My only problem with Cursed Court is the theme but, sadly, that enough

 During a learning game of Cursed Court, one player said "Oh, so its like Texas Hold 'Em?" As soon as I heard that, I felt like that was actually the best one sentence description of the game.

The game consists of a board with a grid of nine characters who look like they spent a lot of money at a Renaissance fair, a deck of cards with three of each character and betting chips in player colors.

At the start of each hand, cards are dealt out face down between each player and one card is dealt face up. You can look at the two cards next to you. There are four rounds of bidding, with an additional face up card being dealt before each round.

The short version is that you are bidding on what cards you think are actually dealt out since there will be plenty of cards that remain in the deck even by the end of the round. You can outbid other players but you have a limited number of chips. Otherwise there wouldn't be a game.

There is more to the game than that but that's the basic idea. So, it also has an element of Liar's Dice as well as Texas Hold 'Em or has their shared elements.

Mechanically, I feel like Cursed Court holds together. Texas Hold 'Em has to count as one of the most popular games in the world, even if it has a different audience than other board games. Liar's Dice, in one form or another, has been around for centuries. Cursed Court has good bones.

However, I found that I wasn't very engaged by the game. When I read a comment on BGG that the game would make more sense as a game about a casino than a fantasy court, that really clicked for me. The theme and the mechanics do not mesh for me.

I don't mind a pasted-on theme and I love me a totally abstract game. The theme and the mechanics have to downright clash for me to have a problem and, quite frankly, that doesn't happen very often. However, in Cursed Court, the theme distracts me from the mechanics. If someone told me the developers fell in love with the art and just couldn't let it go, I wouldn't be surprised.

Cursed Court has a very good mechanical design, tapping into bluffing and deduction mechanics. Unfortunately, I'm not going to be interested until it gets a better theme.

Tile laying when my brain isn’t working

 As life and work have become increasingly hectic, I have found myself revisiting Potato Carrot Tomato as a quick, lunchtime game. 

I have written about Alexander Shen and how they have a real genius for creating games and puzzles that can be played in a coffee cup’s worth of time. And I’ve written about the need for brain fog games, games you can play and enjoy without concentrating on them. And Potato Carrot Tomato is a game where those two ideas come together.

It’s a solitaire tile-laying game consisting of fifteen tiles, plus some scoring tiles. Each tile has one to three sections. Each edge will always be a potato or a carrot or a tomato so the divisions are in the rest of my life, instructor hands-on environment, always diagonal. Edges don’t have to match, but you only get points if they do.

At the end, you will score each of your largest groups. The twist is that their values will be randomly determined. At the start, you will randomly determine which vegetable will be worth one point per symbol. At about the 2/3 mark, you then randomly figure out which one of the remaining two will be worth two points and three points.

Potato Carrot Tomato is, frankly, not a good game. In fact, it is easily the weakest Shen game that I will play on a semi-regular basis. I have found that my scores end up almost always being in the same general range, high fifties to low sixties. In fact, I feel that the game doesn’t actually offer real choices, more pattern recognition with the variation in scoring being luck-based.

There are a couple of other games I’ve found myself thinking about in regards to Potato Carrot Tomato as a brain fog game. Shen also has Blankout, which is also more pattern recognition than strategy. However, I think the patterns are prettier. And there is Dice Fishing D6, which is my ultimate brain fog game. There’s no real decision making but it’s a chill process tied up in a nice package.

Apparently, I’m in the mood for a tile-laying mindless activity. (For the record, I think Ambagibus requires some actual decisions and doesn’t count. It is a very chill game though) And I’m sure Potato Carrot Tomato will fade away again but it is helpful right now.

So who is this Sentry?

 I figure at some point before the end of the year, I want to see the Thunderbolts movie. Quite a few of my friends liked it. However, while I am familiar with a couple different versions of the Thunderbolts, I actually have read almost nothing about the Sentry.

So, I decided to correct that and read the collected edition of the original miniseries.

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I feel like I just read an homage to Alan Moore‘s version of Miracle Man. I also felt like I read a revision of Christopher Priest’s Triumph without editorial interference.

A Joe Shmoe wakes up to realize he he is the Sentry, a nigh omnipotent hero who is like the Silver Age Superman take to the next level. More than that, he helped the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the Hulk, the X-Men and more get started as superheroes. However, all of his history has somehow been erased.

The twist is that his arch nemesis, the Void, is actually him and that the Sentry had to be functionally erased from existence to keep the Void from, well, killing everyone.

I understand that the Sentry has gone through multiple interpretations and origins in the, by comic book standards, relatively short time he’s been around. One part that seems to have stuck is the idea that he was originally a junkie who drank the stuff that gave him his powers to try and get high. That wasn’t in the volume I read but it was hinted at enough that I wondered if it was missing an issue.

I am of two minds when it comes to the Sentry. Taken as a standalone work, it’s quite strong. I was interested and engaged the whole way through. The original series is a good story.

On the other hand, as part of the greater continuity of Marvel Comics, I’m not as keen. I’m not a big fan of works that say ‘everything you’ve read for decades is wrong.’ Twists like that are great in standalone works. You know, where they were planned from the start. On the other hand, revising hundreds of stories by dozens of different authors doesn’t work so well.

(Crisis on Infinite Earths, as a counter example, did work but it also did so by restarting everything, not by saying ‘oh, it was a lie all along’ Eh, it’s complicated)

Frankly, I think the Sentry is a really good character but interacts with the Marvel setting in a weird way. It sounds like making him work as a reoccurring character was a struggle. Like the Catcher in the Rye crossed with Spider-Man.

And, now looking at reviews of his later appearances, it sounds like writers just don’t know what to do with the character. Which, to be far, isn’t unreasonable. The Sentry is on a power scale beyond virtually any other Marvel character but, even more problematic, is in a different genre.

Still, I did enjoy this first story.

My October Gaming

September was one of the heaviest months I’d had in years, both for gaming and learning games. October was inevitably going to be a lot lighter and adulting made sure of it.

I learned:

One for Sorrow

Paper Pinball - Boss Fight

I try and learn a Roll and Write each month. I like the medium and it is a Godsend to Print and Play. Boss Fight is the fifteenth paper pinball game I’ve learned over the course of several years so it’s kind of cheat to count it as learning a new game. That said, it’s what I had the time for and I do enjoy the games.

One for Sorrow was a good find. There are times when In-Hand games are what you have the space for and I think One for Sorrow has a lot of potential.

I also found myself breaking out Potato Carrot Tomato, particularly as a lunch time game. It’s not a very good game but it does let my fidget and turn my brain off. Its far from the only game like that. It’s just the flavor I’ve been in the mood for lately.

Quite frankly, November might be better for gaming but because of Thanksgiving and Buttonshy has a couple of playtests coming up. And if it isn’t, I’ll still get some gaming in.

My October PnP

October wasn’t a super productive month as far as Print and Play projects were concerned. I knew work and adulting would start kicking in and I was not disappointed.

I made:

One for Sorrow

A Dragon’s Gift & expansions (latest round 2)

Ceramicus (contest entry)

Word Flower (contest entry)

Oppidum (contest entry)

One for Sorrow was my ‘big’ project for October and I was pleased with it. It stands a good chance of becoming part of my regular In-Hand gaming. Because there are plenty of times when I don’t have a table and don’t want to be on my phone.

However, the second round of playtesting was the real highlight of my crafting and gaming for the month. I didn’t get to play as much as I wanted to but it was all good.

I also wanted to make another copy of Ceramicus and decided to make a couple of other 9-card contest entries.

I expect November will also be crazy and that’s okay. I’ll still get in a little drafting and a little gaming. 

One For Sorrow is a good addition to my In Hand library

I am always on the lookout for new In-Hand games and One for Sorrow turned out to be a dandy one. 

The theme of the game is that you are guarding the forest and the magpies from the Keeper of Sorrows. You need to align the magpies before either the Keeper of Sorrows and his allies kill the forest or evil thirteenth magpie fully rises.

So, you are putting cards in numerical order while dealing with a timer counting down.

There are thirteen magpie cards, four tree cards and one Keeper of Sorrows card. Eleven of the magpies are good guys and have special powers to help rearrange the deck. The trees each have two hit points and serve as timers for the game. The first   magpie and the Keeper damage the trees, which both hurts your final score and brings one of the losing conditions, all the trees being dead, closer. If the thirteenth magpie ever reaches the top of the deck while being flipped upright, that’s instant game over.

The gist of each game turn is that you resolve the top card of the deck and then move one to four cards to the back of the deck without changing their order. 

As I mentioned, all of the good magpies have some kind of special power that lets you rearrange the cards. After you use it, you turn the card upside down (not flipped over) If you don’t use a power, you can reset the card. Most of the cards will still let you use the power when they are upside down, but they are only worth points at the end of the game if they are right side up.

One for Sorrow has two strong design elements that make for a good gameplay experience. It has a solid decision tree and it is mechanically simple. Your end goal of getting the cards in numerical order is simple. The special powers are easy to understand. And you never have to hold the cards in any kind of funny way, just as a deck.

That might seem like a strange thing to highlight, but it’s actually a big deal in a In-Hand game. While some of them have an intentional dexterity element, having the game be easy to physically play is a big deal. More than that, because you never have to tilt cards, the ability to pause One for Sorrow and come back later is easy.

One for Sorrow is physically and mechanically accessible. It has a solid theme and offers good gameplay. It is well on its way to becoming part of my travel kit.

October without M.R. James is like Thanksgiving without Pumpkin Pie

 I've gotten into the habit of reading some M. R. James every October. His ghost stories are quite influential, which is impressive considering he has a fairly small body of work in that area. I view him as one of the bridges between the Victorian, gothic tradition and the modern ghost story.  I first discovered him because his stories had influenced the The Ring by Koji Suziki, which became the basis for the manga and the movies.

Since I'd read Ghost Stories of an Antiquary several times, I decided to read A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories. I'm pretty sure I read it when I first discovered James and blitzed my way through his ghost stories but I had almost no memory of the book. It was like I was reading it for the first time.

And, I have to admit, it felt like leftover ideas that he didn't want to bother with earlier.

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It really says something that, at the end of The Haunted Doll's House, James included an apology admitting that the story resembled his earlier work The Mezotiny. The most problematic story, though, is An Evening's Entertainment. The story is twice nested, first in an essay lamenting how the tradition of oral storytelling is fading and second by a hypothetical grandmother telling a story. James uses framing devices almost constantly but this felt disjointed and distracting. I will come back to this story, though.

Honestly, though, what I felt this collection was lacking was a sense of things being dire, at least for the protagonist. Earlier stories like Count Magnus or the Treasure of Abbot Thomas, just to name two, gave a sense of visceral danger, sometimes to the point of an unhappy ending. In A Warning to the Curious, the protagonists, at most, watch other people being in dire trouble. The horrible deaths happen to other people, sometimes people they don't even care about.

With that being said, the stories are perfectly good and there are some nice touches. The death at the end of the story A Warning to the Curious with destruction of the victim's mouth is properly disturbing. And the previously mentioned An Evening's Entertainment, once you get through the two layers of framing devices, may be the strongest story in the collection. It does a good job of leaving out enough details to make things mysterious but giving you enough for the story to hold together.

A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories is not M. R. James at his strongest and not what I would recommend to start with. However, if you are going to be a completist (like me), it's not an unrewarding read.