Monthly Archives: August 2023

I got some gaming in

game night

The pills I have to pop to mask the arm pain are still working. Which means I was able to get some gaming in.

This meant I was able to carry out the Three Sisters plan on Tuesday.

What hadn’t been taken into account was we were clashing with the open mike night at the social club.

Unlike the open mike night at my local back in Guildford when I lived there, which was poetry and comedy. This one was all people that had the impression they can carry a tune.

One particular crime against humanity and music was a cover of Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead or Alive. Apparently the singer is a really nice guy. But I’d argue otherwise just based on this one song alone that he is a cruel sadistic git.

The other acts were not much of an improvement with their covers either.

With this audible assault going on we were still able to concentrate on our game of Three Sisters. Barely.

This game was an all in game using both the weather mini expansion plus the third mini rock garden pad.

I rarely use the apiary when I play Three Sisters. But this time I set my self the goal of focusing on progressing along its tracks.

It’s one of the things I love about this roll and write. There are so many ways to approach the game and focus on things.

I also managed to grow all the pumpkins! Plus complete a couple of perennials.

Considering Dave had been thrown in the deep end (literally) with this game his score was quite respectable.

Three Sisters Scores

We followed Three Sisters with a game of the roll and write I picked up second hand from this years UKGE, Roll Through the Ages Bronze Age.

This is a step down in complexity from Three Sisters. But still an enjoyable game especially when you roll three skulls and cause a plague giving your opponents minus three points.

I was pleasantly surprised when I won this one. Everyone else was building more than me whether it was cities, monuments, or making discoveries.

Roll Through the Ages Bronze Age scores

After the two roll and writes the “music” got too much for Dave forcing him to leave before he was driven mad and forced to get revenge. We had a three player game of Village Rail.

This was a new to me game. Which was very enjoyable.

You know in Small World if you want a faction not at the start of the market row you have to place a coin on each faction until you get to the one you want? This game uses the same mechanic to draft cards whether they are scoring cards or track cards.

Money is quite tight in this game, with your main source of income coming when you complete a line and earn money for the number of items matching the bonus card or whatever it’s called you decide to use for that track.

Otherwise you are drafting cards to place in your play area to try and maximise the points you score when you complete the a track or for the long game of end game scoring.

Somehow I managed to get a convincing win. Beginners luck.

Village Rail scores

After this victory we too made a dash for the door with our auditory pain tolerance levels having been reached.

Last night saw me play AuZstralia for the first time.

This is a Martin Wallace game. I have one or two of his games in my collection (London second edition, Wildlands, Hit Z Road, come to mind straight away).

Having played this now I can see what all the fuss was when it came out.

These days I find Cthulhu themed games boring or at best a lazy theme for a game. However it works here but then again it could easily be replaced with dragons for example with Cthulhu being replaced by Tiamat.

But it’s the mechanics I like about this game. I like how each action you can take has a time cost, and repeating an action already with a cube on means it costs you gold plus the time cost.

Like Tokaido, Glen More, Trekking Through History, Patchwork, etc the person at the back of the time track takes the next turn until they are no longer last. It then becomes the new last placed person to take a turn or turns.

A rather cool thing is the ancient ones don’t actually start doing their thing until all players pass them on the time track. Then they start waking up and causing havoc.

Our game ended when Cthulhu destroyed Marcin’s port. After the points were totted up Diego and I would have shared the victory if Cthulhu hadn’t scored one more point than us to grab the victory.

AuZstralia final scores, the ancient ones won with a score of 24

I blame Marcin for building too many farms for Cthulhu to reduce to desolate waste lands and thus giving the ancient one the points for victory.

But it is a fun competitive co-op. I like it a lot.

I’m glad the meds masked the pain enough for me to play some games this week with my friends. I needed these after missing last weeks gaming.

My Saturday Morning Cartoon Project

life, the universe, and everything, Saturday Morning Cartoons

You may find this hard to believe but I’ve actually started writing a post that won’t see the light of day until the later half of October.

But in those words I wrote this morning I briefly talked about my Saturday Morning Cartoon project that I have started. I also mentioned that by the time you get to read those words I might have written something about the project.

Well here we are with me just about to tell you about this crazy and cool (who am I kidding its anything but this, more sad and weird) project that I’ve started.

Back in the seventies and early eighties as a kid here in the UK our Saturday mornings were either Swap Shop on BBC1 or Tiswas on ITV.

Like the great home computer playground wars of the early eighties between owners of the C64 and the ZX Spectrum, you were either a Swap Shop fan or a Tiswas fan (to be fair dads would have preferred if there kids were Tiswas fans thanks to Sally James).

I enjoyed both, so sat on the fence. As I did in the great home computer wars (after all I owned both).

Both Saturday morning shows had a similar format. Live presenters, an audience of some kind (either in studio or on location), plus some cartoons to break things up.

It was great getting up on a Saturday, switch on the tv and watch these shows with a bowl of cereal, that weeks comics (Warlord, Battle, 2000A.D., Starlord, Eagle, Beano to name a handful of ones that I used to get).

But here I am some forty odd years later trying to recreate that Saturday morning chill, when I had no worries, life was carefree, and times were much simpler.

The plan I started with is to watch some cartoons from that period of my life (or there abouts) to help escape from the worries of the world. To have a relaxing start to the weekend.

I started last Saturday with the following three cartoon series; Batman the animated series, Dungeons and Dragons the cartoon, and Thundercats.

So with a mug of coffee in hand and a couple of pan au chocolate, the attack chihuahuas and I laid in bed and watched the first three episodes of from the first season of the three shows.

Obviously the animation is of it’s time. But I still found the episodes I watched enjoyable. Yes they weren’t the shows that were shown back then. But they are from my youth (except Batman which was more my young man years).

The plan is to add to the shows to watch Hong Kong Phooey, The New Adventures Of Batman, He-Man, potentially Transformers, and my holy grail Battle of the Planets.

I seem to remember that the Flashing Blade was also shown on a Saturday morning as well during Swap Shop. But my memory may be letting me down on that one. However I do own it on dvd and will rotate it in at some point.

At some point I want to start an equivalent Friday evening tv project as well with such shows as The Water Margins and Monkey. Which are the only two I can remember from a Friday evening on BBC2.

So there you have it my plan for spending a Saturday mornings.

ToTK too long in the tooth?

nintendo, switch, Tears of the Kingdom, video games, Zelda

SPOILER ALERT! I think I should start adding these. During these posts I will be talking about where I am in the game and my experience as I play it. Some of that might just spoil the game for you if you are planning on playing it.

It’s been well over a month since I last spent anytime on my Switch Lite. Let alone continued my journey in Hyrule by playing Tears of the Kingdom.

I could come up with excuses as to why this is the case. But that is all they are. Just excuses.

Whatever the reason it doesn’t get away from the fact I’ve not played a video game for over a month.

Back in the eighties and my teenage years I had all the time in the world to play video games, read about video games in the pages of such publications as ZZap64!, Crash, or C&VG.

Some games I completed (not many), others I enjoyed but was just crap at them and never got very far. Sometimes you just didn’t have time to complete the game or get good at it before another game came along and demanded your attention and time.

Now decades later there just doesn’t seem to be the time available. Adult stuff like earning a living gets in the way. Age catches up, and energy levels are just not the same after a long day at work. All I want to do in an evening is unwind a little and sleep. Early nights are a thing for me. It’s surprising how drained I am physically and emotionally after a days work.

In fact it is well over a decade, nearly fifteen years since I last had a significant amount of time that I could dedicate to gaming.

Before that my gaming whilst a step parent was hand held titles for one of the Nintendo systems or the Sony PSP (I had both) on my daily commute. Whilst the kids got to play on the Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo consoles. That would give me a couple of hours gaming a day during the week.

Today it feels like I’m stealing moments here and there.

When last I played Tears of the Kingdom I had failed to take out the boss Colgera at the Wind Temple.

Unusual for me these days I had been playing the game after work one evening! Some how I had some energy left over from a day in front of students. Maybe I was feeling energised from having received the players guide a day or two earlier.

I finished the last two locks that would release Colgera, and had an attempt to defeat him fail. I was running out of arrows or more importantly things to meld on to the arrows to increase their damage.

So I retreated.

Sadly the amiibo stuff doesn’t work during the boss battle. I had to retreat to a shrine so I could unlock some supplies.

By that time it was nearly 10pm and I had work the next day. So I left it there, ready for another assault on Colgera.

I’d like to think that a younger me, even when I was playing Links Awakening on my GameBoy in my early twenties, and blasting my way through Doom, would have beat Colgera.

But as Shahid Kamal Ahmad said in the latest Remaster podcast (and I’m paraphrasing heavily here, maybe even putting words in his mouth, but I think I captured his meaning) “I ain’t getting any younger and my reactions are not the same as they were” when he was talking about the latest Street Fighter game and how his kids are thrashing him at the game (is this his “the student becomes the master” moment?)

Memory keeps telling me games were much tougher back in the day. And they probably were. They definitely were much less forgiving. But game design was in its infancy back then. It felt every other game was pushing boundaries, exploring what games could do, or redefining what a game was.

But back then I had youth and time on my side. Time to spend learning patterns to defeat that boss, or advance through the levels. Plus the reactions, hand eye coordination of a teenager.

Now I have greatly less time. And like Shahid my reactions are no longer the stuff of legend (well in my mind they were legendary) but more like that boxer passed their prime trying once more to capture former glory against a much younger opponent.

Am I finding Colgera hard to defeat because I’m old. Do I have to swallow my pride. Admit defeat and get Nathan to get me pass this bit?

Hell no! I’m not ready for the long walk yet (Judge Dredd reference there for you folks).

Time to remind myself of the controls (that drawback of long gaps between plays) and dispatch this boss.

Arm Latest

life, the universe, and everything, still alive

After a weekend of resting the arm, popping pills (only the prescribed medication btw and in the correct dosages and intervals), the arm is currently pain free!

Not only that today I was able to raise the arm high enough to be able to put on a tee.

Until now I was unable to raise my arm high enough (without hurting) to put a tee on.

So I’m a bit chuffed with this progress.

Sadly I had to sacrifice my gaming plans for the weekend to be able to rest the arm and give the medication time to work.

Fenland Gamers Club Night Last Friday aka the one I couldn’t attend. Photo copyright Jonathan Warren

Which meant I missed a really well attended Fenland Gamers club night on the Friday evening. I think going by the photo there were 15 or 16 that turned up, with about 3 new to group folks giving us a try.

Obviously the banter went it was only so well attended because I wasn’t there! “Again, right in the ears, straight to the feelings.” Wil Wheaton Big Bang Theory

The arm also meant I had to cancel our planned D&D session on Saturday afternoon. This Summer so far has not been good for the running of D&D.

No impromptu gaming session Sunday afternoon.

There are plans to play Three Sisters tomorrow evening. Obviously having just introduced Dave to the roll and write genre with the Trek 12: Himalayas entry level roll and write. The next logic step is to throw him totally into the deep end with the sharks (Charlene, Ben, and myself) and play this combotastic, not even remotely entry level or mid level roll and write.

I am hoping the medication and the arm hold out so that I am able to attend the annual Jeff’s all day birthday gaming day next weekend. I believe it is once more going to be Memoir 44 with an overlord map. But more importantly is the home made curry Jeff makes. His curries are rather good.

Even with these plans in place I think my gaming stats will be down for the month. I played way less than I could at Nathan’s because of the arm. It’s cost me a weekend of gaming. How could the numbers not be down?

I’m just happy the alarm is not a major source of pain at the moment. The rest will be what it is. See you in the next post.

Arm Update

life, the universe, and everything, still alive

Monday I caved and tried booking an appointment with my doctor. However there were none and was told to login at 8am the next morning and fill in the form to get one (hopefully) for Tuesday.

I did phone the minor injuries department at the North Cambs hospital who do walk ins. However they told me because I had no history of this sort of thing they would most likely just refer me to my doctor! So there was little point struggling to get to them for relief from the pain.

Tuesday morning I did indeed fill in the form that my surgery requires to be done first before getting an appointment, pressed submit and started the wait.

Nearly three hours later I had a text back saying they had sent a prescription to my regular pharmacy. Which surprised me as I hadn’t had a prescription for years and didn’t know I had a “regular” pharmacy. Plus they were referring me to physio.

Within minutes I had a call to arrange an appointment with physio. That will be happening on the 22nd of the month. I also asked them where they thought my “regular” pharmacy was, as I had no idea. When they told me it was ASDA it made sense, its where I pick mums stuff up from.

In the meantime I had my brother pick up my prescription that only had two of the three items I had been prescribed.

But still £28 was a bit of a shock. Tells you when I last paid for a prescription. Plus I had only been expecting one item.

So yesterday saw me having to pick up the missing medication from the pharmacy and after a day it seems to have started making a difference. The arm is less painful with a little bit more movement. But not much.

Hopefully it keeps it this way or better until the 22nd.

Curry, Games, and Pain!

father son gaming, life, the universe, and everything

Last week I got to visit Nathan.

As I was driving down on the Tuesday afternoon Nathan was taking his driving test. Which was finishing around the time I was passing his location. So I deviated from the M3 to surprise him at Fleet train station and give him a lift home.

When Nathan and his instructor pulled up at the station car park I got out to greet him. But had no idea what the outcome was. That was until he got out the car, gave me a quick thumbs up, and posed for the traditional ‘just passed’ photo next to the instructors car.

Once he was finished I got to give him a hug and tell him how proud of him I was. I’m always proud of Nathan but I don’t think I tell him that enough.

It’d been a long day with the driving etc, so I made my go to comfort food for our tea, a bowl of noodles with chorizo (although I use whatever I have in the cupboard/fridge usually).

We then settled down to watch series 19 of Hell’s Kitchen (a series Nathan enjoys). As a compromise we went with one episode of that followed by an episode of Justified. And repeat.

Nathan hadn’t seen Justified before. But after watching the first episode he was hooked.

The thing about Justified is it’s a western with a modern setting for sure. However the writing, acting, casting, are just as near to perfect as you can get. Each of the six seasons are 13 episodes long. They all have a story arc for the season along with an on going overall story arc between the main protagonists of the series. Even the supporting characters are amazing and developed. I can’t think of any dead episodes. You know episodes that just tread water, do nothing story wise.

I think I must have watched Justified six or seven times now. And it doesn’t get boring even though I know what is happening.

I just love the show.

The big thing for me on Wednesday was that I was making Nathan a curry from scratch.

Unlike his old man, Nathan doesn’t do heat in his food. So the challenge was to create a tasty, spicy curry that had no heat.

I had no idea how this was going to turn out. There was no plan apart from using the core three ingredients coriander,cumin, and fennel seeds, and staying away from stuff that added heat. So there was some turmeric added, along with a cinnamon stick, cloves, curry leaves, and star anise. After toasting these ingredients it was time to turn them into a powder using a mortar and pestle. It was a lot of hard work I can tell you.

When it came to cooking I softened a diced onion, added some chopped tomatoes, the curry powder, then two cans of coconut milk, then some diced potatoes, and finally diced chicken breast.

What I ended up with was a creamy flavourful curry that seemed similar in style to a Thai green curry to me. But had no heat. It came out better than I expected. Nathan enjoyed it. which is the main point for me. I did add some heat for me by using some chilli crunch on my bowl contents.

The only game we got to play was LoTR the living card game. Which I did write about at the time! You can find that in this post here.

The rest of the time we spent together on Wednesday was alternating between Hell’s Kitchen and Justified.

Thursday was a completely different story. That was when the right arm started to cause me some pain.

Despite that we managed to get the remaining two games of the LoTR the lcg core campaign played. We did have a blast and I do need to write them up with the similar style that I did for the first game in the campaign.

It was lucky that we got the third and final game out of the way by tea time as that evening the arm was really causing me some pain.

I like to think I have a high pain tolerance. I can usually focus out most things. Having tinnitus does have an advantage. Over the years I have developed the “skill” of being able to focus out stuff like a constant ringing, or a stinging nettle sting, etc. But sometimes things get too painful or loud to be able to do that.

This arm pain was definitely falling into the too painful to focus out. I even resorted to paracetamol and ibuprofen, but that made no difference at all.

The rest of a painful evening was spent watching those two shows.

After what at best can be described as a disturbed nights sleep of pain I was on my last morning with Nathan.

After my usual coffee and pain au chocolate start to the day. Which I wasn’t getting my usual enjoyment from, it was very functionary. But that was the pain talking I think. I introduced Nathan to the Star Wars the deckbuilding game (which will be getting an expansion sometime next year according to a brief comment in one of the FFG In-flight things at this years GenCon).

After taking an early lead capturing two of the empire bases, Nathan managed to pull things back and get the win.

He liked this game a lot. So much so he was going to buy a copy for himself. I knew he would like it. He loves Star Realms for starters, and like his old man loves Star Wars. So this was the safest bet ever that he would like Star Wars the deckbuilding game.

I decided to save Nathan some money and leave my copy of the game with him. After all he’s going to be the main person I will play the game with. It was bought to play with him in the first place.

After that defeat it was time to load up the car and return home. This was not going to be a pleasurable drive home. But I did make it home.

I really enjoyed my time with Nathan despite the arm pain doing it’s best to ruin it. Hopefully once he has wheels he will be able to pop up and visit. When that happens I have so many games I want to share with him starting with Scythe.

Brief update

life, the universe, and everything

I’m keeping this brief.

There should have been at least two posts about my stay with Nathan and our LoTR campaign play.

But at the moment I’m in extreme pain with my right arm. A pain that inflicted me for the last two days of my stay with Nathan and still does.

I think it might be a trapped nerve.

What it means is that I can barely move my right arm at the moment without some pain.

As soon as it improves I’ll be back to a normal service.

Mirkwood Paths #1 – A Passage Through Mirkwood

Campaign, father son gaming, LCG, Lord of the Rings, LoTR, Mirkwood Paths

I know the LoTR lcg has been out for a few years. Plus the revised core set that I have has also been out for a couple years too. But still I feel that for this play through of the revised core set campaign (mine and Nathan’s first time playing it) I should give the old SPOILER ALERT! warning.

If you intend to play through the campaign included in the core revised set and prefer not to have anything spoiled then avoid this post and join me in another post.

Just remember that was a SPOILER ALERT! You have been warned and if you continue reading this post (which I hope you do) and it ruins your enjoyment of the campaign then it is on you.

Ok let’s get on with the post.

As hinted in my long winded ramblings justifying giving a spoiler alert above this is the first time Nathan and I have played through the campaign mode that comes with the core revised set. It’s also the first time Nathan has played the LoTR lcg, and my third time of playing the opening quest of the campaign Passage Through Mirkwood.

Passage Through Mirkwood is the recommended introductory scenario for new players. Which considering my other two plays of the game were introducing new players to the game (including myself) it made sense to go with the official recommendation each time.

However this third time was different not only because we were playing it in campaign mode, but because of the decks used.

“You are traveling through Mirkwood forest, carrying an urgent message from King Thanduil to the Lady Galadriel of Lorien. As you move along the dark trail, the spiders gather around you…” Flies and Spiders, card 119

For this campaign we are using the Leadership & Spirit deck, and the Lore & Tactics deck from the Learning to Play Guide of the core set.

I’m playing the Leadership & Spirit deck, that has the following heroes: Aragorn, Théodred, and Éowyn. Which means Nathan is playing the Lore & Tactics deck with Legolas, Beravor, and Denethor as it’s heroes.

According to the Learning to Play Guide the Leadership & Spirit “deck excels at putting allies into play and contributing lots of willpower to the quest.” Whilst the Lore & Tactics deck is a “deck should be used to provide additional card draw and handle most of the combat.”

Hopefully we can remember our decks strengths as we play the scenarios in the campaign.

At least using these decks I don’t have to perform any mental gymnastics to explain Galadriel being in the party of heroes battling through Mirkwood.

“King Thranduil has assigned a guide, Mendor, to assist you in your passage through Mirkwood Forest.” Mirkwood Paths – Part 1, card 129

If Mendor gets defeated, aka killed we lose the scenario. Just a little extra pressure to start with.

“The nastiest things they saw were the cobwebs; dark dense cobwebs, with threads extradionairly thick, often stretched from tree to tree, or tangled in the lower branches on either side of them. There were none stretched across the path, but whether because some magic kept it clear, or for what other reasons they could not guess. – The Hobbit” Flies and Spiders, card 119

Our parties made their way south through Mirkwood following forest paths dispatching the odd forest spider as they dropped from the trees.

Such an early attack of opportunity from a spider managed to do serious damage to Aragorn after I had leant heavily into the decks main questing focus and had no one to defend with.

We were or I should say that team Legolas were already engaged with Ungoliant’s Spawn when we had to choose which path to follow.

To give me a bit of variety from my previous two plays of this scenario we went with the other card that I hadn’t played before, 3B Beorn’s Path.

We had to defeat Ungoliant’s Spawn before we could complete the quest itself. Which was slightly different from the other path.

If we had gone the other way we would have won a round quicker but I wanted to keep things fresh for me. So we quickly finished off the wounded Ungoliant’s Spawn. Freeing up my team of heroes to throw everything into completing the main quest. Luckily some ally powers allowed this to happen.

“The forest is dangerous, but that was beyond what one might expect to find.” Mendor seems shaken. “I fear something is not right in the land. I shall continue to travel with you.” Mirkwood Paths – Part 1, card 129

Our reward for successful competing this first scenario was to add a copy of the boon Mendor’s Support to our decks. Plus Ungoliant’s Swarm to the encounter deck.

Nathan liked his first play of the game. Although he thought this introductory scenario was on the easy side. To which I countered it was aimed at introducing players to the game. So it was never going to be really challenging.

I actually liked the core set recommended deck. It was fun to play with. And played well to it’s strengths. Nathan didn’t seem to have any problems piloting his deck. So that to me says that these are great decks for new players.