The Power of Speculation

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I had not heard the term “speculative fiction” until the last two years when Derek decided he was going to be incredibly educated in an incredibly niche field. For me, all that stuff had been “fantasy.” It was the sort of hushed about genre. I come from a family of readers but when I was growing up, mystery was the king of the household. As a wee little lad, I had the romping adventures of the Hardy Boys to spark my imagination. My sister, naturally, had Nancy Drew. My mom read pretty much any detective fiction that was ever printed. There was also a series of books we read which followed two kids as they solved mysterious across Canada. I want to say they were Eric Wilson’s Tom and Liz Austen series?

However, this was not to last. When I was in Grade 4 I got very sick with appendicitis. While bemoaning my imminent death, I was bed bound for a few weeks at home. A child is apt to get bored during that time and no doubt I complained incessantly about there being nothing to do. My mom eventually returned with the entire Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. These were on video since it was far easier to put them on and let me drift off and on in sleep as I recovered.

I found these films absolutely fascinating. Perhaps it was the drugs but the bewitching idea of being transported through an old wardrobe (did not understand what they were for the longest time) into a magical land was incredibly appealing. I learned quite a lot of useless information from those books. Information that did not translate well into my own world. Primary among them is that Turkish Delight, despite its appearance, is not tasty at all.

Accessed from http://www.wga.hu/framex-e.html?file=html/i/ibbetson/balloon.html

George Biggin’s Ascent in Lunardi Balloon by Julius Caesar Ibbetson (1785).

Regardless, the fantasy world was revealed and I dove in enthusiastically. I was far more prolific in my reading when I was younger and it, no doubt, prompted my desire to write. On the heels of Narnia came the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings as well as my nostalgic Thieves’ World anthology. Even into high school I was chewing through the fantasy genres and I had a couple of friends who suggested their own favourite series for me to read.

It took about five years but I eventually discovered that I don’t particularly like fantasy anymore. It’s primary focus is on escapism and epic battles between ultimate forces. It was all… incredibly samey. Each series was just like the last, sometimes blatantly so. The genre certainly became very rigid in its portrayal and as it grew more and more entrenched, I found myself drifting further and further away.

Now, I hadn’t entirely ignored science fiction. Both genres had been smashed rather inelegantly together in every library and book store I visited. I picked up a few, read a couple more that were recommended. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy certainly had the greatest lasting appeal but even the Left Hand of Darkness is something I look back on with ever growing respect. My first novel is a fantasy and though I feel it deviates from the norm, I’m not entirely convinced it does it to any remarkable manner. When I started my short stories, I was hesitant to start into the science fiction genre. I didn’t feel I was properly equipped to write within it. I haven’t read a lot of the seminal works nor am I particularly familiar with its most prominent tropes.

Accessed from http://www.wga.hu/framex-e.html?file=html/g/gautier/backfema.html

Back of Female by Jacques-Fabien Gautier-Dagoty (1746).

However, I find I am enjoying it more and more as I write. There seems a far greater avenue to write on topics which are relevant to the present without needing tireless research into fields which I am uneducated. There is also a kind of perverse pleasure in thinking about current scientific theory and inquiry and imagining the future implications of them. There’s something very… sharp about science fiction. And my short stories certainly take a greater and greater focus on the present now than they did when I was writing purely for pleasure.

Not that entertainment is a terrible thing. There are just less rules to follow in science fiction and that freedom is both liberating and daunting. You don’t have key great works to point at and say definitively “this is what science fiction is.” Aasimov, Le Guin, Herbert and Gibson are about as varied as the topics they cover. Even now, I’m puzzling out the ramifications of modern American capitalism and the possibilities of what corporatehood would be when taken to its greatest extremes. My last short story looked at the existential question of what constitutes individuality and the relationship between mind and body.

There’s a fleeting sensation of being the Oracle of Delphi when tossing your mind against the future and the direction society could take in its endless march. Most of the time, it’s incoherent and drug induced rambling but every now and then I feel I stumble upon a genuinely though provoking idea. For all our learning and understanding, there’s so much we don’t know and even less than we can predict. I will never have the impact of Gibson or create a world that hits as many realities as his but I don’t need to either. All my speculative worlds essentially examine questions we struggle with now or will struggle with in the future. How will body modification affect as both on an individual and societal level? What will it mean to be human when we are able to replace large portions of our body with plastic and steel? These are certainly not the first time the questions been raised but that we have no right answer means that there is room for novel results.

Future earth worlds are also infinitely easier to create than fantasy worlds as well which is also a large plus.

Wild Ways – by Tanya Huff

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I do like Tanya Huff’s work – at least the portion of modern urban fantasy I have read (only a part of her published works). One of my favourite books is Summon the Keeper, which hosts hell in the basement of a bed and breakfast.

The book cover as found on the itnerwebs.

This post will focus on a different metaphysical charm-worker. Wild Ways is the sequel to the Enchanted Emporium, which introduces the Gale family. And really, after you peel back the layers of magic and fey (which are not offensively used), the banter and the various romantic elements you have a story about family; a slightly twisted and off-kilter family.

Family is at the heart of these stories. Family provides both the antagonists and the protagonists. Sure there are a few non-family elements. In Wild Ways, Aunt Catherine continues to manipulate the Gales into doing her bidding. But there are a few scattered others to act as additional villains: trolls, goblins and ethically-challenged oil corporations.

The focus of the story falls to Charlie, as she tries to find her place in the weave of the family. Being a Wild One means that she is different. Her powers are different and her role in the family is different. It is a difference she has come to embrace, yet on some level she still is struggling to understand her position in the overall whole. Jack, the sorcerer-dragon Gale boy, echoes this struggle as he also is learning what it means to be part of the family and how to cope with that place.

One thing I really appreciate in Huff’s writing is her use of diversity. Her characters have different skin colours, sexuality and power. Her villain is understandable. The motivations of all the antagonists are explained. While their actions might seem a bit over the top, they make sense. I understand why the ethically-challenged corporate president was trying to force an oil well into protected habitat. Do I side with the environmentalists? Well yes. But I completely understand the desperate the woman faced as she tried to do her best by the company.

I like the way the book is set in Canada, without making a big deal about its setting. There is no explanation about how Canadian the Maritimes are. Rather, it is treated as a setting. It adds something to the overall flavour without trying too hard. It is also nice to read about places I have actually travelled to. Since I am not American, I do not have a personal connection to the popular story locations of New York, Washington and wherever else. I have, however, been to Cheticamp and Louisburg in Cape Breton.

I have not, however, followed the Celtic music festival. I suppose that you could also say the book was about the power of music, the potential created when eager and talented individuals musicians come together to enchant the audience (sometimes in the literal sense of the word, other times figuratively).

In short, Wild Ways was a well written, entertaining book. I look forward to reading the next in the series, which I shall hopefully pick up from the library this weekend.

Transform the World

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Windy is a terrible person. He takes unnatural delight in his cult practices, hidden away in dank basements or shadowed groves in order to perform his profane chants and adulations. I can only assume old, musty robes and plenty of candles are involved. I do know that this communion is with the most vile and unholy spirits because it–without fail–interferes with my chances of victory.

The contributors of somewherepostculture (barring one by her own volition for which we shall all shame her) have been obsessed with a little German game called Terra Mystica. I am not certain how to describe it. Kait says it’s ‘ugly.’ I don’t know if that’s really a good, qualitative assessment but when you first open up the box, it does look intimidating. My first encounter with the game was during one of our many forays to a board game cafe. While waiting for significant others to arrive, Derek wanted to give a game a spin that would certainly be less enjoyed by the fairer sex while he had the time.

Accessed from http://www.terra-mystica-spiel.de/en/index.php

Terra Mystica is designed by Helge Ostertag and Jens Drögemüller. It is published by Feuerland Spiele. Check them out at http://www.terra-mystica-spiel.de/en/index.php

Two hours later we were buried beneath a mound of little pieces trying to puzzle out how to get our respective race/factions to trot further along the victory point (VP) border while I madly searched for a way to wage war against my counterpart. There isn’t any, outside of actual physical aggression and this game is certain to inspire a little of that. But in a good way.

The closest analogy I can give for Terra Mystica is the game Settlers of Catan. Every player is trying to create the best infrastructure on a limited map with only so many resources to go around. There aren’t any outside threats and the only random element is during the game’s initial set-up. Not a dice is to be seen, which is a quality that always piques my interest. So there is no robber running around to grab your sheep and there’s no sitting forlorn as turn after turn goes by without any of your damn forests producing wood.

Another large departure from Settlers is the multiple avenues for generating VP. There are two scoring qualities at the end of the game (three with the new expansion Ice and Fire where the third is, once again, randomly chosen at the start). Players are ranked by how large their connected settlements and towns are and how far they’ve advanced in the earlier mentioned cults. The first three players get descending point rewards for their efforts. Connections and infrastructure scores better than taking the lead in the cults but there are four cults which have the potential to score you more if you dominate them.

Even laid out organized, this board scares me.

Potential is the keyword here. For it is quite easy for your opponents to muck up your plans. There is no way to wage bloody combat on your nemesis and thus the game focuses around the scramble to gather the limited pool of resources and hexes upon which you build your fledgling outposts. The last major departure from other games is that Terra Mystica features asymmetrical game play. For every different terrain hex in the game, there are two factions which call that landscape home. The ultimate goal of each faction is to transform the world into their preferred environment, like tourists immediately descending on air conditioners wherever they vacation. Each faction brings different strengths and abilities to the table. There are the dwarves, renown for their tunneling ability and to pop out of the ground to raise mountains out of molehills where once you thought they were cut off. There are the mischievous darklings who delight in nothing more than sending their priests out to convert all those wonderful rivers and plains into delicious, delicious swamps. Or there are the engineers who would rather not fuss around fighting for scraps of land but like to concentrate their efforts on raising magnificent bridges to connect their homes in awe-inspiring design.

The trick (because there always is a trick) is that the terrain transformations cost different numbers of spades depending on how different your detested land is from your home land. If I love swamps, then it only takes one spade to change rivers and hills into them (presumably because they’re already wet?). However, it takes three spades to change wastelands and mountains. Spades, by their nature, are incredibly hard to come by (unless you’re those rascally halflings) and thus factions will naturally steer away from the lands of their complete opposites. The game doesn’t allow factions of the same land in the game, so even in your choice of who to play there exists a strategic element. Do you want to be the neighbourly auren and fight those dwarves for their precious mountains or choose the cultists and politely avoid much conflict over terrain?

There’s a further complication in planning. Every faction has five different kinds of structures they can erect with each providing different bonuses. Dwellings provide homes for more workers. Temples give you favours from the divine and train priests. Strongholds unlock a special ability for your faction to demonstrate your true might or make your inherent ability even better. The dwarves are able to use less workers to create their tunnels when they have the awesome might of their fortress to inspire their drunk asses.

And resources are scarce so you’ll never have enough coins or workers to build what you want. You also need shipping levels if you want to cross those pesky rivers bisecting the map and there’s your ‘dig level’ to upgrade if you don’t want to throw legions of workers at that damn mountain to turn it into more pleasant desert. Each round also rewards building different structures. When a Dwelling Bonus round turns up, you can expect a massive explosion of homes from every faction across the board. But do you hold off building your dwellings for those bonus rounds or do you plunk them down for more return in your investment as well as staking your land from would be thieves. You can’t lost any hex you’ve built on which is the only assurance you have in the game.

It’s a complicated game, that’s for certain. However, that initial overwhelming sensation when you dump the thousand pieces out of the box belies the game’s simplicity. The core mechanics are pretty simple once you get a hold of them (with the sole exception of the niggling rules for your power bowls) and the hardest part of the game is all the different factors coming together for each turn. There’s a lot of cognitive load to balance when you take an action. Do your enemies have enough resources to block your natural expansion? Are they going to take the bonuses that you need in order to get your temples up on their bonus round? Will Windy ever stop taking the damn cult tile?!

The dreaded Darklings (who may or may not be my favourite faction). Mad props to you if you can understand what any of that board means on first read.

Terra Mystica is a fantastic game. For a board game, it’s pretty complex but compared to something like Magic: the Gathering or Netrunner it seems positively straightforward. However, after eight games I still don’t grasp the best nuances of its strategy. And the more players you add, the more you have to wiggle around their petty plans. There’s something to be said where your rise and fall is solely determined by your ingenuity and ability to predict the actions of your opponents. It’s the kind of game play that gets you coming back week after week to face your friends. With so many different factions and even new boards (in the expansion) there’s so much variety that ‘the perfect strategy’ is never clear and always changing.

After all, exploitation of your enemies needn’t be so blatant as a cudgel. You can instead figure out their goals, let them commit their resources to expanding their network, then snatch that last bridge or hex before they’re able to connect it all and leave them with two disjointed and pathetic settlements and no other alternative for getting victory. Assuming, of course, they stop sending their priests to that damn air cult!

Even civil engineers can be uncivil.

NaNo Post Mortum

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Sure, this is a bit delayed but the world required me to complain about teenage fiction!

Anyway, today I want to natter about my NaNo experience. In case anyone doesn’t know what NaNo is yet (and how can you not?) it’s National Novel Writing Month. It’s exactly what it says on the tin. I’ve decided to make two NaNo events official times in my life. November is my standard writing experiment while April is my “Double NaNo” marathon. Thus, April I write the first draft of something I expect to get published as it’s around 90,000 words. That leaves November as my experimental month to try something new.

My first NaNo really set the tone. I wrote it at the start of the superhero craze which is dominating popular media at the moment. I wanted to do my own Watchmen story which focused more on the real world implications and outcomes of people getting super powers. I hadn’t seen Heroes at the time but the comparison would probably work. I don’t know a lot about Heroes but in my story, a group of random individuals develop super powers after experiencing a horrific subway accident which occurs beneath a biomedical research centre. The story follows three high schoolers (because comic book idealism really only works for a teenage audience) and how developing the powers of telekinesis and regeneration wouldn’t solve all their problems.

Accessed from http://www.wga.hu/framex-e.html?file=html/a/andrea/castagno/3_1450s/06julian.html

St. Julian and the Redeemer by Andrea Del Castagno (1453).

It didn’t even turn them into crime fighting celebrities. Course, complications arose when one of their group never gained superpowers and his jealousy sort of developed into an increasing issue for the others. The kids tried to hide from these doubling real world problems by falling more and more into the personas, culminating in a confrontation with one of the survivors who was abusing her powers in a pseudo-villainous manner. That fight, however, made the primary character realize that comic book idealism just isn’t realistic and he ultimately turned himself and his friend over to the biomedical company who was gathering survivors and whisking them away to distant, isolated research labs to examine what exactly went wrong as well to contain a small group of people with abilities well beyond the average individual.

My second NaNo came about after a lengthy discussion with my sister while hiking. She is a huge fantasy buff and she made me realize that, while I do write in the Science Fiction and Fantasy genre, I don’t generally hold to the standard format or setting. The closest work I’ve done are the D&D stories which I’ve posted on this blog before. But those were always just short little throw-away stories I wrote between projects. Essentially, the writing equivalent of doodles.

So, NaNo took became a traditional fantasy. Once again “realism” was brought to the forefront as I examined genre tropes and tried to apply them to a setting that focused more on hyper-realism. So, no, there were no wizards, fireballs and pointy eared elves. It was a wandering monk and outcast knight trying to navigate medieval society as they searched for evidence of the mythical and otherworldly at the behest of a bored aristocratic lord. Ultimately, the pair rubbed brashly against the established norms of the numerous Dark Ages communes which they stumbled across. Some where enlightening while others did not appreciate how neither fit their rigid definition of proper social order. This story necessitated a lot of research into medieval society itself which was highly illuminating for me.

But don’t ask my to tell you anything I learned.

This brings me to this year’s NaNo. Once again I set off to write something outside my comfort zone. This time, I was going to tackle the horror genre. I’m not a big fan of it though I do like King and Lovecraft. As with the others, I wanted to take a standard genre set-up and try and navigate it with my own voice. This story was slightly different than the other two: I had tried to write it before. I did the “Novel in a Weekend” challenge and a version of this story was the product of those efforts. Of course, due to its time frame, it was only 25,000 words and well away from anything I had hoped to construct. A full year of rumination had focused more of the narrative I wanted to tell and the story became about a young man working part of a family run ‘medium and exorcism’ business arriving at a supposedly haunted house under renovations. The story examined the relationship between the boy, his mother and the owners with very few of them actually believing in ghosts.

Course, that changed by the end of the story. I feel I learned a lot but more than anything I still feel confident in my prior assessment: horror is dead.

Accessed from http://www.wga.hu/framex-e.html?file=html/a/altichie/1/3george2.html

St. George Slays the Dragon by Altichiero da Zevio (1378-84)

Granted, I am not the best person to make this proclamation. My story was, in my mind, an abject failure. Granted, all my NaNo’s are bad so in that sense, the ghost story is hardly outstanding on that front. However, I still struggled with the essence of the genre itself. As I mentioned in my analysis of Elder Signs, the hardest hurdle for the horror genre to cross is rationality. Basically, in order for my story to work, I had to systematically strip the grounded foundation in which the story was set. For the most part, my characters were too smart for the genre they inhabited. I had to subvert their cozy view of the world but the rationality for that subversion wasn’t any greater than ‘just because.’

In preparation for my novel, I read a number of blogs and articles by horror authors. I have to agree with their assessment that horror is good people making bad decisions. More than that, horror needs to press forth a world view which I inherently disagree. The way horror works is by feeding on ignorance. The primary struggle is of the protagonist standing in the dark while all manner of who-knows-what prowls around them. The hero tries to navigate the darkness with their flashlight, but that light is always on the brink of burning out. They can never truly shine the light on the noises which haunt them or else you banish the horrors which plague them.

The Horror genre ultimately plays on one of the basic, most primal emotions: fear. It and lust are the two fundamentals for an organisms survival and it does not surprise me that they can be found in equal measure in the genre. It is a body of work explicitly devoted to “the feels” and instilling in the reader those primal sensations, attempting to override the fight mechanism and send them into outright flight.

Unfortunately, I feel that we’re progressing beyond that. The human condition is far more than these primordial directives. Our lives consist more than living long enough to continue the next generation. The very act of reading a book demonstrates that. So successful have we been in an evolutionary capacity that we’re capable of more than those two extreme expressions. Hell, we’re capable of holding the flashlight in the first place. Thus, horror is trying to drag the advancement of human development back to those early roots where ignorance and bewilderment dominated decision-making. The author has to cheat in order to tear away the systematic conquering of our environment in order to reach there. It’s why supernatural opponents continue to abound in horror writing despite them never making logical sense within their own world.

For example, if ghosts were both a common phenomenon and as dangerous as they are required to be in order to induce the fear of a horror story, then people wouldn’t be surprised or shocked when they came across them. And, because of our capabilities of passing on survival instincts and information to others, we would readily pass on how to properly avoid if not outright deal with ghosts so they aren’t an issue. As the author, to knock that flashlight out, I have to heavily cheat my character in order to do so.

And this is where horror falls apart for me. It’s that the creator must rely on his “supernatural prowess” (read: the fact that the author is god and is creating a world) in order to get the story to work. So much of Lovecraft’s stories get silly with how predominant cults and dark magic is but yet every new protagonist that stumbles over it is shocked that such things were capable of existing.

Personally, I feel that within humanity at large there’s enough inherent curiosity that no new threat can remain an enigma long enough to function as a continual source of dread. There are enough people that will return to the dark with bigger and better flashlights until the entire darkness is shone away.

Now, Derek loves horror and he enjoys the breakdown of the neat and orderly world which people like me are so inclined to erect. I can understand and respect that even if I can’t share in it. Unfortunately, if I don’t find the topic sincere I don’t think I’m capable of properly doing it justice.

This isn’t to say that all horror fails for me. I think there is still enough unknown for us to be worried or concerned. Lovecraft, at his best, was in driving his characters mad. I also enjoy Sci-Fi horror and coming across alien horrors. There’s a lot out in that starry void that will be bizarre enough that I can see dread returning to our comfortable world. But for Earth and the world we live in now, we’ve driven the darkness so far back that there’s very few corners left for it to linger. We’re no longer cavemen walking out from our shelter to look on the terrifying world of wonders around us. We’ve documented, studied, built and tamed so much of it now.

Accessed from http://www.wga.hu/framex-e.html?file=html/b/baldung/1/061death.html

Death and the Maiden by Hans Baldung Grien (1518-20)

And with that understanding, horror loses its grip. I don’t know, maybe there will be a way to get it to work but for now I’ll go back to my other speculative fiction. There is, of course, one deep well which I think can always be plumbed for good horror inspiration. While the world itself may become less mysterious, there is almost no end to the actions we will commit against ourselves. No matter how philosophically or ethically we advance, we will never stop being animals. It is so easy to dismiss papers and documents and fall back to those primal instincts, letting disorderly cruelty rule than refined rationality.

That, truly, is a terrifying thought for me.

The Hungriest Games

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A winner is me! It’s the post novel writing month and I’m still riding on those loose vapours of having conquered the task. Course, for a novel titled Mary Creek’s Blood there’s a conspicuous lack of the sanguine but what can you do?

This joyous time means, of course, we return to our regular posting schedule. And since it is the season to be festive and celebratory, I’m going to begin it with a delightful review! Oh, how wonderful is holiday criticism.

Let’s move on to the typical prefacing. I want to first establish that just because one finds fault or flaws in a work does not make it bad or worthless. Look back across our long history of culture and you’ll find flaws in just about any great work. The Statue of David, after all, has enormous hands and a head. Apollo Belvedere has the exact opposite issues. Nothing crafted by human hands has ever been perfect and even my favourite art has nits which can use some picking. Criticism does not equate to quality or a lack there of. Beneath its surface, criticism is simply an engagement with a piece and the extended conversation between crafter and audience that has always been intricate since the moment some old man gathered his cave-children around a fire to tell them of the first buffalo to roam the plains.

Accessed from http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130420112448/thehungergames/images/e/eb/Effie-Reaping-Bowl-The-Hunger-Games.jpg

And my verdict is!

Now with that said, The Hunger Games is a bad movie.

Alright, this isn’t the most topical of discussions but if anyone thought I was going to be rushing out to the theatre to see the opening feature of the Hunger Games Trilogy then, well, they don’t know me at all. I had full intentions of not seeing/reading/experiencing this teen drama since I had already read Battle Royale by Koushun Takami. And if you’re over the age of eighteen, I think it’s pretty safe to say that you’d consider the Japanese version not only the predecessor but the superior telling of the story.

All that said, I didn’t even like Battle Royale. I felt it suffered the Lord of the Flies syndrome but this isn’t a Battle Royale review so that is neither here nor there. Obviously, I’m going to only examine the film and the unfairly compare it to the much more developed medium of Battle Royale‘s book form. Will anyone be surprised when the film ultimately come across as more shallow? I hope not!

First, the customary preamble:

The Hunger Games follows spunky, go get ’em Jennifer Lawrence as the eponymous Catnis (Catniss? Katnis? Katniss?) of District 12. The movie makes immediately clear the crushing poverty which Catnip lives with her younger sister and ambiguously employed mother in old timey Midwestern Quaker America. She leads an exciting life of hunting boar from the King’s forest and eating the local cake shop owner’s burnt and soggy bread while courting a budding romance with young Throbheart McHandsome. This delightfully dirty pastoral life could not last and her whole world comes crashing down in traditional fashion with the arrival of a spaceship delivering the Queen of the Oompa Loompas.

Here, the quaintly townsfolk are gathered up to perform Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, replete with coal miners, surprising in the frankness of its name: The Reaping. Course, the twist here is that instead of males over sixteen being candidates, we’ve decided to only make children between the ages of twelve and eighteen eligible. This is for reasons obviously beyond trying to appease the target market demographic, I am certain. There is, of course, some propaganda video with some bullshit reason explaining the historical context for this system which is apparently in place for seventy-five years, but so unbelievable is that explanation that I’ve already forgotten it.

Of course, Catnip’s sister gets selected as one of the “Tributes” to the Capitol (because subtlety is a lost art in the future) and Catnip boldly steps forward to volunteer in her place.

This was when I did a “bwuh?” moment. Anyway, everyone gasps, Catnip walks forward, Strawberry Shortcake draws the male representative and our two heroes board a hover train to be whisked away from their shitty lives of digging in mud to reach the very short terminus of their lives. This is where the story really deviates from Battle Royale, however. And it’s not just because they meet Woody Harrelson aboard the train.

As the audience quickly discovers, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was apparently the only classic work to survive whatever terrible war tore America apart in this speculative future and everyone is dressed as garishly as possible while they stroll through a city plucked from the doodlings of Steve Jobs. Here, Catnip learns that the games are essentially a gussied up Miss America competition but instead of a swimsuit competition to round off the finales, contestants are instead expected to either starve off their competition (that shouldn’t be hard in a Miss America contest) or bludgeon them to death with whatever item is nearby.

And to think people draw parallels between modern America and the Roman Empire.

The workings of the games, it seems, are based around impressing the crowd in the Capitol and acquiring sponsors to send you little robotic crates like kill streak goodie crates in Call of Duty. We’re then treated to an extended portion where Lenny Kravits tries his best Chris Tucker from the Fifth Element impression while dressing Catnip in the most garish costumes that a fevered teen author can imagine. Catnip scopes out the competition during their four days of officiated training and interviews are held with each contestant before a crowd all to eager to gasp and laugh as though the tele-prompters were all equipped with semi-automatics.

We’re well past the hour before the actual games begin and here we see the second largest departure from Battle Royale. Around half the contestants are killed in the first four minutes of the games and Catnip spends most of the time climbing trees and hanging out with bees than partaking in any actual “game.” Of course, she gets help from some spunky little girl meant to warm the cuckolds of our hearts before she has the grace to be killed by someone else other than Catnip (seriously, what was your plan in befriending the little girl?) which justifies the only real kill Catnip performs in the entire game. She then spends most of her time caring for Peter, the male representative of her Mudville commune while hiding in caves and waiting for the game makers to get bored and release mutant dogs to conveniently eat anyone who happens to be left.

Accessed from http://images5.fanpop.com/image/photos/26900000/The-Hunger-Games-wallpapers-the-hunger-games-26975706-1280-800.jpg

(The Hunger Games is property of Lionsgate and Suzanne Collins and whoever else)

There’s a customary “battle” of sorts with the one contestant who was dressed as a roman soldier during the opening ceremonies and is blonde haired and blue-eyed so we can only assume he’s meant to be a Nazi stand-in. But even this villain is pretty unconvincing as he taunts Catnip while holding Peter at knife point with such blood-chilling lines like “Kill me. Or don’t. It doesn’t matter.”

He falls off their post-postmodernist pez dispenser and is eaten by dogs before Catnip may or may not have delivered a mercy shot from her iconic bow before the “star-crossed lovers” who may, or may not, be actually in love or just hamming it up before the camera in order to gain more sponsorship, realize that some pointless ploy by the game makers to allow two winners for the games is really a ruse (elegantly revealed by the game makers themselves making a broadband announcement because they feel having 12-18 year olds enact a bloodsport isn’t evil enough). Catnip threatens to do a joint suicide with Peter which forces them to deliver truly on their earlier promise to let the pair live and crown them victors.

Cue the celebration montage and Catnip and her on-again, off-again heartthrob returning home amidst smiling faces and fluttering confetti as though the fact that she killed two children is something worthy of celebration.

Hit the credits, prep secondary camera crews and get filming started on the sequel because we can rake in tons of cash from the teeny-boppers with this nonsense.

Seriously, there’s so much to discuss why The Hunger Games is the poor Midwestern coal miner’s version of Battle Royale. But for me, the lasting issue is I have no idea why this thing exists as a piece of art. It’s purpose is lost on me.

There appears to be three key elements that are more jarringly thrown together than the Halloween costumes of the Capitol citizens and their pristine, clean white buildings. We have the opening set-up of a post-war dystopian America organized into a tyrannical and yet oddly absent totalitarian government. As though tutu Nazis weren’t intimidating to begin with, the fences erected around District 12 are unmanned and Catnip slips between them rather effortlessly to hunt amongst the plentiful forests with just a half-hearted scolding from Chiseled Dreamman that this is dangerous/bad/mildly unacceptable. There is a sense that the government is suppose to be all domineering, complete with cheap Star Wars Stormtrooper knockoffs that show up to perform the Reaping on the children (which sounds worse than it actually is). Furthermore, the fact that you can volunteer for the games gives a somewhat mild alternative to the cold-hearted ripping of twelve year old children to throw mercilessly into a gladiatorial arena.

I mean, they make mention that one district trains up their children for the games and has them volunteer every year. Why every district doesn’t do this is beyond me. You would think that a responsible community with apparently no motivation to organize an uprising (since they’re not actually oppressed-see the complacent absence of the froo froo Capitol “army” earlier) would at the very least teach some people what skills they can to give their children a fighting chance in the games. I suppose this sort of kindheartedness was lost on the future Quakers because they were too busy making sure their mud was still properly muddy.

Contrast this with Battle Royale. Here, the government chooses a single graduating class amongst all the high schools in the country seemingly at random. Everyone knows this will happen but prays that the odds are in the favour (and generally speaking they are given that only one class is taken and there are a lot of schools in Japan). Here, the government literally kidnaps the students, going so far as to execute teachers who try to interfere with the process. They are then whisked away to some random location in the country which changes every year. The people of said area are forcibly evacuated for the duration of the games without so much a “Sorry Ma’am.” There is a heavy implication that the whole point of the games in Battle Royale is to instill fear and obedience in the populace. The twist, however, is that the government is simply corrupt (shocking!) and they only maintain this barbaric murder spree because it’s become somewhat of a bureaucratic gambling event.

My first instinct given the opening act of The Hunger Games was that we would get this very same “totalitarian governments are evil” shtick. However, when Catnip and Peter are whisked away to the city, there is no sense that we’re really suppose to feel these games are horrific. The contestants are treated like celebrities and past winners languish in comfort and luxury. Furthermore, everyone seems excited and the games is treated more like American Idol than anything else.

Thus, I began to wonder if this was ultimately a criticism of American media and its exploitation of the people it sucks in. An immediate comparison would be the Toddlers and Tiaras show and the whole controversy surrounding child pageants.

But, no, the movie never really explains that the system is bad. In fact, it celebrates the ingenuity of Catnip for manipulating it in her favour. Sure, District 11 gets angry and tries to riot when their little girl gets speared but outside of that, everyone seems pretty damn happy with the conclusion of the 74th Hunger Games. There isn’t any sense that the audience themselves are part of the problem. Outside of the stupid costumes of the Capitol citizens, they’re mostly portrayed as blank individuals there to cheer blindly on for our protagonist as we, the viewer, cheers her on simply because she is the heroine and that is what you do.

Finally, we have the games themselves. Battle Royale is almost entirely composed of its combat. It goes into great detail about each student, often right before they are horribly killed in ever escalating orgasmic feats of violence and murder. The Hunger Games, on the other hand, is incredibly shy about its actual games. It’s like the author didn’t actually want to write about the bloodsport with almost all the people either dying away from Catnip and off screen or to rather mild methods (single shots from thrown spears, arrows or hilarious and not-graphic ‘neck snaps’). There isn’t any real exploration of how this absurdly barbaric event would really impact the people involved either. The “villainous” contestants essentially form a jock squad of bullies going around pantsing the nerds and giving them swirlies. Catnip befriends the outcasts and everyone seems quite content to ignore the fact that they are all stuck there until everybody but one is killed! Seriously. You would think the district which supposedly trains its children the hardest for these games would have drilled into them “Trust no one!” There is no benefit in grouping up with people and then blithely falling asleep at their side. Had Peter been so inclined, he could have slit the throats of about five of the contestants, bringing the movie to its conclusion a good half hour early.

So, I have no idea why this book exists. It’s like three half baked ideas which no one really wanted to explore. The horrors of dystopian totalitarian military states? Nope, that’s never touched. The exploitative and inhuman way media treats and views both its stars and audience? Nope, the media is wonderful and really we just celebrate those that succeed within it! The senseless and gross loss of value in the death of an individual especially for something as banal and pointless as a sport? Nope, we view the survivors as heroes and the losers are very quickly forgotten for adoration and accolades. There is no reason for Catnip, after surviving the games, to blithely answer the master of ceremonies about how she found love and everything is wonderful. She should have condemned Flickman, the audience and even the government for how disposable they were. Why are people all applause and grins when Rue died and no one cares? Catnip went so far as to build a rather extravagant pyre for the girl and then never thinks of her again.

There is no reason to create this cold-hearted set-up if you’re not even going to use it. There’s a whole lot of nothing going on in this movie. There’s no commentary on the value or disposability of life. It’s a watered down, friendly version of Battle Royale which by its nature is neither of those. The Hunger Games is, ultimately, forgettable. At its best, it’s mild entertainment meant to distract and appease for its brief flutter across the eyes of its readers. But there’s no punch to it. There’s no depth. It’s only so much fluffy pink dress and horrible CGI flames that’s all too quickly forgotten after the next spectacle comes rolling through.

www.Wake – Book Review

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Yes this is November. Yes that means that I have been busy juggling work, job applications and the yearly Nanowrimo challenge. Does this mean I haven’t read anything? Well, not quite. I have read, though considerably less than at other points in the year. What I have been reading has been largely ridiculous and thus not worth the bother of writing a review (or too embarrassing to admit that I read that trash).

The book I am reviewing today is www.Wake by Robert J Sawyer. It came highly recommended by a person at work. The individual was so enthusiastic that they mentioned this book on some half dozen occasions over the past year. Even though they know I am more of a fantasy and less of a sci-fi reader.

Book cover, image from the intelligent internet. Careful – it is watching you.

Well, partly out of boredom and partly out of stress I borrowed www.Wake from the library. I was told it was a story about a blind girl who had an implant that let her interface with the internet where she discovered intelligence (AI). It was a stupid sounding plot. It was also strangely misleading.

So what was the story about? Well it is about a corner of the internet gaining consciousness. It is also about an orangutan-bonobo hybrid demonstrating the ability to learn language and starting to paint in perspective. And yes there is also a blind girl, who undergoes a procedure designed to correct her vision problem. There is also a conspiracy/cover-up in China just to add more tension. In short there is a lot going on. While most of the secondary strands are simplistic they all contribute to the ideas of flow of information, self-awareness and identity.

The book is first and foremost well-written. The plot progresses at a reasonable pace. A lot work is done to build realistic and complex characters. Even more time is spent trying to develop different perspectives. I really liked the geeky math-based humour that actually had me laughing as I read.

A number of interesting and potentially controversial ideas are raised. I am of two minds about this. On the one hand it might get people thinking, which is always a good thing. On the other hand, real science doesn’t support these ideas. The idea that humans did not gain true consciousness until some 1000 BC is ludicrous. The arguments put forth for this idea (researched while I was reading the story) are easily countered by the simple fact that other civilizations existed around the world with written language. The book has an ape capable of meaningful communication – which real life has failed to produce. The concerns about the ape being a hybrid is really questionable. Most interspecies hybrids are sterile – which is why we have different species. While these points might be fun to think about or even talk about, they don’t hold up to modern science.

My other complaint comes from the authors efforts to make the story Canadian. There is nothing wrong with writing about Canadians. However, this one felt like he was trying too hard. Each Canadian-ism felt like it was being shoved in my face. The writing was smoother when Sawyer forgot he needed to reinforce the idea the story took place in Ontario and instead focused on the characters and their personal struggles.

Also, the birth of AI in the internet is silly. I may know next to nothing about programing, but this was clearly science-magic. AI is fine for a story. While I don’t personally find it compelling, others I understand like reading about it.

Summary: it is a well-written book. I enjoyed it despite all my complaints. That said, I have zero interest in the sequels that round out the trilogy so don’t expect more on this topic. Now back to my own sad scribbles.

Novelber… Nanovember…

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I can’t really come up with a witty title here.

You may notice things awfully quiet on the somewherepostculture front. It is November and for many, that means growing a moustache in support of prostate cancer. Most of us here already have one, however, and sadly it’s not for charitable reasons but because we’re dirty, unwashed swines. Except swines can’t grow beards. Hm…

Accessed from http://cavalierhousebooks.com/nanowrimo

NaNoWriMo advisory. You can follow, join and support NaNoWriMo by visiting their site: http://nanowrimo.org/dashboard

Anyway, November for us means lots and lots of writing as it’s National Novel Writing Month (also affectionately called NaNoWriMo). All of us are busy pounding away at keyboards to get words into documents that, unfortunately, don’t really get posted up here for your amusement. I would have liked to have some articles saved up to post in lieu of actually focusing on the site but, alas, I was ill-prepared for this annual event.

However, Kait and Derek were equally ill-prepared so at least the blame is diffused amongst the three of us.

And yes, this is a long winded way of saying there’s probably not going to be any updates for the next two weeks until we get some loads off our plates. For that, I apologize on behalf of all the somewherepostculture website.

See you in cold, blistery, wintery, snowy December!

The Alliance of the Century Part 2

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So, I may have gone overboard with my prior post and ended up writing way too much about something that I haven’t even gotten my grubby hands on. So, instead of editing it down like a reasonable person, I split it into two parts. I’ll repeat my warning in the last post, just in case people forgot it. This is all purely speculation based on the cards revealed during the sneak preview on Plaid Hat Games website. I have no great insight into the game beyond what I’ve learned through playing with my kin. That said, my judgments are still good, damn it!

Summoner Wars and its art belongs to Plaid Hat Games and Cupidsart. Find Alliances at their website http://www.plaidhatgames.om

Summoner Wars and its art belongs to Plaid Hat Games and Cupidsart. Find Alliances at their website http://www.plaidhatgames.com

5. Fallen Phoenixes

I don’t care for the undead. I don’t really care for haughty elves either but at least they have the decency to look pretty. Unless they’re the Phoenix Elves. Then they have nothing going for them.

The Fallen Phoenix faction is… interesting. The Phoenixes trick was that they alleviated the inherent randomness of Summoner Wars by making many of their units hit for their strength in damage without needing to roll. The Fallen Phoenix take this idea and balance it. Now they have “precision” only when Immortal Elien spends magic to increase their die roll. So, you can still be screwed by bad rolling but if you’re David Windrim and rolling in the money, you can just throw enough magic at it to make the problem go away.

The Fallen Phoenix are the only faction to get really picky about what their abilities target. Good, old Karthus here only grabs Fallen Kingdom units from the enemy’s discard pile. Thankfully, alliance units count as both factions so out of the box there aren’t any worries. It’s an interesting idea though the execution is kind of a mixed bag.

The biggest downside to the faction, however, is that they are costly. Not only do you want a large pool of magic of Immortal Elien’s “cheating” but all three of his common units cost 2 magic. He wants lots of magic to kill things and he needs to kill things in order to have lots of magic. There’s a slight way for the Fallen Phoenixes to skirt around this. A few of their events have adopted the Fallen Kingdom’s raising of the dead though the triggers for these abilities are often rather specific and finicky. Karthus can pull your units but only from your enemy’s discard pile and if you pay for them. From the Ashes can pull them from your own discard but only if they’ve been killed by your units (and only those associated with the fire elves).

They’re strong but pricey and require just the right set-ups in order to excel. On the plus side, they have better all around options and Forced Conversions and Purge can really open up an opponent’s defence to let you break through and strike with those unerring Phoenix attacks.

6. Vargath Vanguard

Revenge of the ugly goats.

I like the idea behind the Vargath Vanguard but I can’t help but feel they’re a faction designed to make their parent factions better than to actually offer a good deck on its own. Moyra is a poor man’s Sunderverd. Seriously. Her special ability lets her grant 1 strength and 1 extra movement to a single common each turn within two spaces of her. Sunderverd gives all your commons 1 strength when close to him. The question here is whether 1 extra move is worth 2 overall strength.

Nay, I say. The Vargath Vanguard are all about positioning with all of their units getting stronger the closer you bunch up all your guys. But this sacrifices board control in order to make your units more powerful. Unfortunately, Moyra doesn’t really offer her units that much in terms of events or even her presence. Throw all her troops into Sunderverd and you’d have a much stronger deck. He allows repositioning with Muster and Fall Back. Greater Command lets him extend his influence to four spaces. Sure Superior Planning and Toradin’s Advance are dud events and while Moyra’s are stronger I just don’t think they’re strong enough to lose what Sunderverd offers.

And that is three cherubim attacking for 3 strength each turn. The largest failing for the goats was that in order to succeed they had to march themselves and their summoner across the board into enemy territory. Unfortunately, walls make it effortless to raise an overpowering defence that will chase them away. Now, Sunderverd can create a Roman Phalanx of impenetrable troops which loose endless volleys upon their enemies. Two cherubim sandwiching a defender gives both of them the Shield of Light power. Stick a crusader behind one and they’re under constant Blinding Light. Yes, both of these can be mimicked or played by Moyra but these effects don’t stack and are easily replicated by commons alone.

Moyra. I want to love you because you don’t wear boobplate. Unfortunately, it’s just not working. I’m sorry. It’s not you, it’s me. (It’s totally you, you useless woman!)

That is kind of Moyra’s problem. Her strength is solely in her exportable cards. Her event suite isn’t terrible. It’s just unfocused. Lightning Strike is great but you only have one. Change Form is wonderful but incredibly time limited (to a single turn and thus very susceptible to Mimic as you must hold on to the event until the proper turn). Divine Intervention is not something you want to play if you’re planning on running Moyra in with Change Form and there situations where you want to trade summoner health for common health is pretty limited. Even more disastrous, her only healing option is Father Benny which, thankfully for Sunderverd, can also be carried out from her deck.

The Vanguard Vargath are interesting but ultimately underwhelming in all but the cards which will be poached by the Vanguard and Mountain Vargath.

7. Deep Benders

If Moyra was suffering from burglarizing then it’s an absolute epidemic of Endrich. The Deep Benders seem to have the opposite problem. They weren’t designed to make the Deep Dwarves or Benders better but to not be obsoleted by their powerful constituents. The Deep Benders offer an interesting mechanic with Boost but, unfortunately, the execution leaves something to be desired.

The general idea is that Deep Bender commons is kind of the inverse of Filth mutations. You can summon them on the cheap in order to get a mediocre unit or you can pump them up to make them really strong. Of course, you’re investing magic either way but you’re deciding at the point of summoning whether they are cheap or powerful.

Unfortunately for Endrich, he is entirely replaceable. His unique ability is a worse version of Sorgwen. Yes, you can combine the two to get a bonus two extra attacks after the attack phase. Unfortunately, Endrich has to be close to his target, they have to be boosted (thus restricting him to just the three commons in his deck) and you have to pay for it! Course, Endrich starts on the board but that’s less of a problem when you are Tacullu and can just search for Sorgwen with an Hero is Born event. Not to mention that Endrich can’t use his ability until he starts getting boosted units so he can’t double attack out the gate either (which would require building a magic pool as well anyway).

Nearly everything about the Deep Benders feels “balanced for Deep Dwarves and Benders.” The Owl Gryphon has lots of exacting requirements so he doesn’t combine with Tundle’s meditate. Which is irrelevant since Tacullu is going to be the one to grab the Gryphon in order to make him one of the top decks. The actual interacting with boost tokens is mostly in the commons themselves, which is Moyra’s issue. Endrich has a couple of interesting economy cards to try and play with the boost mechanic but it ends up being irrelevant because Tundle can meditate for his economy and Tacullu can grab the Owl Gryphon for his (on top of both generally playing incredibly defensive). Endrich, on the other hand, loses if he attempts to play defensive even with the Owl Gryphon being overpriced and useless on his arm.

Ugh, the Deep Benders are so infuriatingly bad, I’m just going to stick a Swamp Merc event card here instead. Look, it’s a worse version of Magic Pulse!

Basically, the stars need to align in order for the Deep Benders to win. They need to establish an economy advantage with opportune plays of Unlock and Reclaim then push that advantage with a fast assault from their Deep Dragons, Geopaths and Keodel. Course, this opens them up to the age old problems of turtling play. Magic Drain will cripple him and Endrich relies on his units for board control and economic tempo. Any event that outright murders his boosted commons will swipe what economic advantage he can wrangle with his boost tokens. And, ironically, Tacullu can just mind control his units if they try to assault him for a truly crippling economic swing that Endrich can’t respond.

Oddly enough, the overbalancing of the Deep Benders was directed at the summoner and his events when it should have been focused more on his units. It’s incredibly odd how poorly designed the Deep Benders appear especially since the route to take was done on the Cave Filth and Sand Cloaks above. Make them based around their Boost mechanic and the commons will be less valuable for the parent factions. Give Endrich lots of advantages for using boosted units to discourage him from poaching the super strong commons from the Deep Dwarves and Benders. Then you would have differentiated summoners without potentially unbalancing the game.

Instead, we have a summoner that looks underwhelming but brings lots of incredibly powerful tools to the factions that already held most of the good tools in the first place.

8. Jungle Shadow

Well, someone had to be on the bottom.

If Endrich and Moyra’s issues were lackluster abilities and events, Melundak’s is exactly what I rambled about in their entries. The Jungle Shadow have, by my estimation, the worst suite of units in the Alliance box. Granted, they don’t have the worst card, that still belongs to the Tundra Guild scribes, but their shadows, stalkers and shamans are certainly vying for that position.

The biggest issue with Melundak’s army is that they’re money pits. All three commons require extra expenditure of magic. To haste, spend 1 magic. Want to make your stalkers 2 strength? Spend 1 magic. Trying to maintain board presence with your shadow? Yup, spend another magic. And yet, Melundak has absolutely nothing to help generate magic for all these effects. Even worse, he has one of the best summoner abilities and nothing to use it on. Shadow Weave lets you treat any unit as a wall for a common once a turn. Hogar has to enchant his stupid golems to get that. Rallul needs to use an event. Glurblurgderp needs to cultivate his horticulture. Melundak, on the other hand, just wills someone to pop out of a furry.

harbinger___sw_alliances_by_cupidsart-d7vy47b

If there’s one thing I really like about Alliances, it’s that the art is has noticeably improved almost across the boards. Unfortunately, if there is one point of criticism it’s that Cupidsart isn’t very good at drawing goatmen and other furries. Though, I have to wonder if that is truly a criticism…

But two thirds of his army are ranged with 1 health so want to come from his back walls anyway. It would be really good if he could extend his power to champions but all three of his champions come with extra mobility anyway so it’s irrelevant. Furthermore, Melundak’s events give bonuses to sneak attacks and greater movement which is wasted on his army composition. His deck is geared all around getting all up in his enemy’s face but its used on a force that wants to anything but that.

Melundak is the one summoner who just screams to be deck built. Almost any Jungle Elf unit in his deck is terrifying. The Shadow Elf champions are clawing to emerge from Melundak’s walls to rampage across the board. There’s an absolutely monstrous unit pool waiting just beyond Melundak’s grip and he was offered the possibly worst dregs of an alliance between his two factions. He’s the unwanted third child with nothing but raggedy hand-me downs while he gapes enviously at the sparkling toys in his siblings’ grasps.

And his units wouldn’t be too bad if they were lent to the Jungle or Shadow elves either (seriously, stalkers with Abua Shi are like lioneers that can be chant hasted). Together, they’re a horrible combination but I can see them being useful in separated pieces amongst the rest.

Barring shadows, of course. I still don’t see how they’re anything but a gimmick.

The Alliance of the Century Part 1

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Summoner Wars and its art here and below belongs to Plaid Hat Games and Cupidsart. Find Alliances at their website http://www.plaidhatgames.om

I’ve written a few words on the board game Summoner Wars before. It’s a fun little 2-player game that Derek will never discuss because it lacks the deep strategic element found in Netrunner or Tanto Cuore. However, my sister enjoys the game, the rules are pretty simple and the gameplay itself is straightforward enough that you don’t need a lot of investment into it to have some fun.

So as Kait gets more and more involved with the game, I’m hoping it serves as a gateway drug so that one day she may actually want to play Diplomacy or the Republic of Rome.

Hey, a man can dream.

Anyway, there is a big release coming up for Summoner Wars. For those not in the know, Summoner Wars is a cross between a board game and a collectible card game. Each player chooses a summoner which comes with a preset deck of cards that is customizable–to a point–which they then play upon a 8×8 (I think, I’m too lazy to check the box) grid that adds an element of positioning to an otherwise simplified game of Magic: the Gathering. We got into the game with the Master Box release that had six different factions to choose. Since then, we’ve grabbed three separate faction decks to add a little more variety bringing our total options up to nine.

Summoner Wars: Alliances will add eight new summoners. That nearly doubles our current holdings. Even more exciting, for me, is that each summoner represents a union between two factions. An “alliance” if you will. A couple of these new pairings has resulted in unique game elements and mechanics but all of them follow the same deck building rules: an alliance summoner is free to add any cards from its composite factions to its deck. Essentially, the Alliances box will give us the tools to customize all the factions we’ve bought so far. If I were to get this product (wink, wink) then I would be nearly doubling the content which I currently own and expand the possibilities for decks even further.

So, yeah, I’m a little excited. In the lead up to the launch of the box, the developers at Plaid Hat Games have been giving weekly teasers for all the cards which will be released. Furthermore, if you pre-order from their website, you get all four of the promotional champions only available through purchases on their website. The lead designer will also sign… something, but that’s nowhere near as important as four mercenaries and a second play mat so we can hold 2v2 battles.

Hint, hint.

I’m telling you, Kait, that I want this for Christmas. Pre-order would be better with all the goodies it includes.

At any rate, in my excitement, I’ve been analyzing the revealed factions and comparing them amongst those already released. While the deck building possibilities amongst all the cards released thus far makes a true measure of each summoner’s strength quite difficult (especially for those which I haven’t yet played) I’m going to judge the factions and briefly discuss my thoughts towards game design, balance and functionality. This is a long winded intro do say that I’m doing a pre-review of the Summoner Wars: Alliances product before it even releases.

Yes, there’s very little going on in my life at the moment.

To start off, the eight combined factions being released are:

The Fallen Phoenixes: The “controversial” Prince Elien of the Phoenix Elves has partnered up with the ever decaying Ret-Talus of the horribly ineffective Fallen Kingdoms. Since I’ll never buy a starter box (they only contain two factions but come with more boards, dice and tokens that I don’t need anymore) I’ll never have to worry about those awkward Elien vs Elien battles as though we were recreating the epic battle between Luke Skywalker and the Swamp in The Empire Strikes Back.
The Tundra Guild: The Tundra Orcs and Guild Dwarves are considered two of the best and most frustrating factions to fight… if you’re stuck on the game’s iOS version. Personally, I think they’re overrated but, once again, their first summoners feature in a product which I’ll never purchase. A curious decision to combine the two which has led to the revealed Rune Events which adds an interesting twist to improving units seen in both faction’s second summoner sets.
The Cave Filth: Ermergerd erts teh ferth!
The Vargath Vanguard: Missed labeling opportunity. They should have been the Mountain Vanguard. Mountain Vargath and the Vanguard regularly come up on the short end of the stick when people discuss tier lists so the question lies whether their alliance will actually improve their original summoners.
The Sand Cloaks: I love Cloaks. I love Sand Goblins. I’m going to love Sand Cloaks. Kait is going to hate them.
The Jungle Shadow: In our impromptu tournament with the factions we owned (Master Box plus Cloaks and Filth) the Shadow Elves managed to get into the top four. We just recently grabbed the Jungle Elves. They make sense as a combined faction as both play fast and aggressive but how will their alliance play on these themes of mobility and assassination?
The Deep Benders: Now here is an actually controversial pairing. The Deep Dwarves and Benders are two of the most powerful factions despite not being expanded with a second summoner like half the other factions. The Benders came out on top in our tournament and, had Kait not sabotaged the Deep Dwarves, they probably would have been second. Will their first real expansion be even more dominating?
The Swamp Mercenaries: Kait loves the horribly misleading Swamp Orcs. They grow vine walls (I know, they should be Jungle Orcs or they should grow root walls but here we are) which spread like a plague across the board choking out strategic locations and being generally obnoxious. The very close second place finisher in our tournament their combination with the Mercenary faction is a little odd but someone had to be stuck with the sellswords, I suppose.

Obviously, all that comes next is going to be speculation. I could do indepth posts on each faction and what I think of them but, in the sake of time, I’m simply going to give them a short ranking and a small blurb on why I think they deserve their spots. Let’s begin with the best.

1. Ermergerd erts teh ferth! (Cave Filth)

Personally, I think the original Filth faction is a top bet for being the best in the game. It’s certainly top three and balancing the faction is incredibly difficult because the Filth play incredibly different from everyone else. In a metagame that has revolved strongly around defensive play and heavy champion line-ups, the Filth stand out as being neither. Their unique mechanic, mutations, allows them to change one of their common units into a unique summon which is neither champion or common but something in between. The original summoner The Demagogue is especially powerful for his inherent ability allows him to search his deck or discard for the mutations he needs as well as give him a slow economic advantage by pulling cards from his discard pile which he can then burn for magic at the sacrifice of an attack.

Put simply, the Filth are a mid to late game deck that looks to play defensive until they generate a strong economic advantage by fueling their summoning costs with recycled mutations before flooding their opponent with powerful units that will tear apart commons and champions alike. I love them. Kait even loves them. All hail the Filth!

The new dude, The Warden, is interesting in that his alliance with the Cave Goblins is anything but an alliance. Presenting himself as an antiquated tyrant, the Warden introduces the “Prison Pile.” This acts as a sort of economic “bank.” Abilities that affect a player’s magic pile do not affect the Warden’s prison pile. Thus, the dreaded Magic Drain event can possibly be mitigated by the Warden by leaving his magic pile empty and undrainable.

This guy is probably the worst mutation coming out. Just so… you know… you have some idea of the faction’s measure when the worst is a 4 strength, 3 health for 3 magic.

For the most part, the Prison Pile doesn’t add a lot of strategic depth. The Warden can, for free, shuffle a single card from the prison pile to his magic pile. More than anything, the Prison creates an extra step for him to interact with his army. This would be an issue if the Cave Filth weren’t designed along the same vein as the Filth: make everything so damn amazing that the extra hassle is irrelevant. Technically, the Filth require two cards to get their “mutations” going and when they die they give twice the magic power to their opponent.

On the other hand, you can spend 3 magic to get a 3 strength, 3 health monster which enemies are too terrified to strike back and if it gets weakened you can always mutate that baby back to your hand to inflict upon your next devotee. The Warden has a similar “flawed advantage” which is really just an advantage for him. His basic unit, the Prisoner, has a 50% chance upon being summoned to just pop into your Prison. Course for a 1 strength 2 health unit for free, it’s a bit of a steal on its own. Combined with the fact the Warden himself can just turned “failed summons” into magic once per turn, the Cave Filth player hasn’t lost anything with his unruly subjects.

Furthermore, a lot of his cards require fuel from the Prison. Legion, Soul Eater, Scabbicus and Hector all need or grow stronger the more suckers you’ve locked up. The Warden will start stockpiling subjugates long before his inherent enslaving ability of sending destroyed units to Prison kicks in. To “balance” this “negative” the Cave Filth come with some of the best priced units. 3 strength 7 health for 4 magic is something you won’t find anywhere else. Plus they can have the most powerful unboosted unit in the game: 5 strength and 6 health. Granted, you pay out the nose for that guy. Hilarious enough, even Hector can grow astronomically if enough pressure isn’t applied to the Warden and he can get a rowdy Prison built. He gains 1 strength for every two prisoners beneath his care, has 6 health and a measly 4 cost. To compare, Leah Goodwin is the only other 0 strength card in the game who grows with an increasing economy pool and she has 5 health for 3 cost and maxes out her strength at 4.

Yeah, the Cave Filth are silly.

2. I’m not biased! (Sand Cloaks)

The Sand Goblins were the faction with which I was introduced to Summoner Wars. The Cloaks were my first faction received after the Master’s Box. Both hold a fond place in my heart even though they’re a little lackluster without second summoners or reinforcement decks. The alliance, however, is easily the top in the box.

The scholar both makes the Sand Cloaks and is easy builds for magic. Free (yay 0 magic!) and melee means he’ll be hiding in the back just quietly keeping your event abilities coming back and pumping your troops.

The Sand Cloaks introduce Event Abilities. These events are like prior summoners’ upgrades which went under a unit to improve them. Unlike Bolvi and Torgan, however, these cards can be moved around and synchronized with all the pieces of the deck. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the two stand out factions in the Alliance box are also the two decks that introduce their own unique mechanics which almost every unit reinforces or improves. All nine abilities open to Marek are strong abilities and they can not be lost like Filth mutations. Though they can only improve one unit at a time, Marek’s inherent ability lets her grant the bonus she holds to another unit once per round. Considering that you can enchant her with Camouflage (which makes it that she can only be attacked by adjacent units), you can make a very robust force with very few individuals. Nearly every unit in this deck is ranged as well, the sole exception being the unobtrusive scholar who allows you to move around your event abilities even from your own discard pile.

The only weakness the Sand Cloaks have is that there isn’t inherently any source of strong damage amongst their cards. Only one card naturally has 3 strength and all the commons natively have 2. However, their champions are cheap (4, 5 and 6 respectively) as are their units. That you can then give abilities to each of them to strengthen them or make them hard to kill gives the Sand Cloaks a very strong advantage that will overcome their inherent frailty.

3. Swamp Mercenaries

I’ll just say it: Glurblub, the new summoner, is worse than Mugglug. Yes, the swamp orcs have stupid names. No, it’s not a good idea to say that to their face.

It’s the god damn Boarboon! RAWR! I actually don’t hate the guys. They’re taking the place of Savagers so they’re slightly weaker (1 less strength after the first turn) for cheaper. It’s amazing how much of a difference 1 magic can make.

Mugglug has the far stronger ability to spread his swamp. Any unit next to his walls which dies grows a vine wall. Glurblub only gets vine walls natively from his ranged attacks. Overall, I predict smaller swamps with Glur but faster invasion of the enemy’s board with those swamps. Which is good because the real strength of the walls is giving advanced summoning positions to overwhelm defences. Glur even takes this further by having a 2 strength, 1 health for 1 magic swordsman which is a statline I love for its pressure and aggression. The boarboons, his cheaper ravagers, have 3 strength on the turn they’re summoned. Though they essentially lose any extra abilities beyond the first turn, this is not actually a big negative given the proliferation of “nullify” abilities or cards that are starting to return units to their owner’s hands. Glur also finally comes with a 0 cost common though he can’t attack them for free walls. But the slippery swamp rats are open to his Spore Carrier events which lets him destroy his units to grow walls where necessary. Glub won’t choke his opponent out of the board but he will plant a garden in their front yard and immediately attack the house with it. And while Mik was designed for Mugglug’s deck (finally a useful champion below 6 magic), Glurb has a 3 attack 3 health 4 cost champion that can negate one attack so long as he is beside a vine wall.

It’s a good thing that Glurb flings his walls too since his deck is entirely composed of melee units.

4. Tundra Guild

They’re good and bad. I don’t know what else to say. Hogar was just recently revealed and my gut instinct is that he isn’t that great. I’m looking at scribes as the old, Master Box design of “always include one auto build as magic unit.” Scribes are probably one of the worst units released in the entire box. They have 1 attack, 1 health and 0 cost which I don’t super hate but their special ability lets them look at one card from the top of the deck per scribe and allow Hogan to put those cards back in any order whenever a Rune Event is used.

So, to get the most out of their ability, you need at least two scribes sitting on the field. You also only get 6 chances to trigger their power since that is the total number of Rune Events in Hogar’s deck. You can’t fling scribes at the enemy and immediately kill them to deny their magic since you need them to stick around the board. With them being melee, you aren’t likely to attack with them at all. So they’re just going to sit on your side of the field being useless hoping that you get a good Rune Event draw which will let you manipulate your pile for your rather lackluster champions to be a little less awful.

They’re bad. At least the swamp rats can be killed for vine walls.

The marauder doesn’t fare any better. It’s a 2 attack, 2 health for 2 magic. When he is enchanted with a rune, he can attack at range. However, you’re never going to waste one of your very limited Rune Events on these guys. So he’s a 2/2/2 which doesn’t really live longer than a 2 strength, 1 health unit but at twice the cost.

The only really great card in Hogar’s deck is the Ice Golems and they are really good. Rune Events are, essentially, Event Abilities that can stack on a single unit. However, unlike Event Abilities, any player can spend 2 magic during their event phase to discard all Rune Events on one target. So, yes, you can pump Hogar up with a ludicrous number of enchantments to turn him into a murder machine. And yes, the opponent can clear all of them for the low price of 2 magic on their turn to leave Hogar naked and sad.

Single handedly putting Hogar in the top four of the upcoming releases. Ice Golems rock. Or… chill?

On the up side, the cost to erase the runes is the same as Magic Drain so it’s a pretty hefty price. More than that, the previously mentioned Ice Golems get counted as Ice Walls when they are enchanted. This means they operate as mobile summoning platforms much like the Swamp Orc’s vine walls if they were on legs and could punch idiots in the face. Plus, Hogar’s boring ability (walls are only damaged on rolls of 4 or higher) stacks when the Ice Golems are enchanted making them extremely hardy.

Unfortunately, Hogar’s champions are all really expensive despite their abilities being pretty lackluster. He has two 6 cost champions and one 7 cost but only one of them actually has 3 strength. But it becomes 4 strength if you happen to have a Rune Event on the top of your deck when he attacks! At least he’s better than Dagger I suppose. Except Dagger can be built into Marek’s deck so he can gain Greater Sneak on top of his Backstab…

The “random chance” of the Tundra Orcs is represented in these champion abilities but, unlike most of the tundra dwellers, the champions aren’t really that great if they aren’t getting lucky.

Reading, Writing and Reviewing

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As work becomes less intensive I feel I ought to contribute something to the blog. I have read and enjoyed several books of late. Unfortunately none of them inspired me with the burning need to write full length reviews. Instead I will gather them all in one post – into a mass reviewing of books.

Book cover from the interwebs.

Free Agent by J.C. Nelson was a fun, fast-paced romp through a fantastical urban setting drawing heavily on fairy tale imagery. The protagonist works for the local Fairy Godfather, who will help you find your Happily-Ever-After for a reasonable fee. When working on assignment, Marissa mistakes a blacksmith for a prince things start to unravel around her. She is suspended from the job she loves and hates. She causes her crush to be targeted by a dangerous curse. She ends up in the hospital on more than one occasion from near death experiences. But things turn really dangerous when her boss is targeted by a rival Fairy Godmother. Sorting out all the tangles and surviving to work another day is not an easy task. The writing is fun and imaginative. The story is high energy and fun. I will be adding the (yet unpublished) sequel to my book-list.

Book cover from the interwebs.

Unmade by Sarah Rees Brennan is the third and conclusive book in the Lynburn Legacy novels. I really enjoy the character development in Brennan’s writing. Yes, it is a young adult novel. So yes, it follows around a bunch of hormonal teenagers. However, Brennan doesn’t write dialogue like teenagers speak. Her characters are far more engaging. They have distinct voices that are often filled with lively banter and cleverly crafted phrases. With the author’s awareness of classic tropes, she handily makes fun of many of the clichéd moments in the story. Even the main character is able to reflect on how easy life would be if she was an orphaned heroine, rather than burdened with a family she cares about. I really appreciate the variety of relationships built (or broken) in the story. The inclusion and prominent use of family in the story helps to build a world that is real. While we might not be facing an army of murderous wizards, we can all relate to family feuds that disrupt our lives. It is the characters that drive the story and create the interesting world of Sorry-in-the-Vale. I really did love this series.

Book cover from the interwebs.

Heir of Fire by Sarah J. Maas is the third book in the Throne of Glass series. I have really enjoyed following the saga of Celeana – world’s best assassin. It is a richly developed world with multiple locations and people all interacting at various points. Though the story revolves around Adarlan and its recent abolishment of magic and all those associated with it. It is a kingdom set to conquer the world – seemingly at any cost. Despite the inclusion of the fey, the world is interesting. Celeana is a fascinating character. She is not the most verbose of leads, but her actions are loud and energetic. There is something engaging about her struggles in a world that has become increasingly grim. My biggest complaint of the book that followed not only Celeana, but Captain Westfall, Prince Dorian and the Heir of the Blackteeth clan was the lack of conclusion. For whatever reason, I had it in my mind this series was only three books in length. I was a little surprised and disappointed to reach the end of the book and not have a conclusion to the story. On the other hand I have another book to look forward to. It is a fun, if somewhat violent, young adult fantasy setting. Still I enjoyed it.

Book cover from the interwebs.

Royal Airs by Sharon Shinn is the sequel to Trubled Waters. The story is nice (if somewhat predictable), the characters are nice, and the pacing is a tad on the slow side. What draws me to this series is the world. I love the description of the capital city with its temples, plaza of women and men, the potentially dangerous river, and the mix of modern elements. There are a number of more ‘modern’ elements mixed with more traditional fantasy; from the trousers and tunics worn my most people to the automobiles clogging the city streets. Yet this is a world where the sword (or knife) is the deadliest weapon. Magic is both overt with the primes and their ability to move the elements and subtle when mixed with the spiritual religion. While I appreciate the author’s reorganization of the calendar into five seasons, each eight weeks long with a changeday between them. Each week is nine days. I like the neat organization of the calendar. But I love the religion and its focus on blessings. There are eight blessings (things like wealth, change, joy, etc) for each ‘element’ (wood, water, earth, air, and fire). At the temples you pull your blessings three at a time. They can offer guidance or reflection for where you are in life. I like that while you are typically born into an element it does not depend on your parents and is more a reflection of your personality. There is something about this setting that I find lovely. It is more for the setting that I read this series and will continue to read this series.

Book cover from the interwebs.

Tin Swift by Devon Monk is book two in her rough and tumble new world western frontier setting. It is an age of steam and mechanism, with rail lines crossing the land and airships sailing above. It is a land where the gods can curse a man. Where the fey are dark and hungry, the thing of shadows and nightmares. Witches are few and clustered together in covens. Man is restless as he seeks his fortune (whether that is power, safety or freedom). It is a rough world filled with violence, death and mysterious dark forces. But there are also glimmers of hope mingled in the mixing of magic and machine. There is something intriguing about the gritty world Monk has created. The writing itself is also well-constructed.