Bunker Project Log

As all two of you who regularly read the world famous Bunker Plog know, I am peeing my pants for Rock Band. I have pre-ordered both the 360 and the PS3 version, in hopes of choosing one and sticking with it, or just saying screw it, and having a full Rock Band setup in both the DDR room, and the Theater. (Battle of the Bands anyone?)

However, when I saw this Joystiq post, I knew that Guitar Hero III had gone from a “probably… unless I really get bitched out by the wife” to “don’t even think of telling me that I’m not getting this game, wummin!”

The source of excitement? Not only a Sonic Youth?song… but probably the most rockin Sonic Youth song in existence. Kool Thing.?

Note: before you music snobs start talking trash about sellout albums and the like, I must say that I owned all the previous releases. I wasn’t one of the trainjumpers who discovered SY at Daydream Nation, I was a longtime fan. I used to dick around with a crappy guitar banging the strings with forks and tuning it all weird until I eventually bent the neck. (I still do the same thing, for those of you who have not had the misfortune of hearing me “play”.)

So, after crapping my pants after hearing the news, then changing my undies, I took a second to Youtube for this:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OdSoKfTP1k]

This brought back all my near post-teen fantasies… Kim Gordon, my dream girl, already almost 40 years old. Me at First Ave in the frozen north, standing in the front row, sweating through my oh so anti-social trench-coat. Staring up at her while my unprotected ears were damaged note by note. Dreaming that night that the band had dropped by the house that I had grown up in, then hung out for a day like old friends. I made the mistake of asking “before you go, can I have your autograph?” Her looking back disappointedly: “I thought you were a cool guy.” Then unceremoniously driving away.

I am young again every time I watch that video, I can’t wait to play.

A Turn in Twilight Imperium is broken up into three phases:

1) Strategy
2) Action
3) Status

This post will go over the basics of the Strategy Phase.

There are eight strategy cards, numbered 1 through 8. Each has a Primary and a Secondary Ability. The player holding the card when it is invoked takes the effects of the Primary ability, and each of the remaining players may take the effect of the Secondary ability.

Click on the images of the cards to get a more legible view. As I haven’t played the game yet, I can’t really comment on why you would choose a given strategy over another.

Strategy Cards 1 – 4

Strategy Cards 5 – 8

The number on the card dictates the order of play. For example, the bearer of the Initiative Strategy (number 1), will always go before the player with the Imperial Strategy (number 8).

The Strategy Phase is where each player chooses the strategy he or she is interested in. Players go around the table clockwise starting from the player who last held the Initiative card.

In a six player game, there will always be two strategy cards left. These are left on the table and a “Bonus” chit is placed on each. If a strategy card is left unpicked for many rounds, the Bonuses continue to accrue. This mechanic ensures that even an unpopular Strategy will eventually be played.

“Imperial” wasn’t chosen in the last round, and. “Warfare” hasn’t been chosen for three.

When all players have chosen a Strategy, the action phase begins.

Yesterday I went through the setup, but I broke my rule dictating that I must describe victory conditions first, so I am backtracking.

The only scoring metric for the game is the “victory point”. (Some day, I am going to try to find one of these, and describe what they look like. They must be pretty awesome because it seems that every friggin game is based on collecting them.)

The main game is played to 10, although there are ways to short-circuit this and finish the game sooner. There is also a variant called “The Long War” that plays to 14. I won’t be playing that one for… a while. Victory points are counted on the victory point track.

There are three ways to get victory points. Either complete a Secret objective, a Public objective, or use the Primary ability of the “Imperial” Strategy. (More on using the strategies in Part 2!) With the exception of the Secret Objectives, the Imperial strategy must be involved. Objectives are not revealed without the Imperial strategy being invoked.

The Imperial Strategy

Each player gets one secret objective. They generally have two victory points.

In addition, all players can get points from the Public Objective Cards. The main game has ten of these cards in a deck on the play area. Six of them are Stage I objectives. These are fairly easy to achieve, usually relating to amassing generic resources.?These grant one victory point.?The other four are Stage II objectives which are more complex, requiring players to own a?occupy planets,?or develop technologies.?These usually grant two points. Included with the Stage II objectives is the “Imperium Rex” card, which ends the game immediately.

As the “Imperial” Strategy is activated, the top card in the objective stack is revealed. Thus, the game begins with no objectives at all, and builds turn by turn thereafter (assuming that the Imperial strategy is played often.) If no player chooses the Imperial strategy during a given round, no new objective is revealed.

Near the beginning…

As each player fulfills the objectives, a chit is placed on the corresponding card.

Near the end…

As you can see in the picture above, the “Supremacy” Objective, if completed, grants victory to the player, regardless of points. Since there are nine different Stage II Objective cards, and the main game gives you three possibles, your game may not have this card at all.

It should be noted that the player using the Imperial strategy automatically gets two victory points. This means that the game could end by the beginning of the fifth turn if the same player picked the imperial strategy each time. So, if you don’t like the game and want to end it soon, you know what to do!

In one of the recent great Tangapacolypses, I pulled the trigger on Twilight Imperium. On paper, this is exactly not my type of game. Complex, massive, and epically long.

However, it is currently #22 on Boardgamegeek, and my previous Tanga policy was, buy anything in the top 50.

So, when all 10 pounds of it arrived on my doorstep, I wasn’t really sure what to make of it. I let it perk for a week in the analog room before I moved it closer. Then it started talking to me. Open me up and check out all my bits… there’s lots of them, and they are pretty!

I did, and read the rules, and enthusiastically told Mrs. G about how cool they were, and she explained how cool they weren’t. So being the “best husband evar”, I have decided to hold a meeting of the “Players with Yourself Club” rather than inflict another game on her. (For now.)

First of all, there is a lot of setup for this game. There are tons of hexes and different kinds of cards and chits and bits. What follows is a chronology of the cool parts. Or at least the parts that I got to tonight.

There are ten races in the game. Each has a distinct personality and special abilities.

The ten races also have a homeworld they call their own.

Each player’s race is determined by randomly drawing a hex from the set.

There are several different kinds of hexes, other than the previously mentioned homeworlds. There are one-planet systems, two-planet systems, completely blank space, wormhole endpoints, asteroid fields, nebulae, and the supernova.

Now, the galaxy is created. “Mecatol Rex” is placed in the center, and the player’s homeworlds are arranged around it, two hexes from the center. This is a six-player layout. The rules allow for 3-6 players.

The remaining 32 tiles are shuffled and two are removed randomly

The rest are distributed to the players face down

Going clockwise from the starting player, the first ring is created. Each player places a tile from their hand one at a time.

Once the first ring is complete, the last player puts the first hex in ring two. Each player can place their hex any where they want, as long as it is in ring two.

Ring two is now complete.

On to ring three.

The final pieces are added, and the galaxy is finished! Note the strategic placement of the special tiles, creating buffer zones between the homeworlds.

Now we move on to the objective cards. These define how points will be earned throughout the game. There are ten cards of each type.

First, the Secret objective cards. Each player is given one of these cards, which is to be kept secret by the player. The remaining cards are returned to the box.

Next, the Stage II Public Objective cards are prepared. Four of the ten cards are taken and placed on the table. Amongst these cards is the Imperium Rex card, which mandates that the game ends as soon as it is revealed. This is a mechanism that forces the game to end in approximately ten turns.

On top of the four Stage II cards are placed six stage I public objection cards.

In my game, the Imperium Rex card is the ninth in the stack. Depending on fate, this card can be from the seventh to the tenth in the stack.

All that’s left is the individual player area. This contains the race card, the various status cards, the command chits, and the bits!

The collected plastic bits, representing battling units, both space and ground.

From here the game really begins. Stay tuned…

I have infected two “non-gamers” with?Catan?this week. I am starting everyone with a tutorial game of the Settlers of Catan Card Game, which you can read about here.

My hope is that, by the next Bunker Party, there will be an army of Catan addicts. From there… Puerto Rico… and then… Twilight Imperium, my new Holy Grail!

In the comments for IGN: Ultimate Setup XLVII, I’ve been harshly criticized about the general blandness of the Bunker. I quote:

“This is a bit much for me…….maybe he should get a life? Does look cool but really designed poorly just because all the walls are white and really plan I mean pimp out the room with some posters or paint the walls, but who ever uses a whole house for gaming is either insane or needs to lose their virginity…..…” – LadiesLoveCooLJ

“Screw this. Sure he’s got a lot of cool stuff, and wastes way too much money on it, but the execution of the setup is completely dry and style-less. It is disgusting.” – raineisdead

“Alot of stuff, but it all looks too messy to me. If it was me I’d spend some more on getting nice furniture and get the rest of my house/gameroom looking stylish. Seems to me like he’s just pumping as many electronic devices into a house as he can.”– Panoz-Esperante-GTR1

I don’t know if I would go so far as “disgusting”, but I definitely agree with “completely dry and style-less”, mainly because it is by design.

First, the DDR room is painted “Spa White” it was designed that way to fulfill two purposes. One, the wife (Mrs. G) loves the EyeToy, and the only way that damn thing will work well is with a completely white room lit by a 680K Candlepower lighthouse lens. I know this because the room is completely white and is lit with 4 75 Watt bulbs, and it still seems dark. The second reason is, Mrs. G is a Yoga freak, and I wanted the room to completely transform into a calm, serene place where she can navel-gaze without a bunch of garish speakers or other electronic junk distracting from her Nirvana quest.

At one point I wanted to get a bunch of wall decals like this? but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I had made that space for Mrs. G, and I didn’t want to spoil it.

As for the theater room, yes, it is grey. Really grey. In fact, I often look at it and go… “wow this is really grey.” (Actually, the paint is called “Silver Screen”.) However, it is very rare for anyone other than me to see the Bunker with the lights on. We had an “incident” at the last Bunker party, where we had to clean up a lot of Pottse’s blood, and a bunch of people said “I’ve never seen this place with the lights on.” What you can’t see from the pictures is that this place is pitch black except for 9 LCD monitors, and the Projector. On top of that, it is loud as hell. Either there is J-Pop bumping out from DDR, or “John the Fisherman” from GHII, or someone warbling out the words to “Take on Me” on Singstar. Any other “style” would cause your eyeballs to bleed a little harder. Seriously, when you leave the Bunker at 4am you are full-on sensory-overloaded.

As for non-gaming, theater use, I am always amazed when I see a theater with posters in the viewing area. I hate distractions when I am watching movies. (Hence the no-pausing rule, and the monitor in the bathroom.) Posters are glossy unless you matte them, and they will reflect the screen like a supernova. My philosophy is, you are there to watch the movie, not the walls.

That is not to say that I don’t admire the setups that have gone all-out for style, quite the contrary. Those are the ones that inspired me to build the Bunker in the first place. For those of you looking for truly gorgeous setups and gear, make sure you hit www.avsforum.com. You will be amazed. The Bunker is child’s play compared to what the guys have there.

As for being messy… the Analog Room definitely is. There are board games stacked everywhere, and half-finished games all over the place. I would like to deal with this, but that would require some major cleanup in the Bunker Storage room, and that makes me afraid.

What no one notices, mainly because I think I failed to pull it off, is that the bathroom was supposed to convey the look of both Yavin IV from “A New Hope” and Boba Fett’s color scheme all at the same time. The floor tiles are stone and staggered to give it a feel like the temple at the end with the victory ceremony. This was supposed to blend in with the general jungle green of Yavin… and then to the greyish greens from Boba Fetts armor. At one point I considered etching one of the Mandalorian symbols into the glass of the shower door, or just hiding it somewhere painted red near the toilet roll or something. If there is one place I would consider putting up posters, it will be in there, and probably Star Wars related.

So, the Bunker was designed to look the way it does for a reason. Unfortunately, those reasons usually are only tangentially related to aesthetics.???

Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party?came out on Wednesday, but?I am on credit card probation.

I keep trying to convince Mrs. G that she really needs to buy it for me, for the good of all Cobalt Flux owners everywhere, because I will figure out what it takes to mod this bad boy!

So, if you are a proud owner of a Cobalt Flux, and a Wii, and are waiting to take the plunge, leave a comment and tell Mrs. G that she needs to put down the 70 bones so I can show you the light!