We rounded the year out quite well with movies.  The first movie of the year was on New Years day, and the last was December 30th.

• 01-01 – The Curious case of Benjamin Button
• 01-11 – Yes Man
• 01-24 – Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
• 01-31 – Taken
• 02-14 – Push
• 03-06 – Watchmen (IMAX)
• 03-28 – Monsters V. Aliens (3D)
• 03-31 – Knowing
• 04-18 – Fast & Furious
• 05-03 – X-Men Origins: Wolverine
• 05-09 – Star Trek (IMAX)
• 05-20 – Star Trek
• 05-23 – Terminator: Salvation
• 05-30 – Angels & Demons
• 06-03 – Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
• 06-13 – Taking of Pelham 123
• 06-20 – Up (3D)
• 06-28 – Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (IMAX)
• 07-03 – Public Enemies
• 07-04 – Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
• 08-01 – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (IMAX)
• 08-16 – District 9
• 08-29 – Inglourious Basterds
• 09-05 – Star Trek (IMAX)
• 09-06 – Gamer
• 09-12 – 9
• 09-27 – Surrogates
• 10-10 – Zombieland
• 10-18 – Fame
• 10-31 – Cirque Du Freak: The Vampires Assistant
• 11-13 – 2012
• 11-20 – Law Abiding Citizen
• 12-23 – Avatar (IMAX)
• 12-25 – Sherlock Holmes
• 12-30 – Avatar (IMAX)

…..

Meh, I’ve been sitting on this post for a month.  Always the way it seems.  The movies of 2010 are already rolling in, we’ve already seen 3.  I might talk about things in more detail later.

His Majesty’s Dragon

The first is perhaps a great failing of the genre it is in. This is an alternative history novel. Set in the Napoleonic Wars of the early 1800s the main characters are members of Aerial Corps who fly Dragons. Dragons however are not a new introduction to this world. There are references in the novel going back to the times of the Crusades. The problem is, despite 600 years of human interaction with intelligent dragons we’re exactly where we would be without them. Napoleon has seized the throne of France and has waged is war against Britain and most of the rest of Europe. A key off stage event is even the Battle of Trafalgar, though Admiral Nelson does manage to survive this one. Too much is status quo, as if except for the existence of dragons, the divergence doesn’t start until the first page of the book. Now yes if you subscribe to the Multiverse theory, which would make this world possible in the first place, the possibility does exist for a world exactly like ours with dragons that haven’t influenced anything. But to me some universes are more likely than others.

My second problem with the book seems small, but to me is indicative of lack of thought. In the climatic battle at the end of the novel a French dragon has been attacked by a British acid spitter. The acid is all over the head of the dragon, and he is in great pain. The acid is eating into him and it is only a matter of time before it eats through to his brain. The crew abandons “ship” to nearby dragons. The captain, in an act of mercy, shoots the dragon in the head to save it a slow death, but now plummets down to the ocean with his beast.

As yes, a good captain goes down with his ship, and by showing his dragon mercy he denied himself the option of jumping to another dragon. Bullshit. I don’t doubt that people are incapable of mercy or sacrifice, and the relationships that exist between the dragons and their captains in this book are capable of making that sacrifice realistic. The problem I have is while the mercy was warranted, the sacrifice was completely unnecessary. The man should have been wearing a parachute, but then nobody is.

The book is set in 1805, and the invention of the parachute is credited at 1793 even though sketches and rough prototypes go back hundreds of years. While the invention of the backpack style parachute does not occur until 1913, Novik already shows dragon related acceleration of technology in the form of the carabiner which was not invented until 1915. The men and women of the Aerial Corps are regarded as a valuable resource, one would think that more effort would be put into protecting them from mishap.

In all not a horrid novel, but enough problems to keep me from continuing to read the series. Rating: 2.5/5

The day started of with the reissue of and old favorite and classic, Talisman. Unfortunately it hasn’t held up to today’s standard of games. This is the 4th edition, and I had just gotten into gaming when the 3rd edition was released. I was introduced to it at a con in Blacksburg, VA called TechniCon (still going strong to this day). This was back in the thick of my role playing and CCG days, and a fantasy themed board game fit right in for me. The miniatures game it that extra draw. They had the game set up on a constant “perpetual” game. People would come, people would go, I don’t think the game ever actually finished but you got a taste of what it was like. I had to hunt it down, and despite the hefty price tag which ate into other gaming budgets considerably, and pick it up. But on to current day.

So four of us (Steven, Josh, Alec, and I) sit down to play, when Jim barges in sits down at the end of the table (clearly in the way of the aisle) and makes us a game of five. We proceed with role selection, a brief overview of the rules since all of us have played some incarnation of the game before and dig right in. It’s a merry time of roll, move and crack a joke. The Sondheim references flow freely. As we start to cross the hour mark though, the jokes are all that is keeping us going. We keep going though, brave adventurers that we are, and break into the inner region, slowly making our way to the inner regions. We eventually realize that we’ve make our transitions between regions a little more complicated than needed, but despite that we can’t seem to get past the first space of the center region, frustration and crankiness start to set in as we cross the 3 hour mark. Josh finally cracks space 2 of the center region with his handy gnome, and works his way to the Crown of Command. Despite protests from Jim who feels he’s right behind him, we decide to use the sudden death finish and end the game when Josh actually obtains the crown.

Alec and Jim wandered off and the three of us (Steven, Josh and I) were joined by David for the “lighter” fare of Take it to the Limit. Eagles jokes were quickly dispensed and Josh and Stephen proceeded to explain the game. I say “lighter” only in reference to complexity and length, because this can be quite the brain burner. Much cursing and begging for specific tiles was had, But Josh’s 80 point hub on the board crushed us all. With 449 points I was a distant second with 315 points and Steven and David were in the low 200s.

After a little bit of wandering I settled down with David, Ken and Brad for a game of Alchemist. This is another “light” game that is quick, but a little thinky. The basics of the game are start out with a random set of cubes and to create recipes using player generated patterns of up 3 colors to return 2 cube of other color. When you create these recipes you assign them a point value and score it. Then you opponents are free to copy your recipes and score the same points while providing you with a cube from the recipe. The final goal is to have the fewest cubes in you secret color when the game ends.

We started out the game tentatively, David had played earlier in the day and gave us a few pointers on how to choose scoring vs. recipe complexity, and we set to it. It’s amazing how often during the game that all it seems like you can do is either take cubes or copy your own recipes, which your not allowed to do. Another common move was right after you picked a cube you needed from the general supply, the person after you would copy your recipe and hand you the same color. So despite having 3 of the 10 recipes on the board I constantly trailed the scoring. By the time the game was coming to an end Brad and Ken were well ahead of David and I. I had the option of ending the game during one of my turns, but pushed it onward for one more round, but still proved futile as Brad already well into the lead won the bonus for fewest of his color.

A little more wandering brought me into competition with Kenny, Vanessa and Mike for a game of Tongiaki. I’ve played this a few times before, and I think it’s slowly waning in likability. Overall I think while you can play tactically well on your turn, the dynamics of the game leave little room for an overall strategy. Vanessa was new to the game, so after a quick rundown of the rules (and that’s all it takes) we got started. Expansion went well in the first several turns, with very little water coming out, and the sea times that did were favorable. Mike quickly found himself alone on Hawaii but felt that his position was safe from incursion. Many tiles later with much of the back and forth the game is good for I found myself with a cascade that quickly encroached on Mikes monopoly of Hawaii, but since he had neglected to make it a “royal” island… As the game came to a conclusion and we tallied up the points, noone was quite sure where they stood. It turned out to be quite a tight game, Vanessa winning with 26 points and Kenny trailing with 21.

By this time of the day most of the food was gone and many people were making runs to local establishments for a “dinner” fix, so lighter games were in order. So six of us sat down to play Space Beans. This game is a simplification of Bohnanza. We started well enough, but many of us were scoring for zero points. The game progressed well enough but by the time Josh had made the required 30 points, I had only managed to score 4. I don’t think I will be playing with that many people again. My playing of Space Beans with only 4 people was a more balanced game.

I then progressed onto meaty favorites. First up was Torres, my #4 all time fave. Floyd had been itching to play, and we recruited Marc as a third. After a run through of the rules with many examples we commenced to building. Marc had the privlige of placing the king in the first round, and I ended up on the opposite end of the board from him. Giving up on that bonus for at least the first round I proceeded to build my castles away from Marc and Floyd. This proceeded well, but Floyd was managing to keep another castle in parity with my main castle, and getting just a little higher. This process continued through the succeeding rounds, while being kept away from the kings bonus due to size of the castle that it was place on. In the end that proved to be my undoing as I lost to Floyd by a margin of only 8 points.

Last for the night, though definitely not least, was my #1 game of all time Robo Rally. Lisa, David and Linsey joined me in mechanical robot mayhem. Choosing a simple two board four flag run, we set off quickly after a rules lesson for Linsey. The beginning of the game proceeded fairly smoothly, most of us going our separate ways towards the first flag. Lisa even managed to proceed without killing herself. Things started to get ugly as we converged on the first flag however, David and I swapped lasers, and Lisa and Linsey got in each others way. A few belts and gears were incorrectly accounted for, and death and destruction ensued. Lisney broke out into the lead for flag 2 with David and I not too far behind her. Disaster struck for Linsey however as she was heading back to flag 3 and I pushed her right off the board. All and all though, my efforts were not good enough as Linsey managed to keep the lead and tag the 4th flag.

It was a good day of gaming, win or lose.

Been playing a lot of Guitar Hero. Finished Hinterland (4/5) and am on to the next Honor Harrington novel. Saw Sweeny Todd (3/5), and played quite a few games at Game Day.

I’ll try and expound on these over the next few days.