Proud Mammal Kane

Raised by sloths. Invented the hula-hoop. Enjoyed a short stint as a zombie in Haiti. Now he makes games.

Published: 39 articles

Game Review: Battle Wizards

My favorite game publisher isn’t one of the huge ones (although they are fairly prolific thanks to licensed properties). And they’ve made a few great games but nothing that’s blown up to huge proportions (though that may change thanks to Wil Wheaton’s show Tabletop playing a game of theirs in an upcoming episode). You may not recognize their name or any of their content (yet), but in my humble opinion they offer some of the most fun and funny gameplay in modern gaming. This is the first of their games I have reviewed, but it certainly won’t be the last. Not Mayfair. Not Steve Jackson. Not Parker Brothers, God not Parker Brothers. And not even Rio Grande! The publishing company I love the most (besides Proud Mammal (in potentia) of course) is Cryptozoic Entertainment.

taken from http://kastorskorner.com/wp/2013/02/15/cryptozoic-toy-fair-2013/

And their logo is cool too.

This love affair with Crytozoic started with the game that I’m going to review today. Already, before I’ve even mentioned what game it is (aside from the title of the article), you can tell that I’m going to be giving this game a big thumbs up, but don’t worry because I’ll tell you what I think is wrong with it too. But there’s really not much for me to complain about, this game has everything that I personally want from a game. It’s simple enough to teach in 2 minutes but has complexities that only come with knowing the entirety of the game, it puts an emphasis on humor in card art and writing AND gameplay, and to top it all off… it’s fun. Welcome to my review of Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre.

Battle Wizards, as I will refer to the enormously titled game hence forth, is a card based combat game where the goal is to completely annihilate your opponents with silly sounding spells. As I mentioned before, the gameplay is very simple. All you have to do is pick 3 (or less) cards to add to your spell with the only caveat is that you can only have a maximum of 1 of each category of card (Source : Quality : Deliver). That’s all you need to know! First time players will need to be shown what that means, but it’s very easy to grasp and the art of the cards reinforce the order better than any rulebook ever could. There’s also some stuff about rolling dice that might need explaination, but it’s included in that 2 minute prep course, so it’s really not that complex.  It’s all very intuitively designed, just take a look at these cards.

taken from http://boardgaming.com/games/card-games/epic-spell-wars-of-the-battle-wizards-duel-at-mt-skullzfyre

A thing of beauty.

But I didn’t even get to the best part yet. How damn funny the whole thing is. Some more squeamish players might not find the art as humorous as I do, but I’ve been a watcher of horror movies my whole life, I just get a kick out of over the top gore. For the person with the right sense of humor, this game will make you laugh every time you draw a card. And there’s one more cherry on top of this sundae… “Wizard Voice”. This is the rule that will let you know if you should be friends with the people you’re playing with (or if you should no longer be friends). Players, when they cast their spell, have to assume their best “Wizard Voice” and it’s just the best when people really get into it. It’s enough to give everyone a laugh every time someone plays a spell, which could potentially be every 45 seconds if the game is moving swiftly. Which is damn good for a combat based game. See below for an example of Wizard Voice (kind of).

I can’t remember a time when I played Battle Wizards and didn’t have a great time. It’s a perfect game for beginners but can get really cutthroat if you play with a group who know what they’re doing. I love it. It’s absolutely in my top 5 games (I didn’t really think about what the other one’s might be, soooo… it could rank even higher).

That said, I’m often a nitpicky person and it’s not hard for me to find things in any media I consume that could be changed for (what I believe to be) the better. Just a short list, but here you go.

#1 Include more Health Markers and dice with the game. 1 marker and die for each character sheet would have been very convenient. The game never mentions a player limit, although the ingredients of the box limit you to 6 players. I suppose the players are limited to keep the game moving at a brisk pace or to make sure you don’t have to shuffle the deck every single round, but that burden is on the player, the gameplay itself could handle that many people and there have been times that I wanted it to, but couldn’t because there weren’t enough parts in the box. The same goes for dice, while you’ll never NEED more than the 4 that come with the game, just a couple extra dice would help the game move faster when somebody plays a card that requires everyone to roll. Which brings me to…

#2 Downtime. The game can have lulls where either players who don’t know the game well enough are trying to build spells from their hand (and everyone is waiting on them) or where you’re dead and waiting for the next round to begin. The game tries to nullify the waiting when dead problem by making you stronger the next round (via Dead Wizard Cards that boost your power in the next round), but it’s not fun to die in the first round and have to wait 3 rounds for the game to catch up to you. And when it comes to the player who doesn’t know the deck, well, just wait for them. Eventually they’ll get on level with you, but until that point, cut them some slack.

That’s pretty much all I have to say about Battle Wizards. It’s a great game, from a quality company, that you should play all the time. If you have 20 spare bucks and you already own the entire Proud Mammal line of games, books, movies, graphic novels and comics, t-shirts and also have at least a six month supply of our energy drinks, then I wholly endorse giving your money to them instead.

One last thing, I want to give a shout out to the artist of Battle Wizards. His name is Nick Edwards and he does some really righteously cool shit (click the awesome picture below to link to his tumblr site).

taken from http://nick-edwards.blogspot.com/

Nick Edwards is awesome.

PSA: The One Day of Christmas

It’s coming up on the holidays and if you haven’t started shopping yet, it’s time to begin. But I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in recent years. People seem to think you need to shower family in gifts to earn their adoration. Let me help you out and tell you that it’s simply not true. Buying cars, extravagant vacations, homes and scads of jewelry… totally unnecessary! And there’s an old song called The Twelve Days of Christmas that tells the story of a rich youth trying to buy the love of their significant other, completed over an excessively long twelve days. Well I’ve rewritten it just a little bit to appeal to the more thrifty (read: cheap) of us gentlefolk.

 

The One Day of Christmas

On the One Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

One Drummer Drumming.

One Piper Piping

One Lord a-Leaping

One Lady Dancing

One Maid a-Milking

One Swan a-Swiming

One Goose a-Laying

One Golden Ring (don’t be 100% stingy!)

One Calling Bird

One French Hen

One Turtle Dove

And a fresh copy of ACHTUNG!

"Police Graffiti" by Kirsty Hall / CC BY 2.0 / modified effects and "ACHTUNG!" logo http://kirstyhall.co.uk/ [kirstyhall.co.uk]

Click here to buy ACHTUNG! TODAY!

Happy Holidays!

4 Things Wrong With Science Fiction Spaceships

Proud Mammal Kane 207 Comments

Proud Mammal is working on a game that deals with some of the physics of space travel, and it’s lead me down a path of thinking about the space ships we see in movies and television. Most of my favorite ships from those sources are utterly bonkers. The Viper (Battlestar Galactica) has terrible maneuverability. The Enterprise (Star Trek) has literally zero true visibility, they rely 100% on computer read-outs. The TARDIS (Dr. Who) is… well it’s a police box, or… a gateway or something, but regardless they show that thing flying through space.

Image by Locozee

No problem.

Those ships don’t work in any situation but fantasy… but that’s not really what I wanted to point out. There are 4 things that I think could improve any space ship design with only tiny changes, and here they are.

1. Add Windows – So many designs in science fiction do away with windows because they have sensors and view screens and emergency back up generators that will protect them from every needing to see anything. Star Trek (at least The Original Series) has the crew receiving all of their information from powered screens. I know for a fact that there is at least one instance of them losing power and becoming totally helpless (Star Trek: The Motion Picture). Maybe if they had a window and some manual propulsion vents (to give them a way to propel themselves without power), they wouldn’t get caught up in so many issues where they just have to talk themselves out of trouble (I know what you’re doing Gene Roddenberry, save a lot of money on those FX, yeah?). And maybe they didn’t think layering of screens would be possible either, but we’re already living in a world of Google Glass, so maybe we can just stick those same sensors and screens right on the window, solve everyone’s problem. Worst case scenario, just swing your view screen in front of the window when you don’t need to see.

from scifi.blogoverflow.com

Sooo, which direction is this thing looking?

2. Add Rear View Mirrors – Even the ships with windows generally don’t have any means of seeing behind themselves. Point to any number of space fighter and they have these cockpits that can see (at best, and not counting blind spots) 180 degrees around their ship. The X-wing, the Viper, and Starfox’s ship, none of them can see behind themselves and none of them can turn on a dime (for some reason, their versions of space don’t let you spin while maintaining momentum). The most egregious violator of this and the one with the most prominent problem? Firefly’s Serenity. There is an entire episode dedicated to what happens when they don’t look behind them (1 whole episode of their short 14 episode run – I.E. that’s a problem for them 7% of the time: which is huge compared to most of my other fixes on these other ships). They’re followed into deep space by a bounty hunter trying to catch them off guard… and they don’t know he’s there despite the fact that he’s been following them at close range for hours! Just mount a mirror on the outside of that ship and they would never have had a problem.

From Dash Z

A quick look backwards once in a while… not too difficult.

3. Reduce Ship Size – There are so many enormous ships in science fiction that it’s basically a trope at this point. But I’m going to point to the absolute biggest of them all, The Death Star. Clocking in at 160 Kilometers in diameter it’s easily one of the biggest ships in science fiction history. But what is that space used for? It’s not all power and laser workings, I can tell you that. There’s a standing army aboard, but why? It’s a blatant misuse of manpower and materials… because instead of building the extra 80 miles (diameter) of crew quarters, mess halls, cinemas, shopping plazas, family barracks, pre-schools, roads and breweries – they could have just made it smaller. They need probably 3 teams of 20 to pilot the ship, 3 teams of 20 to shoot the gun. 20 kilometers would probably have been plenty big enough to house the gun, have enough power and STILL have room for homespun niceties for the crew. Plus, with all that extra metal and crew, they could have manned additional ships to help protect the giant mega weapon. And it’s not just Star Wars that gets this wrong. Almost every giant ship in science fiction is absolutely too big for what it’s designed to do. Oh man… and don’t even get me started on the logistics of keeping these ships supplied. Unless they’re essentially magic like Star Trek’s replicator… only then is it possible.

from  Cartuse Imprimanta Refill Profesionist

Never get between a Klingon and his magic whiskey.

4. Add More Engines or Thrusters – The thing about space craft is that they need more than one thruster to get motion in more than one direction, and a lot of space craft in movies and television do have more than one… but, and it’s a huge but, they’re so often asymmetrical that it’s a wonder these ships don’t go spinning out of control immediately. Take Battle Star Galactic’s Viper, its 3 main engines aren’t directly behind the center of mass, and they are not symmetrical. That ship is going to go into some wicked spins. The X-wing design on the other hand is a bit better, it has 4 engines, directly at center of mass and they’re symmetrical. Good. But something we never see in the movies are nose-cone thrusters, something to give it a good dog fighting maneuver. Getting followed? No problem, just swing your ship 180 degrees and blast away while you move backwards.

from Gizmodo

Great luck for the Cylons that whoever designed this ship was drunk.

There’s my nitpicks, and they’re all valid. These ships just aren’t as good as they could be. They can’t see, they’re wasteful and (in a real situation) they would probably just spin out of control forever. With my proposed changes, the Empire would have won the war, the crew of Serenity wouldn’t have to deal with uninvited madmen on board, and the Enterprise would certainly get to decrease the number of red shirts it orders.

from couples costumes

“Thanks buddy!”

Behind the Scenes #2: References in ACHTUNG!

Today I’m just going to take it easy this week and showcase some fun I had with writing the cards in ACHTUNG! The game had me coming up with a lot of different ways to be silly, and I borrowed a few of them from real people and various media. Take a look at this short list and I’ll point out some of my favorites.

There are two cards in the deck that each refer specifically to one person. Both of these people have extremely identifiable traits that are hard to miss.

The first of these two will have you choose from these laws: “Wear something on your head,” “Speak in an old west accent,” and “End everything you say with, ‘Pilgrim.’” Of course it’s John Wayne, The Duke himself. He’s pretty much the most famous cowboy in movie history. Go check out him out in the movie Stagecoach, it’s pretty great.

 

The second of the set reads: “Do not move your right hand,” “Hold a writing utensil in your right hand,” and “Only refer to yourself in the third person.” Any guesses? Good guess! That’s right, it’s our old friend Bob Dole. If you were that guy in the back of the room who guessed wrong, well then let me tell you who he is. He’s one of those career politicians that hang around so long that everyone gets to know his name and face. His mannerisms stem from a wound he received serving in World War 2 and while that isn’t funny, I feel like a bunch of people imitating him would be.

 

Sourced from https://chicanes.wordpress.com/

Ball(point)s to the wall.

There’s also a ton of movie references tucked away in the box. Here are a few of my favorites…

“After playing a law, raise your arms into the air and shout ‘Can you dig it?’” If you’re a fan of the action film genre then I’m sure you’ll scream “Yeah!” The Warriors is a movie that gives us so many great lines… especially the insane villainous gang guy who sets The Warriors up for murder. I had to use restraint to only shove one quote into the game.

 

Not all movies are great, and some aren’t even good. The movie that I took, “The losers of a filibuster must say, ‘You are tearing me apart, Lisa!’” from is what you call a so-bad-it’s-good movie… and even that might be generous. The line comes from the incredible Tommy Wiseau’s magnum opus The Room. The wikipedia page quotes a review calling it the Citizen Kane of bad movies, which couldn’t be more accurate.

 

I’m a sucker for smart comedy that doesn’t mind being silly and the boys (men? (grandpas?)) of Monty Python are some of the best. Which is why I had to co-opt a line from their brilliant questing film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. “If you must insult someone, refer to their parents as rodents and fruit.”

 

I don’t want to go through everything and produce a list four times this size, so I’ll just skip straight to some musical reference. This one is a bit absurd out of context (and it doesn’t make much more sense in context but… there you go). The Ramones are one of my favorite bands and they have a song called Commando from which I took the idea for the law, “One your turn, be nice to mommy, don’t talk to commies, and (pretend to) eat kosher salamis.”

I wanted to pack as much silliness and reference into the game as I could so players would, just once in a while, go “oh yeah, I recognize this!” I know that reference is the lowest form of creativity, but damn if it isn’t a good time.

PSA: Turkey Day coming up!

Proud Mammal Kane 23 Comments

In the U.S. Thanksgiving is coming up at the end of the month and with that comes a proud holiday tradition, The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Turkey Day Marathon! On Thanksgiving Day at noon eastern time, Joel will be back again to show us some more bad movies topped with the sweet and savory gravy called riff. I’ll be there to stuff myself full of the dark meat of bad movies and the cranberry sauce of robotic comedians.

For those not in the know, riffing is basically just talking over a movie, responding to things said or actions taking place on screen. Nobody does it better than Best Brains (the team behind MST3K) and their progeny (Rifftrax & Cinematic Titanic). Those outings are also good, like ham, but stick with the great big turkey bird that is MST3K if you don’t know what you’re getting into.

The official MST youtube channel (get to it through that first video!) has two full movies on it, and they both come with a riffing guide built into the annotations; which is kind of great considering a lot of the references are to things that happened long before I was either born or cognizant of pop culture. But don’t let that dissuade you young’ins, even the fruit cake of obscure reference is delicious in the quantities MST serves up.

If you’re looking for a good time right now (yeah, lets keep this anonymous, just like a bathroom wall) then go to youtube and… don’t tell anyone I told you this, but type in “mst3k” into the search bar and you’ll be able to find almost every movie they’ve ever done. A good jumping in point to brine you for Turkey Day? Try “Catalina Caper” the movie is as poisonous as a raw potato, but the MST boys boil it thoroughly and stick a fork in it when it’s done.

And never forget to end your MST3K meal with a big helping of the pumpkin pie of overused simile.