Viticulture and Legacy games

Viticulture is one of the best games ever. If it weren't for the fact that Dominion is my favorite game ever, Viticulture would probably be number one. (Speaking of which, I need to update my Favorite Games list, mine only has three, whereas Alex's has over 50). I don't even know what it is about Viticulture that is so awesome to me. I've been thinking about it, and I guess I really really like worker placement games. Viticulture, Caverna, Village, TZolkin, I don't know, there's something about them that I just really like. With Viticulture there's also the fact that every year your wines age and your crushed grapes in your vats age, and I really like that for some reason. I like being able to construct different buildings that give you certain stuff, but some of them seem to be essential, like you have to get them every game or else you'll lose, like the extensions for your wine storage. Others are just super important but you don't have to have them if you have the right cards, such as the buildings that allow you to plant certain types of grapes in your vineyards. One game I totally got around that by playing a visiter card that allowed me to plant without needing the required buildings. That's another thing: the visitor cards are so rich and varied, and the game automatically gives you one every year, so you don't even have to go out of your way to get one. Although once again there is a building you can buy that will get you two.

Stuff from the Tuscany expansion, I guess, that I love: the mamas and papas at the beginning are super cool. The fact that you can sell some of your starting three fields is really neat, and a lot of visitor cards are from that expansion too I think. Alex said that we didn't need Tuscany because all of the good stuff was already put into the essential edition of Viticulture, and after watching reviews I can see what he means. While some people may think the separation of Summer and Winter worker placement is cool, to me it's just alright, and in Tuscany they even have spots for Spring and Fall workers, which once again I don't think really make the game. And there's an option to make cheese? Which the reviewers were just like, what? Why did you add this to a game about making wine? You're just taking away from its simplicity and goodness. So yeah, I guess we don't need the Tuscany expansion.

So, yeah, Viticulture. Love that game. I've also been thinking a lot about recently, ever since Alex's post about Pandemic Legacy, is legacy games. I've only ever played one, SeaFall, which was awesome, but it apparently is the worst legacy game out there according to some reviewers? Well if that's the worst dude, and I loved it, I can't wait to see what the heck other legacy games are like. And Pandemic Legacy is supposed to be just as good as the first, which is super hard to pull off. (The sequel to anything is hard to pull off.) But they do recommend playing the first one before playing the second one because there are minor spoilers to the first one in the second one. But man, I have no one to play with.

See, that's the main problem. I'd absolutely love to play all these legacy games with people, but with who? Eric and Ryan live at BYU-I, and Alex is still back in Fallon fighting back adulthood as long as he can, and the only time we've had to play a legacy game was during the two week Christmas break. The closet so far since then is Jacob and Brandon suggesting we start a game of Risk Legacy, but once again, when are we going to have time to play it? Getting together once a month? It's super hard for all us of since we all have kids (well, I have kid, soon to be kids) and they are young and need our time and attention and it's really hard to go out and do anything like a legacy game for us. Maybe I'll talk to some fellow teachers and see if they want to do something after school? Besides, you know, work?

Even if I did have a group to play with and a time to play, the next question is: which Legacy game? Jacob suggested Risk Legacy, so if it with that group we could do that, and Alex suggested Pandemic Legacy Season 1, so if it was with that group we could do that. I've already played SeaFall. It's suggested that I play season 1 before I play Pandemic Legacy Season 2. There's a legacy game coming out soon (like, it's already come out? or it will very soon? one of those) called Charterstone, and get this: Charterstone is created by the exact same guy that created, wait for it, Viticulture. The same designer of one of my favorite games created a worker placement legacy game. So that one is definitely on my radar. So which would I play if given the option to play any legacy game I wanted? Well, once again, it would depend on who I played with, but my first pick would be Pandemic Legacy Season 1, followed by Charterstone, followed by Pandemic Legacy Season 2, followed by Risk Legacy. If playing with Alex and Eric, who have already played Season 1, it's a toss up between Season 1 and Charterstone, because they already know everything that happens in Season 1, and Charterstone would be a fresh experience. But, of course, all of this is only hypothetical at this point.

Trip to Wyoming, new How to Play video, school

This last Thursday I took a little trip up to Wyoming. Why? Good question. Let's go back a bit.

I had work off this last week. It was October break for everyone at my school, and so I was at home all week cleaning and getting ready for the baby. I'm taking an online Master's program through Grand Canyon University. Each of my ten classes is six weeks long. I have to post every Saturday and Monday, and every Wednesday is a big project due. Heather suggested I look at those early, so that I wouldn't procrastinate. So on Tuesday I get on and look at all the future assignments I have to do. It turns out that for some of them I needed to have observation hours. Usually when I needed these I just used my school because I could go during my prep, which is what I did the last time I needed some of those, including interviews. Well, it turns out that this time it needed to be in a Title 1 school (which mine is not) with ELL (English Language Learners) (which my school does not have). So I would need to go to a different school and observe.

Wednesday comes around and I think to myself, I have this week off. This would be a perfect opportunity to get in those observation hours while I don't have to go into work. So I start looking at some Title 1 schools around that I can go to. Um, so the thing is, is that they all decided to have a short little Fall break. That Thursday and Friday. Every single school district (with the exception of one down in Saint George) in all of Utah was not going to have school that Thursday or Friday. And I'm just like, What the heck!?! Here I am, getting all prepared to actually be proactive in my education and get these observation hours done a month in advance, but because I was a day late it all  doesn't matter!? If I was a day more prepared I could have observed on Wednesday, but that's too late and I was planning on Thursday and Friday but now all the schools are going to be closed!? Anyway, I was frustrated and upset that even though I had looked up my assignments way before and had the week to do them so that I wouldn't have to take work off to do my observation hours, it didn't even matter.

That's when my good darling wife Heather helped me out and found me a Title 1 school with ELL that wasn't closed Thursday. The reason? Because it wasn't in Utah. It was in Wyoming. The corner of Wyoming that sits in the little seat that Utah makes in its upper-right corner. here, I'll just put in  picture:

I called the school and barely managed to talk to someone (because it was at 4:00 which is when everyone leaves) and they said I could come in the next day for observation hours. It was an hour and 44 minute drive, but the next morning I got up early and drove there while it was still dark. I needed nine hours, and only had seven, but thankfully there was two hours of stuff going on that night with the ELL teacher that I stuck around for to get my nine hours. I left home around 6:30 in the morning and got home around 9:00 at night. And that's my story about going to Wyoming. I think that's the first time I've ever been to that state.

In other news, it took me about three days to do, but I finished my newest How to Play video. It didn't take me three days in the sense that it took me 72 hours, it took me three days in the sense that I started on Thursday and finished on Saturday night, with various hours and times each day writing the script and filming and editing and what-not. Anyway, for my Game Design Winterim class I made a whole bunch of videos on how to play the games so that the students could watch them and learn how to play them so that the first two days of class we could just play those and they would all know how to play. This year I think I'm going to replace some of the old games with new ones, one of the new ones being Kingdomino, the winner of the Spiel des Jahres 2017. 

So, school. More specifically, work, APA, American Preparatory Academy. So in my last blog post I mentioned how the building had about three inspections it had to pass? Well, it didn't pass one of them, so we're not going to be teaching in the new building on Monday like we had hoped. The good news is though, I got an e-mail Friday saying the building was finished and it had afterwards passed the inspection, so this upcoming week we're going to be moving stuff to the new building, it's just that classes won't be starting there until the following Monday, October 30, the day before Halloween.

APA is a uniform school, and costumes are not allowed. Both years I've taught there I've gotten away with a tiny costume. For example, my first year all the students said I looked like Linguini from Disney Pixar's Ratatouille, so that year I put a little toy rat on my shoulder like Remy. The next year I wore a baseball cap and I was a sports fan or something, I can't really remember. This year I don't know what I'm going to do. Something small so I won't get in trouble (fingers crossed) but something so that everyone will know it's for Halloween. We have a big creepy toy spider, maybe I'll put that in my hair.

You know what's in five days from the day I post this? Stranger Things season 2 comes out. That's right.

Next week off from school, baby coming soon

This next week I have off from school. Yay! Which means I will be taking time to clean the apartment and getting it ready for the new baby who is due November 10. Also, if you remember the situation with the new school not being ready for us to teach in, and me having to teach in the gym, well the new school is set to be finished this week. Then they will have four inspections, and the plan is to be ready to go by the Monday after the break. We'll see how that turns out. I had really high hopes, up until during an after school meeting with all the teachers when the administrators had a guy come in to encourage us that it would be done on time. After his talk I felt way less optimistic that it would be done. That's called irony: when an event occurs opposite of what you would expect. They expected it to make us more optimistic but instead it made me less optimistic. Dude, I don't know what we'll do if it's not ready by then.

Played my new game Dice Forge at clubs night a few weeks ago and with Heather twice yesterday. I won at clubs night by 5 points and Heather beat me once and I beat her once, by about 6 points and then about 20 points. It's a fun game.

Alex said he'd be interested in playing Pandemic Legacy with more of his brothers than just Eric, and I totally want to, but I have no idea when I'll be in Fallon next, much less for an extended period of time. This year was the year Heather, Henry and I would go to Fallon for Thanksgiving and Mesa for Christmas, but with the baby being born on November 10 we weren't planning on going anywhere for Thanksgiving.

The new baby is coming soon and Henry is very excited. He points at Heather's tummy and says, "Baby sister come out! Right now!" What a cute kid. He's going to be so good around her. Maybe a bit too friendly. We'll have to make sure he doesn't cuddle her too hard. Or try to feed her anything. Or anything like that.

Speaking of Henry, this last week Heather, Henry and I went to a farm place that had a corn maze and was selling pumpkins and had a whole bunch of fun stuff for families and kids. There was a little petting zoo area there that Henry loved, and we got a video. There was also this wide but short metal slide that you could go down into corn seed that Henry absolutely loved. When we got home he still had corn seed hiding in his clothes that we had to get out. I got a video of him playing with it later and singing to himself too.

So this next week I'll be cleaning up and getting the apartment ready for the baby, since I have the week off of work. My Grand Canyon University master's is going well. Hopefully my American Preparatory Academy building will be ready by next week. Speaking of my school, we're already getting ready for Winterim and we're sending in our Winterim proposals! I'm doing Game Design again obviously and I'm also going to offer the Psychology and Science one I did last year too, but now I'm calling it Psychology, Philosophy, and Science wince we talked a lot of philosophy last time, too. For a third class I was thinking about offering a Brandon Sanderson class, and we could talk about the Cosmere and create our own magic systems and the like. I might team up with another teacher who's actually good at writing to do that one though. We'll see.

My thoughts on October General Conference 2017

Okay, so in my opinion a lot of the talks given this general conference were given on one topic. It seemed to me that the majority of talks were about this one thing, but when I told Heather she didn't think that at all. So maybe it just seemed that way to me? Anyway, the theme I thought the majority of talks had was this: There are a ton of trials in this life, but with reliance on Christ He will support us through these trials. Anyone else get that same theme?

Elder Hales passed away after the Sunday morning session. He was prayed for in the opening prayer of the Priesthood session. I can't remember any other time when an apostle has passed away during a general conference.

Okay, I wish I had taken better notes in conference, because I could have sworn there were two entire talks just on trials and overcoming them, but I can't remember what they were or who gave them, and looking through Middle-aged Mormon Man's blog isn't jogging any memories, either. But I know for a fact that the mentioned the natural disasters and hurricanes a lot. And two talks talked about the eclipse. My conference word should have been eclipse. That would have been so cool.

Okay, boom, Sister President Jean Bingham's talk. Christ will help us through times of trial and difficulty. Was that the only talk? I could have sworn there was at least one more earlier. Maybe that's just the Spirit telling me what I need to hear? Didn't someone say in conference that just because we have fight that doesn't mean our problems will be solved; it just might mean that we are given strength to make it through the trial? Like the people of Alma. Someone talked about the people of Alma and that principle. Anyway, so maybe other people got different things out of conference. That's the main theme that I got out of it.

In other non-conference related news, after Priesthood on Saturday I went out and used a couple of gift cards, one of which being a Barnes and Noble gift card that I got over a year ago, to buy the game Dice Forge. Look forward to playing it.