Top 5 Things TI4 still needs!

 Last week I raved about how this was the #1 game I was looking forward to coming out this year. Now I want to talk about what else I'd like to see come out in future expansions from this epic game!

5) Planet Upgrades

Though rarely used in the 3rd edition by anyone but me, I'd still like to see it in the 4th. What they did was increase the political influence or production value of a planet by one and you could only get one per planet. So it's a slow strategy of growth that does come in handy depending on what game style you're planning during the game. 

4) Space Mines

Another rarely used item in the 3rd edition but still effective. Most time you'd plant them over Mecatol Rex to increase your chances of defending the planet. It also make the cruisers a little more desirable to build which I liked too. 

3) Shock Troops

Another rarely used one but I think that's because you use a token to keep track of them instead of a figure. I'd love if they changed that and made this super commandos more relevant in the game.  

2) Preliminary Missions

I know the vast majority of folks didn't care for this expansion but it sped up the game by giving players a way to make some quick points early in the game, thus speeding it up. (which helps solve TI's biggest complaint. Bringing these back would be easy and a great way to keep the time of game down for players. (though I could play all day)

1) Mercenaries 

Man do we miss some Mercs! They were great to have in the 3rd edition and at least 2 of the players in every game would use them. You can't resist! The cost to keep them is high but their value exceeds the cost at times when they're used. I love it. This will now be the ONLY thing my gaming group will complain about not being in the 4th edition. Could I fit them in to TI4? I think so. Just need to put a reminder of the "5" tile to remind everyone the option is available. But I'd love to see it in the base game. I think it would sing.

Board game releases I'm looking forward to

 So what other games am I anticipating coming out this year? Let's give it a look!

5) A buddy of mine has convinced me to look into getting the game. He raves about it and since he's a good friend (and his recommendations have matched my expectations in the past) I'm looking forward now to when the new Big Box version is released. 

4) The only reason this one is ranked lower is because it's coming out sooner. I'm a fan of Gugong and looking forward to seeing what the expansion does to the base game. 

3) HUGE fan of the base game and all the expansions that have come out for it so far! I play with them ALL in every game I have. None of them have yet to disappoint and this one doesn't look like it will either! Amazing how they've managed to come up with expansions to such a simple game!

2) I regret not backing this one on Kickstarter. Now I have to wait until the end of the year to pick up a copy but when I do it'l hit the table immediately! One of my favorite Queen Games, I look forward to seeing what the extra modules bring to it......and eventually play the game with EVERY module all at once. May sound like a nightmare to some folks but not to me!!

1) Is it any surprise that I'm looking forward to an expansion from one of my favorite games of all time?? This looks GREAT too! It adds a whole lot more to the base game and I think it'll be enough for my gaming group to make the switch once and for all!

Have a good weekend folks!

Top 5 Kickstarters I'm looking forward to!

 Time for an updated list of games I'm looking forward to getting this year!

5) Tribes theme is hard to get me interested in but this game managed to do it! I picked up Bora Bora this year and enjoyed it, I'm looking forward to see what this one has in store for the theme.

 

4) An interesting theme borrowed from the extremely popular Scythe game. In this one you're working against each other but have to share the resources in which you collect. Too interesting to pass up!

3) I enjoyed the base game and love the idea of this expansion. A "0 level" High priority helicopter is added to the game plus an maternity ward with mini pink dice. I couldn't resist!

2) Went all in on this one off a of recommendation from a friend and my love of Stephan Feld. It looks good but this one won't be coming to me until the end of the year. 

1) Got in late on this one but CAN NOT wait to see the upgraded edition with bonus mini expansion. So far the base game has become THE game of the year for me so in essence I'm buying this game twice in one year!

Jasper Mall Documentary Review

Remember when new movies were coming out each week and things like this no one even cared about seeing?

While bored eating lunch I found this interesting documentary said to be about the dying malls in America. Finding the subject interesting I decided to give it a try. What I found was.....interesting.... but in not the way you would expect. 

It all centers around a dying mall in the small town of Jasper, AL. I've never been there but I can relate to small towns with dying malls since Monroe has it's own here. 

As a documentary this movie is a "fail". It doesn't have a narrative, focal point or even a coherent structure. I really just think the guy knew the folks who ran the mall and got permission to do this film in some twisted plan to get people to come back to it and shop??

The story is everywhere and has no direction. One moment you're focused on a hair stylist who works there, then the next is a mixed couple who enjoy a night at the Jasper Fair....in the Mall parking lot. 

The couple have NOTHING to do with the mall, but I guess the director saw a mixed couple down south and went "Wow! I thought the South was full of racist?!"

However, I enjoyed the film. It's shot well and though it's 90 minutes of relatively nothing, I found that watching the characters who hang out, work for or what in a small dying mall worth spending an hour and half of my time watching. 

So if you're scrapping the bottom of the barrel looking for something new to watch, look no further that this terrible documentary. At least you'll be entertained for a short while. 

The Very Excellent Mr Dundee (Review)

Paul Hogan stars in a low budget comedy where he and a few of his Hollywood friends play themselves and poke fun at their careers. 

Though Paul Hogan's performance is sub-par the movie isn't that bad. And with guest appearances by Chevy Chase and John Gleese the movie's actually enjoyable in parts. It's short run makes it a nice movie to catch if you were a fan of Crocodile Dundee back in the day. 

If what I've described peaks your interest, go ahead and give it a try. I think you may like it!

Bloodshot (Review)

Had no desire to see this film until my brother told me about it and I tried to give it a try. 

Pretty good flick. Just the right amount of time, good story, interesting twists and overall a lot of fun!

Never read the comic is was based off of and I never found the character that interesting but they pulled it off in this movie that's well worth your time watching!

Sadly, this one hit theaters right as COVID did and didn't do that well so it may not get a sequel which is a shame. 

Still, you should try it out. 

Failed again

 Uh-oh. Numbers aren't decreasing like they said they would with everyone wearing masks. In fact, a few countries outside of the US with mask mandates have already seen their numbers spike..... wasn't this the latest thing to stop the virus? 

What's next? Goggles?

Morons. 

Third Person (Review)

FINALLY a good movie for a change!

This centers around a writer who's in the middle of writing his next book. There's also 3 other couples the movie revolves around and shows no connection between the three at first but after a while things start merging together and connections are formed. 

But the ending.....it's great. I won't even give spoilers for it either but the movie hints at what's really going on the whole time and teases you at the end with a call back that you saw earlier to show you something wasn't right all along. 

It's a brilliant movie and worth your time. I loved it. May even rank it up in my Top 5 Neeson flicks I think it was that good. 

If it's available streaming....give it a try. It was finally something worth my time to watch. 

Have a good weekend folks!

Mark Felt (review)

This is a movie that focuses on "deepthroat" in the the 70's. The FBI leaker who blew the case off of the Watergate scandal at the time. 

It's interesting but just shy of being a "great" movie. It felt a little rushed and had a lack of direction on who Mark Felt really was as a person. Neeson does a great job but it's not enough to get this movie over the top. 

Not a waste of time but not the best use of time either. I give it a "meh"

Silence (Review)

I'd heard Scorsese did a film similar to "The Mission" which is a great movie so I wanted to see this one too. 

It stars Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield playing missionaries who go on a mission to find a lost brother from their church. The story is interesting all the way through until the end. (SPOILERS) Everyone end up giving up on their faith and renouncing God. The movie kinda throws it in your face too since the whole time the missionaries are in awe of people willing to die for their faith but when they're given the choice they're cowards and renounce the faith instantly. 

Really bad character arcs. Movie it garbage. Move along.....move along....

Operation Chromite (Review)

Ok, so I'm on a Neeson kick at the moment. Going back and watching all of his movies I missed. This one was a foreign film he made for China a few years back. He's in about a quarter of the movie playing an American General. His acting's ok but he was just in the movie to draw box office dollars in China I think. 

Overall, the movie is dubbed in English and not very good. I realized what it was about 20 minutes in and decided to have it play in the background as I did other things. 

Another dud movie I took a chance on. 

Seraphim Falls (Review)

This one looked good. A story about a man in the wild west trying to bring a Union solider to "justice" for killing his family. 

It's a very interesting flick until the end when (SPOILERS) he ends up letting he go?!?!? The movie builds up to reveal at the end WHY you should hate the man being hunted. (you don't find out about the family until closer towards the end) So why not have it pay off in the end?!?!?! Confusing ending to what could've been a fantastic movie. 

But now I have to say "pass"

Another movie that wasted my time. 

After Life (review)

An odd movie about a mortician who talks to dead people and helps them "come to terms" with their life that's now over. 

I say "odd" because the movie also wants you to think that the girl is really alive and Neeson's character is just an evil person who murders people by convincing them they're dead and then having them buried alive. 

Not sure what's the point since the way it started off was interesting enough. I think the "twist" was a bad idea for the movie and really puts a confusing ending to what could've been a good flick.

Not that I miss new movies coming out but.....yeah, there's a reason these types of movies don't need to be "re-discovered"

Have a good weekend folks!

Kingdom of Heaven (review)

After many long year I finally sat down and watched this 3 hour movie by Ridley Scott. I'd heard it wasn't that good but I wanted to see for myself and yeah.... they're right. 

It looks amazing but the movie DRAGS bad in places. It could've easily been half the time and a much better movie but for what it's worth....not so much. 

Skip it. 

The REAL Hamilton

Oooh! History lesson time!

Ok so let's cover just a few things the play got wrong about Hamilton and his life journey. I'll do this in bullet points since that'll be the easiest way to get some of this in:

- Hamilton was a war monger. He constantly fought with John Adams who was pursuing peace in what was in line with how George Washington felt. 

- Adams could've (and was pressured to) remove Hamilton from office once he became president but he didn't. He was hoping to bring everyone together but Hamilton wasn't having it. He fought Adams at every turn and was enraged Adams had secretly sent an ambassador to France to get a peace treaty signed because he wanted to go to war instead. 

- When creating a militia, Adams requested Washington to take command. Washington assembled his men, with Hamilton being one of them yet Hamilton caused chaos when he insisted he be second in command under Washington though his rank was significantly lower. His stubbornness and arrogance forced everyone else involved to depart leaving him the sole person in charge. (No wonder Adams never wanted to go to war)

- In the world of finance, Hamilton did a lot of good but that doesn't mean he was fiscally responsible. He constantly pressured Adams with ideas that would bring the nation larger into debt but Adams wasn't hearing it. 

- Thomas Jefferson DID fight in the revolutionary war (unlike what was indicated in the show) He was pulled off the front lines early by Washington himself to be an ambassador to France. It is assumed the decision was made due to his wife's recent passing and they hoped this would get his mind off of it. Thanks to Jefferson, France assisted the US in the war and loaned us a lot of money....which we never paid back. 

- Aaron Burr was a scoundrel. He and Burr were not best friends though were cordial to each other in the beginning. Did Hamilton not want to duel him? That's debatable due to the fact that he actively pursued a duel with James Madison that went on for some time until both men decided to move on. 

- Not only did Hamilton have an affair but he willingly continued it even after he was blackmailed. Maria and John Reynolds were scoundrels and John even invited Hamilton to continue his affair as long as he could ask for favors every once in a while, which usually ended up being money. Hamilton only ended the affair when things got out of hand and Reynold's was arrested and sentenced to prison. 

- Jefferson and Burr weren't even among the people who invested (or revealed) the scandal on Hamilton's affair. It turned out being a clerk in Madison's department who purposely leaked it out to a journalist most likely due to his hatred of Hamilton. 

- Burr DID serve as VP under Jefferson. The only reason he was removed from the ticket the following election was because he'd been on trial for crimes which sullied his reputation and so Jefferson made the correct decision to go with someone else.  

- Burr NEVER regretted killing Hamilton. In fact, he went on trial several times for the murder of Hamilton (because it was illegal in New Jersey unlike the show indicates) but was never convicted. 

- The REAL reason Burr dueled Hamilton was not due to his loss in the presidential race but his defeat in the Governor's race for New York. When Hamilton opposed him again, they dueled. 

 

Well, there's just a few things. There's more but I think that's enough. Again, the show is fun either way just as a history major, I can't help myself!

Hamilton Musical Review

I got to see the show on streaming last month so I thought I'd give my thoughts. Overall, it's good. I can see why people love it. I wouldn't put it in my Top Ten but I did enjoy it. Maybe it was a little overblown to me, I was expecting a lot more from what others had said but in the end, it's a one and done show for me. 

Of course where it really fell short was all the historical inaccuracies you regularly have with shows like this. Romancing the lead  I understand but it's so far removed from the original content that even Alexander Hamilton would have a problem with it. 

Maybe tomorrow I'll give more of a historical account of what I mean but for now, watch it, enjoy it but discard it as being historically accurate. 

The Peoples of Middle-Earth (Re-read)

In this final book of The History of Middle Earth a LOT is covered. Tolkien explains how the Hobbit characters each got their names, what their calendar, genealogies and history were. He did the same thing for dwarfs as well, adding interesting bits of information such as revealing that Thorin's descendants carried the last known drawfven ring forged by Sauron. But it never corrupted them because most Dwarfs never cared for the "sub-par" quality of the rings in the first place and had no need of them. This is also said to have made Sauron furious. 

Speaking of Sauron HIS history is covered in detail as well which makes you think why they didn't put that part in "Sauron Defeated" 

Another great part of the book is they give you an entire timeline for the 3rd age of middle-earth. REALLY good stuff!

You find out the hidden history of the 5 wizards to enter middle-earth. Sauraman and Gandolph being the most well known out of the bunch, with Radagast a distant third and then 2 blue wizards who not much is known about, only that they departed for away on another mission and were never heard from again. 

You also get a chapter from the SEQUEL Tolkien had thought about for Lord of the Rings. Basically the chapter focuses on two soldiers from Gondor talking about the "old days" of the War of the Ring and how there's hardly anyone left alive who remembers the battle. It's not much but you also wonder why this wasn't included in "Unfinished Tales" too. 

Besides all that it was a pretty good novel to end the series with. 

So overall, is it worth it? For the ie hard Tolkien fan, yes. To test if you'd enjoy it or not I suggest you first read the Silmarillian and Unfinished Tales books first. If you loved them, then go ahead and give these a try. 

If you thought they were sub-par.....try reading something else, this series isn't for you. 

  

War of the Jewels (Re-read)

The 11th book of The History of Middle-Earth is pretty much a retread of what we've already read of the Silmarillion but we a few more edits. 

The one redeeming quality about the book is towards the end where we get information about the Elfen language. Pretty good stuff there. It's funny, because like the prior book this one carries an intriguing title but never lives up to the expectations set forth from it. 

Overall, kind of bland except for at the end. 

One more to review! You'll have to wait until next week though. Have a good one folks! 

Morgoth's Ring (Re-read)

In the 10th book in the History of Middle-Earth series, Christopher takes us back to the Silmarillion. This time for the later revisions that were made by his father. 

Not much is new here, just a few changes noted from the earlier novels who talk about the same subject. The only interesting thing to note is there's a little deeper history of how the Orcs came into being and why Tolkien referred to them as Goblins in The Hobbit but later on in Lord of the Rings decided to give them a deeper history and change the race to Orcs. 

Other than that, the rest of the novel was pretty stale. 

Sauron Defeated (re-read)

In this 9th installment of the History of Middle-Earth series it focuses on the last few chapters of Return of the King. 

In the drafts it turns out the hobbits are excited to see their old friend like, Jeremy, Ciszimo and Cousin Pimple! There's also a character called Took Brandybuck as well. 

However, this novel drags a lot in the end. After Christopher finishes the Lord of the Rings drafts he doesn't have that much else to offer. 

There's a LONG story about "The Notion Papers Club" which has nothing to do with Middle Earth. Just another writing from his father. It literally takes up have the pages in the novel. After that, there's another rehash from the 1st age that mentions Sauron as a servant for Morgoth who had "eyes" everywhere but the story isn't about Sauron nor is it focused on him so it reads like filler to pad his page count. 

The BEST thing about the book is the "lost" chapter to Reurn of the King which has a NEW ending to the novel.....and it's great. 

It ends years later as Sam is grown up and is reading the Red Book to his children (for the third time) He does a "where are they now" segment as he anwers his kids questions on the various characters from the story. 

As they go to bed his little girl asks if he will also have to travel to the Grey Havens one day since he held the ring albeit for a short time. Sam responds that would be the case but not for a very long time. As he closes their door it says Sam sits in home....listening to the call of the ocean.

WOW.

Absolutely love that ending too! Very good stuff and if nothing else makes this book worth the read!

War of the Ring (Re-read)

The 8th book in the History of Middle Earth series continues showing you Tolkien's drafts of his excellent trilogy. 

Here's some of the interesting things it discusses:

1) Tolkien considered having Sauraman help the good guys in the end at one point. 

2) Tolkien wrote out a complete day by day timeline to where every single person was and what they were doing during the Lord of the Rings series. I mean to the point where he knew where on the map they were!

It's incredible details like that which really show you why the series was so good. Another good read!

The Treason of Isengard (Re-read)

In this 7th book of the History of Middle Earth the story of Lord of the Rings continues to take shape. Here's a few interesting ideas Tolkien had when writing the epic series:

1) Galdor was the original name for Legolas

2) Before it was Gimli, Gloin is said to have been the one who joined the Fellowship of the Ring. 

3) Tolkien was still unsure if he was going to put Treebeard's character in the books. At one point he even considered having Pippen and Merry have an adventure in Minis Tirith instead. 

On top of all that there's even some notes on the Elfen language which was fascinating to read. Again, this series is worth your time!