Tonight was our second ever Malifaux Thursday Throwdown at Dueling Grounds. For the second time in 48 hours, Som’er Teeth Jones and his band of Bayou Gremlins took to the field. I was using the exact same Scrap force that I did at Meeplemart on Tuesday. This time I was facing Rob and his twin Viktorias. I drew Reconnoiter as my objective which meant that I needed to have models in three quadrants of the board to claim minor victory and in all four quadrants for major victory. Although this is only the first time I’ve played that scenario I have to say that I strongly dislike it. But, part of being a skilled player is adjusting to victory conditions so, like they say, suck it up, buttercup. Rob drew Treasure Hunt for his objective and named Bodyguard and Thwart as his schemes; I disclosed Hold Out and Thwart for mine.

Image © Wyrd Miniatures, LLC

This game actually went pretty fast despite my persistent analysis/paralysis. Rob sprinted Bishop to the treasure token and scooped it up on the first turn and cranked his defense up to 8 which I wasted one Gremlin’s activation trying to pierce. Much like the game I played against Ash on Tuesday, Rob clustered his models together around the treasure. I was able to score Severe damage with Som’er Teeth’s Boomer Strike and get around Bishop’s high defense by damaging him several times with blast tokens. My piglets came through on the right flank and chowed down on one of the Viktorias. I completely (and aptly) brain-farted again and sat back and shot at one of the Viktorias with his Boomer with a control hand that couldn’t cheat up to any great extent when I should have just ran up and used Pull My Finger to do 2 wounds on a successful casting flip. The piglets did a good job on their pig charges and wound up killing the other Viktoria. In the final analysis neither of us achieved our objective (so we both got 2 VP for Thwart) and I got 2 VP for Hold Out so it was a 4-2 win for the Gremlins.

What was odd about this game was that I barely used the Hog Whisperer at all but, at the end of the day, I didn’t really need to. I still need to study my models and remember what they do but the more I play this game the more I like it. I’ve only played a handful of games of Hordes which I’m told is largely analogous in many aspects. What I like about Malifaux is that the game isn’t over in a “caster kill” scenario when all your masters are dead. I also like that every game is a scenario-based game and that your scenario is random. This really forces you to make tough choices with your force. If you only plan for fighting you can really get left out in the cold in this game. I’m really going to try and get my Warpig and Mosquito Totem painted up for next time so I can try out some more options with the Bayou Gremlins.

At the first Malifaux Thursday at Dueling Grounds I heard some of the guys talking about Meeplemart. I checked out their website and, essentially, it’s a one-man operation that does business primarily over web but they do have an actual location on Carlaw Avenue in Toronto. Essentially, it’s a big industrial loft with shelves lined with a surprisingly vast and well-priced array of board and miniature games. It’s not really a store, per se, as it’s only open to the public on Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 5PM to 11PM. To buy games from Meeplemart you can pay via PayPal off of the website or you can specify pick-up and pay in cash in person on the nights he’s open.

When the store is open on those evenings there are games going on the whole time. On Tuesdays miniatures games are played and on Thursdays it’s board game night. Steve (the sole proprietor) has a pretty unique and somewhat off-beat vision for his business. Apparently he only took control of Meeplemart approximately a year ago from its former owner so I can’t comment on what it was like before versus now. Steve’s intent is to be a supplier of strictly specialty games for niche gamers; he has no present intent to tap into any of the mainstream market. He essentially wants Meeplemart to be a hobby that pays for itself, not a full-time business.

The gaming area at Meeplemart is great. He has more than enough table space to have four miniatures games going on at once on surfaces at least four feet by four feet. For board games, depending on the game, he could easily double or triple the amount of games going on at once with the space and tables he has. As of today, this is only the second week or so he’s had these gaming nights but even so early on in the format he has an impressive amount of table surfaces and terrain that are free for people to use.

Tonight was one of a series of nights for Malifaux. We had four games going on at once with spectators so the turnout really surprised me. I played a “Scrap” (25-point game) using Som’er Teeth Jones, a Hog Whisperer, 3 Bayou Gremlins, 4 Piglets, and two Soulstones. This is only my second full game of Malifaux so I’m still really learning the rules and getting to know how my faction works. My opponent (a nice guy named Ash) was playing Guild with Sonnia Criid, Samael Hopkins, an Executioner, and 2 Witchling Stalkers. We were playing each other with the Treasure Hunt scenario.

Image © Wyrd Miniatures, LLC

I took some losses early on in the game after some less than impressive attacks with stampeding Piglets. I came close to taking out one of his Witchling Stalkers with two Piglet attacks but it didn’t pan out. He then was able to summon another Witchling Stalker which made me nervous. I didn’t do a very good job of managing my control hand early on in the game and wound up having to take some pretty heavy damage and some unlucky flips by my Bayou Gremlins had them shooting each other more than their enemies. By making good use of Flame Wall, Ash was able to get his Executioner, Sonnia, and his summoned Witchling Stalker in a cluster around the treasure and it looked pretty grim for the Bayou Gremlins. That’s when we both witnessed The Awesome Power of a Fully Operational Som’er Teeth Jones! Near the end of turn four, Ash had killed everything of mine except Som’er Teeth and he had Samael Hopkins, Sonnia, and a Witchling Stalker all bunched together. I moved in Jones an, with Reckless Fast, got two back-to-back hits with his Boomer Strike at Severe damage. With the blast tokens that generates it wound up killing the Witchling Stalker and Hopkins and left Sonnia with only two wounds. I won the next initiative and capped Sonnia but had a complete and utter brain fart. I used Jones’ trigger that allows me to deal double damage while taking regular damage. I scored a Severe hit and, stupidly, assigned the double damage to myself, as well, and told Ash that I’d killed Jones. So the game ended up in a draw in terms of models left on the table but I won because I had announced the “Thwart” scheme which meant that I got 2 VPs if I kept my opponent from achieving their schemes which I did. In terms of scoring it would have made a difference because I could have used another action to move to the treasure token and cut myself for a third action to pick it up and would have achieved the lesser objective but, honestly, I like the mental image of Som’er Teeth loading up his Boomer with way more gunpowder than he should have and it blows him up as well as Sonnia.

The one aspect of the Bayou Gremlins that I really need to get my head around is making better use of their proximity-based abilities and using combos that allow me to summon. I didn’t summon or reap a great benefit from my models that were killed in either of the games I’ve played but I think I’ll need to in order to meet with success once people start figuring out their own factions, too. Overall, though, I had a great time at Meeplemart and I’ll definitely be going back in two weeks for their next Malifaux night.

My exciting evening tonight was taken up by installing Quicken and loading in all of my bank account data for calendar year 2009. I also went back and have done about 75% of the expense categorization which should make doing this year’s tax return a lot easier. I installed the update to Twitter Tools on the blog so, hopefully, the erratic performance of the widgets and functionality will be improved. Erin really warmed my heart today. Without going into too much detail, there was an opportunity to help our a stranger and she jumped on it and went above & beyond the call of duty. Man, I love her.

Erin and I have been living in Milton for a few years now and we’ve only now just found a church that we like going to. It’s called The Village Community Church and they hold their services at the Galaxy Cinemas at Thompson & Steeles. Tonight was the last night of a 10-week study group (which they call a “DNA Group”) that serves as an introduction to the church where they clearly lay out their approach to ministry and what it means to be involved. Lots of churches that I’ve been involved with have their own way of saying “this is who we are” but this is the first one that I’ve been to that really resonated with me. I can’t really nail down precisely why this is but a big part of this is simply that everything that was presented came across as authentic to me. One other custom that The Village has that I really like is that they don’t pass a collection plate. If you want to donate you can by placing something in a basket at the entrance to the theatre. It’s a small thing but I think it speaks volumes in terms of the way they want to interact with people. I’m happy to say we’ve found a church home.

• Played Monsterpocalypse on 2010-01-26 http://boardgamegeek.com/play/details/3898742 #bggplay #
• Played Grind on 2010-01-26 http://boardgamegeek.com/play/details/3898744 #bggplay #

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Not much to report for today. Worked from home and had a pretty productive day, overall. I have to remind myself pretty much daily how fortunate I am to have a job that lets me work from home so often as well as work autonomously. After work Colin came over at around 6:30 and we ordered pizza from Toppers and played board games. It was a Privateer Press-filled evening with a game of Grind first and then Monsterpocalypse. It was the first time Colin had played either but, as usual, he figured them out pretty much immediately and did really well. For a game that began its life as a free download PDF and distraction for Warmachine it’s really well polished and a lot of fun. The snap-together steamjacks are fun to customize. I really hope they come out with different steamjacks or even just a different set of arms and weapons to use. The replay value of games like is directly proportional to the amount of customization that can take place. My only complaint about the game is the finish on the actual game board. I’ve only played it twice and there’s already visible scratching from moving the pieces around which is a shame because it’s a great looking board, artistically.

Image © Privateer Press Inc.

It was fun teaching Colin to play Monsterpocalypse. He used Gakura (Empire of the Apes) and I used Krakenoctus (Tritons). The learning curve on that game is pretty steep just in terms of the amount of rules you have to absorb but Colin picked it up pretty quickly. I think about the only way to learn that game is to have someone coach you through every move on your first game simply because knowing how your units, monsters, and buildings work together is essential not only to winning but to the game being fun. Hopefully we can play some games over Vassal.

I took in this year’s NFL conference championship games with @C_Derksen at his place yesterday. What a great pair of games. The Jets definitely made a game of it but the Colts are just plain better. Peyton Manning still drives me up the wall to watch with his non-stop audibles but I won’t take anything away from the guy on the field. He’s one of the few quarterbacks in the NFL today that can put a clutch drive together and move the ball down the field when he needs to. The talent he’s surrounded with doesn’t hurt, either.

I can’t remember the last time I was as into a game as much as I was into the Saints against the Vikings. I’ll cop to schadenfreude and admit that I spend the whole game hoping that Brett Favre would blow it for his team and end the season on a downer. To be completely honest, until the final interception, Favre played as well yesterday as he did in any of his career performances that earned him MVP accolades. Had the coin toss gone the other way I have no doubt that the Vikings would have won. That being said, fate is cruel and overtime coin tosses are part of the deal. I sincerely hope that this is the end of Favre’s NFL shenanigans. I have absolutely no problem with older players making a living. If a player in his autumn years can get a team to believe in him and pay him based more on past achievements than future potential then more power to him. What I have issue with is the way in which he manipulated three franchises over the course of the last two seasons to get his way. His behaviour should be the definitive case for a player being compelled to sit out of the league for an entire season after announcing his retirement.

As time goes on I’m seeing more and more first-hand evidence of something I’ve believed for a while now: our population is being dumbed down. I don’t say that to sound like an intellectual snob nor to condemn those younger than myself. If anything, my generation (generation X) is largely culpable for the dumbing down of those 20 years old and younger as we are the educators, parents, and policy makers that have reared them.

I was out shopping for a birthday present for my father this evening and I went into the Best Buy at QEW and Brant Street in Burlington. I wanted to get him a carrying case for his new video camera so I asked a young man who looked to be between 15 and 17 whether they sold cases for my father’s brand of camera. He indicated that they didn’t have brand-specific cases but he directed me over to their rack of generic cases. I found one that I thought was suitable and brought it over to the display of video cameras which included the brand my father owns. I held up the case to the camera and it looked like it would fit but the camera had a bulky security tether attached to the bottom of it and, as such, I couldn’t place it in the case in a way that I was sure it fit properly. I asked the kid if he could remove the tether so that I could try it out in the case and he said something along the lines of, “I can’t. They don’t come off.” I responded by saying, “They must come off” to which he replied, “If I take it off an alarm will sound.” For the next few minutes I tried to convince him that, even if he’s not able to do it, there must be some way that someone in the store could remove it. I asked him to at least try and remove the tether and, after he fumbled for a minute or so with a screwdriver to no effect, I asked him if he could just take a new camera out of the box to which he replied, “I can’t do that. Then we can’t sell it.” At that point I just left.

I am seeing this behaviour more and more among people under 20: an almost complete inability to think laterally outside of specific instructions of little complexity. This sales clerk’s world view was such that the cable on that camera did not come off. Not that they’re “not supposed to come off” or that “I’m not allowed to take them off” or even “I don’t know how to take it off.” In his mind at that moment that tether on that camera was a permanent fixture that existed in perpetuity, period. The idea to ask his manager to take the cable off simply did not enter his head. I don’t even think, in this particular case, that this was due to “teenage laziness.” This kid was articulate, well-spoken, attentive, and well-groomed, not your stereotypical acne-ridden slob just there to collect minimum wage with as little effort as possible. What’s concerning to me is that he was doing his job as instructed with zero deviation from instruction and not because he was consciously adhering to his training but rather because the notion to do otherwise never even occurred to him. This, to me, speaks of a complacent, cowed population and it scares me.

Being a San Diego Chargers fan is becoming painful. After an unimpressive start to the season they racked up eleven regular season wins in a row and earned a bye in the first round of the playoffs only to have their offence completely shit the bed in the second half of yesterday’s playoff game against the New York Jets. I don’t want to write a long and detailed diatribe as, quite frankly, it’s too frustrating to live through again. All aspects of the team failed in the second half except for the defense. Although the scoreboard shows that the defense gave up two touchdowns in the second half I only blame them for one. Any time your quarterback throws an interception in your own red zone you can hardly expect the defense to respond with a full stop. Yes, they gave up the 53-yard run late in the game but, mentally, that team had already checked out by that point.

Nate Kaeding missed two easy field goals. There’s no analysis required here. If he’d made either one of them, all other things being equal, it would have at least given them an opportunity to win on overtime. I’m really surprised that a guy who had made over 60 field goals in a row from within 40 yards missed twice from that range.

The coaching failed, as well, coming out in the second half. New York visibly demonstrated in the opening moments of the second half that they had made adjustments and found a way to win. San Diego looked uninspired and lost.

What was the most frustrating moment for me to watch was Shaun Phillips’ idiotic head butt which netted a 15 yard personal foul penalty. There are very few aspects of a game of football that are completely under your control but a lack of discipline like this is bush-league. This was not a case of two guys not ratcheting down their intensity milliseconds after the whistle, this was a knuckle-head intentionally walking over to his opponent and throwing a head butt long after the play was over. Pointless. Meaningless. Stupid. The San Diego Chargers that walked on the field yesterday in the third quarter were a team that deserved to lose and that’s precisely what they did.

Allfrost and I headed down to Dueling Grounds today for some Monsterpocalypse action. Five people showed up for the event so we did a round-robin that took all afternoon and it was a lot of fun. I tried out Quantum King Kondo for the first time. The Quantum property essentially meant that, when I had more than 5 power dice, the Quantum form’s movement increased from 7 to 9, the boost dice on power attacks increased from 2 to 4, and the hyper cost increased from 2 to 4. Additionally, Quantum King Kondo had a new ability called Temporal Displacement which reduces your power dice by 1 at the beginning of your hyper phase and makes your attacks to super damage for the turn.

First I played against Allfrost using Defender X. I don’t know if I was rusty, not paying attention, or both but I made way too many mistakes and won despite myself. I never was in a position where I could even take advantage of my quantum stats and I wound up starved for power dice most of the game and I don’t think I did a super damage attack more than once, if that. I wound up winning with one form knocked out and only one health left.

Next, I played against Brian using Ultra Zor-Macros. That game went incredibly quick and was unique insomuch as I never spent a single die to move my monster. On his first monster activation, Brian used Underground Network to get his morphers close to King Kondo. Two of them (including Zor-Fractus) got aligned with King Kondo and used Gang & Lightning Attack to do 2 damage and blasted me for one more. He forgot about the Live Wire ability so I was able to bodyslam one morpher into the Electrical Power Plant and do four damage to his alpha (one from the attack, one from the building collision, and then one to each morpher from Live Wire). He then knocked out my alpha and I knocked out his morphers and my quantum got thrown into some buildings & hazards that left me with 1 damage. His Ultra had two health left and it was my unit activation. My only chance was to do two combined brawl attacks with my units but that didn’t pan out and I lost. I then played Tully and Jason and lost and won, respectively, on damage done by the time limit.

By the end of the day, what I think I learned most was that the Quantum form plays dramatically different from the Ultra form (I haven’t tried the Mega form yet). With Ultra King Kondo I’m accustomed to rampaging around the board  and never relying on my units to secure buildings to gain power dice. For Quantum King Kondo to do big damage you need to do multiple monster activations with a consistent supply of power dice. Additionally, the lack of any movement-based ability is a big adjustment from King Kondo’s other forms.