Erkki

I'm also building a new computer. Last time I did this was 4 years ago and I remember we had a special thread about building computers here, but I can't find it now. It had links to some awesome table with recommendations, I wonder if there's anything similar now? Although I might just try upgrading as little as possible (I need a new motherboard at least, and a new graphics card).

I think Cyclades has become my desert island game. The 3rd game of Titans was really awesome and yet relatively quick, taking 2+ hours. We had six players forming 3 teams (obligatory with 6) and one team again got a pretty good lead by being clever and attentive during setup, but what made them win was the rest of us not cooperating enough to stop them and bad battle luck. The expansion adds even more variety and I liked the team play version, even though interaction between team-mates is limited. I think the game will get better as we gain experience and figure out more of the dynamics, and what the good starting positions are.

Received my Explore & Protect posters some days ago. Sadly my CC account didn't have enough cash to get Defend as well at the time. They look really good and are currently being framed. Arrived in perfect condition unlike prints I've got from kickstarters such as DFA and sadly Idle Thumbs as well.

I sent some money

Yeah, I could paint for example some of the ships of Merchants & Marauders. There are brown NPC ships that I tend to confuse with the red player's ships due to my color blindness. Painting just those would be actually useful, and I could also apply each flag's colors to them so the cardboard boards below them would become unnecessary. Even better might be to start with the field generators of Alien Frontiers (the three larger thingies here): Those are relatively simple, there are just 3 and if I really mess up, I can order the pieces pictured above as a separate box without ruining the whole game. I would really appreciate any advice and recommendations you can give. I don't even really know what kind of materials and tools I need to get to get started other than "some kind of paint" and "brushes".

Yeah, that looks great Codicier! I did some more googling on this and read (just a bit) about the painting process and it looks like there are a lot of complicated steps to get good results. And I realized that painting all the Cyclades player figures would be like a few months part-time work even for someone more experienced... Also, what if I fuck up just one of those things (I was gluing one slightly broken one back together and realized just how tiny they are). Would it be possible to get the colors off again if a horrible mistake is made? On the other hand I saw some painted Cyclades pieces and they looked great, except the player color could be not that obvious any more on some when placed on the board. So another challenge may be to make the player color still dominate for people to identify the pieces from all angles. Now I'm having doubts that maybe I like the idea of having the pieces painted, but maybe not so much the idea of spending months of actually painting them. I'll have to think about it some more before I start [edit] Or maybe I should just paint a couple of the monsters, to get an idea how much I would like the process. The Kraken would be so much more impressive on the board when painted. Should I start with a less frequently used one for practice?

I was looking at why the new Merchants & Marauders expansion Seas of Glory seems to have such a low geekscore @ BGG and very few reviews available... then realized that it just came out in April. The rules make it seem awesome in most senses of the word -- it's both awe-inspiring and scary to add so many new pirate-y rules to an already rules-heavy game, and it will probably now take at least 6 hours to play in all its awesomeness (with my group). Seems to require a lot more table space, which was almost a problem already. It adds all kinds of cool things I never even thought of, but which make a lot of sense on first read at least. Nice of them to make it modular, but also makes me wonder how balanced it is. Also, at least the PDF version of the rules makes the graphics look a bit badly designed. I hope this is just how the PDF was made, and real components look better.

Also I bought Alien Frontiers and man, that's a game with really good-looking components and solid gameplay. I lost in the end by forgetting to convert some resources and not getting a good dice roll, but it was fun.

I bought Cyclades: Titans last week and already played twice (5 and 3 players). Both games were rather similar in that one player got a huge advantage quickly and won. I'm rather disappointed after hearing that it's supposedly a really good expansion. In both games a player got ~10 income after 3 cycles, which is unheard of in the base game. In one game this translated to certain, but slightly delayed victory as soon as the sandals became available for purchase. Nobody could stop him because he could outbid anyone and still do a lot with his money during his turn. The second game was very similar (dumb of me to try a similar start twice after losing once, though), but the player made a mistake of not trying to win immediately and was almost beaten back down, but he still had such a huge income that while we had weakened him temporarily it took all our resources and he basically defeated us with money again in the end. The sandals and the caduceus seem hugely overpowered. I do not see how this game is even remotely balanced, but on the other hand it is quicker and even more hectic than the base game, which is kind of cool. I want to play some more soon, maybe there's something I have missed. I went for a start where I wouldn't get a high income, but got a metropolis quickly. Maybe you should never go for a start that leaves you with less than 2 income (if it's possible for all players to get that) even for a single cycle. [edit] Fuck, I just realized we have been playing Cyclades very wrong for a long time: when a player finishes their turn, we put the marker on the first free spot, not the last one.

Damn, I wish I would have followed this Jam's thread in Idle Banter before it really started, then I would have been able to perhaps prepare some time to take part of this. I definitely wanna join next time, do some game development again, haven't done anything in 3 or more years.

The time period thing didn't even conciously register for me during watching. Weird. Although I remember thinking that the e-reader was weird.

I saw It Follows yesterday. Soundtrack was indeed awesome, although the cinema I went to fucks every movie up a bit by turning it too loud and this was no exception. Had to cover my ears in the beginning until I got used to it. Also, the movie wasn't half-bad for a horror movie. I'm not sure I'd give any horror movie made after The Shining more than 7/10, but It Follows gets that much for sure.

I've settled on Universal Media Server + PS3 client for most of my movie streaming, although it isn't perfect. For example adding/deleting a movie seems to make every other movie unwatchable until the server is restarted. Today I got some furniture for the living room, including a cabinet for storing the PS3 and other devices. After watching one full HD movie, the cabinet was quite hot, though. It doesn't have any ventilation holes at the top... I wonder if it would be enough to make some holes in the top edge of the back wall so the hot air could get out, or if fans are required if I want to keep the cabinet door closed during use.

Hmm... something might be up with mine too then, still at the origin facility. I guess they come up with a unique origin story for each poster there and it just takes time.

Estonia is relatively flat too, but I guess it's no match for Kansas. We don't have any mountains, but there's a lot of hills in the south.

Wow, almost 3 (or is it only 2?) years after moving in, I'm finally getting cupboards/wardrobes for putting stuff into. Only had one dresser for all my clothes before.

I think I need my PC upgraded anyway, it's about 3 years old and has some other problems. Also want a NVIDIA card with <whatever-their-word-is-for-the-streaming-stuff> so I can try in-home streaming even while I don't have a proper Steam box yet.

Cool, I didn't even realize these were all available on Steam. Bought it, with the physical stuff. Also now I'm thinking that since I have a relatively big screen, maybe I could play some digital versions vertically in hot-seat mode. Probably not due to the games having secret information (or maybe all don't?).

On this, yearoftheps3.info, I bought Far Cry 2 (for the PS3). I figured I'll give the console version a try and I don't have that much to play on the PS3, which is now my main entertainment machine, on the year of the PS3*. * likely soon to be replaced by Steam link or something similar, though.

What does everyone think of Terra Mystica? I recently bought it, but am having trouble getting people to play it due to the length. We have played it once (not counting the practice run I did of a 2-player game just to get the hang of the rules), and it definitely was too long, but subsequent games could turn out to be shorter. I know I took 15 minutes for my last turn, and I don't even remember whether it won me or lost me the game by 1 or 2 points. On the other hand I think on the whole it was really fun for most players.

Ok, added Alien Frontiers, Spyrium and Suburbia added to my wishlist, or at least wish to play list

It probably would in tinbullet. Man, I should get back to that thing some day.

I just bought a Raspberry Pi 2 on an impulse after seeing it advertised in an electronics parts shop. Was able to stream some 3D movies even, but not all HD movies. Should it be able to do that, in 1080p? Seems to depend on codec or bitrate. I'm using OpenELEC.tv as the OS, and Universal Media Server as the server. Both computers are wired, but maybe the UMS is not re-encoding the best way for the Kodi running on the Pi. With the current chopiness, I'll stick to the PS3 as the media server client, and the Pi becomes kind of useless. Maybe I'll install a different OS on it and use it for surfing the net, which kind of sucks on the PS3.

I kind of see what you mean, but so far Lords of Waterdeep has been anything but dull for us. Or well, for me one aspect that can make it dull-ish is that it might be even too well-balanced. You can think that you have an awesome lead, or even that you are losing, but end up winning by 2 points. It is possible to lose by a lot, of course, but then probably due to your own obviously sub-optimal moves. I think what makes it great is how simple each element is, and how well they combine. It's probably one of the best examples of emergent combinations of game mechanics, at least in an eurogame. For example, that you complete quests after doing an action lets you play more stealthily by not explicitly showing what quests you are going for (by taking them just in time to complete them), but of course that way it is more difficult because you can't be sure the quests you want will be available.

Castles of Mad King Ludwig is pretty good. I've only played it once, though, and don't know what Suburbia is so can't compare. The only problem I have with it is that setting the prices as the master builder is nearly an impossible task that can lead to analysis paralysis, and when playing for the first time you just have no idea what to do there. But I guess it's still kind of fun, especially if you pull it of really well, and not that big a problem since you can just give up and use some random order (although that way you could unknowingly play into somone else's hands). Lately I've mostly been playing a few games that have become favourites in my group(s). Firstly Lords of Waterdeep has become my favourite worker-placement game. It's amazingly simple for how complex it is, easy to explain, well balanced, and the randomized aspects (lords, quests, intrigues, buildings) make it very replayable. I only regret a bit that our group doesn't care much for the thematic elements, so we often don't even read the names of the quests and talk about colors of cubes instead of wizards/warriors/etc. The expansions are also cool, but it's too bad you have to separate them after each game and can't just mix everything together. I think I have mentioned this earlier, but Cyclades is still our favourite strategy/area control game. It's also amazing how differently it plays, given the fixed starting positions. Some games can end rather quickly and surprisingly, but sometimes it gets really intense with people starting to insult each others' moms and it just ends up kind of like Munchkin where everyone wants to stop the leader(s) from winning until there's no way left to stop one player. It can get a bit anticlimatic that way if some big battles are fought in a round before the victory. Some complain that the Pegasus can be too randomly powerful, but to me that's kind of the appeal of the game -- that you can't protect yourself against everything. I wonder if the expansions for Cyclades are any good? They sound interesting, but maybe just add unnecessary complexity?