There and back again
11 Mar 2008 
in the early evening 
Matt Winckler
There for a while I was almost in the real world, but I’m back.
Actually, the main cause of my absence would be Mr. Geoffrey’s too-generous gift of The Orange Box for my birthday weekend before last, and ever since I have been disinclined to exercise the creative muscle for the purposes of posting anything of value here.
Indeed, one might argue that nothing of value has yet been posted, since this is really just the token sacrificial blog post necessary to prime the pump of creativity and get Real Stuff going. I find that writing every day, every other day at worst, keeps the brain focused and the wit sharp, whereas posting every other week dulls the blade of…something. You see, I cannot think of it. That ellipsis consumed entire minutes of time that my lifeless fingers drooped upon the keyboard and my eyes focused hazily on something about four feet behind the monitor. My blade is dull.
Look! William Wallace!
And now, board games. I also received various forms of cashes for my birthday, which I was very pleased with, because it means that I can spend them on board games. In this case, I ordered four, among which was a board game that allegedly includes William Wallace as a character. (Or was that an expansion? I cannot recall.)
- Railroad Tycoon, of computer game fame. That was the computer game that sapped my productivity in the days of yore, before they invented evil things like Portal and Half-Life 2. The board game promises to be an affair that can handle up to 6 people and will hopefully be somewhat less intimidating than my only other game that 6 people can play (and that takes less than 6 hours), Power Grid.
- Power Grid Power Plant Deck #2. Because I still like Power Grid, even if it’s heavyweight, and Plant Deck #2 is rumored to remove some of the late game randomness that dominates the plant draws.
- Warrior Knights, which can also go to 6 players, but would probably take about half the time of a 6-player game of Twilight Imperium, which would still be half the day. So fewer players is okay, but I liked the look of several of the game mechanics. I am a sucker for clever game mechanics, unless they are wrapped in a completely dry and/or distasteful theme, like German politics (or American politics, for that matter).
- Duel of Ages Set 1: Worldspanner. My game collection has grown sufficiently that now I’ve started including a “go out on a limb” game in all of my big orders–a game that looks like it could either be really neat or be a complete flop. Tannhäuser was the last “go out on a limb” game, and apart from the inappropriately-clad whip-bearing
NaziReich bad-guy lady pictured on the front, it turned out okay. Duel of Ages’ premise is…well, I’m not sure what the premise is. But a bunch of characters from wildly diverse backgrounds and timelines are brought together onto some modular terrain and have certain objectives to accomplish while not getting killed by enemy players. The game ends at a set time limit agreed upon beforehand, at which point the team with the most points wins. We’ll see how it goes. Unfortunately, the characters are represented by cardboard chits instead of fancy plastic miniatures, which already drops it a notch in the eye-candy department, but hopefully the gameplay makes up for it.
And that’s about it. Sacrifice completed, hopefully the writing around here will stagger back into something resembling liveliness, rather than the oozing zombie this post turned out to be. I would categorize it as Humor, but the problem is it’s just so sad, and yet not quite sad enough to be funny.
You do what you’ve got to do. I blame the residual trauma from the tragic loss of my Weighted Companion Cube.