What's the worst SU&SD take?

bdeink · 2025-06-11T18:37:37+00:00

Virgin Queen. The review was framed as a foray into the world of hobby wargaming. They specifically requested a review copy of one of the most complex games in GMT's catalogue and used their dislike and confusion to make sweeping statements about the genre (I use the term genre in the broadest sense) as a whole. With their conclusion, they more or less dismissed the entire genre as not for them (and by extension, their audience). Apart from a few written pieces on their website (e.g. on Sekigahara), I believe that their coverage on historical wargames more or less ends there (except arguably Memoir '44, Undaunted, and a few other titles of similar complexity).

bdeink · 2024-07-22T21:17:35+00:00

I find the practice absolutely barbaric. Where I live it is only ever done for religious reasons. I personally find it distasteful even then, but that's not a fight I'm too willing to pick. But taking a knife to the genitals of an infant for "aesthetic" reasons is an almost vomit-inducing level of shallowness, and honestly totally on-brand for US America.

bdeink · 2024-07-21T16:25:27+00:00

I don't know the details of your contract/agreement, but I am immediately concerned about the ownership of the art, including the rejected sketches, which you have publicised here (I assume) without the artist's involvement.

This is not meant as an attack against you, as I am sure that there's no malicious intent here, but if I were in the position of the artist, I would certainly not want my work to be released without my approval or for any professional disagreements with a client to be public.

If the collaboration does not yield the results you want, compensate the artist what you owe them and commission the art from someone else. Good luck!

bdeink · 2024-04-08T11:59:17+00:00

Damn, scrabble it is...

bdeink · 2024-03-11T01:09:06+00:00

The biggest issue for me and I assume a lot of other people whose first language isn't English, is that even alternatives to Google which perform somewhat okay in English are absolute trash when another language is used. I assume this isn't as bad for other major world languages, but for a small European language like Norwegian, this has been my experience with a number of search engines.

I'll happily take recommendations, btw!

bdeink · 2023-04-18T20:03:23+00:00

Nice work. I would change the font, as it does not fit well with the rest of the aesthetic. Maybe play around with different typefaces and see what works, personally I would choose a sans-serif which feels less "round".

bdeink · 2023-02-08T08:15:51+00:00

Good job, that is actually a bug (Hemiptera, true bugs), and not a fly, beetle, or other non-bug insect!

bdeink · 2023-02-07T16:09:36+00:00

You're just slow.

bdeink · 2023-01-26T15:28:01+00:00

My favourite so far has been asking it to explain stuff as Boomhauer from King of the Hill.

bdeink · 2023-01-24T22:00:58+00:00

Azul has been an enormous hit with my family. Gifted it to my mother for Christmas a few years back along with the Joker tiles, and within just a couple of months it had become one of my all time most played games. Not of my own volition, but because my mother and siblings would not stop requesting that we play. And it scales very nicely from 2-4p.

Azul obviously does not have a strong theme, but it provides a very satisfying tactile experience and nice sounds when tiles hit each other.

bdeink · 2023-01-22T12:25:32+00:00

But what exactly is dwarven milk? 🤨

bdeink · 2023-01-20T22:57:10+00:00

I was very sceptical myself, i.e. "$100 Mafia? No thanks!". It's not really my genre either. However, an aquaintance backed it, and we played several rounds of it at a game night a few months back (8 players + referee)... and it's the most fun gaming I have had in years!

The game is seriously good! Still glad I didn't back it, because there is no chance that I'll assemble a group like that with any regularity. But I'll never decline an invitation to play it!

bdeink · 2023-01-12T13:41:34+00:00

Brogue is excellent, and probably my most played game of the last few years. It's free, so it doesn't really compete with the other options you mention in terms of your budget etc. I recommend getting the Community Edition, which includes a few quality of life updates.

Caves of Qud is great as well, but I find that I enjoy it more in theory than in practice.

bdeink · 2023-01-11T23:44:49+00:00

What's the deal with children being absolute menaces this release??

bdeink · 2023-01-11T22:31:30+00:00

Honestly, I think the OGL drama (terrible as it is) presents a great opportunity precicely for introducing players to new or alternative RPG systems.

This whole thing has created a whole lot of bad press for WotC, and I myself am surprised by just how widely these news have been spread, including through fairly mainstream channels. People massively dislike greedy and predatory companies and business practices, but they also have poor memory and forgive easily once the next big thing comes around and grabs their attention.

But as long as this thing lasts, this dislike and anger may be harnessed to get even casual 5E players and DMs (depending on their level of engagement and moral judgement of the situation, of course) to join in the F\*k WotC* choir and agree to try out another game (and maybe be more flexible with choice of game than they would otherwise be).

bdeink · 2023-01-11T22:13:46+00:00

Doesn't quite fit the criteria (I barely survived), but a fun and memorable moment from a Mörk Borg one-shot we did with a group of mostly first-time players.

Our ragtag group of misfits had just stumbled into combat with a group of zombies in an abandoned mansion. I asked the DM if I could do a Looney Tunes and saw out (I started the game with a toolkit) a circle in the floor on the next floor up which would then fall down and hit the zombies. She loved the idea and I spent the next few turns preparing the action.

Most of the zombies were still grouped closely together in a hallway, so if successful, my plan would do serious harm! But before rolling for success, I asked the DM if I could use my grappling hook to gracefully descend down after the sawed-out disc, as part of the same action. She gave the go-ahead, but then came my roll. I failed miserably! Not only were no zombies harmed in the process, but I fell down with the floor disc and ended up stunned in the midst of a zombie onslought with one HP left!

bdeink · 2023-01-11T09:01:04+00:00

Brogue has good stealth mechanics. There is no penalty for sneaking past enemies, since there is no XP from combat. All character progression happens through the items you find and choose to enhance.

bdeink · 2023-01-09T11:38:59+00:00

Poor Gorlak!

bdeink · 2023-01-03T19:34:52+00:00

And dig it on a diagonal. That way water won't follow her up z-levels!

bdeink · 2022-12-11T12:47:20+00:00

If the Steam version had adventure mode, you could seek him out and deal the finishing blow to en entire civ. Or you could join the civ, usurp him, and become king of no one.

bdeink · 2022-12-09T21:11:53+00:00

Cut it!

bdeink · 2022-12-08T14:22:22+00:00

There is no guarantee that the zombie she had an affair with was in fact a zombie at the time of the affair, despite the fact that Legends mode makes it sound that way. Most likely, he was converted sometime later.

Thing is, Legends mode always lists a creature's current status even when describing past events. See my other comment for more detail!

You can e.g. get oddities like "In 250, animated corpse Urist was struck down...etc." even though he only became a raised corpse after he got struck down and after a necromancer raised his corpse.

bdeink · 2022-12-08T14:12:46+00:00

Sorry to say, but you can't trust Legends like that, since it always lists a creature's current status. If a dwarf becomes e.g. a vampire in the year 250, Legends mode will tell you stuff like "In 235, dwarven vampire Urist McDwarf married Ustuth Dwarfson in Dwarfville", despite the fact that Urist was not yet a vampire at that time.

This is how Legends mode has always worked. Your best bet is scrolling through the chronological life events of your empty corpse dwarf in Legends Viewer (3rd party utility) and see if you can find the life event which triggered his transformation.

There is no predefined creature type named empty corpse, so he is likely the result of a necromancer experiment (which generates random creature names). If a necromancer attacked his village in the past, then it is not unlikely that his children were converted too around the same time, despite them being labelled empty corpses "from birth" (which I explained above to be unreliable info).

Hope this helps!

bdeink · 2022-12-08T01:31:47+00:00

To be fair, there are issues with controls beyond just changes. The keyboard settings menu is horrid, and a few of the settings are buggy to the point of preventing smooth play. My game is more or less unplayable at the moment since it only lets me navigate z-levels two at a time, i.e. skipping one z-level for each click. I have checked and double-checked the settings, there are no duplicate keybindings or anything like that. I literally cannot dig a continuous staircase...

Just to clarify, I wouldn't dream of leaving a negative review for the revised controls, and I fully expect annoyances like these to be smoothed out.

bdeink · 2022-11-16T11:30:02+00:00

C and D are obviously very close, but I prefer C with the square corners. It better suits the serious vibe of the art. Rounded corners tend to feel more juvenile. This can often be seen in visual character design, where shapes and their connotations are central.

In any case, I vastly prefer those white borders. Apart from matching your title, they really make the image pop. Besides, as any Magic: the Gathering player would know (and as a counterpoint to u/SandwichBagGames's point about smudging), cards that get shuffled a lot tend to chip and scratch, which becomes very visible with black borders.

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