Floods

I haven't written in almost a month. A bunch of stupid stuff happened last month starting with a flood (we got like 13 inches of rain in about 4 hours), and then another flood ... of insurance fuck ups.

The water got high enough to get in Crystal's car's cabin, and then the insurance company was supposed to tow it to the repair shop to get it cleaned up and replace the carpet or whatever, but they towed it to a holding yard for totaled vehicles instead. A holding yard where there's a bunch of gravel, and it gets flinged around like crazy as they're moving cars around with forklifts.

Crystal's car got dinged up and her bumper got cracked somewhere in that process. We then spent an afternoon waiting around at Honda, for them to deliver the car for repairs, because they told us it was headed there. We got there around when they said it was going to be there, and then they said they got held up detailing it, but now it was on the way, so we grabbed some food, came back, and then they told us it wasn't going to be there until tomorrow.

The car was delivered with dings all over it, no license plates, but with some bags of air freshener inside, and tire shine.

The Honda rep touched the carpet, then smelled her hand, and her hand smelled.

After around a month, Honda called and said, that the repairs were done, but Crystal never got the check from the insurance company. Called them up, and they apparently mailed it without our apartment number, so we had to wait for them to issue a new check, but the rental coverage limit was coming up, and they were like, "There's nothing we can do!," even though Crystal was only stuck in a rental for a month because of their screw ups. They went as far as to suggest that Crystal tell Honda, "Hey, they're good for it, so just release my car."

Crystal gave them a stern look over the phone.

Eventually, they talked it out amongst themselves, and figured out they could start a new rental period on the second claim they had to open because they towed the car to the wrong place and got it damaged. I think they opened that claim without guarantees that it wouldn't raise her rates, to boot.

Check comes a few days later, I say, "Is this the right amount?" Crystal thinks it is, she goes to pick up her car, and turns out it isn't, and Honda said the insurance company sent the check to the repair shop that handled the exterior damage, instead of to Honda (who handled the carpet replacement and electronics checks and whatnot). This may or may not have been true, since they called back later that day saying that she could come pick it up, but it was too late, and we had to wait another weekend.

So screw those guys.

In other news, Caverna, which people sometimes refer to as Agricola 2 (Agricola is my favorite board game), had its price drop and Mike picked up a copy, which I borrowed shortly after. I played a few games with Steve to figure out how it all works, and set to work programming it.

The game has like 900+ components. The box weighs 8 lbs. There's a bunch of downtime between rounds where you have to shuffle needlessly bulky wood pieces around, and it's a mess.

Don't get me wrong. The components are very nice, and it's verily dripping with quality. There are a ton of functionally identical dwellings you can build that are little cardboard tiles, and they all have different drawings, and patterns on the blankets on the bed. Functionally equivalent meadows sometimes have bushes on them. All the mine tiles do the same thing, and have different drawings of ore on them. It's nuts.

But ... 900+ components.

I haven't actually done as much programming as I'd like. There was a lot of asset work, scanning and digitally processing images. Modeling the layout a little bit after Playdek's excellent Lords of Waterdeep.

Using Ember. No surprise. Going to try out Firebase as a backend. We'll see how that goes.

I've never programmed a board game before, and worker placement seems straightforward enough, but animal husbandry and building effects are going to be a pain. I should have maybe programmed Pandemic as a board game starter project instead.

I think it can't be as bad as Agricola and its bazillion card interactions, and Playdek did a great job with that, so it's at least possible.

Code will be public. Won't be checking the images into source control. Don't want to be sued.

The game seemed pretty good, but 3 2-player games isn't enough to really evaluate it, I think.

Speaking of Lords of Waterdeep, I've been playing it a lot. Probably too much. Turns out I really like worker placement games, and I like to be good at everything I try.

I'm fairly good at the game, rated in the high 1700s, but I think the game isn't well balanced.

I play 1 hour games, with both expansions, heads up. Anything else takes too long for a sitting, and it's too easy to lose track of what's happened.

In that configuration, I think the starting player gets a huge advantage with the Skullport spaces, and it's improperly compensated for for the second player (I think you start with 5 gold, instead of 4). It's very easy for the first player to take a quest, 5 gold, an intrigue card and 1 corruption, and then have 9 gold to spend on a premium building, and there's nothing nearly as good as an opening move for the second player.

That aside, certain quests (i.e. Study in the Librarium, Seize the Citadel of the Bloody Hand), and the Open Lord intrigue card are wildly imbalanced, and if you start with one in your hand, or in the offer when you're the first player, everyone's basically screwed.

There are times where you really need mandatory quests to slow down a player with a great plot quest. I think the game would benefit from separate actions to draw attack intrigue cards instead of the regular ones that just give you some minor boost.

Also, if you're a lord that gets bonus points for arcana quests, and the Librarium is in the building offer to start, that's a huge advantage.

End of the day, I don't think it's as good of a game as Agricola. You can draw a great hand in Agricola, but it won't stop you from losing if you don't play it just right. On the other hand, if you draw Open Lord in Waterdeep, you pretty much have to make repeated huge errors or get incredibly unlucky on building and quest draws to lose.

I could go on and on about this, and I probably will, but in a proper strategy thing, like I did with Agricola.

Also went and shot trap for the first time with Jerry, Mike, Tae, Jay and Steve. I think I averaged around 8.5 hits out of 25, which is pretty bad. I'd never handled a shotgun prior to that, though.

I would have liked to shoot some papers or something to just understand my point of impact and stuff. I think I heard after the fact that you want to bury the bead in the clay to hit it.

Also, I think my shooting stance isn't good. I shoot with my elbow down, because I don't want a chicken wing habit if I ever end up in a gunfight, but I think the gun wasn't seated properly, and I wasn't pressing it into my shoulder enough. I got a bruise on upper inside part of my bicep. I also had my cheek swell up a little, because it kept bumping my cheekbone.

Looking forward to trying to get better at that.