
Blaseball Returns
After a long hiatus, the weird and unusual sport has returned. For those of you that don’t know, Internet League Blaseball (ILB) popped up during lockdown in 2020 and was quickly embraced by the internet.
It started off with some characters playing simulated baseball and they had some funny names. Then the players got to vote on new rules for the game, and we immediately decided to open the Forbidden Book. This was a bad idea and led to the Discipline Era where weather such as Birds, Blooddrain, Peanuts, and Solar Eclipses would happen.
Eventually teams won and lost, teams ascended, entities were introduced and defeated, and we all fought to kill capitalism by sending the whole thing into a black hole.
But the black hole has burped Blaseball back out and we’re starting essentiall V2 of the game. It’s still a bit rough and there’s not a lot to do on the site right now. But I’m a solid Breckenridge Jazz Hands fan and I’ll be there cheering my solidly mediocre team on. Here’s hoping for some interesting chaos in the seasons ahead.

Board Games
Jan 8: Wayfarers of the South Tigris – I’m a big fan of Shem Phillips’ trilogies. That said I was pretty burnt out on their release schedule after Wayfarers hit Kickstarter a monthish after the expansions for the last game of the previous series went up. I decided this time I would sit out and wait until they hit retail. Well on New Year’s Day I sold some expansions (oddly enough to an other game in the series) and also had some store credit so I went to my local shop and picked this up. We finally got the chance to play it and it’s something else. It’s a pretty easy to grasp game, but with a lot of careful planning required. I think it will see a return to the table pretty soon.
Jan 10: Fabled Fruit (x2) – We continued our play of this with two more games that I won for once. This is a legacy style game in that there’s a large stack of cards and there’s only ever 24 of them in play. Once someone claims one, a new one comes off the stack. It’s a pretty neat game and one that we’re excited to get through a bit more of. We’ve just cracked open the second of three shrink wrapped decks so we’re about 1/3 of the way through the game.
Jan 13: Crokinole – Our annual Candlenights holiday party was last Friday. A good time for friends to get together and exchange terrible gifts and play some games. This year, not as many games were played, but I did get to play Crokinole which I had hoped to do. It’s a great dexterity game and one we really enjoy.
Jan 14: Belfort – This one is pictured on the left. We needed a game for our Alphabet challenge starting with B and this one took the win. We bought it last year when TMG went out of business and sold all their inventory on Cool Stuff. This time we tossed in one of the expansions and it was pretty good. I’m excited to try one of the variants listed in the other expansion to see how they improve the two player experience.

Movies and TV
This week I went to see Shin Ultraman, a retelling of the classic Japanese super hero in a modern world. I really enjoyed Shin Godzilla from a few years back so this was one I jumped at the chance to see even though I really knew nothing about Ultraman.
It was good. I really enjoyed the movie. It was funny, had great characters, and was well acted. It’s not one I’m itching to get out and buy when it hits stores, but I’m glad I saw it. There were only two showings at my theater and so I had to go in the middle of the week which I don’t usually do.
I also got the chance to get my giant popcorn bucket that was my Christmas present this year. It’s a refillable bucket you can take back with you and refill for like half the price of a regular one. I did the math and I have to go like 4 times for the price of the bucket to swing in my favor, but there’s that many coming out in March alone that I plan to see, so this should be no problem.
With TV I did finish Bad Sisters and I was right in my hunch, but in a way I didn’t expect which was very satisfying. I imagine I’ll rewatch this at some point down the line with Rachael as she likes mysteries and it was a very entertaining show.
On the YouTube side of things I followed and binged the videos of two new to me Minecraft creators, ezY and WadZee. I’m a big fan of the well edited one video a couple weeks channels and these two are both in that realm. ezY has less videos but they’re all pretty good. WadZee has a much larger set of videos including a very long standing hardcore series, but the one I’m enjoying most is the newest series where he’s trapped in a small one chunk world border world that’s slowly expanding.