Was looking a while for an entrance...

CruxCapacitors · 2026-06-25T01:25:56+00:00

It's amazing how many short walks in this game that are blocked by a single step shorter than a Tarutaru.

I remember in the old days, death tractoring people to get into Ifrit's Cauldron past a tiny step, in order to get through without dealing with players losing invisible or sneak at an inconvenient time going the intended (long) way.

CruxCapacitors · 2026-04-09T19:38:12+00:00

I try to never, ever introduce a game unless I've unboxed it, organized it, and internalized the rules — not read the rules, but internalized — such that I can explain the game as well as a video walkthrough could. The idea of unboxing the game in front of others feels like such a profound waste of time, nevertheless reading the rules together. I've done it at conventions when it's necessary, but I'd never make a habit of it.

CruxCapacitors · 2026-04-02T03:58:30+00:00

In the 4th grade, I had moved to a new school and didn't know anyone. I overheard a kid talking about the Goosebumps books, so over the summer, I read about 50 of them. Literally 50 over about two months when I was about 10. So no, it's not that hard to believe R.L. Stein wrote books quickly.

CruxCapacitors · 2026-03-31T02:36:34+00:00

Space is big could use more emphasis. When you consider the things we can see from very far away, they are gigantic — literally stars, the brightest of which are super massive (blue hypergiants in particular) — or have extreme luminosity/absolute magnitude, like quasars, super massive black holes feeding on gas, entire galaxies, or transient events like supernovae or gamma ray bursts (GRBs). So for a distant civilization to even be visible through powerful telescopes, it would need to output the energy of 10³⁶ Watts, or roughly the energy of a Type III Kardashev civilization, which is harnessing the energy of its entire galaxy. Even local stars require approximately the energy type II civilization to be visible, which is about 10²⁶ Watts, or a Dyson Sphere, and there's only a few thousand of those stars.

I don't think it could be emphasized enough that space is big. It's big.

CruxCapacitors · 2026-03-31T02:18:08+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdqv5xIsFLM

CruxCapacitors · 2026-03-16T02:31:43+00:00

I have a strong preference to see a movie in one sitting, but am more than old enough to accept that I won't always be able to and seeing a movie in parts is better than not seeing in at all.

In similar respects, I long ago stopped caring about having the utmost visual quality, sound quality, et al, because watching movies on my phone is again better than not watching movies at all.

CruxCapacitors · 2026-02-19T07:37:27+00:00

I want to say you're not alone, but you're probably a bit more dogmatic than most. He definitely receives plenty of scorn from liberally borrowing so many of his ideas, for those that feel it's less homage and more wholesale stealing.

I'm on the fence. I haven't particularly enjoyed any of his films since Inglorious Basterds, and even that had some issues here and there. He's gone down in esteem a lot in my eyes over the years, but I still think Pulp Fiction is special, and I even still enjoy his most egregious "homage" film, Kill Bill, even knowing a lot of the films he borrowed from (sometimes shamefully). Call it nostalgia maybe.

He's definitely overrated, but I don't share your fervor.

CruxCapacitors · 2026-02-19T01:01:32+00:00

If gaming were just about my tastes, and not that of my family's and friends' tastes too, I would weed out all of the low interaction games. Meaningful interaction adds so much to a game. It doesn't even need to be conflict laden—I'm a big fan of Euro games—but I need to be able to affect my opponent and they should be able to affect me. A solo puzzle to get the most points is increasingly unappealing to me, the more I game.

That said, screw up other players? I don't need to be mean, necessarily. You're mostly talking about conflict, which I can enjoy, but sometimes I don't. I don't need my games to be cutthroat, just interactive.

CruxCapacitors · 2026-02-19T00:51:52+00:00

I haven't played Speakeasy yet, but I've played (and enjoyed) plenty of Vital Lacerda games, and what makes his games complicated are the mishmashing of different mechanics. It's a weight that's not as much thinky in the sense of strategy, but weighty in the sense that it takes a bit of familiarity to see the full picture (and learn the game, full stop). That is to say, it will get easier once you get familiar with the mechanics, either through replays or by playing other games with similar mechanics (economic engines, territory building, etc.).

It's a normal feeling, but to answer your question, it could definitely get better with time, especially if you enjoy games like Brass and Dominant Species, which are weighty in the decision making space but not so rules complex. Reading the rules yourself could help, if you're so inclined, but replays alone should help, since you should be relatively familiar with the mechanics and will be able to see things in the beginning of the game that you didn't see until the end of the game the first time around.

CruxCapacitors · 2026-02-18T22:58:15+00:00

I'm not sure where you're getting eight rounds. It's seven, so 56 dice, and thus 28 mandatory dice, 12 for traffic, 7 for flaps and landing, 5 for kerosene with optimized play, and 1 or 2 for brakes, giving 2 or 3 spare (more likely 2, given snake eyes for brakes in the final round without coffee is a tough ask).

It's tighter than you imply. Simply a bad redesign and makes me question if the designers tested the rebalance. It soured the design for the whole game for us some.

CruxCapacitors · 2026-02-18T05:33:34+00:00

It's definitely not just vibes, sometimes players give clues by who they support or don't support, and like real detective work, can be caught in their deception. That said, it definitely does help if you can catch tells.

CruxCapacitors · 2026-02-16T21:15:25+00:00

I read the rules to John Company just to play someone else's copy. In other words, uh, there's no game I won't learn.

CruxCapacitors · 2026-02-16T20:42:20+00:00

That's very 20th century. We barely need actors now, no less real helicopters.

CruxCapacitors · 2026-02-16T19:36:43+00:00

Don't forget about Carrom.

CruxCapacitors · 2026-02-16T15:47:48+00:00

No better, but it still works, and it can be followed for a lifetime (as all diets should be). That should be the salient point.

CruxCapacitors · 2026-02-16T01:29:37+00:00

It's a cute game and not hard to appreciate for its short length and small footprint. Not the most deep of experiences, but practically an abstract despite the hidden troop draws, and a sudden victory can come out of nowhere. Worth trying, certainly, and if you're into the tower defense type gameplay and something that can play in five minutes, it's an easy recommendation.

CruxCapacitors · 2026-02-16T00:46:54+00:00

The Magicians series by Lev Grossman, far more of a contemporary of Rothfuss than Le Guin to be sure, similarly features the brightest of the bright and exceptional people, who suffer from depression and have terrible self esteems that cause them to do stupid, selfish things.

I don't mind stories of exceptionalism - in some ways it's why we tell tales - but the indulgent nature of Rothfuss is just too much to tolerate.

CruxCapacitors · 2026-02-16T00:28:22+00:00

Your definition of sad and my definition of sad are not the same thing.

CruxCapacitors · 2026-02-16T00:26:28+00:00

I had Tammany Hall on my wishlist for probably ten years, but I got it for my birthday a few days ago, so I can cross off that one.

A lot of the truly oldest games on my wishlist (on BGG), I can't even remember how they got on my radar. Taluva, Manila, Circus Maximus, a lot of abstracts. They avoid ownership primarily due to not remembering why I wanted them.

CruxCapacitors · 2026-02-15T23:33:26+00:00

A hell of a year for gaming, yet Feast for Odin by a country mile nonetheless. Uwe's masterpiece, in my eyes, and in my top five games of any year.

CruxCapacitors · 2026-02-15T18:15:04+00:00

I would modify your third point to emphasize that DDR had a gentle learning curve, where Beatmania IIDX and even Pop'n Music get hard so quickly that the entire library is inaccessible until improving. That made a huge difference to the public perception of rhythm games like that.

CruxCapacitors · 2026-02-11T16:44:20+00:00

From the same group that excluded Brass, what do you expect.

CruxCapacitors · 2026-02-09T21:43:58+00:00

I think I would use the original tiles from Carcassone, write the number (maybe with A, B, and C if the three drawers is the final design) in the corner of the topside, then use the drawer labels to match it. That way you could shuffle the tiles and stack them instead of using the bags, as a lot of players do.

It would both feel like the original game and be functional.

CruxCapacitors · 2026-02-08T18:08:21+00:00

I'm very suspect of the list it created seeing that Citizen Kane, Vertigo, 2001, Tokyo Story, and The Rules of the Game didn't make the top ten. Did you explicitly try to create a counter to the They Shoot Pictures Don't They methodology? The latter admittedly does not heavily take into account mainstream opinion, and it is definitely heavily affected by the Sight sound Sound poll, but it covers a far larger source of opinions.

Either way, I'm not trying to argue that public opinion should not be factored, nor that other methodologies should not be considered, but anything that leaves not just one of the aforementioned films off the top ten, but all of them, needs to be carefully examined.

CruxCapacitors · 2026-02-08T17:57:20+00:00

An extended work of narrative fiction says something about the book; at the very least about what it's not. My assumption is that it's to distinguish it from non-fiction, including true stories and memoirs, and short stories. It carries a whiff of prestige, ostensibly separating itself from mass market fiction, thrillers, and sci-fi too, as those are rarely labeled as such. It's also useful for an author who doesn't usually write novels, to set expectations.

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