Shimabara Rebellion – The Christian Uprising that wasn’t One
Excellent essay on the Shimabara Rebellion– I became interested in this based on the painting by Takato Yamamoto, of which there is no complete online version to look at. Needless to say, the pieces that are out there are amazing. Where is this full art? Private collector?
There is a lot of good electronica out there, too much to consume really (and of course, a lot of crap). If you are looking for a good compilation, the AF030LP (great name hey?) from the Analogical Force label is excellent with a track from Wisp, and one from Venetian Snares. Both of those are great, but they are not even the best tracks on the record!
This is fan friggin’ tastic.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5 (the big one)
Here is the guy’s channel.
The Washington Warbonnets.
I don’t give a shit about football. I’d convert all the football stadiums into soccer ones or better yet, Australian Rules Football if I could. Football is boring, commercial driven and so very static (but has a good draft system, I’ll give it that).
However, in this era of let’s call it political overcorrectingness, people are offended by everything and the Washington Redskins fell to the offended mob recently. They are working on a new name. I get it, at first blush it certainly seems offensive– but then you see interviews with Indians that don’t mind the name at all and especially the logo and branding, which is frankly REALLY fucking cool. Indians interviewed like the representation of native Americans in professional sports. I think they should have it, just like the Celts, Vikings, Saxons, Trojans, Spartans, on and on.
So in coming up with the name, I thought at first it was imperative to follow what has worked in the past really well: pick a TRIBE name like the ‘Noles or Fighting Illini. We all know the Comanches, the Iroquois, the Apache and the Araucanian (look them up, geez), among many others, have become LEGENDARY in their ferocity as warrior cultures and would fit perfectly as team names. We yell GERONIMO! when jumping off stuff. This is homage to great warriors and a term of endearment and great respect. Every time a kid asks “why you yelling that” and you explain it to them, it retains in our cultural memory the history of these great and terrifying people and their story and struggles against the early forces of globalization.
But which tribe do you pick? The Blackfeet were involved in the original logos, but what about all the tribes in the DC area? The Pohantan empire was there when the first settlers arrived, there’s the Mohicans, Delaware, Sioux, Cree, on and on and on. I think for this team, it’s too tough to choose just one and we need a logo and name that is more general, but also isn’t perceived as racist in our current ULTRA sensitive climate.
And aside from all that, we want a cool name and a cool logo. I found it when driving up north last week. I saw a road called Warbonnet road and there it is, simple, effective, iconic.
WASHINGTON WARBONNETS.
Problem Solved.
I missed this back in April when it came out. Great inside look at what happened at Rackham and with the excellent AT-43 game. The basic engine became Bolt Action (well if AT-43 and Epic 40K humped and had a kid that is).
With the juxtaposition of the current frenzy of historical revisionism, iconoclasm, iconoclast trolling and let’s not forget base traitors who deface statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, along with July 4th, the date we chose to celebrate throwing off the yoke of Feudalism (the final signatures weren’t there until October though), I feel compelled to do a bit on a lesser known, but critical figure in American history: Casmir Pulaski.
Casmir Pulaski was a disposed, banished second-son Polish noble who joined the American Revolution and died via GRAPESHOT in the battle of Savannah. This alone would be enough to have statues and revere the guy, but this is overshadowed by some of the other things he accomplished.
First off, he joined anti-Russian confederation in Poland and actively campaigned, mostly defending fortresses and getting his ass kicked, getting captured, and almost court-martial-ed. It was said that the only thing he was interested in was fighting the Russians, and was wholly reckless and didn’t obey orders. Pulaski even went on to join the war with the Ottomans vs the Russians a few years later, which ended poorly for him and he ended up in France in debtor’s prison. He was found by Benjamin Franklin who recommended him to Washington as an asset to the Revolution. He started as a cavalry officer and then a General of the Continental army’s tiny and wholly shitty cavalry–which he attempted to bring up to Polish standards of training and discipline. He’s called the Father of American Cavalry and man, at that time, we needed one.
Under Washington, he performed a successful rearguard action that likely saved Washington and his army from capture and destruction, and possibly saved Washington’s life. Washington was an expert-retreater (hey, don’t knock it, it’s how Fabius defeated Hannibal after all) so this was a critical event.
Later in the war he was leading a cavalry charge that was beaten off, and he was hit by grapeshot, which, like slivers of the true cross, seems to be in quite a few different museums around the South!
Pulaski is one of only eight people who have been granted honorary citizenship. The Freemasons have claimed him and there seems no doubt, despite the lack of paperwork, that Pulaski was a Mason based on the fact that Franklin and Washington were, of course, Masons as well.
Lastly, and I am not sure about all this, is the conjecture that he was actually a woman based on a skeleton that was found that might be his. He didn’t drink and had no interest in women, which is likely explained by something much more common if you catch my drift, than a man pretending to a be a woman or having some odd chromosome condition.
While Pulaski died in Georgia, many statues of him are in the Midwest in Chicago, hopefully people actually look up who he was before tearing them down or realize that coming out of over a thousand years under the grip of iron fisted feudal lords, the framers of the Constitution and the people that fought to get us STARTED on our path to Liberty and Freedom are to be revered, and not held to the modern standards of ethics and conduct, modern ethics that their lives and dedication allowed to evolve. Of course, in DC, the people have already proven that they are fucking imbeciles.
Who’s a 40K fan? Putin is! While Americans are trying to nullify their national identity the Russians are doing the opposite. Note that Putin did not put statues or murals of himself, nor are there any of Stalin. Many of the soldiers who fought.
And we are on to season 2 DLC for Samurai Shodown. This is a NEW NEW character, not just one of the old ones coming back and it’s a bit odd. I’ve been happy with the choices so far, despite the last set of characters getting too into the waifu region, especially with Iroha.
So this guy is a knight. He unlocks tomorrow so I haven’t gotten a game with him yet, but will as soon as possible. Unlike samurai swords, the European longsword is much more of a club you can stab with. Extremely well made (never discount the Europeans for their steel forging– they were amazing) but not really for cutting bodies in any subtle way, Knights would brute their way in combat, using the pommel, punching and using the heavy sword as a club mostly vs other armored enemies. With that, I’m curious how this guy fights.
While I would like to see many of the old characters come back (Sieger, Gen-An, Caffeine Nicotine, etc.), Darli Dagger was brand new to the series and she has grown on me a ton– a big-hit female character in games is pretty rare!
The 90’s CCG splooge brought many terrible games trying to cash in on MTG’s success. Out of the cascade of dreck came a few good games– some of which are supported to this day. I think I did this a few years ago where I went through the status of some of my favorites. The genre of multiplayer CCG’s is long dead as evident by Fantasy Flight (FFG) making Legends of the Five Rings two player only… bah!
Let’s start with the bad news:
Shadowfist
Shadowfist’s new kickstarter was supposed to start in Spring 2020. We have four days left until Summer and based on shadowfist.com and the reddit group, there have been no updates at all since Fall of 2019. This one may stay dead, which is sad because as a multiplayer CCG, it is the absolute best, including the theme.
Blood Wars
This sucked 2 player, but was significantly better multiplayer. I just check from time to time if anyone is going to rehash it from the dead as the subject matter is pretty excellent. Nope, still dead. Don’t discount this one if you find it for cheap.
Good news…
Jyhad / Vampire the Eternal Struggle
Garfield’s multiplayer masterpiece is set for a reboot (again). It’s amazing how this thing keeps going as post-Jyhad it descended into a complete mess of a game with horrifying degeneracy. It is quite fun with the right group and they are keeping this one going!
On The Edge
This is one of the pre-cursors to Shadowfist and is notable as it’s likely the only William S. Burrough’s inspired card game (or board game for that matter). Perfectly encapsulates the conspiracy-fanatic 90’s to a T and with my favorite CCG card ever made, this game is only sort of dead. A guy from Wisconsin put out a custom set of cards with permission of the original designers– which is really cool.
Netrunner
This game died, came back in force, died again, sadly as FFG had a great model and great support. This is the only 2 player game on this list. It was fun, but for me it’s been eclipsed by Keyforge because I can reach into a box, pull out an unopened deck and be taken for a ride for 4-10 games with people that have done the same. That said, this game is being kept alive by it’s fans, which is really confusing as apparently the license was in dispute between FFG and WOTC. It’s called the NISEI project and will probably continue for awhile until the people that run it realize it’s a LOT of work and no money– and there’s always the possibility that WOTC or whoever will totally reboot the game at some point, making all your fan expansions moot.
Rage
This is never going to come back as it was a fun, but not very good game compared to the others on this list. This is one we have to get some plays in at some point to verify the above sentence.
Usually I buy good sleeves for my CCG or TCG cards and shit ones for my board games… If I am going to sleeve a deck, that means it’s been played a few times at least and I’m pretty satisfied with the build. Or, if it’s Keyforge, it’s been in the top 2 in one of our home tournaments or just has an awesome name which is half the reason to play a deck. In searching for really good sleeves, I found these: Ryker clear matte. Seem normal right? Nope. They have a slippery side and a rough side which I had never seen before. The face of the card goes on the smooth side and you can tell easily if cards are on the wrong side when you shuffle due to the rough side. For Keyforge, you can face your ‘home’ card making it very easy to find if you shffle it into your deck just by FEELS. Highly recommended.
