The cakes a lie #1

nintendo, switch

It was back in the early half of 2009 whilst I was living in Crook, between jobs, coming to terms with a failed marriage, and missing my son. Definitely a low point in my life, that I bought The Orange Box by Valve for the Xbox360.

It was incredible value for money at the time (especially second hand for a tenner iirc), consisting of Half-Life 2 plus its two stand alone expansions Episode 1 and 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal.

Apart from being my first introduction to the Half-Life series. Which was an incredible experience, and maybe the subject of a future post. It also introduced me to (what has become a classic) Portal.

It’s rare that an unknown (to me at the time) game out shines such a high profile game as Half-Life 2 in a compilation like this. But it did.

I loved that it was a first person puzzler, some of those puzzles were so devious (I may have had to look up the solution to one or two). It may not have had the storyline of a Final Fantasy game. But you weren’t really playing the game for its story.

There was great use of the environment aiding in telling what there was plot wise. You got the feeling everything was not quite right, failing equipment, decay, and graffiti. Add in atmospheric music, plus the voice acting and dialog of the computer GLaDOS.

Then there was the Jonathan Coulton song during the end credits “Still Alive” adding a surprise twist to the story arc you’ve just completed. I love this song. It is on one or two playlists I have setup. It’s catchy and fun.

Still Alive by Jonathan Coulton

You know a game has made it when it has memes. In the case of Portal they were about the cake being a lie. People still quote this today, I do! (the title of this post for starters.)

Plus there is a Portal boardgame (sadly I don’t own it – yet!) Portal (technically Portal 2) even made it into Lego!

Portal 2 Lego (you will see this in another post)

As you may have guessed from the big clue above about “Still Alive” I did in fact finish the game. Something I can’t say about it’s follow up Portal 2 but I’m sure I’ll go into that in another post.

Jump forward several years and the purchase of a Nintendo Switch, life events forcing me to trade it in, and the subsequent purchase of a Switch Lite a year or two later.

I remember tweeting during the early days of owning a Switch I’d love to see Portal on the platform. It just seemed a natural fit for the console, especially as a handheld game. But I knew it was a pipe dream. It’d never happen.

Then imagine my surprise and excitement when Nintendo announced in a Nintendo Direct earlier in the year that Portal and Portal 2 would be coming to the platform later in the year as the Companion Collection.

I hadn’t forgotten it was coming out. But since it was announced I hadn’t seen a release date. Then Monday I saw there had been a new Nintendo Direct and that Portal: Companion Collection was out that day! Sadly no physical version (yet?). But at £13.99 as a digital download I could live with that.

So now I am downloading the game as I write this excited to return to the Aperture Science Laboratories, GLaDOS, Chell, and Companion Cubes.

Which brings us to a logical point to split the post, and give me time to play the game before writing about it again.

June 2022 Gaming Stats

by the numbers, gaming stats, stats

Hasn’t the month gone fast? A little too fast.

Spoiler alert, but this months gaming stats are a little disappointing. Not a great number of games played.

Hopefully July will be better.

The 9 Games I Played This Month

Ok here comes the bgstats stats with all that cool data.

Bgstats for June 2022

And finally here is the little progress on the gaming challenges.

Gaming Challenges Progress

See you next month.

RIP Ben

Uncategorized

I should be trying to get to sleep. After all I’ve been working all night.

It was during my break at work that I found out my friend Ben had died.

I took the news pretty badly. My eyes did leak.

Ben was a good friend. Some-one that understood and relate to my personal situation in the last few years. It’s a connection we had and he’d lend a sympathetic ear during our conversations. Not many understand what it’s like to be a carer. Ben did having done it for so many years for his mother.

Ben and I had been battling it out in Star Realms for a few years now. As you can see he’d won one or two more of the games than me.

Sometimes we’d have three or four games on the go. After a particular good run of wins there would usually be a victory phone call to gloat. Often Ben would answer the call with some humorous comment such as “Star Realms helpline”. He indeed was my Nemesis at the game.

I felt in recent games I’d been getting the upper hand and a comeback was on the cards. Now we’ll never know.

Ben will also be credited forever with renaming Takenoko as Bastard Panda. Which he rocked at playing. I believe he had played quite a few games of it.

Ben had health issues. And had recently completed a course of chemo. There had been issues afterwards. Which as you know meant Ben couldn’t make some of our Scythe Rise of Fenris episodes.

We had been planning to get his Kickstarter edition of The Great Wall to the table. Something he’d been wanting to do. Maybe I can find some one with a copy and play it in his memory.

I think all that knew Ben are still trying to come to terms with the loss.

He will be missed at the gaming table and as a friend.

Rest in peace my friend.

Flashback to June 2016

Blast from the past, flashback, gaming stats, stats

Stepping out of that ol’ Tardis vacated by some time lord or other that I borrowed it from. It looks like we’ve arrived at June 2016 to see what I was playing then.

My Top 9 Played Games of June 2016

I’m not sure if June was our last month of playing the Pandemic campaign but I think we were at least getting close to its conclusion.

Guilds of London was picked up at UKGE (my copy was signed by the designer) and was a pretty solid game. It’s only real drawback was the steep learning curve with the iconography.

Marco Polo a great dice placement game, and those game breaking variable player powers. Great fun.

It’s interesting that five of the months top played games are “pocket” sized games that finished in under forty minutes. That filler game bracket.

Ashes is a great lcg, with unique mechanics such as picking your starting hand from your deck, and the use of dice. It’s such a shame that the publisher screwed it up which relegated it to a niche game in that space.

June 2016 Stats

Here is the full list of games played in June.

Games played in June 2016

That’s the trip to the past over and done with. Time to pop back into that police box and try to return to the present day.

A VtM Rivals Deckbuilder #1

coding, Rivals, Vampire the Masquerade Rivals, vampire the masquerade: rivals, VtM Rivals Deckbuilder Project

Temptation got the better of me. Well for the moment.

Let’s face it the odds of this being completed are low. There is a lot working against it. One of the main forces working against it is that I start nights for the next two and a half weeks. Basically my shift is 8pm to 5am. This starts tonight.

In the meantime let’s pretend I’m doing stuff.

So before you start building a deckbuilding app of any kind you need a card database. I know it seems obvious, but still.

There are a handful of options of getting one.

  • An official source – yep I could approach Renegade and ask them if they’d let me have the data. Not very likely, plus there might be a lot of legal paper stuff to sign.
  • Find a third party source – not a reliable option. You just don’t know how accurate it is. Plus it may not be all the cards available.
  • Enter it manual myself! Life is too short for this.
  • Web scrape the data from the Renegade website. This is the option I’ll be going with.

This morning having given in to temptation I started looking at scraping the data I need from the Renegade website.

I’m actually writing this deckbuilder using Pythonista on an iPad. So that’s Python 3.6 and the libraries that come with it. Which is a more limited set than available on a more open platform.

To scrape the data I’m going to be using the requests library.

Which means I have a steep little learning curve to do, along with refreshing my Python. It’s not as if I use this stuff daily, especially web scraping using the requests library.

The first hurdle to overcome before I can get to scraping the data I need is getting passed the login screen. To be able to get to the deckbuilding page you have to be logged in.

So that’s my first bit of focused Python and requests learning.

More soon (hopefully).

Rivals Needs To Be At UKGE 2023

rant, Rivals, Vampire the Masquerade Rivals, vampire the masquerade: rivals

This morning after having had my first cup of coffee of the day I decided it was a good idea to plant the idea of Renegade doing something with Rivals at UKGE in 2023.

After all UKGE this year is (or will be after GenCon and Essen have happened) the third largest boardgame convention in the world. Usually it’s third or fourth depending when you look at the numbers. It’s competitor for those spots is Origins. Which fell into fourth place this year.

At this years UKGE there was nothing done with Rivals at the show. A missed opportunity for sure.

I’m hoping that with enough time they have time to organise a tournament like a Prince of the City at the show.

It seems incredibly silly that Renegade didn’t do something at such a large show. A big missed opportunity. But I can understand why considering recent world events, and event organiser policy on covid. The fact that they could repeat this missed opportunity next year doesn’t bear thinking of.

Why do I need to know now if they will be doing something?

I enjoy my mini holidays attending UKGE. Spending three days there, catching talks, more time to do stuff like take part in tournaments (which I have done in the past), some gaming in the evenings.

But to be able to do this and have it affordable you have to book well in advance to get the cheap hotel rates.

If I miss the window of opportunity on the cheap rates it becomes harder to justify a multi day visit to the show. In fact in these very tough economic times nigh on impossible. Even with the cheap rates it’s still a tough decision.

Most tournaments take place over a couple of days at these big shows. So you need accommodation.

Even if it was a single day event the decision to enter is not easy. Having paid to get into the show you want time to look around and do stuff, as well as take part in the event. Sadly the event stops that.

If you are going for a day you have to decide which of the two things you are going to do. You can’t really do both.

That’s why I need to know now. My show planning has started now with deciding if I’m going for multiple days and if so getting that affordable hotel rate.

Paranoia One Shot Post Mortem

Paranoia, post mortem, RPG

It actually happened. It actually bloody happened.

After a couple of delays I finally got Paranoia to the table.

Since I started DMing (which isn’t long) this is the first none D&D rpg I’ve run.

So how did it go?

Firstly the players had fun. Which is the important bit.

I used the introductory adventure [YOUR SECURITY CLEARANCE IS NOT HIGH ENOUGH FOR THE TITLE OF THIS ADVENTURE] from the Mission Book that came with the Paranoia Ultraviolet edition.

Earlier in the day I went to the library and printed out the pregen characters, and the adventure itself (despite having it in the book).

I have been singing the praise of this adventure because it really does hold your hand through running your first Paranoia game. This adventure is probably my second published adventure that I’ve run. And for me it was quite fun.

It was quite refreshing to have so much less behind the screen. Compare what I have in the photo above to the ones I share from my D&D sessions.

At the start of the adventure you are told to do the following, “Pass them the Players Handbook open to page 14 and tell them not to read it.” Not once did the players touch it! That really did surprise me.

Combat was interesting. Very different to others. It’s real time for starters! Players have five seconds to select an action card. Fail to do so and you get no turn that round. It’s also very much simpler than other systems. I kinda liked it.

I don’t do voices. So there was no computer voice. Plus I don’t feel I hammed it up enough as the computer or even Roz. So my roleplay needs improving.

We did complete the adventure in a single session which I wasn’t sure we would do. So that made it a great one shot on that front.

The overall opinion was fun was had, and keen to play again.

Season Two of Big Game Saturdays Planned

Big Game Saturdays

With the end of the Scythe Rise of Fenris campaign the Saturdays between D&D are taken up with what I am now calling season one of Saturday Big Games!

Season One of Saturday Big Games

The season kicks off with Dune the boardgame with both expansions CHOAM and Richese, and Ixians & Tleilaxu. These combined add a further four factions the six in the base game. The only worrying thing is that the season kicks off with a damp squib! At the moment there are five unsure players possibly going to play the game.

Luckily the other two games currently have more players committing to them. But as we all know life has many ways of throwing spanner’s in the works.

This first season is planned to finish at the end of July.

In the meantime I already have a season two planned!

Well the games I’d like to get to the table this time (see the image below). And as I write this a season three is also forming in my crazy mind.

Season Two of Saturday Big Games

I don’t think it will come as a surprise to anyone about The Thing being on this list. It was fun at four players. Hopefully for this play we can get nearer to the full player count.

“Wait, haven’t you just played Star Wars Outer Rim?” I hear you ask. Why yes, yes I have. But hoping this will be at the full player count with the newly released Unfinished Business expansion.

Despite apparently having flaws (design and rulebook) I so want to get Ghostbusters 2 to the table.

Finally a game of Scythe using the modular board, Invaders from Afar, The Wind Gambit, and (this is the important part) Rise of Fenris as modules, with a five or six player count has to be done. This will be mind blowing.

I think season two is best to start in September once those pesky Summer holidays are out of the way.

In the meantime I can gauge interest in the clubs discord server.

Bouncing round the Outer Rim

star wars

What a way to start two days off work.

I hadn’t played a game with Gavin since March (that was when I got him hooked on Survive Escape from Atlantis). So when he asked at the start of the week if I wanted to go round one day this week to play a game I jumped at the chance.

Gavin had a request to try Star Wars Outer Rim. I was more than happy to get it back to the table. Plus we could do our game trade.

This morning was the prearranged time for our gaming.

One day I’ll get to play Star Wars Outer Rim with the higher player counts. But I still like it as a two player game.

In this game I played Jyn Erso (Rogue One) whilst Gavin played Lando Calrissian. We were also playing to eight fame points instead of the default ten. The quick start rules recommend this for a first game, after it that was the case for Gavin. Plus I’d only played the game once before. So I needed to refresh my memory on some of the rules.

I took the early fame lead by reaching my characters goal first.

During the game I think I was being thematically true to my character by swapping ships regularly. As you can see in the photo above I ended up in Fett’s ship or would have been if I had got a chance to complete the ships goal.

Gavin definitely got the ship that was thematically true for Lando, and managed to complete the goal to turn it into the legendary Millennium Falcon to make it more so.

During all this ship hopping Gavin managed to take the fame lead with a massive turn that grabbed him two fame points in a single turn.

I was playing catch up.

Luckily there were patrol ships I could attack to get money and fame points for.

As I was fighting patrols Gavin was getting closer to victory.

If Gavin hadn’t snatched his last fame point to claim victory I’d have won. I know that is a boastful thing to say. But my next turn would have seen me attack Gavin’s character. Which if I’d won (and the chances were good on that) I’d have gained two fame points and a final score of nine (and not the seven I had when Gavin grabbed his eighth fame point).

Why were the chances good on me winning a combat with Gavin? Between my ships ability, Jyn’s ability, and a crew members ability, I’d have started combat with plus one critical hit (worth two hits), Gavin would be rolling one less combat die, and thanks to a crew ability I could turn blank sides to eye symbols, which I could then turn one into a hit! Oh and in the patrol combats I took part in Gavin was not rolling well. Even on his skill tests his dice rolling was challenging Jonathan for the title of “the dice hate me” king.

If that combat had happened that would have been our first bit of player interaction of the game!

Neither of us went for any bounties either. Which might have made the chances of interacting higher if one of the bounties was for a crew member.

But we both had a good time. Gavin enjoyed the game. But would never get it to the table at home. So his sealed copy will be going up for sale/trade. Let’s face it I have it, and he’ll play my copy. As we were today.

Me? Payday will see me ordering the new (and only), just out Unfinished Business expansion for it. It was a given I’d be getting this anyway. I like the game. But more importantly Nathan likes it. So adding more to a game he likes is a no brainer.

Our small bit of wheeling and dealing saw me swap my copy of Flash Point and expansions for a copy of Tinners Trail plus expansion box.

A great mornings gaming and trading. Thanks Gavin.

Why so silent?

still alive

When you are knackered and working these later shifts time sure does fly. Can’t believe it’s been three days since I wrote about the culmination of our Rise of Fenris campaign and Jeff’s victory.

In real life the uncertain future at work is starting to take shape. I got a glimpse of it when I got my shifts for the next three weeks. To paraphrase The Animals song I’ve Gotta Get Out of This Place, and find something with the hours I need to make ends meet.

Gaming wise I’m able to do a mid week session with Gavin tomorrow. The plan is to have a two player game of Star Wars Outer Rim. Gavin wants to try the game as he owns it but never played it (I think I can relate to that – currently 56 games have that distinction in my collection). The experience will determine if he keeps it or not. So no pressure!

Then Friday sees me running the Paranoia RPG one shot [YOUR SECURITY CLEARANCE IS NOT HIGH ENOUGH FOR THE TITLE OF THIS ADVENTURE]. Looking forward to this.

I did have to move the planned Tapestry session for a third time! Hopefully this will be the final time I have to do this. Having the shifts for the next three weeks has helped on at least finding a day when I won’t be working!

Remember the saga of the Vampire the Masquerade Rivals expansion Shadows and Shrouds preorder? Well the missing half finally turned up on Monday! What’s that 10 weeks!! I’ll be using this copy of the expansion as prize support.

I’m tempted to start a coding project to write a Vampire the Masquerade Rivals deck builder app. I know Renegade have one on their website. But I’m not a fan of it. It’s functional, but because it’s a web page just feels clunky, slow, and so Web 1.0! I want something more like the MtG Decked app for deck building. At the moment it’s just an idea with the start of some class diagrams defining attributes. There are many technical problems to overcome. Maybe I’ll discuss this in more detail in a future post if I go ahead with the project.

See you in the next post.