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BoomMF

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  1. Are we at the tail end of the golden age of board games? Kickstarter and Gamefound haven't been hopping like they used to be a few ago, and it's been like this for months. In other news, I FINALLY finished the 3D Showdown Board for Kingdom Death: Monster. All magnetized, framed, and mounted. I could hang it on the wall if I thought the wall wouldn't fall down! This thing is heavy. Now we just need the upcoming terrain pieces, but I'm in no rush to do this again. Good lord, this took a long time...
  2. When I started this little endeavor, I thought it would be cool to get all the BIS gear for my Haswell-era machine. Like, I was going to make the king dingaling of computers from a time when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, but looking at these prices for parts from a few years before the start of the paleolithic got me like: Turns out my MSI X99a Godlike Gaming Carbon is something of a collectible. Maybe I can flip an old Fatal1ty case I have in storage for one of those fancy chromed up espesso machines. brb
  3. I haven't used my "main" desktop in about 5 years or so. I got back into photography and the monitor array that's hooked up to that machine makes editing pics a joy, so I decided to dust the machine off (and man was there dust) and fire it up. It fired up on the second pull and made sounds like the car from the Ghostbusters cartoon, but eventually came to life. I couldn't even remember the specs! So I poked around the hard drives (it has some mechanicals because it's from a time when multi-terrabyte SSDs were sold almost exclusively to sultans) and updated everything (which took an eon) and found and reacquainted myself with all the incriminating stuff. It was like a pre-covid timecapsule! lol It has a 6950X (remember that badass? I bought it with the trepidation that it would consume so much more electricity. What a sweet summer child I was.), 64GB of DDR4 across 8 slots (X99 holla!) and a 1080Ti (making it the lowest grade GPU, by a considerable margin, in the entire house, which contains 5 laptops and 2 other desktops! Poor, venerable titanium.). I've only replaced the image library drive, swapping in a 4TB Samsung 870 Evo. (Note: do not mount a drive on the USB bus, set it up, and then expect it to work on AHCI. Zzzzz) Now I'm at a crossroad. Do I replace the GPU (for a 2080ti) and the rest of the mechanicals or take it down to the studs (I guess I can keep the 1000W Seasonic PS? Power headers can be adapted if needed, no?) and go with something from this era? I don't need a burner (besides, so much of editing images is gated like PDFs, you can only go so fast regardless of how much horsepower you throw at it), this will only be for image editing, gaming is done elsewhere. I'm not necessarily looking for an answer, just thinking out loud. I'll mess around on it and see if the slowness bothers me. It probably will and I will find a reason to upgrade to whole damn thing without much effort, you watch. In other news, the new main laptop is here: Alienware 16 Area 51 with all the sliders pushed to the right (except for the CherryMX keyboard - where I use the machine isn't conducive to loud clicky-clack mechanical keys and real talk, membrane keyboard are nice nice anyway.) I need to get Port Royal like all the cool kids, but alas. (Time Spy Extreme dropped an 11786) Now, off to see what people are getting for lightly used, never OC'd EVGA 2080Ti's. Only recently found out EVGA isn't even in the GPU business anymore, that's how out of it I am. EDIT: Holy shit, still like $300+?! I thought it was going to be one of those "I'll pay you to take it off my hands kind of thing!"
  4. Yeah, I feel like I've done everything the game will ever offer. Haven't even created a toon the past two seasons, but I got my money's worth with the more than 500 hours I put in.
  5. BoomMF

    Comic Books

    I settled on CDisplayEx Comic Reader for organizing and displaying the comic collection on the tablet. I started reading Claremont era X-Men (with Giant Size #1. It's lol but the build up to the classic Claremont primetime timeline, I want to experience it with this context.) and it works great. Very intuitive book navigation and makes good decisions on what to display next given the current panel/page state. I'm impressed. In other news, this got me into thinking about filling in some holes from my collection. I haven't collected in decades, but my first job was at 15 and it was at a comic store and I was paid in comics, so the collection choice. But, even with that access there were plenty of unobtainium books, even back then. So I've been bouncing around comic stores in Austin and on my travels and see that grading and slabbing comics has become very popular. Am I missing something, but this strikes me as the absolute dumbest shit I've ever seen in this hobby. It almost never failed that a store would have a book on my want list, but it was encased in that god-awful, joy-killing plastic. Is this what the devil's been up to since I've been gone? Fucking hell this is terrible.
  6. Quick update: Elder Scrolls Betrayal of the Second Era delivered. It has the normal Chip Theory clunk, but so far the juice is worth the squeeze. I don't think it will capture us to the extent Oathsworn did (BOTSE doesn't have a single, well-manicured story so it's at a disadvantage there, but it has tons more replayability - which I care less about. I'm team story first.), but the experience is very satisfying. It's still too early to tell, but the bones are there. 😜
  7. BoomMF

    Comic Books

    ComicRack is extinct? What a terrible turn of events. I have thousands of digital comics and previously used ComicRack to organize them all. Anyone have a recommendation for something that manages a CBR/CBZ library and serves/syncs books to a tablet reader? I'm shocked that in 2025 there isn't another obvious ComicRack successor. We used to be a proper country.
  8. ...And then the dog tries to wake them but licks go astray and tongue hits a power outlet.
  9. They don't make them like this anymore.
  10. Oathsworn got finished. Tears were shed.
  11. Is this gem finally getting it's due?
  12. Coincidentally, I've been looking around for a replacement table (5'x5' is a great size for 90% of games, but I have the space for a larger table so looking to get something for the other 10%) and Game Theory's site keeps coming up. Their prices don't blow my skirt up, but their products looks stellar. I think the end of this story is me going to a local woodsmith and having him do something from a sketch. I have the War of the Ring: Two Decades Anniversary Edition on pre-order but the "deluxe" map has already arrived and it barely fits on my table, leaving very little room for players. My current solution is a folding table that stores under the gaming table for spill-over components and gaming space, but it's not an ideal solution. My plan is to have a LOTR weekend with some friends where we watch the movies and play War of the Ring, so that's my deadline. If you're looking to get something, Game Theory has a great reputation and you just can't beat a quality purpose-built gaming table. I'm never going back to gaming on a dining table, gaming tables bring too much to the.. table. If there is anyone in the Austin area who wants a gaming table, I might be looking in the near future to give mine away.
  13. Someone mentioned that young adults today grew up with World of Warcraft, so their orcs have always been just green humans, and since those are the new target demographic it made a lot of sense to me why WOTC is changing them up. I don't like it, but there are so many alternate materials to draw from that I don't even view Hasbro/WOTC to be any more "official" as a source any different than any of the army of alternatives. They can do what they want and let the market decide if it was a good idea or not, but I'll be good either way and just pick up what speaks to my interests. I've learned to deal with disappointment from IPs that are far more important to me that my apathy checks are all guaranteed successes, I don't even have to roll the dice. And speaking of IPs that are more important to me, I played Star Trek Ascendancy several times now. It's really Star Trek in a box. All the factions play different and drip with theme. Gale Force 9 currently has a Gamefound on deck that will introduce new factions (including Gorn!), campaign mode, and stream-lined rules (meh), but the star of the show for me is the proposed crate to store everything. I have everything currently available and putting the contents from all those fiddly boxes into one purpose-built Kallax big box with a smartly designed insert that facilitates setup is my love language. The caveat to the annoucement is that the teaser scenario they debuted is sourced from Discovery. We're still waiting to hear more details from GF9, but if it turns out that Discovery or nuTrek material can't be skipped and is deeply integrated, there's a good chance I'll skip getting the campaign and just get the crate. (Apathy +20) Another space-themed game that was awesome to play was Andromeda's Edge. Just look at that table presence! Now imagine gameplay that's just as good as this physical appearance. I also have and enjoy Dwelling of Eldervale, which this game borrows heavily from. Andromeda's Edge polishes up several of those mechanics and introduces a few more. The end result is a superior experience all around, imo. I painted up all the gods for Amun-Re only to find out they are barely in the game. No bother, I'll still paint everything before even opening the rulebook. Lesson not learned. #noragrets Amun-Re is a modern classic, but I ended up liking Reiner Knizia's other Egyptian-themed auction game, Ra, more. We're almost done with every case released for Detective: City of Angels, which spans across 4 expansions over the base game. It'll be a dark day when there are no more new little tuck boxes to solve. Also broke out Kingdom Rush: Rift in Time. Several scenarios in and the puzzles are getting pretty damn hard to solve. Harder than the app (obv. since the app lets you pay to win and I pay to win) The latest Kickstarter arrived not too long ago so I need to finish this campaign, or at least get through enough of it, so I can try the new stuff, which is supposed to introduce a lot of new mechanics and potentially better gameplay. And we are 2 chapters from finishing Oathsworn. The kid are devastated at the thought of finishing it. Hah. Now, I'm going to get back to Ascendancy to try and get good enough to play as the Vulcans. Peace.
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