Not So Terrific

For some, this is going to be old news, for others, this might be the first time you've heard about what I'm going to say, and for a few, this might just be the first time you've heard me saying it. But, I'm fairly confident that for everyone, myself included, this is going to be a difficult post to read. I'm sorry.

Around February or March of 2012 I noticed I had a slight tremor in my left arm. Nothing too serious, just a small thing. I thought it was stress induced, as we were between our visas and not working. Unfortunately, when I had to get my medical as part of my visa, the doctor said it wasn't stress, or RSI, or any of that, and referred me to a neurologist. As a man, I delayed seeing him for as long as possible.

On October 1st, 2012, one year ago today, I saw the neurologist, and he confirmed that I had early onset Parkinson's Disease. Or at least, he confirmed it as best he could. There's no medical test for PD, but he said I had all the typical signs. He recommended I get an MRI to confirm it wasn't anything else. I got that in December, and it came back clean, so we were back to the PD diagnosis.

Here are some facts:

About 10% of the population will get PD at some point in their lives, but most are over 60 or even 70 years old by the time they get it. About 4-5% of that number get it before 50, so I am in a select group, a fraction of a fraction of the population. I should have run out and done the lotto when I was told, but I didn't. I was devastated. My entire life just crumbled away before my trembling fingertips. For a brief time, I thought I'd lost it all. I thought we'd have to go back to Ireland and give up everything we had worked so hard for here in Vancouver. Going back wouldn't have exactly been a terrible thing, mind you, but we really did love it here by then, and do even more so now. Also, the health care system here is insane, and the University of British Columbia, just a bus ride away from where we live, is at the forefront of research into treating Parkinson's.

I thought I'd lose Claire. I know, that's a stupid thought. But for a moment, I thought it. I even offered to go home without her if it came to it, allowing her to stay here and work on her new and swiftly growing freelance career. She was having none of it, of course, and in the last year, as in the last 13 years that I've been with her, she's been nothing short of incredible.

That's it. That's all the bad news. So here's the good stuff:

It's been a year. Nothing much has changed. I can still work, I still love my job. I'm not taking any medication yet, despite the neurologist telling me in October that I'll probably be on something within 6 months. It's been 12 months now, and it hasn't gotten a whole lot worse yet, which is, obviously, a good thing. It's localized at the moment to my left arm and left leg. My right hand is... yup, just checked now, it's as tremor-free as it ever was. So this doesn't stop me drawing or writing. Even my left arm hasn't gotten significantly worse, as far as I can tell. My leg is fine if I'm walking or even running short distances, but if I try to fast-walk or jog, I notice that it stiffens up a bit. Running and fast-walking must use different muscles, or at least muscles in different ways. Even then, it hasn't been enough to stop me from doing anything. This summer is Vancouver has been astonishingly good, and I've done more outdoor activities than any summer I can think of in recent memory.

And I still have Claire. She's been my rock and my saviour. I know that this kills her at times, but usually, she's fine. She only seems to get upset about it when I'm telling someone about it. When I told the gang back home, I noticed she had to quietly leave the room.

But we're over the shock now. The first week, maybe two, was the hardest. After that, we both realized that not much has changed, or will change for some time. I'm an eternal optimist, so I just picked up the pieces of my apparently shattered lives, discovered that everything was intact, and had, in fact, just been knocked off the shelf for a bit.

I love following the development of technologies, and there is some fantastic stuff coming down the line for PD. This diagnosis 10 years ago would have been a dramatically different story, and in 10 years time, it'll be different again, in a good way.

Why am I telling you this now?

 Despite having a noticeable tremor since February or March, I was diagnosed a year ago today. It's hard to find the right time to tell people bad news, and it's very easy to find excuses why any time is the wrong time. I didn't tell anyone when I first got diagnosed, apart from my family. It was right before Christmas, and I didn't want to "ruin" anyone's holiday. Then we were planning the trip home, so why break the news to my closest friends over email when I'll be seeing them in a few weeks any? Then we were back, and I had work to divert my attention. Then it was the summer and everyone was having a great time. I could find excuses for now too, like, "I'm too busy", "I haven't blogged in months", "I want to write about other things", but that's all just putting it off, when really, I feel like people should know.

I don't want this to be a secret, to be some dirty thing that I'm going through. I want to be open with it, to show everyone that I'm still me, still living my life. And this is the first step to that, telling people.

I'm sorry if reading this has upset anyone, or ruined anyone's mood for the day. It wasn't easy writing it either. I'm sorry if you feel left out because I didn't tell you in person. It's hard to talk about at times, even after a year. I've never been sick before. I've never had to tell anyone I'm suffering from anything that doesn't warrant a "Ya big baby! It's just the flu!", or what have you. I've never taken medication for anything stronger than an over-the-counter painkiller, and even then, it's rare.

I've told people in a reasonably big group, in small groups and individually. I had to tell my mum over the phone. None of them are particularly "easier" than any other. At least in person, people can see how I really am. I mean, for all anyone reading this knows, I can be saying "I'm fine", while rolling around uncontrollably on the floor! I'm not. I really am fine. It's just clearer in person.

We live in a world where we know enough about the brain that I could get a probe shoved in to just the right spot to stop the tremors at the flick of a switch. A world where, excepting some horrific natural disaster, we're moving forward at an alarming pace with technology of all forms. A world where someone somewhere is finding another new way to make us live longer, better, healthier lives.

And I'm going to benefit directly from all of that.

I live on. I look to people like Michael J. Fox, who was diagnosed with Parkinson's when he was 30, and has just started a new sitcom as I write this[1]. He still works, and has a wonderful family, and this brings me great hope.

This is a comma in the story of my life, not a full stop.

Denis
[1] - I can't bring myself to watch The Michael J. Fox Show just yet, but I'll be sure to write up a review once I do.

Race To Adventure

Racing across the globe to collect stamps from exotic locales and rescue prisoners from the sunken city of Atlantis, Race to Adventure is a fast playing board game based in the universe of Spirit of the Century, the Fate powered RPG from Evil Hat. You play as one of five characters from the RPG and novels, including the gorilla, Professor Khan, and star of the upcoming Young Adult novel, Sally Slick.

Each turn consists of players choosing from a number of items, such as the Jetpack, Biplane or Raygun, starting with the current First Player and proceeding clockwise. Once everyone has chosen, all players do their actions together, simultaneously. Then the First Player token moves clockwise to the next player and the next turn begins.

Race is a very easy to learn game, with a well laid out, clear and simple rulebook, and lovely colourful cards with big, clear symbols for the actions. Honestly, the most difficult thing about Race for us during our first games was learning that the game really does play that fast! Turns flash by. Players move together, reaching over each other to get to their tokens and perform their daring feats. Because everything is so well laid out and the visual design is so clear, everyone knows what everyone else is doing, and how it might effect their turn this round. The rules are easy, but overcoming that ingrained board game concept that each player should finish her turn before moving to the next players actions is harder. But once you get it, you understand how the game can be over in 30 minutes, despite a lot to accomplish to claim victory.

The board is made up of tiles that are laid out in a 3x3 grid, beside the heroes base of operations in the Empire State Building that makes up the leftmost column. In a move that is nothing short of genius, each tile has a standard side and a Shadow side. This ties nicely into the setting, where the heroes are Centurions, while the villains of the universe are referred to as Shadows. The Shadow sides offer a higher level of difficulty through greater mission requirements and more impassible borders, requiring more thought on strategy for the current and upcoming turns.

As it was funded through Kickstarter, the copy of the game I received included the expansion, adding more tiles that can be swapped in, as well as new enemies and objectives. That said, even just the base game has a lot of replayability, as the tiles play in a different order every game, making it fresh and new with each play. As well as that, you can play on the standard side, the Shadow side, or a random combination of both. Nigh-limitless variation!

Race to Adventure is another fun, fast game that I love to play whenever we feel like something shorter than Battlestar Galactica! In fact, Race can play faster than some games of No Thanks!

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Escape The Curse Of The Temple

Most board games have a suggested playtime printed on the side of the box, helping you pick a game that might last 30-45 minutes, or one that lasts 90-120 minutes. However, this estimate is usually wildly inaccurate, as you lose time explaining the rules to new players, checking the rulebook for a clarification, or getting bogged down in the dreaded "Analysis Paralysis" common when players have a number of choices in order to proceed.

In Escape The Curse of the Temple, players have only ten minutes, and always only ten minutes in which to succeed. It comes packed with a soundtrack CD, and you can download the tracks direct from the games website if you've left the concept of a CD behind in the last decade. You start the game my pressing play on the MP3, and you have until the MP3 runs out to survive. The MP3 lasts ten minutes, with an event at roughly 3m30s and again at around the seven minute mark.

As soon as players here "Escape" in an ominous voice at the start of the soundtrack, they start rolling the five dice they hold, and don't stop! The faster you roll, the more likely you are to survive. You have to match symbols on the dice with other on the tiles that make up the chambers of the tomb, uncovering new rooms, moving and completing objectives. Your goal is to escape the tomb as a team. If even one member gets left behind, everyone fails.

Escape is a co-operative game. You can share roll results to unlock the dreaded locked dice belonging to other players in the same chamber or work together to reach the higher goals in some chambers. If the party gets split, it can be a race against the clock to rush back for lagging members who have been stuck in a chamber due to bad dice rolls.

This is easily the most intense board game experience I've had in a long time. It's pulse-pounding on a level usually reserved for video games and blockbuster movies. Board games are usually more sedate, as players weigh their options and chose the best strategy for the turn. Even horror themed games like Arkham Horror don't really get the players anxious. You have all the time in the world to make your decisions, and can debate with other players at length about the optimal strategy to deal with the current situation. Escape is frantic. Every moment you stop to look at your dice and think about where to go next costs you valuable seconds you are not getting back!

Thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign, Escape comes with two expansions already in the box, both of which add alternate chambers to the tile deck and new rules, such as treasures or curses. Playing with curses raises the manic hilarity, as players are suddenly forced to play with their left hand on their head, not speak any more, or discard any dice that fall off the table for the rest of the game, a killer curse as you only start with five dice, and any board gamer or role-player will tell you that dice fall off the table all too often!

Escape is a great way to get a gaming night going. It puts everyone in a good mood, and plays fast enough that you're not losing significant time for that game of BattleStar Galactica or Pandemic that is coming up.

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Red November

So, you're on a submarine and suddenly all hell breaks loose! Reactors start to overheat, water starts rushing in everywhere and someone just reported seeing a kraken appear on scopes. Worse, you're all gnomes, and there's nothing you enjoy more than a bottle of grog. There's no disaster so bad that grog can't help. Well, no disaster you've survived so far. This one, however, is looking particularly bad.

Red November is a mostly co-operative game of disaster management on a rusty old submarine. You play gnomes tasked with slowing the constant assault on your metal habitat, lowering flood waters, putting out fires and repairing critical systems. A time track running around the edges of the game board, where your time tokens move to keep track of how long you've spent on your turn. Every Action takes time. some are set, such as opening a door or moving through a flooded room, while other Actions allow you to decide how many valuable minutes you'd like to expend on them, like repairing, or fighting fires. If one of the three disaster tracks fills up before everyone makes it to the end, then everyone dies. Also, that kraken can eat you too. Many ways to die, only one way to win. Man! Co-op games!

I did say "mostly" co-operative, though. In the closing turns, a gnome holding the Aqualung item can chose to abandon ship and swim to safety. If the submarine does indeed sink, then that gnome alone wins. If, however, the remaining crew manage to hold off the rising tide, then they win, the mutinous gnome is executed and everyone apart from that gnome wins! Fun times, and a neat twist right at the end.
This is a fun, fast game. Once you learn the rules, each turn plays out remarkably fast. Players declare what they're doing, then move their pawn for the Action, and a ghost marker moves along the time line to track the expended time. At the end of the turn, the players actual time marker moves up to the ghost marker, encountering any Events along the way, most of which are disastrous!

The game board and pieces are beautiful, and the art is vibrant and funny. I have the big box edition of this game, rather than the first edition mini-box. The submarine board in the first edition is just a thin card, and is hard to make sit flat on a table once unfolded. Unfortunately, I find that my larger scale game board also has difficulty sitting flat once unfolded. A minor quibble, however, and one that doesn't hinder the enjoyment I get playing the game.

Red November is a casual game that runs a little too long to be a night-opener before a more involved game, but it is perfect for an evening with friends who just want to chill, chat and play something light and fun that won't exactly tax your mental capacities, but will definitely elicit a chuckle or two from the players.

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Elder Sign

Fantasy Flight board games are notorious for their number of pieces. They use separate tokens for health, sanity, stamina, coin, treasure, victory points, monster health, enemy movement, player turn order... And if you can use one token to represent two or more elements, don't suggest it to these guys, as it'll fall on deaf, piece-loving ears. Add in expansions, and suddenly you're carrying multiple boxes for a single game, with components and tokens scattered across the various containers.

Arkham Horror is one other biggest board games we own. Even just the base game components won't fit on our 1.25m x 1.25m gaming table, and we require two side tables to hold the elements that don't get used every turn. Heaven forbid you include the Dunwich Horror game board, and suddenly players don't even have room to place their character boards on the main table!

Elder Sign is based in the same universe as Arkham Horror, inspired by the mythos conceived in the deranged mind of H.P. Lovecraft. The story follows the players as they attempt to stop a great old god from being brought into our world, battling supernatural abominations, cultists and powerful occult leaders along the way.

If you've played Arkham Horror, you'll be familiar with the characters and artwork, as player character portraits are reused, giving a nice sense of continuity. Similarly, Health, Sanity and Clue tokens are all identical to those in Arkham, though Clue tokens differ in use between the two games. Amazingly, despite being from Fantasy Flight, and the same family as Arkham Horror, Elder Sign strips the components down, replacing Arkham's enormous board with location cards, and streamlining the experience down to a much faster game overall.

But both games differ dramatically beyond the general look. Arkham Horror is a massive undertaking, regularly clocking it at over five hours, not even including the hour or more you just need for setup! Elder Sign is much closer to 90 minutes to two hours, and setup time is around the three to five minute mark.

This is another of those a co-operative games I'm enjoying a lot recently. The player characters are exploring a museum during the closing hours, moving from room to room and combating the horrors within. The core mechanic is dice rolling, requiring you to complete objectives on cards by rolling matching symbols on the custom dice. Fail to complete a step in the card objective, and you simply discard one of the dice you're using and reroll the rest, a dice down, but still in with a chance. Succeed in getting all the matches and you collect the printed reward. Fail and you suffer the card's penalty. You can use items or spells to add extra dice to your hand for a better shot at the good stuff.

Everyone is working as a team trying to reach a set number of Elder Signs before the elder god awakens. Signs are usually won through the defeating room cards, while the Doom tokens that slowly waken the god most often appear as penalties on rooms. There are a bunch of gods included in the basic game, each with its own required number of tokens, as well as abilities and rules for when it awakens.

The basic game does seem a little easy to me. We've played a lot of games of this, especially in the months after we first go it, and I found I was winning maybe 4 out of 5 games, maybe even more. As you complete rooms and kill monsters, you hold on to the tokens and cards and can use their Trophy value to purchase a variety of things from the entrance sheet. This includes restoring Sanity and Health, finding items or spells and even buying those Elder Signs. What generally ends up happening is that everyone just saves up for the Signs and never buys anything else.

However, the recently released expansion, Unseen Forces, removes the ability to purchase Elder Signs, and adds in Blessing and Curse dice. Characters who are Blessed get to roll an extra dice. Those who are Cursed have a chance of losing a dice in a roll. Get double Blessed and you are gifted an item card. Get double Cursed and you are Devoured!! Although we've had the expansion since the day it was released here, we haven't had a chance to try it out yet, as the weather is unnaturally glorious, and it's hard to find an excuse not to go outside as much as possible. I am hoping that the expansion ramps up the difficulty a bit, but we'll have to wait and see.

Our house has been a big fan of Arkham Horror since we first played it many years ago. It was always one of Claire's favourite games, and she immediately fell in love with Elder Sign. Elder Sign allows us to play in the Arkham world, but in a faster, more accessible game. It hasn't entirely replaced Arkham Horror, which gets pulled out and played every few months, but Elder Sign gets played on a monthly, and at times, weekly basis.

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Forbidden Island

To describe Forbidden Island as "Pandemic-Lite" is accurate to a degree, but does the game a grave disservice. Both games are designed by Matt Leacock, and while they have many similarities, I love having both on my game shelf.

In Forbidden Island, players play a team of Adventurers, co-operatively trying to recover four artifacts before the island they are on sinks into the ocean, taking the artifacts and the Adventurers with them. Players must gain sets of same-coloured cards in order to retrieve the matching artifact, similar to curing the diseases in Pandemic. Also like Pandemic, each Adventurer has a unique ability, and success depends on players maximizing how those abilities play off each other.

The island itself is made up from tiles that are randomly placed in a thick + shape at the start of the game, revealing where the Landing Pad and the four artifacts are in play. Forbidden Island cuts the Infection and Player decks present in Pandemic into a single deck, containing Waters Rise cards in place of Epidemic cards that slow cause the island to flood. Eventually tiles can sink beneath the waves, and be removed from the game. If a critical tile is removed, the players immediately lose. As is common in co-operative games, there are many ways to lose, but only one way to win.

The theme is much friendlier toward younger players than Matts apocalyptic Pandemic, and the rules are lighter. Players can trade any cards simply by being on the same tile as each other, unlike in Pandemic, where you must be in the city named on the card to be traded, severely restricting trade, and making multiple trades in one players turn almost impossible. Also, once an artifact has been recovered, it's yours to keep. There is no equivalent to eradicating the diseases from Pandemic. Everything has been stripped and streamlined. This doesn't make the game easier, but just different. In fact, Forbidden Island has it's own difficulty scale, and it is alarmingly tough to win at the higher settings.

Forbidden Island is a great game. It plays fast, at 30-45 minutes, and the artwork on the tiles is simply gorgeous. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to have a game on hand for either younger gamers or introducing people to board gaming, while still offering a challenge for experienced gamers.

It also makes a great stepping-stone for introducing players to Pandemic...

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Shadow Hunters

In Shadow Hunters players are assigned secret roles, either Shadow, Hunter, or Neutral. Shadows must kill the Hunters to win, Hunters are out to kill the Shadows, while Neutrals have unique victory conditions listed on their cards, such as "You win if the Player on your left wins" or "You win if you're the first to die". Yeah. Neutrals are wacky.

On your turn you roll the two dice to determine what card or action you get this turn. Unusually, Shadow Hunters uses one D6 and one D4 for its dice, and I've had to explain how to read a D4 more than once because of it. There are three colours of cards you can get, White and Black cards are Items or immediate Actions, while Green cards allow you to learn something about the other players.

Green cards are the core of Shadow Hunters. They might say "I think you're either a Shadow or a Neutral. If so, take a point of damage. Otherwise, do nothing." You read the card in secret, decide who you're giving it to and hand it to that player without revealing what's on it to anyone else. Then you just watch how the player reacts. If they take a point of damage, you know that they're either Shadow or Neutral. If they do nothing, they're a Hunter.

Sounds simple, but keeping track of all the possibilities from all the cards you give out begins to tax the memory! Meanwhile, you're fighting off other players who are attacking you, or trying to subtly move toward your victory goal.

Shadow Hunters is an enormously fun game with a larger group. It takes the hidden Cylon element of Battlestar Galactica and makes an entire game of it. If it sounds a bit like Bang!, then that's because it is. You're trying to figure out who's on your team and who isn't, while not revealing your own allegiances too early. Unlike Bang!, if you do get caught out, you can reveal your card and use your characters unique ability to help win the game, but doing so obviously lets everyone know who they can or can't trust.

Unfortunately, Shadow Hunters has its failings. It really doesn't work with smaller groups, despite the box claiming that four player games are possible. Also, I really don't enjoy the theme. The games art and setting are heavily animé inspired. It's an entirely aesthetic thing, but I can't see myself buying my own copy of Shadow Hunters because of it. I love the gameplay, and I've enjoyed many great games with my friends copy. It plays much better than Bang!

I just wish I could take the theme from Bang! and the gameplay from Shadow Hunters and mash them into one, perfect game.

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