Recent Posts

71

Table-top Games / Re: No Thanks!

« Last post by Dragon on November 27, 2022, 17:24:01 »

Need more? No Thanks!

It's been a few months, but we got this game out again for Thanksgiving. It was a nice little game that we played after dinner with the family on Thanksgiving day. Isaac started the game and won. Isaac had 15, I had 20, Janai had 68, and Beth had 30 points.

Today, my brother Tim and his wife came to visit. Tim, Lina, Beth, and I played No Thanks! Tim was the winner with 18 points. I had 36, Beth had 37, and Lina had 96.

72

Table-top Games / Re: The Settlers Of Catan

« Last post by Dragon on November 26, 2022, 18:04:14 »

Isaac, Beth, and I played Settlers today. Beth had both of her starting places in the middle of the island and she ended up completely controlling the center space on the board, which was a wheat space. Isaac and I went around the outside on opposite sides of the island, with Beth in the middle. Eventually I picked up the Longest Road bonus and we all hovered at 8 points for a few rounds, which seemed like a long time without advancing. The robber just kept hitting Isaac when he had lots of cards, and Beth was really locked in, while Nathaniel was not having much luck getting resources. Eventually Beth was able to move out toward the edge of the island. Nathaniel got a Road Building card and used it to get the Longest Road bonus back in a surprise grab which stopped Isaac from winning on his next turn. It was an exciting struggle. In the end, Isaac had the Largest Army and was able to take the Longest Road again from Nathaniel. Isaac also had acquired a Victory Point from the Development Cards earlier, bringing his final score to 11 points, while Beth had 8 and Nathaniel had 6.

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Table-top Games / Yahtzee

« Last post by Dragon on November 23, 2022, 22:44:34 »

I finally taught my 9-year-old how to play Yahtzee. It's such a great classic game and is good for simple math exercises and getting familiar with estimating odds. Yahtzee is a game that I used to play quite a bit as a teenager. She beat me, 197 to 156.

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Conquest Of The Empire Online / Conquest Tutorial Video

« Last post by Dragon on November 21, 2022, 20:47:51 »

I've uploaded a new video to help out people get started. I plan to include this on my instructions page, but for now, here's the link:

Conquest Turn Example

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Table-top Games / Re: Top Picks For Board Games

« Last post by Dragon on November 19, 2022, 14:35:03 »

Since I never was able to find my Deserted Island Game List on About.com, I'll just post some of my current and past favorite games.

Now that my son has gone off to college, recently, I've been playing games on BGA more than face-to-face, but I do still play board games with my wife and occasionally other guests. I still enjoy playing The Settlers Of Catan, Rival Troops, and Dominion, but also recently played Robo Rally again and I really enjoyed getting that one out.

My favorite games to play last year were: Dominion, Stone Age, and Caylus 1303.

Past favorites include: Bang!, BattleTech, Blue Moon City, Cash N Guns, Castles of Mad King Ludwig, Cathedral, Condottierre, Citadels, Conquest of the Empire, Cosmic Encounter, Dominion, Doom: The Board Game (especially the Deathmatch rules), HeroQuest, HeroScape, Homeworlds (Looney Pyramids), Onitama, Pandemic, Power Grid, The Resistance, Robo Rally, Rumis, San Juan, Silver & Gold, The Settlers of Catan, Splendor, QE, Quarto, and Quoridor.

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Table-top Games / Top Picks For Board Games

« Last post by Dragon on November 11, 2022, 12:45:59 »

Over the years there have been several different lists about the top board games. Prior to BoardGameGeek coming onto the scene, About.com had Board Game section run by Erik Arneson. I've had to check back using the WayBackMachine but have even found that his Top 10 Must-Have Board Games changed over the years. For example, in 2003, this is was his list:

1) Settlers of Catan
2) Scrabble
3) Carcassonne
4) Chess
5) Risk 2210 AD
6) Time's Up!
7) Lord of the Rings
8) In Pursuit
9) Backgammon
10) Monopoly
https://web.archive.org/web/20030417064652/http://boardgames.about.com:80/cs/toppicks/tp/must-have-games.htm

In 2004, his list changed to this:
1) Settlers of Catan
2) Scrabble
3) Puerto Rico
4) Traumfabrik
5) Chess
6) Time's Up!
7) I'm the Boss
8) Smarty Party
9) HeroScape
10) Mystery of the Abbey

https://web.archive.org/web/20040904100736/http://boardgames.about.com:80/cs/toppicks/tp/must-have-games.htm

I was looking for a list that I had written for that site years ago, which was my top games to take to a deserted island.

http://fortheliangrun.com/5-strategy-board-games-every-family/ POSTED by HONGBO DECEMBER 4, 2017

1. Settlers of Catan
2. Ticket to Ride – Europe
3. 7 Wonders
4. Splendor
5. Dominion

77

Blogs / HP Victus - Bad Omen

« Last post by Dragon on November 05, 2022, 22:39:12 »

I bought an HP Victus recently. This is the first new computer that I've purchased for myself in over a decade. One big reason for this, aside from the money, was that my Sony Vaio had a great keyboard layout to me, and most laptops that I had found weren't setup the same. Prior to this, I had been recycling, reusing, modifying and upgrading my old Sony Vaio laptop. That computer originally had Windows 7 installed, but has since become a fully Linux machine. I've been running Ubuntu as the primary OS for the past few years. A couple months ago, my old laptop started crashing often again. Even after reinstalling the latest version of Ubuntu, it was having problems. My son recently got an HP Victus and when I checked it out it seemed to have a very nice keyboard layout, good size, and nice specs, so I picked one up for myself. Around this same time, my wife started a new job and needed a computer at home to use until one arrived from her new employer, so I offered to let her use the one that I had just picked up since I hadn't used it much yet, expecting to just wipe it after she used it and then I'd start fresh again. All this was fine, but the problem was that I didn't have much time to check out my new HP Victus for the first few weeks.

After eventually getting my laptop back, resetting it back to day 1, and working with it more, I realized that the Home and End keys were missing... replaced with an Omen Hub key and a Calculator key. The Calculator key was able to be remapped as the End key, but not the Omen key.  I thought it would be something that would need a registry edit to adjust, but even using a program called SharpKeys couldn't detect the Omen key.  Very frustrating. Apparently this is something that HP has decided isn't important for their users. I've continued looking for an option to update this key, because other than that, I've been happy with this this new laptop.

Of course, on the 10-keys there is 7/Home and 1/End, which do work for those when the Num Lock is switched off, or by holding the Shift key, but not the same functionality as holding the Shift key plus pressing Home or End, which highlights the line.

Searching Google brought up several other threads of complaints and alternatives for this issue, including https://www.autohotkey.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=43706 and https://www.reddit.com/r/Hewlett_Packard/comments/fws7h3/hp_omen_sequencer_remap_homecommand_center_button/ but for my needs, since the keyboard doesn't appear to be mapped to F24, there might only be one way. An alternative that might fit what I'm looking for as found on https://github.com/jingyu9575/remap-omen-key

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General Discussions / Re: Greasemonkey for Homeworlds on SuperDuperGames.org

« Last post by Dragon on October 31, 2022, 21:52:22 »

I just updated the userscript above to Version 1.3.1, adding the description.

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Tyco RC / Re: Tyco 9.6V RC Series Upgrade/Replacement Parts Now Available!

« Last post by czstycor/c on October 18, 2022, 20:52:56 »

GTek are you willing to sell off eBay?

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Tyco RC / Re: Tyco Bandit or Eliminator

« Last post by czstycor/c on October 18, 2022, 20:37:20 »

Did you find one?