Redeeming Vision (Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt)

Redeeming Vision is exactly what its subtitle states: "a Christian guide to looking at and learning from art." Here, Weichbrodt teaches us "how to look" in part one by providing tools and techniques for approaching art. She then applies it in parts two and three with walking us through example artworks and showing how we can use each to "love the Lord your God" and "love your neighbor as yourself." An outline follows.

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Part One: How to Look

• The toolbox: how we look closely; our tools for visual analysis, "which is a crucial part of engaging with artworks." Here, she covers:
• formal elements (line, shape, form, color, value, space, texture)
• formal principles (unity, balance, movement, rhythm, emphasis, contrast)
• style (representational to abstract, along this spectrum: naturalism-idealism-stylization-abstraction)
• The archive: how we interpret, which includes historical context of an artwork. This is "a way of understanding how we make meaning. Our archive is our mental collection of other things we have seen . . . that help us make sense of new images and well as new experiences and people."
• The frame: an artwork's physical context, "which can play a significant role in our experience of the artwork."

Part Two: Love the Lord Your God

Here, she considers "three different responses to artworks that can cultivate our commitment to God [by comfessing our idols], awe at his transcendence, and gratitude for his presence." She demonstrates that "we can learn from a whole range of visual langauges, from representational to nonobjective art."

• Confessing our idols
• Wondering at God's transcendence (abstract art)
• Delighting in God's presence (representational art)

Part Three: Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

Here, she demonstrates that artwork can help us grow in love for our neighbor by developing the areas listed below.

• Growing in Curiosity: portraiture
• Sharing our space: landscape
• Allowing for complexity: art of the everyday
• Learning to lament: the art of history
• Redeeming vision

Ultimately, the goal is to be "willing to be changed by what we see, acknowledging the power of artworks as cultural liturgies and seeking to purposefully build new liturgies that reiterate the story we are truly a part of: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration."

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This is an excellent resource and wonderful introduction to art that I have been seeking for some time. Not only is her part one outstanding, giving the vocabulary to better describe what we see, but her parts two and three are thought-provoking and helpful, guiding us to be more aware and analytical in our approach. Ultimately, she achieves her goal of equipping us to have 'redeeming vision.' Highly recommended.

I conclude with one comment: her analysis assumes a deep intentionality in each artwork: in other words, she looks at many facets of a piece assuming the artist was quite intentional about each, in both form and message. Is that true? It may be. I hope it is. Sometimes, though, I scratched my head and asked "is that the only interpretation? Could the artist have meant something very different or been unaware of that angle? And if so, is that, in and of itself, meaningful?" I don't always know the answers . . . but I'm thankful this book has given me the tools to both see better and ask better questions.

Rating: A

Battleground Fantasy Warfare

Today's review is of the 2005 release, Battleground Fantasy Warfare. For two players, it takes 60+ minutes.

Overview

Amass your units, place them strategically, give them orders wisely, and may the dice be in your favor! You win if you destroy all of your opponent's units first.

In this game, you first create an army (my term; I don't have the official rulebook). An army consists of units, each of which gets their own card with:

- an overhead view of the beings in it

- attributes to include health, strength, damage, movement, and courage

- a space for recording that unit's standing order (given by you at the start of the game, and can be changed throughout for a cost)

- special abilities (if any), often shown on the back of the card along with that unit's cost to include in your army (we played a 2000-pt game, and most of my units cost 170 or 270 points).

After choosing your army, you set it up on the table and give each unit a standing order (close [on enemy units], hold, and so on). 

On your turn, you (simplistically):

- spend command actions (you get four per turn) and move your units (up to their movement speed, depending on their orders or other factors). Command actions can be used to change a unit's standing orders, draw a command card, or other things.

- perform any ranged attacks

- perform any courage checks

- combat

- perform any post-combat checks

For combat, you roll a number of dice equal to your participating unit's dice number, subtracting your attack value from your opponent's defense value to determine the number of dice that hit (in this game, you want lower numbers). Then you take the number of dice that hit and roll them again, subtracting your damage value from your opponent's toughness value to determine how much damage the opposing unit receives. Throughout, one command card can be used (per side) to provide various modifications. When the dust clears, decrement the opposing unit's health by the amount of damage it received (the cards can be written on with an erasable marker). Then it attacks back. Combat proceeds across all engaged units in this manner until all possible battles have been fought. Destroyed units are removed and your opponent takes their turn. Play continues until one side's units are defeated.

game in progress; image is mine

Review

I like this game; it is an economic alternative to miniatures wargaming. The rules seemed straightforward enough (though having an experienced friend both guide me through it and provide a helpful summary sheet made a world of difference). The company still produces decks for various factions, giving lots of options for all sorts of armies. The art is not the best, and the game takes a long time: set aside more than an hour for this one. That said, this is a solid offering overall.

Rating: B+

Revival of the CCG?

Card backs from select CCGs; image from herehere

Readers of this blog know I love tabletop games for many reasons. But a subset—collectible card games—I hold dear more than others (I reflect on their attributes and fond memories in other posts).

After the initial CCG boom in the nineties (trying to capitalize on Magic's success), the market crashed. Industry stalwarts Magic: the Gathering, Pokemon, and Yu-Gi-Oh! remain popular CCGs, but new games fizzle and those that do catch on last just a few years before fading away. But are the tides changing?

Today, I look at 'recent' (2019-present) trends in the CCG world, and some thoughts on what may be their revival. I'll separate them into store-based (meaning they are available in typical game stores, be they brick-and-mortar or online) and kick-started (meaning they are available only in kickstarter or equivalent campaigns). I will *not* be including Living Card Games here.

Store-based

These new kids on the block are not to be ignored:

- Flesh and Blood (2019): designed by a former Magic pro, this fantasy/sci-fi game emphasizes playing in-peron (vs. online). It is highly-regarded and the first 'recent' CCG that I recall seeing in game stores outside of the usual suspects.

- One Piece (2022): based on a Japanese manga series

- Disney Lorcana (2023): this Disney/Ravensburger collaboration that is proving quite popular; their products abound even in retail stores like Target

- Star Wars Unlimited (2024): the latest in a line of Star Wars collectible games; this one is by Fantasy Flight.

- Union Arena (2024; forthcoming): this anime-focused release has some buzz around it.

Kick-started

An increasingly popular release mechanism for all tabletop games, kick-started CCG offerings have been exploding (anecdotally . . . this is my impression). Searching for trading card games (synomous with CCG) on Kickstarter yields 539 results. While some of these aren't 'pure' CCGs, many are, and those numbers are shocking. Here are five of the most popular:

- Metazoo (2020): 5300 backers raised over $1.8M to bring this to life. Largely considered a Pokemon rip-off, this started strong but shut down in early 2024.

- Kryptik (2022): 1300 backers raised $873K to bring this to life. I was given sample cards from a game store when buying another game. The art looks cool.

- Sorcery: The Contested Realm (2023): ~6500 backers raised $3.5M to bring this to life. It has echoes of Magic: the Gathering and seeks to reclaim the 'old school fantasy art' feel. I own some of this; the game enjoys a grassroots community and appears well-supported.

- Neverrift (2024): 900+ backers raised $212K to bring this to life. It is billed a cross between chess and Magic: the Gathering.

- Warlord: Saga of the Storm (2024): 1700 backers raised ~$600K to bring this dead CCG back to life. It just closed.

Thoughts

Do the above releases mean the CCG world is in a revival? Yes and no. On the one hand, the sheer number of projects on Kickstarter indicates a sustained interest in this type of game. On the other, the number of backers (from 900-6500 in the above examples) show that these won't be nearly popular enough to go mainstream. They will be enjoyed in small pockets around the globe . . . just like many tabletop games.

What this does show, I believe, is that the features of a collectible game are well-loved and people want to see games that enable customization (here, of card decks). With small player bases and limited print runs, I suspect these games will be enjoyed for drafting, re-drafting or cubes (using products like Dragon Shield cube shells to re-create randomized packs), and constructed experiences (I just used a lot of terms that may be unfamiliar; see here for an explanation). There will be few if any expansions to make the games 'living;' those that exist will be kick-started and take a while (Sorcery has an Arthurian-themed expansion in the works, due out this year).

Ultimately, I think the future will show that CCGs are back in a muted way: they will enjoy limited edition runs and be held dear by small communities, enjoyed for what they are, but not produce the never-ending run of new cards that make Magic, Pokemon, and a few others both exciting and embarrasingly expensive to enjoy. Perhaps this new approach will make the 'barrier of entry' lower to this genre. Time will tell.

Causes, Evils, and Cures of Heart and Church Divisions (Burroughs and Baxter)

The title says it all. In this book, Jeremiah Burroughs (1599-1646) and Richard Baxter (1615-1691) lay out the causes, evils, and cures of heart and church divisions. Note: it is unclear to me exactly who authored what, and whether Francis Asbury (1745-1816, who authored the introduction) abridged either's material. And apparently the version I read (ISBN 9798841093633) was first published in 1849. 

The first section is the causes of divisions, separated into 'distempers' and practices.

- The distempers that divide: pride, self-love, envy, passion, rigidness, rashness, wilfulness, unconstancy, a spirit of jealousy, and a spirit of contention

- The practices that divide: associating with whisperers, needless disputes, not keeping within the bounds God has set, propagating evil reports, an inordinate cleaving to some so as denying due respect to others, because men cannot join in all things with others they will join in nothing, to commend and countenance what we care not for, in opposition to what we dislike, and revenge.

The second is the evils of divisions, both the good they hinder and the sinfulness of them. 

- For the good they hinder: the quiet, comfort, and sweetness of our spirits, the freedom of a man's spirit, the sweetness of Christian converse and communion, our time, our prayers, use of our gifts, and our graces.

The third section is the cures of divisions, separated into seven joining principles, considerations, and six directions, which are too lengthy to reproduce here.

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The content is outstanding; the writing is hard to follow. Very long sentences combined with archaic speech made it hard for me to get through this 107-page volume. That said, I wanted to get through it because there is so much meat; so much insight and value. We are beset today with divisions, whereas Scripture is clear in calling for unity. This books is a welcome reminder that it is (regrettably) common, but offers pointers on why it matters and how to strive for unity. Highly recommended; put in the work to get through this. 

Rating: A

Tales of the Empire

Tales of the Empire is a six-episode series of shorts (each running 12-18 minutes). It is basically season two of Tales of the Jedi. It focuses on formative moments in the lives of two people in particular: Morgan Elsbeth and Barriss Offee.

As with Jedi, it is hard to get any real depth in such short episodes. The first three were about Elsbeth; the last three were about Offee. I enjoyed them all, but you need to be familiar with the movies, the Clone Wars series, and Ahsoka for these to make any sense. These are more connective tissue between established tales than independent stories. I wish they had made more and made them more stand-alone.

Rating: B+

Super Hero Squad Card Game

Today's review is of the 2012 collectible card game, Super Hero Squad. For two players, it takes 15 minutes.

Overview

Can you deplete your opponent's deck before they do the same to you? In this fast-moving game, you launch an attack (with a magnitude and type of energy) and your opponent tries to block. If they can't, they'll mill cards . . . and the first to deplete their opponent's deck wins!

Sample card; image from here

A turn is straightforward:

- flip a coin. If heads, the level (for both you and your opponent) goes up one

- draw a card.

- play an attack. To be eligible, the attack number (upper left) cannot exceed the current level. Attacks have a magnitude and type of energy (middle left); your opponent will try to block by discarding a card with the matching type (lower left). If they cannot, they mill that many cards from their deck until they reach the attack value *or* mill a card with a matching energy block. Come cards may also have special abilities that increase damage or have other effects.

Players keep trading attacks/blocks until one deck is depleted.

Review

This game is (by design) simplistic. While I appreciate how quickly it moved, and the "coin flip to increase the level" mechanic was interesting, I didn't care for this. It seemed incredibly luck-heavy and ultimately a pattern-matching game. If you can 'match the pattern' (by blocking with the appropriate symbol), great. If not, oh well. And how well you can match the pattern seemed largely out of your control, with six energy types available (perhaps three would have been better, for more of a 'rock-paper-scissors' feel). You could build a deck to have a low probability of countering everything, or a tuned deck to counter one or two specific things . . . hard to say how you would design a deck around any sort of defensive strategy. Offensively, I see how it could be done. As it is intended for ages 8+, I don't want to ding it too hard . . . but I understand why I could pick up a starter deck at Ollie's for $3 even though the game has long been out of print.

Rating: C

Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design (Engelstein & Shalev)

In any mature industry, there is a shared language: terminology, categories, and other things that have developed over the years to give participants a way to explain their designs, ideas, and thoughts. The tabletop game industry, though, lacks this language. There are informal terms in pockets, but nothing universal. 

In Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design, authors Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev aim to provide both "a stepping-stone to building a common vocabulary [and body of knowledge] among game designers" and "a compendium of game mechanisms, grouped together thematically, that map the territory of modern gaming." This is not a 'how to' on game design; rather, they've "chosen to look at the building blocks of games themselves: the mechanisms [or mechanics]." So think of this "not [as] a recipe book but rather a catalog of ingredients and how they can enrich a dish." 

Across 13 major sections, they look at 203 different mechanisms, attributes, or facets of game design. (In a given section, the different mechanisms might be variations of each other.) Each mechanism has a description, discussion (including the possibilities and potential pitfalls), and sample games. This list, as the authors state, is not comprehensive: they recognize that they cannot hit on every single thing out there, but try to focus on some basic elements to help both beginner and designer alike. In addition, it can be hard to cleanly delineate between some mechanisms—some things could fall into multiple categories—so they do their best and mention related or alternative groupings.

The sections:

- Game Structure

- Turn Order and Structure

- Actions

- Resolution

- Game End and Victory

- Uncertainty

- Economics

- Auctions

- Worker Placement

- Movement

- Area Control

- Set Collection

- Card Mechanisms

They reference a whopping 838 sample games total, giving readers plenty of ideas for games to try or examine to learn more about a given mechanic. 

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I got this book to help my goal of designing a board game one day. I intended to use it as a reference only, but was unexpectedly engrossed and ended up reading it straight through. (Well, I read each section introduction and mechanism description, and read or skimmed the mechanism discussions as suited my fancy.) 

This is a wonderful book; I really enjoyed it. It covered mechanics I knew, ones/variations I didn't, and gave me plenty of ideas for both mechanics to think about and games to try. I will say, though, that my enjoyment is due in part to having played and reviewed a lot of games. Of the 838 games the authors mention, I've played ~80 of them (and, to date, I've reviewed 188 games on this blog). So if you are already familiar with tabletop games, I think this is a fantastic resource. If you are brand new, you will likely be overwhelmed.

Rating: A