Nelsormensch

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Posts posted by Nelsormensch

  1. Posted

    I've never played DOTA, but whenever Sean talks about its seemingly-bloated-but-in-reality-intricately-elegant design, my mind immediately turns to Netrunner.

     

    Also, "drip this honey" sounds really gross.

     

    Yeah, I think the big difference between Dota and Netrunner is the team play compared to 1v1. So that's why Netrunner feels slightly closer to 1v1 Starcraft than Dota. Otherwise yeah, there's a lot of shared territory there for sure!

     

    And I leave to please.

  2. Posted

    Hey Nels, now that you and Vanaman work together, you should teach him Netrunner! I get the feeling that it's very much his kind of game.

     

    Oh, I'll try my best to drip this honey onto everyone. Nicholas Breckon expressed interest, I'll see who else I can get to bite. It feels closer to Starcraft than Dota, but I think there might still be a siren to sing here.

  4. Posted

    It warms the cockles of my heart hearing someone digging Netrunner so much. Yeah, it's a really, really damn good game on a multitude of fronts. The number of days I've fallen asleep or woken up thinking about my decks is ... a distressing number.

  5. Posted

    man i tried to play this for the first time on OCTGN 

     

    it is impossible 

     

    Have you played the game already and were just trying on OCTGN or were you trying the game for the first time ever on OCTGN? If it's the latter, yeesh, yeah, that's a tough row to hoe. I'd definitely recommend some in-person games first.

     

    But if you're familiar with the game and just not with OCTGN, I'm happy to show people the ropes on how that insane thing functions. If that's the case, I'm out of town for a few days, but DM me or something and we can figure out a time.

  6. Posted

    I started watching this video on how to play the game.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=g3w0B7txipk

    This looks very difficult to learn unless someone is teaching it to you as you play. Looks really fun. If I can get the sense that I'll be able to figure out how to play it, I may buy the 252 card set for $40. My wife always wants to play Magic, but I have a hard time being excited about Magic. We might be able to get into this.

     

     

    Following up this video with this one from Fantasy Flight could help too, if things are still a bit confusing: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp?eidm=207&esem=4#video

  7. Posted

    Doppleganger and Joshua B. Build up to a turn where I get the extra click from Joshua B, run archives and HQ click 1, run R&D click 2, then clicks 2, 3 and 4 are Notoriety. Hopefully that wins the game right there, but if it doesn't, I've got a Data Dealer which turns every Notoriety into a huge threat. Do you really want to lay down an Agenda when you know I can click for nine credits whenever I want?

     

    The only problem right now is that the deck is too slow, mainly because I don't have the influence to spend on good breakers. Once I get Opening Moves, I'll swap out some Joshuas for Hostages, freeing up influence to replace Aurora and Peacock with Corroder and Yog.

     

    Oh man, Joshua B. + Doppleganger? Yeah, that's gross indeed, I like it. And man, I think you've the only person I know that runs Data Dealer. But with Notoriety, that's actually a pretty darn solid combo. What are you doing for econ? Just Kati + events?

     

    To anyone in Vancouver thinking of taking Nels up on his offer to teach Netrunner, be warned, he is the author of this incredibly disturbing website: http://becomingbreckon.wordpress.com/

     

    You can't tell me you wouldn't have done the same. In that, it would be impossible to resist doing so

  8. Posted

    h yeah, I should probably say I'm running Jinteki: PE (core) and Shaper Kit (not Kate). I absolutely adore Jinteki. My first and forever greatest corp love. I'm finally experimenting with something else, at least until I get my copy of Opening Moves. Put together and NBN thing and it's really fun thus far. Good lord do I love Closed Accounts. Nothing like someone hitting you with an Account Siphon only to have you turn around and burn every credit the runner has.

     

    I actually have a copy I got from a Reddit exchange that I need to learn how to play.

     

    Yes, do it! I'll bring my decks next time I'm down in SF and maybe we could throw down sometime.

     

    Unfortunately, I live in Toronto, so I can't play with you and I don't have OCTGN (I don't really want to get it either, as I'm obsessed enough with this game as is).

     

    Right now, I've got a Haas-Bioroid: Custom Biotics deck with some Scorched Earth action and an Andromeda deck that focuses on scoring Notoriety. A triple Notoriety turn is tough to pull off, but so, so satisfying when it happens. Once I get opening moves, I'll probably have two Corp decks and two Runner decks at a time. I think I'll add a Jinteki: Replicating Perfection screw-you-up-with-weird-ice deck and a Kate Replicator deck.

     

    You running Doppleganger in that Andromeda + Notoriety deck? I tried a white tree Jinteki deck and it was actually really fun. It's weird, but I think it's got potential for sure. I did a Chaos Theory Darwin + Replicator thing at the last tournament before PAX. It was weird, but fun. Darwin just DEVOURS credits though.

     

    When my friend invites me over to play his massive collection, I usually build and run a (fairly generic) Jinteki deck. I like the bluffing element of ICE, even though I know that there's better corporations for building strong engines or murdering runners.

     

    Anyone who says Jinteki isn't strong to play doesn't know how to play Jinteki. They're quirky sure, but in the right hands, they're just as potent as any other corp. And even though people think Bullfrog and Snowflake are bunk, I dunno, they're almost too fun not to want to use sometimes.

  10. Posted

    As promised (now that I'm back in Vancouver), let's talk about Netrunner! Who plays? Which factions? Why is this game so god damn awesome?

     

    On the insane off chance, if anyone lives in Vancouver and wants me to teach them how to play, I'm happy to do so. Otherwise, if anyone plays on OCTGN, maybe arrange a Thumbs night on there or something? I'm happy to teach people who already know the game how to play on OCTGN too, despite it being an unholy mess.

     

    (I realize Netrunner isn't technically a Vidja Gaem, but I think it's close enough)

  11. Posted

    That's an interesting response, Nels. I disagree in a lot of fundamental ways I think—I think the notion of explaining why characters are flawed is a bit of an entertainment cliche that doesn't really map to how we actually experience the world most of the time. Most people don't thoroughly psychoanalyze themselves or their friends, or at least not in a way that really does justice to that person's true lived experience, and since this novel is explicitly told from the perspective of one of its (flawed) characters, that didn't seem like an omission to me.

     

    Oh sure, I didn't get hung on that explicitly. I just wanted *something* more from the characters than just them being super broken individuals. I didn't want crazy backstories or anything, I just wanted some greater context for who they are as people. Desires, motivations, anything that wasn't just about them being totally broken.
     
    I get that they're flawed, but is it just because they're just kind of obnoxious, oblivious Anglophones boozing their way through continental Europe and ignoring what the post-war meant to everyone who doesn't have the luxury of ultimately returning to an undamaged homeland (I mean, Spain is hypothetically in the middle of de Rivera's military dictatorship, which was just the latest entry in a long line of tremendous instability and hardship that went back as far as the Spanish-America War if not further, and there's no hint of that at all), or are their flaws arising from something personal and sympathetic? I have no idea, and I get how could read it either way. But for me, it was hard to not just see them as basically the former and getting further way from that required a charity I felt the characters didn't earn.
     
    And again, I imagine there was a social context readers in the early 20th century possessed that I totally don't, which frame this in a more complete way.
     
    Can't help but put this alongside The Great Gatsby in my head, since they're obviously quite close in terms of both era and structure (and hell, Hemingway and Fitzgerald were palling around in Paris for a while too). While all the characters in Gatsby were super flawed also, some (Tom) in ways far more overtly awful than anyone in The Sun Also Rises, Gatsby's characters still felt more like tangible, comprehensible people to me.

  12. Posted

    I kinda feel like an uncultured boor for feeling this way, but oof, The Sun Also Rises didn't really do it for me.

     

    Didn't really have any strong feelings about Hemingway coming in. As so many likely did, I read The Old Man and the Sea in high school and remember enjoying it. I think we also read For Whom the Bell Tolls, maybe, but I remember absolutely nothing about it. So I was pretty tabula rasa going in.

     

    What was the most interesting for me was the depiction of Spain. The small moments like drinking wine with a bunch of Basques on top of a bus or stashing wine in a cold spring when fishing. (although you may be sensing a pattern here ...)

     

    Probably the single most interesting bit for me was the detail of the various bullfighters, almost from a critical perspective. Their different techniques, forms, personalities, etc. Way interesting.

     

    Until I took a step back and remembered it was talking about bullfighting, which is an utterly horrific and cruel bloodsport. Hemingway might as well be describing the grace and beauty of dogfighting or bear-baiting. (Obviously it's no fault of Hemingway's, it was way more normal in those days and, somewhat horribly, still is today in some places in the world. But it certainly dampened my enjoyment of what was otherwise a very interest part of the book)

     

    But beyond those small moments, I just couldn't connect with it. As some other folks have said, I couldn't get invested in the characters. I'm fine with having flawed characters, but I'd like to know why they're flawed, how they came to be that way (the closest is Jake has, aside from his physical injury, maybe some PTSD from the war?) or anything else. They can be flawed, but they can't just *be* flaws, I guess?

     

    I just couldn't really imagine the characters as people, or at least not people I'd ever want to know any better. Aside from Jake's fondness for bullfighting, none of them even seem to have any interests or desires beyond drinking, sleeping with each other (or pining to do so) and bickering/brawling about the above. I couldn't understand why they like each other. Why does Mike even like Brett? Why does Cohn? For what matter, why does Jake?

     

    It's probably not helped that I don't have a particularly pronounced understanding of post-WWI, the Lost Generation, etc.

     

    Maybe it's just because the book is such an extreme roman à clef, it felt to me like a travelogue of a bunch of people I'd never want to meet. Again, that feels so horribly reductionist, but there was just so much stuff I couldn't get over.

     

    I am super excited for the cast though and hearing/reading other folks who got stuff out of a book that wasn't personally my jam. I mean, Hemingway didn't win that Nobel prize for nothing!

  13. Posted

    So, I had just assumed that when you all turned on me in Tammany Hall, it was just an implicit read of the state of the board. Now to discover there was active collusion? Fascinating.

     

    Also, just as a matter of public record, when I got up to and you all had your backstabbin' powwow, I was buying everyone a round of drinks. I even brought Nick back a glass of water. Things are on a whole new level now.