D. Hunter Phillips's Blog, page 3

Post #100: I have made it this far!

I still feel like I haven’t really posted that much stuff yet. I also worry sometimes that the stuff that I post about is all over the board. I even hold back from posting about cooking and restaurants that I’ve gone to. Or even things like World Cup soccer experiences and the sort.

Its hard to figure out who is reading this blog and what would be interesting to those people and what would be way off kilter.

If I look at the google searches and the traffic to older posts, I’d really just have to play more Warhammer 40k and put up more game reports. That’s a shame since I both forget to post a lot of the photos and games that I play, and that I have not played a lot of games since 7th edition hit. Not that I’m averse to it, but actually, most of my friends that I played with have gotten busy or moved away, timed almost exactly with the release of 7th edition.

But hell, it’s best to just post things that make me who I am and not just play to what random searchers are looking for. That’ll get people interested more in the long term right?

I’ve also been torn between posting more stories and book excerpts onto the blog. Its just hard to do that when what I really want to do is to keep editing my next novel and get that out there. Trying to keep contact with people and let them know I’m alive and get work done on long term projects, well… its just a lot of directions to bounce in.

I like to think that just continuing to post when I can and not giving up on it will slowly but surely keep me going in a positive direction. I slowly make more contacts and more friends in further and further reaching places. Hopefully, this will lead to my books (when more of them finally come out) getting more attention and more reviews.

As far as the books go, only exciting and well written projects will get me further in life. Blogs, I feel are different. With this, I hope to keep my newly renewed gusto for blogging going. Cheers to anyone reading this.

Here is to getting to 200 posts!

Guardians: Protect my Galaxy!

I surprised my girlfriend with a trip to the cinema yesterday and tickets to an IMAX 3D showing of Guardians of the Galaxy. I’d love to share with you some of my experiences on the movie. The theater was actually pretty packed for an opening Thursday evening showing.

I’ll try to keep this as spoiler free as possible while still talking about the movie.

The first scene of the movie really sucks you into the movie. The set pieces are grand in scale and then, immediately upon seeing Star Lord, you get the tone of the movie as he dances around with essentially, alien rats. Hilarious.

My favorite scene with the villain of this movie was his introduction. I got the feeling from that scene that he was some sort of spiritual idealist. It looked like he’d be a crazy dude with some level of depth to him. The scene actually reminded me a bit of an Alien or Prometheus setting.

Vin Diesel did a fantastic job with Groot, getting a CG character to emote is hard, but getting that one to emote must have been really hard. I found myself understanding what Groot was trying to say before any of the other characters told me.

Chris Pratt did fabulously and it just seemed that the role was made for him. His outfit just looked like something that brought me back to old school sci-fi stories.

I also enjoy when aliens are portrayed with the various different colored bright skins. It is such an old school call out for sci-fi comics and somewhat to old sci-fi pulp movies too.

I was worried about how the Guardians would defeat the villain, but it ended up being incredibly clever and tied with the tone of the movie. Also, it was interesting that the way he was defeated was foreshadowed earlier in the movie. It almost reminded me of the first Fantastic Four movie, except that they didn’t make it lame, as Dr. Doom was totally lame in that.

I have two criticisms of the movie.

One: I wish they had shown and not told more about the villains back story and motivations. The bad dude mentioned his reasons a couple times, but I really wish the good guys had stumbled on a recording or something to show it. Or perhaps, the bad guy could have gotten a flash back that showed what his deal was.

Two: It would have been nice if the people that the protagonists were trying to save had been humanized more. Instead, it felt like a corporation that arrested any trouble makers and were just whiny bureaucrats. They did humanize them at the end of the movie, but I think a minor character from the people that were the potential victims, well, that would’ve been greatness.

This is: A MUST SEE IN 3D.

Marks of Hesitation on me thanks to some Nine Inch Nails

Talking about Hesitation Marks has been a long time in coming for me. I actually got to see NIN on this tour long before I gave the whole of the new album a listen to.

I have been a fan of NIN since the days of Pretty Hate Machine, sitting in my friends room in his parents basement, playing the Battletech card game. I also have a very fond memory of playing that album while playing an old video game where you fly a souped up B-52 Bomber that ruled the skies.

I can also not so fondly remember when the NIN cds that I traded a very nice comic book shirt for and then having someone that I thought was my friend, steal those very cds.

So, NIN has a place in my past, it makes NIN nostalgic with every one of their albums after that one.

With all that time I’ve spent with Nine Inch Nails and building this all up, you might think I’m going to communicate that the new album was a big let down. Well…

I actually really enjoyed this album!! Its got the haunting slower melodies that I love from old albums. Memorable dancier songs like Came Back Haunted and Copy of A really make me move, even as I drive to work in my car.

Listening to this album from start to finish is a great, contiguous experience that makes this album one that might be added to the memory train. I think if I listen to the whole thing on its own one more time, I will find it forever associated in my mind with the things that make my life what it is today.

Prepping for GenCon: Star Wars LCG Marathon Play

I recently had a friend over to help me with practice playing Star Wars LCG for the upcoming tournament at GenCon. I don’t have a lot of friends that play this game, and since I feel I am pretty good at it, they all assume that there is no point to helping me practice by playing.

When getting ready for a tournament though, its also good to work on the basic mechanics for a complex game like Star Wars. It is also important to make sure you understand the cards, because sometimes the untrained or less trained eyes can question things that a more veteran player might take as gospel.

The friend that came to play with me is actually fairly good and has a couple of the newer force packs that I don’t have yet. Those are the cards I really wanted to see.

Scum and villainy decks based on the Capture mechanic still suck, but other than that, Scum and Villainy is great!

Watchers in the Wasteland, Objective set 91, is really an amazing set. The best thing about this set, is 3 of the cards are very good for a slow Jedi deck that intends to keep the force to plink enemy objectives throughout the game and also get some extra benefits. The Wolfman coming back into play from the discard pile at the force struggle phase reminds me a lot of old MtG Black decks that play out of the graveyard.

I had a deck that I thought would be getting scrapped that won every game against every one of his dark side decks. This deck is a Jedi deck with 2 of the Millennium Falcon objective set. The Obiwan from Set 91 really became a lynchpin of the deck. I really need to play this deck against some good Scum decks.

I tried out the smuggler deck with objective sets that had powerful named characters. I found the starting hand very unreliable through multiple shuffles.

I’m pretty sure I will be playing the same dark side deck as last year. I found it very reliable and people didn’t know how to counter the cards that I was using.

The light side deck could very well end up being this Jedi deck I thought I’d scrap. I still need to rebuild the speeder deck and see how that goes, though I feel like the Snow Speeder is a pretty weak 2 cost unit.

An ‘A Test Of Will’ Addiction

So, after finishing my play through of The Hobbit adventures in LOTR LCG with my girlfriend, I have realized I have a serious problem. Both her and I were using decks that had at least a splash of the Spirit Resource and each of us had three copies of A Test of Will.

After forgetting what it was like to have ever anything but a trivial When Revealed effect trigger, her and I built brand new decks to play through the Heirs of Numenor box together. Neither of our decks had any Spirit at all, instead going for a pure Lore deck and a Leadership deck with a splash of Tactics.

We played through the first quest of the box and we’ve replayed it another three times. We actually did best on our first play through and its just gotten worse since.

And what is it that has made our life such a living hell? Well, big surprise, it is the Treacheries. I don’t even think the treacheries in that quest are all that brutal, there is no Sleeping Sentries or anything that causes an instant lose, but we yet still find ourselves overwhelmed with the effects that are in that pesky quest.

The thing is, no other cards have still yet been released that really simulate the same effect as this magical Spirit card that I bank my life and the life of my heroes on. This card, funny enough that it is blue, is just like the ole’ MtG Counterspell of old.

I would love to eventually see some Tactics cards that cancelled When Revealed on Enemies. There are already some things that deal with locations in this regard, but some more options to delay or negate encounter deck card abilities would be a welcome addition to the game.

In the mean time, I am going to start trying to find easy ways to add a splash of Spirit to each and ever deck, because, well, just imagine a 4 player game where each player has 3 copies of A Test of Will. It almost sounds like cheating… but its not.

Feast for Crows is a Feast on my imagination, but where’s the epic battle?

And now my goal is complete for the next year.

It has been my loose plan all along to read the Game Of Thrones books coordinated up with the show. So far, I have managed this by finishing each book of the series before the corresponding season of the show has come out.

There is a certain genius about the way the books and the show are being done. Though the events of the books are not being shown from the same perspectives, almost everything that has happened has been the same story. This has made for a real treat, I think, for people that both read the book and watch the show. The show gives POVs that the book never does, so that you get to see characters you are familiar with in the books get more detail.

The book was more entertaining than I had planned for it to be. This is mostly a factor of expectations. I have heard from a number of sources that Feast For Crows was a less than stellar book in the series. I think that the majority of these comments stem from the lack of Tyrion in the book.

I’d also have to state another factor though. Despite the length of the book and all the things that shook the foundations of the characters and the world in Storm of Swords, this book doesn’t have any big events like that. There are no epic battles that change the landscape, and I must say that the George R.R. Martin trademark of killing characters seemed to soften quite a bit.

I still enjoyed the ride, but I wonder what Dance With Dragons will be like. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get to finish that book before the next one comes out and be all caught up! Though, don’t hold your breath. There aren’t really any book series where I am caught up. I jump around too much.

Mass Effect Novelization Review: Ascension

I’ve finally finished the second Mass Effect Novel. And while I do like the stories told in the video games, and the video game stories are written by the same author, I can say that I’m not the hugest fan of this book.

I finished the book in just a couple of weeks of casual reading, so the book held my interest enough to be a decent book.

I think one of the weird things about the novels (first two) that I’ve read thus far, is their scope. The video game is about these huge events and revealing these very exciting mysteries. The books are there to sort of set up the video games, so they don’t reveal too much.

Ascension ties the Collectors in to the story as a tie in to Mass Effect 2. The mystery is built at the most rudimentary level here in preparation for the video game. I realize that the novels should have some tie ins, but I wish the books took more of an opportunity to explore more of their own story.

I actually did find myself enjoying the Quarian characters a bit. The traitorous Golo and the young and hopeful Lemm.

I would really have appreciated descriptions of the aliens when they first appeared. If someone hasn’t played the game yet, or if they just want to read the stories, they will be lost in this. The Star Wars novelizations often have the same issues with using aliens.

In the end, I’m glad I read the book. I probably won’t read further Mass Effect fiction unless I read that the story of books take a totally different arc.

Playing the Hobbit the traditional way with LOTR LCG

Recently, I had the pleasure and luxury of having a gaming partner that has a similar approach to gaming as I do. It was her suggestion, we actually tried our best to create decks of cards that would only have been around during the time of the Hobbit. We mostly focused on the heroes and allies for this. We tried to throw in some themed events and attachments, but there isn’t really enough card pool to make an effective deck totally to theme.

We started our way through the quests after a little back and forth on synergizing our decks together. I almost always play tactics, and I actually realized recently that my spare tactics card pool is only about 60 cards that are not in decks. Literally, the Tactics section of my box of unused cards was about half of all the other spheres.

Side Note: None of the other spheres can really compete with Tactics on the scale of combat power where as some of the other spheres can emulate each other a little bit.

Synergizing decks between each other is really a powerful thing to do. Two people bringing decks together without talking for this co-op game make for wasted cards quite a bit. Since so many cards that are very powerful are unique, multiple players tend to have them.

We made her deck a secondary combat deck that becomes very strong at combat in the late game. My deck was built to handle early questing and to ramp up on allies. It was interesting that her deck with 2 spirit heroes was so much weaker than mine at questing.

I’m really addicted to A Test of Will and I wish there were some other cards that emulated it to give some other options for cancelling when revealed effects. I actually built Spirit into both decks to have 6 copies of that guy in there.

Total Cards: (50)

Hero: (3)

1x Dwalin (Khazad-dum)

1x Oin (On the Doorstep)

1x Ori (Over Hill and Under Hill)

Ally: (22)

3x Bifur (On the Doorstep)

2x Bofur (The Redhorn Gate)

2x Dori (Over Hill and Under Hill)

2x Erebor Battle Master (The Long Dark)

2x Erebor Hammersmith (Core Set)

2x Erebor Record Keeper (Khazad-dum)

2x Gandalf (Core Set)

1x Longbeard Map-Maker (Conflict at the Carrock)

2x Miner of the Iron Hills (Core Set)

3x Veteran Axehand (Core Set)

1x Warden of Healing (The Long Dark)

Attachment: (10)

1x Dwarrowdelf Axe (Khazad-dum)

1x Dwarven Axe (Core Set)

1x Ever My Heart Rises (The Long Dark)

1x Expert Treasure-hunter (On the Doorstep)

1x Ring Mail (The Long Dark)

1x Song of Battle (The Dead Marshes)

1x Thror’s Key (On the Doorstep)

3x Unexpected Courage (Core Set)

Event: (18)

2x A Good Harvest (The Steward’s Fear)

3x A Test of Will (Core Set)

1x Ancestral Knowledge (Khazad-dum)

1x Daeron’s Runes (Foundations of Stone)

1x Dwarven Tomb (Core Set)

1x Expecting Mischief (Over Hill and Under Hill)

1x Fortune or Fate (Core Set)

1x Hasty Stroke (Core Set)

2x Lay of Nimrodel (The Morgul Vale)

1x Renewed Friendship (The Redhorn Gate)

2x The Galadhrim’s Greeting (Core Set)

2x Untroubled by Darkness (Khazad-dum)

One of the lessons I learned with this deck that I played is that Fili and Kili are a very potent set of dwarves for decks that rely on the minimum 5 dwarf mechanic. I tried to always have one of them in my opening hand to hit my 5 dwarf total by the end of the second turn.

The 5 dwarf thing is harder than it sounds to pull off with the current card pool. Fili and Kili are good, but by the end of the cycle, I was starting to see why the hero version of Bombur might actually be alright. By the end of the first turn, you could activate your 5 dwarf bonuses.

Total Cards: (50)

Hero: (3)

1x Nori (Over Hill and Under Hill)

1x Thorin Oakenshield (Over Hill and Under Hill)

1x Balin (On the Doorstep)

Ally: (18)

1x Bofur (The Redhorn Gate)

1x Brok Ironfist (Core Set)

3x Fili (Over Hill and Under Hill)

3x Gloin (On the Doorstep)

1x Kili (Over Hill and Under Hill)

2x Longbeard Elder (Foundations of Stone)

3x Longbeard Orc Slayer (Core Set)

1x Northern Tracker (Core Set)

2x Zigil Miner (Khazad-dum)

1x Gandalf (Core Set)

Attachment: (8)

2x Hardy Leadership (Shadow and Flame)

3x King Under the Mountain (On the Doorstep)

1x Path of Need (Foundations of Stone)

2x Ever My Heart Rises (The Long Dark)

Event: (24)

3x A Test of Will (Core Set)

3x A Very Good Tale (Over Hill and Under Hill)

1x Burglar Baggins (Over Hill and Under Hill)

1x Desperate Alliance (On the Doorstep)

3x Durin’s Song (Khazad-dum)

3x Hidden Cache (The Morgul Vale)

3x Lure of Moria (Road to Rivendell)

1x We Are Not Idle (Shadow and Flame)

1x Fortune or Fate (Core Set)

3x Sneak Attack (Core Set)

2x The Lucky Number (On the Doorstep)

We Must Away ‘Ere Break of Day

We did pretty well with this quest. We basically outlasted the Trolls until Gandalf arrived and won us the day through progress. Lesley was still relatively new to the game, so I do believe we had to beat it in a second play through. The synergy between using all dwarves and having events that boost all dwarves was very positive. This quest is definitely a much better version of Conflict at the Carrock.

Over the Misty Mountains Grim

It has been a while since we played the three quests in the first set, but I remember us actually handling this quest pretty easily. We cancelled the nasty treachery cards and we kept our threats below 38. The Giants did end up taking a chunk out of me, but by then I had numerous allies out and her deck’s combat strength was up and running.

Dungeons Deep and Caverns Dim

I know I have heard a lot of complaints about the Riddles mechanic of this quest being very random, but each time I have played this box, I’ve never found it to be much of an issue. Guess I’m just building with cards that start with the right letters! We didn’t have too much trouble with this quest. I could see these quests being a hell of a lot harder if we hadn’t gotten the treasure from the trolls in the first quest.

Flies and Spiders

Flies and Spiders is a quest where Miner of the Iron Hills shines as he so often does. There really need to be some more cards that remove condition attachments. He is another staple card that is hard to avoid playing and when you don’t have him, he is just so well missed. We didn’t have too much trouble with this quest and it played out in that we took good advantage of timing with Bilbo waking dwarves that were poisoned and sort of min maxing the spread of poison tokens.

The Lonely Mountain

I misguided us on our first play through and the way we handled the Lonely Mountain was very poor. We didn’t get all the treasures and the dragon just annihilated us when we moved on to the later part of the scenario. We never woke the dragon early, though I do love the way that mechanic just threatens you but doesn’t have to happen to make the quest challenging. With some slight modifications to our deck, as shown in our final lists above, we managed to take all the treasures and actually put a swift end to the quest through superior willpower on the quest.

Battle of the Five Armies

This quest was the one we had the hardest time with as it was the least forgiving to our willpower heavy, combat average decks. We played twice and got beat quickly. We played a third time and were doing quite well, advancing to the final stage of the scenario and then had to put the game down for the night. We got back to finish the game the next day and then realized that we actually had no way at all of surviving Bolg and all of his bodyguards. That was a funny moment when our dining room table was clogged up with an unfinished game for a full day, only to pack it up and try again. Fortunately, two friends were over that day and one of them really wanted to learn how to play Lord of the Rings. So, I threw together an elf deck for one and a tactics deck for the other, trying again to only use characters that may have been there. I cheated a little and used the new movies as part of the benchmark for that. With that, it worked actually. The Tactics deck with Beorn, Bard, and the Eagles swept away most of the challenges and by the end of the game we were in pretty firm control. All the body guards still really made it a rough trod at the very end and we almost lost a couple of players before smashing Bolg to bits.

Our decks did actually do pretty well together. The only thing we were a little short on was early game combat strength. Also, locations became a hinderance on a few occasions.

D&D Next, Before, Now, Then, Which is it? I reflect

I recently had the luxury of getting to play the new 5th Edition starter set for D&D. Is it really fair to call it fifth edition? Was it a good time? How’d the game go? How was the basic D&D pdf? Let’s find out below!

The funny thing about calling this game 5th Edition is that it feels in some ways like a step back to days past. I don’t mean that in a bad way. The mechanics are smooth like I found them in 4th, but the game feels and plays much more like old school D&D did.

We had 8 players gathered around the table and with doing the game in theater of the mind and with the new rules, it was not the terrible slog that 4th edition became with more than about 5 players. So, the number of players can fluctuate a little bit easier up or down from a standard sized party.

The whole crew pretty much had a good time. The new rules for Advantage and Disadvantage and character backgrounds made the game fresh. The mixture of so many old school mechanics made the game feel very nostalgic for all of us. It felt like we should have been playing until 3 in the morning and getting up for college classes the next day.

The Basic D&D PDF is what six of us used to make our characters. It was simple to have everyone make their characters at the same time. Similarities with older editions made it easy for all of us to get a grasp on. The equipment system made building characters from just the 2 pdf documents on hand fairly straight forward. I think we got to finish making characters after about 45 minutes.

The spell casters need the spell effects, so fortunately, we only had two actual casters to go with our two pdfs. That was one big benefit of 4th edition, to have all the effects from your spells right there. But fighters and rogues are a hell of a lot more straight forward now than they were then.

The modular design of the system makes future rules modules (hopefully) not add too much time to character building.

I was incredibly skeptical about the new edition. I loved 4th basic mechanics, but the bloat made making characters without the online character builder an impossibility. Also, the theater of the mind aspect was out the window.

3rd edition spell casting was brutally challenging to add up with all the level bonuses to things.

2nd edition had some wonky mechanics like THACO.

I think this new edition has some real legs for old and new D&D players alike.

Revenge is a dish best served by Joe Abercrombie

My father suggested that I read Best Served Cold because of my interest and enjoyment of Game of Thrones. I have finally finished reading this revenge tale. Let me share with you some of my wonderful thoughts on this yarn.

Joe’s writing style is gory and dark. The character’s in his book are not super heroes. They may be skilled and they may be much better than the average soldier, but these guys still have to fear death and the way they act in the book makes that obvious.

See that girl in the image to the left? She’s the main character, Monza, and she is a bad ass in her mind. She’s a perfect example of someone with justification for her cause, but one that so many others see as a villain.

One of the things that I liked about this book is that it is a stand alone story. The setting that Abercrombie weaves through the tale is detailed, and by the end, I learned why. It is a stand alone, but it takes place in the same setting as his First Law Trilogy. That bastard got me! I wanted a stand alone so that I wouldn’t have another series to read, and now I want to read his other books!

Another element of this book that I liked is that it wasn’t really epic fantasy, despite its length. The book focuses on a much smaller cast of characters than most tomes of this size. I enjoyed getting to delve into those few characters and learn more and more details about them as the story went on. It reminded me a little bit of the way Lost told tales about its characters.

The break down into several distinct parts based on who Monza is seeking revenge upon is convenient. I actually put the book down for about two months for some other books and projects. When I picked it up, it was so easy to get back into. Just make sure that you stop at the beginning of a new Part and it’ll flow pretty easily.

Anyone that likes Gritty Fantasy will definitely get a kick out of this book. Pick it up, read it, put it down or don’t, but whatever you do, make sure you finish it.