The Year in Review

As is my custom, I find it helpful to reflect upon the good and the bad of 2024.  I start the year with goals; this post looks back at some of them and considers other factors we experienced this year.

Spiritual

My goals here:

- Be disciplined in prayer.
- Be intentional/consistent in meeting with others.
- Serve well in the various roles.

Prayer was the same as last year: pretty consistent when in my routine, but easily dropped when 'out of sync' due to illness, vacation or other factors. I need to be better about keeping the first things first, even when the day is abnormal.

I did get to meet with a fair number of people this year, which is always a joy. This one is hard to quantify or limit; it was good, but should always be a priority.

I tried to serve well in various roles and felt they went reasonably, but this year showed me that I have too much on my plate, and that could be overwhelming at times for me (and the family) this year, so I will have to drop something in 2025.

Nutritional/Fitness

My goals here:

- Get (and keep) weight under 185 lbs.
- Complete 240 workouts (run, bike, gym, hikes, etc.).
- Eat less overall, and more fruit/vegetables.

I started the year at 197 lbs and did drop some weight this year; I stand at 192 lbs as of this morning (my low was 188 before the holidays). I did eat more fruit/veg, but ate too many sweets around the holidays in particular. Overall, I am pleased here, but want to keep going. 

I had what I thought were heart problems early in the year; they turned out to be gut-related. Managing my gut health is increasingly apparent as a big part of overall condition; I attribute better care here to some of the weight loss.

On workouts: I'm starting to feel my age; running now consistently messes up my knees for days afterwards. It is now 100% biking or walking for cardio workouts. Other big news: my son now does the bulk of the mowing. Hooray!

Overall, I completed 285 workouts, which is satisfactory. Most workouts were gym, bike rides, and yardwork. Including the past few years' totals for reference:

2022: 38 runs for 91 miles, 113 gym workouts, 68 bike rides for 1061 miles, 7 hikes for 30 miles, 43 mow/yardwork, 5 misc.

2023: 22 runs for 54 miles, 182 gym workouts, 58 bike rides for 623 miles, 15 hikes/walks for 55 miles, 21 mow/yardwork, 113 hours spent working on the basement.

2024: 12 runs for 25 miles, 169 gym workouts, 82 bike rides for 1119 miles, 9 mow/yardwork, 13 'other' (hikes, etc.)

Reading
My goals here:

- Read 50 books.
- Continue chipping away at my American Reading List.
- Revisit King Arthur.
- Find good books on the science/study of humor.

No problem here; I read 60 books, and kept my 'owned but unread' pile at a pleasant number. My post here caps this year's book recommendations. I enjoyed revisiting King Arthur, and made minor progress on my American Reading list. I did not make any progress on humor studies. (But I laughed a lot, if that counts.) Overall, I'm satisfied.

Stuff

My goal here:

- Minimize everything in the home.
- Buy less/budget better.

This went pretty well until July. My boys got into collecting sports cards, and I was caught up in the nostalgia of that; I spent too much in the latter half of the year on my hobbies. Need to reign that in.

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Conclusion
Looking across the categories above, it was a pretty good year. The main thing that stands out as needing improvement are focusing areas of service, nutrition, and personal spending, but more on those tomorrow. Here's to a better 2025. "Never stop starting."

Thus Concludes 2024

Another reading year "in the books." This post recaps the year and presents what I consider the best of the bunch.

I read 60 books this year, totaling 15,271 pages—about 42 pages a day. My average rating was 90.6/100.

Of the 60 books, 0 were audiobooks, 0 were eBooks, and 4 were borrowed from the library or friends. By genre, I read 9 fantasy books, 17 on religion, 11 graphic novels, 5 literature, 12 Arthurian, and a smattering of others.

I chipped away at my 200-book American Reading List (presented in three parts: here, here, here) and read 4 titles on those lists. I revisited Arthurian works, as I intended this year. I looked at a lot of theology books to prepare for a Sunday school class I taught. And I kept my 'owned but unread' pile to a reasonable size.

Here are my top ten reads from this year:

Daniel Nayeri: Everything Sad is Untrue

Marilynne Robinson: Gilead

Michael Kruger: Canon Revisited

John Frame: The Doctrine of the Word of God

Peter Brown: The Wild Robot

Elissa Weichbrodt: Redeeming Vision

F.F. Bruce: The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?

Jason Reynolds: Long Way Down

Howard Pyle: The Story of the Grail and the Passing of Arthur

C.S. Lewis: The Reading Life

On the whole, this was a good reading year. May 2025 bring further works of excellence. Happy reading!

DC Deck-Building Game (expansions and variants)

Last year, I reviewed the DC Deck-Building Game. That fun experience has produced many expansions and variants over the past few years; this post looks at a few of them.

At present, there are seven 'core' or stand-alone sets, meaning boxes that are the same basic game and include everything you need to play:

- DC Deck-Building Game

- DC Deck-Building Game: Heroes Unite

- DC Deck-Building Game: Forever Evil

- DC Deck-Building Game: Teen Titans

- DC Deck-Building Game: Injustice

- DC Deck-Building Game: Dark Nights: Metal

- DC Deck-Building Game: Justice League Dark

Any of them are great starting points for the game itself, though the first/original release is probably the most basic and best place to begin.

There are a series of Rivals (1v1) and Confrontations (2v2) releases. These take away the common nemesis stack and instead you attack your opponent's main hero (or villain) to win the game.

- DC Deck-Building Game: Rivals—The Flash vs. Reverse-Flash

- DC Deck-Building Game: Rivals—Batman vs. The Joker

- DC Deck-Building Game: Rivals—Green Lantern vs. Sinestro

- DC Deck-Building Game: Rivals—Shazam! vs. Black Adam

- DC Deck-Building Game: Confrontations

Another variant is Rebirth, where you have linked campaigns and characters can move around a 'board' (so position matters).

- DC Deck-Building Game: Rebirth

Finally, there are plenty of expansions. The main categories are crossover, crisis, and expansion packs. These mini-releases must be combined with a stand-alone game. Some of the crisis packs have stated ties to specific stand-alone releases. The crossover and crisis packs can be sold separately or bundled into 'collections' of two or three sets, making for many (confusing) options. I'll try to keep them separate below. I omit promo cards, and I list a few sets coming out in 2025.

- Crisis Pack 1 (intended for the original release)

- Crisis Pack 2 (intended for Heroes Unite)

- Crisis Pack 3 (intended for Forever Evil)

- Crisis Pack 4 (intended for Teen Titans)

- Crisis Pack 5 (intended for Dark Nights) (2025)

- Crossover Pack 1: Justice Society of America

- Crossover Pack 2: Arrow

- Crossover Pack 3: Legion of Superheroes

- Crossover Pack 4: Watchmen

- Crossover Pack 5: The Rogues (intended for Forever Evil)

- Crossover Pack 6: Birds of Prey (intended for Teen Titans)

- Crossover Pack 7: New Gods

- Crossover Pack 8: Batman Ninja

- Crossover Pack 9: DC Bombshells

- Crossover Pack 10: Flashpoint

- Crossover Pack 11: Dark Knights Rising (2025) (intended for Dark Nights)

- Crossover Pack 12: Hush (2025)

- Expansion Pack: Legion of Doom 

- Expansion Pack: Justice Leage Dark

- Expansion Pack: Super-friends (2025)

At this point, we own many of these versions (this game is a favorite of ours). While I won't go into every release above, at a high level, I say the following about them:

- the designers did a good job incorporating unique elements/rules (or focus areas) into each release. One sign of a good game is the ability to alter (or add) a few rules for a completely different experience; they do that well here.

- while it is possible to mix and match releases, doing so can lead to and overwhelmingly large card pool and/or clunky interactions between sets that don't pair well. Ultimately, this lengthens game times.

- as the titles may imply, some of these releases are quite dark. If you are considering this for children, stick to the original release and do your research on specific sets before purchasing.

The Quacks of Quedlinburg

Today's review is of the 2018 release, The Quacks of Quedlinburg. For 2-4 players, it takes 45 minutes.

Overview

You are a quack doctor, selling 'potions' for as much as possible. Push things too far, though, and all will be for naught. Can you outdo the competition to become the biggest quack in Quedlinburg?

In this push-your-luck game, each player has a cauldron and will build a bag full of ingredients, each of which has a number and color. After setup, rounds work as follows: 

- players draw one ingredient from their bag, place it the stated number of spaces away from their previous ingredient, activate any effects if applicable (based on color and shown on accompanying spellbooks), and decide whether to keep drawing or stop. - The white ingredients are 'bombs'; if the numbers on your bombs ever exceed seven, your whole potion explodes and you get penalized. 

- After all players have decided to stop drawing and placing ingredients (or they've gone too far and it blew up in their faces), end-of-round effects occur one at a time, giving players victory points, money to buy more ingredients, and other effects. Then, all ingredients go back in their respective bags and the next round begins. After nine rounds, the player with the highest score wins!

one game board showing in-progress round; image from here

Review

This game looks busy, but it is easy enough to learn and goes pretty quickly. The replayability is high with both 1) the chance inherit in blind draw games and 2) multiple spellbook choices per color, granting different effects and changing the game if players so choose. (Beginning-of-round 'fortune' cards also shake things up.) Overall, this is a simple, solid, enjoyable offering. 

Rating: B+

Bicycling, Five Years Later

In 2020, I took up bicycling as a hobby and primary cardio routine. Shadowfax (my gravel bike) and I have traveled many miles at this point, in both Germany and America. This post looks at some trends, five years in.

My annual bicycling goal is 1000 miles. See chart above: I met that mark in 2020, 2022, and 2024. I missed it for good reasons in 2021 (we moved mid-year, and I was without my bikes for ~100 days in the riding months) and 2023 (we spent the summer finishing our basement, leaving little time/energy for cycling). Given all the other responsibilities in life, I think 1K is an achievable goal for this season, and that remains moving forward.

My number of rides per year varies (see above chart); ignoring 2021 due to the aforementioned move, 60 rides is the floor and 80-90 is the ceiling in a given year. 

One big change this year is the increased use of an exercise bike. Though my miles per ride on such bikes stayed about the same (orange line in above chart), the number of rides increased significantly (up to 44 in 2024, just over half of my overall rides). I have learned to use the exercise bike for speed training; I try to average 20mph on it, for 6-7 miles. That, in turn, has improved my road rides (both distance and speed); you can see the increase in distance in the blue line on the above chart. When I started biking, 15-16 miles was an average distance for me. Now, I am routinely over 20; I did 24 rides of 22 miles or more this year.

I set one personal record this year: in June, I biked 50.5 miles in one ride. That was a great (if tiring) experience and one I will seek to exceed next year. But otherwise, I plan to keep the road rides at 22-25 miles, and exercise bike at 6-7, due to competing obligations.

I am very thankful for this hobby; it took a pandemic and personal injury to lead me to bicycling, but it has been a wonderful 4635 miles so far. To more in 2025!

On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness (Andrew Peterson)

Janner, Tink, and Leeli Igiby live with their mother Nia and grandfather Podo in Glipwood, a town in the land of Skree on the edge of a fearsome forest. All is not well, for years ago, the vicious Fangs of Dang invaded and now rule the land. Though the Fangs are cruel and unpredictable, the Igiby children find ways to enjoy a humble existence . . . until some unfortunate incidents snowball and lead to all sorts of trouble. The children will soon discover the world is much bigger than they realized, with old secrets, strange creatures, and darkness all around. And their lives are about to be changed forever when the Fangs discover the lost Jewels of Anniera might be in Skree after all . . . can the Igibys survive?

I've had this series (the Wingfeather Saga, a quadrilogy) on my list for a few years, so I was excited to finally pick it up. It took me a while to adjust to the style and (especially) the names—Peterson weaves deliberately-silly monikers (and asides) throughout that I found amusing but occasionally irritating—but once I got into it, I couldn't put it down. Written for kids, this fantasy has some expected (and unexpected) elements, all done well, and has a dash of wisdom to boot. Looking forward to book two.

Rating: A

Oriflamme: Alliance

Today's review is of the 2022 release, Oriflamme: Alliance. For 3-5 players, it takes 30 minutes.

Overview

You represent a powerful family jockeying for influence in a cutthroat world. Can you attain the most influence in time?

In Oriflamme, you and your opponents will build a single line of cards, then activate any face-up cards in that line each round. You each start with 10 identical cards representing characters or schemes. Shuffle your cards, discard three face-down, and evaluate the remaining seven to determine your options and strategy for the game. 

The game consists of six rounds. In each:

- the starting player places a card face-down on one end of the line of cards *or* on top of one of their existing cards

- all players (proceeding clockwise) do the same, placing either at the front of the line, back, or on top of one of their existing cards

When all players have placed, the next phase of the round begins: activation. They player whose card is left-most in the line goes first, then each card (regardless of ownership) is activated in turn. To activate a card, do one of three things:

- if face-down, turn face-up and activate its ability *or* keep it face-down and place a coin on it

- if face-up already, activate its ability

When all cards are activated, the first player token passes clockwise and the next round begins, adding to the existing line of cards. Play proceeds in this fashion for six rounds. At the end of the game, the highest influence (represented by coins) wins!

game in progress; image from here

Review

This is a nifty little game with a surprising amount of strategy. I did not cover each card's abilities, but the gist is that some give you coins, some take others from adjacent cards, some destroy adjacent cards, some are traps (that hurt your opponent if they try to destroy them), and so on. The game has echoes of the character cards in Citadels, only here, the order of play is determined by card placement and not character role. Replayability is high, as you will be denied three cards each game (and those are kept secret from opponents), so even those familiar with the options will not know which ones you have available to you. Overall, this is a winner. And apparently the third in a series of related (and 'mixable') Oriflamme games.

Rating: A

When Christians Disagree (Tim Cooper)

John Owen and Richard Baxter were both "giants of seventeenth-century English Christianity." These men "were both wise, insightful, passionate, warmly committed to Jesus Christ, and deeply concerned for his church and the gospel" during and after the English Civil War. Yet the two could not agree, and lobbed inflammatory barbs at each other in print for decades. When Christians Disagree looks at what happened, why, and what lessons we can take from it. A summary follows.

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Cooper looks at the good accomplishments of each man in chapter one to make it clear that these were not troublemakers. They both truly cared for God and others, and served well. But the point of the book is not just that they disagreed but how they went about it, and so the rest of the book looks at (first) their respective backgrounds (experiences, personalities, theology), and (then) their disagreement and fallout.

While both men sided with parliament during the civil war, they took opposite views of the war itself (one calling it a triumph and the other a disaster). This was, in part, due to their personal experiences during the conflict itself, with one in the trenches (as a chaplain in the army) and the other relatively isolated from the bloodshet itself. Our experiences shape us in ways we don't always recognize and affect how we look at the world.

Baxter and Owen also had very different personalities. One was a political player; the other spoke bluntly without regard for how it was received. One was "easily exasperated"; the other was "simply exasperating." Sometimes conflicts are due more to conflicting personalities than we realize.

These men also wrangled over theology. "While they share an enormous amount of common ground, they stood back-to-back, looking in opposite directions and subject to opposite fears." One worried about lawlessness that came from misunderstanding God's grace; the other worried about encouraging works-based righteousness is also a gospel distortion. "Their underlying fear made it extremely difficult for each man to see in the other the many points they held in common. Rather, each one saw the other as aiding and abetting the enemy." 

In the wake of war, church unity was a focus for both men, but they had rival visions for it—one focused on confession (agreeing on principles) and the other on action (agreeing on practice). Ironically, "working together on unity served to drive them further apart." They sniped at each other in print and in person, culminating in derailing an important forum intended to heal the country. Years later, their previous poisonous exchanges would further shade future encounters, as memory can be powerful and encourage distrust even when both genuinely hoped for reconciliation.

So what can we learn? Cooper suggests five things:

1) have a mediator (rather than snipe at each other publicly and at distance)

2) focus on what holds you together (rather than drives you apart)

3) pay more attention to Scripture's calls for unity (John 17:11, Philippians 2:2, 1 Thessalonians 5:13, Romans 12:18, etc.)

4) be humble

5) there is great advantage to distance and hindsight, so look at past conflicts for lessons how to live today

And based on this situation, Cooper offers the following questions as a response when discord arises:

• Do I really need to respond to the initial provocation?
• How much of the conflict can be traced back to personality rather than theology?
• Am I overlooking all the things I have in common with the other person and seeingly only the small number of differences?
• How are my own faults contributing to a poor relationship?
• Am I showing the humility, generosity, gentleness, and kindness to which I am called?
• How much pride is mixed up in my motivations and actions?
• How much damage will be inflicted on those around me and the cause of Christ by my continued conflict with the other person?
• Is there anyone in my Christian community who can help repair our relationship or manage our differences?

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This work disappointed me. While the author brought up good points, the book seemed repetitive, speculative (there are a lot of gaps in the record that Cooper fills with assumptions), and not overly helpful for resolving conflict in our own lives. We didn't learn a lot about the men, the situation, or the ramifications to the church (which are hinted at but not spelled out). This book could have been an essay, I thought to myself as I read. The list of questions at the end is good and worthy of usage, and I did learn a few things, but I had hoped for more.

Rating: C

National Parks of Britain

There are 15 national parks in Britain (ten in England, three in Wales, and two in Scotland). In National Parks of Britain, each park gets an overview, explaining its history, showing top sites/points of interest, and providing a somewhat detailed map to help visitors navigate the area. 

As in the States, Britain's national parks can be large; the below map gives you an idea. A park can encompass many towns, geographical features, historical sites, and so on. This book is a nice guide to each.

The parks; image from here

As with the previous review, this book is great for those living in or traveling through Britain. Each park gets a cursory treatment, enough to get you going—but not enough to fully explore each area. So supplemental resources may be required, but this is a fine starting point.

Rating: B

Exploring Britain's Castles

Exploring Britain's Castles does just that, looking at 135 such structures across the island. The book is geographically arranged into six sections; most castles get one page (some two-four) with a few pictures and paragraphs covering history or other facts of interest. There is a good mix of castles, meaning the book includes ruined, 'real,' and restored castles (see this post for an explanation of these terms). 

This is a nice book for getting ideas of what to see: for picking out the castles of most interest if you live or are traveling in the area. There is far too little information to be comprehensive; this is just a taste. I enjoyed this book while we lived there, but now that we're ten years gone, I will pass it on to someone who can use it.

Aside: I think we got to see ~32 of these castles when we lived there. I felt like we covered a lot of ground, but apparently only scratched the surface. What a blessing, and also a reminder that we can't do it all.

Rating: B