Imperial Assault: Number of Characters Matters

Most Wednesday nights I get together with a couple friends and play Imperial Assault. It is a great game set in the Star Wars universe. It is a lot of fun to play. However, the number of players playing the game can have a large impact on the game.

The game has one player that runs the game and two to four players that play characters in the game. That is where the issue is. Four characters are clearly more powerful than two. To try and balance this when playing with two characters—like my friends and I are—each character gets two turns. That doesn't quite make up for it thought.

We've played nine different scenarios in the game so far and have discovered that there are a lot of scenarios where only having two characters has a big impact. In some cases there are simply too many objectives that need to be hit in too short of a timeline for the characters to accomplish it all. Other times, you might need more characters on the board to block the opposition from being able to make certain moves. It can get a bit frustrating.

What I would recommend to anybody that is thinking of running this game with just two characters is: don't. Instead just have the two people that would have been running those two characters play four characters—two characters each. It really isn't that much more complicated and I believe that it will make the game more balanced.

Need to Read More

I need to read more.

Over the last year to year and a half I've only managed to get through half of the books that I wanted to. That isn't to say that I've read maybe 6 out of 12 books. It's closer to say that I've read half each of those 12 books.

I usually blame my exhausting work schedule on this. My day job has my brain working all day that it is often just easier to try to not think when consuming media—so I watched a lot of YouTube and Netflix.

I need to stop that. My growing pile of books to read irritates me. I want to read them.

I tried to ask the internet how could I find time to read more. For the most part it had no ideas. The most cited advice was to carry a book around with you. But I was already doing that. At any given time I might have 3 or 4 things on me that I wanted to read.

My plan is to try plan time specifically for it. Most days I have half an hour to an hour either after work and before dinner or after dinner and before work (dam—I work too much). Lately I've been using that time to try and find something to watch on YouTube or Netflix. That needs to stop. I'm going to try and take 30 minutes out of that window every day just for reading.

I'll let you know how it goes.

YouTube Monitization

I watch both Philip Defranco and Casey Neistat on YouTube. I thought it was pretty crazy when Defranco made his first video about this. But, I think it is super important that Neistat also made a video about this.

With the monitization rules that they have in place it is pretty clear that that YouTube prefers to work with creators like Neistat. They want happy positive content that nobody can find objectionable. That is not what Defranco makes. Defranco gets it from all sides because his commentary on the news tries to keep it right down the middle.

That is why it is super important for the more positive creators to also chime in and tell YouTube that this is not okay.

Thanks Casey.

Focused Like a Shotgun

The best piece of blogging advice I've ever read was to find a niche and stay on topic. The more specific the better. The thought is that a person coming to your blog is coming to read about a specific topic. Any posts not on that topic will have them disinterested.

I'm sure that is right. It makes complete sense. When I'm reading a website that is what I want.

I've tried to do that several times. It never goes well. My interests are not well focused. So, if I try to stick to just a single topic I eventually give up.

I'm not going to try any more. I'm going to post about anything that interests me. For me, I'm pretty sure that is the only way I'll be able to sustain this project.