Yesterday ended up being a binge tv day. Amazon Prime had just put up Season 3 of the excellent series they produce The Man in the High Castle. Which is based on the Philip K. Dick book of the same name.

I’ve never read the book, so I’ve no idea if they have gone beyond the book now, if they are still within the plot of the book, or even if they have deviated from the book much. However I am a fan of his book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and the movie that was based on that. Plus I loved A Scanner Darkly (another one I hadn’t read the book for).

So when Amazon released The Man in the High Castle just the source material had me interested. Then the synopsis got me really interested. The whole alternate history thing I love. The what if? For this book/series the premise is the Germans and Japanese won the Second World War. America has been split by the two victors. But it’s an uneasy peace, the threat of war between the two bubbling underneath. Against this backdrop you have these films turning up mysteriously showing a world where the Germans and Japanese lost the war. These are all linked to The Man in the High Castle, and a kind of resistance movement.

I’m really enjoying the series, good acting, not bad effects for tv these days. The story has now introduced multiverses, and a plot of multiverse domination by the Germans. Can’t wait for series 4.

Naturally you were expecting me to be writing about the no holds barred Commander game. But that fell through. Crowded social calendar meant that the others who had planned to take part couldn’t. Luckily I knew Friday evening, and hadn’t driven for an hour, and sat around looking like Billy no mates at the library.

So in a moment of boredom I decided to recreate visually what Zo-Zu the Commander of my mono red mass land hate deck thought the real reason was.

I did see on icv2 a news story about an interesting expansion for Catan. This one is for charity and is educational! The charity being supported is the Global Crop Diversity Trust and the expansion is called the Catan Crop Trust Scenario kit.

“But in this semi-cooperative scenario, players must balance the needs of the future against their immediate plans by working with the other players to store and preserve seeds.  If players overharvest, they risk damage to the environment, possibly causing a collapse of the food supply.”

Sounds really interesting. Apparently it’s big introduction to the world will be at Essen. I’m gobsmacked they didn’t chose Tabletop Gaming Live last weekend for that! That’s sarcasm folks.

But I like the sound of this, and has now jumped on to my wishlist.