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

Living Life Backward (David Gibson)

In Living Life Backward, pastor David Gibson walks through the bulk of the book of Ecclesiastes and its perspective on death. Why? "Living in the light of your death will help you to live wisely and freely and generously." In fact, Ecclesiastes "makes a very simple point: life is complex and messy, sometimes brutally so, but there is a straightforward way to look at the mess. The end will put it all right. The end—when we stand before God as our Creator and Judge—will explain everything." And "if we know for sure where we are heading, then we can know for sure what we need to do before we get there. Ecclesiastes invites us to let the end sculpt our priorities and goals, our greatest ambitions and our strongest desires."

I won't summarize the entire work here, but some highlights:

- We will die. Our lives are "like a whisper spoken in the wind." "Accepting death is the first step in learning to live." Since we won't live forever and will be forgotten, how should we then live?

- We insulate ourselves to forget death, often using "wisdom, pleasure, work, and possessions." Yet "this is the main message of Ecclesiasties in a nutshell: life in God's world is gift, not gain." God gives us things (life, wisdom, pleasure, work, etc.) partly for enjoyment, but they can never satisfy if they become our ultimate things and goals. "You can only truly enjoy what you do not worship."

- We don't always understand what happens in this world, and it eludes our control. Yet everything will have its day in court, so our conduct has weight and meaning. And we won't know it all. "Part of being wise . . . is learning to accept that we have only very limited access to the big picture." And "not even being wise will tell you everything you want to know . . . part of living wisely is learning to live with the limitations of wisdom itself." And "satisfaction lodges in my heart when I accept the boundaries of my creaturely existence and accept the seasons of my life as coming from his good and wise hands." 

- The source of our pain is our self-centerdness. We want to be god, to get ahead of our neighbor, and so on. When we do so, we hate others and in the process destroy ourselves. Relationships matter; your neighbor matters. Loving others is, in the end, loving yourself. So "take the best of what you have and the best of what you are and give them away." 

- Because life is a gift, "give up your pursuit of profit from your toil and instead seek to enjoy the things that God has given you for what they are, and as you do that, you will know some reward." There are better things than success and worse things than failure. Living well means, in part, to enjoy the gift you have been given and not obsessing over control, success, gain, etc. "A life fully lived is a life receiving the reward of today as a gift that you don't deserve and one that God has given you to enjoy." 

- "The Bible's realism about old age and death is both urgent—Rejoice!—and calm—Remember." We need to be "delighted with the bounty God gives" because when we aren't, we deny who God is and His covenant blessing. And we need to remember "your Creator, [which] means remembering that God made a good world, not an evil one, and that we are the ones responsible for spoiling it, not he. Remembering God as Creator means taking my place in the world in the appropriate way and not demanding for myself more than it is my right to have." 

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This is a great book! Powerful in many respects. As I learned, I was both convicted and overjoyed. My main ding is that it doesn't cover the entire book of Ecclesiastes. But I loved his discussions of the themes he does cover. Ecclesiastes is a powerful, yet at times confusing, book. Gibson does a good job showing its structure, patterns, and messages.

Rating: A-

Shrek

Continuing a recent trend of (re-)watching 'older' movies, today's review is of Shrek.

 

Shrek is an ogre living in the swamp. Judged and feared all his life, he lives out a quiet and miserable existence wanting to be left alone. One day, he meets Donkey and learns of the nearby noble's goal to rid his kingdom of fairy tale creatures, banishing them to Shrek's doorstep. Annoyed, he agrees to go on a quest to save a princess from a fearsome dragon in return for the deed to his swamp. Along the way, he'll have adventures and make discoveries he never dreamed of . . . and find the thing he was ultimately seeking.

This satirical take on the fairy tale genre was a huge hit upon its release in 2001. It has spawned three sequels, two spin-off movies, one holiday special, a musical, a surprising number of video games, and more. (The next installment, Shrek 5, is due out in 2026.) I watched this with my sons today, having surprisingly little memory of this classic though I had seen it before (it's been 20+ years . . . ). Anyway, it's a fun story, with predictable (yet amusing) nods to classic stories and holding true to the typical motifs while also turning them on their heads. I was surprised how dated the CG looked—I'm sure it was great in its day, and the main characters look alright, but the background/minor characters were 'stiff' and robotic. The message was pretty good, looking at the need for friends and forgiveness, and the importance of not judging too hastily. The humor was great in places, with some innuendo that only adults will detect (I think/hope). A solid effort overall.

Rating: A-

How to Train Your Dragon 2

Five years after the first film takes place, Hiccup and Toothless enjoy a period of peace in Berk. With vikings and dragons reconciled, they enjoy each other's company and explore the region. But all is not to last . . . when they come across dragon trappers on one of their journeys, they find out that an old foe, Drago, is determined to trap and control all the dragons in the land. And he just might have the means to do it, with incredible power at his disposal. Do our heroes have what it takes to overcome? They may need aid from a most surprising source . . . and everyone will learn that the leader's job isn't to control and dominate, but "the Alpha protects all."

Let your nine-year-old pick the movie, and you stay in the land of dragons. This 2014 sequel to the 2010 hit film was solid, but a notch below the original. Two messages were solid: that of leaders protecting their people (vs. dominating and controlling) and that it is better to work together than fight each other. So far, so good. But I didn't care for a pattern that started in the first movie and continues here: Hiccup routinely ignores his father. It is a typical message in children's shows of various kinds that "adults don't understand" and "kids know better." That can be true occasionally, but not always, and it is a dangerous message to propagate. That, plus some rushed plot points, drop my rating here. But there is still value to be had, if you know where to look.

Rating: B