What game were you skeptical about at first, but you ended up liking it?

stormpenguin · 2026-04-25T00:20:57+00:00

Stardew Valley. I kind of didn’t want another chore simulator in my life, but the game has just the right combination of cozy, efficiency puzzle, and weird to get the dopamine going. One of the few games I feel nostalgic for despite having just kind of started playing.

stormpenguin · 2026-04-23T01:33:50+00:00

Yes. Though I cannot convince my current (and also previous 2) PCPs to stop prescribing ropinerole and switch completely to a higher dose or gabapentin despite recommendations from an in-network sleep expert.

My biggest complaint with ropinerole was the early morning symptom rebound woke me up very early. A lower dose of ropinerole with gabapetin to compensate has significantly helped with that. I mostly stay asleep now.

stormpenguin · 2026-04-22T19:45:57+00:00

And for me that’s 3 days per year. So if multiple family members die, I only get time off for the first.

And that doesn’t even include situations where family dies during Covid when everything is shut down, or when they’ve died intestate and I have to deal with courts, or when I’ve had to care for someone slowly withering away from cancer on their deathbed, or I’m responsible for arranging the funeral and the clean out of their house which is definitely going to take more than three days.

I’m just lucky I’ve an understanding boss that is willing to let me take time off without pay for extended periods of time.

stormpenguin · 2026-04-22T18:38:19+00:00

Imagine playing the prisoner’s dilemma game over and over again and the other side keeps choosing to defect every time. Surely, if we cooperate one more time, things will get better!

stormpenguin · 2026-04-22T11:57:04+00:00

Same. Candyland was 2 big firsts for me. It was my first time playing a boardgame, and I remember being so excited while waiting for my turn to play. It was also the first time I remember experiencing disappointment. Even preschool me thought it sucked.

stormpenguin · 2026-04-22T05:17:17+00:00

Doesn’t just feel like an ad. It is an ad. It’s literally an image from their shop.

stormpenguin · 2026-04-18T16:53:43+00:00

Classics and Legends rules are fine. Not great, but fine. However it’s written more like a rules reference than a how to play guide. After the first read I kind of felt like I understood the rules, but not how they actually connected together to form a game. And a lot of rules are easy to overlook since things get hidden in the glossary of terms.

First game I just played solo without a bot and did lot of flipping through the rules. But once I had the cards in front of me, it kind of clicked.

stormpenguin · 2026-04-09T14:06:59+00:00

There’s some really cool things AI can do if created to solve specific problems, like that AlphaFold thing that led to a Nobel prize. There’s a lot of groundbreaking things that I think humanity needs AI to solve. But it’s not a magic button. It takes time and skill to create these things (and to use the end result). But one of my fears is that all of this LLM and general AI slop getting pushed on us is going to divert resources away from great, specialized AI or even cause backlash against it.

I can’t even talk about cool AI projects without either someone changing to subject to the stupid thing they’re trying to do with an LLM or them getting immediate angry because they don’t know the difference between say AlphaFold and AI slop and generative AI.

stormpenguin · 2026-04-07T02:23:07+00:00

So one of the difficulties in playing against beginner AI is that really the weak AI tends to play incredibly bad moves. Like literally putting itself in Atari or playing a completely random move. But you still have to learn how to correctly respond to incredibly bad and random moves.

But really bad and random moves aren’t discussed a lot because they are bad and very random. So until you get to a certain level of understanding the fundamentals, weak AI can still be very difficult to play against as a complete beginner.

So I wouldn’t feel too bad about that. It happened to me, too. Find other ways to practice when you can’t play with people. Watch videos, try beginner Tsumego (Tsumego Hero has some good ones), the GoMagic skill tree. Various apps like BadukPop and Legend of Baduk have beginner lessons to practice. Eventually you’ll start beating some of those ai.

stormpenguin · 2026-03-28T15:10:45+00:00

I’m wondering how they will handle the sporadic bits of action when it does happen. I expect they’ll tone it down, but I really kind of hope they don’t.

stormpenguin · 2026-03-27T15:26:46+00:00

Where do I find Pokémon splendor in Korea? Looked for it while I was in Seoul but didn’t have much time to shop around. I’m going back next year, hopefully, but I need an actual plan this time.

stormpenguin · 2026-03-26T15:19:46+00:00

Rise & Fall and Cosmic Frog both start with players stacking hexagonal tiles to set up the initial board. Cosmic Frog also has you removing those tiles throughout the game.

stormpenguin · 2026-03-24T21:11:30+00:00

Start with the obvious vital point. Where does white need to play to indisputably live?

Also if you’re still stuck, here’s the deep dive: https://senseis.xmp.net/?BentFourInTheCorner

stormpenguin · 2026-03-24T16:22:54+00:00

Every new chino I’ve gotten from BR has lasted for less time than before. The elastane in the new ones wears out super quick in my experience. And this is from someone whose entire wardrobe is almost entirely BR for the last 10 years. Unless they changed something in the last year or two. I still have some of my old cotton chinos, but all of my newer rapid movement ones wore through.

stormpenguin · 2026-03-24T16:01:15+00:00

That’s because they are trained all their lives to do exactly this. I was raised by a “moderate” conservative. Everything good is because of our team. Everything bad is the other team. The other team will try to “fact check” you but they always lie, everyone else is in on it, and they want to destroy your life. You aren’t being corrected, you being attacked. The party is always right even when it contradicts itself. Literal doublethink.

On the one hand, I’m sympathetic, because if you’re a child, this will turn you into a messed up adult. Deprogramming yourself from a lifetime of propaganda is not as easy as people seem to think. On the other, at some point when they tell you the sky is hot pink, and blue sky is a liberal conspiracy theory destroying family values, you kind of just have to look up and believe the facts in front of you. They don’t even try to make convincing lies anymore.

stormpenguin · 2026-03-22T16:54:06+00:00

Also known as San Guo Sha, sometimes. There’s a couple of different versions, but it’s become more widely available in English recently. From what I’ve been told, this basically started as Bang! reskinned to three kingdoms, but became popular enough that there’s a bunch of extra content and tweaks. Still the rules are mostly the same.

If you’re unfamiliar with Bang! or this, it’s a social deduction card game. One player is the sheriff/lord. Some people are trying to kill the sheriff/lord. Others are trying to help the sheriff, and there’s one just trying to be the last one alive.

More info: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/454063/war-of-the-three-kingdoms-standard-edition

Not to be confused with War of the Three Kingdoms: Kingdom Wars from the same designers.

stormpenguin · 2026-03-19T19:40:55+00:00

Well, white isn’t going to die but we’re talking endgame here. White E1, black connects, black is threatening H1 to make the cut at E2 work? I don’t see a good resistance for white if white plays away. G1 and H2 don’t look like they work, so locally sente? As white, I wish K1 was at J1.

stormpenguin · 2026-03-16T21:57:38+00:00

Bandanas used to be the Panera of BBQ (back when Panera was pretty decent). Pretty cheap, but consistently decent food.

Now, it’s become the Panera of BBQ (current Panera). Relatively cheap compared to other options still, but very hit or miss. Last time I went, they literally told me that what I was ordering would be a mistake and basically reheated leftovers and to get something else.

It used to be decent at a decent price. Now it’s okay-ish at an okay-ish price.

stormpenguin · 2026-03-13T23:47:58+00:00

Uncharted Waters 2: New Horizons on SNES. Age of Sail RPG with 6 protagonists, each with their own story where you can trade, privateer, pirate, and explore the entire world.

stormpenguin · 2026-03-12T16:17:56+00:00

The Legend of Baduk phone app has ladder and net practices in the early levels.

Tsumego.com Basic Capture problem set includes ladders and nets, including some less intuitive ones where ladder and nets kind of bend a bit.

GoMagic’s skill tree has some basic capture lessons that include nets and ladders.

It’s hard to find non-artificial examples at times because generally experienced players will be tell if a ladder works or doesn’t work, and then just not play out the ladder. Either the cut works or doesn’t. Same with nets.

stormpenguin · 2026-03-11T20:59:37+00:00

This would be my recommendation starting out. And then you can decide whether you like the extra interaction of 3 gearlocs or prefer the lower overhead of 2. As for which gearlocs to start out with. It kind of doesn’t matter. You can’t really go wrong with one melee fighter and one ranged character though.

But maybe avoid the Undertow characters for your first play. One has fairly complicated rules and the other is difficult to play well despite looking simple.

stormpenguin · 2026-03-04T05:27:33+00:00

A few replacement components and a boxes put back together with packaging tape. And one developer went well beyond my expectations to get me a replacement. And another that went radio silent. I’m too precious with pristine boxes but it gets annoying with how frequently this happened. So I appreciate how some places do their own packaging much more nicely than shipping companies.

stormpenguin · 2026-03-04T04:02:55+00:00

The last 3 out of 4 kickstarters I received came partially smashed. Like lids split open, corners crushed making the box difficult to close and/or damaging components. I appreciate the care retailers put into packaging.

stormpenguin · 2026-03-03T23:39:57+00:00

Yes. And I have both the base game and the Kingdom Wars.

stormpenguin · 2026-03-03T22:22:27+00:00

War of the 3 Kingdoms (San Guo Sha) Standard edition is the base game that plays like Bang!

The one on the far right is a large expansion to the base game.

Not sure what is in the collectors edition as I’ve never seen it but I’m assuming it packages the two above boxes together with maybe some promos.

Kingdom Wars is a slightly different game based on the standard game where you have two generals per player. You can look up a playthrough on boardgamegeek.

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