Games
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The trireme's oars sweep in time to the beat of the master's drum propelling the ship towards the harbor. The journey across the wine dark sea, ever perilous, nears it's end.
Above, the moon and stars are obscured by clouds but closer to earth burns another beacon to help these mariners into port. The Great Lighthouse sends forth the light for the captain to steer by and so arrive at one of the world's greatest cities.
Alexandria, a city founded by a man of war but now inhabited by men of peace and seekers of knowledge. There they built a repository for all of man's lore. It is to this Library that our travelers have journeyed across thousands of leagues. It is there they will find what they seek.
It has been told that in this vault of knowledge there are large tables where upon a person might place a board. Upon that board tokens may be positioned. These tokens may be manipulated according to arcane principles and thus games may be played. It is "Game Day" at the Great Library of Alexandria.
It is F:AT Thursday.
It was a reuniting this week. Long had we gone without a full compliment of True Believers but that was rectified. Josh, Al, Uba and I all gathered at the Rose Secret Lair. We started off by doing the "Put your hand out and have everyone put their hand on top of yours in turn" thing (is there a technical name for that?) followed by a brief montage of us suiting up in our gaming-assault gear with lots of loud zipper noises, glove pull ons and exaggerated gun cockings overlaid with some kick ass pop rock inspirational music.
Then, once we got over how awesome we all are, we broke out the latest addition to my game collection, Clash of Cultures. This was the first time any of us had played the game and I'm going to use that to explain away my utter bone head mis-explanation of one of the fundamental rules of the game. That being of course, the rule regarding how large your city can be. I explained it as being that you could only have as many cities as the segments in your largest city. So, if you had one city with three bits in it, you could have three cities on the board. Now listen THAT IS INCORRECT!!
The real rule is that you can only have as many bits in any one city as you have total cities. So if you have three cities on the board, you can have three bits in a city.
But, you think to yourself, how is that possible? Have you not seen this very rule addressed a hundred times in posts and comments? Yah, but see, here's the thing, I ain't too bright.
I have to say that we all really liked it despite my mental failure. We played through three turns and then packed it up. Partly because of the rules error and partly because we were running out of time because of slow initial play but we could all see how the game was supposed to play and are eager to give it another go.
I just had one question left regarding the ships. "What the hell, man?" What is up with those sails? They fall off the ship if you look at them wrong. Guess I'll have to get some glue at some point. I roll my eyes in exasperation.
When I mentioned last week to Engineer Al that I had started to watch the TV show "Freaks and Geeks" but that I was having a bit of trouble getting through the first episode because it was bringing to mind much of high school that I've spent the last 30 years trying to forget, he told me to stick with it because it was a great show and there was a character that was written with him in mind. Well he was right.
If you've ever wondered what Al is like in real life, and who of us hasn't, watch this show and pay attention to school guidance councilor Jeff Russo. That character is Engineer Al. Seriously. Ok, Al is a bit more ruthless at least as far as games are concerned but otherwise it's an uncanny resemblance.
The show is considered something of a cult hit and after having watched 12 episodes, currently streaming on Netflix, I think it's really great. The characters really grow on you. When a show can almost make me burst out in tears when a kid gets an Atari 2600...well that's some damn good writing.
