Giant Anime Meme

by on January 19, 2009 at 11:33 am
Posted In: Anime

Swiped from Elin & Smudge. Okay, I typically avoid memes, but this one hits close enough to home for me to actually care.

Go through the list and check off the titles you have watched. For our purposes, “watching” a title means that for TV and OVA series, you have to have seen at least one episode. For one-shots, you have to have seen the whole thing. At the end of each genre/category, add up your sub-total. At the very end, add up the sub-totals to come up with your grand total. If your grand total is 80 or over, congratulations — you are an obsessive anime watcher!

I. Action and Adventure
(X) .hack//SIGN
() Airmaster
() Battle Arena Toshinden
(X) Bleach
() Blood+
() Burst Angel
() City Hunter (seen the live action movie)
(X) Cowboy Bebop
(X) Dragonball (a few episodes of Dragonball, none of Dragonball Z)
() Flame of Recca
() GetBackers
(X) InuYasha
(X) Lupin III
(X) Mai-HiME
() Naruto
() One Piece
() Tenjou Tenge
(X) TRIGUN
() Saiyuki
(X) Yu Yu Hakusho
Total Here: 9/20

II. Comedy and Parody
() 2×2 = Shinobuden
() Adventures of the Mini Goddesses (read the manga)
(X) Azumanga Daioh
() Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan
() DiGi Charat
(X) Dragon Half
(X) Excel Saga
(X) Fruits Basket
() Galaxy Angel
(X) Here is Greenwood
() Kodomo no Omocha
() Kyou Kara Maou!
() Midori Days
() Ouran Koukou Host Club
() Pani Poni Dash
(X) Project A-ko
(X) Ranma 1/2
(X) Tenchi Muyo
(X) Those Who Hunt Elves
(X) Urusei Yatsura
Total Here: 10/20

III. Drama and Miscellaneous
() Beck
() Full Moon wo Sagashite
() Gankutsuou
(X) Genshiken (the second series should be required watching for anyone wanting to get into comics)
() Glass Mask (original)
(X) Haibane Renmei
() Hitsuji no Uta
() Honey & Clover
() Kaleido Star
(X) Last Exile
() Le Portraite de Petite Cossette
() Monster
() Paradise Kiss
(X) Princess Mononoke
(X) Read or Die
() Speed Grapher
() Twin Spica
() Weiss Kreuz
(X) Wings of Honneamise
() Yakitate!! Japan
Total Here: 5/20

IV. Ecchi/Mature
() Agent AIKa
(X) Cutey Honey
() Ebichu
() Golden Boy
() Grenadier
(X) Hand Maid May (I wouldn’t really put it with these others….)
() He Is My Master
() Iketeru Futari
() La Blue Girl
() Lingerie Senshi Papillon Rose
(X) Mahoromatic (well, okay May and Mahoro belong together)
() Mezzo Forte
() Miyuki-chan in Wonderland
() My Dear Marie
() Najica Blitz Tactics
() Negima
(X) Puni Puni Poemi
() Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend
() Wicked City Noir
() Yumeria
Total Here: 4/20

V. Fantasy and Supernatural
() Angel Sanctuary
() Aquarian Age
() Berserk
(X) El Hazard (OAV, Wanderers, and second OAV)
() Final Fantasy Unlimited
(X) Fullmetal Alchemist
(X) Howl’s Moving Castle
(X) Magic Knight Rayearth
(X) Mushishi
(X) Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
(X) Record of Lodoss War
(X) Scrapped Princess
(X) Slayers
() Tales of Eternia
() Trinity Blood
(X) Tsubasa Chronicle
(X) Vampire Hunter D
() Violinist of Hamelin
(X) Vision of Escaflowne
() X: TV
Total Here: 12/20

VI. Historical and Alternate History
() Anne of Green Gables
() Basilisk
() Barefoot Gen
() Chrono Crusade
() Grave of the Fireflies
(X) Fire Tripper
() Kaidomaru
() Legend of Condor Hero
() Millennium Actress
(X) Nadia – Secret of Blue Water
(X) Ninja Scroll (well, II, not impressed)
() Otogizoushi
() Peacemaker Kurogane
(X) Porco Rosso
() Rose of Versailles
(X) Rurouni Kenshin
() Samurai 7
() Samurai Champloo
(X) Steel Angel Kurumi
() Victorian Romance Emma
Total Here: 6/20

VII. Kids and Family
(X) Angelic Layer
() Astro Boy (anime no, I have a volume of the manga)
() Beyblade
(X) Castle in the Sky
() Detective Conan (would like to see it)
() Digimon
() Doraemon
(X) Hamtaro
(X) Kiki’s Delivery Service
() Kimba the White Lion
() Monster Rancher
(X) My Neighbor Totoro
(X) Pokemon
() Samurai Pizza Cats
() Sazae-san
() SD Gundam Force
() Sonic X
(X) Speed Racer (loved it when I was 5….)
(X) Spirited Away
() Yu-Gi-Oh
Total Here: 7/20

VIII. Magical Girls and Boys
(X) Cardcaptor Sakura
() DNAngel
() Earth Girl Arjuna
() Elemental Gelade
() Hime-chan no Ribbon
() Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne
() Magic Users Club
(X) Magical Girl Pretty Sammy (OAV and series)
() Magical Stage Fancy La La
() Mahou no Star Magical Emi
() Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha
() Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok
() Ojamajou DoReMi
() Oku-sama wa Mahou Shoujo
() Pretear
(X) Sailor Moon
() Saint Tail
() Tokyo Mew Mew
() Ultra Maniac
(X) Wedding Peach
Total Here: 4/20

IX. Romance
(X) Ah! My Goddess (OAV and the movie, and the series)
(X) Ai Yori Aoshi
() Air
() Ayashi no Ceres (have several volumes of the manga…)
() Boys Be
() Chobits (seen the beginning of the manga, not impressed)
(X) Fushigi Yuugi
() Hana Yori Dango
(X) His and Her Circumstances
(X) Kimagure Orange Road (way back when)
() Kimi ga Nozomu Eien
(X) Love Hina
(X) Maison Ikkoku
() Marmalade Boy
() Peach Girl
() Piano
() Please Teacher!
() SaiKano
() To Heart
(X) Video Girl Ai
Total Here: 8/20

X. Science-Fiction
(X) Appleseed
() Blue Seed
(X) Bubblegum Crisis
(X) Crest of the Stars
() Galaxy Express 999 (seen some of the manga)
() Gundam (any)
(X) Macross (any) (‘Robotech’ version, Do You Remember Love, and Macross II)
(X) Outlaw Star
(X) Patlabor (well, the movies)
(X) Planetes
() Please Save My Earth
(X) RahXephon
(X) Saber Marionette
() s-CRY-ed
() Soukyuu no Fafner
() Space Battleship Yamato
() Stellvia
(X) Transformers (any)
(X) Voices of a Distant Star
(X) Xenosaga: The Animation
Total Here: 12/20

XI. Shounen-Ai and Shoujo-Ai
() Ai no Kusabi
() Descendants of Darkness
() Earthian
() FAKE
() Fish in the Trap
(X) Galaxy Fraulein Yuna
() Gravitation
() Haru wo Daiteita
() Kannazuki no Miko
() Kizuna
() Lesson XX
() Loveless
() Maria-sama ga Miteru
() Mirage of Blaze
() Oniisama E
() Seikimatsu Darling
() Song of the Wind in the Trees
() Sukisho
() Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito
() Zetsuai/Bronze
Total Here: 1/20

XII. Sports
() Ace wo Nerae (Smash! Volley!)
() Ashita no Joe
(X) Ayane’s High Kick
() Baki the Grappler
(X) Battle Athletes
() Buzzer Beater
() Captain Tsubasa
() Eyeshield 21
() Ginban Kaleidoscope
() Hajime no Ippo
() Hikaru no Go
() Initial D
() Major
() Monkey Turn
() One Pound Gospel
() Prince of Tennis
() Princess Nine
() Slam Dunk
() Suzuka
() Wild Striker
Total Here: 2/20

XIII. Surreal and Psychological
(X) Akira
() Betterman
() Boogiepop Phantom
() Elfen Lied
(X) FLCL
() Gantz
(X) Ghost in the Shell (movie or TV)
(X) Hellsing
() Jigoku Shoujo
() Karas
() Madlax
() Melody of Oblivion
(X) Neon Genesis Evangelion
(X) Noir
() Paranoia Agent
() Perfect Blue
(X) Princess Tutu
(X) Revolutionary Girl Utena
(X) Serial Experiments Lain
() Texhnolyze
Total Here: 9/20

Total: 89/260

It’s not a bad list, but there’s some decidedly notable titles missing. No Dirty Pair, no Crusher Joe, no Gall Force, no Megazone 23, and no Comic Party. And personally, I’d expect to see Fashionable Judo Girl Yawara and Touch in the sports section.

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Game News VII: Yanks

by on January 14, 2009 at 9:45 am
Posted In: ASL, News

Mostly news from MMP catching my interest at the moment. Brian Youse posted on ConSim World on the 8th:

“It is with great, well, shock, that we have to announce that Yanks, the American expansion for ASL, is out of print. Ten years and 8 days after we signed our contract with Hasbro.

I, personally, never thought we’d sell out of Yanks. I am still shocked.”

Yanks was reprinted by AH shortly before being bought out by Hasbro, and MMP has always characterized the stock as being huge (consider that they’ve reprinted Beyond Valor which you need before Yanks two or three times, and are about to run out again in the same period of time).

A quick look at the state of ASL ‘core components’:
Rulebook – 2nd edition in print.
Beyond Valor (Russians, Germans, system counters) – Just a few left, due to be reprinted when they can gather the cash. Say this summer.
Yanks (Americans) – Out of Print. They’re going to have to recreate the entire thing from scratch. Presumably, they have the original art, and that’s it. Given the time it takes MMP’s tiny part-time staff to do this stuff, it’s going to be a couple years at least. Expect to see the scenarios from Paratrooper (which is permanently gone) with it when it does get printed.
Partisan (Allied Minor infantry) – Considered obsolete and on sale until gone. Presumably, its scenarios will be in the next printing of Armies of Oblivion, but until then, they’re only available here. (Admittedly, it doesn’t have any that players consider anything special.)
For King and Country (British) – Replaced the combined British/desert West of Alamein, and is out of print. Due to be reprinted with Beyond Valor, it should be going onto the pre-order list soon to help them raise the money.
Hollow Legions (Italians) – Out of print. This had the rest of the desert materials, and the plan is to reprint it with all of the desert materials. The Italian part has been printed by MMP before, but the desert materials (chapter F and overlays) need redoing.
Pacific (Japanese, Chinese, USMC, Pacific theater rules) – Both the old Code of Bushido and Gung Ho are long out of print, and they are going to be re-released as one big module (actual name unknown). They’ve been working on the layout of this for some time, so it’s possible it’ll come out late this year—or not.
Croix de Guerre (French) – In print, and I think, still AH stock.
Doomed Battalions (Allied Minors) – Originally rushed out the door as the last thing AH did before the Hasbro buyout. Out of print, but due to be reprinted at the end of January. The new version will also include all the materials from the old Last Hurrah module (also in print…).
Armies of Oblivion (Axis Minors) – Marked ‘temporarily unavailable’ on the MMP site, but you can still order it there. Not sure what’s going on.

Also, Action Pack 5 is out and shipping to customers. The reprint of ASL Journal 2 sounds like it will go to the printers about the same time as Doomed Battalions. And they’ve put a new scenario pack up for preorder, Turning the Tide. It’s going to have 20 scenarios translated from various Squad Leader sources. I haven’t kept track, but that sounds like just about all that’s left on that front.

Outside of ASL they’re also keeping busy: PanzerBlitz: Hill of Death (once known as “PanzerBlitz 2000″…) has started printing components, the game itself will probably ship in February. Bastonge and GD’42 are also going to the printers.

They’ve also put a reprint of Guderian’s Blitzkrieg II up for preorder, along with Battle Above the Clouds. This last has me particularly excited, as it’s a new game in the Great Campaigns of the American Civil War series, which gets great reviews… but has been completely out of print for some years. I can only hope that this is just the beginning of more work (and reprints) of the series.

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An Ancient Afternoon

by on January 12, 2009 at 10:34 pm
Posted In: CC:Ancients

Well, we were scheduled for a continuation of an interesting Soldier Kings game yesterday, but Patch was unable to make it, so we had to adopt Plan B for the remaining four of us.

Which we quickly decided was a day of Commands & Colors: Ancients. This was another first time for Zjonni, but it’s a simple and fast game. All told, we managed ten two player games during the day. For most of the day, I was squared off against Jason (who seems to be the best of the group on CC:A), and Zjonni was facing Mark. For the final round, Mark played Jason, and I played Zjonni.

On my side of things, we started off with the second part of Utica (there are two scenarios covering the two days of fighting). This is an interesting affair, with two ridgelines going down the length of the board, and the opposing armies drawn up on top of them. Since this is 49 BC, the Julian Legion rules are in effect, which really changes the nature of the game (heavy and medium infantry move faster and have limited missile ability). I don’t remember too much about the first game (as the Romans under Curio), except that I could never figure out what I wanted to do, which showed in the final score of 1-5 (as well as some good dice from Jason). Of course, I also found out afterwards that I had accidentally missed setting up a unit of medium infantry. It would have helped, but I don’t think it could have saved things for me. Still—very embarrassing!

The second playing, with us switching sides (and the extra unit put back in), went a lot better, even though I made the mistake of pressing forward off the ridgeline at the start. As a result my (Pompeian) right flank pretty much ceased to exist, and some good fighting towards the middle got the score to a 4-4 tie. However, much of my army was smashed and easy to pick off, while there wasn’t much I could get at in Jason’s forces. Before I could come up with anything, he got the fifth banner and the win.

Mark and Zjonni were still involved in the longer Paraitacene scenario, so Jason and I went on to the longer Lauron scenario (76 BC, during Sertorius’ rebellion against Sulla). This is a fairly complicated scenario. The town of Lauron appears on the board as four impassable hexes, Pompey’s army is ranged around it, and Sertorius’ entire left wing is on the Pompeian edge of the board (coming out of the hills in an ambush). This creates a certain amount of fighting against instincts, as units retreat toward the friendly board edge, but instincts are saying to move them away from the enemy body of troops.

Jason led off with the ambushing force attacking fairly piecemeal and losing their best units (warriors) to no effect. This rather solidly gave me the initiative, and good card draws helped me keep going. Certainly, it’s the only time I’ve seen Jason at a loss in this game. And I wrapped things up at 7-2. Of course, I then had to figure out how to do better as Sertorius. The first thing was to lead off with the ambush, but keep more of them together. It’s hard to move six units all together, and I only moved four of them out of the hills into Pompey’s flank. However, as that included the leader, I was able to hit a lot harder, and got an early edge. Despite a six-card to five-card edge, and going first, this is a tough battle for Sertorius as his army is broken up while Pompey has a good line, and and his units are not as tough. Things went back and forth for a while, with Jason slowly closing the opening gap, and he pulled out an eventual 6-7 win. Again, he smashed a greater portion of my army, and left me with few good options, and the game ended with a risky cavalry move deep on my right flank to try and force him to loose a unit to casualties and retreats. But my units were in bad shape, and when they couldn’t get a result, the battle back got me.

At that point, Mark and Zjonni’s third game wrapped up, so we decided to swap opponents. Since Zjonni and Mark had just played one game of Cynoscephalae, we played a second game of that, with Zjonni switching sides, and I taking the side that Zjonni had taken earlier (the Romans).

It decidedly has some interest, with a jumble of hills in the middle separating the two forces. The Macedonians have a decidedly heavier force, but if the fighting stays in the hills, that won’t matter much. Also, the Roman force has a single unit of elephants on the right flank. They, of course dominated much of thoughts of the early game, with me trying to drive them into the Macedonian positions, and with him eagerly shooting them whenever adjacent to my troops. Surprisingly, for all the effort expended, and several trample attacks, they managed not to create too much carnage. They did catch a Macedonian heavy infantry as they came off the hills and managed to wipe it out, before dying in the next turn or so.

Other than that, the beginning of the game saw a lot of ranged attacks without much close combat. This eroded units on both sides, but did not generate much of a decision. In the end, luck told as Zjonni got two Double-time cards and pressed into the right flank with his heavies, causing great carnage both times (three banners per card!). Final score 1-6.

We mucked around for a little bit after that, but it was well past 4 by that point, and when Mark and Jason finished their second game a little bit later, we packed up for the day.

I don’t know what happened in the other battles, as I was too busy to really look in, but Mark won both of the first two matches with Zjonni (Paraitacene) 7-4. He also won the first game of Cynocephalae 6-4. Mark’s and Jason played Dyrrhachium twice, with Jason winning both times (giving me the only victory against Jason, and the only loss against Zjonni…) 6-4 and 6-2.

This gives Jason the win for the day with 31 out of 36 possible banners (or 86%), Mark had 26 out of 32 for 81%, Zjonni got 18 out of 26 for 69%, and I got 19 of 30 for 63%. More importantly, everyone had a great time with a truly fun game.

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2008 Wrap-up

by on January 1, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Posted In: Life

Well, it’s over. It’s all over. 2008 is now a part of history.

Anyway, Christmas was small. We had planed on visiting Smudge’s parent for Christmas, but snow and Baron falling suddenly ill put an end to that. Dave being out of town to visit his folks left the three of us, and we invited over Kris Kreutzman (aka Blondiewood in the WoW guild) as he had no plans for Christmas day either. We all had a good time, and a good dinner, and Kris stayed pretty late talking.

I got an interesting book from Baron, Batman: Murder at Wayne Manor. I’m not much of a Batman fan, but it’s an excellently produced book, with various ‘clues’ that come up in the story stuck in little sleeves throughout the book. Dave got me a couple of nice trays for use with game counters. My parents got me a copy of Starfleet Command II (I got my dad hooked on the first one, and mentioned I’d like to get the second myself, so I bet he got himself one); and The Complete Boucher, which I’ve been wanting since I found out it had come out. Mark got me a copy of Carthage, which Mark and I hope to get to sooner rather than later.

Mark came over Tuesday, and we tried out Pursuit of Glory. Sadly, this was arranged a little suddenly, and neither of us was prepared. So, the bulk of the time was spent going over the base concepts and playing through the sample game of the first two turns and then proceeding slightly past that before Mark had to go home. We plan to try again from scratch next time, now that we have an idea of how the game plays. It has quite a bit of chrome, but looks to be very good.

The main December problem this year is that Smudge’s monitor died last Saturday. It had been making signs of going for months, where it would suddenly just go blank for a moment and then come back. As of Sat, it would display the Acer logo for a second when it came on, and then go blank, and nothing could induce it to do more, even though the status LED showed that it thought it was on. Calling Acer eventually turned up the information that they are not repairing any monitor that is not under warranty. So, our $900 three-year-old monitor: junk. Also, I got the impression from the fellow on the phone that Acer has been having lot of monitor failures lately. I get the idea that the policy is a matter of self-defense, so they have the capacity of taking care of warranty obligations. Still—don’t buy Acer.

Thankfully, we have an emergency backup monitor. Since it didn’t like Micca at all, Smudge ended up with my monitor, while I was stuck with the emergency monitor. As its color and brightness are crap, this was a good inducement to making sure we got a new monitor in a hurry. Some initial looking quickly showed that we get down to nearly a quarter of the price of the old one by going down to a 22″ widescreen, and we ended up with three equivalent choices at the same price depending on which retailer and manufacturer we wanted to support. We ended up with an LG W2241T from Best Buy for about $300 after tax and a four-year warranty from Best Buy itself, where they promise to replace it with a new monitor if something happens that they can’t fix.

The annual review of posts here shows that I had 41 posts during 2008, down one from last year. Tag count shows: 28 ‘gaming’, 8 ‘life’, 6 ‘news’, 5 ‘gmt’, 5 ‘mmp’, 5 ‘onward christian soldiers’, 4 ‘sfb’, 3 ‘adb’, 3 ‘successors’, 3 ‘soldier kings’, 2 ‘c&c ancients’, 2 ‘conquest of paradise’, 2 ‘haruhi’, 1 ‘ff’ (Final Fantasy), 1 ‘humor’, 1 ‘asl’, 1 ‘office’, 1 ‘writing’, 1 ‘biafra’, 1 ‘video’, 1 ‘pixar’, 1 ‘micca’, 1 ‘a victory lost’, 1 ‘rome’, and 1 ‘wow’. Mostly, gaming and computer related stuff. A pretty good reflection of me….

There was a period of several years where I (like a fair number of people) looked back to high school or college as the best time of my life. I didn’t have true money concerns, I’d rather be in school with classes I like (which is its own trick) than at work, which is generally tangential to my interests. Mostly, after a childhood of only having one or two friends at a time, high school was wonderful because I actually had true circle of close friends for the first time. Afterwards, life took its toll, and things shrank down again.

Part of the reason for moving to the SF Bay Area was that were people I knew here, which I hoped to get to know better. Progress has been slow, as I am not a terribly social person by nature. However, last year did very well in this regard. Both the WoW guild and my little gaming group expanded and are doing well.

I would like to thank everyone I know in ‘real life’, in Minions of the Fickle Muse, in my gaming club, who I’ve chatted with here, on Goodreads, on Board Game Geek, on GameSquad, and other sites, or even who’ve just read my words there, for helping put me into an ever-wider realm of friends and interesting people, and making this one of the best times of my life.

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Frederik the Overworked

by on December 22, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Well, had the gang over for gaming again yesterday. For the first time, we got a 5-crew over, and we decided to try Soldier Kings once more, but with five players for the first time. As Zjonni was the new one, we gave him England, and drew randomly for the rest. I ended up as Prussia, with Patch as Austria, Mark as Russia, and Jason as France. Progress was slow, with a good amount of head-scratching over the rules (the basics are easy, it’s all the little interactions).

The war in central Europe got off to a slow start as everyone looked across the borders, didn’t like what they saw and stayed defensive. Russia managed to get an alliance with Poland, and I countered with one with Turkey. I attempted, late in the first year, to start knocking Poland out of the war, but couldn’t get the dice I needed.

On the alliance end end, Russia and Austria teamed up, and I allied with France while Britain practiced a form of “Splendid Isolation“.

Meanwhile, France got off to a very good, and very aggressive start, taking the Austrian Netherlands and Hannover in Europe and shipping troops off to the New World. England initially attempted an invasion in Brittany, but was driven off. The year ended with France with 10 point, Austria negative, and everyone else at 0.

The second year got more exciting. Poland was forced to go neutral (Royal Heir Dies), and Britain and France started getting into a real fight for control of the New World. And everyone in my neck of the world got more aggressive, including me. I managed to beat off the first couple attempts into Prussia, but Austria managed to go around me and took Mecklinburg, and I lost East Prussia while I was taking out Saxony.

This is my usual experience with Prussia, there’s too much to do to keep from getting nibbled to death, and because of the small size of Prussia, losing any territory is a pretty big deal. I think I need to concentrate more on making the offensives as fast as possible. Save the resources for unlimited combat and siege, concentrate (using Frederick) on the target swiftly with the big, hard to hurt units, and spend the resources to make sure it gets done now. I keep trying to skimp on the number of rounds so that I can do more things, and getting burned by the dice.

Speaking of bad die luck, I’ve had the luck to have both of the Prussian 4-3s and one of the 3-2s, but all three got damaged during the Fall turn, and I had already had to overspend for a previous repair. Thankfully, there was no time to take advantage of the weakened Prussian army, but maintenance forced me to flip to more units. The bulk of the third year’s budget is going to repairing all of that.

This all actually went quite long, and we had to call the day at the end of the second winter turn. For once, we’re seeing a really interesting situation, and we definitely want to see where it goes. France is in the lead with 12 points, and everyone else is still hovering around 0. However, it’s probably only a matter of time before the heavier English navy gets the victory it’s been seeking for the last year. The end of the session also saw a small flurry of card plays and Poland is now allied with Prussia and Bavaria is allied with France, both of which should help take the pressure off me a little.

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