“In Citadels, players take on new roles each round to represent characters they hire in order to help them acquire gold and erect buildings. The game ends at the close of a round in which a player erects her eighth building. Players then tally their points, and the player with the highest score wins…
At the start of each round, the player who was king the previous round discards one of the eight character cards at random, chooses one, then passes the cards to the next player, etc. until each player has secretly chosen a character…
The characters then carry out their actions in numerical order: the assassin eliminating another character for the round, the thief stealing all gold from another character, the wizard swapping building cards with another player, the warlord optionally destroys a building in play, and so on.”
—
This is the “cheat sheet” that we use when we play — it contains a brief description of each role’s unique abilities. Using a 10-point font it just fits inside the box.
#1 Assassin: Announce a character that you wish to murder. The murdered character misses his entire turn. The murdered player must remain silent and not reveal his character card when called.
#2 Thief: Announce a character from whom you wish to steal. When that card is revealed, take his gold. You may not target the Assassin or the character that the assassin murdered.
#3 Magician: Either exchange your cards with another player or discard any number of cards and draw an equal number of cards.
#4 King: Receive one gold for each of your Noble (Yellow) districts. When the King is called you immediately receive the crown. Exception: If the King is murdered you receive the crown at the end of the round as his “heir”.
#5 Bishop: Receive one gold for each of your Religious (Blue) districts. Your districts may not be destroyed by the Warlord.
#6 Merchant: Receive one gold for each of your Trade (Green) districts. After your action, you receive one extra gold.
#7 Architect: After your action, draw two district cards and keep both. You may build up to three districts during your turn.
#8 Warlord: Receive one gold for each of your Military (Red) districts. At the end of your turn, you may pay to destroy one district that is not your own. The cost to do so is one gold less than the cost of building the district. The Warlord may not destroy the 8th (“winning”) district in a city.
Why I Like It: It’s an easy game to teach and learn, but it has enough strategy (and bluffing) to keep it interesting — the Architect and Merchant are often “best plays” every turn, but that also makes them obvious targets to be assassinated and lose their turn. The game can be shortened by playing to fewer than eight districts. There isn’t much downtime, which I value in any game I play of anything.
To (maybe) quote Sid Meyer: “A game is a series of interesting decisions.” Citadels qualifies on that front. We’ve had a lot of fun with it.
—
Link to a Sid Meyer speech at the Game Developers Conference. There’s some fascinating stuff.
Games That Got Played: Cards Against Humanity, Citadels, Gardens of Alhambra, Guillotine, Magic the Gathering, Mystery of the Abbey
Games That Didn’t Get Played: Agricola, Fjords, Fluxx (Python), Hector and Achilles, King of the Elves, Munchkin, San Juan, Settlers of Catan
I don’t know if it was the variety of caffeine-spiked beverages we were consuming, or what, but the gaming didn’t wrap up until about five in the morning(!) The record turnout could have contributed to that too — almost double that of any other GNOIF. We may need to purchase another card table, or a low table to put near the couch. Maybe something like this, though it’s only 27 inches square. It might work for a small game.
We started the evening with a game of Alhambra. It’s a good warmup game because it’s fairly simple and goes fairly quick. Four of us (2.5 new players) learned the rules and completed a game in about 35-40 minutes. Thanks to JH for correcting us on the scoring rule that we had been doing wrong since we’d bought the game. I had thought the game was unbalanced to the point of broken. It’s a dramatically better balanced game when played the right way.
I played a few games of Citadels. We started the evening playing with seven players, and the game “worked” with that many people. Later in the evening we played with four players, and it works that way too. Learning the game I’d played with two players and I enjoyed it that way as well. Point is, the game seems to scale to more players really well, and even with seven players it didn’t take an hour. (Though we only played to 6 districts all night in the interest of keeping the games breezy and fast. The games didn’t really seem to suffer for it.)
While I was playing Citadels, there was an epic game of Mystery of the Abbey. I could swear that they had 11 players, though the box says 3-6 players, and there are only 6 “Monk” miniatures. Maybe somebody who played could comment on how they swung that?
Cards Against Humanity was a hit again. The game seems to benefit from being played late — after the aggregate beverage consumption has passed a certain critical threshold.
The game that seemed to get the most portmortem was Guillotine, with it’s abundant coulda-shoulda-woulda events.
Thanks to everyone for playing! (And yeah, in retrospect the better name was “GNOIF Of The Round Table”. Oh well.)
I know that Modern Warfare 3 has been out quite a while, and there a ton of guides like this, but I think there’s a place for one oriented to camping, and if you choose to run around it’ll work too, only the leveling will go faster. At this point some of the guides are looking pretty dated anyway after the weapon patches (or just flat wrong in the first places in some cases.)
Why the table below looks like it does:
This is all predicated on playing Domination — flag caps count as an extra “kill” (they advance your Strike package one “notch”), and they’re worth 100 points, whereas killing a player is worth 50. (And helicopters are worth 200(!), more on that later.) If you absolutely can’t hit anything there’s always the flags for points. I want to be invisible on the mini map and invisible to air support. There’s no faster way to die than to show up as a red dot on the minimap, and having superior tactical knowledge of the battlefield is a huge advantage when it comes to staying alive.
Up to Level 20:
Custom classes become available at level 4, but I’ll often choose to run Overwatch (which has Blind Eye) as a default class until level 11, because that’s when Blind Eye becomes an option, and I hate hate hate getting stomped by air support. The Overwatch build also features the very usuable MK46 LMG. All of the LMGs are great for shooting down helicopters. At low levels enemy helicopters and UAVs are relatively super valuable when it comes to scoring points to level up. Don’t bother with any other flying things though, they’re too hard to shoot down — you’ll use too much ammo and most times die trying. Destroying helicopters also advances your “kills” for the Strike packages, which leads us to:
The build below uses the Support strike package until level 20. UAV and Ballistic Vests are cheap, and the object is to hop on as many flags as possible, which when combined with the “air kills” and “player kills” allows you to spam the UAV and Ballistic Vests. At level 15 Hardline becomes available, making each reward cost one less “kill” and speeding the leveling process even more.
Level 20-26:
At level 20 I go to the Specialist package. Combined with Hardline, this makes the first *anything* you kill/capture worth an extra 100 points. It basically doubles your leveling speed!
Level 27-38:
Assassin! I’ll say it again! Assassin! The most powerful ability in the game! (Which, for whatever reason, only maybe 1-2 players out of 6 actually use, making Portable Radar the best Tactical item in the game… more on that later.) Assassin gets even better after you get a few kills with it and unlock the “Pro” variation — at that point enemy Counter UAV/EMP no longer fuzz out your minimap(!) But wait, there’s more! The Pro version removes the red gamertag from above your head… meaning that shadows are almost as good as actual concealment or cover in a lot of situations. Just make a point to be in the shadows when available, you’ll be amazed at how many guys don’t see you. Additionally, people are expecting to look for the red gamertag as “enemy”, often they’ll think you’re a friendly just out of reflex.
The other big change at level 27 is that I will run Hardline for bonus points on the flag cap at the start of the game. It’s basically 100 free xp. After that I’ll change to a build that starts has Assassin in the Perk 2 slot. (See the table below.) It’s a little bit of a hassle, and you need to make sure to remember to change after your first death, but it really does speed things up.
Level 39:
At level 39 I add Scavenger. Otherwise it’s the same as the level 27 build.
A note on the Perks:
I *always* run Blind Eye, Assassin, and Stalker. Stalker allows you to move faster while aiming down sight (ADS). Two huge advantages to this are that you can ADS and slide around corners faster, and that during gunfights you can strafe left and right. I often strafe during gunfights — if my aim is off a little to one side I’ll strafe (rather than turn) to bring my sights back onto the target. This also has the added advantage of making me harder to hit.
The Hardline in the “6 kill” slot means that I get the “All Perks” bonus at 7 kills. The All Perks bonus gives you almost gun upgrade, and every Perk except Overkill(!)
Really, everything else is a matter of taste. I’ve been digging Blast Shield lately, if only for the stun/flashbang resistance that the Pro version provides. Marksman is useful, especially if you don’t know the maps well, since it reveals red gamertags (unless the opponent has Assassin.) I’ve recently started using Sitrep, because it makes any enemy grenades/gear glow red — it’s saved me more than once from Martyrdom and other random grenades rolling around. As an added bonus it lets me know which enemy crates are safe to open and which are traps — I get some bonus Killstreak rewards that way *and* I get to steal them from the enemy! Fun!
Level
Perk 1
Perk 2
Perk 3
Strike Package 1
Strike Package 2
Strike Package 3
4
Sleight of Hand
Quick Draw
Stalker
UAV
Ballistic Vest
11
Blind Eye
Quick Draw
Stalker
UAV
Ballistic Vest
15
Blind Eye
Hardline
Stalker
UAV
Ballistic Vest
20
Blind Eye
Hardline
Stalker
Blast Shield
Quick Draw
Marksman
27 (Start)
Blind Eye
Hardline
Stalker
Assassin
Blast Shield
Quick Draw
27 (Stealth)
Blind Eye
Assassin
Stalker
Blast Shield
Quick Draw
Hardline
39 (Start)
Blind Eye
Hardline
Stalker
Assassin
Scavenger
Marksman or QD
39 (Stealth)
Blind Eye
Assassin
Stalker
Scavenger
Marksman or QD
Hardline
The Secondary gear:
For the Lethal Slot I prefer the Bouncing Betty (unlocked at level 37). If I’m camping the Betty will (mostly) cover one angle. At the very least I usually can hear the distinctive “fling”, alerting me to the presence of an enemy. If I’m moving it’s fun leave behind in random, high traffic corners, just to make the rushers “think”. I know they hate getting killed at random running around a corner. (And they’re not rushing because they want to “think”.)
For the Tactical Slot I use the Portable Radar (unlocked at level 74.. this is the one essential item I take when Prestiging). Everyone nearby without Assassin is shown on the minimap. Which means they’re “food”, either for you or your teammates. When combined with a Light Machine Gun — the whole enemy team can try to rush a doorway.. Hasta la vista baby!
Shadows, shadows, shadows!
The Weapons:
LMGs: For camping, the L86 is all you ever need, and it’s available at level 4. It’s pretty accurate, and it’s a three bullet kill at any range, even with a silencer equipped. It has bullets for days, go fishing down blind alleys! Just hold down the trigger and let the enemy run into the bullets! With the optional Thermal Scope it becomes a laser of death (try on Bakara, Bootleg, Outpost, or Mission), though you basically give up the minimap to use the Thermal.
The MK46 is very usable too, it fires a little faster and it’s a little sloppier.
I prefer the L86 because I think it fires fast *enough* and with good sightlines it wins against about everything. The only exceptions are really good ACR, MP7, and Sniper users, but I’m going to lose to them anyway… (And don’t stand in the open at extreme distances against snipers…but you shouldn’t ever do that anyway…)
Here’s what I use on the L86, the (RDS) in parentheses are what I’d use on an assault rifle:
Level
Proficiency
Attachment 1
Attachment 2
2
Red Dot Sight
4
Kick
Red Dot Sight
5
Kick
Silencer
12
Attachments
Silencer
Grip (RDS)
27
Attachments
Silencer
Thermal
Assault Rifles: Either,
M4A1 with Silencer and RDS or Extended Mags. Another level 4 weapon. 3 bullet kill at short range, 5 bullet kill at long range. Moderately accurate and a fairly high fire rate make it good at closer ranges and fringy at longer ranges. It’s a good brawler with the Extended Mags attachment.
G36 with Silencer and RDS. Recoil goes straight up. It’s a 3 bullet kill at short range and 4 at long range. Similar damage to the M4A1.
ACR with Silencer and either Kick or RDS. 3 bullets short range, 4 bullets long range. The most accurate of the ARs, especially with Kick. Slightly lower damage, and I don’t love it if the enemy is in a brawling mood — it loses to too much stuff at medium-short range. It’s great for headshots on an enemy that’s dug in, and all of the bullets go wherever you ask them to, so it’s a great gun to use to improve accuracy.
A lot of people love the SCAR. I’m not one of them. The 5 bullet long range kill means that it sort of futzes out at longer ranges. Try it though, some people swear by it.
The semi-autos:
The MK14 is a fun hybrid sniper/AR. One shot per trigger pull. Use with Silencer and RDS or Thermal
The Type 95 is great at short-medium range. 3 bullets per trigger pull, and it’s *extremely* accurate. Sucks at long range with a Silencer.
SMGs:
MP7 is my other preferred gun (with the L86). Use Silencer with Extended Mags. Highly accurate, good rate of fire, and it allows me to use mobility to my advantage. Ambush predator!
At lot of people like the PP90 (grease gun). It’s too sloppy for my tastes. You have to get close to use it, and when everybody’s toe to toe it comes down to who has the better reflexes and the better connection. In other words, there’s some luck involved. Pass, though it’s fun.
Other Weapons (I’m not an expert on these):
Sniper: Barrett 50 cal.
Shotgun: Striker, though I’ve been hearing good things about the USAS post-patch.
Launchers: I never use them. I feel like I can take out any air support with Blind Eye Pro. That, and a lot of times when I’d hide I would see my rocket launcher sticking out on the enemy killcam. Screw that. The XM25 is a noob tube that’s fun sometimes, and it’s good for leveling Recon Pro.
I use the MP9 silenced as my backup weapon. It’s basically a poor man’s ACR. It can usually get me through until I can scavenge more ammo.
Other tips:
Whatever weapon you choose, try to create game situations that optimize its range. It sounds dumb, but it’s hugely important. I tend to try to make all gunfights happen at about 20-30 yards or so, because that’s where the L86 and MP7 shine. It’s out of range of shotgunners and SMGs, so I rarely lose to those guys. Most of the ARs are a 4 or 5 bullet kill at those ranges, so the L86 just overpowers them, and the MP7 is accurate and fast enough to generally win all but the longest fights as well. If you’re standing in a corner and an enemy could be on top of you instantly then you’re standing in the wrong place. Use the minimap to keep track of where your teammates are, and where they’re dying.
Try to always use cover and shadows. If you’re camped you should only have the tip of your gun sticking out. If you’re running it should be from cover to cover. Players rarely check their corners in MW3, there are some terrific places to hang out in the shadows that most people would never consider looking at as they try to rush on by. I’m fine with shooting them in the back.
No cover and you’re getting shot at? One option is to hit the deck! It makes your weapon more accurate too. With LMGs I’ll often go prone to change ammo if I think I might be spotted. The LMGs in particular really benefit from prone shooting.
If they know where you are — there are times it’s better to jump out at them before they can come to you. No sense letting them dictate how the fight is going to go. Shotgunners hate this, they want to beat everybody into holding still for them. Otherwise though, if you’re in cover, resist the urge to get a better look! That’s now my mantra everytime I lean out to see what’s up and I get shot while doing it. Resist The Urge To Get A Better Look!
For good tips go to Youtube and check out “MW3”, “Ozerecyt”, or “TMartn”. Note that everything older than the summer of 2012 may be a little dated due to the patches since then. Overall though, they have some great tips and really know how to use the maps to their advantage.
Finally, I run a 7 sensitivity. I found that with a 2 or 3 that the enemy was sprinting past me and I couldn’t turn fast enough while ADS to keep up. I also use Kontrol Freeks, which I think help. Your mileage may vary, but they’re cheap.
Borderlands 2 is a first person shooter set in a futuristic Mad Max/ Western/ The World Is Running Down setting. It’s a high tech wasteland where the toilets don’t usually work. It’s sort of Halo mixed with equal parts Diablo II.
Why I like it:
The Diablo series is famous for its variable loot drops. When defeated, almost every enemy drops loot which may or may not be useful. Every opponent is a potential loot pinata! “What’s going to drop this time?! How will it work with what I already own?!”
Borderlands appoximates this by dropping shields, other goodies, and lots and lots of guns. Bazillions of guns. The guns themselves are collections of a scope, stock, magazine, etc — about seven pieces in all. Each piece of the gun is randomly generated, then all are combined to create the final weapon stats. There are guns that do corrosive damage and fire damage guns and explosive damage guns. There are wildly different fire rates and magazine sizes and damage outputs. The guns often handle *very* differently from one another, so you’ll want to use a different gun for each situation, which is fine. You can equip *four* of them and toggle through them as needed. (Plus another 18ish backpack slots for the other good situational candidates that you just can’t *bear* to sell.)
There are Diablo-style RPG elements to Borderlands 2 as well. As your character levels it gets more powerful and gains helpful special abilities, such as: “Your fire rate is increased by 20% for a few seconds after killing an enemy.” or “Your turret emits a small nuclear blast when deployed.” The leveling means that you outgrow your beloved guns over time, necessitating the constant search for more. You’ll say to yourself — “I need a corrosive sniper rifle for when we’re shooting at robots that are a long way away!” or “I need an explosive damage bullet hose with a huge magazine for crowd control!” Of course, those are just dreams. What actually drops may or may not be exactly what you had in mind, but will it “do”?
Borderlands features split-screen co-op too, so there can be much discussion of who has what, and how do we share to optimize our survivability? “Is your second-best fire damage submachine gun better than mine? Does that shotgun better suit your abilities and playstyle, or mine?” Splitscreen is totally the way to go, the game almost begs for it.
Borderlands 1 is a great game, but the enemy AI is better in Borderlands 2. The enemies are “smarter” in 2 because they don’t just sit still when they’re getting shot at; they’ll duck, roll, or run to another cover, making them a lot more challenging to hit. They also “patrol” when they spawn, rather than just standing there — no more “If I stand here I can head-shot that sentry over there before he can act.”
To sum up: Borderlands has a fun foul-mouthed sense of humor, and the Bazillions of guns makes for some addictive gameplay and lots of replayability. And it’s fun!
GNOIF #6 Recap — GNOIF And Punishment (Crime/Corruption Theme.)
Games That Got Played: Cards Against Humanity, Guillotine, Rocketville
Games That Didn’t Get Played: Family Business, Gloom, Mr. Jack (travel and full-size) Mystery of the Abbey, Pirate’s Cove, The Worst Card Game Ever, Revolution
The hit of the evening was Cards Against Humanity. Visualize Apples to Apples, only make it R-rated, and make the object to be funny rather than to have similar/evocative meanings. In our case it evolved into “how foul can you be?” As one player said “There are some of these words and phrases that I’m not sure that I want to admit that I know what they mean.”
Full disclosure: I HATE Apples to Apples. Quoting a guy from the boardgamegeek forums:
Apples to Apples isn’t really a game. Even by the standards of party games, it’s not really a game. The problem is that WHAT you do has no bearing on HOW you do, and HOW you do doesn’t matter.
I contend that if neither your actions nor the outcome matters, then you don’t have a game.
I think the reason that Cards Against Humanity worked better is because the object was only to be funny. That, and because we’d all had some beverages, and the game itself is so over the top sometimes. Looking at the boardgamegeek page, we also happened to hit the sweet spot on the recommended number of players (6-8).
Perfect crowd, fresh/new material = lol funny… some people were about falling out of their chairs.
GNOIF #5 Recap — GNOIF, Trains, and Automobiles. (Transportation theme.)
Games That Got Played: Star Fluxx, Forbidden Island, Lost Cities, Poo, Rocketville, Ticket To Ride Card Game
Games That Didn’t Get Played: Starship Catan, Robo Rally, Ticket To Ride – Europe
Rocketville was the big surprise hit of the evening — we hadn’t played it before a quick cram session earlier in the day, and the boardgamegeek reviews are Not Good. We had a lot of fun with it though. In brief, it’s a fairly simple card based bid/auction game where you’re trying to campaign to become the mayor of Rocketville. The premise really doesn’t have much to do with anything though… I think thesetwo reviews line up with my take on it pretty well. The reviews are titled “Blame Avalon Hill (defending Rocketville)”, and, “Not Nearly As Bad As They Say”. Rocketville is recommended for 3-5 players. As one of the reviewers states: It’s probably a better game with three players rather than five, which would decrease the impact of luck on the outcome. It’s also a game that you don’t want to pay full price for — $10-$15 is about right; there’s not enough in the box to justify thirty-five bucks. None of that sounds too encouraging, but I’ll say it again, we *did* have a lot of fun with it!
The other surprise hit was a game that was purchased fairly recently — Poo: The Card Game. The premise is that you play as a monkey, and you throw poo at the other monkeys until you’re the only reasonably clean monkey left. There are Poo cards and Clean Cards. And cards like “Buddy’s Face”, which allows you to to interpose your buddy between you and the primate flinging poo at you. It’s a fun game with cute and silly graphics and tiny card text.
I’ve gotta quit scaring people away from Robo Rally if I ever want to play it again…
The boy cat was *very* excited with Rocketville. (He really thinks he fits in that box?)
The tables below show the builds I’m using for Modern Warfare 3, Domination Mode. I did this post when I was new to the game. Now I’m on my 7th Prestige. The new information is really different from the old stuff.
The idea is (still) to skulk around corners and shadows, and to ambush as many unsuspecting players as possible. This isn’t about having “fair fights”. It’s about shooting them when they’re not looking, if possible. The builds feature Blind Eye and Assassin, to be invisible to enemy air support and invisible on the mini map. I always use a Silencer when available for maximum sneakiness. (Plus, when I whiff it takes them longer to figure out where I’m shooting from.)
For assault rifles I would suggest the SCAR at level 6, then the G36C and the ACR at higher levels. The G36C has a little more punch, the ACR has more accuracy.
The MP-7 is the best submachine gun in my opinion, though it’s not available until level 74. Otherwise I would use the P90 or PP90 (grease gun). I generally prefer accuracy, so I use the P90 at lower levels.
Level
Perk 1
Perk 2
Perk 3
4 to 9
Sleight of Hand
Blast Shield
Stalker
10 to 19
Blind Eye
Blast Shield
Stalker
20 to 26
Blind Eye
Hardline
Stalker
27+ first capture
Blind Eye
Hardline
Stalker
27+ remainder
Blind Eye
Assassin
Stalker
I use the Grenadier class until level 4, when the custom builds become available. I settled on Stalker because it allows me to scope and strafe around corners at nearly full speed. The player that is crouched and scoped when the shooting starts has a big advantage.
Level
Strike Perk 1
Strike Perk 2
Strike Perk 3
4 to 19 (Support)
UAV
Counter UAV
(none)
20 to 26 (Specialist)
Quickdraw
Sleight of Hand
Blast Shield
27-38 first capture
Assassin
Quickdraw
Sleight of Hand
27-38 remainder
Quickdraw
Sleight of Hand
Blast Shield
39+ first capture
Assassin
Scavenger
Quickdraw
39+ remainder
Scavenger
Quickdraw
Sleight of Hand
During the first flag capture I use Hardline to get to Assassin, that way the Assassin kicks in after that first capture, and I basically get double the capture xp too. *After* that first capture Assassin is used to stay off of the minimap.
I use Bouncing Betty and Portable Radar for the Lethal and Tactical Slots. If you can tolerate the SCAR, I would take the Radar with the first Prestige, the Betty with the second Prestige, the ACR with the 3rd, then take the bonus custom build slots for the next five Prestiges. Personally though, I would take the ACR first, then Radar, then Betty. I hate getting outgunned.
First off, a fun animated look at Doc Ellis’ “chemically altered” no-hitter. Thanks to M for the link.
Next, we have a guy who gets *very* upset on day one of the Diablo 3 launch. So upset, that he tries to jam his collectors item Soulstone into his head at the end. Almost 700,000 views in 3 days! The language is NSFW.
I’m not buying D3. It has DRM, which for me is a nonstarter. And you have to be connected at all times to Blizzard’s server to play — if you get disconnected, tough nuts, you’re redoing the content. Part of the reason for the “online only” is because they’re doing a real-money auction house and keeping a significant part of the sale price. (Like 30% in some instances from what I’ve heard.) In theory the “online only” will allow them to avoid dupes (which would make all in-game items worthless from a money standpoint, can’t have that). Of course, I’m not one of those people, so to my mind they completely missed the mark. The best part of D2 was hooking a couple (or more) computers together and playing with friends. Not. An. Option. The other “best part” was the random loot drops. Every kill had the potential to be “Christmas”. The auction house (the “gold-you-get-from-drops” one, not the “real money” one) has made it so that players can use in-game gold to buy better gear than they might find as drops, completely negating that aspect of the gameplay. Keeping my money, thanks.
Finally, a bonus animal picture!
Female in the foreground. Male in the background. I like the composition. It also pretty well nailed her "don't mess with me" face. She gets that way sometimes. He's keeping a healthy distance.
Title: Citadels (now sold with the Dark City expansion)
FlatbreadGarden 