Category: Games

Games

The 2017 College League Blades of Steel Tournament – Round Two

Posted on By Wil

It was another 20ish minutes of furious action, here in Konami Arena, as the Los Angeleses Hockey Guys from Los Angeles took on The Team from Chicago in the second round of the College League Tournament.

Fresh off a commanding victory in the first round, Los Angeles controlled much of the first period, getting several scoring opportunities from All The Guys, including two breakaways that even a monkey could have scored so what the hell, man. But it was The Chicagos who scored first, halfway into the first period when That Player Guy intercepted a pass in the neutral zone and scored from the blue line.

The Los Angeleses tied the score seconds later, when The Faceoff Guy won the draw, skated back around The Defence Guy, and then fired a wrist shot from the faceoff circle that beat the Chicago goalie on the far side.

The ensuing celebration dance was exceptionally funky, even by tournament standards.

The Chicago scored near the end of the period, after That Chicago Guy knocked down The Los Angeles Guy, and fired a rocket that the goalie totally saved, but whatever I guess it went in. Then, with just seconds left in the first, Los Angeles scored again off the faceoff, as time expired in the period.

The second period got off to an exciting start, with an early penalty shot for The Los Angeleses. Possibly remembering his failure to score in the game against the New Yorks, Los Angeles Left Winger The Same Guy, scored over the Chicago goalie’s glove side, to give his team the lead.

 

Less than one minute later, Chicago tied the game again, when the Los Angeles Guy couldn’t get the goddamn puck behind his own net for some reason, even though the goalie should have been able to pick it up and pass it to him, leading to the Chicago guy passing to the other guy who passed to the other guy who passed to one more guy for a quick shot that the goalie never saw because his entire team was trying to figure out where the hell the puck was. Los Angeles fought back — literally — but didn’t score on any of their power plays, allowing Chicago to take the lead back with a goal that the Los Angeles goalie was pretty sure he had, because the arrow was next to the post and he had position so he should have made the save, but collision detection wasn’t as precise in the 80s as it is now I guess.

Los Angeles was able to tie with a pair of unanswered goals, including a buzzer-beating slapshot from the red line that was pretty awesome.  

Both teams continued their fast and aggressive play to start the third period. That Guy from Los Angeles had several great opportunities to score, but couldn’t get the goddamn aiming arrow to move for some reason. This Dumb Guy from Chicago picked up one of That Guy’s rebounds, and skated around the entire Los Angeles team, sneaking the puck past the goalie, who was out of position.

Los Angeles answered quickly, again scoring off the faceoff from just inside the blue line with a gorgeous backhander that snuck between the Chicago goalie and the near post. 

The score remained tied until 6:11 remained in the period. Chicago’s Exhibition Season MVP, That Guy There, knocked My Guy from Los Angeles off the puck at center ice, and skated in deep. He shot from the slot, and the Los Angeles goalie made a huge save, but couldn’t control the rebound. That Guy There picked it up, skated all the way back out of the zone, and fired a long shot from just outside the blue line. The Los Angeles goalie apparently never had a chance to stop the shot, which went right past him in the center of the net, where he thought he was positioned to make the save. Chicago took the lead with time running out, and Los Angeles called a time out.

 

Energy in the arena was at a fever pitch. Something that sounded like a whistle joined some static that could be the cheering of the crowd, as the arena organist played a royalty-free, public domain chiptune. The Los Angeleses got ready for the face off, moving a couple of their guys around just before the referee announced “FACE OFF!” The Center Guy for Los Angeles won the puck, and skated back toward his own zone, before passing it at his own blue line to his goalie for some reason, even though he had a guy wide open at center ice. The Chicago Guy rushed toward the next, and fell down in the goal crease, allowing the goalie to pass it up ice. Two quick passes from One Guy to Another Guy Who Looks Just LIke Him got the puck into the Chicago zone, where This Guy fired a shot from the near boards that sailed past the goalie, to tie the score with just two minutes left.

With the score tied at 8, the game went to a shootout.

Los Angeles sent This Guy in the Purple Pants to the line, and he scored on the glove side. Then Chicago scored down low to tie, past a goalie who knew that’s where the shot was headed, but slid to the side anyway for some reason.

With the game on the line, Chicago’s own This Fucking Guy shot the puck to the stick side. The Los Angeles goalie saw it all the way, and moved to the side to stop it, but then the puck literally went right through him for some reason, and the Chicago Chicagos defeated The Los Angeles Los Angeleses by a final score of 3-2 in the bullshit shootout.

In his post-game press conference, the Los Angeles coach expressed frustration with his team. “We tell them to ‘make the pass, make the pass,’ but some of them are still doing ‘with the pass, with the pass’. That can get the team out of sync, and in a competitive league like this one, every mistake is going to hurt you.” Asked if he’ll be back for another tournament, the coach said, “Oh yeah. After a loss like this, you want to just throw up your hands and go play Zelda or maybe RC Pro-Am or something, but you always end up coming back for another game. I mean, let’s be honest, an entire tournament here takes less time than one game in Baseball, and we have much better graphics.”

The Chicago players from Chicago were jubilant after the game, posing for pictures and shaking their sticks in the air. They will go on to face the winner of the Edmonton / Vancouver game for the championship that nobody cares about, because the Los Angeleses are out of the tournament.

Games

The 2017 College League Blades of Steel Tournament – Round One

Posted on By Wil

It was an exciting afternoon, here at Konami Arena, as the Los Angeles … um … Los Angeleses looked to win their first championship of the year, opening the tournament against the New York … New Yorks.

The first period was scoreless until that one guy took a pass from the other guy and got the puck past the New York goalie, putting Los Angeles on the board. The period would end with Los Angeles leading 2-0.

The Los Angeleses scored twice in the second, taking a commanding lead, though The One Guy for Los Angeles didn’t score on his penalty shot, even though he “totally fucking should have that was bullshit what the fuck.” At the end of two periods, the score was New York 1, Los Angeles 4. The New Yorks cut the lead to 2, when they scored on the powerplay early in the third period. The goal was credited to That Other Guy who had the puck at center ice and somehow scored from the red line, even though the Los Angeleses goalie was totally over the arrow, and who even scores from center ice, anyway?

The Los Angeleses were held to a single goal in the third, which came from breakout rookie That Guy There, and the New Yorks got close with a goal scored on the power play, but the Los Angeles Los Angeleses held on to win the game, by a score of 5-3. This Guy Here had two goals and two assists, to earn the first star of the game.

After the game, The Guy from Los Angeles told reporters, “I was just trying to get the puck into the net, and when I didn’t have the puck, crash into the New York guy enough to knock him down, or maybe start a fight. Usually it’s the Other Guy, or That One Other Guy who does the fights, but when your team tells you to fight, you drop the gloves and try to knock the other guy down before he puts you into the penalty box.”

New York goalie, The Goalie, said that he knew the Los Angeles guy would shoot the penalty shot right into him, so “I just stood up like an idiot and made the save because whatever.” New York’s enforcer, that guy there, said that he wouldn’t do anything differently. “I just try to make the pass, make the pass, and fight,” he told reporters.

Up next for the Los Angeleses is The Chicago, who defeated the Torontos in their first round matchup.

 

 

 

Games

Because it’s a FAQ: 2-Player Tabletop Games

Posted on By Wil

A few times a week, I am asked by couples to recommend some two player Tabletop games for them to play. This is a very short, totally non-exhaustive list of (mostly lighter) games that I love to play with Anne, as well as some other games that aren’t her jam, but are still pretty great.

Travel Blokus

The idea is to take pieces that are basically Tetris shaped, and lay them down on a board, following some simple placement rules. The objective is to use up all of your pieces, or have fewer pieces left than anyone else when you run out of places to put them. It’s super simple to teach and learn, and way more difficult to master than you would expect. There’s a regular Blokus that’s for up to four players, and a version that uses triangles. This travel version is perfect for, well, traveling, and also is specifically designed for two players.

Jaipur

Jaipur is a very simple set collecting card game for two players. It’s portable, and has great replay value because it allows a lot of different strategies to be explored and utilized.

Small World

You may have seen us play Small World on Tabletop in the first season. It’s sort of like Risk, but more fun. It’s an area control game, and each player has a fantasy race + special ability combo that changes every game, or multiple times during the game, if they choose. One of the great things about Small World is that it comes with multiple maps in the box, and each map is designed for a different number of players, including a two-player map.

Pandemic

Pretty much any cooperative game will work for two players, or even as a solo game, but I think Pandemic is the best one for couples because it’s so freaking intense. You feel like you’re losing from the first turn, and that’s half the fun of the game. I’m not saying that it lends itself to strip variants, but I’m not not saying that. I should also mention that Pandemic Legacy is fantastic for two players, especially if you want to have the experience of watching a season of a TV show together, only you’re playing it and everyone on Earth is going to die if you fail.

Sorry!

Yes, Sorry! from Milton Bradley. This is the go-to game for Anne and me, because I hate Scrabble. This game is almost entirely random, but there is some strategy if you really want to go that route. It’s great for two players, especially if you want to have a drink or eleven while you play.

Ticket To Ride: Switzerland

Ticket To Ride is a great infection vector for making new gamers, and this expansion is specifically designed for 2 or 3 players. You can technically play any of the TTR games with 2 players, but you run into the problems a large map presents, which (in my opinion) just make the game longer and less fun. So this particular map works well for 2 players, and works with either the original Ticket To Ride or Europe base sets.

Set and Iota

Both are little card games that feature pattern matching and team work. Iota is more competitive, and plays like Set in reverse.

Takenoko

One of my favorite Tabletop games of all time, Takenoko is high variance when you play it with 4 players, but intensely strategic when you play it heads up.

Finally, there is also Magic: The Gathering (duh) and my friend Chris Kluwe’s upcoming Twilight of the Gods LCG. If you want something that’s intense and takes hours and hours to play, Twilight Struggle gets high marks from my friends who play it.

I’m sure there are a lot of other games (tell me in a comment, if you want) that work well for two players, but this is what I can come up with quickly off the top of my head, and I have 23 pages of dialog to prepare for a voice session tomorrow so I kinda have to get back to work.

Play more (two-player) games!!

Edit to add: HIVE! This was mentioned in comments (with a lot of other games that look really fun, but haven’t been played by me) and I need to add it. Hive is amazing. It’s everything you love about Chess and Othello and Go, with none of the things that make those games so difficult for new players. Rich Sommer introduced me to this game one night at a little coffee and pie place in North Hollywood, and what we thought would be a quick cup of coffee turned into like four hours of us playing Hive over and over and over. It’s really awesome. Get the pocket edition, because it’s portable and you lose nothing in the translation.

 

blog

it’s a secret to everybody

Posted on By Wil

I’ve never been someone who goes to sleep early, and I only wake up early when I have to, but I had a 7:30am call the next day, and I was in a lot of scenes, so I’d closed my bedroom door and turned off the lights at the relatively early hour of 10pm. I sighed, reached up to the shelf above my bed, and pressed play on my CD player. I put my head on on the pillow and stared at the ceiling. I listened to the disc spin up, and then the mournful guitar that opens the second disc of The Wall began to play.

Hey you… out there in the cold getting lonely getting old can you feel me?

Hey you… Standing in the aisles with itchy feet and fading smiles can you feel me?

Hey you… Don’t help them to bury the light. Don’t give in without a fight.

Before I realized what was happening, tears began to run out of the corners of my eyes. I was so lonely, so sad, so frustrated and so unhappy. I imagined myself like Pink, in The Wall; an artist who felt trapped by success he wasn’t ready for, and the expectations of everyone around him to maintain and expand it.

It wasn’t nearly as bad as the complete breakdown Pink has, of course, but I was a hormonal teenager. I was a dramatic artiste, and until a few hours earlier I had been staying at a beach house with my best friend and his family, in a house full of the girls from his mom’s drill team, including the girl I liked. Oh, she didn’t like me back, and was was never going to like me back — she was cool and confident, and I was so uncomfortable in my own skin, I was a total weirdo even when I was trying hard not to be — but I could dream that someday I would graduate from Duckie to Blaine.

I laid there in my bed, listening to Pink Floyd, and I cried. I cried because I was lonely. I cried because I was frustrated. I cried because I was in almost everything on the call sheet for the next day, but I didn’t so much more than say “Aye, sir,” and that was all I’d been doing for what felt like a long time. I cried because, though I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it at the time, I felt like I was having my childhood taken away from me.

I let myself feel sad. I let myself miss my friends. I let myself wallow in the unrequited love that is so outsized when you’re a teenager. I stared at the ceiling until the CD was finished, and then I listened to it again, finally falling asleep during the second time through, sometime before Comfortably Numb.

So, obviously, I got better.

And I haven’t thought about that night, late in the summer of 1987, in over twenty-five years, but earlier this afternoon, it came back to me as clear and viscerally as if it had just happened. I’ve been playing classic NES games on my RetroPie, and 1987 was the summer that we were obsessed with The Legend of Zelda. We played a lot of Blades of Steel, Double Dribble, and Lifeforce, but we were obsessed with Zelda. In those days, we discovered secrets in the game by hearing them repeated from kids who knew a kid who knew a kid who went to camp with a kid. We pooled our money and bought big strategy guides that we couldn’t really afford, even though it felt like cheating, because that was the only way to get help when we were stuck. We made maps on graph paper, and kept notes about the different weapons, their damage against different enemies, and all the rumours we’d heard about secret levels and hidden dungeons. That was the summer we stayed up all night more than once, listening to Depeche Mode, Van Halen, New Order, and The Smiths while we ate enough junk food and drank enough Jolt cola to kill a muggle. That was the summer that I started to figure out who I was, and began figuring out who I wanted to be, and on this particular night that I’m remembering right now, I wanted to be with my friends.

Playing these old games has been like unwrapping memories, gifts I’d hidden for myself and forgotten about, and just accidentally knocked off a shelf. When I remembered how to beat King Hippo in Punch Out, though I hadn’t thought about that game in decades, and had completely forgotten that he ever existed, I felt like I’d punched a hole through time and watched myself, thirty years ago, doing it for the first time. The same thing happened when my hands took over and made me a spectator to a game of Super Mario Bros. that was played almost entirely by memory.

I have my system set up on the floor in my office right now, because I haven’t figured out where my RetroPie can live permanently, and my 44 year-old hips can’t handle sitting on the rug like their 14 year-old version could (though my 44 year-old self has a 100% better chance of actually kissing a girl before the end of the day than my 14 year-old self ever did) but I’ve spent hours there over the last few days, revisiting these games I loved when I was a kid, and letting the memories they reveal wash over me.

Building and updating and configuring and running this RetroPie (which is currently in a tiny, NES case that I made on my 3D printer) was a fun and rewarding experience, but the real joy that I get from Retrogaming isn’t from playing games from my youth, in some cases for the very first time. The real joy — in fact, the real magic — is when the animated goal celebration in Blades of Steel unlocks the memory of my best friend, Ryan, scoring against me in a two-player game to tie the score, standing up and mimicking the 8-bit characters while saying, “He who dances last, dances funkiest!” It’s when I instinctively remember how to get to the graveyard in Zelda, hearing the music it plays when I get there, and then getting knocked over by a sad memory like the one I wrote at the beginning of this post. These memories are priceless to me, and Retrogaming is not just the key that unlocks the chest where they’re stored, it’s the treasure map I use to find it. I feel like there is power in these memories, though I don’t know precisely what that power is, or how to use it.

I guess I’ll just have to keep playing until I figure it out.

blog

“In time, a new hope will emerge.”

Posted on By Wil

We dropped out of hyperspace somewhere near the edge of the outer rim. I was looking at the scanner, so I was the first to see the freighter. It was inside the Ghost Nebula, and appeared to be disabled.

The comm crackled to life. Between bursts of static, we heard “…distress … oxygen … please help…” 

Our mechanic wanted to help the ship. I was convinced it was a trap. Before we could come to blows about it, the captain ordered me to run another scan, which confirmed that the ship was, indeed, venting oxygen into space.

“I’m a droid,” I reminded them, “I don’t care about oxygen the way you meat sacks do. Pull up close to the ship and I’ll go investigate.”

Cap pulled us up alongside the freighter. We attempted to raise them on the comm, but they were silent. A quick scan showed weak life signs. “If anyone is alive in there, they won’t be much longer,” the medic said. The captain decided that we’d connect our airlocks, so we could evac the survivors more quickly. I volunteered to go first into the ship. I’m big, I don’t need to breathe, and I’m built to kill, so if it was a trap, I wanted to be first in, to protect my crewmates.

The airlock attached and I cycled through. The ship was dark inside, except for flickering lights.

“IG, what do you see?” The captain asked me.

“It looks empty, at least on this deck,” I replied. 

“What’s the oh-two situation?”

“Irrelevant to my existence,” I said. I sometimes make jokes. I’m not very good at it and my timing is usually bad, they tell me.

“Just check the level, Iggy,” he said. That’s not my name. My designation is IG-426. They call me Iggy. Biologicals are curious that way.

I looked at a scanner. “It’s … one hundred percent. The ship is perfectly pressurized,” I said. Before the captain could reply, a group of humanoids revealed themselves, blasters drawn.

In under a second, I scanned them all and identified their leader. In the next second, I raised my disruptor rifle. Before the third second had ticked by, I fired.

+++

Last night, I started a Star Wars RPG campaign with some friends. We are playing as a small rebel cell, five years before the events of Rogue One. My character is a reprogrammed imperial assassin droid (yes, because I think K-2SO is cool) who was given to this cell by a mysterious Rebel agent, which allowed me to drop into the campaign three sessions after it began, and fits into my real life situation of knowing one of the players very well, and being barely acquainted (until now) with the rest of the players.

I haven’t been a PC in a campaign in years, and I’ve never played a Star Wars RPG until now, and I’m already looking forward to playing next week, because it was so much fun. We’re using the Edge of the Empire and Age of Rebellion rule books. Our GM has us focused on narrative, instead of tactical minis combat, which is my favorite way to play any RPG, because it’s about the collaborative storytelling experience, rather than the boardgame experience.

It’s a really fun system, and there’s a ton of material that I’m looking forward to reading and incorporating into my character. I shouldn’t like the primary dice mechanic, because it requires proprietary dice, but it’s so well-designed, I don’t mind. Check it out:

The core mechanic of the Age of Rebellion is the skill check. At times, the GM will have the characters roll pools of dice to determine whether their actions succeed or fail. Whenever you roll a skill check, you compare a pool of “positive dice” and their results against the results of a pool of “negative dice.” Positive dice help your character accomplish a task or achieve beneficial side effects. These dice may reflect his innate talents or abilities, special training, superior resources, or other advantages that he can apply to the specific task. Negative dice represent the forces that would hinder or disrupt him, such as the inherent difficulty of the task, obstacles, additional risks, or another character’s efforts to thwart the task.

If your character’s successes () outnumber his failures (), the action succeeds. However, the situations of Age of Rebellion are rarely simple, and the game’s custom dice do more than determine whether an action succeeds or fails. Even as the dice indicate whether an action succeeds or fails, they determine if the character gains any Advantage () or suffers any Threat () as the result of the attempt. The sheer number of possibilities provides opportunities to narrate truly memorable action sequences and scenes. Nearly anything can happen in the heat of the moment; even a single shot fired at an Imperial Star Destroyer might hit some critical component that results in its destruction. Players and GMs alike are encouraged to take these opportunities to think about how the symbols can help move the story along and add details and special effects that create action-packed sessions.

Even for someone like me, who has the legendary ability to roll dice in a statistically improbable and terrible way, the dice don’t get in the way of the fun, and instead of simply deciding if you succeed or fail, they sort of land you on a spot that’s in a spectrum between total success and rolling two 19s in a row doesn’t get you out of the acid pit for some reason not that I’m saying Chris Perkins deliberately murdered Aeofel because he is a monster.

cough

I really owe a lot to Rogue One, because it reawakened a love of Star Wars that I’d forgotten I had, after the disappointment from the prequels and the cluttered mess of the EU that never managed to land on me in a meaningful way. But after seeing Rogue One twice, The Force Awakens twice, and playing in this game last night, I have this desire to not just watch the original Star Wars films again (get the despecialized editions if you can because they are amazing), but to also dig into Rebels.