Final Fantasy XIV - Dungeons with Penny

Penny and I have been playing a lot of Final Fantasy XIV over the past few months.  It got to the point that my wife decided (on her own with no convincing from either Penny or me) to join us as well.  She's a level 50 Bard now and slowly progressing through the post-50 story quests like Penny.

At some point I decided to record some of my dungeon runs with Penny.  What follows below are the first 3 episodes of our YouTube series Dungeons with Penny.

Episode 1 - Halatali

Episode 2 - Tanking Thousand Maws

Episode 3 - Haunted Haukke Manor

We don't really have a set schedule for when episodes get released simply because it was hard to find time to edit the videos during the school year and the last two months were super busy with end of year stuff.  However, with summer coming up I think Penny and I will be able to put out a more regular schedule.  Going to try 1 video a week so one Dungeons with Penny episode each week!

Anyways if you enjoyed any of them, please subscribe to the channel and comment on the videos!

Final Fantasy XIV - Family Adventuring

In my last post I posted a picture of my character Mialee Liadon in her new look as a Miqo'te.  Considering how much time and gil I spent trying to find a look I liked for her when she was an Elezen, changing her race was not a snap decision (see post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4 for the evolution of Mialee's look as an Elezen).

A few weeks ago Penny watched me play and then asked if she could play too.  She had made a character on my account when I first started playing and although she didn't get too far she remembered she had one.  The combat mechanics were too complicated for her as she was only 4 I think so she spent all her play time just wandering around looking at things (and dying to high level things when she found them).  Now I didn't want to give up my play time so she could play so I made her a trial account.  I figured why not since it wouldn't cost me anything and she would have plenty to do while on her way to level 35.

So she made a new character on my server (Exodus), a Miqo'te named Luna Khaleesi (named after our two cats, Luna and Khaleesi).  She was annoyed that my character was not a Miqo'te and kept wanting me to change to one.  Penny wanted my character to be the same race as hers so that she can pretend our characters were sisters.  I didn't think much of it at first but eventually I came to the decision that this might be funner for her so I surprised her during one of our gaming sessions with the new Mialee and she was very happy.  I think that simple change made Penny connect with both her character and my character better and as a result she seems to enjoy the game even more than before.  And, like me, she likes looking for nice outfits for her character.

Luna (on the left) and Mialee (on the right)

After trying out the Marauder first (mostly because that was my main class) she eventually settled on the Arcanist because it has pets.  She liked the carbuncles and when she made it to 30 she got access to the fairies which really made her like the class.  I ended up gettting her a 1 month subscription as a treat for doing well at a recent violin competition she attended and as of this post she's a level 40 Scholar.

I truly don't know if this was a good decision on my part or not but wow is it ever fun being able to share my Eorzean adventures with her!  She loves exploring all of Eorzea and because she's playing on my gaming laptop the scenery looks amazing and the gameplay is smooth (compared to my old bare bones desktop at least).  Penny especially loves night time in the La Noscea region as she can see the stars so clearly and often just wanders around at night following the stars.

One really neat thing is that she is learning how to play in a party and learning the different roles.  She's a fairly proficient healer but does spend most of her time DPSing and letting her fairy handle all the healing.  I have to remind her for tougher fights to pay attention to the tank's (me) health bar because if the tank (or healer) dies, so does everyone else.  It does help that I'm an experienced tank so there's a little more room for error but I am wondering how she'll handle the more mechanically intensive fights as she continues her adventure.

I guess only time will tell if this is a good thing for her or not.  In the meanwhile we get to enjoy a hobby as a father daughter tank-healer team!

Final Fantasy XIV - Revisiting Eorzea

First let me say that Facebook ads work (at least some of them do on me).  I think it was a Facebook ad that got me into playing League of Legends for the first time so many years ago (before Season 1) and it was a Facebook ad that rekindled my interest in playing Final Fantasy XIV again.  Can't quite remember what exactly was in the ad but it got me all nostalgic about when I used to play the game with my friends a few years back.  The last time I played FFXIV was when the Go Go Posing Rangers event was on back in 2016.

So I started up my subscription at the end of December and have been playing daily since.  I hadn't finished the main Heavensward story so that was my first goal.  To be honest I'm still not done that part yet.  On top of the main story in the original expansion, Square Enix added a few patches worth of additional main story since.  I just finished the 3.1 scenario "As goes light, so goes darkness" and now into the 3.2 scenario quests.  After the 3.2 scenario quests, I'll move into the 3.3 quests followed by the 3.4 quests and finally the 3.5 quests.

It's been a little slow as I don't want to outpace my healer friend who I convinced to resub and join me.  He's a dungeon or two behind me so while I wait for him to catch up I'm doing a bunch of side things.  Mostly crafting.  Prior to my return to the game I had 5 of the 8 crafting classes at lv50 so I started power leveling them to 60.  That task blew through a tonne of the gil reserves I had.  I think close to 3 million after all was said and done!  While doing this for my 5 main crafting classes I quickly realized I needed the other crafting classes at lv50+ as well so I could access certain reagents that they could make.  I could buy everything off the market board but that was getting too costly as my levels increased.  This also led me to pick up the botanist class and to continue leveling my miner so I could access more raw materials for my crafting.

So that's where I'm at right now in my journey in Eorzea.  Waiting for my friend to catch up to me in the story and spending gil leveling my crafting classes and gathering classes.

P.S.  Finally used my Fantasia potion and turned Mialee from an Elezen to a Miq'ote.  Why did I do that? Stay tuned and find out!

Mialee as a Miqo'te (with the Tidal Wave axe from Leviathan)

2016 and 2017 Years in Review

The last two years were busy to say the least.  I'm going to blame all the other stuff on why I didn't write anything about my gaming those years.  It's not that I didn't get a chance to play games or be involved in the gaming communities in town, just didn't have time to write or reflect about it.

Here's a brief run down of what occured

• Started an Esports club at NVSS.
• Even competed in the High School Starleague
• Penny and I played the Pokemon TCG competitively and regularly placed in the top 8 at our local events.
• Once she could read better, the decks we played got more complicated and we started buying singles and building meta/net decks.
• Finally reached Gold rank in League of Legends in Season 6 (2016)
• And got the shiny gold border for all of Season 7 (2017)
• Sadly I didn't play much ranked in Season 7 and ended up in Silver again.
• More board games!
• Got into cooperative board games big time.

Back From the Void

I have not paid much attention to this for a year and a half now.  I did not die and I did not stop gaming.  Just got busy and fell into a rut with regards to chronicling my journey as a gamer and geek dad.

Anyways, I neglected to do a Year in Review post of 2016 like I did the years prior, so I will post a Years in Review 2016-2017 later this week.

Lots of cool things happened in the last year and a half, the most significant of which being that Penny learned to read!  That opened a lot of opportunities to show her various games and what not.

So stay tuned as I chronicle my continuing journey as a gamer and geek dad.

Pokemon - Re-Learning the Card Game with Penny

Summer has arrived and with it a bunch of free time (when I'm not doing housework at least).  This summer Penny is a lot more cognizant of her surroundings and after a year of kindergarten is eager to learn how to read and do math and other stuff.  I've already started on teaching her the basics of game play with games like Tsuro and X-Wing so following a set of rules is getting easier for her.  She does have occasional bouts of why can't I do this but those are getting lesser and lesser.

Anyways, she started watching Pokemon on Netflix a few months back and out of the blue I asked her if she wanted to learn to play the Pokemon card game.  From my perspective this accomplished a few things.  First, she would learn to play a game that I used to play when I was younger.  Second she would learn to count by 10s since for some inexplicable reason Pokemon hitpoints and damage are in 10s and third she would learn to read some words like Cut or Tackle or other simple words that are Pokemon attacks.

So to start the road to learning the game we picked up the new Trainer Kit from Game Quest.

And so it begins...

The set contains two 30 card decks with fairly simple Pokemon, a playmat and all other necessary components for playing the game.  I thought Penny would want to play with the Pikachu deck as Pikachu is so prominent in the series but she opted for the Suicune deck as she liked the look of that Pokemon better.

The first game we followed the scripted game plan.  By scripted I mean that the decks were already pre-ordered and the instructions told each player how to play each turn for the first 8 turns or so.  This pre-scripted game ends up with the Pikachu deck winning.  Needless to say Penny was not happy so wanted to play again.

This time we shuffled up the decks and went at it again.  I kind of got a little unlucky in the second game as I did not draw enough energy cards to fully power my Pokemon (especially my Electrivire) and Penny eventually knocked out enough of mine to win.  She even made good use of Retreat to save her Suicune from my Electrivire and then brought it back the next round (after letting one of her Seakings eat an attack) to finish off my Electrivire for the win.

Penny laying the beats down.

As for the objectives I set out when teaching her the game, all were met save for the reading one.  We will have to work on that a bit more.

The rules for the game were really simple and haven't changed much at all when I first learned them back in 2000.  Penny picked up the rules really easily and she seemed to enjoy the imagery of the cards as well as imagining the two Pokemon fighting each other.  The only hangup we had was when we used attacks that had additional conditions like coin flipping.  She couldn't read the whole sentence so I had to explain to her that some attacks did extra stuff or only hurt under certain conditions.

Penny picked up counting by 10s pretty easily especially with the counters available.  She was even able to do some elementary algebra by figuring out how much more damage was needed to knock out (though she used the term kill) a Pokemon.  Interestingly she understood weakness easily enough (she referred to it as the Pokemon being allergic to certain types) though her math skills were not enough to multiply by 2 yet (admittedly I have not taken the time to show her what doubling means).

I need to figure out how to play the game for 3 players so that my wife can join us too.  My biggest concern is it would end up becoming gang-up on whoever was winning as is my experience in most other card games.

Teaching her the Pokemon card game coincides perfectly with the recent release of Pokemon Go too.  Just gotta wait for it to come to Canada now.

Video Games - League of Legends Highlights Sway

This past Tuesday was a Professional Development Day (Pro-D Day) for my district and rather than drive 2 hours to the town where the various Pro-D sessions were held, I instead opted to submit a self-directed Pro-D application to learn how to make a Sway.  Sway is a new presentation app that Microsoft developed as (I guess) an answer to Google Slides and Prezi (both are presentation apps that are natively online).

I originally wanted to learn the program at another Pro-D day but that session was full.  The app did interest me so I briefly looked into what it actually was and initially dismissed it until now.  Neat little program and in my mind, the biggest advantage over PowerPoint is the native online presence Sway has.

However, since I'm not supposed to be making lesson plans or other lesson related activities during my Pro-D day I instead learned how to use Sway and created Mr. Arocena's League of Legends Highlights.

In the process of learning Sway I also inadvertently ran across HitFilm Express which is an amazingly powerful free video editing software package.  I'll end up using it for all my education videos as well as it can do things that Movie Maker cannot.

The only flaw I found (and it's a major one in my mind) is that for some inexplicable reason Sways cannot be grouped into folders.  So for example if I make a bunch of League of Legends Sway presentations, they will just be sitting there ungrouped and unorganized in the My Sways tab of the website.  Huge flaw and the only reason I'm not going all-in on this new tool.

In the meanwhile though, Sway is great for special projects like the one I made.

Video Games - New Gaming PC Built!

My birthday came and went and with it an opportunity to build a new gaming PC.  I hadn't actually built a new PC from scratch since my university days, instead relying on pre-built systems and just upgrading the video card from it.

That sufficed for the most part but recently I've been experimenting with streaming and recording my gameplay and the pre-built systems I had been buying just weren't up to the task (part of the reason I haven't posted many video game related things or even streamed any game play).  With the opportunity to build my own PC again I spent a few days researching parts and finally decided on the following build
http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/md3sHx

I scavenged the case and HDD from the existing computer so that saved me a bit of money.  Although in hindsight I should have picked up a new case anyways as I could then have a 2nd PC.  What I would do with the 2nd PC I have no idea but it would at least be working.  Maybe sell it or give it away to someone I guess.

Anyways, the new system was arrived last week and was fairly easy to put together compared to when I last built a computer.  Installing Windows 10 wasn't too bad either and I managed to activate it with an old Windows 7 key I had from an ancient laptop we had kicking around.  The computer operates much quieter than the previous one and is ridiculously fast in comparison as well.

My old system (running on an AMD A8-6500 with a Radeon R7 240 graphics card and 6gb of RAM) struggled to play Final Fantasy 14 at 1080p resolution on ultra low settings with an average of 20 FPS.  My new system runs it on maximum at 1080p while averaging 60 FPS.  There is no noticeable drop in FPS during gameplay while recording or streaming either so I think I'm going to be more inclined to stream/record my games now.

Obviously the PC is nowhere near top end but man is it ever a huge improvement over what I had before.  I have a potential significant upgrade path as the 7th generation Intel processors will use the same socket and I have a power supply large enough to power a beefier graphics card if I need to upgrade that later.  Given the current benchmarks though, my system should last a few years before needing any major upgrades (so says every PC builder).

X-Wing - First Tournament Report

First X-Wing tournament under my belt and I went a respectable 2-2 with 2 blowout wins and 2 losses.  Not bad for my first go around against opponents who can read and use the full rules.  The tournament took place the weekend before Wave 8 released so no one had any of those ships.

The list I took on the day ended up being

Colonel Vessery - Veteran Instincts, Heavy Laser Cannon
Omega Leader - Juke, Comm Relay
Carnor Jax - Push the Limit, Targeting Computer, Royal Guard TIE (for flavour)

I like flying the Defender and the Interceptor and Omega Leader is just too good not to use.  The list has good synergy and when Carnor gets close, enemies can't help but eat the heavy laser cannon shots from Vessery.  Omega Leader does a good job cleaning up as well and his damage is pretty consistent.

Anyways on to the matches!

X-Wing - Getting Closer to Tournament

Tournament is less than two weeks away and I've gotten a grand total of 3 games in against opponents who can read the pilot cards.  For context, the majority of X-Wing games I've played were with my 5 year old daughter where we just played with basic rules and were mostly to get her to think and plan, basically to just help her develop intellectually and she is learning to really like Star Wars as a by-product.  Not that she needed any nudging she took to the Star Wars universe like a moth to a flame and is often the reason we get new ships ("Daddy I think I need a Y-Wing for my Rebel alliance." "Ok Penny, let's pick one up, but I need a new TIE fighter to fight it." "Ok")

Anyways, on Saturday I played 2 games with a list similar to what I used the week before.

• Colonel Vessery - Heavy Laser Cannon, Stealth Device
• Darth Vader - TIE X1 title (borrowed for the day), Fire Control System
• Omega Leader - Juke, Comm Relay

First game was against a Scum list packing

• Trandoshan Slaver - Gunner, Bossk, Tactician
• Laetin - Heavy Laser Cannon, Heavy Scyk, Stealth Device
• Kavil - Autoblaster Turret, Engine Upgrade, Veteran Instincts

I played pretty badly mostly because I didn't quite know what his list did.  Quickly found out that getting into range 1 of autoblaster turret is bad and range 2 of the Slaver was also equally bad.  His list had good shots at all ranges so was hard for me to decide how to engage.  It was also the first time I played against a stress list and that totally messed up my aces.  With no one able to paint targets for Vessery or get tokens it made getting hits through a little more difficult.

In hindsight, should have stayed at range 2-3 and picked off the Autoblaster first, then closed on the Slaver and finally the Scyk.  I probably should have also danced around a bit more and tried to get behind the slaver or the Scyk instead of closing in as soon as I could.

The second game was against a Rebel aces list

• Keyan - Push the Limit, Stealth Device, Advanced Sensors, Mangler Cannon?
• Jake Farrel - Push the Limit, Autothrusters
• Gemmer - A-Wing Test Pilot, Push the Limit, Autothrusters

I played this one better.  Vessery ended up jousting Keyan on one end of the map (everyone else was on the other side) and won off of a bump.  I planned on Keyan slow moving towards Vessery so instead of doing the same, I just rocketed Vessery forward with a 5 straight, then the following turn a 2 straight which put him right in the path of Keyan who did indeed bump him.  A k-turn after that bump and Vessery was stuck to Keyan like glue and finished him off in short order (rolling 4 dice at all ranges is huge even without a target lock to help)

On the other side of the map, Omega and Darth danced around Jake and Gemmer.  My opponent made a few bad mistakes which put Vader behind Gemmer which quickly resulted in a dead A-Wing.  Jake couldn't fight off the entirety of my squadron and was caught in the crosshairs of all 3 at one point which ended him pretty quick.

After those 2 games, I definitely need to get more practice.  The list was also not quite doing it for me so back to the drawing board.  Omega Leader did well and I'm thinking of bringing Omega Ace with Push the Limit instead of Vader for more guaranteed hits.  Vessery was good, but not great, but that could be because of how I flew.

For now I am thinking of the following

• Krassis Trelix - Heavy Laser Cannon, Agent Kallus
• Omega Ace - Push the Limit, Hull Upgrade
• Omega Leader - Juke, Comm Relay, Hull Upgrade

Krassis basically replaces Vessery and is pretty action independent so stress lists like the Scum list I played won't hurt as much.  The Firespray has a pretty stress-friendly dial with no red turns.
The TIE F/O aces should also be pretty reliable for plinking away at any range which should hopefully let Krassis just blast away at hull points.

The other list I was thinking of using is

• Krassis Trelix - Heavy Laser Cannon, Agent Kallus, Hull Upgrade
• Mauler Mithel - Veteran Instincts
• Scourge - Veteran Instincts
• Wampa - Targeting Computer

A pair of high pilot skill TIEs to hopefully pick off a weak target or strip some shields.  Wampa to get some guaranteed damage and Krassis as a big target capable of putting the hurt at different ranges.  This list is also pretty action independent and has some good maneuverability (plus more bodies to fight against swarms)

I'll have to get a few games in this weekend to test both lists and if I can't, I'll try out the Mark 13 AI program I ran into a few days ago.  Practice is always good before a tournament.

X-Wing - First Game Against a non-5yr old

In preparing for the upcoming X-Wing tournament I went out on a limb and asked for a game against one of the locals through our local X-Wing group.  My schedule never let me go to the gatherings that happen every two weeks so I had yet to actually play against an opponent who knew the full rules.

It was quite a different experience as one would expect.

Anyways, I only had time to play one game because I think we actually played longer than regulation would normally allow but we didn't care as it was quite fun and intense.

The list I used was as follows

• Colonel Vessery - Lone Wolf, Heavy Laser Cannon (HLC), Stealth Device
• Zeta Leader - Wired
• Zeta Squadron Pilot
• Zeta Squadron Pilot

and the list he used was

• Soontir Fel - Push the Limit, Royal Guard TIE, Autothrusters, Stealth Device
• Zeta Squadron Pilot
• Zeta Squadron Pilot
• Zeta Squadron Pilot
• Zeta Squadron Pilot

Lots of evade dice on both sides but the I figured the HLC on my side should give me the advantage when shooting at his TIE F/Os.

We both brought asteroids to the field and deployed them in a cluster in the center.  My Zeta Squadron and Zeta Leader were deployed in the center with Vessery off to the left.  His Zeta Squadron was deployed as a group of 4 opposite of my Zeta Squadron and Soontir was deployed in to my right away from everyone.

The game escalated very quickly as by my turn 2 my forces had engaged his 4 TIE F/Os in the asteroid with Soontir hanging out on the wings.  First blood came to me as the Zeta Leader and Vessery concentrated fire on one of the TIE F/Os.  After that it became a tense game of cat and mouse between everyone as I tried to get Soontir in Vessery's sights while he tried to avoid that.  All the while our F/Os were circling each other in the asteroids trying to get shots at whoever they could.

I actually had two good rounds of shooting against Soontir scoring 4 hits with Vessery in both rounds but he rolled really well (a lot of focus results both times and flipped them to evades) but after that I couldn't get him back in my sights.  Zeta Leader unfortunately crashed into an asteroid as I misjudged one of his turns (one of my opponent's TIEs did the same earlier).  Soontir eventually took over and was able to arc-dodge and blow up Vessery (he could have survived that particular round of shooting but he suffered a Direct Hit critical) and then my last TIE.  By the end though he had only Soontir and one TIE F/O sitting on 1 hull point.

Fun game and really showcased my need to get some more games in before I am tournament ready.

Things I learned

• It's easier to predict where an older player will go with their ships.  I had a few turns where I was able to block some of his ships and avoid getting blocked myself.  Very important for Vessery so he can get his focus action in combination with the target locks everyone else was providing.
• Soontir Fel is really hard to target and when you do, you better hope he doesn't get focus results.  The interceptor's maneuverability is insane and I kind of want to buy a pair for my own fleet (next to the Defender it's my other favourite Imperial fighter to fly in TIE Fighter)
• Vessery's HLC was quite good and with target lock and focus he basically guarantees 3-4 hits on whoever he is shooting at.  No crits, but that's ok against most things not on a large base.
• Lone Wolf was hard to trigger with 3 extra ships around.  Might drop it for Veteran Instincts instead or I just need to learn to fly Vessery on the outside more.  I took it for the defensive re-roll more than the offensive re-roll.
• Wired didn't work too well this game but that's because I didn't roll many focus results with Zeta Leader.  For 1 point it does synergize really well with Zeta Leader and I'm not sure any other 1 point Elite Pilot talent would be as worthwhile.

I don't think I'd change anything in the list aside from maybe changing the Zeta Squadron pilots for Darth Vader with Juke (and if I get a TIE x1 title I can add Fire Control System) and replacing Lone Wolf on Vessery with something else.  So the new list might become

• Colonel Vessery - Veteran Instincts, Heavy Laser Cannon (HLC), Stealth Device
• Darth Vader - Juke (possibly with TIE x1, Fire Control System)
• Zeta Leader - Wired, Weapons Guidance

I could also replace Zeta Leader with Omega Ace - Push the Limit or Omega Leader - Juke (and give Darth Vader Lone Wolf as I only have 1 Juke card).  Only 3 ships but if they are the right 3, that's all I should need.

One thing I have to keep in mind when building my lists is that I probably wont' have to face a large ship and 4 or 5 small ships.  When Penny and I play it's usually 5-8 ships a side as she likes using as many of her Rebels as she can so I'm always expecting to have to fight huge squadrons.  Making a list with less than 4 ships never seems enough.

X-Wing - Tournament time!

The local X-Wing group convinced the Game Quest management to hold a tournament in early March.  Great news as I haven't been able to play much X-Wing lately and haven't really had the motivation to go out to the local X-Wing game days.

From what I gather, there is no real meta in the area yet so I don't expect any super-competitive lists or super-competitive people so the list I bring can be pretty much what I want it to be.  This is great as I really have no idea what will work great and what will not.  I can obviously pull up what lists won what tournaments but my game knowledge is pretty limited having only played against Penny and even then without full rules.

I used my knowledge from other wargames I've played and my basic understanding of the rules to come up with a few prospective lists to take to the tournament.  I have a few weeks still and I might try to hook up with a few of the other people to test out some lists.

2015 Year in Review

This year has been a busy one.  Both in terms of gaming and life in general.  A lot of highs and one gigantic low at the end of the year.

Here's a brief run down of what occurred this year.

X-Wing - Introducing List Building to a 5 year old

We just got Penny's report card back earlier this week and she appears to be doing well.  Her social skills are also meeting expectations which is great as my wife and I were worried because she's an only child and has not had much interaction with peers outside of pre-school and kindergarten.  She can count fairly high in both French and English which is great and her addition skills seem to be on par with everyone else.

As a math teacher I'm ok with that but I'd like her to be better at math than her peers.  Call it pride if you will.  So in that regard I've decided that I'm going to introduce proper X-Wing list building to her soon.  Not sure how far I'll get though but from what I have seen her do and the report card comments she should be able to add tens (so add like 20 + 10) and she can already do ones addition (things like 1 + 4, and 5 + 2).  Shouldn't be too far of a stretch to do something like 12 + 23 (a Bandit Z-95 + Red Squadron X-Wing) or 16 + 5 (HWK-290 with Ion Turret).

My plan is basically to give her the points value for one of her ships and have her add upgrades to it and see what the new total is.  If that goes well, we can move on to adding the costs of ships together and hopefully get to a point where she can pick ships that add up to something close to 100 or whatever points total we decide to play at that day.

So the next game we play will be with a list that Penny makes herself!

X-Wing - Things are Escalating Rather Quickly

Exciting day today!  A little over a week ago I had asked Game Quest if they did special orders as I was looking for a 10th anniversary edition of Ticket to Ride that didn't cost an arm and a leg (the other game store in town had a few copies of it but they were selling them for $160 + tax!).  I knew I could order it via Amazon for way cheaper but I liked Game Quest and wanted to support a local business.  Turns out they were able to order it for me and at a price comparable to Amazon.

Not content with ordering just the board game I asked if they could order a few X-Wing ships as well so with my board game order came the Millennium Falcon and a pair of TIE Defenders.  Game Quest also got a restock of other ships so I will probably add more things to both Penny's Rebel Alliance and my Imperial Squadron in the near future (as it stands I have 6 ships to her 5 ships and she thinks it's unfair despite her having two large ships).  The influx of reinforcements for both sides coincided perfectly with us having finished our starfield battle mat!

Before we played with the new ships though I took some time to rearrange the ships and pilots so that both sides were roughly even in points and came up with the following squadron lists.  I also added some ordnance because in the last game we played, Penny had asked what the "alphabet tokens" were for.  I explained to her that they were called Target Lock tokens and next time we played I'd show her how to use them.

Penny's Rebel Alliance - 160 points

• Han Solo in the Millennium Falcon - 47 pts
• Dash Rendar in the Outrider with a Heavy Laser Cannon - 48 pts
• Rebel Operative HWK-290 with Ion Cannon Turret - 21 pts (I opted for the ion cannon turret as it doesn't require focus to be used and I can try and introduce ion tokens to our games)
• Bandit Squadron Z-95 with Concussion Missiles - 16 pts
• Blue Squadron Novice T-70 X-Wing with Proton Torpedoes - 28 pts

Mr. Arocena's Imperial Squadron - 160 points

• Gamma Squadron TIE Bomber with Homing Missiles, Proximity Mines - 28 pts
• Bounty Hunter in a Firespray with Heavy Laser Cannon, Seismic Charge - 42 pts
• 2x Zeta Squadron TIE/fo - 32 pts
• 2x Delta Squadron TIE Defenders - 60 pts

So a quick recap of what rules we have played with so far:

• All the basic rules from the Learn to Play guide except for stress tokens
• Focus Tokens
• Evade Tokens
• Secondary Weapon cards (just Cannons and Turrets so far)

We still don't play with pilot special abilities as her reading comprehension is not at the level necessary to understand the abilities.  I could just tell her what each pilot does and I think she'd remember that but I'll hold off until she can read better.  We also don't play with critical hits for the same reason.  Interestingly enough, Penny tried to make a case for dealing two damage with the big explosion because it's a bigger explosion.

In this game we learned about target locks, how to use ordnance and ion tokens.

X-Wing - Playing among the stars

The last two weeks were a little busy so Penny and I didn't get to play much X-Wing together.  She still asked on a daily basis though so I think she's quite interested in the game.  That didn't stop us from doing other X-Wing related things together though.  Like making a starfield battle mat.

I was tired of having the ships slide around so much on the dining room table so spent a few days looking how other people made their DIY starfield battle maps.  Lots of things came up on the internet ranging from felt cloth (decided against this as it would just slide off the table) to yoga mats (lots of pros but relatively expensive compared to other DIY solutions).  So armed with this knowledge of what others had done, I spent an afternoon (while doing other errands) looking for some materials and pricing them out.  I ended up picking up two black anti-slip shelf liners (something like this but 18" wide and shorter) from the dollar store for $6 and taping them together underneath to make a 36" wide field.  The mat looked good, gripped the dining room table well and the ships didn't slide so much when placed on the mat.

To make the mat even better, Penny and I looked up various star fields on the internet as references and spent an evening painting the mat.  She had a lot of fun flicking the toothbrush of white paint on to the mat and adding some large pink gas clouds/planets/stars to one of the quarters.  The following was our end result

We were happy with it, but I might try and find a way to make her pink celestial bodies blend better with the rest of the star field at some point in the future.

X-Wing - Adapting for a 5 year old

Since picking up the Force Awakens Core Set for X-Wing last Sunday, Penny has asked to play the "Star Wars game with ships"' almost every day this week.  Sadly I could not oblige every day because of work but we did play a few more games.

Having a second ship certainly helped even things out since we weren't playing with Actions or pilot skills.  The game at this level was basically just ships moving and shooting at each other so a lot of our games came down to who could point their ship at the enemy and roll better.  With only 1 ship, Penny had quite a disadvantage despite the added shielding, but with 2 ships she was able to hold her own much better.

My TIE Fighters chasing down a Z-95. Penny's X-Wing coming in fast to help the Z-95.

Earlier today we went back to Game Quest and added a bit to each of our respective forces (pay day!).  Penny wanted the YT-2400 but she didn't have enough money for it.  She was going to settle for just the HWK-290 and another Z-95 but I mentioned to her that we could look through our old video games and trade in any games that we didn't play anymore to see if we could get the extra money to get the freighter.  She was quite happy I suggested it and we ended up getting a fair amount for the games we traded in.

HWK-290 and YT-2400

After pooling all of our money together, we got enough to get the YT-2400 and a HWK-290 for her, and Slave I and a TIE Bomber for me.  I had a hard time deciding between Slave I or the Imperial Aces expansion (both the same price at Game Quest) but finally decided on Slave I as it was the only one they had and I needed a big ship too.

TIE Bomber and Slave I

Anyways, what I really wanted to write about was how to modify the game a little (and it really is just a little) so that someone as young as 5 years old can play.

X-Wing - Getting into the game

Last night I found out that they released a new trailer for The Force Awakens so I decided to watch it before dinner.  While I was doing this, Penny asked what I was watching and jumped into my lap and watched the trailer with me.  Afterwards she asked to watch the other Force Awaken trailers on the playlist so we did.  She's really excited by the new movie and I really want to take her so to help prep her for the new movie I decided to take her to Game Quest after dinner to see what Star Wars X-Wing stuff they had.

We ended up buying the X-Wing Force Awakens box set and proceeded to learn the game as soon as we got home.  The game officially has an age limit of 14+ but ever since Penny was a baby, I've been pushing the envelope so to say with her toys and entertainment.  While taking out all the tokens and templates she ended up choosing the X-Wing as her ship.  So I ended up with the Imperial TIE Fighters (well I guess First Order) as mine.

We played through the tutorial mission easily enough.  She understood how to use the maneuver dial and what dice to roll and what the symbols meant except for the Eye as it's not described in the tutorial mission and took me a while to find out what it actually does.  It took her a few turns to realize she shouldn't tell me her plans as it would allow me to plan my own moves better.  Unfortunately for her, the dice just did not go her way and my TIE fighters finished off the X-Wing at the end.  There was a moment mid-game where she annihilated one of the TIE fighters in one volley though and that made her happy.

While we were cleaning up all the tokens she declared that she needed another ship.  I did not dispute this because the two TIE fighters had a slightly higher point value than the lone X-Wing.  Using just the basic ships with no actions or pilot abilities heavily favours the side with more ships I think.  As we play more games I might introduce actions but I don't want to overload her as she just turned 5.

So today, after her skating lessons, we went back to Game Quest and picked up a Z-95 Headhunter for her.  That should even the playing field against my two TIE fighters.  Haven't had a chance to play another game but we will no doubt get a few games in on Remembrance Day which we, with me being a teacher and her just starting school, both have off.

I don't think my wife has seen this comic yet, but I think I'll send it to her soon.

Video Games - Fantasy eSports and Alpha Draft

While watching some League of Legends videos on YouTube an ad popped up for the fantasy esports site Alpha Draft.  The ad basically said, if you like esports come make a fantasy team and see if you can win money.  I clicked on it to check it out thinking I'm a fan of esports (League mostly) and maybe I can generate some free money out of this much like I did with Diablo 3 a few years back.

I've been playing on Alpha Draft for about 2 weeks now and so far after an initial investment of $15, have been making money each week.  Not an appreciable amount mind you as I messed up the first week and used the second week to make back what I had lost and initially invested.  However, much like selling stuff on Diablo 3, small gains eventually lead to larger gains and as long as I am growing my funds each week, I'll be happy.

So far the experiment is working and I'm curious to see just how much I can make by the end of the summer.  Might post my thoughts on how I pick a team later as I get more experienced with each game.

Travel - Visiting Japan is Bad for the Wallet

Spring break this year was way different than previous years.  In previous years all I really did was stay at home and watch Penny while my wife works.  This year though we went to Japan for my brother's wedding.

We were there for 10 days and spent it split between Tokyo and where my brother lives in Kofu.  We also managed to get to Kyoto for a day trip and see the bamboo groves and the Tenryuji temple in Arashiyama.   Didn't get around to visiting Himeji castle (too far for a day trip) so couldn't cross that off the list (see World Wonder Tour). Just means that I'll have to go back in the future.  Japan will be a lot more fun when Penny is older I think.

Anyways, while in Tokyo we visited the Akihabara district which in the past was known as a big electronics shopping area but now is kind of a hotbed for otaku culture.  Lots of shops catering to fans of video games, anime and manga.  So many arcades and toy shops.  We visited a few shops over 3 days and I ended up walking away with 3 Gundam plastic (aka Gunpla) model kits; a high grade Wing Gundam Zero Honoo, a Master Grade Deathscythe and a Master Grade RX-78.

I like mecha anime and although I have yet to watch the original Gundam series, I am a fan of a few of the other Gundam series (namely Gundam Wing and recently Gundam Build Fighters).  Buying the model kits also helped sate my model building appetite.  With Games Workshop being out of my price range I figured getting back into Gunpla would be just fine.

Once we got home I decided to start with the Wing Gundam kit.  The last time I built a Gundam model was back in high school and it had been a while since I last put any kind of model together.  It was only a high grade kit therefore easier to put together than the master grade kits.

I spent more time than I usually do being a lot more careful about cutting the pieces out and filing pieces down to make them smooth.  After the break are some WiP shots as well as the finished product.