Bunker Project Log

Well, I finally got my ten… plus two extras. My first two worked fine. Then my CC was refused by Steam. I eventually got smart and set up a new Steam account, but used PayPal as my payment method. This allowed me to get five more before Steam wised up and killed that.

So, I started getting antsy, and emailed friends at work. Being that it was Sunday, I didn’t get a response. Then, I got really desperate, and asked DangerKitty to help out. He hasn’t PC gamed in years, and doesn’t have a Steam account, so chances were slim.

Steam is running a great special on Prey right now, at $4.95 a pop. This is perfect for me, as I can get a groovy game on the entire LAN for just shy of $50.

So, I bought the first one to try out the multiplayer and it worked lickity split. I had the dedicated server set up in about three minutes, which is a record for me. I was sure that the gravity and Portal effects would be perfect for a drunken Bunker Party LAN game.

Friday night, I went through a “medium” (five Epidemic card) game of Pandemic with Mrs. G and The Wall. Throughout the course of the game, we discovered that the St. Petersburg card popped up twice, which, if you know how the game works, is impossible.

I had heard at Boardgamegeek that there were possibilities of missing cards, but I figured it couldn’t happen to me. Upon further inspection, here’s what I found:

(And yes, my pictures are getting horribler. I blame the camera.)

As you can see, I have two St. Petersburgs, and no San Francisco. With the addition of some very stylish markerwork, order is restored.

Thanks to Scott Burkett at Pothole on the Infobahn, I’ve finally solved my theme changing issue. Hopefully my two loyal readers will never again be shellshocked by the constant theme switching.

Also, for my one mobile reader (possibly Dangerkitty), the site now actually shows up and works well in a mobile browser. Thanks to Alex King’s WordPress Mobile Edition for that one. (Of course, I’ve had this thing installed since about day one, but I was too stupid to install it correctly.)

One more thing off the list. Now to review the 10 or 20 games that have been waiting!

So last week or so, Toys’r’us has this 50% off blowout on games, and for whatever reason they usually throw some non licensed-Monopoly type game in the mix. Last time I scored the Seafarers of Catan 5-6 player expansion, which really wasn’t a victory at all. This time they had Starship Catan (which I already own, love, and have been too lazy to review) and Settlers of the Stone Age, which I did not own, and desperately needed to get closer to closing the loop on the whole Catan series. So I ordered it for the a-mazing price of $15, and had it two days later.

I spent so much time playing board games that I never got any pictures. Thus, I was only able to capture the aftermath.

Beer:

The third game of Pandemic in a row (in which we got our asses kicked):

Besides the fact that there were a few people from BP’s of yore, there was the usual. Plenty of Blokus, but totally innuendo free (not enough drunk girls playing… just mature manly men.) There was some Singstar, but? I missed it. Lots of Rock Band. A screwed up game of Shadows Over Camelot (I lost 2 of the loyalty cards, which messed things up, and there was NO TRAITOR!)

For whatever reason, the four of us (excluding Princess NotCool, AKA, Mrs. G) who played TI last time, all had this romantic notion that we would have a great time playing it again.

For me it was the white whale. I was bound and determined to make it through this damned game, whether we enjoyed it or not.

So, did we enjoy it? I’m not sure. Did we finish it? Almost. Z thinks Red5 was headed for a win, but I had managed to Diplomacy Markus into the boredom zone, and he was breaking off… which could have led me to Mecatol Rex, which my Secret Objective was all about.

In a typical fit of diva-esque luxurizing, Mrs. G refused to play anything unless I made it possible for her to do so without getting her ass off the couch.

I don’t know if it is slavish devotion, or just pure will to play, but I managed a solution which involved moving my matching couch (don’t ask… these couches were her idea) opposite hers, and then clever placement of a card table. In the end, it worked just fine. (Except for the stresses of playing a board game from a supine position, since I am 6ft+. She, being about three apples high, had nary a problemo.)

There is a LAN for old men. Or, at least there is when the game is XMP, and the old men are myself, DangerKitty and Junior.

As I’ve mentioned before, I love XMP. The more I think about it, the more I realize that it is the most perfectly balanced multi-player game ever made.

The only problem with it is, it takes a lot to learn, and it is even harder to get anyone to play it.

Unless of course you challenge a whole LAN worth of young bucks to a three on seven game. (They took the bait.)

This one was big, and I was all over the place, so I really don’t know what happened. Here are a few things I do know:

Rock Band was constant, although somehow the PS2 version got booted from the DDR room. I don’t know if it even got played past some n00b training.

Pandemic claimed another victim with the Blue disease outbreaking all over the place. I didn’t get the feeling the game was as well received by this group.