Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Most reviews I've seen so far seem to go off on the film for nothing more than being a Michael Bay film, as if none of us have ever seen one before. You've seen Michael Bay films before, so you know what to expect. If you liked the first film, you're probably going to like this one. If you didn't, then you won't.

There are lots of things that can be criticized about the film, but few reviews seem to actually go into any of that, instead going off on tangents about how much plastic surgery Megan Fox must have had, how Hummer has been sold to the Chinese, and how Obama is portrayed in the film (here's a hint to the clueless reviewers, he isn't in it!)

So with that in mind I felt it was time for me to do my own review. I'm limiting this to things that aren't really spoilers (although if you can't stand anything at all being revealed, then just stop reading here, and particularly stay away from #4 in things I don't like). There are certain specific things about the plot that I both liked and disliked, but I won't get into that here.

Here's what I didn't like about it:

1) Frenetic editing in action scenes is one thing, but circling the camera around Megan Fox and Shia LeBeuf a half dozen times as they stare into each other's eyes just made me dizzy.
2) Coeds can be hot, but they don't all look like they're getting ready to go on stage at MBOT. The college scenes are ridiculous. I guess the idea is to make it plausible that Shia might be tempted to wander from a hottie like Fox, but it just looks ridiculous.
3) Was Lucas involved in this? Why do we have "ghetto" speaking autobots? It's the return of Jar Jar, but with a thankfully smaller amount of screen time. Also, unlike Jar Jar, they do actually get a couple lines worth a chuckle, but it's not a fair exchange for all the others that induce winces.
4) Obligatory government bureaucrat. It seems we always have to have one of these guys around to keep the good guys from doing their jobs, only he's not really needed here. He doesn't prevent the good guys from doing anything. He's a cliche that the plot doesn't even need (and is why we get all the pointless meanderings from reviewers about Obama).
5) Megan Fox's boobies. OK, like #2, I realize this could go in the plus column, but not when it's done in such a ridiculous manner with shot after shot of slow motion jiggle as she runs from Decepticons. If the director is that obsessed with her chest he should just go for the R rating and show her topless in a sex scene.

Here's what I did like about it:

1) Autobots kick ass. In the first movie they were pretty weak. It usually took multiple Autobots to hold their own against single Decepticons. Apparently they've been doing some intensive training since then, because in this movie the situation is often reversed. When they do end up on the losing end it's only because of being massively outnumbered.
2) The human military kicks ass, and gets its ass kicked. NEST shows why the Autobots think it's worthwhile to work with the humans instead of on their own, but at the same time shows what happens when soft and squishy humans and their primitive tech fight giant metal robots. It's good old fashioned John Wayne style heroism. No blood or gore, just lots of explosions and broken toys.
3) The fight scenes are long. This is a criticism from many reviewers, but it's a plus for me. It's why I go see these movies. It's just fun to watch all the special effects.

My conclusion is that it was a fun movie despite its flaws. If you liked the first one, then go see it. If you didn't like the first one, then go see something else.

Edit: it turns out Obama is in the film, very briefly. It turns out that Michael Bay briefly met the man before he was President, was impressed with him as a person, and chose to include him in the film more as a tribute than anything else. Any discussions as to the presence of a political message in the film still misses the point of the film, which is pure entertainment.

Small World

Last month I mentioned the board game Small World, and how I liked the game but probably wasn't going to buy it because there was an open copy at the FLGS and I was unlikely to play it anywhere else. Since then I bought a copy at the FLGS.

I bought it from the FLGS because I was able to play it there, but my decision to buy it wasn't based on that play. My decision to buy it was made due to the podcast the D6 Generation. They've been raving about the game and how it was the first game in some time that all three hosts owned. More importantly, the wives at the D6 Generation were enthusiastic about it to the point that I thought I just might be able to get my wife to try it, despite not really getting that impression from my one play at the FLGS.

Fortunately, I took the risk, because I was able to get my wife to play it. The first board game she's played in several months. We've only played one game so far, but she's indicated that she's willing to play again some time when she's in the mood, which is about as much as I can hope for when getting her to game.

I mention this both to mark the relatively rare event of getting my wife to game, and in the interest of full disclosure given my earlier rant about how I wasn't going to buy the game. I still think that the point of that rant stands as this purchase was made in spite of, rather than because of, the FLGS having an open copy to play at the store.

Imperial Guard vs. Space Marines

I had my first game of 5th Edition 40K this past Tuesday, taking 500 points of my Imperial Guard vs. Chris' 500 points of Space Marines.

The lists were necessarily pretty basic. I had Yarrick as my HQ, three squads of Penal Legionnaires, and one Armored Sentinel with a lascannon. Chris took a Captain as his HQ, a Rhino, and two squads of Tac marines, both with a flamer and missile launcher. For my Penal Legion abilities I rolled one squad of Knife Figters and two of Psychopaths. This meant that I had an assaulty IG force going against a fairly shooty Marine force.

We rolled up a Capture and Control mission with a Spearhead deployment, and things did not go well for my IG at the beginning. I left my Knife Fighters on my objective and moved my other two squds forward with Yarrick in charge of one of them while my Sentinel stayed back to snipe the Rhino while trying to avoid taking fire from any missile launchers. Chris moved one of his squads forward in the Rhino while keeping his other squad and Captain back as a fire base protecting his objective.

First blood was to me in the second turn when I destroyed the Rhino with my Sentinel. I had hit the Rhino in the first turn, but then had an "anything but a one" moment and naturally rolled a one for penetration. The destruction of the Rhino was the last bit of luck I had for a while as the Marines bailed out and proceeded to shoot up the entire squad that Yarrick was leading, leaving only Yarrick and the squad sergeant. Yarrick fell back to join the other squad of Psychopaths and was able to charge them into the Marines which went a bit better for me.

I still lost a couple men to shooting before I got the charge, but once in assault Yarrick and his men were able to win the combat and then run down the survivors, wiping out the Marines. Then the Marine Captain, who hadn't been involved in the first assault, charged me and wiped out everyone that was left, including Yarrick. I figured the best I could hope for at this point was a draw, even if Yarrick got up again due to Iron Will. Then I noticed something.

Chris had strung out his squad through the woods in front of his objective, leaving only a couple of Marines on the end actually controlling the objective. I realized that if I charged that unit on the end away from the objective that he'd have to pull his troops off the objective in order to react to my assault. Even if I was wiped out he wouldn't be able to consolidate back onto the objective that turn. Given that it was Turn 5 and that I went second, this gave me a chance to actually pull out a win if the game ended that turn.

Yarrick did get up thanks to Iron Will and I was able to charge him and that lone sergeant from the first squad into the Marines, pulling them off the objective. Through incredibly bad rolling on Chris' part, both of them actually survived the assault, which was nice since that would probably let me keep them off the objective for another turn if the game went to turn 6. That brought us to the end of turn 5 and the roll for the end of the game. Chris told me to make the roll, and I rolled a 1... game over, IG wins!

Imperial Guard

I've had the beginnings of an Imperial Guard army since shortly after they first released the Steel Legion miniatures back during the Third Battle for Armageddon promotional campaign. I bought the Steel Legion army deal off someone on Waryammer who didn't want it anymore, and built on that.

The main thing keeping me from fielding an IG army on the table has always been the numbers of troops I've had available. Under the previous codex you had two troop options: Infantry Platoon and Armored Fist Squad. The problem was that for every Armored Fist that you took, you had to also take an Infantry Platoon. I barely had enough infantry models to field a minimum size Infantry Platoon with an an Armored Fist Squad, so my options were always extremely limited. Combine that with many of my other models butting up against each other in the force organization chart, and I was lucky to be able to put 750 points on the table.

The reviews of the new codex I'd seen all talked about how guardsmen had dropped in cost, and made it sound like you were going to need even more troops to field an effective IG army. I figured that meant no IG for me in 5th Edition 40K, but then I actually read a copy of the book and discovered that in addition to the old Infantry Platoon, there are now two other Troops choices, neither of which requires that you first have an Infantry Platoon, and both of which only require ten models. This gives me a lot more options to construct viable lists using only my existing models.

In addition to new Troops choices, there are also new HQ choices, including the Lord Commisar and Commisar Yarrick, which mean I can take single model HQs, instead of the five model count Company Command Squad. Sure, my lists are likely to be far from optimized, but they will let me put up to 1900 points on the table without assembling a single new model! I see my Eldar staying on hiatus for the time being, and some 40K games with my IG in the near future.

Boardgaming in NWA

My wife's in Chicago through Sunday, which means I'm spending a lot more of my time at Castle House Games. I don't know if I'm just more sensitive to it now that I have less time to waste hanging around in game stores, or if it was different at BDG, but there seems to be an awful lot of talking about gaming, and not a whole lot of actually playing games going on at the game store, even thought there's plenty of available gaming space.

When I go into Castle House there's almost never a game being played unless there's a scheduled event going on. If I've got more than a few minutes, I always try to get one going, but my success rate is around 50%. When I do get people to play a game they always say something like "wow, it's good to get a game played, that was fun!" It's like it's a novel idea to actually play a game in a game store.

Fortunately, I have been able to get some gaming going the past couple of days. Thursday it was several games of Pandemic in a row as we struggled to finally pull off a win against the game. We started with a two player game and added a third player after our first or second attempt. After five plays we finally won one, and called it a day when I was unable to persuade anyone to play a game of Dominion.

The game itself was fun. I had played it solo before, and playing it with a group didn't offer any surprising new insight. It's a fun game that I can see pulling out again. The cooperative nature is also a good way to meet new gamers as no one has to worry about whether or not to crush a newbie, or what level of trash talk is acceptable.

Yesterday I went to the store expecting to play a game of LotR, but one table was full of hirst arts molding supplies, and the other had a game of 40K set up on it (I have a little mini rant on that game that I'll go into at the end). Fortunately, I wasn't actually that psyched for a game of LotR, and I noticed that the store owner had opened a copy of Small World for the store, so I suggested that we play it instead.

As we set it up we attracted a third player who was wondering what we were doing. This is actually pretty common. If I can get one other player interested in a game, then I almost always get another player or two who will join in. The trick is getting that first player.

The game was slow going at first as we got used to the rules, but was fun overall. I definitely want to get another game in, not least because I think I have a better grasp of the strategy involved after coming in dead last.

From a retailer perspective, my experience with Small World shows the potential danger of having too many store copies of games. I like Small World. I would normally buy a copy of Small World, and before playing it I was debating whether to buy it at Castle House or order it from BDG. The problem is that I will most likely only ever play it at Castle House, and now they already have an open copy available for play. Why, other than supporting the FLGS, would I now buy a copy?

As a gamer, I really like their policy of opening store copies of interesting games, but I've tried to caution the owner a couple times about being more selective in this policy. For example, he has an open copy of Agricola. Now, it is the highest rated game on BGG, having unseated the long time champion Puerto Rico, but it's also a rather hardcore eurogame that sells for over $80. I think I'm the only hardcore eurogamer in the area, and I'm not going to buy it anytime soon because I know my odds of getting someone to play it with me are close to nill, plus I now have an open copy at the store I can use if I do find an opponent, so I don't think he's going to get much of a return on that particular investment.

Now, I could see having an open copy at BDG, because there are several hardcore board gamers there who I could see buying a copy after giving it a spin, but that just isn't the case here. It's one of those examples of every store having a different set of conditions that it has to operate under.

One solution might be to restrict the use of the store copies to demo games and not allow them for casual play, or to divide them up into two groups: one available for casual play, and one only available for demos. That would let the owner and employees get familiar with some of the games, and show how nice they are, without providing a disincentive towards buying them.

OK, now for my mini-rant on the 40K game. When I walked into the store I saw a couple of regulars playing a 750 point game of 40K, but I wasn't too worried, we still had about an hour until my opponent would be off work and I figured we'd have time to get in a game of LotR after they finished if the owner didn't want to clear his hirst arts stuff off the other table.

I proceeded to spend my time talking and shopping until the owner was ready to do something. Then we came back to find the 40K game setup in mid-game with no one at the table. One of the players was standing off to the side and we asked him what was up, and he said that his opponent was taking a WoW break. Now, there was a lot of card gaming going on as it was Magic night, and I thought he was talking about the WoW CCG, which would have been bad enough, but then I look across the room and see the other player sitting at his laptop playing the actual MMOG!

You don't start a game on the only available miniatures table only to stop halfway through to go play a computer game! It's not just rude to your opponent, but to everyone else that might want to use the table. We let him know in no uncertain terms that he either needed to get his butt back to the table to finish the game or else clear his army off the table, and I think they went ahead and finished the game. I'm not sure, because it was at this point that we decided to play a board game instead, and while the 40K game was right next to us I really didn't pay much attention to it.