main board is a smaller one connected via a ribbon cable on the left, with a wire for all 11 outgoing pad connections, and a few on the right into the actual cable. I suspect that this is a board for one particular adapter, like maybe the Gamecube section, but that’s just a guess.
Unfortunately, I got a little hung up with my actual method. There are 11 wires that need to be connected, and the most convenient place is the ribbon connector on the right. unfortunately, there is very little clearance in the control box underneath the circuit, so I will have to make these good solder joints. I also have to keep each circuit from melting into each other.
I considered tapping in to the ribbon in the middle, but that seemed like a cop-out.
So, I am going to think about it for a bit before I proceed. (Mrs. G dragged me away for ‘Heroes’ anyway.)
Until then, here are my notes… I love having my whiteboards back!
See you tomorrow, for the conclusion (I hope!)
I’ve been in this house for 3 years now, and this is the first time the basement has been whole. By whole, I mean… organized, not totally junkified, put together.
So, I am sort of chilling out and enjoying it. I hadn’t realized how much the mess had been bugging me.
Here are the pics for those that care. I’m going to need some decorations for the Analog room, so feel free to suggest something cool. There will be a new addition in there if all goes through as planned. Watch for it at the next Bunker Party, which should be this Friday!
What do I put on the walls?
Clean… work surface. Tasty
In the Friday game of TI?there were lots of rules questions, but I had an answer for all of them (that I remember…) except one. For some reason, I had interpreted the rules for production of units to mean that any Tactical or Transfer Action could be followed by Production… anywhere. So, we would activate a system, move junk around, then activate the system with our spacedock, then build there. This did not sit well with Mrred5.
I had been prepared for this. My laptop was near the table, I had the rules, and printouts of a bunch of stuff including turn flowcharts, race descriptors, and unit cost breakdowns.?So when the question came up, I tried to look it up in all of the resources I had, and?still found no answer.?Later, days after the game?I had still not found anyone discussing this particular question. So I took it up with the the Geek.
The answer? It was spelled out pretty clearly in the rules (clearly enough that no one else in the known universe had missed it!) 🙂
?”Except for the first step (the activation itself), each individual step of the Activation Sequence is only resolved if the condition for its resolution applies or is initiated by the active player. A player, for example, may activate a system to produce new units there during step 7, but does not necessarily have to move any ships into the system during step 2.”
Special thanks to The Barefoot Killer for supplying the exact quote,?and sasquatchdjh and?Gilby for answering my query!
And extra special thanks to Mrred5 for coming to the dizzle having read the rules in the first place. It really helped to have someone else to corroborate with!
The unfortunate side effect is, now the turns will be even longer. Production will have to be a separate action from movement, adding one or two more required actions for each player. It also means a few more Command counters will be?going into the command pool.?Do you feel the squeeze fellas??
I’m certain that I have some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder, but I’m not sure what form. I generally don’t mind a mess until it reaches a certain point (a point probably further than most humans can tolerate) but then, BAM! I have to have it fixed, or I go absolutely berzerk, and I can’t think of anything else until it is done. That is where I am right now.
Luckily I am succeeding.
The Workbench will be a major component of tomorrow’s work
And the Analog room is still screwed, but I can see more floor!
A week ago, I had to help my buddy Jjam out with some network issues he had. This amounted to telling him to just a buy a new router, and that led to him needing a 15-foot network cable.
The thing is, I have been seriously slamming crap into the Bunker Workshop/Storage room. I mean, I just threw everything that I needed to get out of the way in there. By the time I was digging around for the network cable, there was stuff piled to the ceiling. We were literally climbing up and digging down through piles of crap to find a box full of cable that I knew was there. In the end, I couldn’t find it.
So, that is when I decided that it was time to clean this crap out. I took the day off from work just to go through it.
Here’s what the storage room looked like before (note that you can’t actually get in there.)
And here’s the after
And here’s the Analog room before
And the after
Anybody else get the feeling that this crap is just migrating from one spot to another?
Having forced Mrs. G to take part in the Twilight Imperium nerd festival, I didn’t feel right trying to get her to play another game that wasn’t meant for two. So, I opted for a 4-player game by myself. Best… husband… ever.
As I’ve mentioned before, I love the Catan games. I like having the possibility of getting something every turn, whether it is mine or not. I also like having the possibility of trade outside of my own turn. It makes me like I am playing more than just waiting for the other people to hurry up and finish.
In this way, Starfarers is much like the original. Production is the same, with some re-theming of the actual materials produced. Also, The concepts of of settlements and cities are intact, with a few mutations.
One of the four Catanian colonies at the start of the game
Where it starts deviating is in the third phase of the player’s turn. This is the “Flight” phase. Instead of colonies being connected by roads, they are flown to the next cluster of planets by transporters. A player’s entire fleet of transporters is defined by the upgrades that were made to the player’s mothership.
A fully tricked out mothership
At the beginning of the Flight phase, the player’s mothership is “Rolled”. That’s right, that silly looking rocketship also serves as dice, because inside it are four colored balls. When shaken and stood upright, two are displayed in the bottom.
The thruster showing the current speed of each of the player’s ships (blue: 1 + red: 3 = 4).
There are two kinds of ships, each with a different goal. Colony ships move toward planet clusters. Colonizing planets ultimately mean more resources, and more jumping off points for space exploration. Trade ships move toward alien outposts.
The outposts are where the “Longest Road” and “Largest Army” concepts come in. If you are the first to reach an alien outpost, you get that alien’s “friendship chip”, giving the bearer two victory points. There are five spots at each outpost though, and that chip is held by the player occupying the majority of those spots.
The Diplomat friendship chip is shown in the lower left
The Merchant Alien outpost gives us the “harbor trade” concept from the original game. By creating a trade outpost, you are able to pick a card allowing 2:1 trades for the resource specified on the card.
Finally, the concept of “Events” from the Card game and Cities and Knights is incorporated in the Mothership roll. An event is triggered when a black ball appears.
To resolve an Event, the player to the left pulls the top event card and reads it aloud to the active player. These generally have a flowchart of actions triggered by the answers given.
Here is an example of an encounter where the alien must be given a gift:
And a sneakier gift card:
And finally, a pirate encounter:
As I played through my turns, I found that events happened quite often, so it is probably wise to keep a few extra resources around to pay tribute to the aliens.
By the fourth turn, I was convinced that I would love this game in actual real humanoid play. The space theme is nice for the nerds, the bits are pretty, and the core Catanitude guarantees goodness.?Having to race up to the planets and alien outposts adds tension,?and the sheer amount of space to be covered eliminates the claustrophobic feel of the original.
The event cards were a little irritating, though. Mainly because I have legendarily bad luck. If/when this game actually gets played, I will blame them on my inevitable loss. 😉
Mrs. G suggested calling it Midnight Imperium, but the game went until almost 2am.
Markus O’Reallyus was the first to arrive, followed soon by MrRed5. Turbo Taxi ensued. ‘Twas okay, but not as rockin as it usually is. Once VitaminZ appeared, Mrs. G had to be roused from her ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep. We began at 8:30pm.
The beginning
I had sorted all the bits and laid as much out as I could beforehand. We had each drawn our races from a hat earlier in the week, and everyone had a chance to read their cards to familiarise themselves with their race. I handed out a pre-randomized set of six system hexes to each player, and we commenced placing. Since no one really knew why they were placing things where they were, it was more or less strategyless.
And then came the explanation of the rules. Contrary to popular belief, Twilight Imperium is not that complicated. There are three very distinct phases in each turn, with the first taking about 5 minutes, and the third taking about two. The second phase is the longest, but it also has a clear set of things to do. The part that takes explaining are the Strategy Cards. There are eight of them, and they are all very different. I went through each one, and by the third, there was yawning, by the sixth, eyes were watering. By the eighth, I thought everyone was going to get up and leave. Why they didn’t, I don’t know, but I was relieved when things started rolling.
The first turn took at least two hours. All I remember from it was that I had pulled the Trade Strategy card. This card allows the bearer to initiate trade negotiations, and officiate them. What is funny is, I had read the text on this card several hundred times, and explained it a few. In all cases I said, “I don’t know why you would dissallow a trade.” Until, of course, I actually experienced it. The creeps at the table had managed to trade with everyone, except me. When I discovered this, I basically pulled the first dick move of the night and said “screw you guys, I’m not allowing anything between you until I get my two.” (I may have used some less family friendly English, but you get the idea.)
The second turn was faster, probably an hour and 15 minutes. We were figuring things out and getting a little more comfortable with the game. Vitamin Z had pulled the Political Strategy, and found an awesome law for us to ratify: “Free Trade”. This law was straight up golden. It gave each player an extra Trade Good each time Trade took place. Unfortunately, the trade incident from the previous turn bit us all. Mrs. G was the only one of us who did not have an active trade agreement, and using the racial power of her race, the Xxcha, she killed the law dead and forced us to draw another. The one that came up next “Colonization Licensing” was a real mofo. This would force each player to pay resources every time they captured a new planet. Needless to say, we killed it.
By the third turn, we were firing on all cylinders, but we were tired. It was now about 12:30 and Mrs G had to bail out. We had all grown adept at moving our stuff around. We had had an actual space battle (poor little space bugs of MrRed5 suffered at hands of Vitamin Z’s reptile chicks.) And, I had managed to take Mecatol Rex in a move that shocked even myself. It was just getting good!
In the end, Markus was up to five victory points, having drawn the Imperial card twice (and totally screwing with Mrs. G’s end the game quickly strategy.) We talked about saving state, but the loss of Mrs. G unbalanced the game too much, and the alternative was starting a fresh game actually knowing what we are doing.
Near the end
As long as the game was, it didn’t seem it. I never felt bored, and I think those of us of the more nerdly sex were into it. I asked Mrs. G what she remembered about the game, and her answer was, “the dip, the salsa, and that I took the pie out too early.” In other words, it wasn’t her cup o tea.
Will we ever play it again? Will it ever be played at a Bunker party? Will anyone be interested in it after this writeup? That remains to be seen. Bunker regulars speak out in the comments, and I will make sure it is available on Bunker Party night, or maybe… Twilight Imperium Friday!
I have mentioned my feelings about card games before. However, Mrs. G dictated that tonight was the night that we were going to “sit down and play a game and watch an episode of Heroes” instead of working.
So I went downstairs to find the highest rated 2-player game in the collection that I hadn’t played yet, and Blue Moon is what bubbled to the top.
The game is simple. Each player has a deck of 30 cards. In the center of the play area there are three plastic dragons. As each “fight” is won, a dragon is “attracted” to the winning side. When all three dragons are on a player’s side, the next victory for that player finishes the game.
A fight is started by the active player, who must play a single “Character” card. These characters can be modified with other cards, after the first turn. When each player is finished with their turn, the opposing player must play a card with equal or greater value power.?The fight goes back and forth until the active player is unable to play a character and modifying cards that match or exceed the previously played?cards.?
On each character card are two numbers, one for Earth power, and one for Fire power. Generally, the cards have power combinations ranging from 7 Fire/0 Earth to 3 Fire/3 Earth to 0 Fire/7 Earth. Once this card is placed, the player must call out what power the continuing fight will be fought with. In the picture below, the?bear thingy on the right has a Fire power of 4, and an Earth power of 4. (The most recently discarded gladiator-guy character on the right?has a Fire power of 1, and a Earth power of 5.)?
For our purposes, I will call out “4 Fire”?which means that my opponent must play a character from her hand that has either 4 Fire, or can be modified up to at least 4 Fire with a booster or support card.
Booster cards are played on the current character. Support cards are played in the support area, and are cumulative over the course of the entire fight.?Each time a new turn starts, the previous character, and?its booster?is replaced by a new one. This means that you must choose carefully between your characters,?once they are gone, they are gone for the game (barring some cards special powers of course!)
The spread:
Luckily, the game is very fast. We made it through two plays in about an hour, including stumbling through the rules a few times. I had figured out how it all worked by the second one, and it mostly made sense. Mrs. G was annoyed by some of the “CCG-esque” card effects, and?I felt that the decks were incomplete, as if there should have been a few more of the Booster or Support cards to make the decks more usable. The cards were big though, and were appreciated by my spidery hands.
In the end Mrs. G was happy with her two-dragon victory. Blurry pictures of the win FTW!
I had?almost completely given up this game of Colosseum after a hideous second round, which had netted me only 14 points. I?passed a whole turn without a cent to my name, there was no way I could win.
When suddenly, I?managed to buy “Mare Spielbergum”, and everything came together. I had stars, I had a huge colosseum, I had season tickets!
I rode high for turns III and IV. I was doing the impossible, I was winning! In turn V, the end, I made my final production with 71 points.
Then, out of nowhere, Casper starts put on an amazing show. I was sweating every second, until… she came… one point short! One measly point! She rested at 70.
I had it made…?until Pottse and VitaminZ started doing the math. Pottse was out, way out. But Z had a chance. Slim, but a chance.
So, Pottse, being the martyr that he is, sacrificed himself to position the nobles for Z’s next turn.
Final tally… 72 for Vitamin Z, and the win. Stolen.
Douchebags.
