evildrganymede

evildrganymede, 6 days ago to Wargaming

We finally played "1066, Tears To Many Mothers" last night and it was good! It'd work well as an introductory wargame (it's really a very interactive tableau building card game).

The artwork is amazing on the cards too, though some of the noble folks look a bit too clean & modern for the 11th century. I'm sure the artist based some of the characters on moderns actors too, Harold Godwinson looks suspiciously like Russell Crowe! :D

You start off with the appearance of Halley's Comet & progress through several objectives to get to the Battle of Hastings (strangely the Saxons took the comet as a bad omen, and the Normans took it as a good omen. Not sure how that's decided!). While you're doing that you can pick off/damage units that are being build in your opponent's tableau, move your cards around, & do other actions. The resources to buy cards are very tight in this game & it seems that it's best to get the resource generating cards out there as early as possible - otherwise you need to spend cards from your hand as resources & it's easy to run out of cards there! You're also somewhat at the mercy of the random draw to determine what is available on a turn - at the end I had some very high cost units in my hand that I had no way to pay for and put in play!

I started off pretty well as the Saxons, fending off Vikings in the north and then tromping down to the south of England to face the Normans. But I got stuck on later objectives as I didn't have a lot of cards with Zeal and so the Normans beat me to the Hastings objective and got a headstart attacking the wedges there. By the time I caught up I was already demoralised and I hadn't really arranged my units in the wedges very well - in the end the Normans took two wedges and won. I almost killed William with my archers earlier but he managed to shrug off all his wounds with a timely "heal one character" card!

It's a fun, clever, thematic game with lots of interesting decisions - worth checking out! #wargaming

about halfway through the game.
The End - the Saxons couldn't gain a big enough advantage in the Battle of Hastings and were defeated by the Normans!

evildrganymede, 11 days ago to astrophotography

I did go back up to Christmas Hill tonight (which was quite crowded!) but sadly there were no more aurorae. It was a clear night though and I figured if there was no aurora then I could try out the astrophotography mode on my phone.

One thing I discovered is that the phone mount on my tripod is terrible. It's a springloaded thing that makes it very hard to actually take the photo (because the mount is in the way), see what's being photographed (because the mount covers half the screen), and also not damage or turn off the phone (because the mount clamps on the sides which is where the power button and volume are). But I managed some kind of uneasy, asymmetrically-mounted compromise that worked!

I'm not sure why some turned out blue and some turned out brown/grey though. I think I've identified some of the constellations in the frame at the time (though they're also harder to see in these pics because there's so many stars). But I think they turned out well! #astrophotography

different photo of the same patch of sky but now it's blue-tinted for some reason.
cassiopeia, and cepheus above it somewhere? (looking north)
looking directly up. the big dipper might be in here somewhere?

nyrath, 24 days ago to random

An old classic "what if" question is What scifi novel or movie would you like to live in?

Adult me is skeptical of most of them, they all have drawbacks.

Child me instantly knows my heart's desire.