New board gaming period with Scythe

 

I spend time reflecting to wrap things up at the end of every year, and then create things for the new year, like a context, motto, themes, and this year some main objectives.

I had a board game design idea a few years ago that I hadn't progressed with so it's on the list for this year (I admit it was last year too, I just didn't do anything about it then).

Anyhow, we had someone missing for our regular roleplaying game night with friends so I suggested meeting at Loufoque, a board game café I like, and trying out a quite big game. I suggested Architects of the West Kingdoms because I haven't played it, but someone else wanted to try Scythe, the game designed and published by Jamey Stegmaier (Stonemaier Games), and featuring beautiful artwork by Jakub Rozalski.

I'd played Scythe, though years ago when I was in Chicago. I also had the chance of having Jamey Stegmaier on my podcast back then, you can check the episode out here. Jamey is incredibly generous and prolific with the amount of interesting content he shares: perspectives about the board gaming industry like about how they're affected by recent tariffs, publishing advice, design focused content, and much more.

It has a few different moving parts about it, though I'd probably describe Scythe as an engine building strategy game, with wargaming elements. It looks like a wargame with it's big alternative 1920s steampunk-ish mechanical engines and hexagon tiles, but it isn't really exactly that. 

It may look intimidating, and clearly designed for a large American size table - we barely had space for drinks, though actually I love the way it's designed such that it is quite easy to grasp what you can do every turn, so tactics, and not so much analysis paralysis (well sort of, more on that in a second), and yet lots of depth and moving parts from game to game to think about strategy.

I totally lost but it was a fun game, good to test it again. I went on to play the digital version I have on Steam over the weekend, which is where the analysis paralysis kicked in for me, in front of my laptop playing 3 computer AIs (medium level difficulty) and getting absolutely beaten every time, trying to understand wider strategies to better understand the intricacies of the game.

I also played some Terraforming Mars, that I'd forgotten I had as a digital version, and then a friend invited me to join Board Game Arena, so I started playing a few more games there too. My user name is Hippowill if you want to add me as a friend and play a game some time.

I started a new notebook with design notes for my board game idea, I'm pretty clear what the theme and design goals are, but I wasn't too sure of mechanics to quickly start prototyping and playtesting. After a few new games tested and a few podcasts, talks, design book passages from my shelves, I had an idea last night for a starting point that I'm happy with. I'm not exactly ready to talk about it just yet, but I will do soon, to document the process.

I had been trying to find specific processes and/or methodologies, starting with the Board Game Design by Joe Slack (it's all right though I think you can find many free ressources online instead of this one), and Jeremy Holcomb's notes in The White Box board game design workshop (it's a useful toolbox of things).

The main thing I keep up with is rapid prototyping. I have a tendency to start things and not finish, or study and daydream rather than do. At the very least I have made more progress than in all of last year.

2025 ski season wrap!

 It's a wrap for the 2025 ski season! Ups and downs ski wise - and yes, it is a pun.

Last year ended a little slow work wise, and this year began like that too, so not tons of budget for a lot of skiing, but as usual, I couldn't help do a little more than was probably reasonable. 

First, a gorgeous warm-up day in the Pyrénées aux Angles to get our ski legs back on with my brother Morgan and a friend, Barbara, at the beginning of February. Bright blue sky, and probably too hot, just enough man-made snow to ski on, but hey that's the Pyrénées these days I suppose.

Barbara had just been on a day of backcountry ski touring with her father the day before, she skies way better than Morgan and I, plus with her mom's old skis, so she has a proper 80s ski form - quite unlike my ungainly feet apart but somehow managing to keep balanced on my skis style.

In March, I thought it would be a fine idea to book two weeks of skiing in a row after the French school holidays, figuring I'll be saving on an additional train ride back to Paris.

We went to La Rosière, above Bourg-Saint-Maurice, on the Italian border. The skiing area that I'd visited in the summer of 2018 connects with La Thuile in Italy.

Katie took lessons and I just went skiing, exploring all the resort had to offer, the snow on the Italian side was gorgeous and it snowed several days while we were there. I loved going shopping for cured meats to make our lunch sandwiches in Italy, and had coffee and gelato in the sun. 

It was quiet in both resorts, little to no queue on the lifts aside from the first in the mornings, nice runs, some sides and in between the pistes to ski some fresh snow, varied terrain and lovely tree runs on the Italian side. I definitely want to go back. 

Of course I skied pretty full on and was tired at the end of the week. As mentioned, I thought it would be a good idea to book a second week. Moreover, the second week was with the UCPA in Tignes (a sports and outdoor activities camp, it's really worth looking into) for a beginners backcountry ski touring week.

Suffice to say it didn't go as planned. According the description on their website, I thought I had the right technical skiing level, and physical fitness level. At the end of the first morning of off-piste, the instructor said we needed a chat, that he was concerned about my borderline good enough technical level, and even more concerned with my physical fitness level, or lack thereof. 

Still, I joined the group for a first small hike just out of the bounds of the skiing area that afternoon, so I at least did my first ever little backcountry ski tour. I hadn't really accounted or thought of the altitude, and that hiking on skis at 3,000 meters high is actually demanding, and underestimated how tiring skiing on variable and steep snow off the piste would be. 

Plus I was exhausted from the previous week of skiing. We had our first day in Tignes free, I'd been hearing about Tignes and Val d'Isère for years, so of course I went out for a full on day from 9am to 4pm all the way to end of Val d'Isère at the Glacier du Pisaillas, and back with no visibility in the clouds. My thighs felt like jelly before going on that hike the following day. 

Maybe I'd have done better if I was more rested, though the instructor seemed to have doubts about it. The rest of the group were really nice, though for the most part happened to be a lot more experienced in off-piste and backcountry skiing, and fitter overall - from being used to hiking in altitude several times a year, to running ultra trail marathons, to completing nordic skiing circuits in a third of the time most people did.

I felt tired, deflated, embarrassed, disappointed and angry with myself, and overall vexed. Now with a little time, it was great to do a first hike like that, and I joined the group on another off-piste session a couple of days later.  

I thought going a third time to the gym per week for the past couple of months and losing a tiny bit of weight was sufficient preparation for the ski season, and it sort of was, but not at all enough for that level of backcountry skiing. I seem to have hit a limit to my skiing enthusiasm. In past courses, I've been told a few times that my level of confidence and enthusiasm without fear made up for some of my technical skill to let me follow others who were better than me. Not this time though. I was physically spent, felt not good enough, and lost morale.

On top of that, I was told at the last minute to join another traditional ski lesson group the following day, and it was a complete opposite. The first day was so challenging I was told it wouldn't work, the next day was so easy and relaxed skiing that all the other people in that new group were grumbling about the instructor.

Given I didn't know which group I was in for the afternoon anymore, and I was upset and tired, I took the afternoon off and went to the swimming pool's wellness centre: sauna, jacuzzis, steam bath, slides, and a beautiful view of the mountains.

The rest of the week there was all right, though mixed. I tried to get over myself with limited success. I skied and enjoyed the weather, reading the Codex Alera, hung out with a really crowd of people, played a cool big board game (Kemet), so definitely some good - with a sort of background shadow of disappointment.

After the fact, as I write this, I'm happy I did it, though I guess it was an expensive lesson in humility. The instructor recommended training and practice in off-piste skiing as a next step, so I might do that, I'd been wanting to before, this just seemed to be a way to do that. That's to my point about their description as a beginners backcountry training week, I seemed to have the required level (and the lessons in the second part of the week being easy showed me I did have the level stated too, but oh well). I also told them it might be worth revising their website's description of the level required, though their customer service reply didn't seem particularly sensitive or empathic with my experience.

I'm not sure what I'll be wanting to do with the next ski season, we'll see next winter. 

Right now, I need to focus on work stuff, new business and securing new clients and projects in priority. I'd finished a client project just before going away, so I kind of came back to a nearly blank slate. Whatever I do ski-wise, it's unlikely to get any cheaper, and I'll have to finance it somehow, so first things first.

To end on a positive note, skiing with a group means I do have some of the best skiing photos of me I've ever had, so that's pretty cool to show you!

The Codex Alera Epic Fantasy series book notes

I just finished reading the 6 books of the Codex Alera fantasy fiction series by Jim Butcher, the last three were a bit of a blur as I read them back to back, I wrote brief notes about them on Goodreads, and here I thought I'd write an overall review of the series, avoiding spoilers.

First I'm biased, I read and love all 17 novels in The Dresden Files series by the same author. And I suppose I'm biased as a regular reader of fantasy and science-fiction in general.

Jim Butcher described the idea at the origin of the Codex Alera as the Roman Empire with Pokemon mashed up as two concepts. The first as a bit of a different vibe from the more frequent medieval setting, here is a more antique Roman style setting. The second because the people in this vast empire have abilities to adopt and control elemental style creatures and powers that go along with them. In case it concerns you (it did for me when I first heard that ideas), the Pokemon idea is not carried out much further. Catching them all is not particularly at the heard of the plot, and they're called furies, hence the book titles.

It starts out as all traditional epic fantasy series: with a nobody boy hitting puberty somewhere lost in the middle of nowhere countryside, and of course with enough winks to the knowledgeable fantasy reader that one realises the protagonist is likely hidden royalty or some such.

There are enough nods to other fantasy works to what you're dealing with and having it set in some genre tropes and traditions, enough new elements of setting to make it interesting, and enough small and larger twists to raise eyebrows in usually good surprises. 

An obvious one from the start is that in a world where everyone has some kind of special magical powers with elements like water or fire, the young hero doesn't and has to rely on wits alone to get himself out of trouble.

The big bad guys seem coming straight out of science-fiction tropes rather than fantasy ones, which is pretty cool. Think of the Zerg in StarCraft or the Arachnid bugs in the Starship Troopers movie, if ever those ring bells. 

Where I feel Jim Butcher particularly shines, to some extent as in The Dresden Files, is the wild action-packed scenes and outrageous scale of events.

He's also funny, and I highlighted a number of turns of phrases I've enjoyed throughout the series.

Even in the first book there are excellent page-turning unexpected turns of events and crazy-paced action. Fun characters, enough hints of secrets, backstory elements and foreshadowing to want to read the rest of the series.

I also enjoyed that the first book, and I'd say up to the third, have satisfying arcs, beginnings, middles, and ends, setups for the sequels without too much of cliffhangers.

I left a pause and read another book or two between those, compared to the fourth book. I happened to be on holidays so that may have played into it, but it felt like events massively accelerate from the fourth book onwards, and I read the rest of the series back to back. So it's a bit of a blur.

In Goodreads, I only wrote short comments, my overall impression in a few words for each book in the series goes this way:

1. Furies of Calderon: Setup and big events on a local scale
2. Academ's Fury: Character growth and development.
3. Cursor's Fury: Problems and successes against massive odds. Probably my favourite book in the series.
4. Captain's Fury: Events accelerate.
5. Princeps' Fury: The scale, scope and stakes of events dramatically expands.
6. First Lord's Fury: A breathtaking race to the end line and resolution.

Suffice to say I recommend them, and also a good choice even if you're not in love with fantasy style novels, there's enough action and fun page turning for most if not all readers I think.