Well holy crap I have 1000 posts on this blog. It’s over 10 years old now. I think I have three regular readers!
Here’s a bunch of posts that I found interesting or silly enough to relink here. There’s been so many updates to WordPress that many of these I can’t even edit properly anymore!
RPG Gaming
2009 – the year of ultra-complex RPG’s – This (and what came before) created the need for the OSR and, by extension, simplified story games. You could almost call this the Pathfinder/Exalted diaspora.
Seeing pictures of people out for ice cream in Sweden the same day there are protests with confederate flags and shit here– I’m having trouble reconciling those two images.
We had our lockdown extended while at the same time the number of cases is not going radically up (about 150 a day for weeks now, way, way lower than projected, I mean WAY lower). The department of health here indicated 1500 deaths by April 8th WITH the lockdown. It’s now 4/28 and we may top 600 by mid-May. Everything predicted looks very wrong. Below is another interview from Knut Wittkowski who has taken it on the chin from all over on account of his original interviews. Who was right?
Stuff we know:
Data is bad, popular models, (especially in the media who always publish the HIGHEST number in the presented models) for what will happen are terrible and have led to mass hysteria or total denial. Models that a month ago showed a much lower result were shouted down or ignored. Wisconsin’s model WITH lockdown in place was an order of magnitude off, just like the UK model originally was (500k, then down to 20, with 2 million in the USA: that’s right, 2 MILLION). This has lead to hasty decisions that are very drastic which completely makes sense when bad data makes bad models, not any more.
NYC is terrible but had no lockdown at all until after everyone was infected (March 18th lockdown, March 17th started the drop in the curve of people going to the hospital), and it has an unbelievable population density compared to everywhere else in the USA. However, non dense places in Italy and Spain were hammered as well for reasons not totally understood yet (one city gets hammered, another city down the road does not). There’s a three day difference in NYC and California’s lock down and VAST difference in outcomes so far. Other area’s outcomes and risks are going to be very different from NYC, especially sitting out in say Schiocton or Cuba City. It could be as simple as co-habitation, poverty, access to health care and viral load.
As for contrarians to these contrarians, the panic nightmare is hard to uphold at this point, but I’m seeing a LOT of attacks on people that suggest that this is not even close to as bad as we have been told. Data is coming in.
“It’s more virtue signaling “science”. Start with the conclusion, in this case “we need to lock down” and then work backwards to get that result ignoring all evidence to the contrary. “
I pulled out a win in the finals of our 8 deck tournament in a very tight game vs my kid, age 9, after a brutal game vs his sister in the round before. While he was not happy, he steamrolled into the finals with his deck and nearly won anyway.
The deck I won with I’ve always felt was a bit shite, but it was able to pull through in two tight games. First, it has SHADOW with the ever dangerous theft of ember and equalizing card in a pinch. Most of the rest of the Shadow stuff in the deck is useless crap though. Logos is the other faction that has some great cards, but while I was able to forge a key off my Logos artifact combo (the guys that give you ember for using artifacts and a bunch of artifacts on the table of the same faction) that only happened once as my opponent destroyed all my Logos creatures the turn after they hit the table.
What pulled it off for me was a huge Untamed turn where I was able to take out his creatures that increased my key cost and gain a mess of ember for the win. During his last turn, he could increase my key cost by one, but it wasn’t enough because I had seven. Great game.
So we will probably play casual for a week or so here and then have another tournament with some of the unplayed or crappier decks. I must say the NAME of the deck may be the most important initial thing.
I think I like Logos the best, maybe because my initial decks did not have them so I had to go farm for a couple that did, but also they just have some crazy cards. Dis is also awesome. Shadows are the guys everyone hates but wishes they had in their decks!
If you are looking to get into Keyforge, the new expansion is out this summer. I figure you need about 3 decks for each player overall– just so you don’t get into a rut going one deck vs one other due to the possibility of power disparity.
We got a Keyforge tournament up in here and we are down to the final four.
The first few games were pretty chaotic as players wrestled with new decks or ones they hadn’t played for months, as well has not having played for awhile and being rusty on the rules. We got the hang of it quick and I think the best decks/players got into the final four.
Looking at the spread of factions, there are three decks with Shadows, which one of my kids favors for the stealing of amber and equalization cards. Logos is a very tricky and odd faction, and I was surprised it was in any of the winning decks, but there it is. In addition to Shadows, there is a clear favorite with Untamed as there’s a lot of both creatures and damage potential vs enemy creatures.
Both of the Dis decks use the Dominator Bauble with one deck having THREE of them. One of the Dis decks uses the Logos ‘draw a card for each card played’ along with Dis Library cards that allow archiving to create the potential for massive card plays during a turn.
The last deck of the four is the only one that made it in from the new set, and it is crazy good. Star Alliance coupled with tons of Brobnar and Untamed creatures makes for a real heavy hitter. When you are reaping to check a couple turns in a game, that’s nuts.
Next up is the Broken Locksmith vs S. Donohue Aeronaut of the Hyper Retreat and Betar Spawn of Saviborn vs Laney, Brilliant Tunnel Weirdo.
Remnants of the Precursors is described as ” intended as a strict feature clone of the original Master of Orion game from 1993. “
Yessssss.
I’ve played earlier versions and they were good. I’m PUMPED to get rolling on this update, despite my current Stellaris addiction which could very quickly fall into a Crusader Kings addictions.
Juan Gimenez passed away last week. He was the illustrator on Jodorowsky’s METABARONS among many other comics. For me he represents the style of marvel’s EPIC magazine and Heavy Metal from the 80’s in it’s best form.
METABARONS is totally insane sci fi. Reminiscent of DUNE in it’s parts, but taken to a totally new level of extremes. Like most of Jodorowsky’s comics, it gets a bit TOO straight to the point without much in the way of sub-plots or supporting characters (similar to Royal Blood). However, it’s highly recommended and pretty cheap to pick up. The art is, of course, over the top awesome.
Have to make up your own mind about this stuff but when I see data starting to look better before it’s even possible that social distancing has had an effect-– I get real fucking confused.
Aphex Twin has been posting stuff to soundcloud and in it was this link. And while that site certainly has it’s focus and bias, when you start to look at ALL the links and sources and videos referenced in addition to the Stanford Group (Michael Levitt, et al) info, it paints a different picture than the one you would find on Facebook. And this:
While could end up being 2-4 times worse than the flu, it’s possible that all this insanity is due entirely to the internet.
