BSG: Betrayal So Great

Battlestar Galactica had just come out. We were huge fans of the series, board gaming and Fantasy Flight, so buying it was a lock. In the first week we played it ten times, getting to grips with all the various rules. But there were a few minor hiccups, and one major, hilarious one.

It was a six player game. Both Boomer and Baltar were in play, so the Loyalty Deck had two extra cards. I was the Admiral, and a Cylon from Turn One. Jp was President Baltar, and after the halfway point, he used Baltar's Once-Per-Game ability to look at someone's Loyalty. He picked me. 

My deception game was over. I was outed before I could do much damage.

Jp looked at my You Are a Cylon card. He handed it back and looked me square in the eye. "It's okay guys, we can trust the Admiral."

Now, I've never had the best poker face, and it took every ounce of my being not to squee in joy. As President and Admiral, Jp and I went on to utterly destroy the humans without ever revealing, taking heat off each other as soon as someone got suspicious. We were on opposite sides of the table, two other players between us on either side, so we were devastatingly effect.

As the final blow was dealt, we stood up to High-5 over the table, and two of the other players whooped in victory as well! Everyone froze. There were four Cylons in the game. The only two humans just starred, their very souls and faith in humanity charred and blackened.

I had screwed up the Loyalty Deck. For Boomer and Baltar, I shuffled all remaining cards and added two randoms, instead of adding two "You Are Not a Cylon" cards, as the rules state. By chance, those two cards were both Cylon cards. 

Yeah, it was against the rules. Maybe it shouldn't be counted as a victory, but it was memorable, and we all still laugh about that game to this day.

Cross posted from Tales of Betrayal on Shut Up & Sit Down.

2012 In Video: Part 2: Entertainment

While I saw many great movies in the cinema throughout 2012, including The Avengers, Amazing Spider-Man, Dredd and Skyfall, there were some terrible, terrible failures (I'm looking at you, Prometheus). The trouble with the cinema is that not only have you already paid for your ticket by the time you realise this movie is sucking the life right out of you through your eye-sockets, but you have to get up, leave and make your way home afterwords, fuming at how bad the movie was.

Thanks to YouTube, I got a huge amount of my 2012 video entertainment through webseries and incredible independent YouTube creators. These range from action packed stories to hilarious shorts, from interesting shows to fantastic concepts that no big network would green-light. The advantage of material presented through the internet, of course, is that you can watch it at any time, and if you're bored, you just skip to the next video.

Here's a small selection of what I've been enjoying in 2012.

The Yogscast
These guys provide about 95% of the dinner time viewing in our household, and have done so for well over a year now. While they do playthrough videos for all kinds of games, they're mainly famous for their Minecraft videos, wherein they create amazing contraptions in the cubed world and get up to hilarious antics along the way. We started watching the Shadows of Israphel series, which was just Simon and Lewis playing out an enormous adventure made by friends, never knowing what was in store for them. Their most recent and longest running series, quickly approaching 100 episodes, is the Tekkit series, where Simon and Lewis are joined by friends Duncan, Sjin and Sips, as they collectively attempt to build an enormous Jaffa Cake factory! It is always hilarious, very unexpected, almost entirely unscripted and generally ingenious!

If you enjoy the core Yogscast Channel, then check out some of their friends. But even if Yogscast isn't for you, please do yourself the favour of watching the side-splittingly, tear-jerkingly hilarious playthrough of Farming Simulator 2013, staring Farmer Dunc, Farmer Sjin and, later, Farmer Lewis. I know, farming simulators may not be your thing either, but trust me, it's not about the game, it's about the antics! It's worth it for the elephant alone.

Corridor Digital
Sam And Niko (Behind the Scenes for Corridor Digital videos)
Freddie Wong
Behind the Scenes videos for FreddieW
These are pure entertainment, in short bursts! Both mega YouTube stars, they actually share work space and collaborate on loads of stuff, while still maintaining their own individual identities. You've probably seen some of their stuff that's gone viral, but all of their videos are worth catching. Better than most of the stuff on major TV networks in an average week! Both of them did their own webseries in 2012.

Video Game High School - VGHS
From Freddie, Brandon and the team behind the FreddieW Channel, VGHS exists in a world where pro gaming is the biggest sport around, and there are schools for gamers. It's fun, funny and exciting, with some fantastic storytelling, SFX and acting all around! Claire was a bit wary of it at first, but loved it by the end, so if that's not a vote of confidence, I'm not sure what is. My favourite from a great bunch of characters is Drift King. Hilarious! The entire first season is online already, so you can watch it right through as a single 90-odd minute movie.

Sync
Sam and Niko from Corridor Digital created a sci-fi webseries with a cool concept at it's core. I'm really not going to spoil anything about this show, except to say that it's great and well worth watching. Again, the whole thing is online now, so go check it out!

Geek And Sundry
This is a channel with new content almost daily, created by Felicia Day from The Guild and Doctor Horrible's Singalong Blog. It has loads of "shows" airing on it, but my two favourites are Written By a Kid and TableTop. WBaK is exactly as it sounds: Stories told by kids are animated or otherwise brought to life in different ways to create some incredible, magical tales. The Behind The Scenes extras are always hilarious and informative as well. TableTop is hosted by Wil Wheaton, and each week sees various guests playing various tabletop games. This show is so popular, there's actually a major network stealing the entire concept lock, stock and barrel! Watch the original. It won't be beaten.

HALO: Forward Unto Dawn
I've never been a fan of the Halo video games, but I love the setting and lore, and goddammit if Microsoft don't know just who to go to to get awesome live action marketing videos, either in the form of their amazing trailers, or Forward Unto Dawn, the webseries that is rumoured to have cost them in excess of $7.5million! Honestly, though, it shows. The series is beautiful to watch, gritty and dirty at times, and wonderfully acted. Even if you've never played the games, it's just good sci-fi stuff.

Battlestar Galactica: Blood And Chrome
We waited and we waited. Some of us hadn't even finished the original series when this was announced (*whistles innocently*). We were teased and taunted, given glimpses of what could be. But eventually, they deigned to grace us with its presence. BSG: Blood and Chrome takes place during the original Cylon War, and stars a young William Adama. Given the wait, it couldn't pssibly live up to expectations, right? Actually, it does. It's quite good, and that makes that fact hat at one time this was supposed to be a new series all the more painful. Once you're done, spoil yourself and learn how 90% of the sets were greenscreen in a behind the scenes look at the series!

Again, like my list of educational videos I enjoyed, there are a bunch more that I haven't listed here. Worse, there are hundreds of one-off videos from people that I saw and loved, but listing those too would take from now until February!

For now, I'll leave it here. I'm looking forward to fantastic worlds, great storytelling and wonderful new series from incredible creators that 2013 brings to me.

Psychological Trauma

Not having a work permit for Canada means that I've had plenty of time recently to catch up on quality television. Over the last year in Vancouver we've been so busy enjoying ourselves that my old number one time waster has fallen to the wayside. Staying in touch with the newest shows and episodes was once important, but lately I haven't been watching anything. I have yet to touch many shows that I was looking forward to seeing, including the dino-series Terra Nova.

Instead, I've been playing catchup. I'm currently racing through season four of Burn Notice, one of my all-time favourite spy shows. Built in the mold of MacGyver but "with more violence", as my wonderful wife once observed, it was an instant success as soon as they dropped Fiona's Irish accent in the second episode. I've been watching since the pilot, and wrote about it way back then. It helps that not only does it star Bruce Campbell, but also the fantastic Sharon Gless, whom I've enjoyed since watching Cagney and Lacey with my mum back in the '80's.

Along with Burn Notice, I'm hoping to catch up on Community and Fringe with all this time off as well, but all this began with me finishing a show I started way back in 2008.

Battlestar Galactica was a mind blowing experience right from the pilot episode. The first season kept that going from it's opening episode, 33, that put the fleet at the head of an unstoppable chase to it's close, when... well, stuff happened. I got distracted originally late in season two, then got as far as the fifth episode of season three a few years ago.

My enthusiasm was peaked again during our trip to Seattle when Claire and I visited the Experience Music Project, home to the Sci-Fi Museum as well. We had seen the museum in 2008 during our Epic Holiday[TM], and didn't really have much interest in seeing it again. But on arrival, we discovered that there was a BSG exhibit, as well as a James Cameron's Avatar one!

The Avatar exhibit was incredible. There were amazing props, design specs from the production, and other fascinating trinkets throughout. We got to play with not one, but two Microsoft Surfaces and stand in the shoes of an Avatar, literally! The movie was pants, but the designs behind it are incredible.

Of course, the main attraction for me was the Battlestar exhibit. It covered both the new and original series, with costumes, props and models from both. The exhibit was centered around three full-scale ships, a classic Viper, a new Viper and a Cylon Raider. Not only was there pilot and crew costumes, but they had Imaginary Six's red dress as well. There was a neat display related to the series musical score, playing a space combat scene and a switch to alternate between "Action Score", "Emotional Score" or "No Score", illustrating how there can be more than one "prefect" piece for any given scene. Conveniently, it also illustrated what a genius Bear McCreary is.

One of the highlights was seeing one of the Command Center's combat phones against a wall and asking Claire to get a photo of me holding it. I picked it up and put it to my ear, and my eyes widened. Felix Geata was ordering me to battle stations, declaring "Set condition red". For a moment, I was instantly transported right into the heart of Galactica, right there, rubbing shoulders with Commander Adama.

When I got back to Vancouver I picked up where I left off and watched the final two seasons in a short space of time. There were several episodes that had me, literally on the edge of my seat. Given how many episodes ended, I was only too delighted to have waited; I didn't have to bite my nails for a week to find out the resolution to the mutiny, or the identity of the Final 5[1].

In the end, I watched the final ten episodes, as well as the final special created for the big finale all in one day. At approximately 45 minutes an episode, and a feature length finale, that adds up to nine hours of Battlestar Galactica in one day!

It was quite the rush, and an emotional ending.

However, that night, and for several nights after I had the weirdest dreams, involving Cylons, robots, androids, Lego Cylons, and all sorts of other things. It was getting to the point that I didn't want to go to sleep for fear of what I'd dream of this time.

So, the moral of the story, kiddies is: Don't watch nine hours of Battlestar Galactica in one go, especially not the blood pumping, adrenaline charged, non-stop roller-coaster ride that is the final nine hours. It's not good for you health.

[1]- If you watch BSG you know what I mean. If you don't, explaining it won't matter. If you are planning to, or currently in the early seasons... forget I said anything. Move along.

Hard To Believe

It's been one year since Claire and I were last in Ireland. More than that now, as I didn't feel much like blogging about this last week. We've had a pretty spectacular time of it here in Vancouver this past 12 months, and we're looking forward to spending more time enjoying ourselves in the coming year.

My job has been nothing short of incredible. The children, families and staff are all amazing and the job itself is rewarding. Claire's web design business has really taken off, and it's not unusual for her to be working on two or three sites at the same time. Of course, right now, we're between work permits, which means that we're on a holiday visa in Canada. We can stay and have a good time, but can't work until the new work permit arrives.

I've been making the most of this free time by catching up on some TV series, most notably Battlestar Galactica, a show I started watching with the Pilot in 2003, but never got around to finishing. I flew through the remaining two seasons over the last few days, and finished watching the grand finale at 1am this morning. Having been effectively watching this show for over eight years now, it was sad to see it all end.

We also went to Seattle at the end of January to visit our friend Cian. That was just way too much fun for me. I had a blast hanging out with him and his friends, and we even did a group breakfast Saturday morning. I felt like I had been transported back to Cork for the morning again, sitting in Puccino's having our weekly Sunday breakfast get-together.

I was hoping to get a lot of reading done while I'm home from work, but I find myself distracted by Xbox, the internet and watching TV shows. I've done a huge amount of reading since we moved here, but most of it is done while sitting on the bus on the way to or home from work. I may have to start taking the bus into twon for no other reason than to get some reading time!

Right now I'm off to take a walk. It's a beautiful, if cloudy day here, and I'm going to get out and enjoy it. I need to. Yesterday I watched nine hours of Battlestar Galactica! I was having Cylon dreams for the night!