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By Mark D, October 6, 2012 2:12 am

The Masquerade Ball in 2006, a Markland Event run by the Order of the Lost Boys

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By Mark D, May 11, 2011 1:28 am

TNA was fun. My new and improved Axe is even more deadly then before. Its
faster and thus I’m faster. For the war part of it I ended up barking out
a lot of orders and got a big helping hand from Gerade. We really kicked
some ass for most of the day. I did re-learn a lesson I learn every start
of the season. I HATE our archers. They know enough to kill me because I
wear no plate and I’m usually out in the open. Plus I’ve learned that when
our archers aren’t aiming at their targets they are most likely aiming at
their target.

Hurrah for Brahm for hiding my Jack Daniels that I worked really hard to
get for free. The one ranger was fine, the other one was a pain in the
ass Super Cop Rookie. God Dam Bright Highlighter Orange MadDog.
Of course they saw that stuff when you hide it with your foot. The only
real problem I had was that my pinky toenail is curved upwards, and
towards the end of the fighting I managed to drive the steel toe down
into the toenail which went into my toe and made it tough for me to walk.

Right now I feel like I am living just for the weekends, just for war. I
really feel alive when I’m fighting, when violence is being feed to me. I
want to fight as much as possible. I want to bring vengeance and wrath
upon my enemies, no matter who they are on the field. I am fighting for
the pure adrenalin from battle to battle. To know you can defeat your
enemies no matter who they are is the greatest feeling in the world.

Plus let me just say I got a great response from Blackcross about my Rise
and Fall story. That story was definitely inspired by his stories at last
years Masquerade Ball, so to get a response from him was great.

I’ve got something pissing me off really badly. I won’t definitely know
anything about it till after this weekend. I’m usually the last one to
catch on to some of the politics going on around me, and this seems to be
one of those times. Thankfully its got to know the lay of the law and to
have connections in all the right places. Those people have definitely
offered me a hand already. I’ll probably know more after this weekend. I
just can’t really say anything on this forum of speech. This is almost
like Reality TV. Is reality TV really reality once you introduce Cameras
to people. People naturally act and react differently when they do not
know they are being watched. Interesting thing to think about for this
Journal.

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By Mark D, April 15, 2011 6:08 am

Although this isn’t just limited to sword battles, it’s just about any non-gunpowder battle in Hollywood films. The problem is when you’ve seen real-ish combat, you understand that all combat basically breaks down to the same idea. It’s all Action Vs Re-Action. Unless you have super human reflexes, it’s almost impossible to parry. Most of the time you want to swing to kill with your first swing, not aim to parry anyway. Parrying will only save you for a short period of time, and is useless unless whoever your against does something to blatantly telegraph a move which will  leave him off balance.

You can see this in a one on one match between the two best fighters I know:

They obviously know each other too, but you can see what I’m saying. A battle is going to be an action and a re-action. if the action strikes, there is no re-action. If the action misses, the re-action should win. It is extremely rare you see long dragged out duels like you see in Hollywood. Sometimes you might see that between two pole arms, but that is mostly due to the length of the weapon allowing blocks to cover more of the body.

But for the most part you rarely see pole arms in Hollywood combat. As great a warrior as Gimli is, he would be at an extreme disadvantage against a 6 foot tall opponent with a 6 foot pole arm. I have fought people who had an obvious reach disadvantage, and had no problem dispatching them. Only the very best can make up anything more then a few inches in reach differential. But you will once again almost never see reach given any sort of importance, other then the Braveheart scene with the Spears and the horseman.

If you can act first, you will most likely win a fight. So if someone comes into your reach without you being in their reach, you’ll probably win. It kind of sucks though that this is almost always ignored. To me there is more to a fight then swinging the swords. There’s a certain psychology when two fighters are staring each other down. Who will move first? Does the fighter want to act or re-act? The closest you ever get to this is the end of Kill Bill Volume 1, but even that has too much parrying.

Battles can be a thing of beauty, even without a bunch of parrying back and forth because you somehow have to shoehorn a conversation into a fight. For that matter the lack of Pole arms tends to get on my nerves too. The Billhook was one of the most popular weapons of the period for foot soldiers because of it’s multiple uses. Most of them came with a thrusting tip, they would have a back blade for cleaving, and if the hook didn’t puncture the armor like an axe, it tended to hook between armor plates and you could drag horsemen to the ground.

Swords are overrated as weapons, especially Florentine (two swords) style. Unless you were fighting with a Sword and Shield you were a dead man walking with just a sword or two swords. For example you commonly see someone crossing their swords to block/catch a blade. This is actually the worst thing possible to do. You need to use one hand as an offensive sword and one as a defensive sword. If you are blocking one attack with both blades, you are unable to take advantage of the block. Which once again everything goes back to act and re-act. If you can’t immediately take advantage of the situation or opponents mistakes then  your just asking for your mistakes to be taken advantage of.

There’s a reason I don’t work in Hollywood, because I probably wouldn’t make a penny and my film would be a mish mash of everything. It wouldn’t make a lick of sense, and at some point I would probably cause it to make even less sense. But if I did have the money to produce a film, I’d probably get the rights to the Prophet Series by Duetscher and make an epic out of the Life of Trotsky, but that’s a story for another day.

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By Mark D, February 3, 2011 11:05 pm

I was going to post this earlier, but the storm knocked out my power, so here you go:

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By Mark D, January 18, 2011 2:12 am

I recently got Merchants and Marauders after playing it with a friend. I just got a chance to play today with my roomie (who doesn’t play that many games) and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. Given that there are a large number of pretty bad pirate board games out there, this is easily head and shoulders above the rest of them. The game is relatively easy to pick up and play except for the combat. It’s actually similar in a lot of ways to the computer games Port Royale 2 and Sid Meier’s Pirates.

The board is a map of the Caribbean, which is split between the four major colonial powers of the day. France, England, Spain and the Netherlands each have their historic ports. You choose a captain at random (and depending on their skills you decide whether to merchant or pirate) which also tells you your nationality and home port. Beginning the game you have the choice between a Sloop or a Flute for a ship which each has it’s own strengths and weaknesses.

If you choose to be a merchant (you don’t have to declare either way, but you are considered a pirate once you have a bounty on you, pirates can still be merchants) then what you are trying to do is sell goods which are in demand. Goods that are sold in port get you 3 gold each but goods in demand get 6 gold each. All goods cost 3 gold to purchase, but for each of the same good you buy the price goes down by 1 gold. So buying 2 of the same good costs 2 gold, buying 3 of the same good costs 1 gold. If you sell 3 or more in demand goods you get 1 glory point (First to 10 glory points wins the game).

Each sea zone has a flipped over token representing a merchant. If you successfully scout the sea zone you can flip the token over to see what nation the merchant is from. You can then decide whether to attack that merchant or replace it with the nation of the port in the sea zone. The combat with Merchants is done using cargo cards, there are icons for combat on the bottom of the cards and the same cards also have numbers telling you how much gold you gain. If victorious you gain as many of the cargo cards you can carry and the total amount of gold on the cards. You also gain a bounty from that nation, can be attacked by any of the nation NPC ships (but not Pirate NPCs) and if you get over 12 gold from one merchant you gain 1 glory.

There are both NPC hunter ships from each nation and two NPC pirate ships (a sloop and frigate). They enter the game via events and move by event cards which are pulled at the start of every turn. If a player ends up in combat with them, the other player (or someone with an interest in defeating them) handles the NPC like a player on player combat. If the player losses to an NPC he losses his captain, ship and everything on board. You enter next turn with a new pirate, 10 gold and a choice of starting ships again.

Player on Player combat is a bit of a dice fest, with your choices being to fire cannon, board ship or flee. Firing the cannons will have the highest success, boarding is neutral and fleeing is tough. Depending on how victory is had, if the losers ship is still floating you can take everything they have on board. It’s a winners takes all battle for the most part and can swing the game one way big time. Of course since you can stash 10 gold towards glory points for a max of 50 gold for 5 glory points, it’s important to take out an opponent’s ship floating around with a lot of gold.

The game is a lot of fun, my roomie who isn’t especially great at complicated games had a good time. Other then some struggles with the combat, it’s a relatively simple game. I’m probably bad at explaining it, but that’s why I didn’t name this as a review, it’s just my thoughts and roundup of the game. If you are the type of person who likes pirates, likes having a lot of ways to win a game and enjoys a lot of bits this is for you. Don’t forget whenever Rum is in demand to ask “Why is all the Rum gone?”