2010: Week 52 Blots

BLOT: (27 Dec 2010 - 11:34:31 PM)

Quick Game Review: Steve Jackson Games' Zombie Dice

Hot on the hells of my Cthulhu Dice quick review, here's the Zombie Dice review to match. The game play is likewise pretty simple. You have a cup. Shake it up and then choose three dice at random. Roll them. Put all your "brains" in one pile, all your "shotgun blasts" in another, and retain the "running feet". Draw enough new dice to get back to three (including the running feet from the last round) and roll again. Keep going until you get three shotgun blasts, in which case you get nothing that round, or until you tap out and collect the points from all the brains. First person to thirteen total brains wins.

The variation in gameplay largely extends from the variation in the dice. Red dice have three blasts but only one brain. Green dice have three brains but only one blast. Yellow are balanced. Drawing a handful of red dice can greatly increase your chances of getting shot out in a single round. Not guaranteed, for sure. Plenty of times it was a couple of green dice with shotgun blasts that ended the greedy zombie. For those looking to add a little flavor to the game, by the way, call the red, yellow, and green dice "Daddy", "Mommy", and "Baby" respectively. Or maybe "Jock", "Chav", and "Nerd". Delight as you get one of each color in hand and get to take a shot at the whole family or to re-enact The Breakfast Club...of the living dead.

Plays fast, with a surprising amount of outcome variation despite the overall simplicity. Really, it comes down to luck: you can get three shotgun blasts from any combo of dice (it just goes from 1:216 with all green to 1:8 with all red). Play the odds, though, and adlib your best "brraaaaainnns" jokes* or "Red light! Green light!" puns and have at it. It's a Good game. This one edges out its cousin, Cthulhu Dice, at least slightly, as far as gameplay satistfaction goes. Both are quick "pocket" games, but Zombie Dice seems to have a tad bit more staying power. With this one caveat: Cthulhu Dice gets more complex and more "diplomatic" with more players. Zombie Dice gets to be more about waiting for your turn. While Cthulhu Dice is probably best for 3-6 players, Zombie Dice should probably tap out about 2-3. Would be interesting to see if SJGames releases a few specialty dice that could be mixed or matched into the main pile. Such as a "run for help" dice that is mostly running, and the next turn automatically turns into a blast without re-rolling. Etc etc.

Official site for Zombie Dice

* Of course, this might earn my ire after a little bit, since only one zombie movie (of the old school, anyhow) has actually used the "brains" bit: Return of the Living Dead. The fact that the one movie, which doesn't include head-shots by the way, has taken over so much of zombie lore is a pet peeve of mine. Since this game isn't resolved in a single headshot, I assume Zombie Dice takes place in the Return zombie-verse.

LABEL(s): Games

BY WEEK: 2010, Week 52
BY MONTH: December 2010

BLOT: (27 Dec 2010 - 02:03:46 PM)

Quick Game Review: Steve Jackson Games' Cthulhu Dice!

There isn't much to this quick, couple-o-minute game. You have a die, twelve-sided by with custome faces rather than pips/numbers, and you have eighteen "sanity tokens" which are little glass stones. Gameplay is for 2-6 with the basic pack. You take turns being the "caster" and picking out a victim. You toss the die and play out the event as dictated by the symbol. The event can be "victim loses a stone", "victim gives a stone to caster", "everybody loses a stone", or "caster gains a stone from the center of the table". There is also "die-roller's choice". The center of the table is called Cthulhu and lost stones go to him. The victim will then get a chance to roll the die, and it might be best to think of this as "spell after-effects". The caster might lose a dice, might gain another dice from the victim, and so forth.

Once you lose all your sanity, you are insane. You can still act, but now you are working for Cthulhu, basically, and any gain you might make simple goes to the table. Last person left sane is the winner. Since you start out with only three sanity tokens, and it is possible to lose two a turn (and probable to lose at least one), the entire game resolves itself fairly quickly.Then you can easily restart and play again. As one last note, you only go insane when you have no sanity at the end of a "turn", which means that a caster who rolls Cthulhu (everyone pays one sanity to Cthulhu) still has a chance of getting a Tentacle (victim pays one sanity to caster), but if the victim runs out then there is only the Elder Sign (get one stone from Cthulhu). That all means little to the casual reader without a die in hand, but just take it say that you die fast and there isn't a whole lot of chance of stopping it.

The "call and response" gameplay gets a little weird, especially when the victim goes immediately after the caster, but it is not too bad. Besides that, it is a quick, relatively cheap game than can be carried in a simple pouch and resolved in less time than it took to read this review.

With all that being said, this is a game begging for house rules. BEGGING. Why not a rule that pits sane v. insane in a significant way, so that you can either try to build up a certain number of stones or try to win the most points for Cthulhu? A rule that causes one set of effects for the caster, but another set when the victim rolls the dice (to represent misfires)? Maybe a rule where everyone loses sanity every turn, starting with more sanity tokens to begin with and summoning Cthulhu results in the person with the least sanity being devoured? Caster and victim roll dice at the same time to some effect? There are a lot of possibilities.

For the price and intent, a Good game, but really not a whole lot to it. It's a pocket time waster for the when the GM is in the bathroom or the Munchkin deck is being reshuffled (or to see who buys drinks). I'm still going to go buy a couple more dice just to get some different colors. Oooo...is that a bone colored die with red paint I see?

Cthulhu Dice Official Site

LABEL(s): Games

BY WEEK: 2010, Week 52
BY MONTH: December 2010

BLOT: (27 Dec 2010 - 12:45:15 PM)

Baked Kabobs - Sirloin Tip, Chicken, and Mushroom

On Christmas, I wanted to cook something a little different than your average turkey + ham + roast beef kind of dish, and at some point in time, the idea of kabobs stuck in my head (no pun intended). I had the skewers and the desire and, a quick trip to the nearby corner grocer, later: I had the supplies. At the core of the dilemma was the fact that my smallish indoor grill would not be able to cook kabobs for four people at the same time, and we've had issues with it cooking beef well before it cooked chicken in the past. I needed something that could cook all of the kabobs and I needed to be able to cook all of the kabob ingredients evenly. I decided to bake them.

Some quick research online found few simple and real baked kabob recipes. Which is to say you can find lots of recipes if you are looking to involve a culinary degree, pinapple, and chilli peppers sun roasted on the first day of spring. What about the basics of baking as opposed to grilling a kabob? I decided to guess. For Christmas dinner. That's right, I'm braver than you.

This is what I did, about 1.5 pounds of sirloin tips. About 1 pound of chicken. About two cups of mushrooms, long sliced. I pre-boiled the chicken in brine until it was partially, but not totally done. In the future, I will skip this step and that was me being a worry wort. Then I marinated the meat and mushroom in a sauce that was made up soy and a hoppish beer with pinches of dill mixed in along with some pepper. After thirty minutes, I filled up the skewers, sprinked some chilli powder and some garlic powder on top, and baked. The temp was 375 and I baked them for about 15-20 minutes. I know I am being really inprecise here because I am not trying to lay down a set recipe, mostly just trying to say that it can be done. And here are the things I've learned.

You do not have to soak the skewers over night, or say a prayer to Polynesian volcano god, to stop the skewers from catching fire and burning down the house. There was no issue with the skewers scorching or anything of the sort.

The meat will come out a little dry, this way, so you want to baste it and turn it at least one time. A lot of the juices will get caught in the pan and that will help, but still needs a bit of moisture. Not a lot.

You will still get a bit of the "uneven" cooking. A lot better than our grill handles it, but some of the beef (none of the chicken) was variably done, from well-done to medium-well. It was slight, and I liked the effect, but again something of a mid-turn should help this.

That is it. This was mostly just to say: you can bake kabobs and this doesn't have to involve beds of things or specialty knives or blue moons.

LABEL(s): Food

BY WEEK: 2010, Week 52
BY MONTH: December 2010