June 2004 Archives

Here's a couple shots from this year's event.

Our Doomtown banner, still hanging proud over the World Championships. This is its second year in service. Saturday morning, three of our group participated in a Scrabble tournament. Here, Chris watchs Mike play Scott, while Shannon has her match two games up. Mike ended up doing really well, beating one Scrabble pro and losing to another in the finals. He contested the word "vino." I hate Scrabble.

Here's me and Rhonda facing off against game designer Reiner Knizia at Lord of the Rings. It was a pleasure to lose; he was a courteous Sauron. Meanwhile, back in the exhibit hall, random folks enjoy a life-sized Icehouse game at the Looney Labs booth.

Batman and Spider-Man lurk over the Upper Deck booth, where we demoed the Marvel Vs. game. Badass! On the right is a long shot of the WizKids area, during one of the few times the place wasn't encircled with conventioneers standing in line to buy the rare Galactus HeroClix figure.

And here's me with my hero.

You can't count ten people out here without hitting a Homestar t-shirt.

Our Saturday had some minor rough spots... barely anyone showed for Rhonda's Apples to Apples game, but she played anyway. And we all figured our big Lord of the Rings game was cancelled when we went to the event location and no one was there. Turns out things were moved, and the organizers did eventually make a convention-wide announcement 20 minutes later.

The first thing Reiner Knizia did was refund our event fee, because he personally doesn't feel people should have to pay to play games with him. Since he role in our game was to play Sauron and beat on our poor hobbits, that was probably his last gentlemanly act! I've been in awe of this board game since we bought it, so playing against the designer was very cool. Since time was limited, he requested that the game would end whenever any hobbit dies... so the pressure was on.

We burned through a couple key abilities rather early on, almost losing the Ring to the Black Rider in Moria (Sauron had a great shuffle and had all of his 4s and 5s right at the start.) We did get all the way to Shelob's Lair, with no sundial (bad) endings on any of the previous boards. What did the group in was that terrible event where each hobbit has to pay 3 shields, 1 wild, or die. Two of us couldn't do it. I had the Red Arrow, so I could have fetched Gollum to save one hobbit, but we had no means to save the other one.

So we can take some comfort in the fact that it was the game board itself that killed us, not a direct assault by Mr. Sauron. And he played hard too... making full use of the Nazgul at his disposal, something I usually forget to do when I play Sauron.

But board or no, that's a win for Sauron. There were prizes for the three least-corrupted hobbits anyway, whcih turned out to be entirely our group: me, Rhonda and Scott (who subbed in for a Scrabble-bound Mike), so all of us walked away with something. I was first place (least corrupted)... and given that my chosen hobbit was Fatty, that seemed book-appropriate.

More gaming back in the hotel room; Mike and Scott did some serious Doomtown deckbuilding while the rest of us hit the Gamecube or took power naps. Later that night, I jumped into the Spycraft rulebook, which made a hell of a lot more sense than the demo.

Sunday morning, we rushed to the vendor hall for the last hurrah... we had a spectacular demo of the new Marvel Vs. card game, and I can safely say that the game does not suck. In fact, I'm going to call it the best demo we've ever had. (Not the best game, although it was good, just had a great demo.) Lots of demo lackeys are just hired monkeys, especially at the larger companies where they simply need warm bodies to take care of everything. The Marvel demo was a standout. He knew the game, he knew the cards, he knew the abilities. I will buy more cards because of that demo.

Our last act was to hit the free prize game at the Wizards compound, where Rhonda won six packs of Neopets boosters and I won some RPG crap. Good thing we're married.

Final tallies:

Demoed: Neopets, Magic, Pokemon, Fish Eat Fish, Spycraft, Marvel Vs., Haunting House. (That's just Rhonda and/or myself, the rest of the teen gang did plenty others.)

Bought (again, just us):
Zombies 4, Battle of the Bands Encore Edition, Spycraft starter + 2 boosters, Early American Chrononauts, Looney Labs plush flower, six packs of Pirates of the Spanish Main, Deadlands Aces & Eights music CD, some random dice.

Free:
Lord of the Rings fancy backgammon set, box of LOTR Reflections boosters, two Spycraft starter decks, Spycraft t-shirt, two Pokemon Hidden Legends boosters, Marvel Vs t-shirt, DC Vs Bane promo, five Neopets promos, Neopets pin, six Neopets boosters, Chrononauts promos (Really Fast Time Machine and Carl Sagan's Joint), Wizards logo lanyard, Pokemon mousepad, Pokemon mini-binder, Pokemon AA batteries (!), Pirates promo ship, Cyberpunk booster, Mighty Beanz sample card pack, 30th anniversary Origins d6, Killer Bunnies promo, Magic fridge magnet, Magic pin, Dork Tower comics... and a ton of miscellanous promos, posters, pens, one-sheets and other marketing materials.

And the next you're at the Columbus Convention Center, make sure to hit the Krema Nut Company down by the indoor food court for a spicy PB&J. Holy frock.

Remember how I said my Collegium deck was gimmicky? Well, I went 2-3 in the five Swiss rounds. This deck really needs a couple unmolested days to get going, and an aggressive tournament just isn't the place to expect that.

My first two losses were against Dixie decks fielding Ezzie, but the second guy out-and-out cheated on me right from the start. He waited until he saw my starting dudes and then quick fished out Ezzie as a starter. I let it go, but then he did the same trick in a game against Shannon. Asshole. Plus, he smelled so bad that I thought it might have been part of his strategy, because I had trouble concentrating on anything but his overpowering exhalations. If he shows up next year, we're considering refusing to play him. Happily, he did not win the whole enchilada.

Neither did any of us, Mike went 3-2, Shannon went 2-3, and Scott went 1-4. On the whole, we all had some great matches.

Since the Doomtown tourney goes all day, I did not do much else. Spent some brief time in the vendor hall... demoed Spycraft, which I like on general principle despite the demo being really opaque. I will buy some when it hits, if only to make sense of what I already know.

Did an exceptional amount of multiplayer Nintendo back in the room... rousing games of Pac-Man Vs. and WarioWare Party Games among them. Wario's Listen to the Doctor mode is priceless.

Scott and Shannon have picked up some cool-looking edutainment-style games, and Chris seems to have completely internalized Pirates of the Spanish Main already. Mike will likely pick up LOTR Confrontation... and Rhonda and I are uncharactistically drifting. Uncharacteristically for me anyway. Really haven't bought much myself yet, aside from EAC and some Pirates packs. I hope to change that tomorrow.

So the big bad news is that the convention center may have locked up their wireless network. The iBook definitely saw a network, but it would not hold a connection for more than a second.

Even though we all got here Wednesday, Thursday was the first actual con time. Mike and Scott talked me into entering the Doomtown sealed deck tournament... and I have to say that whole sealed deck bit was more fun than the event itself. Sealed deck = everyone is assigned a random starter, then everybody gets 1 booster, of which you take one card and pass the rest to the next guy. Etc. I pulled the Stoker's Alliance outfit, and Mike suggested I start with the Exp 2 Black Jack. The plan did not work, and I was knocked out right away. It was a risk, but I had hoped I had built the rest to work around that, but nothing fell as expected.

For this year's tournaments, Rhonda and I made two new Doomtown cards... a Bounty Hunter token dude and a new home for the Lost Angels (with text designed by the guy who won this year's tourney at Gen Con SoCal.) The Bounty Hunter is kind of pointless, but without being able to duplicate the exact feel of a Doomtown card, we're left with producing card types that don't get shuffled: tokens and homes. The Lost Angels home is crazy ass powerful and I'll be surprised if it doesn't get altered by the next tournament. I'll have PDFs of both cards here at fourhman.com soon.

As the reigning Doomtown World Champ, Mike actually signed an autograph for some awestruck young player. On one of the Bounty Hunter cards.

The vendor hall was the usual splendor... we bought Early American Chrononauts and some Pirates of the Spanish Main. Demoed Neopets for some promo cards, picked up some great Pokemon swag. Demoed a new tile-based game called The Haunting House (which is made by the Zombies! folks), but we'll probably pass on it in favor of the new Zombies! expansion that adds in 100 zombie dogs.

Tomorrow is the big Doomtown World Championships, which will likely run so long that I'm already annoyed by it. It goes five Swiss rounds... which is probably overkill by this point, given that we'll have 30 players total if we're lucky. This year I'm setting aside my usual Whateley deck in favor of a very gimmicky Collegium deck. Very very gimmicky, but I really like playing it.

Would you believe that Dave & Buster's has no vegetarian options, aside from ths usual boring house salad? Not even the gestural garden burger like every other Ugly Prop Franchise Restaurant out there. Plus, we had more fun playing four-person Four Swords on the Gamecube in the hotel room than we ever would have playing $2.00 games of South Park pinball at D&B's. The boycott begins now.

Next week we'll be at Origins, so I'll be blogging from the road again... given the hiptop holds up and/or the convention center has that surprise wireless network up again. So for now it's time to review some of the games I'm hoping to see at this year's event.

AEG has a promising-looking card game coming out, based on their Spycraft RPG stuff. Last year we demoed their Initial D card game, and it did not stick to the roof of our brain (it's based on the manga about a race car-driving tofu delivery boy, and Rhonda thought the game needed less race cars and more tofu.) They have the Spycraft rulebook online already, and it reminds me - in general design terms - of my faves Doomtown and 7th Sea. To wit, there's multiple factions you can play, each with individualized personality cards, and an overarching continuing storyline. I seem to like that sort of thing, so if the game itself can stand up, I could be in for keeps.

Fantasy Flight Games is continuing to milk their Lord of the Rings license with another board game, The War of the Ring. This one sounds sort of like Risk. Now, I already have LOTR Risk... but I think I would like it better if the game was more LOTR and less Risk, and I suspect War of the Ring might deliver that. This is the same company that handles the amazing Reinier Knizia Lord of the Rings cooperative board game, so I feel I can trust them. Aside: Rhonda, Mike and I have signed up to play that game against the designer, Mr. Knizia himself! I have no idea what to expect, but it could be very, very brief. At the least, I hope we last into Moria.

Third World Games has a second edition of Battle of the Bands, which I will happily snag... and then pawn off my original edition on some lucky friend or family member. Their site also shows two new Portable Adventures sets - one sci-fi, one Austin Powersesque - but it says Winter '04, so they may not be available this Origins.

WizKids is continuing their domination of the collectible figure type games with Pirates of the Spanish Main... which centers around little pirate ships you build yourself out of die cut pieces of cardstock. I'm fascinated by this, and even if the game is a dud, the ships themselves should be dandy for 7th Sea.

Upper Deck recently released a brand new Marvel Comics TCG that I hope doesn't suck (with a DC set coming soon.) I already have a starter + boosters, but I can't bring myself to play it because I fear suckage. Last year, their booth had some Marvel preview artwork and closelipped lackeys handing out samples of that asinine BreaKey game... this year, they better be demoing it. Excelsior.

But the coolest news is Looney Labs' new time travel game, Early American Chrononauts. This is a new game that extends the timeline of "original" Chrononauts to cover the birth of America. I was lucky enough to help playtest this one a couple months ago, and I was helpful enough to earn a credit in the rulebook! Original Chrononauts was probably the first small-press card game I discovered at Origins (and opened my eyes to a lot of booths I ignored before), so I was extremely flattered and happy to be a part of its sequel. Some time soon I'll have to reveal exactly what input I offered... because there are a couple cards in EAC that came straight out of my playtesting conversations with family and pals. And yeah, I think the title makes the game sound boring, but that was one design debate I did not win. Title aside, go find your local game store and pick this one up (in stores by July 4th!) or order one from the LL website... you can't find many better single-deck / multiplayer / easy-to-learn / intelligent card games than Chrononauts and Early American Chrononauts.

This is a test. My home network is having trouble, so this update is coming from the hiptop.

Continuing the test. This sentence comes from the iMac after having removed the wireless router.

OK. I think we're back up. Chew on this story, tech-heads... late Friday night, I noticed that Safari was loading fourhman.com like shit. Slow response, missing graphics. I chalk it up to crappy network problems and go to bed. The next morning, fourhman.com is still loading lousy... but everything else is fine, slashdot, eBay, etc. But anything coming off of fourhman.com just will not load (including all my subsites: TaleSpin card game, Mappyland, etc.)

So I go to my hosting site, Dreamhost. Dreamhost has this great login panel where you control all aspects of your hosting, and they're usually really good about notifying users when they're having trouble. I haven't received any warning emails, so I figure I'll check my panel for updates. And I cannot get into my panel. Nothing loads on it, it just doesn't exist. So I figure that Dreamhost is having a problem... and I email them to see what's up.

They get back to me within a couple hours... no, we're not having any issues... your site loaded fine here. Now I'm stymied. Everything seems to be fine except for my site and Dreamhost.

Troubleshooting begins: I pull out my wireless router (Linksys WRT54G) and go direct from cable modem to iMac. Now everything works. Fourhman.com loads beautifully. Put the router back in service, and my stuff dies again.

So I ask you: why would my router be purposefully inhibiting my own site, plus the Dreamhost hosting interface? I set the thing to factory defaults, no change. I turn everything off for 30 minutes, no change.

So I bought a new WRT54G (the v2 model, which has many less LEDs than the v1 model) for $70 and now everything is fine again.

Disposable technology. Pfft.

I've been lusting after the 20th Anniversary Optimus Prime ever since it made Toy of the Month in ToyFare. If you'll recall, the better portion of Transformers sucked. And they make it even easier to recall this, because Hasbro is busy re-releasing tons of the original toys. Most Transformers looked great as vehicles, and looked like crap as robots, like a car standing on its ass with folded out fenders for arms. And yet, in the cartoon, they all looked incredible.

20 years later, they finally deliver on that impossible promise... making a toy that looks like both halves of the cartoon, truck and robot. First of all, this bitch is huge: standing 12" tall in robot mode. He's as poseable as an action figure, yet hides one of the most complicated transforming processes I've ever attempted. And none of that pop-off-the-hands bullshit either.

I never had the original Optimus Prime. I had the Go-Bots equivalent, Staks. Staks was orange, and had a similar but drastically simplified transformation. The windshield became his head; I guess they were his eyes. The exhaust pipes popped off the back of the cab and became guns of some sort. Staks sucked.

This guy is crazy with details. Moving air vents in his legs, working "pneumatic" pipes in the elbow and ankle joints, light-piped eyes, comm screens in both arms. His head is in the proper size for his body. And you know how Optimus's chest pretty much becomes the front of the cab? Well, that was too simple for this toy: the grill you see on his abdomen in robot mode actually folds away to make room for a second grill that unfolds from his chest. See, crazy!

Toys R Us, with their usual sense of worldly abandon, had him for $80. The Hasbro website says $70. Local Wal-Mart had it for $64. Mine! I spent the entire car ride home figuring out the transformation.

This morning I walk into the kitchen on my way out the door for work, and I see this:

With a note that says:

Reporter: Mr. Prime, how do you feel since your Swan makeover?
Optimus: I feel pretty!

In case you can't tell from the picture, the Leader of the Autobots is wearing a frilly neck ruffle and a fetching new dress. His hands are covering his face because he can't believe how great he looks.

This is why my wife is late for work in the mornings.

You have got to read Tim Rogers's writeup on this year's E3 over at Insert Credit.com. It exactly the kind of webloggy article I prefer to read about video games, because it's random and personal and interesting and catered towards fans. I mean, the dude refs Gyakuten Saiban 3 and doesn't even have to explain what it is. (A Japan-only GBA lawyer sim, ahem. That's right, I said "lawyer sim.") Most video game websites can boil down to "The graphics are superb and you can shoot lots of stuff." Because that's what most gamers want to hear, sadly. Tim's article goes beyond that, and offers the most detailed and genuine E3 account I've ever read.

I can't resist giving you some of my favorite quotes, but I really hope you go through the entire five page article.

on certain folks' reactions to the cel-shaded Wind Waker...

That game was snickered at because it looked like a cartoon, and the people snickering would rather be shooting life-like demons on some game on Xbox, because only games with life-like demons are cool with the ladies. The people snickering at the [Nintendo] DS promo video were snickering because it involved kids. They probably finished demoing the games and ran up to the press room, where they called the console "ANOTHER BABIES' TOY FROM NINTENDO TEH OMG" on their professional sites.

on the already-overplayed Nintendo DS vs. Sony PSP debate...

Some journalists commented on the [DS] not being as "sexy" as the PSP, and I groan to even recall this. Get over it, people. You want a pocketable device a woman's going to consider "sexy," get a goddamned vibrator.

on the N-Gage...

The worst problem with the Nokia N-Gage might be Nokia's president's own belief that it, really, doesn't suck. All the red lighting, free alcohol, and chatty booth girls in the world can't hide the look on one female executive's face when the president of the company says, in his thick accent, that the original N-Gage sold 600,000 units. He's lying to the press, and many of his subordinates know it.

on Nintendo's newfound propensity for giving mainstream gamers exactly what they've been begging for: more "adult" games and a realistic Zelda...

...and something else tells me to be afraid of Nintendo's gestures to make everyone happy. That something else may or may not be Metroid Prime: Hunters, where you fire when trying to turn around, and feel upset about it, even though firing isn't doing anything you're not going to do anyway. And it's not like the game counts your shots. This game feels, to me, like overreaction to criticism; only I can't tell what criticism that is.

on another article of his, an interview with MGS creator Hideo Kojima...

My first question to Hideo Kojima back during my historic February interview was simple: "Why does the President grab Raiden's crotch immediately after meeting him, in Metal Gear Solid 2?" Kojima's eyes widened at the question. "That's the best first question anyone's ever asked me."

on the usual uptight hack attendees with inflated egos...

I caught hear of one journalist complaining to another in the press room about all the "Fucking assholes" who had "snuck in." I won't say who this journalist was, because that'd look like libel or some shit. I'll just say that he said it. The people who had "snuck in," according to this guy, were clerks from such fine establishments as GameStop or Electronics Boutique, places that actually sell games to people, unlike his little pissy magazine, which just talks about them, and provides online arenas for children to call each other homosexuals for liking Wind Waker that way.

That is great stuff... great, smart stuff (even if he doesn't like Crystal Chronicles.) I enjoy reading nothing more than when the author can intelligently earn the label "smartass."

Now that the heat has cooled, I'm still very excited for the DS. It's mainly the wireless networking ability that I want to see, because I'm hoping that's the way the big brother console units go as well. I was finishing off Lupin the Third tonight (sigh), doing that PS2 controller lasso trick to keep the cord from knocking things off the coffee table, when it occurred to me that it won't be long before wired controllers will look ancient and low-tech. I have every hope that the DS (and the WaveBird before it) will be the harbinger of the next generation's wireless world.

I've already talked to guys at the office about how we can abuse the DS's wifi during work hours... and if the unit doesn't pull a Virtual Boy, it's possible my middle school-aged neighbor pal would get one... meaning there's lots of potential multiplayer interaction to come. And of course I already have an in-home wireless network, so jumping online with my DS will be just too easy.

This is all largely speculation. You never know when Nintendo is going to pull back and downsize the feature list... like when we found out that the upcoming GBA wireless peripheral will only work with games specifically designed for said peripheral, and not with any old game linkable game. Or the notion that you can't trade Advance Pokemon with Previous Version Pokemon.

So it's best not to assume too much. Even more annoying is that that wild list of E3 games/demos for the DS may not appear in full at retail for years, if at all.

One of my game mags had a life-size picture of the PSP in it, driving home just how great that screen is. Unfortunately, Sony has three big problems with the PSP right now: no killer games shown, a nasty price point, and a confusing and hateful attitude toward battery life.

By the way, Nintendo's new "freeboy" TV ad campaign is totally fucking amazing. When Rhonda saw it, she said "Now I know how you see the world."