A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

Another exciting Memoir 44 game, playing scenario 40: Breakout at Klin, part of the Eastern Front expansion that classicaljunkie got me for Xmas.

M44 has kind of become "our game" - we have a reputation among some friends for liking it a maybe a little too much - but we hadn't played it in months after I got kind of burned out on it over the winter. Early summer rain combined with a good work-day put me back in the mood.

Anyway, you'll be pleased to know that even though I boasted on Twitter about how I expected to make short work of Amy's russians, she turned it around. I think I made a mistake my throwing units at Golyadi right at the start of the game, figuring I'd be able to hold them for the duration. Amy correctly focused on knocking them out for an early lead, and that kept me off-balance for the whole game. Duh: occupying territory is an endgame move in Memoir, not an opening gambit. I deserved what I got.

And, as always with Memoir 44, it really helps to remember to roll the dice well. I kept forgetting to do this, clearly. It feels like I kept rolling flags, allowing Amy's units to flounce away from all my attacks, and meanwhile she kept rolling tanks, neatly taking apart all my Panzer units.

It came down to one of those ridiculous situations where it's mutual game-point and there's two adjacent units chipping away at each other until one of them finally rolls the right symbols. But that's war for you.

For those of you just tuning in, I shall elucidate upon my gift-giving and gift-receiving policies. This applies equally to Xmas and birthdays.

In a nutshell, I do my best to avoid active participation in the gift-exchanging aspects of all of these. I do not gift people due to calendar-bound events, and expect no gifts in return.

I do like to gift people on a whim occasionally. Usually it's a piece of media or a game that I figure some particular individual really must experience for themselves, and I'm so adamant about this that I choose to rob them of the option of not owning it by buying it for them. I tend to put no ceremony around this, other than the surprise, which I admit to finding delightful.

If I have not gifted you in this way, it is because nothing has yet said to me "[your name here] needs this right now", at least not during a time when I have been flush with money. And certainly these periods come and go.

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That said, I do gracefully accept gifts at Xmas and other times, so let us go over what I've gotten so far:

classicaljunkie got me the Pacific Theater expansion to Memoir '44, which is excellent. It's a little box that includes a sand-colored Japanese army set, new terrain tiles (stuff like jungles, rice paddies, mountains and caves), and plenty of new rules and scenarios. We played one of the Guam landing scenarios and it was hella fun.

My favorite new rules involve movement and battle modifications that apply to both sides in all the Pacific scenarios. The U.S. Marines are Gung-Ho, which in M44 terms means that they can usually order an additional unit in their eagerness to crush the enemy. The Japanese forces balance this by ignoring most retreat-flags rolled against them. They can also perform Banzai attacks, moving two hexes and battling if the target is adjacent (infantry can normally move only one hex and battle), and throwing an extra die if the attacking unit is at full strength. It's great. I will absolutely bring it to the next HoRGN and hope to find an opponent there.

My parents got me the "Party Box" edition of Apples to Apples, which is like the normal edition only more so; it has two card racks and twice as many cards. We played a little as a family and everyone had a good time.

They also got me a hell of a lot of white briefs. I do not wear white or briefs, but I suppose it makes a nice backup supply.

I celebrated Veterans' Day today by playing Memoir '44 a bunch of times. Actually I played it three times today versus Shmike and classicaljunkie at dougo's birthday thing, but earlier this week played against meerkitty and temvald.

Between temvald and shmike we liberated Paris no less than three times, so that's only fitting.

mrmorse and I, in our copious free time, have been trying to rework someone else's idea of mixing "Memoir '44" and "Zombies!!!" into a playable game.

Today's attempt:

Axis: 0
Allies: 1
Zombies: 6

Prognosis: Needs recalibration. (Even worse, the one Allied point was when I played a Barrage card on a one-figure unit that had already been savaged by Zombies!!!.)

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I think that the Volity meme's been released into the water supply somewhere... got two messages about it from strangers, yesterday and today. (One posted to the mailing list via the Usenet link that PSA set up, which I believe to be a first.) Could be a coincidence, but experience suggests that even two datapoints with this sort of thing means that it got a mention somewhere. I've seen it happen before with my writing, or with different jmac.org toys.

Uh, waitasec, daerr set up a Web traffic analyzer with the site itself well over a year ago. I'll go check it out now. OK holy crap, there's been as much traffic in the first three days of July as all of June. Hmm, it may be due to the http://byond.com people finding it... I see a bunch of referers from there, and relevant chatter on their message boards. Perhaps I will pay them a visit. Now I'm all nervous about what they're saying on their forum! Will steel my nerves w/decaf and then give it a butcher's.

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Feeling a little whacked out from four straight days of coding (zombies aside), and I'm still not done with my Volity tasks, implementing a lot of long-defined protocol chunks for the first time and battling a thousand devils down in the details, stuff that isn't obvious until you first try setting things to code. I'm so happy that Zarf is doing parallel work in Python; I don't expect there to be many unhammered bumps left in the platform, between the two of us. And then the public beta will happen, the first uncontrolled user-tests shall come, and it will all collapse with a puff and a sigh. No, don't get like that.

And tomorrow is going to be all day with ICCB coding as I try to meet Tuesday deadlines. The holiday just means I don't have to go to the office. O poor poor me. Actually no complaints; I had my July 4 on June 30, with the rest of Somerville. (Thanks hauntmeister!)

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Ricky's coming down to check out Art Beat this year. I am optimistic.