The Mana Leek

Yeah David Turczi has designed some absolutely banger solo games (and is often brought in to make solo modes for other people's games).

My wife's a Trek fan (more than me) but this one would be heavier than she usually likes for games so it'd be solo only for me.

Ugggh I've been putting off buying this for a bit now 😅 I **really** enjoy Imperium that this is sort of a spin-off of.

Finished up my Solo, and about to finish up my 2-player, 15x10 challenges (play 15 board games 10 times each) a good bit early this year.

Might blab about those 30 games I played here or somewhere. There were some bangers.

I'm very out on Magic anymore. And doubly so on official WotC communications/collabs.

But Jet Lag the Game is awesome and this was fantastic.

I think Media Studies is still in the Ontario curriculum, but it's an optional grade 11? English course and it wasn't terribly popular 30 years ago; can't imagine it's gotten more popular. Opting-in to additional English classes was a hard sell back then, gotta be near impossible these days.

Seven, that they're describing as a scheduling "quirk" (...they make the schedule...) but they've assured us next year they'll return the "regular" six sets a year.

Regular six sets a year...

That was my go to in my judging time. "Are you cheating or are you wasting everyone's time? Pick one."

I liked the world and mechanics, just found it sometimes frustrating at solo due to some scaling issues.

Earthborne Rangers is highly recommended though I bounced off it for solo, but I think it'd really shine at two players (or playing two handed).

It's a fairly lengthy campaign (20-30 "games") and it's draw is being somewhat open world. There's a through-line story but you go off and side mission.

Been on my to-do list for a while...

Remember, if r/FreeMagic ever posts and celebrates you as "Based <ContentCreatorNameHere> you've messed up somewhere along the line.

(Events based on a true story)

Draft & Write Records is so dang good. May be my favourite roll/flip/draft and write? Or at least favourite non-super-heavy one (looking at you Hadrian's Wall and Twilight Inscription)

Yeah I'm keeping it on my shelf to give it a try multiplayer at some point, I think it'll really sing. Bounced off if quite hard true solo though. And when my collection's nearing 500 games I need to love a game to keep going with it 😅

One of the most prominent Magic creators tried to RT-dunk on me for calling him out on it. Deleted the RT when he realized no one was running to his defence. Extreme weirdo shit.

Here are some things that Charlie Kirk said in his life.

The man is dead, and so it only seems fair to share his legacy by cataloguing the values he spread while alive.

Ditto, I need to go to board game Valhalla.

Update on Slay the Spire the Board Game solo play: it might be the worst solo game I've played this year. It was originally designed to be multiplayer and it really shows.

It is *brutally* difficult and random in a way that just doesn't feel good in a board game. Multiplayer apparently fixes this.

Finding the Slay the Spire boardgame quite difficult solo (this is a known issue it seems), but boy is it wild how much worse the BGG forum posts are for this game vs any other solo game. So much "git gud" "game's not for you" toxic gamer BS. Plus a healthy dose of advice based on very low % chances

Incredible University Challenge final tonight. Most exciting I've seen.

This podcast was insufferable garbage.

There's still a legitimate chance. The Liberals are 4 seats away from a majority, special ballots have leaned heavily Liberal, and there are a good handful (8+) of ridings that are close enough with a Liberal in second place that those special ballots could flip them. If 4 flip, majority.

Lost an NDP stronghold in London to Cons due to vote splitting 😕

A seat in the wicker man may be the only seat he has 👀

Elections Canada's website being down for over and hour while polls are still open needs to be investigated to hell and back. It's never been an issue before, so what's the source this time? Something totally benign I bet...

Sure, yeah, not getting the Marvel rights for digital was **definitely** something totally out of WotC's control and was just big, bad, mean Disney and not WotC just saving money on licensing for a platform that drove 1% of their revenue increase... 🙄

Remember, if it's critical of WotC it's a conspiracy theory. If it cuts WotC some slack or puts the blame one someone else, it's clearly the truth.

Magic discourse is worse than I remember, just in a different way 😂

I mean, I've noticed quite clearly that the number of new artists has ballooned in recent years, especially with digital-only sets, and the quality of that art has been...less than stellar.

The license would also include profit sharing whereas the unlicensed set keeps all the money in WotC's hands

It made stupid money in paper, I don't recall hearing anything specific about it popping off for Arena financially.

And the LotR video game license likely doesn't cost as much as Marvel which is my point. This one was likely costly, especially for "multiple games" and so they made this call.

I'd argue that it's pretty complicated to convert Marvel fans to Arena off "the street". Magic Arena isn't changing their name to Marvel Arena, getting to the Marvel cards would take several steps, it's just not an easy on ramp for the Marvel fans to give them their wallet, unlike a physical product

So Marvel Snap has the ability to tell Disney "no Magic" but not the ability to stop the other 8 to 10 card and card-like Marvel apps that are kicking around?

"WotC did something in their financial interest" shouldn't be an out there idea at this point 😂