Robot Claw – Page 454 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

River Monsters

May 14, 2014

In a little under a month, KLS, Jim and myself will be crusing along the Erie canal in a rented houseboat!

The Erie canal is a man-made waterway that connects Buffalo in the extreme northwest of New York state, to New York City. It was opened almost 200 years ago and for a long while was the most important transportation thoroughfare in the state (and was instrumental in making NY the most powerful state in the country). Obviously roads, trains and air transport have mostly obsoleted the canal for commercial use, but it remains popular for recreational boaters.

Much like the British canalboats, people worked and lived on the canal in a particular type of narrow boat. Today a company near Rochester manufactures their own houseboats in the vintage style, and rents them out for 4 or 7 day cruises. I’ve known that such rentals exist for a long time, and this year finally decided it was time to try one for ourselves!

We’ll leave from very close to J&J’s house in Rochester, and cruise at a maximum speed of 6 miles a day. The rental company sent me a wonderful packet of information so we can plan the trip, and as of right now we’re probably going to head east on the canal through a more rural area, including a nature reserve. We’ll leisurely cruise for two days and then turn around and come back! The boats themselves are quite luxurious! We rented the largest they have (42 foot) that has two ‘state rooms’ (both with queen beds), a dining area, fully-equipped kitchen and a shower with hot water! The boats also include a grill for cooking on the deck, and some bicycles in case we want to moor up and explore. All we need to bring is some food and games 🙂

Here is a newspaper article about a canal cruise rental. Needless to say, you can expect to read all about our own adventures on this very blog 🙂

Master Of Puzzles

May 8, 2014

It’s time I revealed another of my secret skills: Puzzle Master!

But I’m not one of those half-men that only solves puzzles. No my friends, I have now become adept at creating puzzles. My brain-twisters will be a challenge for all non-genii, and should provide endless hours of entertainment to those that cannot count themselves among the hallowed brethren of the puzzle savants.

Curious to test and see where you rank in the world of puzzlers? Try this one first (you can print the full-sized version):

Good luck working out what that is without finishing it!

But of course I know there are some real smart alecks reading this blog, and I’m sure one or two of you may even be able to finish the above without more than 3 or 4 mistakes. Lest your heads swell, I’ve decided to present you with another of my creations to show you just how lofty the halls of the Gods Of Puzzling are…

And so! One of my greatest creations: a ‘god tier‘ difficulty (and quite positively Laytonesque) Picross for you to solve:

Print it and solve it! Send me a photo of the completed puzzle for a mystery prize! (If you don’t know how to solve Picross puzzles, read this)

Good luck 🙂

Oh, Oh, Oh It’s Magic!

May 4, 2014

It’s been a while since an MTG post, so it’s time to give my reviews of two recent releases.

The first is Commander 2013, which was released back in November of last year:

This product remains a bit controversial since one of the five decks (Mind Sieze) was – and remains – much more difficult to find than the other four. Despite herculean attempts I never saw it in any store myself, and ended up paying probably too much to get it at a convention. Wizards would eventually reprint the series with a disproportionate amount of Mind Sieze decks and yet it still remains hard to find. This is all (as is usually the case in these products) due to one single card in this deck only being in great demand for players of legacy MTG. This is the card:

Dedicated MTG players buy four copies of the Mind Sieze deck just to get four copies of this card for their decks, making it much harder to find for everyone 🙂

At any rate I eventually got all four, and over several weeks played 20 games in total, matching each deck against the others. Here’s the score breakdown:

Evasive Maneuvers (W/U/G): 3 wins, 1 loss
Eternal Bargain (W/U/B): 3 wins, 1 loss
Power Hungry (B/R/G): 3 wins, 1 loss
Nature Of The Beast (W/R/G): 1 win, 3 losses
Mind Sieze (U/B/R): 0 wins, 4 losses

In essence, it was a tie since EM beat EB beat PH beat EM! Three of the decks seem well matched with the other two being poor competition. Mind Sieze in particular failed to deliver, but my feeling playing it was that it was much better suited to multi play than 1 vs 1 (as is natural for a Commander deck).

In terms of individual decks, I like Eternal Bargain the most. The commander in particular is fun to play, and makes me want to build a lifegain deck around him (shame he isn’t W/G/B instead though). Most of the time, this deck won a game with massive amounts of health remaining.

I’ll soon split the decks up picking out individual cards for self-designed decks and absorbing them into my larger collection. At $30 each for 100 cards, these are well worth it and every bit as good as the first commander series in my opinion.

The second new product I have recently played is the new duel deck: Jace vs Vraska

I really enjoyed the last duel deck, and thought they were the best matched yet in the series. Sadly, this one takes a step back in playability.

Of the five games I played, Jace won all five and usually won them quite handily. His mono-blue deck is a weird mix of cards, dipping its fingers in many pots (illusions, counters, mill) without seeming to commit to any. It takes only a moment to look at the decklist and theorize ways to improve it, and yet ill-focused as it is it had no trouble shutting down Vraska in every game. Her deck has a green/black removal focus, with most spells and creatures dedicated to killing other creatures or removing life. While on paper her deck seems more cohesive than Jaces (and therefore I assumed it would win more often), in practice – at least in the five games I played – it was always just a bit too slow to get the upper hand. Jace’s illusions in particular were extremely effective once on the board, and one thing I took away from this duel deck was the potential of an all-illusion deck.

So a shutout in terms of gameplay, with Jace winning every time. Even with his (new) bad art, he’s still a badass 😉