Christmas games!

I didn't get a lot for Christmas, and I'm glad a lot of it was useful stuff. However, my kids got a few board games I'm really excited about. Particularly we've been enjoying "Settlers of Catan"! I've been enjoying it with my 4 year old and 5 year old. They seem to get the grasp of it fairly well, though higher level strategy is still beyond them at this point.

Still playing DDO with friends and climbing the Starcraft 2 league rankings. Starcraft 2 is getting tougher as it seems the more casual players are quitting or getting better. So come on newbs, join in and let us win some!

My Sinuses have been flocked

I've spent the last week sick and feeling a bit like the recent CAD comic like about making terrain:

Finally, J-I-T (Just in Time)

So, this morning I was having another horrible, awful day that is typical of my days at work now. Called into my Boss' office so he could yell at me, someone had called him and yelled at him accusing me of something and he wasn't interested in hearing anything about it from me. I don't want to go into details of all the petty politicing, rumormongering, lies, and backstabbing which go on at this place. It has the worst office politics by far of all the places I've worked at.

I was fed up and hit the "I don't give a care anymore" breaking point because I knew my superiors didn't care about my performance so much as just trying to forge paperwork to pass an audit next week... which they're almost certain to fail... again.

Well to make this quick after all this and being in a foul mood all through the afternoon I called home this evening. A recruiter had contacted me in my email and was trying to reach me to make me a job offer at a place I'd really like to work at. So this hell job is over and my whole family can go back to living a less stressful and more normal life.

I've been smiling all evening ^_^

Do you read CAD?

Ctrl-Alt-Del, I love it

Playing a little

So what I've been up to... not much in the ways of miniatures games lately unfortunately unless you count a couple games of Descent. I've taken up playing 'Vanilla' Descent with my daughters who love the game. Donations to the VOR kickstarter is one of the top two items on my Christmas wishlist this year (the other not being gaming related).

Got in another game of Arkham Horror with a new board game group. Might get some more games worth writing about in the next month, but we'll see. If I succeed in replacing the lame job I have now, then I should be able to play board games a lot more.

I've been playing a little bit of the free-to-play DDO and LOTRO with friends and family. I love that these games are free now and they've certainly breathed new life into them.

But mostly what I've been playing when I have the chance is Starcraft 2. The number of cheaters in the game is annoying (like people who are obviously working together in a FFA). It is still a lot of fun however and it reminds me a ton of my old college days playing original Starcraft and Brood War when they came out. Ah, for the misspent days of my college youth!

But the sad thing is, there is nothing coming out this christmas season that I look forward to. Is there anything that you are looking forward to?

VOR Kickstarter???

From Mike Nielsen


VOR 2.0 Kickstarter project

Say What??? EA's empty bluster

If you're a MMO fan and enjoy closely following the industry like I do, then you had to get a laugh out of this one:

"Speaking at London Games Conference earlier in the week Cousins (EA-Easy executive) said that the company's rivals are "resting on their laurels" when it comes to investing in the future of video games."

Really? Other companies are resting on their laurels compared to EA? Because as what I see whenever I go to a store selling PC games is that most of the market is MMOs, and pretty much none of that thriving market is EA. If by "resting on their laurels" he means not buying up successful and productive software shops to turn them into unproductive rubbish bins I'd have to agree. But with what EA has done to the Sims Online, Origins Studios, Earth & Beyond, and most recently the disaster which is Mythic Entertainment....

EA is talking a hilarious amount of smack. It is like the nerdy preppy kid in college telling the all-star athletes that he is going to single-handedly kick all their butts at basketball.

I mean sure, maybe Bioware I can understand because they have a good track record. But when you tell me EA is making a Star Wars MMO I expect it to turn out like this:

Because if any game company knows how to rest on its imperial laurels while its little game studios struggle and die, it has to be EA (Sorry to Mythic Entertainment)

Starcraft 2 finally

So a quick note on my earlier blog about Starcraft 2. I finally broke down and got it, and I'm very glad that I did. First and foremost because it finally has a good ending to the story from Starcraft: Brood War which just wasn't quite the story ender I wanted. Now I'm sure the next expansion will be something of a cliff-hanger, but the ending point for the campaign in Starcraft 2 was very satisfactory.

If you're an old Starcraft fan you should get it for no other reason than that. The gameplay feels like old fashioned Starcraft with some new gimmicks. Not a lot to say there, but it is still worthwhile.

Home from a long day of work

and look what I got in the mail!

Your daily dose of Drama

Need to read some really dramatic flare ups about EA, Mythic, WAR, or simply just want to see verbal sparks fly and flames erupt? Here you go, go read "EALouse"!

The Replacement... Stuff

It is frustrating being a poor Gamer Dad in a bad recession. My 1 and a half year old son has recently wrecked two dining chairs and my gaming mouse. In addition I've had to put all my painting supplies and models up high as well as my Wii gear. I've had my car throw a bolt and a light socket burnt out at our house. This is just in the last week too so it seems like a lot of stuff is getting wrecked and I don't have much funds for replacing it. My gaming mouse got slightly downgraded with a replacement. Still haven't found dining chairs cheap enough to replace the ones we lost.

Plus with all that I still can't get out of my mind all the Geek Chic furniture at PAX... a Gamers' dream house is made of it!



I sincerely hope by the time my kids are teenagers the job situation has improved and they've stopped wrecking enough stuff that I can just afford these things as upgrades. Or at least have the funds stashed away that when they do wreck stuff I can replace it with something better than what I had!

Samael Tactics evolved

I thought I would update my earlier writing on My Samael Tactics, since they have adapated and evolved since then. Most Samael teams need Janiel to handle stealthed units and so they never get to take Aoi who is one of the best supporting characters in the game because it leaves them open to ambushes from Stealthed prowlers. I've not played it against a full Azur prowler team, but they're very rare and I've found Momiji alone is enough of a prowler assassin to force other prowlers to be on the defensive or be exposed.

Acquisitions, Inc. at PAX Prime 2010

The single best event I attended at PAX was easily the Acquisitions Inc, Live event. This was a live D&D event with the guys of Penny Arcade, Scott Kurtz of PvP, and Wil Wheaton of, well... all his writing and acting credits.

This was the equivalent of the super bowl for D&D geeks.


Other great events were the Geek 2.0 panel on Saturday, the Geek Chic booth, Nvidia and Alienware's many booths. Famous people highlights were meeting and talking to Scott Kurtz of PvP Online and one of my favorite webcomic artists Aline Pete of Weregeek. If you haven't started reading Weregeek then you should, it is one of my top three favorites along with CAD and Penny Arcade.

PAX has begun

PAX has begun! This year's PAX is a blast and I think that soon 3 days isn't going to be enough for it. There is so much to do there and more than I will have time for. Yesterday, Friday was pretty much just a reconnaissance and preview day with so much stuff to do. So much new stuff like "Super Dungeon Explore" from Sodapop miniatures (pictured to the right), the new Tron game, new Fallout game. Plus lots of prizes and goodies to win from old well known companies like NVIDIA, Intel, Warner Brothers, etc. Today I've got 3 or 4 panels to attend as well plus a PAX tournament game of Anima Tactics!



It might take me a long while to blog and catch up with all the stuff I've seen and done!

Listening to beta testers is .... "Elemental"

Stardock did a wonderful job with Galactic Civilizations, and those of you who follow my blog know that I've been very eager for their new game "Elemental: War of Magic" for a long time. That is until it showed during beta that their egos were getting in the way of listening to customers and beta testers. I won't rehash the old parts, but the behavior continued and despite people like me posting game crashing bugs... the game went gold before it should have and the game you buy in the box is completely unstable. Tonight as I write this I think I'm downloading the 6th post-release patch already adding stabilization and making other basic mechanics work.

So if you're not buying a game and expecting to connect to the internet and patch it right off... don't buy this game. In fact, sadly as someone who already sunk their money into it you are probably better off waiting several months before the game is to the state where it should have been at release. Luckily, with Stardock one can still trust that they will do that and not just drop the title so I do feel that Elemental will eventually be a market ready game.