Virtual Front Porch Pages

Sunday, April 21, 2019

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulu is a version of the critically acclaimed Pandemic but it's set in the universe of H. P. Lovecraft's horror fiction. Players take the role of investigators who travel to iconic Lovecraft locations -- Arkham, Innsmouth, etc. -- in search of clues to seal portals leading to the otherworldly realm of Cthulhu and his brethren. The object of the game is to seal the portal in each of the four towns before the entire region is overrun by evil or all the investigators go insane.

We picked up a copy of Reign last weekend but didn't get a chance to play until this afternoon. Nathaniel played as the Detective (who requires fewer clues to seal a gate) and I played as the Hunter (who excels at killing cultists and monsters). We found ourselves overwhelmed from the get-go and quickly split up so that Nathaniel could focus on closing gates while I set out to eliminate cultist threats wherever they arose. Despite my initial bleak assessment of our situation, Nathaniel managed to close two of the four gates quickly. Only the gates in Innsmouth and Dunwich remained, and after a bit of card-juggling, Nathaniel found himself ready to take care of the latter. I was at Innsmouth, meanwhile, with horrific monsters called shoggoths closing in on my hospital hideout from two different directions. Naturally, my Hunter went insane from the shoggoth incursion, but Nathaniel activated a relic that restored the Hunter's sanity in the nick of time. He closed the gate in Dunwich, and on the next turn I joined him there to hand over all my Innsmouth clues. He then hopped on a bus back to Innsmouth and closed the last gate, thus saving the world!

Saturday, April 20, 2019

Grand (Slam) Finale

The first championship game certainly exceeded my expectations. Starters Mickey Welch of the Haymakers and Kid Nichols of the Blue Legs breezed through the first several innings and we were scoreless through four. Baserunners were few and far between, so I was aggressive in using pinch hitters to try to generate more offense. After I lifted Welch for a pinch hitter, Old Hoss Radbourn came into the game and promptly gave up a couple of runs in the fifth. The Haymakers battled back in the sixth, however, and tied the score at 2, only for Radbourn to give one back in the next frame. Now with the Legs leading 3-2 and a chance for more, I pinch hit for the Kid, but the Legs failed to extend their lead. Nichols left the game up 3-2 after seven, only to watch his solid effort get squandered by John Clarkson, who got roughed up for three in the top of the eighth. As a result, the Haymakers led 5-3 going into the bottom of the eighth. The Legs then loaded the bases for Sam Thompson, who promptly smacked the first-ever grand slam in the short history of this league. Radbourn escaped further damage, but now the Haymakers were down by two going into the ninth. Clarkson retired the side in order to seal the championship for the Blue Legs. The final score was 7-5, and a grand slam in the eighth to spark a come-from-behind victory was an amazingly cool turn of events. How many days until spring training for next season? Well, it could be tomorrow!

Haymakers Deliver Body Blow

In the league's first-ever playoff game, the third-place Haymakers -- reeling from three straight losses -- headed to face the Canaries. The Haymakers came ready to play and ripped Tim Keefe for three runs in the top of the first inning, highlighted by Joe Kelley's two-run triple. They would tack on two more runs against Keefe, including catcher Roger Bresnahan's solo homer. In the middle innings, the Canaries began to chip away against Cy Young and managed to get some great relief pitching from Jack Chesbro and Al Spalding. Young, however, gutted out all nine and held on for a 5-4 victory. The Canaries go home, and Haymakers move on to face the power-hitting Blue Legs in the championship game.

Playoff Time!

My old timers have completed the first regular season of their nineteenth-century league. They played only 16 games apiece (I'll probably increase the number of games in future seasons), and it ended up being quite a dogfight. The Blue Legs, led by runaway position player MVP King Kelly, got hot down the stretch and finished in first place at 9-7. Their run differential was dead even, but they led the league with nine homers and 77 runs scored. The Canaries finished second with an 8-8 record and although they scored the fewest runs in the league by far, they also allowed a league-low 62 runs and had a run differential of +4. The once-mighty Haymakers cratered over their last three games and finished 7-9 with a -4 run differential, and their 80 runs allowed were worst in the league -- pretty lousy for a team with Cy Young (this season's pitching MVP) on the staff!

Now the playoffs begin! For this inaugural season, I'm keeping it simple and holding only two games. The third-place team (Haymakers) visits the second-place team (Canaries), with the winner moving on to play the first-place team (Blue Legs) in the championship game. The play-in game forces both of the lower-ranked teams to burn one or more pitchers, while the team that earned first place awaits them with a fully-rested staff. Will the Blue Legs capture the championship, or will one of the underdogs upset them? We'll find out soon!

Wednesday, April 17, 2019

Playing the Long Game

Druid Cycle game action is nowhere near as fast and furious as it was in years past. (Moving thousands of miles away from the other players definitely didn't help matters!) These days, we keep the stories going with slow-paced email-based adventures featuring the long-running characters played by Tim W, Scott, and Kevin. Scott's and Tim's earliest characters in this world date back to 1993, and Kevin's to 1998, so we've seen these characters evolve over decades of real time and game time alike.

As a result, sometimes we'll have a narrative payoff that's years in the making. We had such a payoff today, when Tim learned that the wife of his character Lwcus had not perished (as Tim and his character have always believed), but had been transformed into an undead revenant -- one that has appeared as a minor character in numerous other Druid Cycle adventures. Now Tim has learned that 'Cerys' and 'Kheru' are one and the same, and a reveal that I'd been planning for at least ten years was finally able to take place!

Thursday, April 11, 2019

Baseball Is Back!

The first season of my nineteenth-century Hall of Fame league continues! After ten games, all three teams are sitting at 5-5, though the Haymakers have a +7 run differential (the other teams are both in the red) and an expected win percentage of .573, so they might take off if their luck evens out. Mike "King" Kelly of the Blue Legs -- one of the most fascinating characters in baseball history -- is the early frontrunner for MVP, as he's hit more home runs (three) than all other players in the league combined (two). The Haymakers' Cy Young was cruising as the league's top pitcher, but he got roughed up last night, while Tim Keefe of the Canaries is on the rise. All three teams have had their share of heroes and goats, and with eight more games apiece in our (rather brief) regular season, it will be a fun race to the finish!

Saturday, April 6, 2019

Finished!

Technically it's the UNSC Infinity from the Halo series, but I left off the identifying signage so that this model can instead serve as the Arx, a capital ship of the Armada. At nearly 2500 pieces, it's one of the largest building toys I've ever assembled.





Friday, April 5, 2019

Just say the word...

Shazam opens today. I can't wait to introduce the boys to the Big Red Cheese and his charmingly goofy corner of the DC universe!

Thursday, April 4, 2019

Still on Break

I've been going fast and furious with my nineteenth-century baseball league, but Strat-O-Matic has taken a backseat for the past few days because this beast arrived at our doorstep. I'll always love Legos, of course, but when they got the Star Wars license two decades ago, it was the death knell of their Space line. In days of yore, Tim W and I used to build elaborate Lego ships -- entire fleets, in fact -- from the sci-fi setting of the Front Porch multiverse. Now, with my kids, the medium for that building is Mega Construx (nee Bloks). I don't know anything about the Halo series (I defer to Matthew and Nathaniel on that score), but the Mega Construx line is pretty fab for space stuff. This Halo set is being re-imagined as a certain lost ship called the Arx, which Tim might recall...

Monday, April 1, 2019

All-Star Break

What a difference a few more games can make! We're at the halfway point of my first season of nineteenth-century baseball -- with each team playing a 16-game regular season -- and the Canaries are no longer looking like a world-beating powerhouse. After eight games, the Haymakers have pulled out in front with a 5-3 record and a +12 run differential; they've scored the most runs in the league and also allowed the fewest. Ace pitcher Cy Young is looking like our league MVP, and his work includes a 13-inning complete-game victory. The red-hot Blue Legs have moved up to second place, with a 4-4 record but a -5 differential that reflects their early struggles. The Canaries have fallen into the basement, with a 3-5 record and an ugly -7 differential. I'm still not confident that the teams are balanced appropriately, but I think we're pretty close. The teams are starting to exhibit their own unique flavors and character, so it will be fun to see how things shake out in the second half of the season.