Beware of geeks bearing gifts

I got Pat a bunch of LEGO sets for her birthday. Decided to start her off with relatively small stuff. You know how usually you think of LEGO as coming in ginormous boxes that cost a ton? Well okay, actually that's still true. However, I made the amazing discovery that LEGO is actually pretty fairly priced when you look at the medium sets. I was able to get Pat two decently sized boxes, when I thought that I would only be able to afford one.

The first set I bought was 4939: Cool Cars. It has a lot of parts, 206 in all. Since this is Creator, the parts are very generic; you can use all of the parts in entirely different designs, not just the 3 given on the box. The parts are pretty small, there are a lot of 1x1 and 1x2 tiles. There are very few actual bricks; it's mostly planks, with slopes, smoothers, some grilles, hinges and a windshield for effect.

The finished models are all pretty cool, if you don't mind the fact that they're proud to have studs visible all over the body. I really appreciate the instructions for three builds; I wouldn't say the desgins are amazing, but they're still a lot more creative then I would be able to come up with myself. The only drawback is really that it can't fit minifigs; this won't matter if this is your only set, but if you have a lot of minifigs you might feel that the given designs are out of place. All in all, it's a lot of product for just under 1k Php, so it's a pretty good starter for a grown-up.

The other set I got for Pat was 7040: Dwarven Mine Defender. This is from the Castle line, which means minifigs ahoy! Included are two Orc and one Dwarf minifig; they look pretty neat, with printed torsos and textured helmets. Also included is one orcish sword and a bulky orc banner. The minifigs are great fun, but you do pay for them; the siege machine is kinda small and straightforward to build.

There's only 86 parts, and that counts the minifig components. On the other hand, the parts are a lot bigger, so there's more mass per brick (when compared to Creator sets). Some of the parts are also kinda specialized; there's a one-piece catapult and scoop, and the spinning circular siege blades are pretty much always going to be circular blades. Overall, this set is fun, but at the same price as 4939, it's not so great on value. In hindsight, I would have saved up for a bigger Castle set.

Pet Fish

Last month, I started playing a massively multiplayer online game. No, I'm not talking about WoW. I'm talking about Ikariam, which is a free browser game.

I've heard it compared to Utopia, or (offline) Civ or Sim City. I wouldn't really know, since I didn't play any of those. Ikariam is, to wit: a city-building resource management game, with some pretense at having some combat. It's technically real time, but most people wouldn't recognize it as such since it's so slooow in execution.

In any case, Ikariam is pretty fun for what it is. Making your town expand is reasonably fun, and it has a better interface than I expected. The real failing is that military adventures are pretty useless. On one hand, this is a good thing in an introductory mmo-town game, since I was able to learn comfortably, at my own pace. On the other hand, it might as well be a single player game. I guess some people like that though! Overall, it can be a bit boring, but still less boring than work so that's alright.

Just last week, I joined Travian (speed server), which is pretty much like Ikariam. However, I was promised faster gameplay and more combat. Well... it delivers!

The gameplay is fast, particularly on the first day. You have to note that after a month of Ikariam, you're kind of used to playing for 10 minuites, twice a day. In contrast, the first three hours of Travian are continuous. This is (probably) not something you want do at work.

Combat is also relatively prominent. Attacks come in often, and it can be discouraging to see three hours worth of production taken away by a handful of units. On the other hand, there are ways to just turtle in and weather attacks (Cranny rulez!). This is made more interesting by the fact that there are three races to choose from (Romans, Gauls, and Teutons), and each has their own relatively unique tech tree. Of course, at this point I'm not really qualified to comment on combat since I'm just starting to build my own army. Overall, I'm enjoying this.

LEGO - a wide angle view

Pat had been talking about how much she would enjoy playing with Lego since we got Tesla a Baby Zoo Duplo set. I'm not entirely sure if it's something she would have gone through with on her own, but I took it as a cue to do some research into the scene.

There aren't any local hobby shops that specialize in importing Lego; I'd have to look at the regular mall toy stores, like Rustan's, Hobbes and Landes, or Toys R Us. Sad to say, local SRP seems to convert the official prices at around 1 USD = 100 PHP. But hey, shipping and shopkeeping costs money, and it's still better than importing it myself.

Taking a look at what's available, I noticed that Lego seems to be divided into several different lines. The most classic line would be Creator: it uses very generic parts, has instructions for 3 different builds per set, but it doesn't worry about scale or minifigs. I'd say it's aimed at adult builders who want to make their own creations. Probably best for Pat.

On the other extreme is Bionicle; it's still built from small parts, but it has almost no brick pieces. Instead it uses mostly specialized parts, joints, bars and axles from Technic. Put together, they look like action figures, not like Lego at all. I expect that the target audience here would be young boys interested in posable fighters.

In the middle are a huge number of minifig-scale lines. Castle, Space, City, and also similar licensed lines like Batman and Starwars. These lines are all heavily themed; there are many pieces that are specialized for use in a specific setting. The downside to this is that there's less versatility for customization, and the building experience is a little duller. The upside to all of this is that the finished products look pretty good, with detailed sculpting and prints. These themes are aimed at collectors (like me!) that want to have something that's not too hard to build, while being fun to play with and display. As a bonus, there are minifigs everywhere, and let me tell you: collectors love to army-build minifigs.

Flashback: Gamecrab weekends

June, 2008:

I saw Gamecrab's site while reading a local gaming forum, and I convinced Pat to check it out one sunday afternoon. It's a boardgame cafe! That means that it's a place where you can come in, sit down, and rent a boardgame for 40 Php/hour. Part of the service is having a GM give you a quick run through of the game rules.

They have a reasonably large number of games: Elegant Eurogames like Carcassone, Blue Moon, and Puerto Rico, Light party games like Taboo and Apples to Apples, and complicated Ameritrash like Betrayal at the House on the Hill, Descent, and WoW. Oh, and Monopoly too, I guess.

A couple of free game days later, I was able to convince a bunch of people from the Mafiagang to play there too. It's pretty fun to try out all the games, though it can get expensive over time. Fun enough to start buying our own boardgames, at least... but that's another story.

Fresh

So. The Mafiagang mailing list turned a year old last month, and still going strong. I've been ignoring my blog(s) for more than half a year. And really, I have to admit that the two statements are kinda connected. That, and I just finished the hectic P&G project that I've been working on since december. Feels good, really!

I guess I don't like the blog model of information sharing. I'm much more into the forum/mailing list thing. More robust discussion instead of just comments, better topic structure, everything goes into just one place (instead of a separate page for every writer). Yeah, I know what google reader is. It's an admission that blogs are structually unsound.

*ahem*

Anyway, I'm not writing to be negative, or even to recruit for Mafiagang (although new members are always welcome :D). It's because there's a lot of stuff I'd like to record for posterity. Not in the sense that it's something I need to share with others, but because it would be nice to have some stuff that I can look at with a smile, one or two years down the line. Kinda like a journal. Hm, that's probably a better way to look at it.

This is not a good post. I don't have a subject, I'm rambling aimlessly and I don't even have any pictures. But it signifies an intent to start posting again, so there we go.

...is paper thin

I really like the X-Men.

When I was a kid, around grade 4, my aunt gave me a subscription to The New Mutants. It got me into comics, and my interest intensified when I was able to borrow old issues of the X-Men from a cousin's friend. Of course, the problem with monthly comics is that the quality of the authors vary greatly over time. During the comics bubble of the nineties, I ended up collecting 5 X-titles per month. Eventually I guess I realized that the quality had become poor, and I stopped collecting entirely.

Fast Forward. I spent my weekends in Singapore browsing through the large selection of books at Kinokuniya. I discovered the Essential X-Men, classic issues reprinted phone-book style, thick, cheap, and black and white. Kinda like manga! Essential is a misnomer; each book reprints a solid run of issues, around 25 issues worth. Comprehensive would have been a better fit. Suits me fine, since I don't want to miss out on even the filler issues.



Fast forward again. In just a few weeks, I've gotten volumes 2-6. I'd get the rest too, but of course (state of comic book stores as they are) finding the more recent volumes is difficult, and finding the first nearly impossible.

As for the content, it's good stuff! I mean, really, when you track down your childhood favorites, you're supposed to realize that they sucked and you just didn't know (like, say the old Transformers cartoons). But instead, reading this makes me realize how much I loved comics.



Essential X-Men starts off by reprinting the introduction of the "new" team of Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Colossus. And then you move on to Vol.2 with the Dark Phoenix Saga and Days of Future Past, two of the most definitive X-Men stories evar! No, seriously, it's good stuff.

Unfortunately, the curse of mainstream comics eventually takes its toll on the X-Men. Spin-offs and cross-overs plague the books by volume 5, and you can see Chris Claremont's amazing run begin to spiral down into madness.

In the end, it reminds me of why I hate comics too. Marvel needs to have famous characters to trademark and exploit, and good storytelling seems to take a backseat to simply churning out issues. Guys. Sometimes less is more.

3030 words

Hangin' out with the Merlion on the eve of the Chinese New Year.

McSpicy, my staple food in Singapore.

At work with the Order Management business users, Hikita-san and Konishi-san