Update: Major slowdown; posts will be infrequent

No long speeches ... just a notice that maintaining a low-key gaming blog has been forced way, way, way down my priority list due to Real Life concerns.

I do not know when — or, frankly, if — this blog will be updated again. For now, I will leave it open for searching and archive purposes.

(Update 3/5/10: The blog, generally, is still a low priority, but I'm going to post interesting items if the seem worthy. For now, I'd guess that will mean no more than two or three posts per month. So, it's not "dead" ... just "slow.")

No one is dying or anything dramatic like that; it's just priorities.

May your Viruses always multiply by 4.

— Duke

Cosmic Encounter: the fifth game you MUST own

Seriously. It says so right here in this list of "The 10 Games Everyone Should Own."

The highlight:

It’s ripe for expansion, it’s rarely longer than 90 minutes, and the shifting, conditional alliances always make for some exciting table talk and good laughs. It’s everything a hobby game should be — fun, imaginative, challenging, and interactive.

The Dune boardgame also gets a shout-out as the "... best game ever published ..." (yikes!) but author Michael Barnes rightly doesn't include it in his list, which is focussed on games that are either still in print or else attainable with a minimum amount of effort.

Mystery boxes revealed; zero relevant news

So that third mystery box over at Fantasy Flight Games turned out to be some sort of bizarre you-got-your-chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter combination of BattleLore and A Game of Thrones.

Personally, it would be impossible for me to be less interested in this item. I mention it only because it serves as sort of an official end to the speculation: none of the three mystery boxes had the slightest thing to do with Twilight Dune: Dinosaur Ninjas, Borderlands, or Cosmic Encounter.

Bleh.

My God ... Cosmic Encounter is full of stars!

It looks like the Cosmic Encounter creativity bug has bitten some of the usual suspects. Two major homebrew projects are currently getting a lot of reaction over at the self-proclaimed Leading Boardgames Site, and both are pretty neat (both are what might be called "planet-based," too, which is kind of interesting). Anyway, point that clicking thing at these links for Cosmic Stars and Planetary Profiles.

As an aside, I'll add that I really enjoy this direction for CE variants. As I've made clear elsewhere, I am pretty much over the whole "homebrew alien" thing; we just don't need a 37th variant of Pacifist. In fact, I'm actively boycotting any discussion at any site regarding homebrew aliens — I just literally skip right over those threads. Bleh. I've got your Macron variant right here, pal!

But adding entirely new concepts to the game — especially those that have been playtested at least a little bit — is definitely something TheDukester can support.

It's the player aid that ate Cincinnati

What's great about Toomai's Timing Sheet for Cosmic Encounter is that it's so ... extreme. In a very literal sense, it attempts to detail every possible action and reaction for every Cosmic Encounter alien, step by step, as the phases of every turn progress. In a more "meta" sense, though, it's a wonderful look at just how much "the game that breaks its own rules!" really does do just that.

The real comedy, of course, comes from the fact that anyone showing this sheet to a new CE player would cause that player to flee madly for the nearest exit (probably muttering something about CE being "10 times more complicated than Arkham Horror"). But, as we all know, Cosmic really isn't that bad, once a few simple rhythms are learned — and it's not like all 70 aliens are involved at once.

Anyway, be sure to click on the image here to see it a bigger, more readable size. It's worth admiring the sheer scope of the thing ...

Quite possibly the world's geekiest shirt

(Not that such a thing stops me from wanting one, of course ...)

You've got to love getting two solid gaming references for the price of one shirt. And the "flow" line is bigger than just the Dune book: I've never played a single game of the Dune boardgame, FTF or online, where "The spice must flow" wasn't uttered by someone or other.

It's also nice that even the little details are right. For instance, that's a regulation-size Settlers of Catan board pictured.

(Tip of the fedora to Cosmic Encounter player Bioball for the heads-up)

First look at our 20 new alien friends

As usual, a good starting point for all things Cosmic Encounter is The Warp — not the place where your lost ships go because you're playing like a bonehead, but the actual person. Much like he did when the Fantasy Flight Games base set arrived, Jack Reda has provided his initial thoughts on the 20 new aliens found in Cosmic Incursion.

It's well-written, it's got pretty formatting, and it's worth a read.

CE Online on the iPad? Why not?

And that's not just me talking crazy, either. Here's Cosmic Encounter designer Peter Olotka, commenting at this very blog:

Bill and I are committed to getting some of the new aliens online. And we are discussing the possibility of an IPad ce online. Our Cosmic flash guru Alan Queen did this little game in flash and ported it to the iphone:

Search the app store for
Star Match ABC
by DigiDood

Well, that would be enough to pretty much make my head explode in a tremendous spray of blood and gray matter. As a longtime member of both the Apple and Cosmic Encounter cults, playing CE Online — with some new aliens, too! — on Apple's shiny new gadget would be a clear case of Fanboy Overload for me. I will say right now, on the record, that I would gladly pay my CE Online Founder's fee again if it guaranteed I would be playing the game on my iPad by this date next year.

Seriously, where do I sign up?

+++++

One technical question: is getting CE Online to play in a non-Flash environment a feasible thing? Because Apple will not put Flash onto its mobile devices, and that includes the iPad.

First look! All 20 Incursion aliens!

With the Cosmic Incursion expansion now in the hands of at least one eager player/consumer, it's fair to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding the 20 aliens who made the cut for the first expansion to the Fantasy Flight Games edition. They are, in alphabetical order:

Bully, Chronos, Cryo, Deuce, Disease;
Ethic, Fungus, Fury, Genius, Ghoul;
Guerrilla, Leviathan, Locust, Magician, Mercenary;
Merchant, Plant, Seeker, Sniveler, Symbiote.

My first take: I'm seeing at least nine — maybe 10, depending on possible name-changes — that look like first-time appearances. It will be very interesting to see if that trend continues.

My second take: Disease and Fungus? ... Plant beats Insect onto the list of official FFG aliens ... Deuce is a personal favorite, so I'm happy with that ... and Bully? I would have lost that bet.

(Another shout-out goes to Kobold Curry Chef — that's two in a row. The rest of you better get with the program here)