Tag: pirate

Tabletop Tuesday: Fluxx: The Board Game

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The Fluxx card game has existed for a while, and for what it is, I’m a fan. What the card game is, is a light, very random game that you can play almost anywhere in a shortish amount of time (10-30 minutes). The game has a bunch of different themed versions (Pirate, Zombie, Monty Python) that add a small amount of dressing to what the original is.

I can neither confirm nor deny that a picture of college-aged me was used as inspiration for a certain spot on this board.
I can neither confirm nor deny that a picture of college-aged me was used as inspiration for a certain spot on this board.

At their core, the Fluxx games are about having the “rules” change as the game is played. For example: the number of cards drawn at the start of the turn or the number of cards you can keep in your hand at the end of a turn. The difference between the board game and card game, is that in the card game, part of the randomness is your card draws of “Keepers” or the cards to be combined for a win, but in board game you move your pieces on to symbols that represent these keepers. This, of course makes it much easier to accomplish the goal. To make up for this, in the board game you have to do this 3 different times. But in the end, it’s still doing something pretty simple 3 times with the slight inconvenience of trying to do it before the other players or with them futilely trying to get in the way.

To win, just be the first player, and with your pre-game rule adjustment increase the movement by 1. Then just waltz through a few turns collecting the wins and game over. This removes all fun from the game. There seems to be no strategy that can be attempted to combat this tactic more than a slight delay. And the random cards and rule changes don’t affect the outcome so are therefore adding nothing to the game.

Final Rating:  1 “You Sunk My Battleship” out of a broken pop-o-matic Trouble bubble.

Commercials

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You know what’s great about baseball (and other sports) based commercials? They’re not all the same. Have you seen one of the 2 different car commercials? You’ve basically seen them all — they either swanky look at our luxury or sporty look at how awesome this car is – it can drive on a train. With commercials that have a sporty focus, they can head to the humor zone. And with that comes tons of potential stories and, therefore, memorable and maybe even enjoyable commercials.

Check out this ad for SportsCenter where a Pittsburgh Pirate Andrew McCutchen leads a merry band of pirate mascots on an office raid:

Another way the commercials can go, is sentimental and remember when you played the sport as a kid:

After you’re done crying, I think you’ll agree that we need to go find some auto maker ad firms and take those people outside and show them what they’re missing.