Over the weekend, I finally got the chance to organize and compress my Warmachine and Hordes High Command games. I organized it using my normal tabs (surprise!) and managed to fit all the cards into one large box and one small box.
Here’s a picture of the finished box: Continue reading Tabs for High Command
This year, during the holiday season, I hatched an idea for a new white board for NSIDC Operations. Our old white board was serviceable, but getting long of the tooth and not as functional as we have needed more recently. So, I ordered a new magnetic white board and started putting together something a bit more flexible that could change as our duties evolve.
Below are pictures of the old and new white boards: Continue reading New Operations White Board
As I mentioned in my 2015 retrospective, I’ve been playing Path of Exile again. It has been a while since I’ve played, and it is really interesting to see all the things that they have added to the game since then, including a complete fourth act.
As Path of exile adds new features, it’s definitely creeping up the list of my favorite rogue-likes. One feature that they added was skill jewels. These are bundles of passive skills that are socketed into the skill web. The novelty here, I think, is the image in my mind of someone in a designers meeting saying, “Why not allow the players to customize parts of their passive tree?” Just like the passive web itself, this is really quite the novel concept, and the fact that they pulled it off (without stretching the bounds of their universe overmuch), is pretty impressive. Continue reading Path of Exile
Lately, Jessa and I have been playing a lot of Guild Wars 2. The thing that really brought me back to Guild Wars 2 is the removal of my primary complaint about it at the start: the level grind. In particular, there are a couple of new features that made this less of a problem for me.
The reason the leveling annoys me so much in Guild Wars 2 is basically two-fold. First, Guild Wars 2 is a mostly-open world MMO, meaning that you can pretty much go to anywhere on the map immediately after the tutorial. The catch is that a lot of this grand map will be indirectly locked off if you’re not high enough level to deal with the mobs located there. The reason this one in particular sticks in my craw is that they’ve made levels irrelevant up to your level by downleveling you when you are in a zone that is below your level – so if they can downlevel you, why won’t they uplevel you, or, better yet, remove levels altogether? Continue reading Getting Back into Guild Wars 2
For our weekly game day last week, my wife and I decided to give T.I.M.E. Stories a shot. This is another game that I got for Christmas, this one from my mother-in-law, Sally. I saw this for the first time when I was in The Jester’s Court in Grand Junction for Thanksgiving. It’s a cooperative “decksploration” game based around the idea of time and dimensional travel – for me, this is an obvious hook!
The nature of T.I.M.E. Stories’s gameplay makes people very nervous about spoilers (which I’ll address why in a bit), so I want to be upfront that I’ll be keeping this review out of spoiler territory and I’ll be discussing mostly mechanics, though I will dip into broad strokes about how the stories appear to be structured. Continue reading T.I.M.E. Stories
Of the Christmas gifts that I got this year, I only got the chance to play one of them during my post-Christmas Game Day – Resistor. I got this one from my wife, and it’s a small game that I very nearly backed this fall when I saw it come across kickstarter. My main hesitation was that it was a two-player head-to-head game, and sometimes these are a little difficult for me to get my wife to play (which is my most common second for playing a game). Conversely, during the game day, there were a number of 2-on-2 games going, so Resistor actually got a fair amount of table time.
I was quite impressed with Resistor as a product. First, the quality of components was solid. I may not be a fan of the size of the cards, but they did get the job done. The theme is also suitably 80s and the artworks really brings it home (I doubly love the mock tractor-feed rules printout). Continue reading Resistor
Just as I looked back at 2015, I am also looking forward into 2016. I’m not really a goals-oriented person, but I wanted to write down some of the things that I want to do in 2016. Of course, life changes, so I’m not sure I can really levee these as expectations of my future self, but they are things that I plan to make time for this year.
Last year, I started and completed Ticket to Ride: Iceland. This year, I want to complete another project and get it printed. I have a couple of smaller projects that I have designed from the ground up that I could finally get printed, or, alternately, I may make myself a copy of Dune. In either case, I want to create something cool this year. Continue reading Looking Forward into 2016
Over the course of 2015, I feel like I have been able to improve my healthy habits better than I ever have. I’m exercising more, eating better, and generally taking better care of my body. While my habits and work are still mostly sedentary in nature (and I don’t expect that to change), I feel better about the time that I take to be healthier, even if it cuts into all those things.
As with most people my age, my job takes up most of my time, but I still love what I do. I work with great people, I get to do cool things, and I feel good about the work that I do at the end of the day. I don’t know that I have anything more to say here that I haven’t already said – it’s good. Continue reading Looking back at 2015: Part 2
2015 is nearing it’s end, and while I’m not normally very retrospective, I feel compelled to take a look back at 2015. Everyone else is doing it, why shouldn’t I? The main reason is that there are things going on that don’t really merit a full blog post; all the little things that add up to a full year.
Computer games are currently waxing for me right now. I’ve been playing a fair amount of Guild Wars 2 and Path of Exile, while still keeping my EVE Online account active. I also recently picked up Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void, where I am currently playing through the campaign. Continue reading Looking back at 2015: Part 1
Just before my Thanksgiving holiday, I finished reading The Martian, by Andy Weir. This book came highly recommended to me by one of my coworkers a while back, and was something I was keeping an eye on. Unfortunately, I didn’t get around to buying it until after the movie came out and the cost went up – bad timing I guess. However, the book was certainly worth it, and made for an enjoyable read. Continue reading The Martian