Random Thoughts #7

• I've been studying for a certification test all this week, and having thus been slacking on my writing.  I'll have a review for Gratuitous Space Battles and The Last Airbender up soon. 
• I'm also working on completing the next AOIO video for Lady Gaga's Telephone.  I got some really good stuff, and it's time to start making some hard cuts.  Thanks to all you guys who submitting something, I'll have the video up by next week hopefully!
• In the midst of my studying, I'll get a break tonight for Late Nite JengaJam as we have two awesome people to talk about the World Cup tonight at 9:30 Central.  Jessie "koolkeeper11" Falls is a former collegiate goalkeeper, and Dan "strider165" VanderClock is an RvB moderator and futbol fan!  And yes, the World Cup is still going on even though the US is out.  I think we did better than most people expected, and we'll be discussing this and more on tonight's show.  Join us as we plan for the inevitable counterattack against the evil forces of the vuvuzelas!

Big City and Filthy Rich

More board game reviews? SHOCKING.

Big City




There are some games that are way too complicated for their own good. Tribute is one example of an elaborate game, full of spectacular art and a big board, for a game that is essentially Bohnanza. It's fun enough, but the setup of the game takes some almost more effort than it's worth. Cleopatra almost falls into this trap as well, but manages to rise above its modest game mechanics with fantastic bits and amazing art. Big City falls somewhere in the middle of these two examples. It's more fun than Tribute because building a city with little plastic buildings is viscerally satisfying and cool, although it lacks some of the complexity and eye-catching art of Cleopatra.

Big City is all about area control. Players attempt to erect (tee hee) buildings in certain area to score the most points possible while meeting the prerequisites of the structure. Got an area that's on the "outskirts" of town? Put a residential area there! Want to add big multipliers to the business that you're about to construct? Add a train nearby. There are several buildings with varying degrees of requirements, but players are still able to build most of the time.





The game itself is fun and light, but lacks any real strategy and ends up being somewhat random at times. All that is trumped by the major attraction of Big City, which are the city pieces. Building a little city on the table ends up being more fun than it ought to be, and that's why this game is worth a play every once in a while.

Filthy Rich




I'm not only a sucker for cool bits in a game, I'm also a fool for a clever game play mechanic. A game like Schrille Stille has both, with its awesome and ingenious secret CD player shaped voting machine. Filthy Rich may not be as innovative, but it's still a cool fusion of game mechanic and game pieces.

When you first sit down to play Filthy Rich, the central "board", might be familiar to you. That is, it is recognizable to those people who either collected sports cards or played collectible card games. It should come as no surprise than that the designer for Filthy Rich is none other than Richard Garfield, creator of Magic: The Gathering. It's also not a stretch to see how he might have gotten the idea for the game, as I'm sure Mr. Garfield has seen many binders full of clear card holders. He probably noticed that because of empty card slots, it was possible to see a card in a pocket several pages below whatever part of the binder he was in. I would imagine that Filthy Rich was born soon after.

The game is simple. To win, you must buy three expensive luxury cards that do nothing except win you the game. To buy the cards, you'll need money, and to get money, you'll need to buy and place ads. After an ad is bought it's sleeved in one of the game binder's clear sheets. A die is rolled, and you check to see if anyone noticed your ad so you can get paid. Every turn, the page could turn, and your ad might get covered up by someone else's ad. The game progresses like this, with special action cards spicing up the game along the way.

Overall this is a relatively quick and enjoyable game, that will make you look at card binders just a little differently from now on.

Pimping time!

• At this point, Twitter is pretty ubiquitous.  What's not so well known, but ought to be, is my JengaJam buddy OboeCrazy's Musiter project.  Every week, we get 140 different notes, which is more often than some people update their actual twitters.  Subscribe to her youtube channel for weekly micro-music-blogging goodness!

• Speaking of Late Nite JengaJam, we've got a special guest and programming note this week.  We'll be kicking off at the normal 10:30 Eastern time, but on Wednesday, instead of tonight.  Our guest this week is Jon Graham creator of Arby 'n' The Chief , a hilarious web series chronicling the adventures of our favorite Master Chief and Arbiter action figures.  

• Finally, A WILD BLOG APPEARS.  My very good friend and fellow Awesome On Its Own editor FinchLynch has started sharing his thoughts with the greater blogging population.  Check out his stuff, as he rips the internet, celebrities, and gaming culture a new one.

Toy Story 3

Toy Story 3 Review from Jonathan Serna on Vimeo.

Was that review not enough for you? Check the last three posts over at Just Plain Something, where Katie deftly ranks her preferences in Pixar movies!  While I think most of us can agree on the bottom 2 Pixar flicks, the other eight's standings are highly debatable and controversial.

The Young and The Restless: My take on Realignment

The following article was written before the events of today, which sadly renders most of this moot.  Still, pretend that I didn't write this in advance or maybe imagine that I'm behind the times and that I deserve your pity or something.  :P

This really has gotten to be a big soap opera.  This is how we stand right now.  Nebraska to the Big Ten, Colorado to the PAC-10, and everyone else waiting. 

Before I list off my thoughts on the subject, I need to make one thing clear.  While it was fun to write the following paragraphs, I really don't have much animosity towards and of the schools or people I mention here.  Sure, I'd have liked the Big XII to remain intact, but I'm wondering how much that's just me holding onto a familiar and comfortable concept.  Despite my early fandom of Texas A&M, I've never really known anything other than the Big XII.  See, I cheered for the Aggies when I was a kid, but I had no concept of the NCAA, or athletic conferences, or anything like that.  There were no fond memories of the Southwest Conference for me, as I started attending OU in 1996.  The Big XII was all that I'd known, and after an initially rough first few years OU rose to the top, and became consistently the top team in the conference.  It's been a great run, but with new rivals in Oregon, USC and Stanford emerging perhaps a change would truly be in the Sooners' best interests.  With that, here we go:

To Big XII commissioner Dan Beebe, congratulations.  You have just given a master class in inept and flaccid leadership.  You constantly denied that any of your schools were talking to other conferences, but the speed at which the current changes have come is a clear sign that you were very wrong.  You hid in your office, telling yourself and the press that everything was OK, as the building collapsed around you.  I can understand if I get blind-sided by these developments, as I'm not an insider nor a reporter.  You, on the other hand, have absolutely no excuse.  Instead of reassuring your conference that things would be better, and promising that you'd tirelessly work for a better TV deal, you let the PAC-10 and Big Ten raid your house and make off with your stuff.  You let them sweet talk your schools away from you, as you did nothing.  It angers me when I look at the how this has turned out, and I'm convinced that I or just about anyone I know could have done a better job than you.  Your lack of vision and your absence of cunning is sickening, and I hope that the only thing you run after this is a 7-11.  Not even the nice one, but the OTHER 7-11 that everyone's afraid to go to.

To Colorado, fuck you.  I hope that you're in the pit of the PAC-10, a whipping boy in football just like Baylor was for us.  If Texas and OU end up in your division, this will not be pretty.  Expect both Bob Stoops and Mack Brown to run up the score on your pitiful defense, and attack your shell-shocked offense for four whole quarters every year.  Your coach will whine, your school's administrators will complain, and we'll be too busy getting ready for the conference championship to bother laughing at you.

To Nebraska, have fun in the Big Ten.  Also, remember a few things in your new home.  Remember how good the Big XII was to you when Michigan, OSU, Iowa, and Penn State all put a foot in your ass.  Remember the feeling of being the big dog of the North, while you're down and being beaten by double-digits week in and week out.  Remember that you yourself put you into the position as the Big Ten's bitch, and never forget what could have been.  The stink of your failure to put Texas down in the 2009 Big XII Championship game will never fade from your whore garments. 

To Texas A&M, I hope that you follow us to the BigPAC16.  You were my first college team, and you always hold a special place in my sports heart.  Going to the SEC might be good for you, or it might not.  Please understand that the SEC might be interested in your great institution, but they have ulterior motives in courting you.  They really REALLY want Texas and OU, and they hope to use you to get to both of us.  Moreso Texas, but best believe that they want the Sooners too.  Please don't get played, and if you do go I hope that our teams meet up in some epic bowl games.

To Baylor Kansas, Kansas State, and Iowa State, I'm sorry this is happening to you guys.  You didn't do anything to deserve this, except for maybe being too cautious.  I truly hope that you all end up in good competitive leagues, and continue to thrive.  To Baylor especially, it's too bad you can't come along.  Despite constantly ragging on you guys, I really did have a respect for the level of academics you brought to our league.  You made the Big XII especially classy, and you were just starting to find your way in football.  Good luck.

To Texas, Texas Tech, and OK State, see y'all on the other side.  As much as I hate all of you, your programs help us get to where we're going year after year.  The quality of your competition has a direct impact on your success, and this is especially true for OU.  Every year, the strength of the Big XII South is demonstrated time and time again.  We may not always win, but we always bring our best.  More often than not, that's more than good enough, and we of the Sooner Nation thank you.  Also, fuck all y'all. :P

Finally to the PAC-10, please change your goddamn name.  If you're going to be the premier conference in college sports, at least recognize that your better teams are going to be nowhere near the Pacific Ocean.  The Big West is appropriate, or perhaps simply The West.  Swallow your pride, lose the PAC, and brace for impact.  A force that you've only seen from afar is about to rock your world.

Random Thoughts #6

• Movie season is really starting to ramp-up in the next few weeks, with The A-Team movie coming out today, and Toy Story 3 coming out next week. Reviews for both will be forthcoming.

• :D Rock Band 3 looks like it's actually going to be very cool!

• All this talk of college sports and what will happen to the PAC-10, Big Televen, and Big XII is bothersome.  All that said, comments like the ones made by Bob Stoops about the possibility of playing in the Big PAC 16 make me think that it's a very real possibily, and that the PAC-10 will indeed invite all or most of the current Big XII South to join them in a super conference.  No offense to Sherri Cole (hottest. coach. evar. <3), but Bob Stoops is a company man.  It seems out of character for him to make such fanciful remarks, unless he felt like he in line with the people making the decision like OU Athletic Director Joe Castiglione.  That still makes Mizzou a goddamn whore that will probably get left out in the cold, or at best in with the Mountain West.  So is this good for OU?  Yes and no.  Yes, because it will intensify the new rivalries that are developing between PAC-10 schools and OU, namely Oregon and USC.  The conference champion of this new league will have to be a better team as a whole, and that makes me feel better about not only going to a title game, but actually winning it.  No, because OU had an easy road to the Championship game in the last few years, assuming that we took care of business.  The case for Big XII Women's Basketball, which has flourished in the Big XII, also must be considered.  There's also talk of each division champion in this BigPAC16 getting an automatic BCS bid.  I suppose we'll see, probably in the very near future, how this all shakes out.

El Grande

A little while ago I posted what was essentially my Dungeons & Dragons origin story on how I got into the game. My beginnings in board games are not really all that different. My group of friends from college played a lot of games in the dorms, mainly Magic: The Gathering and PC games on the LAN. After school, we all eventually ended up back in Norman, living around town and getting together for football games and other fun stuff. Along the way we started playing some board games that we’d previously never heard of. Games like Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Tigris & Euphrates, and Puerto Rico soon became staples at our parties alone side another game called El Grande.

El Grande was one of the first games we’d played that used no dice at all. Like Carcassone, Tigris & Euphrates, and Puerto Rico, the random elements of the game came from drawing cards or tiles and from the decisions of the other players. El Grande was also the first game to introduce me to the ubiquitous multicolored wooden cubes. It was such a different experience from what I’d been used to from board games, and it was a welcome change.

El Grande plays like a war game, but without the war. The game is all about political influence in Renaissance Spain, and the players use their pieces (known as caballeros) to control various regions of Spain. There’s also a Castillo, a large fortress where players can deposit caballeros for a surprise “attack” every three rounds. Play continues for 9 rounds, and the player with the highest score wins.

The game provides players with a myriad of strategies for victory, and there’s no single “right” way to win. Some players favor controlling a single high-value region throughout the game, and other try to get second place (which also gets some points) in lots of regions. Still others favor keeping their “strongholds” mobile, and will shift their caballeros over the entire board over the course of the game.

El Grande is sublime, and easy to teach to people who are new to European-style board games. This remains, even after the hundreds of different games that I’ve played since my first El Grande session, one of my favorite games. To be honest, I’m shocked that I don’t already own it. I’ll go ahead and change that, right now.

How to Destroy Angels

When I saw what could possibly be the last Nine Inch Nails concert I'd ever see back in September of 2008, I was a more than a little morose. I had been a fan of NIN since middle school, and had been lucky enough to see Nine Inch Nails on several occasions over the last few years. This part of my life was coming to an end and I was a bit bummed. On the other hand, I was very excited as I and other fans considered the question of what Trent Reznor might do next. After almost two years, we now have our answer.

How To Destroy Angels is the new group featuring Mariqueen Maandig, Trent Reznor, and Atticus Ross. While Trent is well-known to most mainstream music fans, Mariqueen and Atticus might not be. A composer and producer, Atticus Ross has been one of the influences on post-Fragile Nine Inch Nails, helping to produce all of NIN's albums since. Mariqueen Maandig is formerly of the band West Indian Girl, and married Trent Reznor just after Nine Inch Nails went on hiatus.

So what does all this mean for the self-titled EP that just dropped on Tuesday? How to Destroy Angels initially sounds very similar to the more cacophonous parts of Year Zero, including the track "BBB" and especially "Parasite". The later tracks are much more melodic, but Parasite is definitely the most challenging. That said, Mariqueen's ethereal voice is a pleasingly stark contrast to the heavy beats and riffs delivered by Atticus and Trent, most particularly in my favorite track of "A Drowning". There are many clear references and inspirations from previous Ross/Reznor colaborations. "Fur Lined" invokes memories of "Only" from With Teeth and "Demon Seed" from The Slip, and "The Believers" is like a Ghost brought back to life.

Finally there's "The Space Between", which deserves mention not only as the opening track of the album but as the song for which the first video was made. The song itself introduces the listener to the group's modus operandi: Heavy and deliberate electronic music versus a beautiful female voice. All that's well and good until you see the video, which is astounding-looking and is what sold me on this group. The video is subtle at first, but stayed with me long after my first viewing. Director Rupert Sanders takes a simple idea and progressively adds layers of dread to a song that is clearly building to a rising climax. The video is outstanding, and is easily the best way to introduce someone new to the group.

After all this, the direction of the group is one that I very much want to go in. Once again I find myself asking, as I did almost two years ago, "What are they going to do next?"

How To Destroy Angels: The Space in Between [HD] from How To Destroy Angels on Vimeo.

Doing Random Right

I wandered to two very different but very fun gaming sessions over the last couple of nights. Saturday night was spent in Dallas doing party games and a teaching Dominion to a complete newcomer to premium board games. There was also beer pong and trivia, and I was once again reminded why most mainstream trivia games like Cranium suck so hard. No matter how good you might be, you might get screwed by a die roll, or by some other happenstance that makes the outcome of the game totally random. You play for an hour or two, and it might be fun but all of the energy is lost in either a grind or in what amounts to a roll of the dice or a coin flip. In the end, only one team or person's having fun, while everyone else wonders if this was really worth their time.

Then there was Sunday night with my usually group of gamers in OKC, where I played three games that properly used dice as the primary mechanic, but managed to each be quite fun in their own ways.

Can't Stop

It's easy to dismiss a game that's old for no better reason than just that. It's old, and surely something better has come along since then. Games like Monopoly, Risk, and Life, are all trumped by games like Agricola, Small World, and Verflixxt! (more on this one later). This cannot be said about the excellent Can't Stop.

Can't Stop severely lacks in the aesthetic department. The packaging for Can't Stop is almost comically antiquated. The cheesy-looking plastic board and cheap plastic pieces belie the truly awesome game this is. The idea is simple. Roll dice and work to roll the same number a certain number of times. You can stop at anytime and "save" your progress, or you can risk losing whatever ground you've gained to beat everyone else to the goal. It's an ingenious implementation of risk versus reward, and well worth trying out at least once. The game is played in about 15 to 20 minutes even with new players, and rivals Bluff as my favorite light social dice-rolling game.

That's Life! (Verflixxt!)

I thought I was done with Roll-and-Move games like Chutes and Ladders and The Game of Life when I hit puberty. The before-mentioned games are great for kids, but offer very little for adults. If board games for kids were analogous to movies for kids, Verflixxt! would be a Pixar movie. There is literally something for all ages.

The rules are extremely simple. Roll the die and move one of your two tokens. If yours is the last token leave a space, you take that space for yourself. Once both your tokens have reached the finish line, you count the score on your collected spaces. The player with the highest score wins. There are a few catches and caveats, but nothing overly complicated. This is a very simple game at heart, and it's amazing how much fun a roll-and-move game can be as an adult. There's backstabbing and conniving that is seemingly out of place for such a straight-forward game, and it's wonderful to find this kind of thing fun again.

Pyramid (Fluch der Mumie)

Last week I reviewed Nuns on the Run, and expressed my disappointment in what I thought was a good game that simply got lost in itself. The theme was neat, but the game took too long to play and was heavily weighted for the Nun team. This weekend, I got to play yet another hide-and-seek board game called Fluch der Mumie, or Pyramid here in the states.

Using a clever board and magnet system, the players try to gather treasure in a recently discovered Egyptian pyramid. Their goal is to get all of their assigned treasure before anyone else. Opposing them is the pyramid's original inhabitant, a mummy, who's not too happy about his stuff getting stolen. His job is to capture the players a total of seven times, and catching any one player three times eliminates that player.

This game is far superior to Nuns on the Run in all ways. The game is shorter, the theme is just as funny, and the mummy never really feels like he's completely out of the game. The balance just about perfect, as was demonstrated by the mummy winning twice and a player winning once in our three plays. Just for reference, we learned Fluch der Mumie and played three games in the same time as one learn/play session of Nuns on the Run. Given the fact that the box and board art are well-done and hilarious, this game is a great addition to the collection.