ChrisTalbot.com

I probably won't be online again for a couple of days, so...

Have a great <insert holiday of your choice>, everybody.

I've been trying to win a copy of Cranium for a couple of months now, and the site finally told me I won. Yay!

Now I just have to wait for it to arrive.

I finally got a chance to play a rail game yesterday. Jacquie and I spent the afternoon at Rich's and Christine's place. We got in a game of Carcassonne and then dove into a game of Empire Builder. Empire Builder was fun, but unfortunately we had to cut the game short. I think we still had at least an hour of play left before it would have been over.

Oh well. It's a game I'd like to try again sometime in the new year.

Dammit! In my correspondence Diplomacy game, I'm about to get screwed. Damn my trusting nature.

I had one hell of a heart-breaker last night during a game of Carcassonne on BSW. I lost by one point. The final score was 209 to 208. Damn, that was the closest Carcassonne game I've ever had. We used the Inns & Cathedrals and Traders & Builders expansions. I'm still really not sold on the T&B expansion. It seems to add an extra level of complexity that the game really doesn't need (that's also how I felt about King & Scout, actually).

Last night, Rich and I played several turns of Tigris & Euphrates via BGG. In that game, I'm doing well, but it's mainly because I've had some awesome tile draws that gave me exactly what I needed for whenever Rich tried to move in on my big civilization.

And I've finally started playing the first turn of Fortress Berlin. I set up the game more than a week ago, I think, and I'm only now finally getting around to playing it. I played the first German turn (it took longer to find the reinforcements than it did to play out my movement), and now I'm going to be playing the first Russian turn (and experiencing the combat system for the first time).

Damn anti-beer sentiments. I support the Beer Not Kids Petition.

I spent part of my weekend converting people to the types of board games I like playing. ;) On Friday night, Rich and I met up with Chris N. and Dave M. from TABS to play Citadels (finally!) and Tigris & Euphrates. Rich has started taking an interest in Euro games recently, which is awesome. The bigger the network of board gamers in Durham, the better.

On Saturday, I went to the Talbot family Christmas party in Woodstock, and I brought along a few games. As things were getting near the end, Sean and I played a game of Munchkin Fu, and then I broke out Blokus Duo. I think both my mother and my Uncle Scott (both of whom kicked my sorry ass at the game, I might add) were impressed with the game. Bonus. Give me time and I'll probably have my mother playing Carcassonne or Settlers of Catan. :)

Back some time ago on RPGnet, a guy named Steve Darlington came up with the idea of drafting out adventure concepts for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG based on the titles of Elvis Presley songs that hit number one on the charts. Later, he did a similar thing with Elton John songs and Firefly (this was before the Serenity RPG had come out).

Call me crazy, but it sounds like a fun exercise. In addition to that, if I can come up with a whole bunch of adventure ideas based on the songs of an individual artist, then think of all the roleplaying that could lead to. So here's my challenge to myself: Come up with one-shot adventure ideas based on the songs of Gordon Lightfoot (yeah, that's right, Gordon fuckin' Lightfoot). I have the Gord's Gold greatest hits CD, which has twenty-one of Gord's top songs, so I'll try to use each and every song on that disc as inspiration for a one-shot adventure (I won't limit myself to one game/genre like Steve did).

Let the snarky comments begin...

We had our first real snowfall sometime last night. Winter, my arch-nemesis, you never stay away for long, do you?

Truly bizarre USB devices. What makes these devices bizarre is their shape, not their use. If you want to talk use, well, I remember coming across some bizarro ones while working on Toronto Computes (R.I.P.).

I spent some time this evening setting up Fortress Berlin so I can run through the game solo. According to BGG, the game takes about twelve hours to play from beginning to end. I swear the setup alone took two hours. It's a bit of a pain to find all the little individual counters you require to set up the German starting positions. Crazy stuff. I hope it's worth the pain I'm getting in my back from bending over a hex map.

Damn. I think I need to renege on my vow to vote Liberal out of spite. Check out this story at CBC.ca. And before you go saying that it's a good idea, consider the fact that this punishes legitimate gun owners, not the jackasses who are out there shooting up our streets.

I saw the X-Men 3 trailer online today, and it's making me really look forward to what appears to be the last instalment in the series (well, that's what the trailer's narrator seems to suggest, anyway). Beast looks pretty cool, and it will be neat to see him in action -- and hear Kelsey Grammar's voice coming out of his mouth.

I wonder how much longer this comic book movie adaptation trend can continue. There have been some real turds based on comic books that have come out since the X-Men first hit theatres, but the list of comic book movies in the works keeps getting longer.

What an awesome weekend of gaming that was. On Friday, I played in a game of Soldier Kings in Whitby with four other guys. Saturday was CondoCon, where I got to play Wooden Ships & Iron Men in the morning and Formula De and Brawling Battleships in the afternoon/evening. And then we ended CondoCon with a mass migration to the pub downstairs.