In order to attend Gencon both vaccinations (a ‘full course’ whatever that means, especially if people got the J&J or Astrazeneca (Europe’s vax)) and masks are required for attendance, making Gencon the least appealing convention to go to. In contrast, most Conventions require a negative PCR test for either unvaxxed, or the smart ones, for ALL attendees 72 hours before the convention. This is the Way.
Let’s break it down
“They can either be manufactured or homemade and should consist of a solid piece of material without slits, exhalation valves, or punctures.”
Scott Gottleib just dropped what people have known and stated since the beginning of the pandemic (especially in the beginning) that cloth masks do not work at all vs Covid or any airborne virus. So, the masks that are required are? Surgical with the open sides since they are made to stop stuff from dropping into a patient during surgery? N-19? Good luck getting enough for even 1/3rd of the convention staff let alone guests. Respirators? You going to spend 50$ or more on one of these? The last one may be the only one that actually works. None of what they listed above does anything at all for viruses.
Since most people touch, move and never change their mask during the day what you have in reality is a bacteria filled sack hanging off your face all day, breathing that at other people that are breathing in and out the same thing, all the while pulling them down to eat candy bars and drink mountain dew which completely negates the point of someone wearing a mask vs an aerosolized virus in the first place! In 2020 I can see people still thinking these had some effect, but with multiple studies and massive (and I mean massive) real life examples of masks doing absolutely nothing, this is the height of stupidity to require. Shit show.
Vax These mRNA therapeutics they are calling vaccines have saved many lives in high risk groups, but swing into the negative risk profile under 40 quickly where the vax is more dangerous than covid, especially the milder Omicron. Gencon has many, many people in high risk groups attending, elderly, morbidly obese, people with heart and lung issues, diabetes, on and on. It’s important that these people get the vaccines or better yet, stay home until they have had Covid, but for everyone else, especially people that have had the disease? It’s preposterous.
These vaccines do not and were not designed to prevent spread like our government falsely advertised last Spring with Biden, lying to the entire population of our country, stating “If you get the vaccine, you can’t get Covid” bullshit. So why would they be mandated for anyone for attendance to anything? Zero logical reasons. What’s more, any immunity that might prevent spread (not just protection for yourself) comes only from prior infection since those folks have mucosal, t-cell and if they got it bad enough to have symptoms, antibody levels of their immune system. mRNA Vax people are walking around with only a spike protein part of the virus in comparison and that has proven to not stop infection or spread in the least. Shit Show.
Seasonality Summer is not the time of Covid and the case counts and illness nearly disappears from late April to early October in our hemisphere. This is known. Why it happens this way is likely a ton of factors, but Gencon being in July or August is during the most safe Covid months of the year. There won’t be any Covid around to get, even for those who have never had it, which by Summer will be a very small number.
Gencon is not doing it’s staff, it’s visitors or it’s future prospects making it’s convention an uncomfortable event with precautions that have been proven to not be effective in the least. It’s not more safe in any way.
What is the answer? As opposed as I am to the plague of testing that is taking place for people that are not sick, the answer to Gencon’s Covid problem is simply the requirement of a negative Covid test 72 hours before the convention for EVERYONE regardless of ‘vaccination status’ whatever that now means to people and there’s no need for the pretend masks unless people choose to wear them, which people will do if they want anyway.
It pains me to see how idiotic this all is in the face of what we know now about this virus, the very short term efficacy of the mRNA vaccines, it’s age stratification and method of spread and the fact that with their current requirements, it is putting their guests at more risk pretending these things work. Sad and, a shit show.
A LOT of games came out during 2021 despite supply chain issues, despite shipping issues and despite a lot of people working from home. It was a deluge…
Quantity does not equal quality though, and many of the games I saw or looked at were the same old tired worker placement point salad that everyone still seems to be pretending are fun to play after basically playing the same game with different art over and over again for the last five years. While not endless trash like Hollywood, and endless stream of the same thing.
That said, there were some interesting games that came out in 2021, likely many of which I didn’t get exposed to yet and will sometime in 2022 as the better games start to bubble up from the vast amount of chaff. Here’s what we got to play that was new this year.
Bloodborne: The Board Game
Well this was another giant CMON game I fell for and spent a lot of money on. With only 2 plays so far I’m not sure it was a good idea. This game is basically Hellboy with a strange card-driven combat that at first is totally counter-intuitive. While this might not see much play, the miniatures are incredible and I really just need to paint the guy with the Kirkhammer and I’m satisfied. I have a few friends that are really into Bloodborne so this may hit the table at some point. Otherwise it’s another Zombicide: Invader that just did not hold any interest even for my kids after a couple plays. CMON has some great games, but they rehash the heroquest/tons of miniatures thing over and over again, and again.
Dune: A Game of Conquest and Diplomacy
This is a shorter, 4 faction version of the original 1979 DUNE game from Avalon Hill by the original design team. Got in only one play and I think this is a winner if you want the feel of the original game but want to bust this out on a week night instead of a weekend. There are a couple modifications that shorten the game a lot (like no auction phase) which I like, but part of me wanted to get out the real game. I will try to get this to hit the table as much as possible this year.
Pax Viking
Ahhhh the Pax games… this was an odd one, even for Pax games as it’s much less like the original (Pax Porfiriana) and more like Merchants of Venus or Wasteland Express. I played this only one time with 6 players (mistake) and so I can’t really see where this one’s core draw is yet. Probably a sleeper hit that has just not gotten to the table again yet. The circle shaped cards are.. interesting…
Vampire: The Masquerade – Rivals Expandable Card Game
This I’ve only played once so far and am interested in playing more. It’s an LCG with many of the same rules from Jyhad/V:TES from back in the day, but shorter playtimes and some different win conditions. This being an LCG, it’s hard to judge after just one play and fumbling through the rules at that. One to watch. It has to compete with one of the best games ever: Shadowfist so let’s see what happens.
Spartacus: Game of Blood AND Treachery
This is a new reprint of an older game with new art and slightly adjusted gameplay. I LOVE this game and can’t wait to play it more. It’s very silly, the table talk and interaction is hilarious and the backstabbing feels wonderful to be on the receiving or giving side. Yes, it’s a classic and not really new for 2021, but this version hopefully will get an expansion or two to round out the game and add more players! I really like the card art compared to the photos from the show as well.
The Hunger
I’ve saved what I think is the best for last. The Hunger is a very new game by Richard Garfield, and after two plays, this is one the family can agree upon as good which was a Christmas Miracle! It combines a race game with market manipulation and deck building into an awesome blend of mechanics that go way beyond the sum of it’s parts. My only small complaint is that the board can be tough to read due to how glossy it is. This would be better matte for sure. The original name for this was Fat Dracula or Fat Vampire and that’s what we call it because your vampire gets fat and slow as the game progresses if you are not careful and can easily burn up to ash at dawn, giving it a wonderful Dungeon Quest feel. Like Dungeonquest, you don’t really effect the other players during the game except to bump them off spots on the map if you land on them. Most of the time the lack of interaction is a big deal breaker for me, but with these push-your-luck games it has proved to be acceptable. It’s the big non-interactive Euros that really put me to sleep.
There you have it, I have some work to do with playing games released in 2021 now that we are in 2022, namely ANHK and the new Cthulhu version of Battlestar Galactica: Unfathomable.
For 2022, I’m pumped for Stationfall and Bios Mesofauna the most, with the new version of Massive Darkness in third place.
Ten days ago was the second Beta/Demo for King of Fighters 15, a now ancient and renowned series of fighting games that used to come out with a new version EVERY SINGLE YEAR from 1994 -2003. It made the switch (for real this time) to 3D with XIV and while that game was good, it didn’t look all that great and had some pretty wonky new characters. What’s more it didn’t FEEL like KOF to me, something was just off…
In contrast, KOF XV looks good and plays exceptionally good. The first demo was fun, but had a few issues (it being a network test beta after all). To give it the college try, I went back and played a few of the older King of Fighters during the same weekend as the demo to see how the feel of the games compared, and while I think KOF 13 (the last sprite-based version) is my favorite gameplay wise, 15 is a close second place.
The toughest thing to do for one of these fighting game companies is to move from 2d to 3d, which only a few series have done successfully (Street Fighter with SFIV, Guilty Gear with Xrd and Strive). A lot of both soul and gameplay can be lost in translation which can be seen in the Street Fighter EX and early attempts at King of Fighters and Samurai Shodown. While most of those are OK games, they really could not hold a candle to their 2d versions when they were released. Nowadays, with the crazy good looking 2d games that Arc System works are putting out, we don’t even think about the struggle it was to get games to look as good as their 2d sprite-based counterparts. SNK has struggled like any other company and I would say nothing looked particularly great in 3D until Samurai Showdown 2019.
Gameplay wise, 3D games that mimicked 2D fighters tended to be slower than their 2D counterparts and rarely felt all that great. Meanwhile full bore 3D fighters worth bothering with (Virtua Fighter, Tekken, Tobal, etc.) were fun straight out of the gate and didn’t have ‘better’ versions to compare them to in the first place. Newer 2d games using polygons instead of sprites have certainly solved this issue and here we are with a good looking and extremely playable KOF!
Here’s some babbling about the game from the demo:
Character wise, I stuck with the old standbys, and I really don’t think most of the new characters are all that great (and there were a ton of lame ones added to KOF 14 that didn’t make it to 15 so far), with the exception of Meitenkun, the sleepy kid who falls asleep during his own supermoves. INSTANT MAIN.
This was the most predictable ‘best film of the year’ AFTER it came out. Before it came out, I was very skeptical that they would be able to pull it off and assumed it would just be MCU in space or worse. After all this Star Wars garbage we have been subjected to over the last 8 years (minus the Mandalorian), it’s refreshing to see a good character driven sci-fi movie that isn’t just a cascade of space piss into our open mouths. There have been notable series, such as the Expanse and Lost in Space, but no films of note in this genre worth bothering with for a very, very long time.
Dune is an atmospheric movie with amazing scenes, incredible interpretation of the technology of the both low tech and high tech societies. I’ve seen it three times already and will probably watch it again just because of thinking about it during this post.
If you would have told me that I would be posting this a year ago, I would have said no fucking guey dude but the sequel can’t come fast enough!
We already know what the film of the year for 2022 is:
After about 9 months of slowly collecting and reading the Invincible series, I was looking around for something GOOD in the comic store. There are tons of excellent comics tucked away between all the endless trash that comes out every month, but you have to search for them. While amazing art abounds, good or even passable writing is VERY hard to find in comics these days. I was looking for issues of the GODDAMNED (a story about Cain pre-flood that was pretty solid in the beginning) and came upon SPACE BASTARDS.
Space Bastards is a multi-writer, multi-artist affair and usually I hate those types of titles, the lack of a consistent artist to me is usually super annoying (BPRD and SUPREME by Image comics are good examples of this). However, Space Bastards has good artists, not all of them I like or I think are fit for the material, but there are a few that just NAIL it, like the esteemed Simon Bisley. I gave it a shot and the first issue I read was #6 and it had a part that I laughed out loud at– read again and laughed again. That has happened so rarely in most comics (with the exception of Groo!) that I can count the incidents on one hand. The story is a biopic about Chuck “Magic” Wagon and how his alcohol fueled rampages lead him to join the Intergalactic Postal Service; which is what the overall story is about. This particular comic goes completely off the rails as Chuck Wagon spirals into drug induced madness from which he never recovers. If you only read one issue, this is it.
Later issues concern the meta-plots more and having jumped in mid-series, I’m not super sure what’s going on, but that’s half the fun. Number 8 starts with an incredibly long rant/speech by one of the characters which is normally something comic readers can rarely abide, but this shit is psychotic and sociopathic GOLD. Not only are the characters violently insane for the most part, they are manipulative, capricious and none of them trust each other. While this is no League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with it’s both subtle and overt betrayals, it’s extremely compelling to just not know what the hell some of the characters are going to do and say at any given moment as they are prone to bouts of complete madness and mental breakdown. Recommended.
I got in a casual CASUAL game of Necromunda last week and what in the flying fuck happened to the organization of these rules? Seriously, this couldn’t be worse.
First, these are not overly complex rules, but there are tons of situational rules that enrich the game and the system. What is a drop rig? What does it do? What does Toxin do? What if something is on fire? Anyone that has played all but the simplest RPG’s (most of which are SHYTTE) will be familiar with these types of questions and it usually takes just a few minutes to look up the rule (and if there is a GM, they may make a rule on the spot to save time which is usually spot on for the situation anyway). Necromunda being a competitive thing most of the time, these questions need solid answers and can’t be hand waved by a GM. While the rules are certainly all there, they are scattered FUCK ALL throughout a ton of different books with the added bonus of having the original 2018 rulebook split between Basic and Advance rules (no one plays with the basic rules).
So the answer to the multi-rulebook issue would be to download and print on LULU the massive community version of the rules that includes errata and all that one needs to play, right? CORRECT, with the exception of that book being as FUCK ALL organized as the original books; going from core rules part 1 to special cases on tiles on the board game version, and then back to core rules. Or going from core rules to stats for a bunch of gangs and creatures that will rarely see play BEFORE going into the weapons and skills sections. In addition, it doesn’t even have an INDEX. Absolutely fuck all.
The Warcry rules are CLEANLY organized. Killteam’s rules are CLEANLY organized. What happened? This is not to say that the new Necromunda is bad at all, quite the opposite as it deals with a lot of the issues with the original version, but why the fuck would the rulebooks be like this? I can only imagine that they didn’t know that the Necromunda line would be as successful as it has and everything grew organically like some indy game where the designer has a day job? It’s really inexcusable for GW.
Anyway the game was good, though slow. Melta traps went off, there was renderizing and web-gauntletting (both brutal close combat weapons), toxic attacks, back stabs and hallway collapsing. A great time. I should have taken a bunch of pictures of the carnage, but I had my nose up the crack of the books the whole damn time!
Solution for next time: print the damn consolidated rules by UNIVERSAL HEAD.
Questions: Where was Feyd-Ruatha? Where was Count Fenring? Why did the Mentats get so little screen time? Why no banquet scene? (dammit)
The real question that this film tries to answer is whether or not Dune SHOULD be done in film format, or, like the sci fi channel did years ago, is better suited to a high end series. I will say that this movie felt like a really long, atmospheric episode of Game of Thrones but with less character development for all but the most important characters.
This is a story that I have carried with my my entire adult life and I’ve read the book more times than I can remember. It’s hard to give up the vision of what I had as a kid reading this for any film or tv version. Now that I’ve seen it thrice, once in the theater and twice on a TV (definitely see this in the theater!), I can say stuff before I go off and see it again in a few months. Despite some issues that I have with it, this film has grown on me a great deal since my first and especially second viewing.
Aesthetics
The previews did not do justice to the costumes and the set and spaceship designs which were surprisingly good. I think the armor for the Atreides looked stupid and for fuck sake in the scene where Duke Leto was taking control of Arakeen, they could have at least put a CLOAK on him. The rest of the costume design was excellent and the Harkonnen house troops, the Fremen and the Saurdukar looked amazing. It’s an easy comparison with the old sci fi channel series here– EVERYTHING looked better, but in comparison to the Lynch version, I think there were some better costumes in the old film for sure. Except for the Atredies armor, the soldiers on all sides looked far better in the new film.
Almost all of the architecture and ship designs in the film can be described as straight out of the Brutalist school with harsh angles and massive verticals that dwarfed the characters. They all harken back to earlier eras in sci fi and sci fi art when Dune became popular (60’s-70’s). There was only one scene in the film where I thought the set was shit– and that was the hallway where Lady Jessica was waiting for Paul to get the Gom Jubar. It just looked very tacky. The guild ships, the Harkonnen artillery warship and the ornithopters were amazing.
Long shots of characters barely taking up any screen space with amazing stuff in the background abound in this film, and if I can find it again in IMAX (hopefully after it wins some awards) I will be up inside to see it right away. This is going to be a ‘get stoned and watch movie for the ages.
Pacing
I was with someone that didn’t know the story and they were disappointed at the end that all the really good stuff will be in the next movie (which the director has himself admitted). They felt the beginning was slow and it really didn’t get going until it was almost over.
I felt the opposite, that they raced through some parts of the book they should have taken more time on and skipped a few scenes (or shortened them to almost nothing) that they should have left closer to the book.
In the Lynch version, I felt Feyd Ruatha needed to get more screen time, especially the scene where he was fighting in the arena. The arena scene in the book also had Count Fenring in it. Both films cut the ‘dinner party’ on Dune with members of the Lansraad that gave a sense of normalcy to the Atreides take over, like there was a chance that everything won’t be fucked, but in this film, they went from arrival to the big scenes (hunter seeker, wormsign, treachery) without very many interstitial scenes with character interplay. It just seems like neither director wanted to deal with the fact that there was someone that knew about Paul’s powers (outside the Sisterhood that is)— as they had similar ones–and were struggling with the need to kill him throughout the film.
Characters
The mentats, who were the masterminds behind a lot of the machinations between the houses got very little screen time or any description of what they were or there to do. That said, they were both cool characters. One a snivelling weirdo and the other an old soldier type.
Duke Leto was believable, though I think someone a bit older would have been better, but I liked the actor more the second time. Neither of the films hit exactly how I pictured Duke Leto, but I think the Lynch version had a more intimidating and formidable Duke.
Lady Jessica is not how I pictured her and seems so young to be cast in this role, but I liked it. I don’t think they sold it early enough in the movie that the Bene Gesserit were not to be fucked with in hand to hand combat, so when she beat Stilgar, it wasn’t set up well. This is the character that started this entire situation up, so she’s very important to get right.
The Baron is a critical character and the Lynch version was a loud crazy fat man, always yelling, which was not anything like the Baron I imagined, but worked within Lynch’s overall vision for the Harkonnens. The new movie’s Baron is much closer to the book and I think it was done better. The actors in both films were superb, but I prefer the new Baron to the old… a lot.
Feyd-Ruatha? Where is he? This was a miss. Remember, Jessica was supposed to have a daughter that was going to marry Feyd, merge the houses AND create the Kwizatch Haderaach. What happened?
Beast Raban. This is a minor character in the book and what it looks like to me is they merged Raban and Ruatha into one character– which I think is a mistake as Raban was just some lesser mean fatty like the Baron who fucks everything up.
Chani – the director seemed to be in love with this actresses’ face because it was constantly shown throughout the film to nearly a Meet Joe Black level. She seems too young but then one must remember that her and Paul were like 14 in the book! This is not how I envisioned Chani, but neither was Sean Young in the older version.
Paul – While I think the Lynch version had a great Paul Atreides, he seemed too old to me when I was a kid– especially when most kids read Dune when they are about 14 or so, the same age as the protagonist. Kyle did a great job in the Lynch version and loves the story/book, but definitely wasn’t an exact fit. The new movie’s Paul is definitely a kid and seems much more in danger almost all the time because of it.
The Reverend Mother – much less striking a character than in the Lynch version, but did fine. Seemed like she was relegated to a much minor character in this film (so far), but has the extra (non book) scene where she “pleads” with the Harkonnens to leave Paul and Jessica to the desert and we get to see Wanda Marcus…or what’s left of her.
Gurney Halleck – Turned out very well, I was worried about the superhero actors cast for the movie when I saw Thanos in the previews, but he was solid. Halleck is more important to the story than people may remember as he and Jessica are not fans of each other and it could have gone badly at certain points because of it, without the dinner party scene mentioned above, I’m not sure their conflicts will be a plotline in the second half.
Duncan Idaho – People that know the extended story realize how important this character is to Paul and the Atreides as they continue their journey through the books. I was glad they did MORE with this character than in the original film, and even gave him more scenes than in the book (?). The missing scene is his drunken rant the night before the betrayal. Again, they just axed the dinner party scene that could have been a better set up for the different Atreides character’s relationships to each other.
Dr. Yueh – not great. Not a good set up, not enough screen time, not enough at all of this character for it to even matter to the viewer who was the traitor. Didn’t go into the imperial conditioning at all, or any forshadowing of his loss of his wife,. The Lynch version did this part FAR better than the new movie, which was altogether meh with the Yueh plotline. There are certain scenes I just would have left in to set up future interactions.
The Guild / Navigators. Did not show any Guild leaders though in the beginning of the film it’s the Guild/Emperor vs the Harkonnens, Bene Gesserit and Atreides. I really liked the scene in the Lynch movie with the Guild Navigator and the Emperor. Maybe we will get that in later films.
The Emperor. Did not show in the film which I think is really cool as they talk about him a lot. It may be that both the Emperor and Feyd show up later in the story (and Count Fenring?)
Shadout Mapes. This was one of my favorite minor characters as a kid as it was the first Fremen Paul/Jessica encounter and added a lot to the mystery of the Fremen for me. I don’t think she got enough screen time during the hunter seeker scene.
Liet Kynes. A minor character in the film/book in the chapter/scenes, yet a big character in the overall story. Unfortunately, this version of the character’s dialog and lines were not great when they deviated from the book and frankly the actress just didn’t have any gravity on screen. Maybe people care that Kynes is played by a female, but it made no difference, the real issue was the line delivery and the lines she was given. Not great.
Jamis – a minor character, but this actor was awesome and carried the scenes he was in. This scene blew the one away from the Lynch version, which was cut from the film anyway and only shown later in extended versions. It’s a critical scene as there are more characters that rely on Paul because of it that would show up and not make sense otherwise. It also shows that Paul was trained from birth to be a killer even though he looks like a little kid.
Stilgar – I loved the Lynch Stilgar but the new one played by Xavier Bardem nailed it as well.
Captain Aramsham – This is who I assume is talking to Pieter in the already infamous Saduakar scene with the Mongolian throat singing. I think we’ll see this guy again at some point, but even with the small scene (one of my favorites in the film) they nailed it with this guy.
Dialog
The film deviated too much from the book and had far too many vernacular phrases and words for my tastes. Most of these characters are nobles and are trained to speak in a very specific way at all times, and this didn’t come out enough.
There were lines that I really loved from the book that were cut out of the dialog that made me sad. During quite a few scenes I was waiting for the actor to drop a key line, but… they did not. Who doesn’t want the new Baron to say “He who controls the spice, controls the universe?”
Finally, the ending
I was guessing the film would end when Paul saw Chani for the ‘first’ time or when Paul and Jessica started off into the deep desert. I did not think they would do the Jamis fight and then a bit after as well. It wasn’t a bad break point, but the very end of the movie with the sandworm rider was a bit cheesy. I did like the final line of the film though “this is only the beginning.” My buddy was immediately like ‘that’s it?’ as soon as the credits rolled. My kid said she didn’t understand anything at all in the film or what was happening at any point, so the end for her didn’t matter.
I liked a lot about the film and actually felt human emotion in some parts of it, a rare thing indeed! The visuals are just stunning, and it’s a different take on the material than I expected from modern hollywood. Did it “rape it with love” as Jodorosky planned with his Dune? Let’s save that verdict for the second part.
Does this film answer the question of whether Dune should be made into a series of movies rather than a high end Game of Thrones series? Yes. With it’s highly visual take on the material, this plants it’s flag firmly in the ‘this is an epic feature film and is best viewed as a theater experience.’ I saw Lawrence of Arabia on a tub television set in the early 80’s. I cannot imagine how differently I would have thought of it had I seen it in the theater.
My buddy Stan (Dice Hospital, Rurik) has a Kickstarter up for his new game. You should back it if you like this sort of thing. This is as close to an advertisement that this blog will get. What Stan is good at as a designer is creating compelling engines in the euro mode, but applying them to interesting topics.
Mythras, in my opinion, has the best hand to hand combat system of any RPG. Nothing else even comes close. It can be a bit challenging to learn at first, though even as a beginner with this system I was able to run the game without the book with the exception of the special effects list, and some references to weapons here and there.
Knowing there is a bit of a learning curve, Design Mechanism in their infinite wisdom has released not just one, but THREE combat training modules to get you over the hump and enjoying some FORCED FAILURES and tasty impaling available on DrivethruRPG
