Tuesday Games and Chicken

It is always, now that I have been retired, a surprise to be woken by an alarm. But it is a gaming day, and today I need to be at Richard’s house in Portland at 9:30 to play the cooperative board game and role-playing style SciFi game. I like games where you play a crew, like the board game Raiders of Scythia, instead of the four pages (or much more) of specifications you often get in Dungeons & Dragons. It is fun to do a crew. ISS Vanguard splits the difference and has you play one or two characters. And, like the Pandemic-like cooperative games, there is an event deck to drive the loss of resources and affect the player characters. Go fast and work together to succeed.

I start on the blog and talk to Deborah for part of the morning. It is always good to chat, as we miss each other, and it has been a long break since Utah. It is eighteen days until I head to California and twenty until I see Deborah. Jeanne LaFountain is joining us for the first week. After checking the transit times, I am quite happy to be driving the EV, picking up passengers, and serving as a taxi driver for the trip. The Uber fees would be large! More than the daily parking charges.

I dress, shave (having forgotten the day before), and forget to use the various creams (and later forgot to get my new prescriptions), but the one application has been more successful than I hoped. Less flakes and itching. I do not rush and find myself running behind, board Air VW the Gray a few minutes later, and this trip takes 45 minutes; I am five minutes late, but before James (headed from Washington State).

We are playing the other half of the demo and training story. We had a few minor errors, and we corrected them by getting more crew. We start mid-way, which is confusing, but I remembered much of the past play, and soon we are running through the process. I find these cooperative games rule-heavy and can see why DMs exist in earlier games. But with new gaming systems and apps, it is possible now to create a great experience.

Without spoilers, I play two characters this time, and it takes me a while to remember the rules and to play them both well. I did enjoy playing them and began to get them to work well together. We learned that you must finish all the objectives to be successful (something not stated in the rules), and we did (including an optional one). We get promotions and more dice for our play. Yay! I cannot say I enjoyed the gaming (it was not immersive), but it was fun to learn a new game (and all these systems). It was mostly rules and procedures this time, but I can see it may become immersive and interesting. We play again next week, and I think that will be more immersive.

James did have pre-painted minis this time (he found them in his ISS Vanguard various game add-ons he purchased on Kickstarter; he did everything). There are add-ons, we looked at one, and more adventures. I suspect we will be playing this for a while.

James is interested in the Gettysburg board games I have acquired, and we may meet to play a 2-person battle. I have two versions, both highly rated and newer designs. The two versions represent two design thoughts: play a simulation of the battle with hard constraints that fits the game into the model of history (Gettysburg: July 1-3, 1863), and another that lets you face all the challenges and figure it out (The Guns of Gettysburg, 2013). Both are valid, but are radically different takes on combat, movement, and maps. More to come.

We also talked about possibly Burning Banners as a break from ISS Vanguard. This is a fantasy wargame with armies of orcs, vampires, elves, and so on. Magic spells are also available. It reminds me of a modern update to Divine Right, which I also have a copy of. We will see.

With the save process done and the game ready to play again next week, I headed to the Broadway Grill and had a meatball and veggie calzone. I also finished the blog and chatted with Deborah. I enjoyed Mr. Toad’s Wild Red beer and then purchased our VIP tickets for Universal in California. I decided that with us getting older and various possible health issues, it is best to invest in the VIP. This also gets us valet parking, a tour, and dinner. I suspect all separate that this would total close to the number anyway.

I looked at Warner Brothers; there is a VIP tour there too, not cheap, but six hours seemed a long day, and I wanted to combine this with a visit to Hollywood and a diner somewhere in the area. I will chat with Deborah and Jeanne about this. That will be Wednesday. Thursday I think will be a beach. I enjoyed Huntington last time, but there’s also Long Beach near our hotel. We also have to see the Queen Mary again and do the night show.

With some tickets arranged and lunch done, I headed home. The day was already vanishing, and I had a 6:30 church council meeting. Corwin called and then came by at 6ish and relaxed with his dog Hank while I did the church Zoom meeting.

The meeting, which took an hour and was mostly an alignment discussion, I drove off to Popeye’s and quickly returned with a remarkably expensive ($57) supply of chicken and associated items (making up for the cheap Costco chicken of last week). This was dinner for Corwin and me, and Hank got a treat of some cheese. I split the leftover chicken with Corwin (it seemed rather precious to me), and he headed home with Hank.

I read more about lightning detectors, Pope Leo, and the SSPX, and watched a long video that offered an insider’s view of the election of the Pope. The story is that the cardinals, most appointed by Francis, turned away more conservative clergy and a rollback of the changes Francis made, and instead elected someone who would retain the changes and possibly press forward with more. This has ignited the SSPX and other anti-reform (in this case, Vatican II) groups within the Catholic Church to criticize and even claim the illegitimacy of Rome. The pattern is familiar to me, as the Methodist split over some of the same issues, and many of the same illegitimacy issues were used.

With Catholic Church words spiraling in my head, I picked up the American Civil War (ACW) and read the account of the Union army’s escape from Hood as it rushes to Nashville. And while there are claims that this was a missed opportunity to crush the Union forces and gain that important Southern victory, they needed to reset the war in their favor. What I glean is a Confederate Army dragging itself to another battle, short on supplies, using old-style guns, and the story is told with less legend. Hood had repeatedly crashed his Confederate troops into reinforced Union positions at great loss and had to withdraw. The Union mounted dropps have six-shooter rifles, healthy horses, and are well fed. They dismount, build a position, and let the Confederates come. The cost is terrible, and if the Union troops withdraw, the gray troops cannot catch them, except for a few stragglers. At night, the Union move is detected, but attacking at night into what may be reinforced positions is something the Confederate Generals or their troops want to avoid. Thus, I do not see this as a missed opportunity to capture a mismanaged and misdirected Union Army, but as a sign of an undersized army not taking excessive risks.

But that is my opinion, and I have the advantage of being an armchair general hundreds of years ago. With the battle avoided, I closed the book and will read the shock and awe of the results on Wednesday.

I soon slept, and I suspect I slipped by the Confederate positions in my dream world as I woke a bit tired on Thursday morning at sunrise.

Thanks for reading!