Two StarWars.com writers debate Luke’s choice in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.

Given the reputation of Mindclash Games as a producer of well themed and sufficiently complex games, I was quite optimistic about getting Cerebria: The Card Game on the table. Designed by István Pócsi and Frigyes Schőberl, the game was released in 2018, and it was due to arrive on my doorstep in March.
Once the box arrived and I saw the cutesy artwork by Villő Farkas, Jamie Sichel, and Pedro A. Alberto, I prepared a little space in my heart for the love of the game that was already starting to develop. The illustrations are playful, family friendly, and reflect the theme very well.
 
In Cerebria: The Card Game, we are organizing and controlling our emotions while toying with the emotions of others. The theming overlaid on the gameplay here works well with regard to what we are doing with our actions, but there is no explanation of who we are or why we are in this situation we find ourselves. I would have liked to see a better developed contextual narrative for the game.
Thanks to busy spring work schedules, it took a bit of time to gather friends over to play. The first game came together at the last minute when my friend Aaron was in town visiting for the weekend and our regular gaming friends John and Meagan dropped by. The five of us crowded around our gaming table, my husband Christopher explained the rules, and then we went at it.
To play the game, cards are pulled out of the main deck to form three decks laid out in vertical columns and the card at the top of each deck is flipped over and available to draw. Every player is dealt four cards. Players take turns drawing from one of the face up cards to their hand, playing cards from their hand to their personal tableau and collecting emotion fragments (blue fragments for gloom and orange fragments for bliss) on those cards if possible (some cards don’t collect fragments but have other special abilities), or both (two actions are mandatory each turn).

During a turn, a player may also activate emotion abilities of eligible cards in their tableau. These abilities involve actions that directly benefit the player, take-that actions that hurt other players, or combo actions that manage to do both at once. Gameplay moves pretty quickly and is not subject to much analysis paralysis. A round ends when any of the three draw piles is empty. At that juncture, all the emotion fragments collected in each player’s tableau are squirreled away to their personal cache and any bonus fragments are awarded to players (emotion cards have vibe symbols on them and bonus fragments are awarded for tableaus that meet set collection goals such as three different vibes or four identical vibes). If any player has amassed either twelve of the same color emotion fragments or seven of each color, they win and the game ends. If not, the game resets with the discard of any existing face up cards, replenishment of the three vertical decks, and all players drawing back up to (or discarding down to) four cards. Then play resumes and unfolds as in the previous round.

None of us are really fond of “take that” games, so the more aggressive and vindictive emotion abilities our cards presented us with weren’t used as frequently as they might have been with a different group of players. But that didn’t stop anyone from winning the game as the game has a lot of room for creative strategies and there are multiple paths to victory.

Subsequent games I played with other groups were just as enjoyable. This week, for example, I played a 4 player game at a youth center with three teens and everyone had a good time. There was a bit more time required before the under 16 crowd really understood the rules and how everything fit together but overall it went well. There were definitely more take-that actions taken by the teens than any of the adults I played with.
 

Win Condition: Be the first player to amass 12 emotion fragments of either gloom or bliss, or 7 of each. Strategy Tip: Be careful about laying down a valuable set of emotions in your mindset (such as four of a kind) early in the game. Tip your hand too soon and you invite others to play aggressive take-that emotion abilities against you to keep you from scoring points. It’s better to lay down your final card, if possible, just before drawing the last card from a draw column, which will end the round and allow you to score immediately.

Components for Cerebria: The Card Game  include glossy cards and some plastic tokens representing emotional fragments. Everything should hold up to regular use and all components can be stored compactly in the well made, small box provided.
I really enjoyed the game and the interactions it provoked between players. If your group enjoys take-that games, you can really turn the screws to your opponents and if your group wants to steer clear of such tactics you can just as easily play and win the game without striking out against others. The theming here is unique. Other than Cerebria (also from this publisher), there aren’t any current games dealing with organizing and handling emotions. It’s a great way to remind ourselves that we can control our emotional mindset by choosing what we focus on, regardless of what emotions pass through our minds.
This easy to learn, quick playing, well-illustrated, clever game has earned a forever home in my collection.
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Publisher: Mindclash Games
Players: 2-5
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 45 minutes
Game type: set collection, take-that
Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

T he kind folks at Tasty Minstrel Games (TMG) recently sent me a preview copy of Old West Empresario, which will debut at GenCon 2019 today. We already have about ten TMG games in our collection that we thoroughly enjoy (with Crusaders and Gentes being the most recent additions) and so my husband Chris and I were both feeling pretty good about the chances of this new release being a good fit for us as well.

Old West Empresario  picks up its narrative where its prequel, Pioneer Days (also from TMG) left off. Players take on the role of Empresarios, settling the old west. They are charged with building new towns so prosperous and populated that one will be chosen as the state capital, winning the game for its Empresario.

As with Pioneer Days, the  artwork from Sergi Marcet reinforces the Western theme and uses bright, appealing colors. I appreciated the racial diversity depicted in the illustrations.

Components include double sided building cards, currency tokens, victory point (i.e. population) tokens, and die number tiles (all constructed from heavy cardboard); as well as a set of eight brown dice, a wooden first player token, thin cards for the wanted and character cards, a scoring pad, and the rulebook.  Most of the components should last a long time under regular use but the character cards and wanted cards should possibly be sleeved to prevent bending or tearing.

The gameplay here is a bit reminiscent of Suburbia in that victory points (VP) are partially earned based on the placement of constructed buildings in a player’s town relative to other constructed buildings in the town. For example, the Mine scores 2 VP at the end of the game if adjacent to at least 1 Inn and 1 VP per adjacent Distillery. In addition to victory points earned based on the adjacency rules, a number of constructed civic buildings award end game points to the owning player based on meeting certain qualifications such as owning x amount of cash, y amount of victory tokens, or z amount of native settlement buildings. There are also four other ways to earn victory points in Old West Empresario :

• owning the largest contiguous block of native settlement buildings
• construction of buildings tied to the railroad, stock, or oil industries
• accumulation of wanted cards (awarded for being the first or second player to accomplish the objective listed on the card)
• accumulation of wealth (1VP for every 3 coins)

So how do we construct buildings in our towns and what else can they do for us besides award end game VP? Well, each round, the starting player rolls the set of dice (2 for each player + 1 extra) and then places each die on top of the corresponding die number tile. Each die number tile has two buildings positioned underneath it selected from the pool of unconstructed buildings and native settlements.  Unconstructed buildings can be activated later in the game once added and constructed in a player’s town.  Native settlements do not require construction and have a one time activation effect when added to a player’s town.

Taking turns beginning with the start player, each player selects a die from a die number tile and then either (1) collects one of the buildings underneath the die number tile to add to their town (2) activates all the buildings in their town that have the same number on their die icon as the die selected, or (3) discards one of the buildings underneath the die number tile to the game discard pile and collects $3.

Each player begins the game with only one constructed building in their town – the town hall – which has, as one of its activation effects, the ability to construct another building in the town for the resource cost of $1. In addition to the town hall, each player selects a native settlement or unconstructed building to add to their town at the start of the game. Note that the town hall can be activated by any die number. This means that on any player’s first turn, they are able to activate their town hall to construct an unconstructed building already in their town. If the first building they construct is the Carpenter building, they now have two constructed buildings capable of constructing new buildings when activated.

Aside from construction as an activation effect, the accumulation of VP tokens, cash, or additional building tiles are also possible, depending on the specific building under activation. One building (the Church) allows a player to activate another building from their town that otherwise would not be activated that turn for a small fee. And the Undertaker building forces opponents to discard cash (Aha! Take that!).

The game ends and victory points are tallied after the round in which one or more players host at least 15 buildings in their town, or the building supply deck or VP token supply runs out.

In my first game of Old West Empresario, I played against my husband. His strategy was to turn the game into some kind of massive engine builder. He worked hard to construct buildings in his town that ALL had the same activation number. I took the opposite approach and tried to cover all the dice outcomes so that I knew I always had at least one building other than my Town Hall to activate if desired. I focused on earning VP tokens through building activation effects and the wanted cards while he focused on earning VP through adjacency rules. I beat him by one point.

In another game with friends, I took the same approach and won again even though my friends also tried to focus on these items. Rinse repeat across a few more games. But when I played against my husband a second time and he focused less this time on adjacency rules and more on building activation effects to collect VP tokens, he was able to beat me. This is where his ploy to have several buildings with the same activation number gave him the edge – I might activate one building on a turn that gave VP tokens as an activation effect while he activated four on a turn that did so. I’ll need to match his strategy in grouping activation numbers if I am going to have a chance to beat him.

I have now played the game several times since receiving it, across all players counts. A few summary takeaways from these plays of Old West Empresario:

1. The game is easy to learn but it takes awhile for players to memorize the activation effects of each building. It can be helpful to photocopy the back cover of the rulebook that documents this information and give one sheet to each player for reference.

2. Game time consistently hovers around an hour, regardless of player count or number of previous plays under the players’ belts.

3. There are multiple paths to victory and winning strategies to explore due to a myriad of ways to earn victory points.

4. Huge spreads across the final player scores are unlikely. They never occurred in our games. It’s very much a neck and neck competition till the end and no one is certain of the winner until the final scores are tallied.

5. The iconography can be confusing for new players. The designer overlays a circle with a a slash through it on top of a picture of a resource to indicate the cost of an action. However, almost every new player interpreted the image at first glance to mean none of the resource was required to perform the action (perhaps thinking normally one  or more units of the resource is required by default).

Overall, Old West Empresario  is an engaging, lightweight to medium strategy game that can work with many different play groups. It’s a good game for drawing non-gamer friends into tabletop gaming and to give hardcore gamers a more relaxing hour of gameplay. I am going to keep the game and I’m thinking of picking up Pioneer Days  to set up a back to back gaming event where we begin with PD and move onto OWE, perhaps with a viewing of a film like Rio Bravo wedged in the middle. The $60 retail price point is a bit steep but strategy gaming market pricing continues to trend upward with the rising demand for new games so it would be a mischaracterization to imply TMG isn’t pricing games competitively; they are on par with other large publishers. 

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Publisher: Tasty Minstrel Games (TMG)
Players: 2-4
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 60 minutes
Game type: tile placement, tableau building

Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me

There was a time – before I sank my teeth into the board game hobby and before I took on the demands of being a stepmom to three children - that I planned frequent trips for my friends circle. Each month would see us jet setting off to a different part of the United States (or a different part of the world) in search of adventure and great cuisine. I would pour myself into the research project that proper trip planning requires and create a custom itinerary for our group, working to ensure we caught all the highlights of our destination. This post is about the one I worked up for our last trip to some of the great Western National Parks in the United States.  I share it here with the hope that you might find the itinerary useful in planning your trip out west.

 

--> Full Photo Gallery – Come and Explore 

DAY ONE	MORNING Depart for Butte, Montana Pick up rental car AFTERNOON Lunch (& ice cream) at Matt’s Place (Butte) Transfer to Grand Teton National Park (4.5 hrs) Grand Teton National Park Visitors Center (open till 7pm) EVENING Stop for photos @ Mormon Row Historic District (Antelope Flats Road, Grand Teton National Park, WY) Dinner @ Peaks Restaurant, Signal Mountain Lodge Check in @ Colter Bay Village
DAY TWO	MORNING AND AFTERNOON 5:45am Sunrise excursion to Schwabacher's Landing • Roughly four miles north of Moose off of the main highway. The 1.5 mile gravel access road is currently closed to vehicles due to sequestration; 20 min walk is therefore required to reach the trailhead. The trail follows along the water, heads northwest then turns north to follow a trail along a smaller stream. Five minutes of hiking you should come to a large beaver dam that creates a pond. Circle around the water on the maze of paths that travel north through the woods for 5 more minutes and it will lead to an opening with the classic view. A log bench marks the area, and if you are arriving for sunrise, a photographer usually will also mark the spot. Breakfast @ Ranch House 8am Assemble in lobby to depart for morning tour Sightseeing in Grand Teton NP: • Lake Jenny- Hidden Falls, Inspiration Point, & Cascade Canyon Hike o Starts with a boat ride ($12; service from 8am) across beautiful Jenny Lake to where the trail starts. The half mile hike to Hidden Falls is short and easy. Half mile further to Inspiration Point. The hike from the boat dock to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point is like a traffic jam after 9am. Option to continue onto Cascade Canyon where the crowds thin and moose and other wildlife are abundant. Signal Mountain Summit Road . The scenic Signal Mountain Road is a five mile, 1,000 foot climb of switchbacks to an observation area at the top of Signal Mountain. Set far apart from the next highest mountain peak, Signal Mountain provides breathtaking views of the Tetons’ towering peaks, the flat glacial plains below, Jackson Lake and the Snake River beyond. From Lake Jenny, travel N on the Grand Teton Road and take a right onto Signal Mountain Road. Lunch @ Signal Mountain Lodge (Trapper’s Grill or Leek’s Pizza) Afternoon at leisure at Colter Bay Village (horseback riding, kayaking, canoe rentals, etc) EVENING Dinner @ Ranch House or Chuckwagon
DAY THREE	MORNING Breakfast @ Ranch House Transfer to Yellowstone National Park (1.5 hrs) Optional brief stop at West Thumb for photos (keep bear spray handy) Sightseeing in the Upper Geyser Basin: • Old Faithful • Black Sand and Biscuit Basin Trails (1/2 mile easy boardwalk trail each) • Geyser Hill Loop Trail (1.3 miles easy boardwalk trail) • Morning Glory Pool AFTERNOON Lunch @ Old Faithful Inn Deli Sightseeing in the Midway and Lower Geyser Basin: • Despite its small size Midway possesses two of the largest hot springs in the world. Grand Prismatic Spring, nearly 370 feet in diameter, sits upon a large mound surrounded by small step-like terraces. The other feature, Excelsior Geyser, erupted nearly 300 feet high before the 1900s. It is now a dormant geyser and is considered a hot spring, discharging more than 4050 gallons of boiling water per minute. Other colorful springs include Turquoise and Indigo springs, known for their pale and dark blue colors. Across the Firehole River from Excelsior and Grand Prismatic springs are a series of small isolated, pristine springs and mud pots. The Rabbit Creek drainage possesses some colorful and unusual features and most are unnamed. Caution should be exercised while exploring this vicinity since the ground is unstable and trails are not maintained. • The Lower Geyser Basin encompasses nearly 12 square miles, with most of the thermal features widely scattered in small groups. We will visit the Fountain Group, White Dome Group, & White Creek Group at minimum and venture onto the Firehole Lake Group and the Imperial Group if there is time. The Lower Geyser Basin possesses a large variety of thermal features, including mud pots, geysers, pools, springs, and fumaroles. Great Fountain Geyser is one of the grand geysers in the Lower Geyser Basin. It erupts from a large, terraced platform with massive bursts exploding up to 150 feet high. White Dome Geyser does not have spectacular eruptive displays, but it does have one of the largest pink and white streaked cones in the Park. EVENING Check in @ Old Faithful Inn Dinner @ Old Faithful Lodge Cafeteria
DAY FOUR	MORNING AND AFTERNOON Breakfast @ Old Faithful Inn Traverse the Fishing Bridge Sightseeing in Hayden Valley: • Wildlife Viewing • Sulphur Caldron • Mud Volcano Interpretive Trail (3/4 mile, easy) Sightseeing in Canyon Area: • South Rim Drive o Picnic Lunch at Artist Point • North Rim Drive o walk from Inspiration Point to Grandview Point o Brink of the Lower Falls Trail (1/2 mile, steep/moderate)  Especially scenic, this trail branches off of the North Rim Trail at the Brink of the Upper Falls parking area • Canyon Visitor Center EVENING Check in @ Canyon Lodge Dinner @ Canyon Lodge Dining Room
DAY FIVE	MORNING 6am Depart for wildlife viewing in Lamar Valley (snacks in the car) 9am Breakfast @ Roosevelt Lodge Sightseeing in Northern Yellowstone: • Tower Falls o Stop at Tower General Store to pick up Picnic Lunch supplies • Undine Falls o Scenic pullout on the right • Gibbon Falls • Mammoth Springs (2 hrs) o Lower Terraces including: Opal Terrace Liberty Cap Palette Spring Minerva Terrace Cleopatra Terrace Jupiter Terrace Main Terrace Canary Spring Overlook o Upper Terraces including: Prospect Terrace New Highland Terrace Orange Spring Mound Bath Lake White Elephant Back Terrace Angel Terrace • Fort Yellowstone, time permitting • Optional stop @ Norris Geyser Basin, time permitting EVENING Check in @ Three Bears Lodge Dinner @ Taqueria Las Palmitas ($) or Madison Crossing Lounge ($$) Ice cream @ Espresso West
DAY SIX	MORNING Breakfast @ Woodside Bakery in West Yellowstone (world famous cinnamon rolls) Check out & transfer to Butte (2.5 hrs) AFTERNOON Lunch on the road Depart for home from Butte airport

There are some games in my collection that I get excited about when they arrive at my house but it takes me months to get them to the table. Typically in these cases the artwork is lovely, the theme is interesting, and the mechanics look promising but there is something standing in the way of playing the game right away. For Triora: City of Witches (designed by Michael C. Alves), what stood in the way is the game’s rulebook. It absolutely flummoxed me.  Even with the errata notes released a few months ago, it’s hard to make sense of the rules. It made a mess of things. And look what’s it’s done to my review – I usually like to start with a nice overview of a game’s theme, cover the components and artwork, and then dive into the gameplay.  But the rulebook is so awful in this case, I’m forced to lead with that. The publisher needs a skilled editor to rewrite the rulebook entirely. It’s laden with spelling errors and unclear language.

So that’s the bad news; the rulebook is subpar. The good news is the game itself is quite interesting. In Triora: City of Witches, players take on the role of witches and their familiars who have traveled to the city to face off against the nobility and the inquisitor, both of whom have been persecuting local women they suspect are witches. To win the game, a player must have the highest total victory points (referred to as doom points and sometimes ruin points in the rulebook) at the conclusion of the game. The end of the game happens at the end of the round in which one of two conditions are met:

[1] three of the four main locations in the city are destroyed,

or

[2] a witch is captured by the inquisitor after they have already accumulated the maximum inquisition points. Note that a witch captured this way is out of the game and ineligible for victory, as all of their doom/ruin points are forfeited.

Gameplay centers on making and using potions toward strategic ends. Players can create potions both by simply moving their witch meeple to a new location (grants 1 cauldron automatically, which can be used to make one type of potion from the requisite herbs held by the player) and by visiting a location with their witch or familiar that grants a cauldron as part of the action of that location. Note that there is an entire subroutine for generating the requisite herbs on a player’s board; once used to make a potion, herbs shift to a seed state and then must pass through planting and harvesting phases before they transform into usable herbs once more. Potions are consumed when visiting locations on the board that require a potion to complete an action at a location (either as an upfront cost to initiate the action or as an input to the action such as when changing potions into silver or taking control of villagers).  Certain locations on the board are defined targets for destruction; when players move their witch or familiar to these locations (there are 4 of them), as part of the location’s action, they place one of their wooden player tokens on the location. When the required number of tokens have been placed, the location is destroyed.

I’ve mentioned players moving their witch or their familiar on their turns. A player gets two turns per round; one turn to move their witch and the other to move their familiar. It is up to the player to determine which to move first. There is more freedom in moving witches (familiars cannot be moved to a location where a witch or another familiar is currently located) and moving a witch grants extra benefits (the automatic cauldron as mentioned above but also there is a witch’s bonus at each location that is granted only when a witch is moved to the location). However, there is also more risk in moving a witch and so it must be done with great attention to detail. This is because in addition to the witches and their familiars, there is also an Inquisitor meeple moving around the board (up to 2 spaces per round; it moves after all players have finishes their witch and familiar movements for the round). If the Inquisitor lands on a location where a witch is standing, the controlling player of the witch receives a penalty, which can include the immediate loss of the game if they have sufficiently high inquisition points already (inquisition points are assigned when completing certain actions as well as each time the Inquisitor catches your witch). In fact, in all of the games I played, the ending was triggered because a player didn’t carefully consider the Inquisitor’s upcoming movement when moving their witch on their turn and thus they found themselves caught by the Inquisitor and disqualified from winning. And these were smart opponents with several years of experience playing strategy games. So remember to be mindful of the Inquisitor’s current location and movement possibilities before you pick up your witch to move her.

In addition to the Inquisitor, there is a meeple representing the spirit of Morgana, the great witch who drew the witches and familiars to Triora. If Morgana catches up to a player’s witch on the board, the player is granted doom points or shovels (used in the seed to herb subroutine) if they are willing to accept some inquisition points as the cost for these benefits.

There is a moderate amount of analysis paralysis inherent in the game, but it’s not extreme. What will cause slowdowns during gameplay is trying to determine consensus on the rules as questions arise that the rulebook fails to address. For example:

1 . For the two player setup, the rulebook notes that two extra familiars should be placed on the board; these will move around the board each round and serve to occupy spaces and simulate the limitations on familiar movement that players would normally encounter during a three or four player game. Once they are initially placed (instructions say each player should place one familiar), are players limited to controlling the extra familiar they placed or can they select either of the extra familiars to move? The rulebook just states that before or after a player moves their own familiar they should move one of the extra familiars. We had much debate on this; I thought you should be able to move either familiar but my husband thought it made more sense that you should only be able to move the one you initially placed otherwise you could just move the one your opponent placed each turn to get it out of your way.

2. Do players alternate with other players their turns in which they place their witch and their familiar or does play pass from one player to another only after a player does both their turns?

3. When and how often do villager bonuses trigger? The rulebook states that they grant a bonus to the player in the final round, which implies the end of the game. But the bonus list includes “produce 1 shovel”, which would do no good in the final round so that doesn’t make sense. We think it should have read in each round, but we can’t be sure. Also, it’s a high price to play for a villager if you get its bonus only once per game as most villagers cost 3 potions.

4. More villager confusion: the rulebook notes that villagers may be used for actions in the Swamp House. But the only action available in the swamp house is to corrupt and acquire more villagers. It’s not clear how a player would use a villager to corrupt and acquire another villager.  And the rulebook also states that villagers may be used for the action in the City location. But the City is the other location where you corrupt and acquire villagers. Based on this, we think the rulebook was trying to convey that these 2 locations are where you get villagers, not where you use them as is actually written.

5. If a player is not at max inquisition points but the result of the Inquisitor catching their witch would take them over 32 points, does that also trigger the end of the game?

Once players get the rules sorted out (they will likely will need to decide on house rules for the questions above or request feedback from the publisher), they can dive in and enjoy the mechanics of the game. The artwork is lovely and the components are pretty well made (components include plastic coated cards, wooden meeples, wooden and cardboard tokens, cardboard player boards, and the large central board hosting all the locations).

I’m really indecisive on the final rating I should award Triora: City of Witches. A perfect rating (oui! oui! oui!) is out of the question because there are some minor problems with the game independent of the rulebook. For example, a round begins with nightfall and the movement of the Inquisitor and Morgana come after that during the day phase but on the top of the main board the Inquisitor’s movement is the very first item shown on the left, followed by Morgana’s movement; nightfall is shown at the end of the line. Why does the sequence of phases on the board not match the actual sequence of play? Is it possible that in earlier drafts of the game nightfall marked the end of the round instead of the beginning and the board was designed based on those drafts?  If the rulebook wasn’t a disaster the game could absolutely be worthy a oui! oui! rating.  So how heavily should the rulebook factor in here? It’s entirely possible that the problems with the rulebook aren’t the result of shoddy work but simply language translation issues (the game originated in Brazil; I am assuming the English rulebook is a translation). That makes me feel bad about dropping my rating down a notch. But with an oversaturated board game market (I heard last week that approximately 3000 new games are published yearly), I can’t in good faith recommend folks invest in a game that is such a headache to sort out how to play. So Triora: City of Witches gets a oui! from me for now. I’m going to hold onto the game and may play it occasionally and I’m happy to take another look at the game as a courtesy to the publisher should they fix their rulebook and ask me to re-evaluate.

Bonus side story: when posting pictures of the game to Instagram, I found out the village baker in Triora and other folks interested in the city track the #triora hashtag. This came to my attention because these individuals began to send me private messages on IG. They had heard a game was being made about their village but they didn’t know the details. They wanted to know the locations in the village depicted on the board (to see if they corresponded to actual locations). They wanted to know how one wins the game (imagine how awkward it was to explain that one of the goals of the game is to destroy the city). They wanted to see pictures of the game. It was a very entertaining series of conversations and now I’ve actually made a new friend from overseas after having chatted with him at length about the game and the village and its historical events regarding witchcraft.

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Publisher: Meeple BR Jogos
Players: 2-4
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): varies widely depending on whether the game ends via Inquisitor or destruction; 10-60 minutes.
Game type: worker placement, area control

Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

Because I love a good story and groove on rich immersive themes, legacy games really appeal to me. The chance to be part of an unfolding narrative is wonderful. It provides a structure for friends to commit to an investment of their time together on a regular basis. It holds everyone's interest over time (when the story is well written and executed). Especially valuable for me is that it lessens the bitter taste of a loss; I get so interested in the plot that I don't care as much about winning. I'm trying to tamp down my competitiveness and narrative driven games help. Finally, I’m a huge fan of Inka and Markus Brand (we have a number of their games in our library already, including all of the Exit  games, Encore, and Raja of Ganges). For all of these reasons, I was really excited when Ravensburger sent me a copy of Inka and Markus’s newest legacy game, Rise of Queensdale, to review.

I actually received my review copy early in 2019, but our RoQ group consists of parents with busy schedules so we can only get together about once a month to play. We've made our way through 13 games so far, and with only 2 or 3 more to go before we finish the legacy series of games, I thought it was a good time to sit down and share my thoughts on the game (Especially in light of Christmas approaching).

Rise of Queensdale  is a legacy worker placement game set in Medieval times. Players take on the role of subjects to King Nepomuk II and Queen Margaret and are tasked with building a new city, Queensdale, on behalf of the royal family. Each player is given jurisdiction over one quarter of the city and is competing against the other players to build the best borough.

As the legacy series of games progresses, players continue to build different types of structures to earn favor with the royal family (fame points) in the midst of dealing with political drama, disease, and other Medieval happenings. Each game in the series sees players attempting to reach their next epoch goal (a target number of fame points). If they are successful, they will have a new, higher epoch goal during the subsequent game.  Note that multiple players can reach their epoch goals during the same game as gameplay continues through the end of the current round once one player reaches their goal. The winner of each game is the person who surpassed their epoch goal by the most points.

The artwork in the game is illustrated by Michael Menzel with graphic design provided by the Fiore GMBH studio in Germany. Michael is probably most familiar to the US based board game community as the illustrator for the Legends of Andor series of games. He brings the same fantasy style drawings he used in that game, with their romantic fonts and soft palettes of color to his work here and it’s lovely. There are a lot of components included in Rise of Queensdale   and Michael does a good job of tying them all to the theme as a cohesive set with the artwork.

Components include dozens of different types of wooden tokens (huts, meeples, player score markers, etc.); the city building board,  scoreboard (epoch tracker, fame counter, and more), action board, player boards, building tiles, and other pieces made out of cardboard; and wooden dice. Everything has held up wonderfully as the months and games have gone by. The rulebook is flipped through frequently and while it’s showing signs of wear, it’s still holding together, staples in place. The rulebook is straightforward and we haven’t had any issues understanding the nuances of the rules.

The narrative in Rise of Queensdale is well written.  It’s memorable and everything that happens makes sense in the framework of the fictional universe laid down by the designers. We’ve played a lot of narrative driven games (Pandemic Legacy, Betrayal Legacy, Middara, Aeon’s End Legacy, Legacy of Dragonholt, Charterstone,  and Seafall, just to name a few) and Rise of Queensdale ranks near the top for narrative driven games that do a good job of incorporating the game play into the storyline. Some legacy games feel more like a story was loosely slapped on top of the game mechanisms, but that isn’t the case here. At the same time, this isn’t an RPG with some board game elements thrown in. The mechanics of the board game have been adeptly planned and implemented; they’re challenging and provide a compelling experience. As the legacy series unfolds, more actions are added to the action board; no one gets complacent or bored because new options keep coming available. Our game group has agreed that there seems to be enough components and actions to allow for replayability as a standard board game even after we’ve reached the very end of our last game in the legacy series.

Rise of Queensdale is a great board game for bringing friends and family together. It’s competitive, so those who turn up their noses at cooperative games and like to win against others will find it enjoyable. Everyone is working toward their own epoch goal and multiple players can reach their goal during a game, so everyone can feel accomplished even when they don’t win. This also creates a brilliant built-in catch up mechanism as the player in last place has the nearest epoch goal to reach. The further a player gets ahead of others in the series of games, the farther their epoch goal becomes and the greater the chance that the players behind them will reach their goals before the leader does. In our games, no one has been able to run away with the scoreboard so far. That helps the game stay family friendly. The narrative turns the game into a shared adventure where everyone is an active participant. Better than going to a movie is feeling like you’re starring in one. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this review, because Rise of Queensdale  is a series of games,  right from the beginning, it fosters a commitment for players to spend time together on a regular basis. That’s the best gift to share with friends and family – our time – and anything like Rise of Queensdale that can make that happen is a wonderful Christmas present to place or find under the tree.

Strategy Tip: If the narrative provides a new shared goal, PAY ATTENTION and work toward it. There’s usually penalties for everyone if it doesn’t get done and rewards for the players who successfully complete it.

-------------------------------------------------
Publisher: Ravensburger
Players: 2-4 (We played with 4)
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 1 hour per game
Game type: narrative driven, legacy, dice rolling, worker placement
Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

I have been playing board games since I was a kid. Chinese Checkers, Chess, Monopoly, Clue, Skipbo, Taboo, and Pictionary  were in regular rotation on our table when my parents and I or my friends and I sat down to play. Into my adulthood, and over the years since, I have continued to enjoy these games. And then, about ten years ago, I was introduced to "serious" board gaming. I began to play board games from small publishers where the designer and artist are a topic of discussion, as are game mechanisms (e.g. worker placement, area control, etc.), weight of the board game, replayability, and other concerns. I started with Settlers of Catan and then fell for PowerGrid, Puerto Rico, and Robinson Crusoe. Then I joined a few board game meetup groups in my community and my passion for the hobby really bloomed. 900+ games in my collection later, I've come to understand there's a bit of snobbery in board gaming circles. The games I knew and loved as a child are lumped into a category referred to as mass market games and sneered at by the board game elite. What defines a mass market game?  Typically published by a major toy company (vs a dedicated board gaming publisher), it has a lower price point, cheaper components, uncredited or corporate designers and artists, weak narrative, and is light to medium weight in complexity. I have several mass market games from yesteryear in my existing collection and am happy to play them with anyone who asks, so I don’t consider myself a board game snob. On the other hand, I don’t purchase new releases in this category anymore so maybe I’ve got one foot in the elite circle?

Recently, Ravensburger sent me Horrified . Released in 2019,  the game garnered high praise from Tom Vasel, who raved about it on Dice Tower. That piqued my husband’s interest, and he asked me to request it for review. Horrified  is easily classified as a mass market board game but since I’m no board game snob, I looked forward to playing it.

Spoiler: turns out I am becoming a little bit of a board game snob.

If you’ve read my reviews before, you know that theming and narrative backstory are important to me. Why has my character come together with others in the story setting laid out in the game? Do the game objectives make sense in the context of the story? What drives the behavior of the bad vs good guys in the game? What era in time do we exist in? Where are we geographically? None of this is explained in Horrified . In this cooperative game, players just find themselves dropped into a nameless town, fighting a hoard of monsters and escorting villagers to safety. How did we get to this town? Where is this town? When is this happening? Why this particular grouping of monsters? Turns out the answer to the last question is: because it’s a bunch of Universal Studios IP mashed together (but that doesn’t provide an in-game narrative explanation).  “Universal Classic Monsters is a name given to the horror, fantasy, thriller and science fiction films made by Universal Pictures during the decades of the 1920s through the 1950s. They were the first shared universe in the entire movie industry in Hollywood and around the world” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Classic_Monsters). The monsters include Dracula, The Mummy, Frankenstein’s Monster and his Bride, Wolf Man, Creature From the Black Lagoon, and The Invisible Man.

I had additional questions on why our characters would be in this cookie cutter town (I played the archaeologist, whose picture clearly indicates he belongs on a dig somewhere in Egypt) but my husband was able to explain that the characters are straight out of the Universal Studios movies (mine is from The Mummy)  and it only made sense they would be in town if the monsters were also in town.

Setting my problem with the narrative aside, let’s talk about the components. A portion of them are poorly constructed - there are flimsy cards and monster mats that bend easily and there are cheap plastic figurines without much detail – but most of the components are just fine. The cardboard player tokens are well made, there are custom dice (nice touch), and the central game board is easy to read, well laid out, and features bright colors. The rulebook is orderly and sensible and player aid cards are included (always a plus – I get irritated when publishers leave these out). And good news, there’s a fix for shoddy figurines. Someone came up with the brilliant idea to use Funko Pop! Universal Monsters Series mini figures in place of the included figurines and it really elevates the game. Unfortunately, there’s no fix for the flimsiness of the cards, so if you want to play regularly, you’re going to need to sleeve them.

The artwork is simple and cartoonish. I wouldn’t describe it as beautiful, realistic, or haunting; more like family friendly and what you’d expect from a mass market game.

What about the gameplay? I’d sum it up like this – it’s a lot like Pandemic but here we are dealing with monsters instead of ambiguous diseases and the gameplay is less complex. It’s engaging and fun. At the beginning of the game 2, 3, or 4 monsters are selected and placed on the board. On each player’s turn, after the player completes their actions, new items are spawned in various locations on the board (items are gathered by players and used to defend against and defeat the monsters), a special action occurs, and then the monsters move and attack. One of the special actions that can occur is to place a named villager in an assigned location. These villagers add additional depth to the game – players must escort them safely to their designated destination location and then are rewarded with perk cards that offer special abilities. If villagers are left to fend for themselves and are attacked by one of the monsters, they die, and our terror level goes up (terror level also goes up if any character is attacked and doesn’t have enough items to discard to fend off the attack). If the players defeat all the monsters, they win. If the terror level gets to the farthest point on the terror track, or if the monster deck runs out, the players lose. The whole game plays in less than an hour, it’s simple enough for kids to understand, and it plays up to five. The player count is a big plus for us as we have five family members once you count the three kids and so any four player games force us to leave a kid out. Because there isn’t a lot of complexity in Horrified , there isn’t much of a problem with analysis paralysis. Turns flow smoothly and quickly. There are several monsters to choose from when setting up monster combinations at the start of the game and each monster must be defeated in a unique way (thematic to the movie plot from which the monster is borrowed), so there is a good degree of replayability inherent in the box.

Providing a review rating for Horrified  is proving difficult. I’m realizing now that I have become a bit of a board game snob and so the flimsy cards and cheap plastic figurines really turn me off (the Funko Pop! minis fix the figurine problem but I resent having to go track them down at extra expense). And the lack of narrative really irritates me. So for my readers who are serious board gamers and only play with other serious gamers, I think a single Oui! is fair. On the other hand, the gameplay in Horrified  is much better than in your average mass market game. Its monster theme is different from all the other monster themes in the board gaming community (which mostly trend toward Cthulhu or space aliens). The gameplay is engaging – especially for my kids – and so it makes me happy to play it again with the family or with casual gamer friends. For those audiences (families and casual gamers), I’d give it a Oui! Oui!

-------------------------------------------------

Publisher: Ravensburger
Players: 1-5
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): about 45 minutes per game
Game type: dice rolling, cooperative, pick-up and deliver, mass market

Veteran Board Gamer Rating:                                          

Casual Gamer and Family Gaming Rating:

Rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

Hamlet and I have been super busy getting the first Chapter of Starfighter ready for printing - it's actually kind of a complicated process and we're both learning as we go. On the plus side, it's going to be a really nice looking volume, I think you all are really going to like it.

Also, I want to give out a HUGE thank you to everyone who ordered a t-shirt, the response was fantastic and I know Hamlet was really touched by all the supportive comments you guys left. So the pre-order is officially over, anything you order from the shop now will be shipping immediately. Did I mention how much you guys rock? -Thisbe

P.S. We got some requests for additional sizes of the Starfighter shirt so we now have a few each of the larger sizes (2X and 3X Large) in stock at the Starfighter Shop.

Hello Everyone!

It's happened! Starfighter: Chapter 01 is now available for pre-order!

Starfighter: Chapter 01 is a full color, 64 page 8"x6.5" booklet that includes the full first segment of the story as well as six new, exclusive illustrations, with a message of thanks to the fans and supporters! This run is limited; be sure to pre-order a copy of this sexy space saga today and be a part of Starfighter!

Starfighter: Chapter 01 contains graphic adult content and you must be at least 18 to purchase it!

All comic orders come with a small special goodie, And will ship on Dec. 3rd!

Starfighter: Chapter 01 is available for international shipping! If you have any questions about how to order or shipping availability, please email: starfightercomic@gmail.com

Thank you so much! To everyone that's read the comic and to everyone that pre-orders, YOU HAVE MY THANKS! And my love. You're the best! I couldn't have done it without you. -HamletMachine

Hello Everyone!

The pre-order for Starfighter: Chapter 01 has concluded! This means that all comics that are ordered from now on will ship out immediately. My love and undying gratitude to everyone that has ordered so far! You guys are so awesome. Seriously, thank you so much!

If you have any questions about how to order or shipping availability, please email: starfightercomic@gmail.com -HamletMachine

Starfighter prints are now up for sale at the online shop! These have previously only been available at conventions, but now you can have a print of your very own! There are five different illustrations to choose from; each print is 8 1/2" x 11" on matte paper, wrapped with a backboard.

Enjoy! -HamletMachine

I will be traveling quite a bit from this weekend until the end of October for conventions!

Event Yaoi's Yaoi Yuri Con - I will be a guest of honor at this convention in Lyon, France! I don't get to travel abroad for conventions very often so I am really looking forward to meeting European fans! :)

NYCC - I will have a table in the Artist Alley! (Table T12)

Nijicon - I will be a guest here! (I'll have a panel!)

So, I have three cons this month (IT JUST SORTA HAPPENED), one of which is overseas, so the Starfighter updates will have to wait until I get back! That sucks, I know, but I will be meeting with friends and fans at conventions, so it's all for a good cause! :) I will be back shortly after I return to wrap up Encke and Keeler!

I hope to do you all proud! Thank you so much as always for your support! -Hamlet

Kam až má sahat pomoc státu podnikatelům, živnostníkům a firmám? Očekávání jsou rozsáhlá, bude to velká zkouška odolnosti vlády. Protože podnikání je dobrovolná aktivita spojená nejen s profitem, ale i s rizikem.

Americké ministerstvo financí v pondělí uvedlo, že si v současném čtvrtletí půjčí rekordní 3 biliony dolarů (v přepočtu asi 75 bilionů korun), aby mohlo pokrýt obrovské náklady spojené s koronavirovou krizí. Peníze vláda potřebuje na testování, zdravotní péči, pomoc pro firmy a domácnosti a na opatření, která mají pomoci v boji s nemocí a zmírnit ekonomické dopady.

Počátkem března přebíral Oliver Dlouhý, zakladatel vyhledávače a distributora letenek Kiwi.com, cenu pro českého podnikatele roku. Dnes má firma minimální tržby a vyhlíží obnovení leteckého provozu. Ve videorozhovoru pro iDNES.cz byl však Oliver Dlouhý optimistický.

Méně stolů a větší rozestupy. Jihomoravské restaurace v pondělí otevřou své zahrádky. Musí dodržet přísná opatření proti šíření koronaviru, přesto nemají alternativu pro špatné počasí.

Firmy si budou moci odložit platby za sociální pojištění za tři měsíce. Odvody za květen, červen a červenec smí uhradit až do 20. října, rozhodla vláda. Odložená částka se však bude úročit.

Každá krize znamená příležitost.Takovým heslem se řídí egyptský miliardář Naguib Sawiris. Podle něj se bude ropa do roku a půl obchodovat za sto dolarů za barel. Zatímco jiní miliardáři se podílů v leteckých společnostech zbavují, Sawiris je chce nakupovat. Potenciál vidí i v turismu.

Koronavirová krize výrazně ovlivnila český pracovní trh. Ve srovnání s loňským rokem evidují personální agentury v posledních měsících přibližně poloviční nabídku nových pracovních pozic. Ubylo práce v gastronomii a cestovním ruchu, naopak logistika zažívá žně. Pro firmy zůstávají nejcennějšími pracovníky lidé z oblasti IT.

Zaměstnanci Škody Auto od pondělí začnou pracovat na tři směny, a to v závodech v Mladé Boleslavi a Kvasinách. Ve Vrchlabí zatím zůstává dvousměnný provoz, oznámil vedoucí komunikace podniku Tomáš Kotera. Automobilka obnovila výrobu 27. dubna ve všech třech českých závodech, ale jen na dvě směny. Obnovení výroby doprovází více než 80 hygienických opatření.

Ve Spojených státech v dubnu zaniklo rekordních 20,5 milionu pracovních míst. Míra nezaměstnanosti vzrostla na 14,7 procenta z březnových 4,4 procenta. Dostala se tak na nejvyšší úroveň od velké hospodářské krize ve 30. letech minulého století.

Česká národní banka čeká propad české ekonomiky o 8 procent. Na předkrizovou úroveň se nedostane ani v příštím roce. Restart bude záviset i na tom, jak rychle lidé začnou utrácet. Napovědí příští měsíce, kdy se víc lidí bude hlásit na úřady práce.

Dr. Anthony S Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and just...

Societies gripped by cataclysmic wars, depressions, or pandemics can become acutely sensitive to...

The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It 

The coronavirus has starkly revealed what most of us already knew: The concentration of wealth in America has created a a health care system in which the wealthy can buy care others can’t. 

It’s also created an education system in which the super-rich can buy admission to college for their children, a political system in which they can buy Congress and the presidency,  and a justice system in which they can buy their way out of jail. 

Almost everyone else has been hurled into a dystopia of bureaucratic arbitrariness, corporate indifference, and the legal and financial sinkholes that have become hallmarks of modern American life.

The system is rigged. But we can fix it.

Today, the great divide in American politics isn’t between right and left. The underlying contest is between a small minority who have gained power over the system, and the vast majority who have little or none. 

Forget politics as you’ve come to see it – as contests between Democrats and Republicans. The real divide is between democracy and oligarchy.

The market has been organized to serve the wealthy. Since 1980, the percentage of the nation’s wealth owned by the richest four hundred Americans has quadrupled (from less than 1 percent to 3.5 percent) while the share owned by the entire bottom half of America has dropped to 1.3 percent.

The three wealthiest Americans own as much as the entire bottom half of the population. Big corporations, CEOs, and a handful of extremely rich people have vastly more influence on public policy than the average American. Wealth and power have become one and the same.

As the oligarchs tighten their hold over our system, they have lambasted efforts to rein in their greed as “socialism”, which, to them, means getting something for doing nothing.

But “getting something for doing nothing” seems to better describe the handouts being given to large corporations and their CEOs. 

General Motors, for example, has received $600 million in federal contracts and $500 million in tax breaks since Donald Trump took office. Much of this “corporate welfare” has gone to executives, including CEO Mary Barra, who raked in almost $22 million in compensation in 2018 alone. GM employees, on the other hand, have faced over 14,000 layoffs and the closing of three assembly plants and two component factories.

And now, in the midst of a pandemic, big corporations are getting $500 billion from taxpayers. 

Our system, it turns out, does practice one form of socialism – socialism for the rich. Everyone else is subject to harsh capitalism.

Socialism for the rich means people at the top are not held accountable. Harsh capitalism for the many, means most Americans are at risk for events over which they have no control, and have no safety nets to catch them if they fall.

Among those who are particularly complicit in rigging the system are the CEOs of America’s corporate behemoths. 

Take Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, whose net worth is $1.4 billion. He comes as close as anyone to embodying the American system as it functions today.

Dimon describes himself as “a patriot before I’m the CEO of JPMorgan.”

He brags about the corporate philanthropy of his bank, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to his company’s net income, which in 2018 was $30.7 billion – roughly one hundred times the size of his company’s investment program for America’s poor cities. 

Much of JP Morgan’s income gain in 2018 came from savings from the giant Republican tax cut enacted at the end of 2017 – a tax cut that Dimon intensively lobbied Congress for.

Dimon doesn’t acknowledge the inconsistencies between his self-image as “patriot first” and his role as CEO of America’s largest bank. He doesn’t understand how he has hijacked the system.

Perhaps he should read my new book.

To understand how the system has been hijacked, we must understand how it went from being accountable to all stakeholders – not just stockholders but also workers, consumers, and citizens in the communities where companies are headquartered and do business – to intensely shareholder-focused capitalism.

In the post-WWII era, American capitalism assumed that large corporations had responsibilities to all their stakeholders. CEOs of that era saw themselves as “corporate statesmen” responsible for the common good.

But by the 1980s, shareholder capitalism (which focuses on maximizing profits) replaced stakeholder capitalism. That was largely due to the corporate raiders – ultra-rich investors who hollowed-out once-thriving companies and left workers to fend for themselves.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, for example, targeted major companies like Texaco and Nabisco by acquiring enough shares of their stock to force major changes that increased their stock value – such as suppressing wages, fighting unions, laying off workers, abandoning communities for cheaper labor elsewhere, and taking on debt – and then selling his shares for a fat profit. In 1985, after winning control of Trans World Airlines, he loaded the airline with more than $500 million in debt, stripped it of its assets, and pocketed nearly $500 million in profits.

As a result of the hostile takeovers mounted by Icahn and other raiders, a wholly different understanding about the purpose of the corporation emerged.

Even the threat of hostile takeovers forced CEOs to fall in line by maximizing shareholder profits over all else. The corporate statesmen of previous decades became the corporate butchers of the 1980s and 1990s, whose nearly exclusive focus was to “cut out the fat” and make their companies “lean and mean.”

As power increased for the wealthy and large corporations at the top, it shifted in exactly the opposite direction for workers. In the mid-1950s, 35 percent of all private-sector workers in the United States were unionized. Today, 6.4 percent of them are.

The wave of hostile takeovers pushed employers to raise profits and share prices by cutting payroll costs and crushing unions, which led to a redistribution of income and wealth from workers to the richest 1 percent. Corporations have fired workers who try to organize and have mounted campaigns against union votes. All the while, corporations have been relocating to states with few labor protections and so-called “right-to-work” laws that weaken workers’ ability to join unions.

Power is a zero-sum game. People gain it only when others lose it. The connection between the economy and power is critical. As power has concentrated in the hands of a few, those few have grabbed nearly all the economic gains for themselves.

The oligarchy has triumphed because no one has paid attention to the system as a whole – to the shifts from stakeholder to shareholder capitalism, from strong unions to giant corporations with few labor protections, and from regulated to unchecked finance.

As power has shifted to large corporations, workers have been left to fend for themselves. Most Americans developed 3 key coping mechanisms to keep afloat.

The first mechanism was women entering the paid workforce. Starting in the late 1970s, women went into paid work in record numbers, in large part to prop up family incomes, as the wages of male workers stagnated or declined. 

Then, by the late 1990s, even two incomes wasn’t enough to keep many families above water, causing them to turn to the next coping mechanism: working longer hours. By the mid-2000s a growing number of people took on two or three jobs, often demanding 50 hours or more per week.

Once the second coping mechanism was exhausted, workers turned to their last option: drawing down savings and borrowing to the hilt. The only way Americans could keep consuming was to go deeper into debt. By 2007, household debt had exploded, with the typical American household owing 138 percent of its after-tax income. Home mortgage debt soared as housing values continued to rise. Consumers refinanced their homes with even larger mortgages and used their homes as collateral for additional loans.

This last coping mechanism came to an abrupt end in 2008 when the debt bubbles burst, causing the financial crisis. Only then did Americans begin to realize what had happened to them, and to the system as a whole. That’s when our politics began to turn ugly.  

So what do we do about it? The answer is found in politics and rooted in power.

The way to overcome oligarchy is for the rest of us to join together and form a multiracial, multiethnic coalition of working-class, poor and middle-class Americans fighting for democracy.

This agenda is neither “right” nor “left.” It is the bedrock for everything America must do.

The oligarchy understands that a “divide-and-conquer” strategy gives them more room to get what they want without opposition. Lucky for them, Trump is a pro at pitting native-born Americans against immigrants, the working class against the poor, white people against people of color. His goal is cynicism, disruption, and division. Trump and the oligarchy behind him have been able to rig the system and then whip around to complain loudly that the system is rigged.

But history shows that oligarchies cannot hold on to power forever. They are inherently unstable. When a vast majority of people come to view an oligarchy as illegitimate and an obstacle to their wellbeing, oligarchies become vulnerable.

As bad as it looks right now, the great strength of this country is our resilience. We bounce back. We have before. We will again.

In order for real change to occur – in order to reverse the vicious cycle in which we now find ourselves – the locus of power in the system will have to change.

The challenge we face is large and complex, but we are well suited for the fight ahead. Together, we will dismantle the oligarchy. Together, we will fix the system.

How CEOs Are Ruining America

Today, America’s wealthiest business moguls – like Jamie Dimon, head of JPMorgan Chase – claim that they are “patriots before CEOs” because they employ large numbers of workers or engage in corporate philanthropy.

Rubbish.

CEOs are in business to make a profit and maximize their share prices, not to serve America. And yet these CEOs dominate American politics and essentially run the system. 

Therein lies the problem: They cannot be advocates for their corporations and simultaneously national leaders responsible for the wellbeing of the country. This is the biggest contradiction at the core of our broken system.

A frequent argument made by CEOs is that so-called “American competitiveness” should not be hobbled by regulations and taxes. Jamie Dimon often warns that tight banking regulations will cause Wall Street to lose financial business to banks in nations with weaker regulations. Under Dimon’s convenient logic, JPMorgan is America. 

Dimon used the same faulty logic about American competitiveness to support the Trump tax cut. “We don’t have a competitive tax system here,” he warned.

But when Dimon talks about “competitiveness” he’s really talking about the competitiveness of JPMorgan, its shareholders, and billionaire executives like himself.

The concept of “American competitiveness” is meaningless when it comes to a giant financial enterprise like JPMorgan that moves money all over the world. JPMorgan doesn’t care where it makes money. Its profits don’t directly depend on the wellbeing of Americans.

“American competitiveness” is just as meaningless when it comes to big American-based corporations that make and buy things all over the world. 

Consider a mainstay of corporate America, General Electric. Two decades ago, most GE workers were American. Today the majority are non-American. In 2017, GE announced it was increasing its investments in advanced manufacturing and robotics in China, which it termed “an important and critical market for GE.” In 2018, over half of GE’s revenue came from abroad. Its once core allegiance to American workers and consumers is gone.

Google has opened an Artificial Intelligence lab in Beijing. Until its employees forced the company to stop, Google was even building China a prototype search engine designed to be compatible with China’s censors.

Apple employs 90,000 people in the United States but contracts with roughly a million workers abroad. An Apple executive told The New York Times, “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible” – and showing profits big enough to continually increase Apple’s share price.

American corporations will do and make things wherever around the world they can boost their profits the most, and invest in research and development wherever it will deliver the largest returns. 

The truth is that America’s real competitiveness doesn’t depend on profit-seeking shareholders or increasingly global corporations. The real competitiveness of the United States depends on only one thing: the productivity of Americans. 

That in turn depends on our education, our health, and the infrastructure that connects us. Yet today, American workers are hobbled by deteriorating schools, unaffordable college tuition, decaying infrastructure, and soaring health-care costs. 

And truth be told, big American corporations and the CEOs that head them – wielding outsized political influence – couldn’t care less. They want tax cuts and rollbacks of regulations so they can make even fatter profits. All of which is putting Americans on a glide path toward lousier jobs and lower wages. How’s that for patriotism?

The first step toward fixing this broken system is to stop buying CEOs’ lies. How can we believe that Jamie Dimon’s initiatives on corporate philanthropy are anything other than public relations? Why should we think that he or his fellow CEOs seek any goal other than making more money for themselves and their firms? We can’t and we shouldn’t. They don’t have America’s best interests at heart — they’re making millions to be CEOs, not patriots.

Big American corporations aren’t organized to promote the wellbeing of Americans, and Americans cannot thrive within a system run largely by corporations. Fundamental reform will be led only by concerned and active citizens.

The Solutions to the Climate Crisis No One is Talking About

Both our economy and the environment are in crisis. Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few while the majority of Americans struggle to get by. The climate crisis is worsening inequality, as those who are most economically vulnerable bear the brunt of flooding, fires, and disruptions of supplies of food, water, and power.

At the same time, environmental degradation and climate change are themselves byproducts of widening inequality. The political power of wealthy fossil fuel corporations has stymied action on climate change for decades. Focused only on maximizing their short-term interests, those corporations are becoming even richer and more powerful — while sidelining workers, limiting green innovation, preventing sustainable development, and blocking direct action on our dire climate crisis.

Make no mistake: the simultaneous crisis of inequality and climate is no fluke. Both are the result of decades of deliberate choices made, and policies enacted, by ultra-wealthy and powerful corporations.

We can address both crises by doing four things:

First, create green jobs. Investing in renewable energy could create millions of family sustaining, union jobs and build the infrastructure we need for marginalized communities to access clean water and air. The transition to a renewable energy-powered economy can add 550,000 jobs each year while saving the US economy $78 billion through 2050. In other words, a Green New Deal could turn the climate crisis into an opportunity - one that both addresses the climate emergency and creates a fairer and more equitable society.

Second, stop dirty energy. A massive investment in renewable energy jobs isn’t enough to combat the climate crisis. If we are going to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, we must tackle the problem at its source: Stop digging up and burning more oil, gas, and coal.

The potential carbon emissions from these fossil fuels in the world’s currently developed fields and mines would take us well beyond the 1.5°C increased warming that Nobel Prize winning global scientists tell us the planet can afford. Given this, it’s absurd to allow fossil fuel corporations to start new dirty energy projects.

Even as fossil fuel companies claim to be pivoting toward clean energy, they are planning to invest trillions of dollars in new oil and gas projects that are inconsistent with global commitments to limit climate change. And over half of the industry’s expansion is projected to happen in the United States. Allowing these projects means locking ourselves into carbon emissions we can’t afford now, let alone in the decades to come.

Even if the U.S. were to transition to 100 percent renewable energy today, continuing to dig fossil fuels out of the ground will lead us further into climate crisis. If the U.S. doesn’t stop now, whatever we extract will simply be exported and burned overseas. We will all be affected, but the poorest and most vulnerable among us will bear the brunt of the devastating impacts of climate change.

Third, kick fossil fuel companies out of our politics. For decades, companies like Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP have been polluting our democracy by pouring billions of dollars into our politics and bankrolling elected officials to enact policies that protect their profits. The oil and gas industry spent over $103 million on the 2016 federal elections alone. And that’s just what they were required to report: that number doesn’t include the untold amounts of “dark money” they’ve been using to buy-off politicians and corrupt our democracy. The most conservative estimates still put their spending at 10 times that of environmental groups and the renewable energy industry.

As a result, American taxpayers are shelling out $20 billion a year to bankroll oil and gas projects – a huge transfer of wealth to the top. And that doesn’t even include hundreds of billions of dollars of indirect subsidies that cost every United States citizen roughly $2,000 a year. This has to stop.

And we’ve got to stop giving away public lands for oil and gas drilling. In 2018, under Trump, the Interior Department made $1.1 billion selling public land leases to oil and gas companies, an all-time record – triple the previous 2008 record, totaling more than 1.5 million acres for drilling alone, threatening multiple cultural sites and countless wildlife. As recently as last September, the Trump administration opened 1.56 million acres of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, threatening Indigenous cultural heritage and hundreds of species that call it home.

That’s not all. The ban on exporting crude oil should be reintroduced and extended to other fossil fuels. The ban, in place for 40 years, was lifted in 2015, just days after the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement. After years of campaigning by oil executives, industry heads, and their army of lobbyists, the fossil fuel industry finally got its way.

We can’t wait for these changes to be introduced in 5 or 10 years time — we need them now.

Fourth, require the fossil fuel companies that have profited from environmental injustice compensate the communities they’ve harmed.

As if buying-off our democracy wasn’t enough, these corporations have also deliberately misled the public for years on the amount of damage their products have been causing. 

For instance, as early as 1977, Exxon’s own scientists were warning managers that fossil fuel use would warm the planet and cause irreparable damage. In the 1980s, Exxon shut down its internal climate research program and shifted to funding a network of advocacy groups, lobbying arms, and think tanks whose sole purpose was to cloud public discourse and block action on the climate crisis. The five largest oil companies now spend about $197 million a year on ad campaigns claiming they care about the climate — all the while massively increasing their spending on oil and gas extraction.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans, especially poor, Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, already have to fight to drink clean water and breathe clean air as their communities are devastated by climate-fueled hurricanes, floods, and fires. As of 2015, nearly 21 million people relied on community water systems that violated health-based quality standards. 

Going by population, that’s essentially 200 Flint, Michigans, happening all at once. If we continue on our current path, many more communities run the risk of becoming “sacrifice zones,” where citizens are left to survive the toxic aftermath of industrial activity with little, if any, help from the entities responsible for creating it.

Climate denial and rampant pollution are not victimless crimes. Fossil fuel corporations must be held accountable, and be forced to pay for the damage they’ve wrought.

If these solutions sound drastic to you, it’s because they are. They have to be if we have any hope of keeping our planet habitable. The climate crisis is not a far-off apocalyptic nightmare — it is our present day.

Australia’s bushfires wiped out a billion animals, California’s fire season wreaks more havoc every year, and record-setting storms are tearing through our communities like never before. 

Scientists tell us we have 10 years left to dramatically reduce emissions. We have no room for meek half-measures wrapped up inside giant handouts to the fossil fuel industry. 

We deserve a world without fossil fuels. A world in which workers and communities thrive and our shared climate comes before industry profits. Working together, I know we can make it happen. We have no time to waste.

Today Wrigley turned 6 years old! I can't believe he's lived with me for over 5.5 years. He's such a wonderful, joyful pup. Happy birthday, Wrigley Beans.

Probert was adopted 6 years ago at about 11 months old from a rescue in Columbus, OH called Measle's Animal Haven. He was a scrawny little pup who had been abused, rescued, and then contracted a mild case of parvo (mild due to being an older puppy) and been bitten by another dog in rescue. Now he's a little snugglebutt who still has issues from his past, but over just the past couple of years is really learning to be a DOG. Finally.


Wrigley was adopted 7 years ago at about 5 months old. He was a direct rescue from people who didn't want him. They said they were watching him for someone who went out of town and never returned to pick him up. Wrigley was living life underneath a trailer at the end of a tow chain and had never even been given a name. The people who had him did doxie rescue and had about 9 rescue dogs in their house, but never thought to bring Wrigley indoors because of his breed. To their credit, they did make some effort to rehome him and I was happy to invite him into my pack! Now he is a wiggly goofball. Definitely the most challenging of my dogs due to his guard barking, but he makes up for it by being one of the most genuinely sweet souls I've ever encountered.





So, there it is. Happy Adoptaversaries to all of my babies. My life would simply NOT be the same without you. I love you all so so much.

This is from the tour show. It's the image we put up at the start of the sketch about the designer of the snake, to try to get across the idea of an animal design department. Tomorrow, I'll put up the image that replaces it when the head of the department says he has one or two questions about the new design...

All these things can be clicked for bigger-er, by the way.

After all those people and animals, here's a vegetable.

Смешно
https://www.forbes.com/2010/02/05/world-health-organization-swine-flu-pandemic-opinions-contributors-michael-fumento.html
оказывается, в 2010-м WHO (это те самые люди, которые
придумали карантин против ковида и везде его пропагандируют)
замечательно сели в лужу, объявив свиной грипп пандемией
и проебав на том 18 миллиардов баксов. Но делали это
они не просто так, а под знакомыми лозунгами
"solidarity, equity and social justice". То бишь WHO
это такая коллективная Оказия Кортез, банда ебанутых
SJW, возглавляющая атаку международного капитала на
общественные и личные свободы.

В 2010-м со свиным гриппом у них не
получилось, теперь они пытаются с короной,
и у них все пока получается.

Многие спрашивают, кому нужно это адское
говно, "карантины" и все прочее, и зачем
либеральная общественность так за них цепляется.
А вот за этим, очевидно. Коррупционеры из WHO рвутся
к власти, а пропагандисты за "solidarity, equity
and social justice" (CNN, NYT, Guardian и иже с
ними) им помогают, ибо надеются урвать свой кусок.

Интересно, что в 2010-м в каждом магазине
(я как раз жил в Бразилии) на входе был специальный
рекомендованный WHO против свиного гриппа диспенсер
антисептического геля для рук, а сейчас их нет.
Специально ходил сегодня в аптеку, искал,
но нет антисептического геля и там.

В принципе, если бы кому-то хотелось
бороться с коронавирусом, они бы этим в первую очередь
озаботились, но никак. Очевидно, WHO, под впечатлением прошлого
раза, сама убедила себя, что корона это фейк, и никаких реальных
мер больше не предлагает. С другой стороны, реальных мер WHO
и не надо, пусть эта музыка будет вечной, им так выгоднее.

В общем, чиновник WHO это адский гад,
похуже любого коронавируса.

Привет

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