What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?

I played a few games of Magic: The Gathering in the last week, and there were two that were potentially of interest, maybe even for people who don't play Magic.

The first interesting game, I was playing a deck called I'd rather not play which is all about doing a particular combo. There is a card called Lethal Vapors that allows you to skip your next turn, and there's a card called Teferi's Protection which basically stops you from being interacted with in the game. You cast the "I'm outta here until next turn" spell, and then activate the "skip my next turn" ability an arbitrarily large number of times (I chose 273 trillion). To cap it off, you need a way to get rid of the Lethal Vapors so everyone else can't do it. I managed to do all of those things. This leaves the remaining players to figure out how they can survive for that many turns. Info for non-magic players: you draw at least one card every turn, you have 99 cards available, and you lose if you can't draw a card, so they have to figure out some way to get their cards back into their draw pile so they can redraw them. I did not end up winning, but it was pretty funny to see everyone switch from mostly leaving me be because I seemed non threatening to trying to figure out collectively how to deal with a bullshit game problem.

I played another game with a deck called The Untouchable, which is a fun one to pull out with new people, because the commander (a special card you have access to in a special zone) is Phage who has an ability that says "When Phage enters, if you didn’t cast it from your hand, you lose the game." It's notable that the command zone is not your hand, so for people who do not know, it seems like a game where you have build a deck that says "when you cast your main card that you build your deck around, you lose". I did stress to them in the pre-game discussion that if this creature hit them, they lose the game, but two people were like "whatever, you can't get it on the board". My brother was the fourth player and also tried to explain to them that it would be problematic. Relatively late in the game - after one player was already out - through tricks and chicanery, I did manage to cast the general and not die, and then my brother cast a card that let him control how I attacked and how other people blocked, and he took out the other player. Then, on his own turn, he stole my general and hit me with it and took me out.

edit: this is probably mostly aimed at @streblo - I know there are more people into M:TG here, but their usernames elude me

I've been all over the place this week, trying all sorts of new games while keeping up with the old ones.

ARC Raiders continues to be fun. I'm into it, but not too into it, which I think is the right amount. I mostly play free loadout, which allows me to play risk and worry-free. I had a blast in Stella Montis this week, where we were cornered in a room by three different groups and managed to beat all of them. Things usually don't go our way, but in that instance it did. I was a bit upset about not being able to get the recording because I was testing the game on my new Linux setup and forgot to enable the Steam recording feature.

In a similar vein, I gave Escape from Duckov a go, and it's such a fun experience. I'll probably play it more because I can do so at my own pace and it's single player only.

I got a bit bored of Megabonk, so I gave BALL x PIT a chance. It made me think about the way games are being made these days. Why does every single game need to have talents and buildings and farming and all that? It's a fun game, and the base mechanics don't feel oppressive, but I still can't help wondering whether I'm playing the game the right way.

Lastly, I played BeamNG.drive for the first time. I'm not the biggest fan of driving games in general, but this one's so much fun with all the ways you can mod it. I've been looking for a calm driving game to occupy myself with while watching a video or listening to a podcast, and this certainly scratches that itch.

We bought the kids a Switch 2 for Christmas (I know I'm on the record bitching about it being overpriced. I fully acknowledge my hypocrisy) and I got it ready last night. Preloaded their Nintendo accounts, preinstalled Mario Kart World, synced up the 8bitDo controllers I bought, etc. And then ya know...my wife and I had to test it out to make sure it worked.

So my wife and I played Mario Kart World for a bit. I wasn't immediately wowed by it, if I'm being honest. It certainly is a Mario Kart game and it's about as fun as 8 was. But I never re-purchased 8 for the Switch, so it's also a very nice graphical upgrade for sure. I think the real fun it will come when the kids get to play it and we can do 4-player races. I'm weak-willed, so we're probably going to give it to the kids tomorrow after school at the start of their Thanksgiving break so we can have a huge staycation playing Switch together :)

The 8bitDo controllers are fantastic though. Hall Effect sensors and only $30 a pop. Compared to more than twice that for Switch Pro controllers.

I decided to dive back into Dwarf Fortress now that it's getting regular updates again. My first fortress got hit by a small army of undead in the first year which wiped out the entire fortress before I had even finished digging through the aquifer.

Rather than reclaim it I started another fortress nearby and managed to dig a moat and get everyone inside before the (now much larger) undead army approached. The moat and wall and held them at bay this time and I managed to pick most of them off with marksdwarves to end the siege. Unfortunately a couple of them fell to the bottom of the moat out of bow range and since undead cant drown they remained there and kept scaring off any dwarves working nearby.

I finally came up a with a cartoon inspired plan to run a minecart track to the edge of the moat and fill the cart with anvils. Hilariously it actually worked! The undead goblins got squished to bits, although a couple more dwarves also fell in and drowned in the process. Their engraved slabs shall remain to forever remember the =+FUN+=.