Hot Heart

Well, the seller fucked up with my copy of Ladies & Gentlemen by sending me a couple of courses for Formula D. Sent that back for a refund since they were the only place with that low price and they never responded to me originally requesting to swap for the correct item and figured I'd get something else. So I got Argent: The Consortium. I've had it on the wishlist for a while and decided to take the plunge since my group tends to like worker placement games. Except this ain't some boring shit like Stone Age or as simple as Lords of Waterdeep. This is worker placement on speed! But, like, "Speed" as in a spell name, maybe? You see, it's based in a magic academy where players are vying to take the place of the retiring chancellor. They do this by winning over members of the committee who have certain conditions for which they'll award a vote (most sorcery-type spells and supporters, most research undertaken, most diverse schools of magic, etc.); there are 12 in all and only 2 start face-up (players can place "marks" to peek at the others). Players have different sorts of mages that they can send on errands around the school. It's not a simple "place a worker here and get a thing" process because they all have abilities. For example, red mages can wound other mages (except green ones), knocking opponents off that slot. Alternatively, you can "shadow" other mages to occupy the spare slot or even cast spells to gain certain benefits or maybe just launch a massive fireball that wipes out two adjacent rooms of mages. Wounded mages are sent to the infirmary and the owner gets a conciliatory bonus for each one (and can even find ways to get them back out on the main board) so it's not a total loss. Essentially, you'll be gaining new spells, treasures, supporters, mana, influence etc. in a bid to win over the most members of the judging committee, partly basing your strategy on what your opponents might be doing based on their private knowledge of the judges. It sounds like a riot but it sure looks like a table hog (and I have Firefly!) There are also all sorts of different rooms, treasures, spells and supporters (and, of course, judges) so it'll never play the same way twice. And while I'm not fond of manga-style art, the actual design and colour is real pretty and everything looks p intuitive.

World Tour was a Guitar Hero game, right? I used to love the GHTunes song creator for that; really wish someone would carry on that idea. Rock Band was just numbered releases with the odd Green Day and whatever. I played a crapton of RB3 back in the day but I've heard all sorts of issues with DLC not carrying over in Europe (because SCEE are shit) so never saw the reason to make the jump. I think most instruments carry over but there should be a chart or something somewhere.

It makes sense for Farage to meet Trump in the same way that flies buzz around shit.

The little two-player mini-game in Mario 3 was THE BOMB. We used to play it as a survival mode and it ruled.

Played some new games recently. London An out-of-print game from the designer of A Study In Emerald, Onward to Venus and Ankh Morpork. Quite a tight little game in that you're "rebuilding London" after the Great Fire of 1666. This is done via card play where you build a part of the city (a line of cards) in front of you by spending a card of the same colour in order to place it. These cards then either have ongoing abilities while they're visible, things they do when you "run the city" (activate cards in the line) or just award lots of victory points. It's a sort of engine-building type game is that you have to carefully make a decent run of cards to activate because every time you run the city it creates poverty (represented by black cubes) for the number of stacks plus the number of cards remaining in your hand (and most cards get flipped once they're activated, which still leaves a blank stack). This can be offset by buyng boroughs in London; so there's a sort of pattern of cards > run city > buy borough. The player with the least poverty at the end of the game isn't punished, but everyone else loses points based off how much more poverty they had than them. I was doing pretty well but then whenever opponents had a chance to ditch poverty on someone, they sent it my way and I just didn't have . I possibly could've won without that (a little kingmaking going on, really) but the top three scores were very close at 41/40/39 (the latter being me). Mysterium If you've ever played Dixit, you'll have an idea of the basics of this. The players take on the roles of psychics/mediums/whatever who are staying in a mansion where a grisly murder occurred. One of the players is the ghost of the victim who is trying to reveal the murderer, location and weapon used via "visions" (cards) sent to the players. How it plays is that every player actually has their own set to identify first; it's the final round where everyone tries to figure out the "true" story. So, each round the ghost has some cards with all sorts of weird pictures on and chooses which to hand to players in order to clue them into which person, location or weapon they should pick. You start with people, then once you get that correct (the ghost can't speak so can only knock once for "no" and twice for "yes" when you ask them if you're right) you move onto location and then weapon. Being the ghost is probably very tricky because the cards can have all sorts of unintended indicators. For example, I had one with a fork or a snain and dishes but also a red ball of yarn with a string going straight across. I was looking at the dishes and thinking it was the chef I had to pick (and other people's clues indicated it wasn't theirs)... but it was wrong. Then I had a chess board and saw the Sweeney Todd-looking barber with the black and white hair... so maybe the yarn was like blood and then the chess squares match the hair... NOPE! As it turns out, I should've picked the racing driver because the line of yarn is like a finish line and the chess board is a chequered flag. D'OH! Of course, meanwhile, I was playing the guy opposite's visions better than he was... Still, it's a fun little game that takes around 30-45 minutes. Dominion w/ Intrigue and Prosperity I'm not big on regular Dominion so wasn't looking forward to playing it when a new friend brought it along to a games night. However, we were using virtually all expansion content which shook things up quite dramatically. There was a slow pay-off card that became more powerful as certain other cards were bought and joint VP/money cards that were very useful, plus ones that offered a free card below a certain value that then provided extra things based on which card was gained. It made for a lot more scope in building your deck and tricky decisions on each turn. And I just managed to end the game before the owner managed to run his slow-build deck once more, sneaking victory by 2 points. And speaking of actually bad deckbuilders, I played Ascension The most restricted, boring, ugly deck builder I've seen. You can be completely fucked by what's in the market and there's no real strategy; you're just fortunate if you can get some constructs to snowball everything else. And played Scythe again the other night. I got to try a different faction (and board) this time which was fun. I'm getting to grips with a bit more and even made a bold, early move in scaring away a player's workers (losing 2 popularity) in order to seize an encounter token (this faction gets to take two options so it's a great kicktstart for your engine sometimes) and it paid off; however, it kind of completely fucked his whole game because the faction on the other side was hemming him in as well (and he made an unfortunate decision in combat), cutting off access to one particular resource he needed. It was a tense game at points as the red faction leapt to an early lead in stars and got to the factory easily (their mechs enable that) even forcing me back with combat once I planted a mech there, but his engine stalled mid-way as the rest of us steadily grew (and I came back super strong a few turns later). It came right down to the wire as an unchecked Saxony placed his sixth and final star just before I was going to, ending with 99 points while I was at 89... but guaranteed to get an additional 13 if I got an equal number of turns. Alas, that is the agony of Scythe. To rub it in, he told me he only made that decision because my building on the previous turn gave him the enlist bonus to bump him up into the top tier of popularity. Either way, I really enjoyed it, although I know a couple of the players weren't so keen...

Oh. Oh no.

New Jimmy Eat World album. This is a lot better than their last album. Some really good tracks all in all. Pass the Baby is a funny one because they become a '90s alt band for the last minute.

TMNT: Out of the Shadows I don't know why I do this to myself, but I am a turtles fan so I was going to watch it sooner or later. What it does better than its predecessor is put the turtles as the stars right away (and tweak their terrible design a little). There's still some April and Casey Jones bullshit, but the turtles are a little more prominent (they get a sort of arc!) However, there is so much dumb shit going on that it makes my brain want to shrivel up, like just contemplating people writing that Bebop and Rocksteady (who's fucking "OIRISH") transform into those specific animals because the ooze unlocks... something to do with their ancestry and animals. What the fu... Oh, yeah, Bebop & Rocksteady. They're fun at times but a constant reminder that this really is a live-action cartoon. There's so much bad stuff but it zips along without troubling your brain cells too much and there's some good action and a couple of decent gags; my favourite being one at the end. LEONARDO: And we succeeded because we have what no one else does... *They all put their hands in the centre and get ready to yell in unison* L, D & M: TURTLE P- RAPHAEL: A GARBAGE TRUCK!

End of Watch I'd bought this on DVD years ago after hearing good things but never got round to watching it... until it was on Prime. Jake Gyllenhaal and Micheal Pena play a pair of cops in South LA and it follows them in a sort of found footage style mixed with normal film photography. The two have great chemistry and while they start out seeming like jerks you grow to love them, warts and all. There's a lot of laughs, some great exchanges and real tension in there. Hard to believe the same guy went on to do Suicide Squad...

Actually, many have pointed out that the later polls were showing Leave ahead or either side within normal margins of error. And I believe Nate Silver got the GE and the EU Ref wrong. I did link a thing a while back about how potentially corrupt our polling is over here though.

Should be interesting...

Doctor Strange Yeah, I liked it. Some good actors and cool effects and nice, little jokes. Neat twist on the usual Marvel blockbuster ending (that hasn't actually been so usual as of late). The only thing that irked me was the "sling ring", as in the concept itself (and the name). Maybe it's from the original comics, so they "had" to use it but it seems weird that they're like "you have to open your mind to all the possibilities, etc" and then it's like "you need this ring to do some things though".

To quote Mr. GOH! from a while back: "Wow, Ethan, your state is totally fucked up" http://cjonline.com/news/2016-10-25/kansas-lawmaker-denounces-black-protester-suggests-she-go-back-home

Managed to find a few things on my wishlist going "cheap" This is a Martin Wallace design (A Study in Emerald is one of my favourite games) from a few years ago that is out of print and going for ridiculous prices of around £80-100. (Ankh-Morpork is the same since the licence expired, although, I think a local shop has it at £50 but I don't think it's worth that to me). I must have gotten lucky because I just happened to search eBay on the off-chance the other evening and there it was for £34 with P&P. Anyway, it sounds like a cool little game based around the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire of 1666. You use cards to build your part of the city then "run" it to gain the benefits. The trick is that to play a card you must expend another of the same colour, putting it in the display where other players can grab it. And when you run your city you also generate poverty based on the number of stacks in the city and cards left over in your hand. A lot of the cards are one-use but still remain as a stack even if you don't put another building on top, so you have to carefully manage the number of cards you're putting out as you go; build too many stacks too early and you could be stuck. The thing with poverty as well is that it's only a negative relative to the other players; whoever has the least poverty doesn't suffer a penalty and then everyone else loses points based on how much more poverty they have than that player. There are twists with special abilities the cards grant you (changing the colours of cards, giving other players poverty, etc.) and ways to manage the poverty you're generating (buying boroughs deducts poverty each time you run your part of the city) as well as a few other elements. At its core, it's a sort of "engine-building" game with a nice little theme. And then in almost completely the other direction... This was talked up by Shut Up & Sit Down waaaaay way back but had always been an expensive import, but copies are currently selling for £20 in eBay. I don't have many light "party" games, so this sounded pretty fun that I should be able to play with a family gathering. It's a somewhat parody of Victorian values where you play in husband and wife teams. The men play a silly mock-up of the stock market (really, just grabbing at tokens) in order to earn money that the wives use for buying clothes and accessories, with the ultimate aim being to be the most well-dressed couple at the ball at game's end. The wives' side of things is a little more complex in that they actually manage the boutiques in which they choose to shop by placing out the wares, putting one face-up in the window, and secretly selecting the boutique in which they choose to shop. And if no one selects their boutique, they can buy the item that they'd selected to go in their window at half price. To complicate matters, the husband and wife teams can't communicate explicitly; only in broad terms (and in-character). So, depending on the group (and, really, you should gender swap here), you could have grown men trying to convince their partner that they really need that tiara while they explain what a bad day it was at work. So, yeah, if you've got the right group it should be pretty funny. There's also a "gossip" variant where you can play insults on other couples under the right conditions (e.g. they don't have a hat, but you do) to reduce their final scores and a "courtesan" addition for odd player counts. Essentially, the courtesan must be bought gifts in a delicate balance because if she's the best dressed at the ball then the husband who gifted her the most elegant items wins with her. Alternatively, if she's the worst dressed she takes down the team of the husband who bought her the least elegant items in a horrifying scandal! All in all, goofy, easy-to-grasp fun.

I finished watching Luke Cage the other week. I liked it but it wasn't great. It has some interesting things and I like how involved the supporting cast was but it tended to steer far too cheesy in places. There were some shades of interesting things being explored ("bulletproof nigga") but I fully expected more from that whole thing with the people of Harlem siding with Cage over the police. Like, they'd step in en masse and stop the police at a critical juncture or something more than walking around in "bullethole hoodies" and getting stopped (and possibly shot!) by police. Also, the "Bye, Felicia" and "Whatchu talkin' 'bout, Willis?" references in one episode was a bit much.

Anyone watching Westworld? I like the idea of what it's exploring (and Jonathan Nolan has previous AI-concerned work in Person of Interest) and it looks set to go to some interesting places. At first, I feared that it's going to be one of the shows where they're trying to hook you along with "mystery" rather than "story" but there are hints at involved character arcs for both human and "human" characters, and I care about where it's headed so there's that.

The Two Faces of January A thriller set in the '60s starring Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst and Oscar Isaac. The former two are a married couple hiding out in Greece (well, Europe, in general) because of ripping off a bunch of people in the US while the latter is a young con-artist drawn to them because Viggo's character reminds him of his father (from whom he was estranged) and he's attracted to Dunst's. After Viggo's character accidentally kills a private detective who'd tracked them down and Isaac's character becomes unwittingly implicated, they go on the run together. It's a good little thriller with some strong actors and nice scenery and a couple of little twists. It never really hits its stride at any point though so I couldn't say it's up there with my favourites.

I totally wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition.

Same!

I persevered to rank 5 in the end, but it wasn't so much about being good at FPSs as much as the balance of matches being way off. Out of the roughly 25 games it took me to reach max, about 3 were somewhat close games. All other times, we were getting utterly stomped or completely crushing the other team. It's just too chaotic for my liking and you're completely at the mercy of the spawns too many times. On the plus side, playing Supremacy outside of IB has provided slightly more balanced experiences so it's probably just a "teething" problem in sorting out people's ELO ratings to improve the experience, combined with the light level discrepancies that factor into IB. That said, I will be giving any future Iron Banner Supremacy events a pass. In other news, tried the new raid for the first time last night. It feels "shorter" but it's actually pretty action-packed and we were playing for about two and a half hours and only just got to the last boss (which also has two stages, I think). It does seem like something you could speed through once you're a higher light level. I really like it, though, because there's a lot more flexibility in what (sub)classes you pick, what weapons you use, etc. I was actually switching between the two I don't normally use because they work better for the team.

I gave IB a go yesterday; my first time playing Supremacy. ... I kinda hate it? While I like the big sandbox, loadouts-across-different-modes idea there will always be balance issues, which this gametype only exacerbates. Since snipers got hit pretty hard (kinda needed, really) the current problem is with shotguns. There are too many long-range ones and very mobile subclass options that cause the opposite of the "camping sniper" problem. Plus, it completely rules out alternative playstyles while adding in the constant spawn-flipping. The best Destiny maps accommodate all different elements because you have sniper lanes, flanking routes, close-quarter areas, etc. Even if you went in solo, you could find a "place" in the game. Now, you kinda just have to rush round as a group with shotguns. It does seem easy to progress through the ranks at least, even winning 3 games out of about 8 (I got better after I gave up trying to use a void loadout to get the Thorn bounty done; I think I'll just take Atheon's Epilogue into regular crucible for that). I just hate how slow the gear progression is since you MUST have your highest gear equipped so that the drops come out higher, even if it's shit gear with all the wrong perks. Where light level matters in IB, it's annoying and the alternative is to be infusing all the time. I made the mistake of turning in an IB bounty hoping to level up some gear for future use only to get a crap drop because having those equipped put my light level way lower than normal. p.s. Ethan, King's Fall shouldn't take more than a couple of hours now. Our group were managing hard mode in just over an hour and that was before you could completely outlevel it and rip through most of the bosses in one damage cycle.

Luke Cage...

Finally got myself up to 368 without even having done the raid, but now I'll have to rely on packages, the raid and IB for getting any higher it seems; all my legendary engrams are coming out at 365. Archon's Forge can be helpful for getting higher gear but fuck those goddamn perfected shanks and servitors. Pro-tip if you're having trouble finding groups: walk slowly into the area to give it time to matchmake on the fly and you should usually find 2-3 other people; running in usually means you'll find it empty. I've heard Iron Banner is giving out lots of cool loot even if you lose, and they've altered the progression to make it a lot more friendly and even give you a chance at getting gear that isn't shown in the vendor. It definitely feels like they've fixed a lot of the old issues (exotic weapon quests are decent this time) and everything's a lot more approachable or just plain rewarding.