We finally played "1066, Tears To Many Mothers" last night and it was good! It'd work well as an introductory wargame (it's really a very interactive tableau building card game).
The artwork is amazing on the cards too, though some of the noble folks look a bit too clean & modern for the 11th century. I'm sure the artist based some of the characters on moderns actors too, Harold Godwinson looks suspiciously like Russell Crowe! :D
You start off with the appearance of Halley's Comet & progress through several objectives to get to the Battle of Hastings (strangely the Saxons took the comet as a bad omen, and the Normans took it as a good omen. Not sure how that's decided!). While you're doing that you can pick off/damage units that are being build in your opponent's tableau, move your cards around, & do other actions. The resources to buy cards are very tight in this game & it seems that it's best to get the resource generating cards out there as early as possible - otherwise you need to spend cards from your hand as resources & it's easy to run out of cards there! You're also somewhat at the mercy of the random draw to determine what is available on a turn - at the end I had some very high cost units in my hand that I had no way to pay for and put in play!
I started off pretty well as the Saxons, fending off Vikings in the north and then tromping down to the south of England to face the Normans. But I got stuck on later objectives as I didn't have a lot of cards with Zeal and so the Normans beat me to the Hastings objective and got a headstart attacking the wedges there. By the time I caught up I was already demoralised and I hadn't really arranged my units in the wedges very well - in the end the Normans took two wedges and won. I almost killed William with my archers earlier but he managed to shrug off all his wounds with a timely "heal one character" card!
It's a fun, clever, thematic game with lots of interesting decisions - worth checking out! #wargaming
I did go back up to Christmas Hill tonight (which was quite crowded!) but sadly there were no more aurorae. It was a clear night though and I figured if there was no aurora then I could try out the astrophotography mode on my phone.
One thing I discovered is that the phone mount on my tripod is terrible. It's a springloaded thing that makes it very hard to actually take the photo (because the mount is in the way), see what's being photographed (because the mount covers half the screen), and also not damage or turn off the phone (because the mount clamps on the sides which is where the power button and volume are). But I managed some kind of uneasy, asymmetrically-mounted compromise that worked!
I'm not sure why some turned out blue and some turned out brown/grey though. I think I've identified some of the constellations in the frame at the time (though they're also harder to see in these pics because there's so many stars). But I think they turned out well! #astrophotography
Also it seems the phone makes a little video/timelapse for the 4 minute exposures. This worked out spectacularly when I tried this from my balcony at 2am last night when the aurora was happening. Also worked pretty well tonight too! #astrophotography#aurora#auroraborealis
@nyrath@iamgerardthomas I know! They were $6 each individually but the bookshop owner knocked it down to $35 for the whole set if I wanted them all, so I wasn't going to say no to that! 😀
For many years now I have been visiting a friend every sunday night and we usually watch films or some old TV series. We've seen many movies, all of the original Twilight Zone episodes, most episodes of The Night Gallery, and tonight we started a new series - Babylon 5 😄 .
I haven't actually seen it since it aired, and I religiously watched every episode at the time, at least until the middle of Season 5 (I know, I know). The Gathering still stands up pretty well (maybe the new Bluray version is better quality but honestly the DVD version we were watching looked absolutely fine). I know Richard Biggs was great as Dr Franklin in the actual series, but I rather liked Johnny Sekka as Dr Kyle in the pilot! (also I am reminded about how many of the show's cast is no longer with us, having died far too soon :( ).
It's going to be fun watching these again :D (and yes, hopefully this time I'll make it through all of season 5...!) #babylon5#scifi
Just finished watching The Orville New Horizons and... wow - how awesome was THAT! This season was great, and much more serious than previous ones with a lot of good character development and some really good stories too!
I always said that The Orville did Star Trek better than Star Trek does (even when it was more comedic at the start) and that was even more true in this season - the Moclan and Kaylon story arcs were really meaty and were really well done! And they even tied up some of the loose ends leftover from previous seasons too (though I do wonder what the deal was with the Chak'Tal...).
The last episode was more like an epilogue but even if they don't do another season (it doesn't seem likely at this point) I think it had a really good run and did what it set out to do. I would love to see more of this setting, in some form (books? comics? cartoons?) but I'd also be OK if this is all we're going to get. "Future Unknown", indeed!
if you're still on the fence about this and you like sci-fi, then I would definitely recommend that you start watching it - it's very good stuff! #scifi#TheOrville#NewHorizons
Hm, what's this free game on Steam - "The Ur-Quan Masters"? Sure, I'll check it out...
Where has this game been all my life?! It's insane! I met the Spathi (Space Captain Fwiffo) on Pluto and they're like something out of the old Captain Kremen skits (fully voiced as well - is everything voiced in this?). Gotta love the way they say ULTIMATE EEEVIL in exactly the same way all the time :D. I think this is gonna be a lot of fun! #videogames
@nyrath@maxthefox Yeah I missed the original games, though this does still look vaguely familar. Or maybe it's the world scanning part reminding me of Mass Effect :D.
I am a very big Heart fan, but I didn't know that Heart's "What About Love" was actually originally recorded in 1982 by the Canadian band Toronto (it seems a lot of North American cities had bands named after them back then!). I hadn't even heard of Toronto (the band) til last night when a friend mentioned them! It seems that they had recorded the song but for some reason left it off their 1982 album... (it resurfaced later as a bonus track when it was reissued on CD, after Heart made it a hit).
It's a pretty solid version too. Could it have been a big hit for Toronto if they'd released it as a single at the time? Maybe it was too soon for it to really catch on in 1982, but I guess we'll never know! (I love bits of music trivia like this!). #music
How is one supposed to pronounce "Dunwich" (as in HPL's "The Dunwich Horror", or "the Dunwich Legacy")?
I always thought it was "dun-witch" but I just heard someone call it "dunnitch" and weirdly I never even thought to pronounce it like that - despite being from the UK where we have places like Norwich ("norritch"), Greenwich ("grennitch"), Woolwich ("woolitch"), Bromwich ("brommitch") and also Warwick ("warrick") and Chiswick ("chizzick") ... but then we also have Ipswich ("ips-witch"), Northwich ("north-witch"), Middlewich ("middle-witch") and of course Sandwich ("sand-witch").
So now my mind is blown. Which is right - "Dun-wich" or "Dunnitch"?! #english#hpl#lovecraft
On one hand, oops! :) (but I absolutely love this image - it's a cheeky illustration of how difficult space exploration is!)
But lunar landing is hard and SLIM may be on its nose but it's in one piece so that's definitely something good! But If the sun rotates around to an angle where it catches the solar panels then this may still be a productive mission. The Japanese have pulled off some engineering miracles before when it comes to space exploration so this isn't the first time :). #space#science#SLIM
Plus the little Sora_Q rover ball is out and taking pics too!
Honestly, I think if I was JAXA I'd be pretty damn proud of this.
Just finished a cracking game of Heat: Pedal to the Metal on TSS (since we're snowed under here) - I found a very good mod with TONS of custom made tracks that were the same as the ones from Formula De! So maybe I can finally play the Nurburgring!!.
The race was very close right up to the end with me ahead for most of the first lap, but my opponent took the lead in the second lap and negotiated the last tight corner much better than I did... and to cap it all a couple of the Legend bots managed to overtake me right at the finish line so in the end I came fourth!
I think this may be the racing game I've been looking for though! I love Formula De but this does racing so much better and more elegantly (and it's also more playable with two players).#boardgames
Am I alone in thinking that the Winter Solstice (today) marks the middle of winter, not the start of winter? It just makes more sense to me - this is the shortest day in the northern hemisphere so winter should be on either side of it as the days shorten toward and lengthen away from that, rather than just starting when it's the shortest? #wintersolstice
I'm pretty convinced now that I'm actually one of those people that have the gene that makes cilantro tastes like soap!
The chimichangas at the local Cafe Mexigo have it in them and I noticed that they had a bit of a soapy kinda taste, so I tried a bit of cilantro on its own and... yeah, it does taste kinda soapy. I always assumed that's what it was supposed to taste like but I guess not!