Mwah

A bullet list for you.

• I finally beat Melissa on the Battle Line, with tactics and the "advanced rule" of taking flags only at the start of your turn. (I should write GMT games about the fact that their "advanced rule" sidebar seems to match the rules as otherwise presented.) The tactics cards seem kind of weak to us now; the only time they seem playable is when your opponent holds none, and therefore can't immediately retaliate, or when you're hoping for a quick kill. I played the first tactic of the game by dropping Alexander (a wildcard) on two 10s, which would have given me the game, but then Melissa played the one tactic she was holding (mud, which requires a four-card formation) and that spoiled that strategy. I suppose my move was still valid because there are some tactics that wouldn't have helped her there. I ended up winning five flags in the fun-fun endgame slugfest when all the troops are drawn and both players have blown their formations, just playing for highest sums instead. So, yay. It was our seventh BL game together.


• Call of Cthulhu was a lot of fun, though I felt like a spoilsport for wanting to end the session before anyone else, and now the next session will open with all the PCs are going on YA Gavin-led kamikaze mission because I was too tired/frustrated to say anything contrarily at the time.


• Though it doesn't sound like it, I've been getting a lot of book book book done this weekend. Tomorrow the TR draft is due. As anyone could predict, it will be suboptimally beautiful, but what can you do? I think it will be better-looking than P&X's TR draft, and if this is as well-received (and as thoroughly critiqued) as that was, oh, I will be a happy boy.


• There is one month left before the book goes into Production: two weeks for the TRs to go over it, and two more for me to react to them. Theoretically I don't get to touch it after that, so there will be another round of me saying "It's done, yay yay," and then I'll spend another weekend furiously marking up the QC1 (quality check draft 1) hardcopy for the production editors. It's all good.