Mountaineering

My dad is a Baptist minister, currently at a church in Ballston Spa, New York. However, just this last weekend, he went to and preached at a church in Morgantown, West Virginia, and has been chosen by the church to be their new pastor. They will be moving sometime between late July and mid August, most likely.

One big difference between this church and my parents' previous churches is that this one doesn't have a parsonage. They've always lived in a parsonage owned by a church, but this time, they're going to be buying a house when they move down there. Crazy stuff. Morgantown is the where West Virginia University is located.

Here's a little more thoughts on Reclamation.

I had an idea the other day. I don't know if it is a good idea or not, so I thought I'd see if I could get some input first. Here's the idea.

When a player wins a battle, they get to decide where the damage wounds go on the losing player's characters. You'd have to follow a couple rules here to make it fair. This includes one rule that is already in place - you have to wound each participating character in a row before you can start wounding characters in rows behind that row. Also, a rule like this would have to be added: Before you can give a character their second wound from a battle's damages, each other participating character must be given at least one wound. Or something to that effect.

I thought this might be a neat thing strategically, as it lets your opponent decide which characters to slowly pick off. It would also (I think) increase the need for one to have healing in your deck.

I also thought that this would prevent a player from quickly killing off their own characters for benefit (from cards like Vengeance of the Lord, that makes a character of yours stronger after a different character of yours has been killed).

It would take rules tweaking, of course. Which method do you think is better? :)

Tisk, Tisk, Bad Blogger!

I missed a couple days blogging, because I am a bad blogger. Actually, I worked from home the last two days, and was lazy and didn't blog. What's with that?

Anywho, here's some interesting information for ya.

My wife has a job! Yeah!! She will be a Residential Counselor at the Wilder Foundation, working in a group home with kids ages 11-17 who have behavioral issues. It is much more in the field she is looking to pursue than her previous job, which was receptionist. This is one of those things that I can see God's hand in. Megan had been trying to get jobs in this field for quite a while, but hadn't had any luck. She signed up for at a temp agency and was assigned as a receptionist at Wilder. Through connections she made while working at the front desk, she was able to have an interview there a couple weeks after her temp job ended. And now she'll be fully employed by Wilder, doing things that are more in her preferred field. Ah, it's amazing how things work out sometimes. God is good!

Yesterday, we had another softball game. While we did not get mercy-ruled, we still lost, sadly. That being said, I did pretty well, going 3-for-4 at the plate, though I had to kick myself for striking out at my last at bat (on a foul ball; in this league, you strike out on fouls). I didn't make any fielding errors, though I didn't have many balls hit to me. But it was good fun as always!

And, of course, a few more thoughts on Reclamation.

Thus far, I've added 27 new cards to the Genesis set (now at 307 total cards), and I may add some more. A base set like this that would be the beginning of a game should have a decent amount of cards in it. Some of these new cards came from adding in kings that were mentioned. Also, I took some cards that were neutral, and added in Heaven and Hell versions of them (while still keeping the neutral versions as well). The thought here is that the neutral versions are weaker, but more versatile (as they can be played on either allegiance during the game). The Heaven or Hell versions are stronger, but more limited in that respect.

A lot of the humans now have their nationality added to their infobox. Nationalities include Egyptian, Israelite, Sodomite, and so on. I'm sure I will do other neat things with nationalities, but right now, the previously mentioned kings (and there are like 8 or 9 kings in the set) help out people from their nationality.

TICSOTD: Tim is so cool, that he is the new absolute zero.

I'm going to run out of TICSOTD real fast. :) I think a picture of the day would be kind of nifty, I may try doing something like that. But who knows.

Case of the Mondays

Ah, weekends always go too fast, don't they?

My wife had her interview on Friday, which seemed to go rather well. She already has a second interview scheduled for Tuesday (tomorrow). The hours would be weird (includes some nights, some weekends), but I think it would be a good starter job for her, as it would actually be something in the field she is interested in. So I am excited to see what comes of it.

And, of course, if she gets the job, we get to celebrate by going out to eat. :)

I finished reading the fourth Harry Potter book last night, and I read the first chapter of the fifth book as well. I am holding on to some slim hope of finishing the fifth book before the movie comes out (in like 2 1/2 weeks). But, you never know.

Saturday was all-day card day, which I always enjoy. I played 4 games of Lord of the Rings (which I won 3 of), 4 games of Star Trek (which I lost all of), and 1 game of Reclamation (which didn't really finish). The Mac Man and our frield Troy also played a game later on. The decks we used for Reclamation were the same decks I had played with in Ohio, so they weren't completely up to date. However, here are some things I still need to tweak.

1. Once a player gets behind, it can be hard to catch up. Maybe there needs to be a rule (or cards) that give advantages to players who are behind.
2. Since the Heaven cards are the only ones that can control battlefields (which a player needs to do to win the game), I may need to make the Heaven cards in general stronger. If all players' Hell sides are dominating, the game will never end. I also thought about adding in some kind of turn counter - someway to automatically make the Heaven forces continually stronger as the game proceeds, to help reduce the chances of a stalemate that never ends.

TICSOTD: Tim is so cool, that I nearly freeze to death everytime he's around.

Oh Happy Day

Well, it finally happened. The Mac Man has finally started his own blog. Took him long enough, didn't it? :) Now I will just have to blog in his blog as much as he's blogged in my blog. Does that go over the maximum number of times you're allowed to say blog in a single sentence?

Well, we are having a card shindig tomorrow, and it is possible that I will have a few Reclamation decks ready for playtesting, should we do that. Otherwise, I will have to schedule some time with the previously mentioned Mac Man for some playtesting.

Edit: On second thought, I will probably not have playable decks tomorrow. With some of the recent rules changes, I need to go through and change and add more cards. Fun stuff! :)

My good looking wife has a job interview today. In fact, it started about 30 minutes ago. It is for a Residential Counselor position (I think that's the title) , and would be working with kids. I don't know many more details than that. But, she talked to one of the higher-up guys in that organization (the interview is at the same company that she previously worked a receptionist-type temp job), and he gave her a good recommendation. So hopefully it goes good! It would be a good starter job for someone who is looking to go into the counseling field.

This blog needs an OTD (of the day) section. I'll try to add something. Maybe the picture of the day. I dunno.

Anywho, Happy Friday everyone!

Dancing Around

Five days ago, I took Megan to see a ballet of sorts - this was my anniversary gift to her. She enjoyed it, which is good. It was not a traditional ballet, but there was lots of funky dancing and it was funny at times, but most importantly, my wife liked it. So it was a success. :)

I have been working on on ASP web page that will take all of the Reclamation card information from a database and spit out all of the cards, so I can then print and cut out for playtesting purposes. Doing it that way makes the cards not look so pretty (though it will still include the card image), but it will greatly speed up making changes. Otherwise, I'd have to add the information for each changed card and export to Photoshop and save it out. So this takes a bit less time. After a bit more playtesting, I may go through and export a new set of updated images.

Tweakification Part Deux

Over the weeked in Ohio, I played two games of Reclamation, one with each of my brothers, and I wrote down several things that I either may implement or already have implemented into the rules. The following probably won't make any sense if you don't know much about the game. :) And these notes are a little long. But anyway, they include, but are not limited to:

• Plunder. In the game, when the Heaven player takes control of a battlefield, they plunder it. This previously meant that you draw a certain number of cards from your game deck (based on the plunder value of that battlefield). After playing it this way, that ended up not being much of a reward, because shortly after that you got to draw a lot of cards anyway. Thus, I have implemented the plunder pile. Instead of drawing those cards, you place them in the plunder pile, and can use them to pay the cost of cards in the future. The plunder values on battlefields has been reduced, from a range of 0-10 to a range of 0-5, and mostly in the 0-3 department.
  
• Rule of 4. I have implemented a rule of 4 (no more than 4 copies of one card title can be included in a deck). Some cards may be too powerful if you're allowed to have lots of them in your deck.
• Neutral constants. There are already neutral cards in the game. These cards are not automatically either Heaven or Hell, but can be played as either, and then become that allegiance. I will be adding (in this set or a future set) some cards that have the constant keyword, which means they are played to an area of the playing surface called the neutral territory. These cards will be active all the time, whether or not you are currently a Heaven or Hell player. One of the main functions of these cards may be to act as armories - some of them will be able to pass neutral items in between a player's Heaven and Hell forces.
• Bidding. One of the potential problems with the game is the way winning it is set up. Right now, the first player to control 5 battlefields (or a majority of the battlefields, whichever is lower) at the end of a turn wins (thus, each player has the same number of chances). However, if each player's Heaven army is doing really well and is controling a battlefield every turn, then the game will never end. Which is bad. So I am considering this change - players bid at the start of the game. The person who is willing to discard the largest number of cards from his opening hand gains the right to go first. Then, whoever controls 5 battlefields (or a majority) first wins automatically, so people may want to bid higher in order to gain that advantage.
• Redraw. I've also added the rule where if you're not pleased with your initial draw of 10 cards, you can shuffle those cards back into your deck and draw a new hand of 8 cards.
• Conflicts. The only built-in way to initiate a battle is to have your entire army battle another player's entire army. There is currently one card for each side that can initiate a conflict between one of your characters and one of an opponent's characters. This concept is going to be greatly widened - lots more ways to initiate conflicts between specific characters. While conflicts will be available to both Heaven and Hell forces, the Hell forces will have lots more ways to initiate them. Conflicts will be able to be initiated between specific rows or columns, for example. Since the Hell player has no built-in way to initate a battle (besides a retaliation), this is a good way for them to do damage to the opponent's characters.
• Multiplayer. While we did not try out a multiplayer game this weekend (I only had 2 decks), I already knew of one big problem. In the game, one player is Heaven, while all the other players are Hell. The way battles had been set up would allow for the current Heaven player to battle all other Hell players at the same time. In multiplayer, this would make it rather difficult for the Heaven player to win battles (and thus, hard to control battlefields, and thus, the game would last forever). So, I have implemented the rule that each battle will take place between only 2 players.
• Battles. One problem we discovered is that the battles themselves need to be more exciting. There need to be more temporary acts (interrupts) that you can play from your hand during battles in order to affect the battles. There need to be more unknowns going into a battle, so that it isn't simply counting up your total might each time, with nothing else happening.
• Miscellaneous. A few other mini-notes:
• There will be Hell cards that punish the Heaven player for not attacking during a turn.
• There are now more ways to refer to how characters relate to each other in a character grid (adjacent, horizontally adjacent, vertically adjacent, diagonal, and surrounding).
• Completed Creation and other Seventh Day-related cards have been weakened.
• Spirit of Darkness has become weaker.
• Satan has become more expensive.
• Apple of Knowledge has lost its ability to draw cards (but Tree of Knowledge now draws an extra card each turn if Apple of Knowledge is in play).
• During battles, the two players' characters grids will be treated as if they are right up against each other (forming one large character grid). Thus, one player's characters in their front row will be adjacent to the characters in the other player's front row).
• Future neutral constants will include walls (or named something similar); these will include cards played on uncontroled battlefields that allow defensive bonuses to whataver player is defending a battle at that battlefield).
• Future sets. Here is a potential list of future sets in the game. Each would cover both the name of the book the set is named after, and often other books in the same section of the Bible.
  
• Genesis
• Exodus
• Pentateuch
• Samuel
• Kings
• Chronicles
• Pslams
• Proverbs
• Isaiah
• Daniel
• Prophets
• Gospels
• Letters
• Revelation
  

I will continue today to work on the rules and cards, as it'll be a long process to get everything tweaked so it works right. As always, any comments or suggestions are more than appreciated. :)

Return to Gopherland

Well, we're back. It was a good fun trip, filled with lots of games and good food. It was good to see everyone, and hopefully it's not another year before I get to see everyone again.

Including dropping off our dog Ruffles at Megan's mom's house, it was a 13 hour drive from our apartment in Shoreview to Columbus. We left Thursday night after work, drove all night, and arrived Friday morning. While we were there, we went out eat twice - once to Damon's and once to Steak-n-Shake, and also went out twice for the best ice cream in the world, at Graeter's. I love that place. These are places that we really like and are not available in Minnesota.

We also tested out the Reclamation game, and got a lot of good ideas for it. There are problems that need to be fixed and cards that need to be toned down. I'll probably cover this is more detail on tomorrow's blog entry (I have to look through all my notes first). But all in all, the play test was pretty successful, since I was definitely expecting game play and card issues to come up. But, of course, that's why you playtest.

On Monday, we went to the Columbus Zoo, which is always a pretty nifty zoo, and (I think) is a good bit bigger and better than the Minnesota Zoo. We left Tuesday morning at about 6:00 in the morning, and through the day treated ourselves to breakfast at McDonald's, lunch at Sonic (which I had never been to before - good stuff), and supper and Davanni's (never been there either - and I thoroughly enjoyed my Turkey Chipotle Hoagie). Then we sat in front of the TV for a little bit and went to sleep at about 9:30. We were tired. :)

But alas, now we're back to work. :)

Buckeyebound

Whooah!

At about 5:30 tonight, when my wife returns home from work, we will set out for Ohio. We will be driving all night and will arrive there somewhere around 8:00 in the morning. We are well stocked with large amounts of caffeine and sugary substances, so we should be all good. I am excited to see people, to eat good food, and to play lots of games, and to test out Reclamation. It should be good fun.

Well, we got blown out again in softball last night. I'm not exactly sure what the final score was, but it wasn't pretty. :) I played center field and then left center field, and was running all over the place chasing balls down, so at least I got a good workout (just in time to gain weight over the next week). We were short on people also, so my wife had to play. Ahaha, lucky her! *evil laugh* Always good fun though.

In other dork-related news, I have mapped out what could be 14 expansion sets for the Reclamation game, spanning the entire Bible. That being said, extensive playtesting must be done on the rules and the current set before I start making new cards.

Anywho, I'll make sure to post on my Ohio trip once I return (that being said, most who read this blog will be in Ohio with me anyway, hehe).

Genesis Images

I have uploaded all 280 Reclamation card images that I've created over the last week or two. This page contains links to all the images, plus the updated version of the rules. Hopefully all the links work - if anyone happens to click a link that doesn't work (or takes you to the wrong card), please let me know. At some point, I will also have the card texts on that page.

I'm now working on getting all the images into Word, so I can print them out and make test decks. I'm pretty excited to see if the game at all functions the way I think it will. It'll be interesting. :)