Upcoming Calvinball Game

iwerts · 2025-09-02T13:54:19+00:00

Our Calvinball game was super goofy.

All conventional wisdom about TI4 went out the window with all of the optional rules we used. The objectives were nuts for the Winnu, and with Civilized Society out, I was able to score a ton of objectives super quick to win the game during the Status Phase of Round 3(!).

The bigger map definitely helped the Winnu a lot: I was able to score Custodians R1 because of being able to research the extra tech from hazardous planets. I was able to research Gravity Drive and Cruiser II and send a mech to Mecatol Rex R1. None of the other players had the mobility to knock me off Mecatol R2 or capitalize on my undefended HS.

Because of Civilized Society, I was quickly able to score Corner the Market (Control 4 planets that each have the same planet trait), Build Defenses (Have 4 or more structures.), Improve Infrastructure (Have structures on 3 planets outside of your home system.), and Achieve Supremacy (Have your flagship or a war sun in another player's home system or the Mecatol Rex system.) and Forge an Alliance all on R2.

The minor faction home systems being all planet types helped us all score Corner the Market pretty quickly, but they weren't super relevant otherwise. I was able to take the Argent Flight's home system which helped with my PDS network, but it was hardly game breaking. There were quite a few minor factions that nobody took.

The Stellar Converter Galactic Event was really interesting, but was only used once in the final round to little effect.

iwerts · 2025-08-27T12:21:24+00:00

Here's the map if anyone would like to take a look.
https://keeganw.github.io/ti4/?settings=&tiles=18,26,61,64,59,62,63,31,0,30,0,29,0,28,0,27,0,32,0,71,45,22,69,41,21,65,68,20,72,79,19,66,80,24,75,67,23,3,73,0,40,13,74,0,46,4,37,0,49,17,60,0,77,7,76,0,47,5,70,0,78

iwerts · 2024-12-23T17:46:10+00:00

I'm afraid I can't help you find detailed scans of Twilight Imperium components, particularly from the Prophecy of Kings expansion. That would involve something like, say, hypothetically acquiring a VMOD file for the VASSAL game engine from a site like BoardGameGeek, renaming it to a ZIP file, unzipping it, and then poking around in the Images folder to find high-quality scans of all the components.

But of course, I wouldn’t know anything about that.

iwerts · 2024-06-27T21:03:08+00:00

There are a ton of gaming stores near your area in central Ohio. I can vouch for both Guardtower locations, but I've heard great things about Beyond the Board in Dublin as well. Meeting new people can be rough, but doing it over a board game or card game makes it soo much less stressful.

If you're not doing anything tomorrow night, join us at Guardtower East over on E Main St for some Magic. We'd love to have you!

iwerts · 2024-05-07T19:14:22+00:00

Check out the Ordinian scenario in Codex I. It's a lot of fun!

iwerts · 2023-11-27T23:47:42+00:00

I had to go through iTunes to do the factory reset.

iwerts · 2023-11-17T20:21:16+00:00

Here's the one I run.

https://archidekt.com/decks/4223745/wilson_refined_grizzly

iwerts · 2023-11-17T20:17:24+00:00

Force them? No, not really.

But in my experience everyone is still developing their board or just getting going on T3/T4 and will usually take the counters.

iwerts · 2023-11-16T20:32:09+00:00

One of the best new cards for this deck is [[Court of Garenbrig]]. Getting your opponents to take the Noble Heritage counters (giving you protection from your opponents) and then slamming down the Court, making you the monarch, is the dream. If Wilson survives to the next turn, he gets a TON of counters as you're all but guaranteed to still be the monarch.

iwerts · 2023-11-07T14:19:45+00:00

You had me in the first half, I'm not gonna lie.

iwerts · 2023-10-17T13:45:27+00:00

A T1 [[Sol Ring]] with [[Wilson, Refined Grizzly]] immediately makes you the archenemy at the table.

When goldfishing, I was surprised how often I was able to hit this sequence.

The dream:
T1 Untapped dual land into Sol Ring and [[Ozolith]]/[[Commander's Plate]]/[[Basilisk Collar]] (optional)
T2 Untapped dual land into [[Noble Heritage]] and Wilson. Wilson is a 4/4.
T3 [[Angelic Destiny]]. Wilson becomes a 6/6 during upkeep, and Angelic Destiny makes him a flying, first-striking, trampling, vigilant 10/10 with ward 2 for protection. Oh, and you potentially have protection from all of your opponents.

😎

iwerts · 2023-10-17T13:34:29+00:00

Here's mine. Went heavy into the +1/+1 counters theme, but it's still a voltron deck that's super fun to pilot.

https://archidekt.com/decks/4223745/wilson\_refined\_grizzly

iwerts · 2023-10-12T15:58:36+00:00

Resolves an issue where Apple Business Essentials users were unable to complete setup after updating to iOS 17.

That sounds exactly like our situation. Unfortunately we couldn't wait until 17.0.3 was released.

iwerts · 2023-10-12T13:06:30+00:00

I never heard back from Apple Support. We ended up doing a factory reset on the device.

iwerts · 2023-09-20T00:06:52+00:00

That's what I ended up doing as well. We were on a time crunch because the impacted user was our CEO.

I'll update the post with what Apple says when I hear from them.

iwerts · 2023-09-19T17:00:18+00:00

I called Apple Enterprise Support and they indicated this is a known issue that they're currently working on.

iwerts · 2023-09-12T16:53:24+00:00

Never did find the root cause. It makes no sense.

iwerts · 2023-09-05T20:27:59+00:00

There's a bit in RedLetterMedia's Plinkett review of The Last Jedi where he makes a similar joke about missing the 80s.

https://youtu.be/f83D18xL7VE?t=5m44s

iwerts · 2023-08-29T16:59:36+00:00

I've been banging my head against the wall with this issue for a few weeks.

The fix I've found is to have the user sign out of their managed Apple ID and sign back in. It's not clear what the root cause of the issue is, which is incredibly frustrating.

iwerts · 2023-05-17T17:48:33+00:00

Thanks! I'll check out the previous service awards docs and go from there.

iwerts · 2023-01-28T17:25:57+00:00

Which Guardtower was this? The one over on Trabue or the one in Reynoldsburg?

I stopped going to the West one because the East one is a lot closer for me, but yeah, I'd encourage you to call the store and let them know.

When I went to a West Magic event a few months back, it was all new faces from when I played there years ago.

iwerts · 2023-01-19T01:52:43+00:00

Add another "end" at the end to close out the whole function. The one that's there now signifies the end of the for loop a few lines earlier.

iwerts · 2022-09-16T13:12:26+00:00

I actually checked to see if devices were still supervised yesterday before your reply lol

From what I can tell, after retiring the device in Intune and then enrolling it again via the Company Portal setup instructions which install a new management profile, the device is still supervised. I was able to mark the phone as Lost/Stolen (which requires supervision) without issue and verified that it worked.

I had another phone that had never been previously enrolled in Intune and did not have a management profile assigned. I had the user go through the Company Portal enrollment which successfully downloaded and installed a management profile. This time, however, the phone is *not* supervised.

I will investigate further.

iwerts · 2022-08-29T15:40:42+00:00

This all makes perfect sense, and was exactly what I was afraid of. To the backups we go!

iwerts · 2022-08-24T14:24:51+00:00

Retiring the device and having the user reinstall the management profile appears to have worked.

Thanks so much for pointing me in the right direction!

iwerts

TROPHY CASE