The Kind Mixed With the Wicked, the Will to Fight Until the End

 Carja's Corner  No Responses »
Dec 052016
 

Welcome back top men and women. Time for some more words. Let us see what they say.

After weeks of tossing and turning my way through the night, I was finally able to get a solid night’s rest over the weekend. Maybe it was the tryptophan from the turkey I had at the dinner party out at the lake (how much tryptophan in a single little slice?) but by 9pm I was too tired to even watch television so I just turned in and apart from a trip to the bathroom at about 4am, I was able to sleep all the way through to almost 9am. It felt GOOD.

I completed the set of banners for the sight. I decided on a much cleaner look than the original Barnaby banner that some of you may have seen last week. I haven’t found how to make transparencies in GIMP so I decided simple was better. I’m not fully satisfied with them, but they’ll suffice until I figure out how to make something better. My favorite is Skitter. He turned out pretty darn cute.

I still have two months’ worth of Masters of the Universe flashbacks to go but I started a sketch for the first of the Firefly set that will follow. It seems a little early for that though, but I don’t want to fall out of the rhythm. Maybe I can find the mojo to work on another project in the meantime.

I’ve been watching a LOT of Barney Miller reruns on YouTube over the last week. The mood struck me after reading about Ron Glass’s passing. The show has aged surprisingly well. It’s most certainly a product of its time but there was some good writing that remains timeless. Even though I’ve already watched at least half of the episodes so far, I’m tempted to add the complete box set to my collection.

I don’t order as much from Amazon as I used to since my entertainment dollars are mostly going to board games these days and sadly that’s one area where they’re simply not as competitive as other online stores. However, I did order some things for Christmas gifts over the weekend. Imagine my surprise to see a package waiting for me when I got home. Obviously Canada Post works weekends.

That’s all for this week. Have a good seven and we’ll do this all again next Monday. Carja V.

Losing Sure Is Easy So I Am No More

 Carja's Corner  No Responses »
Nov 282016
 

Welcome back to the blog that’s read by top men. TOP. Men.

November is almost over and with it goes my bike-riding season. Two days left until the December bus pass kicks in. Looks like I’ll make my goal again this year of biking through to December. That’s two years in a row!

Kayla joined us for board game night last Friday. We played Watchmen of Destiny, World’s Fair 1893 and Speedy Words. It was quite the time. It’d been a while since I’d laughed that hard.

I followed that up with some more gaming with Frank and Melanie on Saturday where I got to try the new expansion for Pandemic: The Cure. I added in the fifth disease module and at first everything went along swimmingly. Then I said, “Wow! We’re really doing well!” and that’s when things started to go sideways. We stalled out for four turns trying to cure the same disease, always missing by one. Because of that we weren’t able to do as many actions as we normally could so we started falling behind until we lost on outbreaks. I was looking for the expansion to add some challenge to the game and it delivered!

I can’t think of anything else to write about this week so I’ll call it a blog for this week. Have a good seven and we’ll do this all again next Monday. Carja V.

I’m Crawling With…Microscopic Bacteria

 Carja's Corner  No Responses »
Nov 212016
 

Hi there! As promised, I’m back to talk about things. THINGS!

First off, I’m not sick. This week’s lyrics refer to one of this week’s topics. But I’m going to bury the lead and talk about something else first.

I finished the new background for the site last week and I’m really happy with how it turned out. I had to expand to a 3X4 grid to add Skitter and Chae and Popkin got to round out things out. If you look up, you’ll see a new Barnaby banner. I’m not really happy with it, but I wanted to get something new up to go with the new comment avatars and background. I’ll have to keep experimenting to find something really spiffy.

I went to Quebec City yesterday to attend Le Salon du Jeu et du Jouet, a game and toy show. It was my first time attending such an event and I enjoyed myself. It was a welcome change of pace after a tumultuous end of week. I got to see all kinds of games, console, computer and board being played and got to participate in a couple myself. La Revanche was there with a library of games to try including giant editions of games like Takenoko, Jenga and Pandemic. I brought a couple of games back with me (shocker I know) including one from a small publisher from Montreal. You could think that the latter is the inspiration for this week’s song lyric title, but you’d be wrong.

The person I attended the event with was a volunteer for La Revanche booth and after the event ended, I helped her and the other volunteers and employees pack up their booth. Afterwards we went to La Revanche proper. For those wondering just what La Revanche is, it’s a gaming cafe in Quebec City. They’re our gaming club’s sponsor. It was my first opportunity to see their cafe in person and it’s really nice. They have a huge library of games to play and helpers to suggest games and explain rules to customers. We ate a nice little supper (I had some really good mac and cheese) while trying out some dice games with the goal of finding a good fit for the club. I got back home just in time to see the last half hour of the Survivor Series. Considering that I’d been up since twenty to six, it was quite the day which made getting through today a little more challenging than it should have been.

I got a couple of the games I helped kickstart last week. Watchmen of Destiny is a nice little card game with a cute theme of anthropomorphic animal heroes (sounds familiar somehow). Each player tries to recruit the best group of watchmen. There are six different species and five different classes. For bonus points a player will want to have the majority in a species but will get a penalty if they hire two watchmen with the same species and class (example, you wouldn’t want two Cat Rangers, but a Cat Ranger and a Cat Assassin or a Cat Ranger and a Dog Ranger would both be fine).

The other new Kickstarter game was Hero Realms which is a fantasy reimplementation of Star Realms, which I’ve talked about previously. I haven’t gotten it to the table yet, but I look forward to doing so.

Okay, so now for the explanation to this week’s lyric title. For the third year in a row, I decided to participate in the BoardGameGeek Secret Santa gift exchange. We got our targets assigned just last Monday and by Thursday I had a mail tag telling me that a package was waiting for me at the post office. I figured it was one of the Christmas presents I ordered for a friend, but no, the package was from l’Imaginaire and I’d already received my order from them. What could it be? Then it occurred to me that my open message to Santa suggested that he or she might want to order from l’Imaginaire to save on shipping to Canada. Well, my Santa took me up on the suggestion and got me the Pandemic: The Cure expansion! Woo! And that’s the inspiration for this week’s lyric title.

The Secret Santa organizers permit participants to request a local target to keep shipping more manageable but really, with online shopping being what it is, it’s pretty easy to order from a store that’s close to whoever you’ve been assigned so so far I’ve opted to leave it open to anyone worldwide. Year one, my target was from Lithuania, last year’s target was from Belgium and this year’s was from Bosnia! It’s kinda cool to think that I’m bringing some Christmas cheer to folks so far away. In the kind of coincidences you can’t plan, the person who posted right before me on the Secret Santa thank you thread on the Geek? My target! It turns out he got his present today as well. Boardgameshop.eu did a great job getting my gift to my target and at a reasonable price considering he said in his open message to Santa that it would be next to impossible to get a gift to Bosnia without spending a fortune. Cool beans!

I think I’ll close on that positive note. Have a great seven folks and we’ll do this all again next Monday. Carja V!

Like Spotlights Beaming in the Black Sky We Can Lift the Darkness With Our Light

 Carja's Corner  No Responses »
Nov 142016
 

Hello and good Monday to you all who are reading this on a Monday. As a Monday Blog, that is the intended day for reading this. I certainly won’t judge you if you read this on a day other than Monday, but know that you are not following the natural order. If you’re okay with it, then really so am I.

Today’s title is courtesy of the Skylanders Academy theme song. I’ve watched half of the episodes now and I like it EXCEPT for some of the voice changes. I don’t know why they felt the need to change Hugo’s and Master Eon’s voices. Maybe the voice actors weren’t available for the series. At least they had Richard Horvitz reprise the role of Kaos. He’s just too good in that role. I’m also a little curious about the Skylanders they chose for the main cast. Spyro and Stealth Elf make sense but Eruptor, Pop Fizz and Jet-Vac? Are they really that popular in the game? It turns out that I really like Jet-Vac though so I’m not complaining.

I played World’s Fair 1893 over the weekend and I have to say, it was REALLY good. The game is very streamlined and easy to play once you get started. I lost all three games we played, but then that’s nothing new for a new game. I figure I should win one eventually. Each turn players will place supporters in one of five areas (Fine Arts, Transportation, Electricity, Manufacturing and Agriculture) . If they collected an influential figure card during the previous turn, they will get to add or move other supporters, then claim all the exhibit proposals and midway tickets in that area and then replenish the game board with three new cards starting in the area they played on and going clockwise. The midway tickets make the ferris wheel go around and when it gets back to its starting position the round ends and a scoring round begins. Players get points for the number of midway tickets they collected and for each area they had the majority of supporters in, they can approve a certain number of exhibit proposals. After three rounds, players count up their points from the midway tickets and approved exhibits. The player with the most points wins. The theme would not have attracted me to the game normally, but it’s really well incorporated. Each card has fun facts about the exhibits and influential figures for those so inclined to read them (I read a couple as we played).

I’m very sloooooowly updating the site. I’ve replaced a couple of the comment avatars and added Skitter and Chae to the mix. The other avatars should be added today. The next step is working on the background and finally the banners.

That’s all the things that are fit for blogging today. Next Monday other things will be blogged. Have a good seven and we’ll see which things will make the cut next Monday. Carja V.

 

Like a Heart Beat Drives a Man

 Carja's Corner  No Responses »
Nov 072016
 

It be bloggin’ time dontcha know! Let us bloggin’ den!

This past weekend was the Extra Life charity drive. Gamers around the world went on gaming marathons to raise funds for Extra Life, a charity to raise funds for the Children’s Hospital Network. A lot of these groups had live streams of their games on Twitch or other similar services. A lot of these were of video gamers playing various video games, but the Game Night gang from Boardgamegeek put on a 25 hour live stream of themselves playing board games. I watched a good deal of it (I dozed off at various points throughout the night) and had a good time doing so. I was SUPER tired on Sunday of course and a I’m still a little tired today but easily capable of functioning. Maybe someday I’ll try my own 24 hour gaming drive.

A few weeks ago I signed up for a 1 month subscription to Board Game Bento, which is a mailing service along the lines of Loot Crate, where folks sign up and get a themed box of goodies every month. Loot Crate offers a variety of memorabilia that will be of interest to pop culture fans. Board Game Bento, as you may have guessed offers a box of board games. It’s a little pricey for Canadians what with the exchange rate being what it is and the cost of shipping, but I wanted to see what they offer. I got my box on Friday and it contained three board games, two of which looked interesting from the get-go. The third I’m not sold on, but I still think I got good value for my money. They aren’t games I would have given a serious look at on a store shelf, but I think that’s part of the charm of the service. It widens the subscriber’s scope. For the record, the three games were The Manhattan Project: Chain Reaction, a streamlined card game version of the original board game, World’s Fair 1893 and High Noon Saloon.

I finished the new cast portraits over the weekend. Expect a visual update to the site over the next few weeks.

That’s about all for now. Have a good seven and we’ll do this all again next Monday. Carja V.

 Older Entries  Newer Entries