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I received an amazing gift for my birthday this month and wanted to share this.  Kassandra Kaplan made an actual ‘Raccoon War 2012′ board game for me, and it’s incredible.

As you may know, I had a series of incidents (linked) involving a raccoon that snuck into my house repeatedly defeating various traps along the way until finally (spoilers) I got it.  Kass was inspired by my struggle to create a board game where players can fight their own battles against the procyon menace and it’s a lot of fun.

First, the production quality is tremendous.  The game comes in a box (pictured) that contains a folding board, two cloth bags with game pieces, and two decks of cards in transparent boxes.

The Board

The board is printed on quad-fold chipboard and has a heavy, solid feel.  When set up, it shows a map representing something that looks very similar to the Willamette Valley, with a few slight changes.  There are four geographical ‘zones’ with color-coded locations that often roughly coincide with real Eugene/Springfield places but have raccoon-esque names like ‘Orsetto Lavastore Pizza’, ‘Araiguma Dojo’, and of course ‘Tanuki Sushi’.  Thirsty?  Better head to ‘Waschbären Wein und Bier’!  Each zone belongs to a raccoon ‘general’/end-boss (who must be defeated).  There are 39 total locations which are interconnected to form a network of paths.  The top has a place for player cards and throwaways, and the bottom is dedicated to the raccoon army’s attack cards which are pulled each turn and control things like the spread of new raccoons, breeding rates, and more.

The Cards

Printed on 165# heavy clay coated card stock, they feel professional and look great.  There are two decks and some outlier control cards.  The players have a deck of locations they can add to their inventory (which they can then use as instant teleports, to fight raccoon generals once they have 5 of the appropriate color, build teleport bases) and mixed in (proportionately to the number of players) with them are raccoon escalation cards that do things like increase breeding rates, advance the raccoon agenda towards winning (the 9 circles on the bottom, a sort of raccoon game progress indicator), and so on. There are also player cards that change their role; master trappers who can trap more at once, real estate agents who can set up bases, etc.

The other deck has a card played each turn that helps the raccoons.  The 39 placenames can have new animals ‘appear’ on them as summoned by the raccoon attack cards, and the rate they accumulate increases throughout the game as they breed.

Playing

The gameplay is similar to Pandemic with many differences including a new ‘Ricky the Raccoon’ human-played antagonist that Kassie has been finalizing.  We played the inaugural game a few days ago and it was a blast.  Three adults and my 10 year-old played and everyone got into it very quickly.  The raccoons started out in a couple of tiny colonies and victory seemed assured, but for every fire we put out, another one or two started…  then spread.  It’s a collaborative game where we’re playing against a common enemy, so there was plenty of horse-trading (well, card trading.  There are few actual horses in the game.) within the rules and we had a great time.  You can perform up to 4 actions a turn (with some modifiers based on role-cards) such as move, trap, build base, etc. It sounds complicated at the beginning, but we were playing like pros within minutes.

Here’s a gallery with pictures of an unboxing and the board during our game:

[Gallery not found]

In conclusion, this is one of the best gifts I’ve ever received and I’m blown away by the amount of work she put into this and the quality result.  Raccoon War 2012 will be a treasured family board game for years and a great reminder of both my victory against the furred menace as well as the amazing things the people we care about can surprise us with.  Thank you Kassie, you’re amazing!

As for you, Ricky the Raccoon, stay out!

Nice, Stories raccoonwar

Funny, Nice, Pictures, Trolls

The original ending of the blockbuster 1983 film was much less popular with test audiences than the version that finally made it onto the big screen.

The final redemption of the film’s original unlikely protagonist was, it seems, thought to be insufficiently clear to film-going audiences of the day.  Today’s audiences, of course, would be able to appreciate the transformation of Salacious Crumb from slave-jester to dignified hero at the moment of his death at the Great Pit of Carkoon, accepting of his fate as he rode the flaming wreckage of Jabba’s sail barge down towards the unforgiving sands of Tatooine.

The studio was in a panic at the news.  At the last moment, the actor playing Darth Vader was brought in to hurriedly fill the spot.  The ‘Jedi Ghost’ effect was quite expensive and a deposit for the special ink had already been put down.  Somebody had to fill the spot, so the little known character of Anakin Skywalker was grudgingly chosen.

Trolls

It’s Friday afternoon and we have friends coming over to hot tub the next day.  It’s been a while since we used the spa so I decided to go give it a thorough maintenance/cleaning.  Anyone who has one of these knows that small animals will occasionally find their way in (the lids aren’t really air-tight, after all & frogs love ‘em) and either hang out in the lid or fall into the water and drown.  It’s rare, but it happens.

I open up the lid and find…  a dead snake.  It’s floating belly up at the bottom of the tub.

This is a disaster.

I start a full drain and walk off disheartened.  How long has this animal been sitting in the warm water?  Is this 1.5 foot snake going to turn into multiple fractional snakes when I touch it because it’s been sitting there decomposing?

I end up leaving it alone for the evening, our hot tubbing plans are probably going to have to be called off.  This needs a full scrubdown and careful checking over to make sure it’s not a biohazard, after all.

I go to bed that night and actually wake up at 3AM after fitful dreams about snakes.  I sit there willing myself back to sleep, but no joy.  All I see over and over again is this snake that I know is just a few feet away that’s sitting there rotting.  I try to think of something else, but my brain rebels.  “No,” it tells me, “you’re going to have to deal with this dead snake tomorrow and it will be horrible.”  Damnit.

I finally get out of bed and start my day tired and stressed.  A simple chore has now become a looming dark task in my mind that I just know is going to _suck_.  Finally, breakfasted and caffeinated, I get on some dirty clothes (I know I’ll be showering immediately afterwards) and shamble resignedly to the back and lift up the lid.

The hot tub is now mostly empty (we can put men on the moon but putting drains in the lowest parts of a hot-tub escapes even the finest Relaxation Technology scientists) and the snake corpse is sitting in a small pool.

I have a large halloween-candy bowl that’s wider than deep and, I figure, might be able to scoop up the (presumably bloated) remains with minimal mess.  I pump myself up, let’s get this over with.

I bend over the lip of the tub, reach out with the big plastic bowl, and SCOOP.  To my delight, the entire cadaver slides directly into the bowl.  Part of the tail sticks over the edge, but it’s stiff enough that it doesn’t even flop over.

Wait, ‘stiff’?  That’s weird, this thing has been sitting in a hot tub for who knows how many days/weeks.  I’m no carrion scientist, but I’m pretty sure it should be some sort of half-stew mass of sludgy ichor barely held together by water-logged skin by now.  Why is it stiff?

Careful not to spill, I stand up and lift the bowl closer to inspect this mystery.  In the light, I now notice more details.  The belly scales are there, I can see the tongue, and…  a logo?  Oh god.

This, I realize in growing shock, is a rubber toy snake.  It’s one of many I’ve bought over the years to play jokes on people with.  I leave them sitting on the wing of the plane, on beds, at the top of stairs, you get the idea.  And now it’s sitting here in a bowl atop my empty hot tub.

I’ve been stressing over this task for maybe 18 hours.  I’ve lost sleep, appetite, and more over what turns out to be a toy snake?!

Then I realize something else: My kids…  they got me.

They really got me.

I’m so proud.

Trolls

It’s time for the SuperBall (or whatever they call it) again, which means it’s time to pull out those special snacks from that dark place where you keep them and the shame surrounding that one time when you said that thing you didn’t realize was so dumb and everyone heard you say it and you hope they don’t remember because it sure keeps you up at night.

Nachos are a popular dish, but you’ve gotta substitute the chips with pork rinds to establish a good baseline.  Also, the nacho cheese you buy at the store is too thin, I like to reduce it on the stove with bacon grease to replace the water/whey.

As for the vegetables, lightweight nachos might use onions and peppers and whatnot, but I’ve found you can chop those up into slightly bigger chunks, batter ‘em, then deep fry them so it’s like you’ve got a handful of ‘onion rings’ and ‘battered peppers’ instead.  You’ve still got your vegetables (it’s practically a salad!), but now they taste better.

For your meats, ground beef loses a lot of flavor in the cooking (even with spices) so I like to use pork sausage instead.  Add taco seasoning to that, and you’ve got yourself a real fiesta.

Sour cream is tasty, but did you know you can get heavy-duty creme fraiche and ‘zing it up’ with some rum?  Great for dipping those chips in!

If it’s too salty at first bite, just drink more beer.  Eventually you won’t notice anymore.  Some chest tension and shortness of breath is pretty normal too, that’s how you know the nachos are working.

Trolls

Funny, Nice, Pictures, Trolls

Funny, Nice, Pictures

Browsing reddit this morning, I enjoyed this completely accurate picture and had to share my solution.

This is why I built a rain shower.

Out of PVC, I made a rectangular hoop of sorts that I hung from the ceiling.  It had holes drilled in it and a tube going to a diverter valve I put between the normal shower head and my monstrosity.

On a lark, I painted it gold.  They had brass, but I felt it was important to go with gold for reasons that will become clear shortly.

Once calibrated, I had a device that could allow both my wife and I to stay warm in the shower at the same time!  We could spend lots of extra clockcycles in the shower and many good times were had.

A few weeks later, we were at a party and wife was telling some friends about the device I had built.  We were having a nice conversation, then she mentioned that I had painted it to look sort of like brass pipes which was neat.

“Gold”, I corrected, then took a sip of my drink.

“Brass, gold, it’s just spray paint, you get the idea” she responded, making eye contact with her friends and smiling.

“Yeah, but no, they had brass.  I picked gold.”  I cocked my head very slightly, patient.  One of her friends suddenly twitched, then another.

After a moment, one of them asked my wife: “So….  he made you…  a golden shower….?”

I don’t remember much about what happened immediately after that, but all in all, I’d put this in the ‘success’ category.

Dumb story, Nice, Trolls

Trolls

Funny, Nice, Pictures