Friday I had my usual ethics classes morning and afternoon. In between I took Scully for a walk at lunch time. I took her down to Bayview Park near the water and the ferry wharf. There were a couple of little pied cormorants drying their wings on an adjacent wharf, in the beautiful winter sunshine. It was really nice down there by the water. I tossed a tennis ball around for Scully to chase and retrieve. But at one point I dropped her container of treats on the grass, and they all spilt out. I picked up what I could, but she spent the next few minutes snuffling through the grass to find all the other dropped ones. And then after that she wasn’t interested in chasing the ball any more!
In the evening I went to a friend’s place for our fortnightly games night. Our host ordered pizza, and his kids were there to play games with us or do whatever as well. He asked them what pizzas they wanted, and one kid said, “Either vegetarian or meat lovers.” The father said to us, “Well, there you go, nothing in between.” We played a quick game of Jump Drive while waiting for pizza to arrive. I had a miserable game and barely reached around 25 points by the time someone had achieved the winning score of 50.
We got in another quick game of Fantasy Realms, a card game where you have to assemble a synergistic hand of cards that represent various people, items, or landmarks. Each card has rules on it for bonus or penalty points depending on other cards in your hand, and the interactions quickly get complex. I went for a Flood hand, with several Flood cards and one that gave me bonus points for every additional Flood. I ended up coming second with 182 points, behind the winner on 186.
After eating pizza, we turned to a big game. Four of us were keen to play Root, while the other guy played a different game with the kids. One guy hadn’t played Root before and wanted to learn. We gave him the Vagabond, as our host suggested it would be easier to concentrate on what he was doing without having to worry too much about the rest of us. I played the Eyrie, and was doing reasonably well behind the Vagabond, who raced to a lead by exploring and doing quests.
Here’s Scully watching us play. My birds are blue, the cats are orange, the Alliance are green, and the Vagabond is the lone light grey piece on the far left of the board.
The Marquisate (cats) played a Dominance card as soon as he reached 10 points, going for victory by controlling three rabbit clearings, and then moving lots of cats into those clearings. He would win at the start of his next turn unless someone else stopped him! The Alliance player (our host) looked at me and said, “Well, I’m not going to be able to stop him. It’s up to you.” I think this was a fair point. I could stop the cats winning, but doing so would require me to stretch myself thin and partly throw away the comfortable second place I was currently in. I had to think about my options for a few minutes, but eventually came up with a plan, moving and attacking to wrest control of one rabbit clearing, without making myself too vulnerable. It was a really interesting dynamic – if I didn’t want to lose the game for sure and give myself at least some chance of winning, I had to overstretch myself. The whole game played out at a frantic pace, and there was drama almost every turn. I managed to get myself into a position where I could potentially win next turn by crafting a pile of coins for 3 points, then building my final roost and scoring 5 more points at the end of the turn to reach the victory goal of 30. But the Vagabond had a monster turn before me and scored enough to win! So a win for the first time player, who really enjoyed the game and was gushing afterwards about the complexity, the asymmetry, and the depth of the interactions. I think he’s hooked.
After this we switched to playing Junk Art, a fun dexterity game where you have to construct rickety piles of sculptural art using plastic pieces of various unfriendly shapes. There are multiple rounds, all with different rules and scoring. Here’s Scully watching us play this:
And one of my constructions later in the game (with other players’ in the background):
I don’t even remember who won, but it was plenty of fun, especially late in the night.
This morning I slept in, partly because it was so dark outside and I thought it was still early until I looked at the clock and realised it was after 8am! It was raining, for the first time in over two weeks. And very cold. The temperature didn’t climb above 10°C until midday. But I went for a 5k run around then, and managed a good time, under 27 minutes.
Today I listed some Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition adventure books on eBay, hoping to get close to $200 in an auction. But five minutes after I’d completed the listing, I got a notification that someone had bought the books for my starting price of $10! I’d accidentally set it as a “buy it now” price, not an auction!! Someone saw it and realised it was the bargain of a lifetime and pounced on it. Stupid eBay, it makes the default listing a “buy it now” and not an auction, and you have to be aware to toggle a switch to make it an auction.
I contacted the buyer and explained the mistake, saying I would honour the sale, but hoping they’d be reasonable and let me cancel it. Turned out they were reasonable and said they still wanted the books, so how much would I be happy with selling them for. I decided to set a price of $80, and they accepted it and paid the extra. So I was happy to get that, and they were happy to get a decent bargain still. The good news is I will now be absolutely sure not to make this same mistake when listing Magic: the Gathering card lots worth $500 or more in the near future!
The rain cleared around lunch time and the clouds parted to a nice sunny afternoon. My wife and I took Scully on a walk over to Naremburn and the Flat Rock Cafe brew pub there. I tried an English style brown ale and we got a bowl of chips to eat as an afternoon snack. Turns out the serves of chips there are huge, and I was still pretty full by dinner time, so only had a small amount of the lentil dhal and rice that I cooked.
A pretty full two days!
New content yesterday:
New content today:
