tberton

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.

Maybe she can't sleep knowing that her sister has run any and might be in danger.

To go along with the purpose of this thread, the article I wrote today was about Jaipur, a wonderful, light, two-player card game. I cannot recommend it enough.

I've already plugged this in both board game threads, but I guess hitting it up here won't hurt either. I've started a blog called Analysis Paralysis, where I will be writing articles with thoughts on tabletop gaming. Check it out if that sort of thing sounds interesting to you.

Also, if anybody actually wants to help fight malaria, I recommend the Against Malaria Foundation. They distribute insecticide-treated nets, which are proven to drastically reduce rates of malaria infection, among people in poor African communities. They are GiveWell.org's number one rated charity and do a fantastic job of staying transparent. If you've got the money, donate to them. Do it for Far Cry 2 (by which I mean, do it to save people's lives.)

I think he's sarcastically referring to your worry about commenting on AAA games. Anyway, it's awesome to here Nels talk about Netrunner because I just played in a Netrunner tournament yesterday. I also placed 5th, but only out of about 20. It's such a fucking great game. On the comment about high-level play and bluffing, it does get tougher because the card pool is small enough that a highly-skilled Runner can know exactly what cards the Corp can activate at any point. They won't know what specifically is coming up, but they have enough knowledge to know what to be scared of. Also, I think there probably is an imbalance favouring the Runner, at least with the current card pool (although the latest expansion pack seems to mitigate that) but it's only present at very high level play, so it shouldn't really concern most players. Nels, you should totally start a thread so that we can geek out about this.

What makes you think Katie assumes that she'll find all the answers to Sam's disappearance? Isn't the fact that she's home alone with nothing better to do explanation enough for why she goes rooting around?

Hey, School of Rock is a pretty good movie.

I've started a new blog about these things. It's called Analysis Paralysis. Check it out if you're interested!

So I just started a board gaming blog (well, there will be card games and party games too). It's called Analysis Paralysis. I thought some of you folks might be interested in such a thing.

The flatness of the characters is partly the point, but yeah, it doesn't make for great reading. Like I said earlier, Brave New World is a pretty bad novel, but it's an incredible thought experiment and well worth reading.

I played 2 and Days of Ruin, although I never finished Days of Ruin because the Advance Wars games always get boring when the attrition missions start. But I would love a new entry in the series.

Finished it today. Loved the game so much, although I think I played through the last third too quickly. I think I'm going to play it again in a couple days.

Bought it, but I just realized that I bought it on Steam rather than their site which I had meant to do. Sorry Steve!

That's really unfortunate. Catch-22 and Mrs. Dalloway are two of my favourite novels. The only books I can think of that I've quit reading recently were for school and that's more to do with being overwhelmed by school work than not liking the books. I generally try to finish reading everything I start and don't start a book unless I think I can finish it.

See, that's my point. These people don't care about each other and can't relate to each other. They pretend to, but really, they are only hanging around each other to pass the time, because they have no idea what else to do. While I agree that the war wasn't actually that damaging to the US in terms of casualties (the Spanish Flu killed more people), the psychological toll would have been the same. These are people who had just witnessed the great power of Europe go head-to-head with each other in a brutal and pointless conflict. New, unimaginable ways of killing had appeared: mustard gas, the machine gun and the creeping barrage, not to mention the more normal but no less horrific modes of death like rotting in the mud or the aforementioned flu. There's a reason that it was called The War to End All Wars: nobody imagined that anybody could ever put the world through that again. That's the context for the book. The world no longer seems like it makes sense. Think of it in similar terms to the post-World War II nuclear fear. When empires can send millions of men to sit a mile across from each other for four years and watch their friends die, what's the point of relating to anything? Why bother? The people you bothered to care about are gone, so there's not too much point in making meaningful connections. Just find some people who you don't hate too much and who are hopefully somewhat interesting. Drink, fuck and party. In the minds of these characters, they're the violinists on the Titaninc (another recent shocking event): the ship is sinking, so they may as well enjoy it while it lasts.

I think that having the character be difficult to connect to is part of the point. Hemingway seems to be saying that The Great War created such disillusionment in his generation that meaningful personal connections were made impossible and that every interaction became superficially focused on food, drinking and sex. You can see this in the fact that the prose is at its most stilted and disconnect in the moments when Jake is surrounded by others; it only starts to flow naturally and feel at peace when he's fishing or watching the bulls, which are things he feels comfortable with and understands. Jake can't connect to the other characters because the means through which they all connect to each other - their sex drives - has been cut off from him. So he, and the reader, are left feeling alienated. Of course, it's fine if you felt that the book was tough to read because of this. But I don't think it was an accident. Also, I don't really think that Brett and Jake are in love. The last line is the biggest indicator: A relationship between Brett and Jake would have fizzled out like all the others, even without the injury, and Jake knows it. The injury is just a convenient excuse, an obstacle that lets them ignore all the others standing in between them. Even if they could have had sex with each other it would have been as hollow and empty as all the rest of it because Jake's injury (and Brett's and the world's) is much deeper than skin deep. It's struck to the core of how people relate to each other.

Whoa, I never noticed this thread before. Sweet! I love board/card/party games! I played Matt Leacock's new game, Forbidden Desert, last night. It's really cool! If you like Pandemic and Forbidden Island, you'll love this. And unlike Forbidden Island, it actually feels like more than just "Pandemic Lite."

Do you not like competitive games in general then? And do you mean conversation in general or just conservation in games?

Huh, I've never heard that sentiment before. What do you hate about them? I love them, personally. The Resistance is my favourite game ever.

I find that with more than ten people, playing one game is rarely the right answer. It might work, but it's tough to get that many people to focus on the same thing. Split into groups or just do something else. This is barring certain situations like big events or summer camp or something. But in a regular, casual party situation, playing a game with that many people almost never works.

If you want to play Werewolf, play The Resistance instead.

Waterdeep is a good choice, Nappi. Here would be my top three recommendations based on what you've mentioned. Bohnanza: The best game about bean farming ever made. An absolutely brutal negotiation game where every player is trying to make the most money planting beans. But you're often forced to plant beans that you don't want, or lacking the beans that you do want and therefore must negotiate with your opponents to maximize your profits. It takes 1-1.5 hours, is super simple to learn and probably wouldn't cost you more than $25. One of my all-time favourites. Hanabi: I haven't played a ton of co-op games, but I have a hard time imagining there being a better one than Hanabi. It's deceptively simple: you've got a deck of cards, with five colours each numbered one through five. Your goal, as a group, is get every colours cards played in ascending order. The problem is that you can't see what cards are in your hand: you hold them so that you see the backs and everybody else sees the fronts. Working together, you have to give each other enough information about the cards so that nobody screws the whole thing up. One of the most challenging and rewarding games I've ever played. 1775: Rebellion: This is a new one and was Kickstarted, so I'm not actually sure if it's available for purchase yet, but it's awesome so I'll recommend it. It's a team-based, dice-rolling war game set in the American Revolution. Two players are the Americans, two are the British. It's got a similar feel to Risk, but it's mechanically a bit tighter and has a really interesting reinforcement system that makes every part of the board feel important. It's one of the games that keep running around in my head at the moment. EDIT: Just saw miffy's post about Traders of Genoa. Definitely an awesome game (although it's probably longer than what Nappi's looking for). I got to play it once last year, after it was re-released as simply "Genoa" and I really enjoyed it. I desperately want to play it again. The idea that negoation permeates every aspect of the game is so interesting to me.

Double post for reviews. Damn, this game looks great. And the multiplayer seems like an interesting take on what they did in Pikmin 2.

Are you arguing that a work of fiction can only have value if it's directly related to the real world? Because that's a pretty narrow view. I'd argue that the Song of Ice and Fire books at times have important things to say about the nature of complex political conflicts and the struggles of ruling. Of course, at times they are simply escapism. But the fact that they are escapism has little to do with the fact that they don't take place in our world: romance novels, mystery novels, cop dramas - they all take place within our world but are still escapist in nature.