The Tao of Gaming

And now I'm caught up! Reviews:

• Mr Jack (initial thoughts)
• Jericho
• Masquerade Initial Thoughts & Follow up
• Warriors of God (& the Sorites paradox)
• Small World
• Are you the traitor?

Articles of Note:

• More thoughts on Semi-cooperative games
• The One True Way
• Le Havre Strategy
• Random thoughts about Disneyworld
• The Epic "Every Hand in an amazing bridge session" thread.
• Le Havre variants (and other thoughts)

Dear The Mob,

I know times are tough all around, so I'm offering you a business suggestion. I suggest you offer computer protection. Affordably priced, say $100 a year. But, you protest, "I am just a humble businessman, and am befuddled by computers, as much as the next honest entrepreneur."

I know. I know.

What would I expect for $100? Sympathy. I'd call you up, and say "Mr. Honest Businessman, some bastard of a hacker snuck a virus onto my system, and now I'm getting pop-up ads offering to help me work at home earning a degree in computer art to design advertisements that offer to Make. Her. Ecstatic."

You would reply "That sounds terrible," and listen while I bitch about the 10 hours lost cleaning up my system. Believe me, a sympathetic listener is worth the money.

We will both be shocked and saddened to hear about that young hacker's suicide, via a silenced pistol to his temple. Such a tragedy. No doubt we will commiserate about the troubled state of modern society, leading a troubled young person towards a life of idle crime and destruction, which spiraled inevitably to self-destruction.

Signed, One of many

P.S. For now, I will get my sympathy via Malware-bytes, which will be getting some of my money, assuming that my computer is still working in a month. Technically quite proficient, but not nearly as sociable.

While I was at the Swiss Teams event yesterday, I discovered that local expert (and my sometimes bridge partner) Darlene Riely died of a respiratory infection a little over a month ago.

I've known Darlene for 20 years, and she was hilarious and vivacious, as well as a hell of a player. Bridge is now mainly played by retirees and elderly ... but Darlene was only 67. It's amazing that we live in a world where dying at 67 seems tragic; but we do, and it is.

Got to try this last night.

Short, ameritrashy, chaotic. Compelling? I'm not sure. I'd play it again though.

The best thing to be said about CitOW? It respects innovation, without slavishly following it. Chaos knows that the days when we'd set up an N-hour slugathon are gone (at least for us middle-aged folk), so it clocks in at two hours. They could be slightly brisker, but two hours works better than "Two, maybe six."

There are multiple ways to win and including an "Everyone losses" rule means that kingmaking situations can be avoided (... and yes, I shifted to "Everyone must lose" with 20 minutes to go).

Lots of decks of cards? Check.

Theme? Check check. Khorne (the blood god) slaughters, Nurgle (pestilence) destroys large crowds, Tzeentch (change/chaos) can rearrange the board, Slaneesh (hedonism) is a bit of an odd duck, actually. But enough theme to keep me happy.

Multiple ways to win? Check and mate. Of all the games that I'm reminded of, Liberte keeps coming back. You can win by VP, but you can forgo victory points and win by "dial advancement" and each god advances via a different mechanism. Two completely different ways to win, that intersect in odd ways.

Given four unique player positions, multiple victory conditions, an agricola style event deck that only sees 7 cards out of fifty or so each game, even if Chaos turns out to be mediocre, I'd easily get five plays out of it. And while I'm not sure I'd call it great, "Perfectly acceptable" seems fine.