Tagged: review

to-court-the-king

To Court the King: Simple Solitaire Rules

I know there are a couple of solitaire variants up on BGG, but I wanted to add my own for reference here.

Short Review

To Court the King basically is Yahtzee: the Gathering. With every card you win, you gain special abilities that can be used once per turn each (tap the card when you’re finished ((Note for WotC lawyers: the rules do not use your term “tap”.))). For instance, the Farmer, the General, and the Charlatan all add extra dice for you to roll. There are numerous cards that give you a die with a set value that you can either set aside or roll, and there are other cards that manipulate die values in various ways, from simple addition to actually transferring pips.

It’s great fun for two to five players as you compete for a limited supply of cards.

The Solo Variant

But what about when you’re alone? You could play a second player (using rules or just using… well, yourself), but I chose the following set of rules:

  • Use only one of each card as the supply. Exception: use all the Fools.

  • Terminology: Ignoring the Fool, each card already has a rank (I, II, III, IV, V). The current rank is the lowest rank with cards still available.

  • Each round, you take your turn normally.

    Then the game will remove a randomly determined, available card of the current rank.

  • You better be able to win the King once the game removes the final IV card.

  • Once you win the King, you also get the Queen as per the usual, but you also need to roll to beat the previous roll with which you won the King. If you rolled seven 6′s to win the king, you need to beat seven 6′s.

It’s simple, doesn’t require dual play or setting up a dummy other than one that competitively removes cards. The same strategies as the normal game apply just as strongly: make sure that you get enough mana die production going, and that you have adequate spells ways to manipulate your dice.

And then you should be set to Court the King on your lonesome.

You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing

I’m warning you: this review is so totally non-objective. But as a look into the effects of pouring a strong solution of John Scalzi into my insane little brain, probably priceless.

I’m going to talk about how the book affected me. Just as John Scalzi comments that he’s writing from his own perspective of what worked for him, I’m giving you a mileage-may-vary review. Attempting to frame the text in some theoretical valuation of “goodness” is really not my strength.
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Sundays with Vlad


Sundays with Vlad: From Pennsylvania to Transylvania, One Man’s Quest to Live in the World of the Undead
by Paul Bibeau

A wacky tour-de-force through the history of vampires from a pop culture perspective. From the historical roots of the Dracula of history and the Dracula of literature and current Romania’s love-hatred of the idea of making money from its most famous icon, through a whirlwind of bad vampire movies, LARPS and the vampire subculture, this is a fun book to read in little bites at a time. I also like Bibeau’s version of the “real” story behind Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Recommended when you need to procrastinate and yet extend your pop culture knowledge in a way most appropriate to the current social clime, i.e., Halloween. Get in touch with your inner Count Chocula.

Elephants on Acid


Elephants on Acid: And Other Bizarre Experiments by Alex Boese

A bizarre and readable little book, capturing the strange ends of Science!. Perfect when you need some quick breaks between periods of beating your head against the next plot twist. And some of these little articles are inspiring! For instance,

  • Back in the Victorian ages, real scientists were trying to revive the dead with electricity, a la Frankenstein. What if they had succeeded?
  • An experiment involved people not seeing what was in front of their eyes—an “invisible” gorilla. That’s useful information for your mystery puzzle box.
  • Milgram’s experiment. Obviously. But also Landis and the decapitation of rats.

Recommended. Also recommended are Boese’s books about hoaxes.