Blog Time.

I didn’t think I was going to be able to keep up my pace of two flashbacks in a weekend for the third time in a row. I had plans for Saturday and there was a LOT of wrestling to watch over the weekend. Somehow in the middle of it all, I got the work done. It helps that I’m really enjoying drawing these Masters of the Universe flashbacks. They’ll start going up next week.

One of the conversations I got into when I was out on Saturday was about passion vs. talent and whether one should give up on something when it’s obvious they’re no good at it and aren’t really getting any better. My opinion is that one should never have to give up on something they’re passionate or that brings them joy, but one still needs to be realistic. I don’t think it’s healthy to cling to the hope that you can make a living at something that you’re not very good at, no matter how much you love doing it. Of course, how good you are at something artistic can be pretty subjective, and it’s possible to hit a niche audience with work that the general public would consider subpar. Still, it can be tough to make a living as a musician or an artist. That’s why I’ve always kept what I’m doing on this site as a hobby and not pushed to pursue it as a career. I continue to see improvement and I’m still enjoying the process so that’s enough to keep on keeping on. If someday I can connect in some small positive way with an audience, small or otherwise, outside my immediate sphere of acquaintances, that’ll just make it all that much better.

I finally got to try Machi Koro on game night last week. The long and short of it is I liked it. The goal of the game is to be the first to build the six landmarks in your city. Each turn you roll one or two dice which will determine which buildings generate income during your turn. You can then either expand your city with a building or landmark with the income you’ve generated or save up to build something bigger on a future turn. The buildings come in four flavours. Blue buildings will generate money for you when their number is rolled, regardless of whose turn it is. Green buildings will generate money for you when you roll their number on your turn only. Red buildings will cause other players to pay you money if they roll the red building’s number on their turn. Finally, purple buildings will cause other players to pay you money if you roll the purple building’s number on your turn. The landmarks are designed to offset some of the luck involved in rolling the dice. Overall it’s a nice, light design and I very much enjoyed the game, even though I lost all three times we played. But if you don’t like games with a high luck factor, I’d say avoid this one. You can help yourself by diversifying your buildings so that you’ll make money on any die roll, but it’ll happen that your maximum payouts will be on a number that you just never seem to roll and inevitably you’ll keep rolling that number that matches another player’s red building and keep having to pay them money. It can be frustrating but funny at the same time. Of note, I bought the “Deluxe” Edition that came with the first two expansions. If playing with just the base game, I would still recommend using the setup from the expansions which will make things less predictable. I think it’d also help to offset the problem that the base game’s setup favors keeping to a one-die strategy which makes some buildings kind of useless.

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

Hello and welcome to this, my 250th blog post (if I’ve labeled them all correctly and WordPress is accurate). That’s a lot of rambling. Here’s to a little more today.

This was my first Monday working since the end of June. It was rough going this morning. I got a lot of “What are you doing here today?” from my co-workers. Ironically, having to explain to everybody why I was there on a Monday did not make it any easier. But it’s out of the way now so hopefully I won’t have the same question come at me again next week.

I did something this weekend that I hadn’t done in a long time. I drew more than my usual three pieces a week. Critical Role was on Saturday as they were live from Gen Con so that meant sitting in front of my computer for an extended amount of time. Extended periods of time in front of the computer with something to listen to is perfect for drawing (really not so for writing). I *SHOULD* have used that time to finally draw the continuation of Bandit Baby, but I just wasn’t feeling it. I wanted to draw a second mash-up, so that’s what I did. I’ve officially committed to doing some new flashbacks. The first will appear after the Return of the Jedi mash-ups that begin this week. Technically, I’m now ahead on mash-ups, so that means next weekend I could skip drawing a mash-up and draw a Bandit Baby strip. We’ll see how that goes when I get there.

My mom’s back from Nova Scotia and that meant some Thursday night gaming. It’d been a while. Kayla joined us after our game of Lords of Waterdeep and we gave Batman Love Letter a try. I like it. It’s a micro game with only fifteen cards. The goal is either to eliminate the other players or to have the highest value card in your hand when the deck runs out. Simple but fun. Kayla really enjoys Clue so we played two rounds of that and finished with a game of Dice Town. All in all, a good evening of gaming.

Yesterday I went out hunting for Pokemon down by the river. That brought me out in front of Fab’s house. He, Lyne and Owen were just finishing up supper and called me over so I spent an hour or so gabbing it up. Owen is getting more comfortable around me. We had some good laughs together.

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

Greetings and salutations blog readers. It’s that time again. Let’s do it.

I forgot to check if this is my last free Monday. I think it is. I slept in today (like really slept in) which was nice. It’s a nice rainy day. I suppose I’m a little weird in that I LIKE when it rains on my days off. I wouldn’t have been able to bike to work so I’d have been stuck taking the bus. I might still need to do that tomorrow, but this saves a day of bus travel. The rain also cuts down on sticky conditions which I’m all for. I’m not especially enamored with outdoor leisure activities so it doesn’t hurt me any either. It’s all good!

I did a lot less reading than I expected over the weekend. I only got a couple of chapters into Aftermath. It’s a little thing, but I don’t like that it’s mostly written in the simple present tense and that’s enough to take away from my enjoyment. Wedge is one of the main characters so I will definitely finish it, but it’s tempered my enthusiasm for the rest of the series. Weird huh?

If all goes as planned, I’ll be getting some gaming in on Friday which will be great after two weeks of going without. Fab suggested it, so I’m figuring it’ll be me, him and Lyne. But who knows what wacky surprises life will hold for us between now and then?

I’m strongly considering going back for another round of flashback mash-ups. I’ve been having trouble coming up with a new theme that I want to tackle and looking back some of those middle series I did are looking pretty bad to me now. They could definitely use an update. I’ll finish up my small run of Return of the Jedi mash-ups and probably revisit an older theme after that unless I come up with a killer idea before then. Any suggestions?

I picked up Dungeons & Dragons Dice Masters last week. Board Game Bliss was having a sale so I indulged. For those not familiar with Dice Masters, it’s a refining of Quarriors, which itself was a riff off of deck-building games only with dice. Dice Masters is a duel game, which is the second biggest knock *I* have against it, since I liked the multi-player nature of Quarriors. They started with a Marvel comics line, then added DC comics which made sense. Then they took a sharp turn and added Yu-Gi-Oh and D&D. I’ve get to give it a try, but I’m all set for when I do. The biggest knock against the game by the way? It’s a collectible game, meaning it’s typically a lot more expensive than it needs to be for what it is. Specials like the one found on Board Game Bliss will help that of course.

So that’s all the blog that’s worth blogging this week. Have a good seven and we’ll do this all again next Monday. Carja V.