Day 69: Wednesday

Going backward, we played the board game Scythe again while the choir and the band practiced. Our last play was with three players, adding Andrew the the game of Z and myself. We started first by playing with Sean, who could play for about twenty minutes, and then reset for Andrew when Sean started to practice with the church band. Z and I don’t mind playing a partial game.  Z was leaning as we played, and the additional restarts were helping Z understand which moves were better. In the last iteration, we almost finished a whole game, with me placing five stars of the six needed to end the game. We ran the final game scoring, and I won far ahead of Z, who was far ahead of Andrew.

Z and I did play a whole to two-person game starting at 6:30. Z is blue, the Norse faction which spreads out fast and can use lakes, and is recorded as the most-winning faction. I am black, Saxony, the more aggressive faction, and on the opposite side of the board. Z played better in this game and won a few stars before I accelerated placing stars and ended the game. The game has a tendency to end abruptly; your plans are never quite finished.

Scythe is a 4X game and thus has a strong competitive feel. Combat, while existing in the game, is simple and does not eliminate units but drives them back to their home base. The game is about efficiency and flexibly reacting to changes and events on the game board, mostly caused by other player’s actions.

Scythe was released in 2016 on a huge Kickstarter and was one of my first crowd-funded games (the others were Bloodrage and Vindication–I got lucky to first do some excellent games). It was a huge success, and add-ons and a campaign game were to follow. I have also upgraded the components and painted the figures and mechs. Actually, I have painted three sets of figures and traded them for unpainted sets. I bought a spare set of plastic pieces that I paint and trade including the campaign pieces. My friends Richard and Cody now have painted figures for their copy of the game. Richard has the campaign figures painted, too. Richard hosted my first and only completed campaign game.

Before the games at First United Methodist in Beaverton during choir practice, I was making dinner. I defrosted and then grilled three pounds of chicken thighs. I used sea salt, freshly ground pepper, and Middle Eastern seasoning on the chicken. I heat couscous sauce from a jar, Tibar. I cook couscous by cooking about a teaspoon of gram masala with almond slices and dried cranberries in butter. I then toast the couscous grain in this until the butter is all absorbed and the hot grain is browning. I remove it from the heat, add boiling hot water, and cover. Easy! To assemble, put the couscous in the bottom of a bowl, pour some sauce over it, put some chicken on top, and splash with just a bit of the sauce.

Dinner was great, and I broke my calorie count for the day with a second bowl. So good.

The rest of the day was less memorable as it was about work and not getting let go. My boss held a 4PM BYOB Zoom meeting to hang out and share for a bit. There is no formal information, and we speculated that tomorrow, they may move on to our level or not. The process seems to be top-down.

I started at 7 and did the usual meetings, read designs, and approved fixes for production. I followed along all day, waiting for the shoe to drop, but nothing. Just fixes and designs. I did read some code and made a few suggestions for more documentation in the code.

So, I think I will stop there and see what Thursday brings. I am also tired tonight.

Susie’s daffodil is open! I planted one for her to see every spring.

Thanks for reading!