HoodedHawk

Board game night: We played 1812: Invasion of Canada, and Lancaster. For 1812, this was the first time playing for 4 of the 5 of us. Cody had brought the game, and taught us. Lots of fun! Let’s classify it as a “light” territory-control game. Two sides, American and British. The American side has two armies: Regular and Militia. The Canadian side has three: Canadian Militia, British (Redcoats), and Indian. I played Canadian, with Steve and Phil playing Indian, British. Cody and Pete played American. My faction liked to flee from battle a lot (you use specialized dice, and two of the sides cause your one of your armies to “flee” the battle. That’s better than being killed, but not helpful for the current battle. Lots of “French” analogies bandied about. :)

The game lasted about 90 minutes (British defeated the Americans); it would have been only about an hour, but it was our first play. Highly recommended! 8/10 stars.

Next we played Lancaster. Phil, Steve, Pat and I had played before; Cody joined us. I’d classify this as another light game. Basically you try to advance your knights’ by winning counties or fighting with France, etc. Most victory points at end of game wins. Multiple strategies to gain points; you basically compete with other knights to win counties, or defeat the French. While Cody was not a real fan, the rest of us like the game (we’ll be playing again). :) Recommended. 7.5/10

Fun night!

Last night we (George, Steve and I) played Through the Ages. George brought the game (it’s one of his favorites) and he was happy to teach Steve and I as we had never played. This one’s a keeper.

A civilization-building game, this first time through was rather long, at about 4 hours. I was enjoying myself so much it really didn’t feel like 4 hours! The game has, I believe, 4 “Ages”: Ancient, I, II, III. As it was, we didn’t get to finish the game (it was close to 1AM); we stopped at the end of the Age II. George won by a wide margin (89 Culture points vs. my 54 and Steve’s 51). We will definitely be playing this one again as all of us enjoyed it.

George did mention that the first game is usually long as everyone is learning the rules – and the 2nd game is just as long due to players refining their strategy, etc. So by the 3rd or 4th game we’ll get a whole game in at one sitting I assume. By then I think I will at least have an idea of what cards are in each Age, so I will be better able to decide on which Leader to grab, etc. George was using James Cook – who was actually quite useful for accumulating Culture (Victory points), especially if you grabbed Territory.

I did like my Joan of Arc (see pix), as she minimized the number of times I was attacked: I got 5 Culture any time that happened. She also gave me a Military strength for each Smiley I had in a Temple. But George was able to increase his per-turn yield of Culture, and this is critical for winning the game. It’s hard to pass someone who gets 15 Culture per turn when you only get 5. I’ll change focus next time around.

This is one I’ll definitely get a copy of, and hopefully play more often. I’d put this in my top 3 –I like it even more than War of the Ring.

Rating: 8.5/10. Keeper.

Last week we played Civilization: The Card Game. This was included as an add-on with a box-set of the Video game series. Steve had had it around and never played it. So we did! It was a fairly fun game, easy to learn. There is a bit of down-time when it is not your turn, but not enough to diminish the game. The game lasted about 3 hours. If the production values for the game were better I would get a copy, but the cards are quite thin; reminds me of a print-and-play copy. As a freebie add-on that’s fine though.

Rating: 6.5/10

Another great Board Game Group evening last night: War of the Ring. I really like this game – it follows the theme of the Lord of the Rings well, and the gameplay allows for narrative description as quoted below.

We had 4 interested so we played the “multiplayer” version; two of us played the Free People, and two played Shadow. I was on the Shadow side (again). This was the first time playing with 4 (usually I’ve played 2-player). I liked the cooperative aspect of two per side.

Great game, and it flew by. I had to leave the game early -about 3 hours in (I never do that; but I had to pick up some allergy meds for Olivia who was still up and miserable at 11:30). That is one other benefit to team play: the game didn’t have to end because I had to leave.

George sent me a recap of what happened after I left. I thought his overview was fantastic; he gave permission to post his recap below. Also, he has painted (most) of the figures used in the game – great job and it really adds to the aesthetic enjoyment we get from playing!

We finished out the action dice you were using, and rolled them once more. We were finished by 1am, probably a little before.

Gondor besieged Minas Tirith to set up Rohan’s use of the “Paths of the Woses” to get Eomer & Theoden’s army to North Ithilien and within striking distance of Mordor. The orcs of Dol Guldur, having taken Dale from the Northmen, threatened both the Woodland Realm and Erebor, but didn’t do more than sword-rattling. The Rohirrim stormed the Black Gate at Morannon, slaughtering the cave troll there.

Aragorn led his army south to Pelargir, reclaiming that. Sauron mustered forces in Mordor, and Saruman raised more Dunlendings. Aragorn’s force headed south to besiege Umbar while the Rohirrim held their position in Morannon. The first battle at Umbar was a brutal one, lasting for 3 rounds. The Gondorians fought bravely, killing all but one stalwart Southron, but not without cost; over half of Gondor’s mighty army lay buried in those blood-soaked fields.

Rohan mustered a token defense in Edoras to ward off attackers from Helm’s Deep, denying Saruman an easy victory. Sauron directed another force of Southrons to relieve Umbar, but Aragorn’s leadership proved too strong for the war oliphaunts, and Gondor repelled the attack with nary a casualty. The battle proved tiring for the Gondorians, however, as they attempted 2 more attacks on Umbar. Sauron made a few last ditch recruiting efforts, but it was too little too late to claim any of the lightly defended Free People strongholds.

As the time drew short, Aragorn and his last 2 Gondorian soldiers made a final push against the gates of Umbar, and prevailed!

Final score FPMV, FP: 4, SP: 7

The Fellowship sat 4 regions outside of Rivendell for most of the game, with Gollum as their guide. The Elves and Dwarves sat on their collective butts, toasting the prowess of Men with wine and malt beer, respectively.

This was a really good game, and pretty tense.

The Walters Museum in Baltimore has some leaves from the Archimedes Palimpsest on exhibit (through Jan 1, 2012). I took the kids to visit the exhibit today.

Very nice venue, and the exhibit was well laid out. While the museum is kid-friendly (they hand out satchels with crafts/activities related to the exhibit for the kids to work on), looking at “old books” didn’t hold the attention of a 5-year old for more than 30 minutes (which I thought was a lot). Granted, about 10 of those were a video presentation. Little Olivia fell asleep in her stroller…

The Archimedes Palimpsest is a Medieval parchment manuscript. The currently visible part of the manuscript is a Byzantine Prayer book, written around 1229 AD. What makes it interesting is that the parchment used for the prayer book is actually comprised of previous manuscripts from about the 10th century. The scribe in the 13th century used a knife and scraped off the older text so as to reuse the parchment for the prayer book (“Palimpsest” is from the Greek, meaning “scraped again”). You can do this with parchment (sheep skin) as it is quite durable. The previous manuscripts comprise some 7 treatises by Archimedes – and for 2 of these there was no known existing text. Now there is!

The underlying Archimedes text is revealed via a technique called “multispectral imaging”. Basically, many digital images are taken of the parchment, each at a different wavelength of light – some in the ultraviolet, invisible to the eye. These images are further processed to get the best resolution of the underlying text. Not every page of the manuscript was in great condition, so sometimes images were enhanced by using high-intensity X-rays (which would basically scatter off the iron in the older ink). All-in-all this was a very time-consuming process, not the least of which was actually dismantling the palimpsest so the imaging could be done.

Non-flash photography is allowed, so:

Archimedes Palimpsest
Normal (left) and multispectral (right) image of a leaf from the Archimedes Palimpsest. Archimedes’ hidden text shows up in red (in two columns, vertically) on the multispectral image. In the right-hand image you can make out a mathematical diagram in the bottom of the first column. Click to enlarge…

Why is the older Archimedes text perpendicular to the overlaid text? Because the previous manuscript was folded/creased, so the scribe would cut it in half for re-use, then re-fold it again after turning it.

Preston Singing at Christmas show. Really! His friend Chloe is next to him. :)

I’ve been meaning to put up a Nativity scene in our yard for years, but this year I remembered to get one early enough. Each year I think I’ll try to add more members; started with just the Holy Family and a couple of lambs. One nice effect is the shadow of the Nativity stable frames one of the windows our house. Neat.

The snowcouple snowglobe had to go up as well; the kids like it. I tried leaving it out, but Olivia remembered it from last year…:)

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Yearly (attempt) at a Christmas portrait of the kids (see last year…). This year the youngest two were smiling a lot more than Big Brother Dylan (most of those now toast). Note however, that when Preston and Olivia asked if they could hold their “friends” (Mr. Duck and Skippit Dog), Dylan also had to run upstairs to get his Elephant. :)

We haven’t decided on the official one yet. Might be a collage. :) Click picture for slideshow…

Christmas Portrait 2011

 

Scientists at NASA announced today that they have discovered the first (probably rocky) “superEarth” planet orbiting in the “habitable zone” of a Sun-like star. The “habitable zone” is an orbit where liquid water is possible on the surface of the planet.

This newly discovered planet is a “superEarth” because it is only ~2.4 times the size of the earth, and thus not a gas-giant. Gas-giant planets have previously been discovered in such habitable zone orbits of stars, but this is the first earth-type (i.e. rocky) planet. Gas giants in general are not considered capable of supporting life (as we know it).

On the other hand, Earth-like rocky planets in habitable zones are capable of supporting life. Kepler-22b is estimated to have an average surface temp of about 72 degrees Fahrenheit. Nice!

Discoveries like these really do hint that life may very well be possible in lots of other systems in the universe. In order to detect such planets, their orbits must be “on-edge” in relation to us. Specialized telescopes like the Kepler can detect the (slight) dimming of the light from the star as the planet travels in front of the star (between us and the star). If the orbit of the planet was off-edge (in relation to us), it wouldn’t block the light from the star anytime during it’s orbit, so wouldn’t be detected. So, it is quite likely that there are many more such planets we can’t detect via this method. Wow!