Sony's taking another go at settling that whole PS3 Linux fiasco...

...and it only took them nearly 11 months (if my last post on this was timely) to work out this version.  At least, that's what I gather from the email that hit my inbox today.  Details this time:  rather than try to sort things out into different "classes" of claims, they're just lumping everybody together, and intending to pay out "up to" $65, depending on how many "valid" claims they get.  The cynic in me wonders what expected number of claimants they're using to come up with that $65 number... but the judge involved has slapped down their shenanigans before, so I won't fret over it too much right now anyways.  At least they're not asking us all to re-apply... since I already did last time, I'm supposedly good.  We'll see how things grind out this time, I guess.

Spoilerriffic! Seafall, game 12

No new unlocks, but some fun shenanigans none the less... I don't think I mentioned, in any of the earlier game write-ups, that they added some research cards of the "treasure map" variety, where you needed both halves of a specific map in order to trigger some find.  One of our players has all-but-monopolized the research deck, and, this game, he started playing those maps.  They've been positive-to-mixed results so far (in one case, he released an ancient terror from underneath an active market... he stopped it with cannon fire, but the market was destroyed utterly, replaced with an enmity sticker he can never get rid of).  Each has also given him a "veteran" sticker for one of his ships, increasing the standard 5-unit track for one of the stats to a 7-unit track.

Outside of that, we also checked out the tablets under the Light of Truth... and wouldn't you know, the symbols match the symbols on the tombs map, making a simple substitution for digits... so, if you get all 3 symbols, that will likely call out an entry in the Captain's Booke to read.  I intended to verify that by raiding the leader's vault, but we almost immediately got hit with a "sacrifice enmity to the islands or lose glory" card that queered that do (and cost me some glory in the process), so that will have to wait for next game... especially since we had a player conquer Tortosa as well, so we were able to get rid of the offending card the next time it showed up for us.

All told, I was still able to eke out a victory (and bestow Princess Kitty's first "sparkly pink heart" replacement enmity sticker), between building the Museum and founding another colony, and another player failing to burn the Museum to the ground with his arsonist.  As a side note, from that, we decided (since the rules weren't entirely clear, and we couldn't find appropriate errata quickly) that, on raiding a home port or colony, if you didn't reach the the number of successes for the target you wanted to raid, you aren't forced to take a lower-ranked target... but, if you don't take any target, you forfeit your glory for the endeavor, and still take any damage for the attempt.

On to the next game, come the new year!

Spoilerriffic! Seafall, game 11

Another short game, courtesy of an amazing second year on the part of the overall second-place player, with a successful tomb exploration and destruction of the Society's temple taking him from in-game last to first and out in short order.  At least I got to conquer Ker... but that also means I've got enmity stickers galore on the board now as well, enough so that I've bought some stickers from a craft store in anticipation of running out of "real" stickers soon.

No unlocks or anything to report, but some of the revelations of the people we've put to the question have been... enlightening (sorry, couldn't help myself there).:

• Not just the front of advisor cards, but the backs also sometimes have hidden messages
• We got told the "map" has messages as well... checked all over, best we can tell so far is that the tombs map has some odd symbols on it that we can't decipher.
• Tablets also apparently have something on them, but we found that out right at the end of the game, so no knowing what all's involved there.

Should be fun to see what we work out next game!

Whaddaya mean, no Amazon?!?

So, totally a first-world-problems rant here... a rewards credit card that I've had for over a decade (yeah, I'm old, but you might have guessed that by the fact you're reading this on a random blog instead of on the latest social media whositz) decided, at some point in the past year, to stop offering Amazon gift cards in exchange for their reward points.  I honestly never expected that to happen, at least as long as gift cards were an option.  Let's just say that I found the other options... lacking, by comparison (Domino's?  Hell, I'm not the healthiest soul around, but I can't see that much cheap pizza being good for anybody that's not in charge of post-game feeding of peewee sports league players).  Finally settled on a Barnes and Noble gift card.... some books, maybe a game, should be nice distractions, pity about the extra clutter though (since I'm quite certain I don't need yet another e-reader to add to my collection).

Spoilerriffic! Seafall, game 10

Another short game, thanks to the new unlock happening as expected, but I managed to not get left in the dust too badly.  As for the unlock itself, well, it's something special... I remember, back when I first got the game, minutely examining the game box for clues as to what might be coming, and noticed one of those "mandatory safety warnings" about the contents including batteries.  I considered a number of possibilities for what that could mean, but it turns out I didn't come even close.

So, the unlock itself... discovering the next-to-last island with the prerequisite chart brings up an island with a tomb that never closes (rank 12, so it's not a total cakewalk), a colony with a massive temple (rank 10 raid to take it out), more cards, including a lot of milestones, and the Light of Truth.  See, the new island is the home base of a secret society, and the Light (a blacklight diode or similar) lets you see hidden info on some of the cards, including some pre-unlock advisors... they've been working for the Society all along, trying to let you all advance while trying to temper your lust for glory, lest we all meet the same fate as the Ancients from times past.

The biggest game-mechanic change here is the addition of Inquisition to the activation of advisors... if you so choose, you can use the Light on your freshly-activated advisor to see whatever they might be hiding (members show a number that represents their rank, and also shows a Captain's Booke entry to read)... and, if nobody has submitted them to Inquisition yet, doing so is also worth a point of glory on its own.  Given the number of cheap advisors from early-game times that otherwise see little action, this is a fine mechanism to get them into circulation once more, at least briefly (buy the Convict for a gold, and get a glory for it?  Sold!).  Of course, the way you mark somebody as having been submitted to the Inquisition is to put one of your enmity stickers on them, which increases their cost to you by a gold thenceforth, but that didn't stop us from reaping cheap glory from all manner of advisors this game.

Of course, cheap glory is all fine and well, but there's another reason to pursue this... three of the milestones deal with "discovering the secret of the (x) statue", which we're pretty sure has something to do with the secrets the Society is keeping, and possibly with some of the maps/charts floating around in the research stack.  Long story short, when you reach this point, everybody should expect to need to take notes, since there's going to be some entertaining stuff to figure out.

Spoilerriffic! Seafall, game 9

Another short game, thanks to the fourth-place player discovering the next island out with a chart card, triggering the next unlock.  It's the island where the Pirate King lives (for all he supposedly hates that name), called Patmos, with a colony called Ker already established.  It's not all good by any means though... when Patmos is discovered, it gets pre-loaded with permanent enmity stickers from all the players based on things like how many islands they already have enmity with and how many colonies they have.  Not so very bad on its own, but until somebody conquers and claims Ker (yes, rules for taking colonies outright have been added), it has a nasty side-effect of making your interactions with any of the islands depend on the higher enmity total of either that island or Patmos... which, for the remainder of this game and into the next game at least, will be a significant drain on most of the players being able to do anything glory-making.

Apart from that nuisance, there are some new advisors available, but with a twist.  Basically, they're tied to Patmos, so you can only buy them if you have a ship at Patmos (unless you've built the new Tavern building), and their price increases with your enmity at Patmos.  Also, these new advisors only have a gold cost, no reputation buy is available.  In exchange for that, the perks on these new advisors tend to be really good, and the ones I've seen at least are also worth glory just for having them... so, a neat new twist to the advisor game over all.

One more item worth mentioning... there are stickers for some new Arches to add to the board in open waters spaces (with the appropriate card found, of course).  Basically, these act as teleporters (any one arch to any other), but also have fairly hefty dangerous waters ratings.  So, they have the potential to shrink the map significantly with the tradeoff of a bit of risk.

With that, current standings at the end of this game... I've moved back into first, thanks to the combination of my snagging the gold hoarding milestone and the previously-first-place player dropping out mid-game (helping his family with a medical matter, not ragequitting or anything like that... we expect he'll return after the next game).  The player that discovered Patmos moved up into the lead pack at third... but the now-fourth-place player is still in good position points-wise, only has one enmity with Patmos, and (due to a fluke with a tomb this game) already has the chart for the next unlock, so I expect him to walk away with the next game handily.

Spoilerriffic! Seafall, game 8

A surprisingly short game this time (no extra winter), due to the fine exploration work on the third-place player's part.  All the "regular" islands are in play now, with a few explore spots hither and yon.  I did get my second colony (Envy, on the island Emerald), but couldn't stop the player who already had two from snagging a third, and the associated milestone.  Oh well, at least I got to raid his council chamber to get the guy who helped him get as far as he did... and then discarded him at game-end, because, even without the Bosun to back him up, the Grizzled Veteran and his luck token spawning is just too good to let go.

Now that we have enough colonies out there, we're ready for the Strange Chart to bring about the next unlock.  As far as standings go, the top three players are once again within a few points of each other (no rank switches this game).  Next game should be extra fun/interesting.

ISP pricing shenanigans

It's been not quite a year since I last whined about Comcast jacking my rates... so of course, they did it again, this time up four and a half bucks, and again with no prior notice.  It irked me enough that I was all set to switch over to CenturyLink, because I knew that they had enhanced the service in my area, and were offering faster service for a lower price.  Sure, there might be some trash fees on top of the list price, but, from what I recalled, they combined price should still be significantly lower.

So, off to the CenturyLink website... and sure enough, there was a glowing promise of monthly service for $29.95 a month at 40Mbps (compared to the $61.45 I'm now paying for 15Mbps through Comcast).  Requires a year's commitment to get, but that's no problem, and sure, I'd have to buy a new modem to avoid a monthly $10 rental fee, but, at that price, that pens out easily enough.  Righto, just give them my address and... now, if I want 40Mbps service, it's a "special" at $45/month, plus a $99 install fee on top of the modem.  No year-long commitment at least, and the price is supposedly "for life", but that just means they'll hide any increases they want in their fees... and that base price, combined with the unknown current fee and tax structure, no longer gives me the same certainty that I would be doing better going that route.  Sure, I would end up with a faster connection, but I haven't really run up against any serious limits with my current connection (benefits of being a bachelor and all).

So, once again, I'll be sticking with Comcast for the time being... not because they're offering superior product or service for the price, but because the gains I might make (if any) are outweighed by the hassle of switching providers.  Good job, CenturyLink!

No Man's Sky 1.3 - again with the galaxy regeneration?

Roughly a year post-initial-release, there's a new major update for No Man's Sky, so I had to check it out.  Note that I didn't bother posting about the 1.2 patch when it came out... yeah, bases and cars, woohoo, these don't support my space hobo-ing in any meaningful way.  This time though, they added some story and sidequest elements to the game... and apparently due to that, they had to regenerate the galaxy once again.

Mind you, last time they regenerated the galaxy, I wasn't exactly pleased or impressed either... but this time definitely showed why holding off until they're done mucking about with the game would be a good idea.  Finding myself booted to the current system's space station wasn't a terrible thing, but then I checked out my base (which I had to build in order to get the techs necessary to gather "advanced" materials needed to improve/repair my ship).  What once was a lush planet with little if any ill effects was now suffused with radiation... and, whether due to that or due to other factors tied to the latest patch, all the personnel I had brought on were gone.  Now, I could have deconstructed that base, found somewhere else to host it, gone through all the associated hassle... but I decided that a fresh start was in order, especially since I figured the new story bits probably tied in to the early game experience more than anything else.

So, a new start, and thereby a proper introduction to some of the systems that had been added to the game over all the patches (like Signal Boosters to help find things like mineral deposits you had to identify visually previously, and special slots on your ships dedicated to tech improvements), as well as more regrettable changes (like Mining Lasers not being standard kit on ships any longer, making survival in space combat decidedly more tricky).  I even got into some of the story bits, I think (likely leading up to the tech needed for one of the enhancements this go around, the possibility of limited co-exploration with friends).  Frankly, though, a lot of the changes I've seen seem aimed at padding out or slowing down playtime (why just let the player discover a tech from a damaged bit of gear found on the planet's surface, when we can have them do a repair (using minimal goods) to collect nanites to buy techs from traders on the space stations at different cost/faction rank limits?), so I wouldn't be too enthused about pursuing the game seriously at this point, especially if there are more major patches planned.

Except... whether it's due to engine improvements or my getting a beefier graphics card than I had at launch, I can now play this game over my Steam Link on my living room TV.  Grinding away at my PC for hours on end doesn't appeal much any longer, but an hour or three on the couch, as an alternative to other games I can do similarly with, that works for me with the pace of this game.  So, yeah, it's back on my radar for the time being.

So long, Raptr

Long-time readers might notice that something's missing from the right-hand side of the page... I had a play-time tracker there that tied to info collected by Raptr, which I found to be a fun and informative tool to show what really got my gaming attention.  Lately, however, their servers have been anything but stable, and, for all it was a free service, the annoyance factor just got to be too high.

For future reference then... while I did have multiple RPGs clocking in at over 100 hours each (including Skyrim, twice), the undisputed champion was Mabinogi, a free-to-play MMO with some interesting mechanics (enough so that I actually spent subscription-equivalent money with them while I was playing).  Someday, I'll be up for a proper MMO again... but there's simply too many new shinies out there in this Age of Entertainment to settle on one right now!

Spoilerriffic! Seafall, game 7

I'll keep it brief this time as well, since there weren't any "major" changes to speak of... but we're definitely getting closer to the next unlock.  Here's the rundown:

• One more island was discovered, so all that's left are the two 12-spots and the 30-spot... and, currently, one more island in stock, I believe.
• Of the leading trio, one of us had some terrible luck with the dice.  Otherwise, there might have been yet another island, and he might have stayed in close contention.
• As is, the guy who was two points behind me is now two points ahead of me, thanks to some aggressive exploration of existing, lower-difficulty sites.
• It could have been worse... the last round, I managed to complete my first colony (Gibraltar, king of the Kidney Stones), setting myself up for easier raids on the home territories and the mysterious Arch, if need be.  Unfortunately, the gent who got the first colony last game also managed to get a second built... so now there's three.  One more, and the path to the next unlock is open, and if he gets it, that'll likely trigger a milestone as well.
• Finally, in the end, I managed to meet the main goal I set out with on this game... acquiring luck tokens to beat back some of the enmity I had accumulated in earlier games.  Once you get to a multi-winter game, the combination of The Grizzled Veteran and The Bosun is a fine way to pump your luck, and the various "every winter" upgrades and buildings aren't too shabby, either.

Oh, and one parting story... I know the line from Ghostbusters is "If someone asks you if you're a god, say YES!", but that didn't work out so well for one of our players.  Remember kids, gold doesn't make you a god, no matter how much of it you may have, as one of our number found out when he discovered the Temple of Bone (I believe it's called).

Duolingo does Japanese now

Actually, Duolingo has been doing Japanese (on the phone app versions at least) for the past month or so... I decided to give it a go, see how it might fit in to my regular Japanese-learning regimen, that sort of thing.  My verdict:  it's... mostly OK, but I wouldn't recommend it as a primary source for learning the language.

The most obvious problem with this software is that it explains nothing.  At least from what I've seen so far, everything is taught through example, which is fine for most things, like basic nouns, verbs, and sentence structure, but doesn't necessarily serve well for "set phrases" that are roughly translated for the use they serve, without noting the actual translation that's just as valid... a good example would be いただきます, which I think gets translated as something like "let's eat" instead of "I (humbly) receive".  Of course, that may be the same sort of glossing over you see in introductory-level courses anyways, and at least this program actually teaches you the sound associated with individual characters (unlike some programs I've seen)... but then they introduce kanji into the mix early, without any warning that, oh by the way, these characters have multiple pronunciations depending, which isn't really helpful for students long-term, I wouldn't think.

The biggest problem I have with this program, however, is that sometimes it's Japanese is just wrong (from what I think I've learned so far).  I can understand why that might be, based on how I think they pursued their translation engine as a programmer, but that's doesn't excuse mis-teaching their users.  There are two main examples I can think of so far... first, instead of ではありません, I've seen them use じゃないです, which at least parses out alright, but strikes me as the sort of thing that might make a native speaker go "well, they're a foreigner, and they're trying, so it's OK".  A better example might be Duolingo's use of ほしい when you're saying someone else wants something (which you're basically not qualified to say with certainty, the correct version being ほしがる, which is more like they look like/seem like they want that something).

Those complaints aside, it is a good tool for drilling with and expanding your vocabulary, so at the price of free (with ads), it's worth using... but if you want to start learning Japanese, I would still suggest starting with Human Japanese, and maybe use Duolingo alongside... and listen to the dedicated Japanese program if you run into any conflicts between the two.

Spoilerriffic! Seafall, game 6

So, yeah, this was a game that stretched over two sessions, but maybe the less said about it the better... the leader after the first session missed the second session, and most of the remaining players had some terrible luck.  The relevant stats, then:

• No milestones claimed, and no new colonies established
• Thanks to that, this was the first game to see two winter rounds
• About an island's worth of exploration was performed on existing islands, leaving about another island's worth left (mostly on Overkill, since the native garrison there interferes with all endeavors, not just raids)
• Two more tombs were completed, resulting in another tablet and the first relic of the game
• There are still four open, attainable island slots... but I believe there are only two more islands available at the moment?

 End result:  one of the players tied for third pulled their own overkill maneuver, and I lost a little ground on the player in second... but not enough to actually drop out of first.  Currently, the three of us are all within 3 points of each other in overall score... but there are many games to go yet, and we won't be starting our next game until mid-July, courtesy of the 4th.  We'll see what fun unfolds then.

Steam discovery queue and related stats

Some time back, Steam decided to implement a "discovery queue", whereby they would present their customers with a daily selection of a dozen games (and now, other things like streaming videos), tailored to their tastes, with an eye towards tempting them with things they might like, but otherwise might never see.  Great idea in theory, and I've played along, checking out a batch of games on a more-or-less daily basis.  Steam says I've now been presented with over 10,000 different titles... sounds like a fine time to see how the idea matches up with reality!

First, the numbers... of those 10,002 items I've been exposed to, 4,151 I've rejected outright.  I think that illustrates how well tailored their recommendation engine is... and it's no surprise to me, really.  Their tool allows you to define tags you're not interested in.  For example, I've told it I don't care about any "VR" titles (because if there's one thing I hate, it's wearing goggles over my glasses), yet still they show up in my queue.

How about the positive results?  Well, at this moment, I have 66 games in my "wishlist", waiting for sales or an unexpected "dead zone" in my gaming desires to snatch up.  I have another 21 games in "early access" or otherwise "coming soon" that I'm following - I don't buy unfinished games (what with the bounty I already have and/or are finished and waiting in my wishlist), and that lets me keep an eye on promising titles and see who makes it to a properly finished game, and who gets abandoned or rushed out the door in an unfinished state.  As for actual purchases, I've currently got 445 games in my library, along with three pieces of non-game software and three series of streaming videos... at first blush, 4%+ sales might not seem like a bad thing, but those numbers also include games I purchased before this program launched, and games I bought through the Humble Bundle, where I've often picked up a game or two I wanted, along with 6 or 8 that I didn't care about, because, at a buck a piece or so, with proceeds going to charity, why not?  Side note:  you should look at the current Humble Bundle... I'd be all over it, if I didn't already own the games I care about in it.

I guess the takeaway here would be, if you haven't tried Steam's discovery queue, it wouldn't hurt to give it a go for a few days, but expect diminishing returns to set in quick.  Unless you're like me, that is... I find it entertaining in its own right, seeing some of the dreck people try to pass off as a worthwhile, playable game, never mind some of the straight-out weirdness you can find.

Spoilerriffic! Seafall, game 5

Not a lot of new mechanics to reveal this time or anything... frankly, this will mainly be a sort of "victory lap" post, since I managed to not only win my first game, but also managed to take the overall lead in the standings.  There is one minor bit of mechanics and schadenfreude to enjoy, but we'll get to that.

We started the game with two partially-explored islands in play, so a fair deal of energy was devoted to further exploring those.  Personally, I intended to limit my militaristic exploits, in the interest of minimizing my fortune token expenditures, the better to buy down my on-board enmity at game end... but I also started out with a Pirate as my carry-over adviser, and being able to basically do a raid each year without generating enmity does help somewhat with that.  Beyond that, I fully intended to start collecting goods, the better to get a colony started, but turn order and finances effectively put that out of reach long enough that, by the time one of my opponents succeeded in building one (the only one this game), we were in a tight-knit pack midway to the target glory score.  From past experience, I knew the odds of succeeding at building a colony this time were very slim, so I cast about for something else useful to do.

...and there it was.  One of the milestones in play was set to trigger at getting 30+ gold from selling goods in one turn, and between different advisors and buildings, I worked out how to use my meager finances to get 10 gold each out of the three goods I had collected so far.  From reactions at the table, I'm pretty sure nobody even saw it coming until it was done, and I was launched ahead of the pack, two glory shy of the target.  There was some talk about trying to sink one of my ships to drag me back, but everybody pretty well shifted to "get some glory while the getting's good" mode.  Just as well for them... I spent most of the gold I got the turn prior on a 2-glory treasure, then padded my score by discovering an island (now officially named 'Overkill').  One of my competitors discovered another island that same turn, so next game is just going to be exploration mad.

Not everyone's final round plans went as well, though... the leader since the first game went for the seeming sure bet of exploring a tomb of the ancients (both prior successes had resulted in a tablet and glory equivalent to a milestone).  On his last turn, he succeeded flawlessly in his endeavor, and received... 45 gold, and no way to do anything with it this game, doubly painful since there's a "have 60+ gold in your treasury" milestone waiting to be claimed as well.  On the plus side (?), that result also didn't call for the closing of the tomb afterwards, so it will still be a draw as well.

So, yeah, loads of fun this time around (the more so for me, since I won and finally got an appellation for my leader, making her Princess Kitty the Vengeful).  On to the next game!

Spoilerriffic! Seafall, game 4

We almost got this game finished in one session, and I almost won, but I tied for the lead with the overall laggard of the group, so no dice.  Still, there was a fair amount of "being in the right place at the right time" involved in reaching that goal, so I can't claim any deep mastery of the game at this point.

With three largely-unexplored islands on the map, it was a fairly safe bet that exploration was likely to be a large part of the score-getting this time around... but it also became clear that people had clued in to the value of the milestones, as people started grabbing all the spice they could get hold of (spice being the most abundant good on the board at the moment) with an eye towards the "sell 4 goods in one turn" milestone and its attendant unlock.  My strategy of specializing my ships and sending them out separately worked nicely here, letting me raid a couple of incoming vessels with my "coastal raider" for their goods and selling them to make a quick buck, while the "explorer" vessel went off to do its thing in the farther islands.  The money I made from those raids, I put into acquiring treasures, in pursuit of that cheap milestone of having three glory worth of treasures in your treasure room.

Unfortunately, I was thwarted in that endeavor by two players.  One of the people I raided previously used the Master Spy (and a little misreading of the text thereon) to empty my coffers after one of my raids was cashed in.  The other used an advisor combo, and the massive treasury he got from being so far behind in the overall game, to get two treasures (one of them the more-expensive, worth 2 glory sort) in the same turn, claiming the milestone, and getting an adder for the first treasure in his treasure room in all games going forward.

However, if the game snatches opportunity from you, it also opens up other opportunities as well.  I used my "being behind" bonuses to stock up on Fortune this game, with an eye toward reducing my permanent enmity in-game, especially with one specific island that holds 3 stickers of mine.  Another player found another tomb site, and my explorer was in position to take advantage.  Finding the Fortune-oriented option on the tomb map, I was able to easily complete the challenge, resulting in a load of glory and a tablet for my treasure room (it may only be once a game, but being able to "teleport" a ship home will be handy).

And so, neck and neck, we two leaders raced for the goal - but somebody else also managed to pull down that unlock milestone on the last round.  This unlocked "colonies" as a thing to pursue, which require 6 goods (including one of each type) to build, but persist for you from game to game (for all they have to be "activated" on a winter round to get all their goodness).  Both your ships start with a hold size of 2, so there's improvements, upgrades, and/or other silliness that will have to be handled to make that happen... but, there's no rules for conquering each others' colonies (yet), so, if you succeed, it's a decent investment.  Oh, and of course, it's also necessary for some of the new milestones (for example, one of them involves having built 5 structures, but your home province can only support 3).  It's not, however, strictly necessary for the next unlock... that just requires you to find a particular island using the Strange Chart.  Should be fun!

Spoilerriffic! Seafall, game 3

Amazingly, we finished this game in one session.  Mind you, that was almost accidental, but it is possible... the winning player crossed the 13-point threshold on turn 6 of the first year, in spite of the attentions of the pirate king (event cards from our first lock box, where a fixed-strength raid hits the lead player, with "bad" results of things like losing an advisor, losing all your gold, generally targeting the "leader" of the current game, by one measure or another).  The way that happened, though, does make me understand the gripes I've heard about how some milestone cards may be overpowered.

To recap, we started this game with three milestones available - two with unlocks attached, and a cheap one for gathering treasures (which nobody has seriously pursued yet - treasures have been outweighed by the usefulness of buildings and upgrades).  Most of the players started working towards the "sell 4 of the same resource" milestone, but we had discovered one new island last game, with an odd skull symbol and a high (but fortune-aidable) difficulty rank.  I decided to wager this round on that being a "tomb of the ancients", as referred to by the other main milestone available... and it turns out, I was right.  This time, however, the unlock didn't wait to the end of the game, but happened immediately.

As part of this unlock, the back cover of the Captain's Booke is unsealed, revealing a tomb map.  Every tomb you discover lets players come back to that site for further explorations, chosen from that map.  Unlike the main site explorations to date, however, these explorations are built with a "perfect" pass required to finish them off, at which point a special item (relic or tablet) is given out, and the tomb site is closed out.  Past that, there's a mix of new cards added in... no new types exactly, except that a new batch of damage cards detailing "curses" are added to that stack, which basically count as a separate sort of damage (making the "max default" damage your ship can take without sinking as high as 4, depending on which cards you draw), which have special conditions for removal.  That, and more milestones... no new unlocks in this batch, though.

No sooner do we have everything in place, than the current game leader goes for the newly-discovered tomb, uses the hints provided for each location to intuit one that he can spend Reputation to help pass, and passes it flawlessly.  In return, in addition to the point of glory he got for the endeavor and the tablet he gets to squirrel away for future games, the story gave him 4 more glory... and then, he was also able to claim the "first to flawlessly explore a tomb" milestone for another 4 glory, rocketing him well past the glory total needed for this game, and leaving everybody else scrambling to get what glory they could before the turn ended.  By the time all was said and done, we had two more islands discovered (for a total of 7), one of which is quite hazardous, one of which looks to be amazingly tame.  A fine point to start the next game!

Spoilerriffic! Seafall, game 2

OK, for starters, I really don't know where the folks at Plaid Hat Games come up with a 90-120 minute game time for this game.  Our group is taking about one 3-hour game session per "year" in the game, which, at 2 years per game so far, comes in closer to 5-6 hours per game.  Maybe things will speed up with time, but I don't see it going anywhere near as fast as stated.  Of course, that means that we're likely to get a full year of play sessions out of this game before we're done, so that's not a terrible thing.

But enough of that, you want to know about how the game went this time, right?  Well, the first thing was the effects of the new rank cards from the unlock box, which gives a boost to the underdogs (in the form of gold, luck, or influence) and a drag to the leaders (in the form of pre-distributed enmity tokens).  That helped me get off to a quick start, at least.  Second, most of the "easy" explore sites were taken, which seemed to prime the game for a more raid-centric play style.  That was mostly true, but it turns out exploring for islands is a fair bit easier than I expected, so we did manage to pick up our fifth island this go around... and likely, I'll be in hot pursuit of island #6 next game.

No unlocks to worry about this time, for all we did pull a couple more milestones (including one for sinking an opponent's ship, which we had to mark the site of for future reference)... the one thing that did bite a couple of us (myself included) was a misunderstanding about handling enmity end-game.  I was of the understanding that all you had to worry about in that regard was enmity with the islands, when it actually encompasses your enmity kept by the other players as well.  So, I've a fair bit of work to do to get some of that down... but nowhere near as much as the guy who won the last two games, so I'm actually feeling pretty good about my position, overall.

Another of life's little milestones

Today, my mother moved into an assisted living facility.  Thankfully, that's something she wanted to do, and not something being forced on her by the rest of the family, so that's a plus.  There's a whole lot of financial uncertainty involved (stuff that, in my opinion, should have been worked out before the move), but it's a nice enough place for what it is, and her area is definitely larger than the apartment she was living in before.  I guess we'll just see where things go from here.

Spoilerriffic! Seafall, game 1

We finally finished our first "real" game of Seafall last night, thanks to the imposition of Valentine's Day on our regularly scheduled night.  Unfortunately, that lapse also caused one of our players to forget the proper night entirely, so we had to make do... the rules have options for if a player is missing for one session, but not for an interrupted session like this one.  Our solution was to give the missing player either the standard missing player score (one less than the lowest score in the round) or their actual score, whichever is higher.

So, for round 1, the victory condition is 11 glory, with four milestones to pursue in aid of that:  fully explore an island, build 3 structures for your home province, obtain 3 treasures, and successfully raid a 6 defense site (which also gives you your first opportunity to open one of the sealed boxes).  Since I was fourth in the play order, I watched the first three players start pursuing the easier unexplored sites on the islands, and tried a slightly harder site on my first round, failing badly enough to sink a ship.  That was my first mistake.  The second mistake was taking that failure to heart and pursuing a mainly mercantile method thereafter, leaving my ship in a sunken state for entirely too long.  It may be possible to do something along those lines in later games with higher glory totals required to win, but there simply wasn't enough time to bring that to fruition this time around.

All that said, there's no significant new mechanics to worry about in the first game.  Your group is stuck with the same set of four islands, and exploration tends to be a little trickier than the prologue round, but still easy enough that a ship mod and/or the right adviser on tap will see you through handily.  We completed two of the four milestones (island exploration and the unlocking raid), each giving the person completing them a permanent boon and a healthy chunk of glory, while adding one card each to the conditions deck.  No great surprises score-wise this game - the two people who scored milestones came in first and second, the other two present eked out just enough score to tie with the person who missed out, so, per our prior decision, he ended up with one more point than he otherwise would have had.

Once the game was done, we got to open the appropriate box for the unlocking raid milestone.  Contents included rule stickers to cover research, exploration, and raiding other players' ships; islands to discover; a fair number of new advisors for the advisors deck; some new sealed condition cards, likely to go along with the new milestone cards; a few more retired advisor sticker sheets; and two all-new card decks, one for research, and one for exploration.  It should be fun to see how these changes affect the next game... oh, and two of the new milestones are unlocks for chests, so things could get increasingly crazy in short order.  The first unlock's story did say something about a pirate king, after all... we haven't seen anything concrete in-game about that yet, but I'm sure it'll come shortly.

Looks like a fumble for Sony

Two months back, I posted how I submitted for my share of the PS3 Linux settlement... and fully expected to be knocked down to a lower class because of my limited documentation.  Well, looks like the judge in charge has shut down the settlement.  In brief, it looks like that partly because the settlement administrators were throwing needless requirements in to pare down the payout, and partly because the lawyers involved were scheduled to get a fat payout with little justification.  Well, we'll see how things progress from here, but, as with most things Sony, I'm not exactly holding my breath.

Spoilerrific! Seafall, prologue round

Thought I'd try something a little different this time... my game group just started in on Seafall, a so-called "legacy" game with a nautical theme, where the act of playing the game alters the game permanently for both the current session and future sessions.  I won't go into great detail on game mechanics and such (here is a handy video that covers that pretty well).  More interesting to me is where the game goes from that basic start point... and where better to post that than a little-viewed blog?  So, in case the title of this post wasn't clear enough, this is your final spoiler warning.  SPOILERS AHEAD!

The prologue is different from the main game.  Fresh out of the box, the game starts you out with four mostly-unexplored islands, and the stated goal for the prologue (gather enough glory to claim milestones that let you name each of the islands), combined with the relative ease of earning glory through exploration, says that one primary goal of the prologue is to populate the game board a little more thoroughly, making the coming games more dependent on skill and management rather than simple luck.  The fact that they use this as a no-long-term-detriment play session to get everyone familiar with the rules is brilliant, in my opinion.  Well, no major long-term detriment, at any rate, but I'll get to that in a moment.

Being seasoned gamers, the first players in our group quickly went after the few resources available on the opening round, which turned out to be a mistake.  Early-game exploration opportunities on a fresh board are plentiful, low risk, and guaranteed to earn you one glory for successful completion... plus, you get introduced to the "Captain's Booke", which adds a "choose your own adventure" element beyond the simple "you found a source of iron" that would otherwise prevail, and slowly introduces you to the lore of the game.  It's not just "subjugate the natives and take their stuff", you start to find bits and pieces that don't add up to a wholesome picture, whether that's odd coins in one place, or peculiar bones in another that the natives rush to prevent you from disturbing, or the natives wanting to meet you at the ruins of a port the 1000-year-dead Empire left behind, it's got the hallmarks of something Lovecraftian starting to come to life, but it's much too early to say what form it will finally take.

Once we clued in to the risk-reward of the exploration option, we went after it with gusto, finding more resource sites, naming our provinces, rulers, ships and advisors as we went.  Soon the milestones were falling, and we were all rewarded with the opportunity to name the islands, as well as entries detailing what was going on from the point of view of the provincial rulers and their underlings.  More stories of dreams of glory, grand things to come, that sort of thing... and then, we triggered the final milestone.  Turns out, whatever influence was in play must have gotten its hooks well and truly into the rulers of the provinces, as they basically all sailed west out of sight and were never seen again.  The provinces each blame each other for the loss, which brings each raiding the other, and it's in that environment that the new rulers are raised (so, the rulers you first selected from the initial batch of 10 are destroyed, and you choose from the remainder for the rest of the game).  So ends the prologue, with a little gut-punch for the players who've gotten attached to their leaders... and now, the game and players are really ready to play.