Thoughts of Chairman Mike

I’ve mentioned in the past that a few of the guys at work run a small band, mostly comprised of IT folks. They mainly stick to gigs inside Nike, but they have done one or two outside events. Apart from the usual drums and bass, they have a few guitars and a couple of saxophones, and, until recently, they did have another guitar/keyboards player, but he left Nike. I’ve always been on the fringes, helping out where possible, and I’ve recently been working on the sound board, just to try helping with the guitar/mics balance. There was a time that we did talk about me joining in, but the last thing they needed was another guitar player, especially a crappy one.

Anyway, due to scheduling differences, they’ve recently had to skip a few potential events, and it’s forced them to focus on a few critical positions, where they don’t have cover and an absence seriously impacts their sound. Essentially this is drums and bass, as they can make do without one of the guitars, or the female vocalist. So, I was approached to see if I’d be interested in learning some bass to provide cover for their regular bass player. Sure, I’d give it a shot.

I found a guy selling a Squier P-Bass copy, along with a practice amp and bass effects modeling pre-amp, on Craigslist, and I managed to squeeze him down to $150, which I’d decided was my budget. I’ve toodled around with it in the garage, but wasn’t getting too far with it. I find bass a lot harder to figure out, as you’re not really carrying a tune, like when playing guitar. Anyway, I know where the notes are, so that part wasn’t too much challenge. Anyway, nothing much has come of that so far, and there haven’t been any practices.

However, a few of the guys also have an offshoot of the Nike band. This is a more serious venture, and they’ve even been writing some of their own material, as well as playing covers. Recently their bass player has had to give up playing with them, due to some  back issues I believe, and they asked if I’d be interested in joining them for a practice. Initially I was not inclined, due to a lack of, well, skill, but after chatting with my good friend who plays with them, and agreeing that the best way to learn was to jump in with both feet, I agreed to meet for a practice session.

Well, that was Wednesday. The first issue is that a 15w practice amp is, in no way, able to cut it next to a drum kit, and with two guitars cranking. No biggie, as they’ve got sufficient gear to hook me up with a small pre-amp, and feed it direct into their sound system. The next thing was that I had no preparation for what they were playing, so each new song was preceded by a quick lesson on the notes. This worked out relatively ok for the songs I’d heard before (some covers and couple of their own tracks), but I was totally lost on the ones that were totally new to me. They even had an impromptu jam around a riff that one of the guys had been working on, which was fun to go along with, as they tried to fit a lyric to it.

Overall it was a total blast, and I enjoyed the evening immensely. Even better, I came acceptably close enough to not sucking that I was asked to come back again. Even the simple stuff I was playing made a significant difference to overall sound, and both guitarist dudes were happy with my contribution. I’m now in a band!

Of course, that does mean that I need to get some serious equipment. Whilst I’m happy with a cheap bass guitar for the moment, a band-sized amp was the first requirement. Fortunately, Labor Day weekend sees a large sale at Guitar Center, where I had my eye on an Ampeg BA115 100w bass combo. I was pretty disappointed to see, however, on checking the small print, that Ampeg was one of the manufacturers not taking part in the sale. So I was resigned to paying the normal price (ok, it’s still discounted from the regular MSRP), and almost didn’t go down to check it out. I’m glad I did, though, as it had been marked down to $299 from $379, more than the sale event discount.  Add in a new, wider strap (after a couple of hours of practice I was starting to feel the effects of the weight cutting into my shoulder with the piddly strap that came with the bass), and some strings, and I’m all set for the next practice.

Finally, a joke I was told by the regular bass player for the Nike IT band.

Little Jonny decides he wants to learn bass guitar, and after hooking him up with a guitar and amp, his parents send him off for his first lesson. He comes back later in the evening all excited, and tells his parents that he learned all the notes on the E-string. The next day, he goes off for his second lesson, and comes back to tell his parents that he learned all the notes on the A-string.

The following day he goes for his third lesson, but doesn’t come home at the expected time. His parents are frantic with worry, until he finally gets back home at 2 in the morning, smelling of cigarette smoke and beer. ‘Where the hell have you been?’, asks his father. ‘Dad, I had my first gig!’

Ba-boom-tsch

One of the recent releases from Apple that I’ve been thinking about is the Magic Trackpad. I’ve been using the Magic Mouse for some time now, and I’ve got used (mostly) to the gestures available on it, so I thought I’d try the trackpad, and picked one up at the weekend.

Removing it from the box and the plastic wrapping, it looks pretty sleek, and has a good feel to the surface, but the first issue was how to switch it on. It has a rounded, long compartment for the two AA batteries along the width of the device, and this also serves to raise the back edge to give an angle to the surface. I could see that one end of the compartment is where you insert the batteries, but the on/off switch is hidden at the other end, as i discovered when I RTFM. Duh, should have expected something sleek like that.

When it was powered up (it comes with batteries and ready to go) it was quickly synced with the iMac Bluetooth, and I was pointing away. However, when I came to try browsing in Safari I found that multi-finger gestures weren’t working. Back to the manual again, where I found that I open the Trackpad item in System Preferences. Uh oh, there wasn’t one there. Even a restart didn’t make it appear.

So, off to the forums, where I found that I had to do a system update. Remember that plastic wrapping on the trackpad? There’s this little sticker holding it together, and some teeny tiny writing that tells you to visit the website for the instructions/driver. This writing is so small that I can’t read it, and even with my reading glasses on it was still hard to make out.

Anyway, once the trackpad is connected, checking for system updates shows the correct software to be available, and it’s just a matter of installing (which involves a restart). Hey presto! everything works perfectly. That could have been a lot smoother, Apple.

In use the trackpad is pretty simple, and anyone used to an iPhone, iPad, or more recent MacBook (Pro) or Magic Mouse will be familiar with the range of gestures. Multi-finger taps, pinching, all that sort of stuff. Some of them are harder to get used to, however. I’m so used to clicking on the browser ‘back’ button that getting used to the 3-finger swipe for the same function is going to take some time, but I’m remembering more and more often as I use it.

Clicks are handled by either clicking the whole pad, or you can set it up for a soft-click, just by tapping it. Selecting, with soft clicks, is a case of double tapping and holding, then dragging to select, and a quick tap to finish selecting. Takes a little getting used to, but I’m becoming more adept at it.

Oh, and it only works with Snow Leopard, so a good reason to upgrade your system.

Overall, a fairly typical Apple product. Flexible, well thought out, and a very minimalist design. But those set up instructions really need to be rethought.

This weekend I hooked up with KC and Rita for a little gaming. I haven’t seen them for a while, so it was great to be able to spend some time with them again. In the bag, KC had a couple of games that I hadn’t played before, so they were my requests, and both KC and Rita were happy to get them to the table.

The first was Fresco, a fairly new release from Queen Games, one of my favorite publishers. Opening the box, you’re not disappointed, as there is the usual collection of high quality components: board, tiles, and a whole bunch of wooden pieces. Gameplay is fairly strait forward, and fits comfortably into the ‘Do a bunch of things, get a bunch of points’ (aka DABOT/GABOP in our group), with the theme of painting the ceiling of the cathedral. You use your workers to perform the paint purchase, mixing, and painting operations. They can also be used to get more cash, or be sent to the theater to improve their morale.

There are a couple of twists to the game. The first is that the choice of actions for your 5 workers is done at one time, and it’s hidden, all players revealing at the same time. The second is that player order each turn is chosen by the players by what time they want their workers to start that day. Start early in the day and you get to play earlier in the round, but you make your workers unhappy, and paint costs more in the market. Start later in the day and you play later in the round, but your workers become happier and paint costs less. Of course, playing early give you first choice of the paint tiles available in the market and tiles that can be painted in the cathedral. And having a happy workforce gains you an extra worker, an unhappy workforce loses you a worker. So there are a few things to balance.

Ordinarily I’m not a big fan of this type of hidden placement mechanism, but here it doesn’t annoy me too much, as it doesn’t have a huge impact. As you determine the paint available in the market, then pick turn order (the time mechanism thing), before you decide what your workers are gong to do you already can figure out what paint you’re likely to get from which market, so you rarely have to waste a worker, and there’s quite a few options on tiles to paint in the cathedral.

Fresco doesn’t really introduce anything new to the gaming world, but it’s easy to get into, has some decision points, and is fairly enjoyable. I’d call it inoffensive, in that it won’t upset anyone, but it won’t leave you clamoring for more. Which is perhaps damning with faint praise, but I don’t want to play a brain burning 18xx/Age of Steam game every time. However, it’s not one that I’d consider buying, but I’d be open to playing it if suggested. Unless I wanted my brain burning.

The second game was Macao, an Alea game. Another fairly recent game, but another not picked up by myself or others in the group. Definitely another DABOT/GABOP game, this time a goods delivery system thing, along with using cards as the roles/buildings/offices to give you bonuses or allow you to do stuff outside the general rules.

The twist to this game is the dice/cubes availability mechanism. There are 6 colors of cube, each with a matching die, and a 7-point wind rose that shows the 6 dice faces, and an arrow to show the current cube availability. Each turn the 6 dice are rolled, and you get to choose 2 of them. The color of the die dictates the color of cube (so pick the red die and you get red cubes, duh), and the number dictates the number of cubes and the number of turns ahead on the wind-rose you place them. So, pick the red-1, and you get a single red cube on the 1-point of the wind rose; pick the blue-6 and you get 6 blue cubes on the 6-point of the wind-rose. After everyone has picked, you all rotate your wind-rose by one ‘click’, so the cubes that were previously opposite the 1-point are now opposite the arrow, and those are the cubes that you get to use this turn. These cubes are then used to activate the cards that you have on your tableaux, which then become available to be ‘tapped’ each turn.

The cards available, which ones you choose, how you activate them to gain the combination benefits, and otherwise use cubes to gain control of spaces in the city, goods for delivery, and moving your ship to deliver the cubes, is a whole bunch of decision points. I’m not sure I like the game arc, as you keep adding goods to your ship while it’s out at sea, and you have this large goods delivery rush right at the end of the game.

However, I preferred Macao to Fresco, as the variation and interactions in the offices (which are all turned up at the start of the game, with 2 available per turn, so you can plan ahead to some extent), buildings and roles (with 4 turned over each turn, although not all are available with fewer than 4 players) made for more challenging decisions each turn. For those new to Euro style games I’d pick Fresco, as it has a gentler game arc and decision points.

And for the record, just to prove that Cooley’s First Law isn’t in operation here, I won Fresco, but lost out to KC by 3-4 points in Macao when we spotted that city locations were worth 2 Prestige Points (i.e. VPs), not 1PP as previously thought, enough to move him in front of me. Knowing that, I would have spent a little more effort in picking up city spaces.

Either way up, it was great to hang out with KC and Rita again, and catch up on family news. Thanks for making time for me, guys.

Yesterday I went along to the launch party of Railways of the World: The Card Game. As may be expected from the title, it has strong ties to the Railways of the World series of games (RotW, Europe, England & Wales, Western US), but borrows some mechanisms from Ticket to Ride (BGG entry) as well. I also have more interest in this title, as it was co-designed by my good friend Steve Ellis, owner of Rainy Day Games, a local gaming store in the Portland area. Oddly enough we played Railways of Europe just this last Tuesday, with me winning by a single point over JD in a rather epic game, so the main mechanisms were very much in my head.

RotW:TCG comes with 110 cards representing track, stations, and engine capability, a bunch of standard Euro cubes for goods to be delivered, plastic trains for each of the 4 players, a central starting hub, and a score board. A player’s turn allows an action from 5 possible options, then the drawing of cards to hand. The 5 actions are:

• Build a link – play a station and a number of track cards with a value equal to or greater than the station value; a link must extend from the central hub or an existing station; if the latter, it must match the color track on the edge of the existing station; the track and the station being played must match colors. You score points for the track value, so it can be worthwhile to play extra track, beyond the minimum. One fewer cubes than the station value, drawn from the bag, are placed on the station.
• Deliver a cube – move a cube from one station to another; the first link must be owned by the current player; the number of links may not be more than the current number of engine cards in play by the current player; the color of the cube must match the station being delivered to; you cannot move a cube through a station matching the cube color; the current player scores 1 for each link moved through, and other players score 1 for each of their links used.
• Play an engine card – play an engine card from hand to expand the number of links a cube may be delivered through; optionally, the player may also take the ‘Deliver a cube’ action, as above
• Discard a card – this allows the player to draw a card to replace it, or draw a cube from the bag to replenish a station.
• Pass – the player takes no action

The final part of the turn is to draw cards. There are 3 face up cards, and the player may draw 2 cards from the discard, face-up or face-down piles, or any combination. However, if an engine card is taken from the face-up display then that is the only card that may be taken in the turn. There is a hand limit of 13 cards.

All pretty simple really. The card drawing is straight out of Ticket to Ride, and the actions are pretty close to the RotW mechanisms. The only real challenge is remembering that the colors have to match when building links.

Scoring at game end is gained for the number of engine cards played, control of the stations (player with highest number of owned track cards connected to a station scores the station value, with friendly ties), and bonuses for sets of cubes delivered.

I played only part of one game, but enough to like what I was seeing. I really enjoy the RotW/Age of Steam/Steam lay track/deliver goods style of games, so this is right up my alley. I’m told that it plays in around 30-45 minutes, and is for 2-4 players. Interestingly, the designer said he prefers it for 2-3 players, but two of the players in my game said they preferred it with 3-4 players. I’ll have to try both. The cards and pieces are clean and functional, a very pleasant graphical design. One thing I did note, however, is that it can take up a considerable amount of space, so a decent sized table is recommended.

The only downside is that it’s from Eagle/FRED/Funagain, so you will not be surprised to learn that the price is set at a rather steep $38.00. Given the small, and rather cheap feeling, cards, cheap plastic trains, and simple cubes, and that it’s a 30-45 minute game, a price point nearer $30 would have been a better choice. Ah well, RDG were offering a launch price of  $30, so that made it palatable. Even though I liked it, and know the designer, I would have baulked at paying the full $38.

Those in my gaming circle can expect to see it on a gaming table in the very near future!

Found this rap video about Newport on A Welsh View, and I thought it was fairly amusing.

One of the games I bought for my iPad early on was Days of Wonder’s Small World, based on their board game of the same name (BGG entry). Whilst it looked pretty nice, I never got around to actually playing it because it was 2-player only, a point that Doug also mentioned in his blog post on iPad Euro games. However, DoW had promised that the next version would have an AI to allow solo play, so when I saw that there was an update available, I jumped on it to see. Sure enough, DoW were as good as their word, and there is now the option to play solo against an AI.

After three games I’m more than impressed with the game. The graphics are busy, but clear, the interface is very easy to understand and operate, and anyone who’s played the board game version should be able to jump right in and play. I’m not a good Small World player, but I comfortably won my first game, and I was concerned that the AI wasn’t particularly good. However, after getting spanked in my next two games that doesn’t appear to be a concern.  The game is very stable, with no crashes or hangs so far, and I haven’t identified a single issue with incorrect game play.

There are a few things that I’d like to see changed, but they’re all fairly minor. First is that when you are playing solo, it still has the AI’s turn showing as ‘upside down’ as if it were playing opposite you like a human player. It does make it hard to read the race/skill that has been selected. You can use the screen lock button for this, however. The other thing that I didn’t like is that there appears to be no way to quit a game in the middle and return to the menu.. Finally, I’d like some way to turn off the music in the game and listen to my own music, as the game music gets a bit wearing after a while.

However, none of those are enough to really detract from my enjoyment of Small World. A definite two thumbs up on this one – go download it from the iTunes App Store, and you’ll soon be as hooked on it as I am.

Another gaming retreat come and gone, so all is sadness. Except that we can start planning for next year’s event!

Highlights, game-wise, for me were the A Most Dangerous Time and Caucasus Campaign, with both Dougs. It was just really disappointing that the latter ended because we’d missed a rule, as it could have been a really tense and close finish. I’d like to try both again.

Lowlight was the Fallschirmjaeger game. Partly this was because of  wacky die rolls, and partly because we didn’t get anywhere near finishing it. I think this is the least prepared Chuck and I have been for any retreat. Normally we’ll fix our target game and go through a few moves a couple of times, so we have the mechanisms and basic strategies in our heads. This time, however, we switched game several times, and only decided on Fallschirmjaeger in the previous week. Originally, we were planning on Liberty Roads as our game of choice. However, with more and more people coming along, we were concerned for table space a little, but mostly we knew we wouldn’t finish it in a day, and wanted to give it a full play.

Most disappointing game was Successors, which felt less strategy game and more Ameritrash ‘beat on the perceived leader’ than I’d expected. There were some interesting facets, and I think I’d give it another go, but in the end I’d have preferred another go at Wellington or Kutuzov, or trying one of the bigger CDGs, e.g. Clash of Monarchs or The Napoleonic War. (Without having played either of those last two, I’m not sure that they wouldn’t end up the same, however.)

The Main Event, Battle for Normandy, was a mixed bag, and I was very conflicted about it. I loved most of the mechanisms, and the general feel was good, but the Mandatory Assault rules took the shine right off it. Following various threads on BGG and CSM, it appears that a few of the rules in that area were last minute additions, and against the designer’s best instincts, and that’s just the way they felt – rushed and poorly thought through, with some crazy side effects. However, I’ve been so intrigued about it that I bought a copy, punched and clipped all 2520 counters, and it’s sitting on my game-table as we speak. And as my major aim was to try the game to see if I liked it enough to buy, then I guess I achieved my objective, so it has to be regarded as a success! Of all the new games that I’ve played over the past year, this is the one that’s got me most fired up.

The biggest challenge at a retreat like this is satisfying all the interests and expectations. I’m more interested in the 2-player wargames, especially those that are longer (perhaps played as teams), others are more interested in the multi-player games, especially those around the 5-6 hour mark. With the numbers we had this year, there was definitely a pressure for more of the latter, although I managed to avoid most of them. After a past event I’ve commented that I’d be happy to play a big OCS (or such) game for the whole week, but hogging the big table for the whole week would be disrespectful of the other attendees, and I’d have to find a partner (or several) to play with. However, I do enjoy the varied company for each game, but trying to schedule some time with everyone there gets real hard.

I had considered going to the ConSimWorld con this year (I got as far as booking a room at the con hotel, but later canceled), also known as ‘MonsterCon’, especially to play in a monster event, and that may not be a bad solution for me. Use MonsterCon to satisfy the monster itch, and the retreat to play the smaller games. (By smaller, I mean games that take 1-2 days to play, rather than 3-5 days.) Time off isn’t an issue, but cost is always the factor that stops me going away to events, as with air fares and hotels, the costs mount up rapidly.

Anyway, this event was a success, and hugely so. I had a blast, and hit all my targets. Even if the games weren’t exactly to my liking (and let’s not even mention Leaping Lemmings at this point), the company was always first class. Many thanks to Doug, once again, for hosting the event, and to everyone for making it a total hoot. Same time next year!

And to to the last day. Boo! This is a pack up day, requiring laundry to be done, tidying and packing up, and with people leaving at various time, you fit in what gaming you can. Eric, Matt and I managed to fit in a game of 18TN (BGG entry), a new one to Matt and I, perhaps even Eric himself, although I think he said he’d played it once.

As part of the packing up I dashed off to get a shower  between turns, and when I came back they were waiting for me, so I just built, ran and paid out, without taking enough time to fully figure out what had happened while I was gone. Big mistake, as there had been a bit of a train rush going on, and my companies needed to withhold to get enough capital to fund some more trains. After that I was playing catch up, and played a little too hard, getting one (or more) companies dumped on me, and ended up well in last, with Matt ahead of Eric, but not by a great deal.

18TN is very interesting, although the Civil War effects are rather minimal, just canceling the income from a single train run when the 2nd (?) 3-train comes out. (Or some such like that.) Ah, who am I kidding? It’s an 18x game. I’ll play it at the drop of a hat.

From there it was the rest of the clearing up, packing, and tidying. Alex volunteered to close up the house, so Doug and I were able to get going in the early afternoon, and had a very clear run home, one of the fastest I’ve seen.

And that was it for another year. I’ll do a wrap-up post later.

What is up with this weather? We’ve moved from June-uary to July-uary. At least it’s very reminiscent of Scotland. And that’s not a good thing, as one of the reasons we moved was to get away from the weather. About the best thing that can be said is that it’s great weather for being indoors and playing games.

Despite all the pre-order shenanigans 10 days ago I was able to pre-order 2 16gb iPhones, although it took most of the day trying on and off. I had wanted them delivered, but that part of the pre-order process wasn’t working, so I had to arrange to pick them up. Originally one was for Colin and one for myself, but I decided that Catriona should also get one, and I’d get one later.

Come yesterday we all trooped off to the Apple store, waiting until lunchtime. However, there were still lots of people in the queue, and we were told that the expected wait time was 2-3 hours. As Colin had to get to work within that time period we decided to come back later, especially as the Apple sales representative said that they’d be open late to ensure all those with pre-orders got them sorted out.

So, after Colin had finished, we all headed back again, around 2100. There was still a longish queue, but at least the wait time was down to 1-2 hours. We also found out that the AT&T registrations system closed down at 2300 (now, that qualifies for a ‘wtf!’), so they were giving customers the option of getting a slip to hold the iPhones over the weekend. We took them up on that offer, so the kids are still without iPhones, but we’ll head back over this afternoon.

However, I did get to play with one a little, as a co-worker had bought one. It looks good, and it certainly is faster than previous models. I’ll get one eventually, as I’m now 2 generations behind, but I’m in no desperate rush.