Madrak1 - A Tour Of Trolls

Continuing on with my Tour of Trolls I'm going with our post-CID zero to hero star: Madrak1.

Fair warning, this is a long article because there's just so much to cover with this caster!

Pre-CID, Madrak1 was one of the worst casters in the faction. Post CID he's so amazingly good that it seems hard to think of a time when he won't be featured in most Trollblood Steamroller pairings.

He's not quite the (pre-nerf) Haley2 of Trollbloods, but he may well be our Rask.

Strengths

What makes him so good is pretty obvious:

Even Ground gives everything in his control area straight up +2 DEF and no knockdown, and it can be cast by his Blood Boon ability, which can proc off of his ranged attack.

His other two spells are also good:

Guided Hand: An additional dice to hit on a model/unit's next melee attack

Jackhammer: Target warbeast can make an additional melee attack.

Both of these spells are strong, though Guided Hand is really going to shine. Additionally both of these spells can be cast by Madrak1's all-but-officially-mandatory caster attachment: the Runebearer.

If this was all Madrak1 had, he'd still be in contention for a lot of lists, but he's got one of the most amazing feats for Trollbloods:  You can't charge models in his control area and all Trollblood models heal D3+3 damage.

I'll be honest, 99% of the time I've feated purely for the "no-charge" portion of the feat simply to deliver my army to have the alpha strike and it's gloriously powerful.  The healing setup can be a big deal, especially since things like Champions are obvious auto-includes with Madrak, where the feat near guarantees they will be fully healed if they take damage and spread it around via their Sanguine Bond ability.

Madrak1 also has Tactician for friendly warrior models in his CMD range, allowing for an amazing amount of flexibility in order of activations as well as clearing out your own models or unpacking what will inevitably be a troop heavy list.  Tactician in Trolls is simply amazing because of all the space the medium or larger sized based army takes up on the table.

On top of all this, Madrak1 still retains his old MK1 ability to use a scroll once per game that allows him to just ignore a damage roll.  With Even Ground up and under the Stone's Aura Madrak's defensive stats are insane: DEF 16, ARM 19, with 18 Damage boxes, tough with no-knockdown, and he can camp for transfers.

Key Pieces for Madrak1

More than other casters, a Madrak1 list seems to want specific pieces to really function.  Before I go into List Theory I want to lay out the pieces that I feel are must take options for Madrak which will influence what we can do in theory.

The Runebearer – Extending Madrak's control area from 10" to 12" with Arcane Repeater is absolutely necessary to get the most out of Even Ground and Madrak's feat.  Harmonious exaltation is clutch for those turns where you can't reliably proc Blood Boon to cast Even Ground, which allows Madrak to cast it himself for 2, possibly throwing out a Guided Hand if necessary, or just camping Fury.  The Runebearer can also be used to cast Guided Hand on a unit himself every turn if you wished, which helps with Fury management and getting things going before Madrak has to activate.  Suffice it to say you will always be taking the Runebearer with Madrak, but luckily he will be free due to theme benefits.

Bomber or Impailer – Madrak really wants the Far Strike animus to be able to shoot 12" with his axe to proc Blood Boon to cast Even Ground. I've played a fair number of games with Madrak without the Far Strike animus and my conclusions after the fact are that we should always have it.

Eilish Garrity – Madrak1 can make life an utter nightmare for your opponent in a variety of ways: Lots of single wound infantry that suddenly have very hard to deal with defensive stats, Champion bricks that are DEF16 in melee, the fact that you can run into position and deny charges onto your stuff. The way a lot of opponents will deal with this is via control, most of which is delivered via spells: Repudiate to deny a unit orders, Crippling Grasp to reduce their effectiveness, etc.  Eilish solves this problems by removing offensive upkeeps from your models, freeing them up to be able to run or charge in.  If he isn't doing that, then he's busy giving Puppet Master to Madrak who can much more reliably kill a model with his thrown axe to proc Blood Boon.  It's hard to dedicate 5 points to this model, especially since he can't be free as a Minion Solo, but he's worth it to guarantee Madrak can play into a lot of matches he'd otherwise struggle in due to control elements.

Fell Caller – This is more of an honorable mention than a pure necessity, but for most lists I've played with Madrak, you need a Fell Caller.  Most of the time at least one or more of your units will need Pathfinder before they have it (ie. Champs + Skaldi only get it on the charge, Fennblades via mini-feat), or +2 MAT to tackle opposing high DEF models.  I can see a Skaldi+Champs and Double Fennblade list that can play without the Fell Caller, but other builds with a second unit of Champs, or Longriders, or Kriel Warriors are going to want the Fell Caller to at least maneuver around terrain on the approach.

Band of Heroes – This is where Madrak1 wants to be played.  It's arguable that Madrak could be in Storm of the North, but the main benefit from that is getting to upkeep your spells for free on Northkin units, immunity to cold on all your Warrior models, and two snow drifts.  The problem is that Madrak1 has no upkeeps, immunity to cold doesn't really matter, and you lose access to the strongest benefits in Band of Heroes: Remove from Play on all melee attacks, ignoring Tough on all melee attacks by Warrior models, and the extra 2" of deployment for what will inevitably be a Troop based army.   Fennblades seem very strong with Madrak which are only in BoH, but I can possibly see trying to go for a hard DEF skew with Northkin Raiders, Champions, and Fire Eaters in Storm in the North – but it just seems like it's easier to counter.

List Theory

There are so very many ways to build Madrak1 that the mind boggles, and there are some key decisions you need to make which will influence your list:

Double or Single Champion Units? This will strongly dictate which way the list will go.  Double Champion units gives you two problem units for your opponent to deal with, but it's obviously weaker against lists that can easily deal with DEF16 Champion units in melee.  This will dictate what else you can take in the list, since it's mutually exclusive with double Fennblade units, at least if you want to take the important solo's needed to run the list.

Bomber/Mauler or Min Beast Points?  If you're going to use minimum points, the light package with Impailer and 2x 9 Point Beasts of your choice is the safest bet.  In this case I think I'd go with an Impailer, Bouncer, and a Pyre Troll so that Madrak can get up to PS18 under the Strength Aura of the Kriel Stone if he needs to do some heavy lifting.   I'm personally much more of a fan of using a Bomber and a Mauler to round out the beast package, even though it cuts into your unit budget to spend the extra 5 points over Madrak1's beast points.

My List:

I'm going to go through the list I've used for our last Scrum (a Steamroller tournament run 1 game a
week over a month) where I paired Madrak1 with Kolgrima.  This is a list where I tried to squeeze in as much value as possible, but in doing so I went without the Far Strike Animus.  I've come to realize that this is a mistake and so am going to list variants I want to play going forward in another section below.

Trollblood - More is More

Theme: Band of Heroes
3 / 3 Free Cards     75 / 75 Army


Madrak Ironhide, Thornwood Chieftain - WB: +29
-    Trollkin Runebearer - PC: 0
-    Dire Troll Mauler - PC: 15 (Battlegroup Points Used: 15)
-    Earthborn Dire Troll - PC: 14 (Battlegroup Points Used: 14)

Eilish Garrity, the Occultist - PC: 5
Fell Caller Hero - PC: 0
Stone Scribe Chronicler - PC: 4

Kriel Warriors - Leader & 9 Grunts: 11
Kriel Warriors - Leader & 9 Grunts: 11
Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes - Leader & 5 Grunts: 9
-    Stone Scribe Elder - PC: 3
Trollkin Champions - Leader & 4 Grunts: 16
-    Skaldi Bonehammer - PC: 0
Trollkin Champions - Leader & 4 Grunts: 16


THEME: Band of Heroes

The big change I found in this list was exactly how good Kriel Warriors are with Madrak1.  Taking two units of Champions and two units of Kriel Warriors is just too much for most opponents to deal with reliably.  Against many opponents, you can just run in and jam your way to a scenario victory, keeping them out of zones while you rack up points.

Kriel Warriors main problem is having low MAT and POW.  While Madrak doesn't fix their POW problem, he does make them hit very reliably with Guided Hand, which lets them chew through opposing enemy infantry nicely.  The Stone Scribe Chronicler can be very good here, with Heroes Tragedy to knockdown anything that kills one, though most of the time it didn't really matter much.

In the end, what seemed to matter the most with this list was exactly how hard it was for opponents to actually just kill Kriel Warriors.  At DEF 14, ARM17 vs. guns and ARM19 vs. melee, I was comfortably able to just run them into opposing infantry or even put them in walk+attack range while under Madrak's feat and without getting boosted damage rolls, the small amount of attacks that hit just bounced off the armor.

Literally every tough check a Kriel Warrior makes is utterly demoralizing for your opponent, especially if they're trying to just clear them out to score scenario VP's.

The best part was that they're literally there just to jam, anything they kill is a bonus. They deliver the Champions and beasts extremely well, and stop a lot of armies just dead in their tracks.  

My Results

The only list pairs I had to avoid dropping Madrak into during our Scrum was Vlad1 Rockets which has enough volume of attacks to chew through all of my guys. In fact out of all the games I've played with Madrak1 post-CID (with many more lists than the one above), I've only lost literally one of them - it was a case where I made a mistake and left Madrak in range of a teleporting Warpwolf where I could have just moved to the back of a zone, not even cast Even Ground, and won on Scenario.

Madrak is a scenario and attrition monster in this list. You can jam opponents out on scenario AND back it all up with hard hitting stuff that is very tough to deal with for a lot of opponents.  Like all Troll lists, it really likes to go first, but it can handle things pretty well going second.  The extra turn to just dump Fury on the Krielstone and run as far forward as possible with the Kriel Warriors is a big deal: this version of Madrak is much slower than the alternative builds with Fennblades or Long Riders.  Basically I'm trading speed for bodies and having two heavies and two units of Champions.

Future Changes

In hindsight, I've had some games where I got lucky to avoid assassinations, and a lot of this was related to the fact that the list has almost zero ways to reach out and touch people, or deal with any kind of sniping out of problem models.

This is why I intend to switch to the following list now that our tournament is over:

Trollblood - Bombs 'n Kriels

Theme: Band of Heroes
3 / 3 Free Cards     75 / 75 Army


Madrak Ironhide, Thornwood Chieftain - WB: +29
-    Trollkin Runebearer - PC: 0
-    Dire Troll Bomber - PC: 19 (Battlegroup Points Used: 19)
-    Dire Troll Mauler - PC: 15 (Battlegroup Points Used: 10)

Fell Caller Hero - PC: 0
Eilish Garrity, the Occultist - PC: 5

Kriel Warriors - Leader & 9 Grunts: 11
Kriel Warriors - Leader & 5 Grunts: 7
Krielstone Bearer & Stone Scribes - Leader & 5 Grunts: 9
-    Stone Scribe Elder - PC: 3
Trollkin Champions - Leader & 4 Grunts: 16
-    Skaldi Bonehammer - PC: 0
Trollkin Champions - Leader & 4 Grunts: 16
-    Trollkin Sorcerer - PC: 3


THEME: Band of Heroes

I'm not sure about the Sorcerer on the second unit of Champions, but its 3 points left over and fills out the list. It could easily just swap to being a unit of Swamp Gobbers to help protect line of sight to Madrak since the main way he seems to lose in the matches he's targeted for is getting assassinated.

The main losses are 4 Kriel Warriors and the Chronicler to pick up a Bomber and to me it definitely seems worth it.  You still have two screens for the Champs and beasts, and the loss of 4 Kriel Warriors should be made up for by the Bomber and Madrak's improved ranged output.

This all said, I have to admit I may want to swing around and start trying a faster list, akin to what I played when I started Madrak1, before I got a deal from a friend selling his old Trolls to double up on a few of my units where you run one of everything: Longriders, Fennblades, and Champs.  You can squeeze all of that plus Eilish, a Bomber, and a Mauler into 75 points and it worked well enough before I started experimenting in other ways.  I may go back to that if I find being too slow with the Kriel Warriors isn't as good against a wide variety of the field. In fact, if you're coming back to Trolls from MK2 when you possibly didn't own 2 units of Champs, Fenns, or Kriels, this kind of list would be a great place to start.

Conclusions

There are just so many ways to play Madrak1 and he is so incredibly powerful for Trolls as a faction that it's hard to see him coming out of list pairs for both power and fun reasons.  While I think Band of Heroes is his best place, there is definitely a way to run him in Storm in the North or Power of Dhunia, though probably not Kriel Company (which is more a fault of the theme than of Madrak).  The only worry I have is that he may be too good, and may stagnate our pairings a bit. That said, it is nice to always have as a kind of question/answer that can be slotted back into Troll list pairs as we go forward into MK3. 

IBM PCjr. Upgrades Part 2

When I first received my IBM PCjr. back in 2013, I was able to discuss most of the readily-available upgrades for the system that existed at that time.  https://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2014/03/ibm-pcjr-upgrades.html  Now, almost six years later, we have some new upgrades available.  Let's see what modern conveniences can do for a 35-year old computer system


Read more »

You say "obsessed" as if it is a bad thing.

Memories Of You

I have to warn all who dare enter that this post is going to be emotionally charged.

I actually wrote it a year ago. My wife went to the hospital for pregnancy complications and was told she'd be leaving with a baby - a few weeks earlier than expected. I only had a few days to process this information, which for reasons that will be explained within was complicated. I couldn't sleep and I was up all night writing and sorting through my feelings. This blog post is one of the results. I didn't post it because it felt unfinished, unrefined. I didn't mind putting my emotions out there for all to consume, but I did want to edit the writing before posting. I just wasn't brave enough to re-read it after it had been written.

My new son turned one yesterday (May 4, 2016) and I felt it was time to revisit this and put it online.

- TOP

---

"キミの記憶" or "Memories of You" is one of the most important songs in my life. My Japanese is pretty bad, because I let it fall far into disrepair over the years, but for some reason this song spoke to me even before I transcribed the significance of every word and stroke of every character into my mind. I was listening to the soundtrack of Persona 3 one night and this song came on. It's peppy and upbeat. It's pretty and I've always enjoyed it since playing Persona 3 long ago. This particular night it was the English words that caught my attention because they play off a few lines from the game said by one of the characters. In particular, "I will never leave you" stuck out as one of the most meaningful moments in the game. It was then that I realized what the song was actually about and from that moment I had to know every word. As I began to unravel the meaning of the song, listening, reading the lyrics and translating them, I unraveled emotionally as well.

Since that night, I always turn to this song when I need to actually, truly feel my feelings. Even on antidepressants, the song manages to burn through the haze of emotional indifference to rip the true feelings from my heart and slap me in the face with them. I even wrote a poem that night several years ago about teardrops filling up the concave inside of my glasses - it wasn't a great poem so I won't share it, but I really liked the imagery of my tears falling onto my lenses. It was the first big release of tears since my son died. Several months had gone by and I had done my very best to lock it all away and bury it with mood altering drugs. I put on my brave face to "get on with life" and left a huge emptiness lingering inside. But that random, fateful night, this song dove into my heart and dredged up all that pain.

The very strange thing about this song among countless songs of love and loss in any number of other languages is that it's about a female android mourning a human whom she had grown to love over the course of the game. The nature of her love is fairly ambiguous - whether platonic or romantic - but it really doesn't matter. It's strange that this song and that relationship is what the developers chose to focus on when there were many, many other relationships in the game that could have been emphasized. It is a game about relationships, in fact. The reason the android is so meaningful is because she begins her chapter of the story without even realizing she's capable of human feelings. Over the course of the game, she comes to understand friendship and develop true, meaningful relationships with the people whom she had been alienated from her entire existence. She expresses her new-found feelings and then suddenly and unexpectedly (SPOILER) the character to whom she is enamored dies. This song is very much about how she processes this grief - something I try really hard to avoid, I think.

I think about Aigis a lot. I relate to this fictional android in several ways which emphasize why this song is so powerful in unsealing what I have buried deep inside. It explains why I can put this song on whenever I need some relief from the emotional pressure building up. As a robot, Aigis's lifespan is fairly indefinite. For her, this encounter with the characters of the game is probably only going to be a mere instant of her existence, but definitely the most meaningful time of her life. She forges a friendship that would teach her what it meant to actually be alive, and to be human. Then, that friendship abruptly disappears in an instant and Aigis makes the choice to live on and carry those memories of him forever (hence the name "Memories of You"). She could shut off her emotions and go back to being just a robot, or shut down completely and withdraw from living in a technical sense, but she makes the choice to go forward because of what her friend taught her about being alive. This choice to carry the memories forward is pretty similar to how I feel about my son, Rhys, who only existed for 6 weeks but changed my life forever. It was like a drop of water in the ocean of life experiences - six weeks out of 35 years seems so inconsequential. He never said a single word. We only made eye contact a few times. This tiny thing that existed in the blink of an eye had the power to change things forever.

I used to think I was a lucky person. It's silly really. I was walking around this planet thinking that I was someone who never really had bad things happen to him. The older I got the more bad things actually started happening, but I just clung to this mentality that I wasn't the type of guy that had truly bad things happen. I had friends who would witness me go through some pretty awful situations and wonder how I held my resolve, how I remained so calm and cool and collected about everything. When Rhys died, that perception of myself as a lucky person completely shattered. It was a few years ago, now, and for the most part the pain is just a dull ache instead of crippling stabs into my chest cavity - but the pain still exists. It's still in there in full, terrible form. There is such a tremendous amount of pain waiting to be unleashed by something as simple as a song about a robot and her dying friend - and it can hurt like the day it happened if I let it grow. It feels like I am now marked by this pain, that my soul is torn so deep that it defines me. In one terrible night, I transformed from that casual, friendly person who could bounce back from anything in stride. I was dismantled and crushed and replaced by a person who now knows he isn't lucky. He knows terrible things have happened and can happen again at any moment.

This weekend a new baby is going to be born. I've spent nine months hiding from it, pretending it's not real, trying not to look at ultrasound pictures or feel the kicks. I needed to pretend it wasn't happening, because I can't handle it. I have to handle it and I will handle it, but my emotions, my anxieties, my endurance is not ready for this challenge. I'm terrified. If anything bad happens again, I don't know how I will survive. This is true of my other two surviving children, as well, but they're already here. The risk of losing them in some sudden accident is already real and prevalent. I've been coping with that for years. I won't even get started about what I go through when leaving them with other people, or sending them on field trips. But it's not nearly the same as having another newborn - another precious, fragile, tiny life living in my house. Another defenseless human being that my wife and I are charged with taking care of.

That's not all and this is why I need Aigis tonight. I'm not ready to let go of Rhys. My rational brain realizes that I don't have to "let him go" and that he'll "always be here." I know that I'll never forget him, but I'm so tremendously scared that I will. I think I always have been. We didn't have enough time together. I can't remember the way he sounded. I can't remember the way he smelled. I remember how he made me feel - I mean, how happy I was to be around him and how wonderful it felt to hold him close, but that's the best I can muster. I don't want him to disappear forever. I don't want him to be buried so deep in my heart that I never let him out. I don't want to replace him with a new baby. I know he won't be. I get it. I tell myself a million times in the last two years, but it doesn't matter what my brain says will be true compared to how I actually feel. I fear the evanescence of my son every passing day. Sometimes it's so real and brutal and painful that I feel like he just died yesterday, but most times I feel like he was just a pleasant dream I had once and the longer I'm awake the less I'll be able to recall it.

Aigis chooses to live. She could shut down. She could go to sleep or simply reboot. She could erase her memories and her feelings, but because of what she learned and how she developed she comes to understand the value of life and living. She chooses to keep going and hold on to the memory. I chose this as well, but my memories degrade faster than a computer. I carry his memory with me as one of the very, very few people who even knew him in his brief existence. That burden is oppressive sometimes and what if I fail? What if some day I can't find the way he made me feel? What if I can't remember how he looked or how soft his skin was? Who will remember him if I don't? What if my new son terrifies me? What if I'm too afraid he'll die so I don't allow myself to get too attached? I know all this is stupid, because I've always fallen deeply in love with my children the instant we met face-to-face, but that scares me almost as much. How defenseless will I be if something bad happens again?

I'm so scared.

- TOP
(originally written May 2, 2015)

Rhys (Aug 17, 2012 - Sept 27, 2012) 

Assassins Creed Origins Black Box

Minimum System Requirements

OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64-bit versions only).

Processor: Intel Core i5-2400s @ 2.5 GHz or AMD FX-6350 @ 3.9 GHz or equivalent.

Video card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 or AMD R9 270 (2048 MB VRAM with Shader Model 5.0 or better).

 RAM: 6GB.

Recommended System Requirements

OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64-bit versions only).

Processor: Intel Core i7- 3770 @ 3.5 GHz or AMD FX-8350 @ 4.0 GHz.

Video card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 or AMD R9 280X (3GB VRAM with Shader Model 5.0 or better).

 RAM: 8GB.

Download The Game Here

Status

Too long without a post.

Hopefully this  won't be the last post on the blog. I am still in draft three of a book, and don't seem to be getting much writing done or even seeing many movie. Distractions and all.

I still have an unfinished story. An unfinished book of parsha shiurim. Several half-baked and nearly baked game designs on the shelf.

However, I am still employed, having a social life, going on a vacation next month. My daughter is married and thriving, my son is thriving, too. Which is all good.

Still have weekly game nights and still get new games occasionally. I just got Concordia, Sushi Go Party, and I am expecting Gentes Deluxe and Haithabu. I am expecting a few thousand new Magic cards soon.

I and my boss have been playing games with three non-gamer coworkers at work every Thursday. It's been half a year, and, aside from Codenames, we have rarely repeated any games. Looks like we may start soon.

The magic of games, those little points, seem insignificant, but it's astonishing how they take a play activity and make people focus on a goal, a start, and an end. It's almost hard to understand why, but it must have something to do with: not only feeling great when you succeed, but wanting others to have a chance to feel great, too. If it didn't, the whole concept of multiplayer games would just fall apart. As long as we still play games together, I think humanity still has hope.

Peace.

Storium Theory: Inverting The Trope

We've seen it before.

A young hero has an older mentor, who taught the hero everything the hero knows. The mentor takes on a mission, and is captured, or killed, or goes missing, or what-have-you. Now the hero has to step up and save the day.

It's a trope.

It's a trope for a reason. It's a pretty powerful story. There's a personal connection between the hero and the mission - a need to carry on after a person the hero respects, perhaps, or redeem the person's reputation, or even rescue the person. It ties the hero more deeply to the tale than if the hero had simply taken the mission himself in the first place.

There's nothing particularly wrong with tropes, even with tropes that are used extremely often. Frequently, tropes are tropes because they are powerful and beneficial to stories. They give additional emotional impact. They create interesting character types. They give us connections to stories.

But for all those reasons, they can also be extremely powerful when inverted.

Consider the above trope. And consider these others:

• The combatant has to save the non-combatant.
• The parent has to rescue their young child.
• The lawyer has to figure out the conspiracy entrapping their client.
• The detective has to discover the secrets of the corrupt corporation.

You've seen all these stories. And oftentimes, they're good stories. There's nothing inherently wrong with using these tropes - they can lead to gripping, emotionally affecting tales.

But let's look at taking each of the tropes I've mentioned and turning them around:

• The older mentor's successor takes a mission and is captured/killed or goes missing, and the mentor must now take the mission in his place.
• The non-combatant has to somehow rescue the combatant.
• The young child must figure out how to rescue their parent.
• The client must figure out a conspiracy that has even enveloped their lawyer.
• The corporation is being menaced by a corrupt detective, and an employee must figure out how to clear its name.

These sound interesting, don't they? In some cases, they give us natural questions that are inherently intriguing. Take the "non-combatant has to rescue the combatant" one...if the combatant, i.e. someone trained in battle, is in trouble...it's going to be extremely dangerous for a non-combatant, i.e. someone not trained in battle, to come to the rescue. We'll wonder how this person is possibly going to accomplish their goal against such odds.

And sometimes, they're interesting just because they play with our usual sympathies. In a battle between a corporation and a detective, we're pretty hardwired to sympathize with the detective - large organizations are generally things we mistrust instinctively. If one's being investigated, there's always a background thought of "well, there's probably something going on there, right?" So if a story plays with that, and has the corporation innocent and the detective corrupt, it twists our sympathies around.

Sometimes, these inverted tropes can become so popular that they then become tropes themselves (I'm sure that you've seen at least some examples of each of the "inverted" stories I mentioned, too). But the point stands: When you find yourself thinking about using a trope, consider for a moment how you might invert it. Sometimes, an inversion of a trope can be just as powerful, or more powerful than the trope itself.

When you're creating a story concept, or a character concept, tropes are going to come into play. You'll find yourself slotting characters into recognized boxes, consciously or unconsciously. And that's fine. But take a little time to think about what you might be able to do if you turn the trope on its head instead. Maybe it won't fit your story, or maybe it won't give you the ideas you need...if so, that's fine. Write your story the way you write your story. But maybe, just maybe, an inverted trope will give you some inspiring story or character ideas, something that excites you and will excite your fellow players and readers.

So take some time. Look at the tropes you find yourself using, and think about how to invert them. When you walk a well-trodden path, look for the points where you can step off or make it lead to a different destination. You can get some excellent stories from tropes...but you can get some excellent stories by twisting them around, too.

Storium Theory: Optional Challenges

Most of the time, when we put down a challenge, it's definite - a note that the story will be focusing on a particular point. But is it possible to use challenges differently? To lay down a challenge for something the players might want to focus on, but are not required to focus on?

I believe it is a tool for the toolbox...but one I would show great caution in using. I've only pulled out an optional challenge once or twice in my own games, and I am wary of using them often, if at all, in my own narration generally. Storium's rules are set up more for completion of challenges and requiring of challenges, and I think there's a good reason for that.

In setup, an optional challenge wouldn't be so different from a regular challenge - you still want to establish the starting situation, the facts of the challenge, and the possible places the challenge can end up once it is complete. There's not much different in the overall technique of setting it up.

But should you decide to use this tool, I think there are some very important things you will need to be sure you address.

First: How will you know if players are or are not going to play on the challenge? You will need a good way of knowing if players have not played on a challenge yet because they haven't gotten to it yet, or because they do not intend to play on it at all. An optional challenge, being optional, could be ignored completely by players for reasons that have nothing to do with slow play or inactivity. It is important to have a way of determining that the players are not going to play on the challenge, and that it is time to move the scene on.

I suggest that you consider one of the following ideas:

• Set a deadline based on the other challenges - if the optional challenge is not completed by the time the scene's other challenges are, you will consider it incomplete and move the scene on.
• Set a deadline based on actual time - if the optional challenge is not completed within X days after the rest of the scene's challenges are (or just within X days if there are no other challenges) you will consider it incomplete and move the scene on.
• Require an affirmative statement from a player that they intend to play on the optional challenge by a specific date. If you have no such statement by that date, you will remove the optional challenge.

These methods are probably not the only ones...or even likely the best...but they all allow you to know when you can regard the challenge as incomplete and move forward. Whatever choice you make, be sure you tell your players so they know what the requirements are.

Second: What happens when the optional challenge is incomplete?

This is a pretty important question, and one that, I think, gets at the reason I don't use optional challenges much. If something's critical enough to the story that you want to set up a challenge for it, it seems like it is something the group should have to interact with - even if their interaction is playing Weakness cards and having their characters utterly ignore it and let it go wrong. In other words, the characters might not care about something, but if it is important enough to the story to rate a challenge, the players should have to do something about it...even if that something is having their characters do nothing. The story of the challenge, once laid out, should probably progress.

If it goes well, then, it ends Strong. If it goes poorly, it ends Weak. If it is less clear, it ends Uncertain. But that's all determined by the cards.

So...what do you do with a challenge that seemed interesting enough to put out there as an option, but that seems like something the character's don't have to address?

My best bet is that you do nothing. An optional challenge is something that is interesting, but not critical. The players don't gain or lose anything by not going after it. It's only if they actually engage it that it matters to the story in any way.

Thus, if the players don't seem interested in it and leave it alone, it just drops off for the moment. Nothing bad happens, nothing good happens. It just fades away into the background again.

That's not to say you can't bring it back again later, or bring it back again later as a normal, required challenge. It's just that for the moment, it wasn't critical enough to be made required, so nothing's reaching any kind of story-altering point with it. It just fades away for now.

If on the other hand players play some of the cards on the challenge, but don't finish it, I'd probably go by my usual rule for ending a challenge early when it becomes absolutely necessary: Most likely, end it by whatever the current result would be (i.e. if it is going Strong, it ends Strong, if it is going Weak, it ends Weak, if it is going Uncertain, it ends Uncertain) - this method makes the players' card plays so far clearly matter, so that's my preference. If you use a different rule for those cases in your own games, be consistent.

But that brings me to another consideration...

Third: How many points do you put on the thing, anyway?

I'm going to just say outright that I think the answer is one, possibly two at maximum. An optional challenge is not the focus of the scene - it is by definition something that can be entirely ignored. Thus, it isn't anywhere near as important as other challenges, and shouldn't get a lot of focus in the scene at hand.

Furthermore, if you put more points on an optional challenge, it makes it harder to judge when players no longer care about it - once it has become active, how do you judge that it isn't going to be active any further? You can always rule that an optional challenge becomes required if at least one player plays a card on it, of course, but that could get messy in terms of game morale and community if players disagree about whether they want to play on it.

So...I suggest making your life as easy as possible by using only one or two points, tops, and making clear to your players that whatever "deadline" you set for the optional challenge is a completion deadline, not a play deadline - the challenge needs to be complete by then or you will move things on. That will prevent an optional challenge from causing delays.

Finally, though: Consider whether the challenge should even be optional in the first place.

Most of the things I've considered as, well, optionally "optional" challenges were ideas that I ended up deciding would either fit perfectly well as required challenges right then, or would fit perfectly well as required challenges later. I've rarely come across something that I considered important to note in challenge form, but not critical enough to be something the players had to address.

If you're considering an optional challenge, think about it a bit more for a while...is it really something that should be optional, or is it just something that hasn't come to a head yet? Maybe it's something you can get some actual drama out of later, and make it a normal challenge in a later scene. Or maybe it's something you can hint at with a minor required challenge now - perhaps to see if someone notices something - and bring in more fully down the line.

Or perhaps it is something that actually is pretty vitally important right now, in which case it should be a required challenge...right now.

So, when can an optional challenge be helpful?

I could see them being useful if you want to allow the group to choose a direction, but neither direction is necessarily better or worse for the story (if one direction is better and the other is worse, you'd instead do a regular challenge and set the first up as the Strong outcome and the second as the Weak). Then, you could set up two different one-point challenges, and tell the players they can only do one of them - that sets them off on that path and determines how it starts out for them.

It isn't my chosen way to find where the players want to go in the story, but I could see it working.

Another method might be something that is solidly an opportunity for the players - again, if they don't do anything, it doesn't go wrong or anything like that, but perhaps it is something they can use to "shortcut" the plot in some way. You'd have to be careful with this one - it's easy to run into the "why don't you just do this as a regular challenge" internal question - but there are ways I could see it working. If you do this, then, the Strong result is very good for the characters, and the Weak result is perhaps less so, but still generally quite good.

The problem I run into myself with that is that if you use that method, it becomes hard to argue that things aren't worse if the player decide not to play the challenge...in which case, again, I feel like it probably shouldn't be optional because it impacts the story in a notable way. And that's exactly where I've ended up when I've reflected on the few times I've used optional challenges...I end up feeling like what I did was render a part of the story optional when it was actually going to have a definite impact. 

And that's the point I keep coming back to myself in considering this - I just generally can't justify putting a challenge down and treating it as "optional." When I put a challenge down, it means that a notable event has started in the story, and the players, through their card plays, need to see where it goes. It needs to get to some conclusion or another, so that we know where the story goes after it. When I find myself thinking of perhaps telling my players a challenge is optional, I start instead thinking of whether it should be there yet at all.

But: I know that this is a technique some other narrators have used in the past, and I'd very much be interested to hear others' thoughts on it. Have you used optional challenges? What did they represent in your game? And how did you ensure that you knew it was fine to move the game forward? Write in, and let me know!

EA Cricket 2018 Download For Free Full Version

EA Cricket 2018 Download For Free Full Version

SCREENSHOT

System Requirements Of Cricket 2018 Download Free

• Tested on Window 7 64 Bit
• Operating System: Window XP/ Vista/ Window 7/ Window 8 and 8.1/10
• CPU: 2.0 GHz Intel Pentium 4 or later
• RAM: 512 MB
• Setup size: 1.1 GB
• Hard Disk Space: 4 GB

Rex Nebular - It's A Man's World

Written by TBD

Rex Nebular's Log: Stardate - 27th of Last Seed.7: I've explored the abandoned underground land of men. I have a few more items, but none of them are getting me closer to getting the vase that I'd almost forgotten about or escaping the planet. I've found some locked doors so I know I'll at least need a few more keys. And I've just had a crazy idea that I'll try soon...

When we'd last left our hero, he'd just come out of the gender bender with his original gender back in order to explore the subterranean land of men by way of gender-locked vehicle.

The vehicle gives us nine possible locations. So let's explore them in the order of... well, in the order I explored them. At each location I'll finish with a short list of what I think needs to be done there. I have no illusions that all of my suppositions will be correct, but it's what I was thinking when I left the location.

The driving requires no input from me beyond selecting my destination. On choosing the location, the car drives there for a few seconds while Rex casually taps his fingers on the console.

Driving in Rex Nebular – much less tedious than Mean Streets or Police Quest

818 WIDEPIPE LANE: ABDUL'S SERVICE STATION

Our first trip will be to Abdul's Service Station, where we find a small barking dog.

Is that a shattered window on the left, or is Wile E Coyote hiding in the darkness behind it?

I of course start by trying to befriend the dog by giving him some bones I found on the surface.

The neon sign behind me is lying - this dog is NOT my friend!

After the dog systematically turns me into a small pile of blue goo like a hungry land piranha, the death screen tells me I shouldn't have gotten so close to him. In response to that hint, I use THROW instead of GIVE.

This doesn't solve my dilemma though. The dog devours the bone as easily as it did me and continues waiting to kill me if I get close. He won't take my twinkifruit or my chicken so I ignore the side door behind the dog and look at the rest of the area.

There is an air hose here. It seems the garage was for old-fashioned cars with tyres rather than modern flying cars (MLV's). And there's a sign that points down – I don't know if that means anything or not at this point. There's also a manhole I can't open.

Things to do later:

1. Find something to distract the dog - more food perhaps?
2. Come back to inflate something deflated.

CITY PERIPHERY: NORTH SEA WINDOW

The next location I visit contains a viewport with a curious sea monster behind it.

I try to talk to the monster.

I will name him 'viewport' and I will love him and pet him and squeeze him!

I look around to see if there's anything else useful in here.

What the hell is a specimen epithet?

Dictionary result for epithet

/ˈɛpɪθɛt/
noun: epithet; plural noun: epithets
an adjective or phrase expressing a quality or attribute regarded as characteristic of the person or thing mentioned.

Well that clears that up perfectly!?!

Sometimes the creature sticks its tongue out frog-like and hits the window with it.

There isn't anything else here obvious enough to interact with, so after trying a few things I move on.

Things to do later:

1. Find something to do in this room... anything at all would be useful...

14 DRESSET CROSSING: RESIDENTIAL

In this area, the car stops outside a place called "Bruce's". I enter and explore what seems to be Bruce's interestingly designed house. Apart from the unusual colour scheme and decorations, Bruce has a wall safe.

Well, of course it is.

Looking at things in the two rooms of Bruce's house, it's obvious he's a cross dressing entertainer, and a very popular one at that. I hadn't thought of it before, but this makes a lot of sense in an all-male society. They may not trust women, but they still want to see people who look like women so cross dressing entertainers would be very popular.

I take the only takeable item I find in the house, a compact case, which seeing as it comes with the verb "REFLECT" I suspect will be used as a mirror at some point.

Things to do later:

1. Find a way to get into Bruce's locked wall safe

34 ½ LONELY WAY: THE SLEDGE MALL – SOUTH MAINTENANCE ELEVATOR

I can't find anything to do here yet. There's a card slot outside an elevator but the only security card I have is from the women-controlled section and likely won't work here. I save my game and try anyway, expecting a gruesome death.

I've never been more disappointed not to die.

Things to do later:

1. Come back when I have a male security card

14 POWERTOOL AVE: SANDBAR RESTAURANT – POLLY'S PLEASURE DOME

I think I've found Bruce's workplace.

Noting the precariously suspended boat above the entrance, I enter the Sand Bar first and take a fishing rod from the wall.

I also take a padlock key out of the cash register.

Back outside I get a hint that I'm never going to be able to enter the Pleasure Dome.

Hint taken.

Things to do later:

1. Come back in about 10 paragraphs when I've explored the rest of the city.

226 BICEPS WAY: KANE LABORATORY – MACHO PROSE SOFTWARE – BARNETT MOTEL – SID'S CYCLES

This screen has lots of buildings to interact with. Or so it appears at first. The air bike is disappointingly too rusted to use and I can't enter the hotel or restaurant.

I'd be more concerned that the restaurant that's shaped like a toilet has the seat down – IT WAS CLEARLY DESIGNED BY THE ENEMY!

I can enter the software store, so I do.

Obvious references to the game's own company of Microprose, and Sierra On-Line in here.

I'm not sure if the fourth wall is broken, but it's at least being bent here.

I take a penlight from the counter, which I can disassemble to get batteries.

The other enterable shop in the area is the laboratory. It contains a large laser and one of the more lazy attempts at referencing current-world items, a 'spinach patch doll'

I can turn on the laser, which much to Rex's delight obliterates the doll, but I can't turn the laser off. I try to throw my explosives at them, but I'm not allowed - I'm sure there's something I'll need to use the laser for, and I'll find out what soon.

Things to do later:

1. Destroy something with the laser

CITY PERIPHERY: CITY SECURITY - EAST MAINTENANCE ELEVATOR

Well, this is just the area I started at where I first found the car, so let's move right along

Things to do later:

1. Use the teleporter whenever I want to go back to the surface (or other teleporter)

MAINTENANCE ACCESS: WILLIAMS BYPASS

This is not the first time the game's made it clear there used to be wheeled cars in this city - does this become relevant at some point? Guess I'll find out soon enough.

Based on the hanging boat and the woman's torso, I'm clearly above the Sand Bar and Pleasure Palace from earlier. The boat that hung above the Sand Bar is held in place by a winch up here.

The winch controls are behind a padlocked panel. I have a padlock key in my inventory. I wonder if those two items could be used together...

Now I'll have a boat I can use!

Things to do later:

1. I suspect by dropping the boat I may already have done everything in this area!

4 MONUMENT STREET: EDUARDO'S NEWSTAND - BUCKLUSTER VIDEO

The newsstand just contains old newspapers talking about the women working on biological weapons. I try to enter the video store.

How many of these puzzles solutions are going to be simple 'come back when I have a key' solutions.

Things to do later:

1. Find a key to the video store.

REVISITING LOCATIONS

Now that I've visited all areas at least once, I go back to the sand bar to see what I can get out of the boat that I'd dropped.

Well that was anticlimactic.

I couldn't find anything to do with the boat or anything useful in the boat. But while looking through my inventory I had another thought and went back to the laboratory.

Remembering the compact mirror I took from Bruce's house, I used it to reflect the laser beam.

I was actually attempting to make the laser shoot itself in the hopes of getting some useful electronics from the wreckage, but this works too.

Getting back in the car and looking at the map, it seems the residential area is the closest to being directly above the lab. So let's go back there and see if we're right.

I doubt Bruce is up to date with his laser beam insurance premiums.

Well, it seems like if I could find a second mirror I could direct the beam to Bruce's safe in order to get what's inside. But trying to take, push or pull the vanity mirror from the next room doesn't work so I forget that idea for now.

Before doing more detailed exploring of this city I have the brilliant idea of using my fishing rod to get the piranhas out of the stream in the village above ground. I spend a bit of time and teleport back to the women's base, bend my gender again and try out my brilliant idea.

Thanks for making me think the last five minutes was a waste of my time, game!

So let's stop for now. I have a few things I can do next time I play. Apart from the short 'things to do' lists I have above, I've since thought of something to do in the NORTH SEA WINDOW section. I figure I can flood the place. As for how or why I'd do that, I have an idea...

Flood the place.

How - put/throw my explosives on the sea monster's viewscreen?
Why - I frankly have no reason to want to flood the city other the fact that I dropped a boat that seems to have no purpose without water.

Session time: 1 hour 20 minutes
Total time: 5 hours 5 minutes
Inventory:

• Security card (for women's base)
• Tape player
• Binoculars
• Timer module
• Shield modulator
• Bones (Animal, not Star Trek's doctor)
• Log (Captain's, not wooden)
• Chicken (Roasted, not fried)
• Twinkifruit
• Target module
• Charge cases (containing explosives)
• Repair list
• Fishing rod
• Penlight
• Fishing line (taken from fishing rod)
• Durafail cells (batteries which can be put back in penlight)