RicOlie_2

And the second one is even better.

Gs-22

It happened once again for the thread mentioned in my first post.

March 5:

A.D. 1179: The Second Lateran Council opens in Rome.

A.D. 1496: King Henry II hires Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot) as an explorer.

A.D. 1616: Nicolaus Copernicus' book, "de Revolutionibus" is placed on the Index, a list of books forbidden by the Catholic Church to be published or read.

I think my downfall was a result of my bad playing, not the way the board was set-up. I think I could have avoided the situation at the end with the two FS/B's, but I think it's too easy for the FS to be brought out and used destructively quite early on and I didn't like that. I'm learning from my mistakes though, so I think I'll manage to avoid a traffic jam with my pieces this time. :)

As for the game length, you probably know by now that I prefer looong games to short ones, so my suggestions may reflect that. It's just me though, so if you feel a shorter game is better, then that's fine with me.

If we're going with alternating promotions, are we allowing pieces to be dropped with either side facing up?

T-18

Um, I watched the OT last year. Is that random enough?

No, I have not. I would read them if I knew how to get my hands on them for free, but I've never seen them anywhere.

Although the EU describes multiple Jedi orders/philosophies and the earliest Star Wars book chronologically describes the Jedi as finding balance in the force (i.e. balancing the "light side" and "dark side") rather than being strictly "light side" users. I thought that was the way Jedi should have been in the prequels. They're also a lot more individual, are allowed to marry and have families, and have much more interesting methods of training.

Anyway, in case you're interested, the book I'm describing is Dawn of the Jedi: Into the Void by Tim Lebbon. The writing style isn't great unfortunately (meaning it isn't bad, just that it could be better), but I still enjoyed reading about what the Jedi could have been.

I think the set-up works well, but that game ended rather quickly. I messed up my first few moves and wasted moves trying to get in a more favourable position. Meanwhile, you got your pieces ready to go and I wasn't able to make a comeback. I still enjoyed it, except for the last few turns, but I had few options. Maybe it's just because the game was short, but it seemed to me that fewer pieces ended up promoting. It might also have seemed that way because we could only drop pieces with their demoted side facing up and pieces only promoted once. Even so, there were few captures during that game which made it less exciting than some games we've played.

I found the game more interesting with more promotions so maybe we should revert to the old promotion rules but still allow only the weaker values to be dropped onto the board. What do you think? Do you think the game would be more interesting if we did that?

I also think that the FS/B should be stuck behind more pieces (maybe switch it with the RC/SC) at the beginning. With the current set-up it can be moved into play quite early in the game and is able to cover a significant portion of the board. If used effectively it can do a lot of damage. Once a player has both of them, like this game, the other player is suddenly very limited in what they can do since they can cover so much of the board at one time. I had a poor defense, so maybe it was just bad planning on my part, but I don't like how it dominated the game.

Other than that, I enjoyed the first twenty turns or so and I could have gotten quite far if you had dropped the second FS/B onto the board just a few turns later. On the whole, I think the game works pretty well, and had I planned better, I probably would have done better in the end. That being said, I still think we should switch the FS/B with the RC/SC to make it even more enjoyable. :)

K-31

I don't know how I can hold you off though. It's only a matter of time before you finally trap my king. I'm being put in check every move and I'm not able to make any offenses of my own at this point. If you do fail to put me in check though, I might be able to tip the balance enough to even things out a bit.

Good point.

It is a lot of work though, so I doubt I'll ever finish.

P*26

This isn't going to end well...

Ph-16

And it will probably be made redundant by some update of Jay's when I'm finally done. I'll work on it anyway unless a lot of people think it's a stupid idea.

How about an index thread? With my compulsive desire to catalogue things, I might just index the entire Off Topic section and organize it by category and user, providing OT.com users with an easy way to find out if the thread they want has been made yet and simultaneously eliminating the need for this thread, since no one uses it anyway.

Is it crazy and unnecessary, or would people actually find such a thing useful? The only problem is that I won't be able to post it for a while because there are almost 3200 threads in Off Topic.

There's already a video game thread (no link 'cause I'm too lazy).

March 4:

A.D. 1152: Frederick I (Barbarossa) is elected Holy Roman Emperor.

A.D. 1793: George Washington's second inauguration as U.S. President;

A.D. 1797: John Adams is inaugurated as U.S. President;

and

A.D. 1801: Thomas Jefferson is inaugurated as President in Washington D.C.

A.D. 1809: Madison becomes the first U.S. President to be inaugurated in American-made clothing.

I didn't know they recorded that kind of thing. :)

1800s-2000s: A bunch of other inaugurations of American Presidents.

A.D. 1881: Holmes and Watson begin their first case together.

A.D. 1924: "Happy Birthday to You" is published by Claydon Sunny.

Warbler said:

ah, I've never it. 

 Never watched it or never heard of it?

Frink's first ridiculous edit, The Ridiculous Menace, of course.

K-30

The pattern has been broken. I received no notification for the latest post in the General Star Wars Random Thoughts Thread which was made by an agnostic (Frink).

I've only made it to the beginning of the second season, but apparently the first two are the worst. I quite enjoy the series though (for the most part--I don't like Ahsoka and the amazing new shape-shifting abilities of Clawdites for instance).

Glad to hear it'll be fixed soon...it's driving me crazy. :P

Replace all of Darth Vader's JEJ dialogue with Hayden Christenson.