Deadpool & Wolverine - My Take (Spoilers)

 

If you didn't read the full title of the post there will be spoilers. I'm not going to white them out. You've got your warning.

I've seen both of the Deadpool movies but none of the X-Men movies. I have them. I just haven't watched them. If you've read any of my blog you'll know I'm woefully behind on my media watching. But these have moved up the list. Any references I make to Wolverine will be things I found from the comics. Not that I've read those either but cut me some slack.

Comparing this one to the previous two it's clear that Disney let them go to the limits of an R rating. I'm going to give an example here. In the first movie the concept of pegging was implied and Wade was reconsidering his decision. In this movie the word is used and it's darn clear that Deadpool isn't new at it. The profanity is easy enough to brush off but this is a whole new thing to bring into Disney. And Disney let it in. Pun kind of intended.

This is a buddy cop movie. Mostly. But the interpersonal stuff is very much a buddy cop movie. And that helps it immensely because I think Deadpool needs a strong straight man to play against. Without that he's quite frankly annoying after a while. With someone to play off and pull the character back it becomes more effective. Wolverine is a very good straight man here.

Small note. I have a major crush on Hugh Jackman at the moment so, sorry.

I know that there's a lot of comic and fan art showing Deadpool and Spider-Man in a ship (relationship, I'm trying to keep up with my slang) of some kind. That won't work in the MCU because of the age they're playing Spider-Man. We'll never get that combination. But Wolverine? Well ...

The Beginning

I think they did a great job bringing back Wolverine without taking away from the legacy that X-Men built. Nothing here diminishes Logan. They used the TVA to open the multiverse to bring in A Wolverine, not THE Wolverine. Because now there's no such thing as A character. By bringing in a completely different variant they could make this version what they needed for the movie. A reboot with the same actor, as it were.

Oh. Someone online pointed out that Mr. Jackman is no longer the only actor to play Wolverine due to one of the cameos. I hadn't thought of that but it also didn't matter too much to me. I don't think anyone should get their hopes up about a change to that actor. It was done for the LOLs and fan service.

The plot is a bit thin if you want my honest opinion. Rogue TVA agent needing to be stopped. X-Man variant about to cause multiverse havoc and needing to be stopped. Confluence to stop them. Buddy cop movie stuff. But honestly this movie isn't about plot. It's about Deadpool and Wolverine. So accept it and move on.

Wolvie and Deadpool (I won't abbreviate him to DP because, well, IYKYK) end up in The Void from the Loki TV series. That sets up a lot of the rest of the movie and allows for an absolute shit ton of X-Men characters to be introduced to the MCU without any regard for what happens to them in the future movies. These are variants in The Void. As I said, MCU used what they had and used it well.

I may get these fights out of order and I apologize for that if I do. Because for me this is a movie where great fight scenes are strung together with some dialog.

The Void Fight

This is the first fight between the two. The long-awaited fight. It showcases both characters' abilities and lots of action. And gore. But since both heal there's plenty more gore where that came from. They did right by the fans on this.

The sound of Wolverine's claws extending through the suit glove? Oh yeah ...

The Sabretooth Variant Fight

Another well done thing here. Yes, this is an important fight in X-Men canon. But it isn't here. So after the fight everyone wanted here's another fight everyone wanted.

They had Wolverine make the smart decision and it was the smart decision for the fight itself.

The Capture Fight

The boys are captured. The head Void bad guy is revealed. Many naughty X-Man variants. Fighting occurs, the boys escape due to Wolverine's knowledge of X-Men gadgets or because he just knows stuff. It's not explained and it doesn't need to be. They get the heck out of there.

Why am I not talking more about this? Because it's not a bad fight scene, it's just not that interesting to me.

The Honda Odyssey Fight

I will put this fight into the top five fight scenes in my personal record book. The fight choreographer deserves an Oscar for the movie but this fight? *Chef's kiss*

This is where two inhumanly strong unkillable (Note 1) characters really try to, well, kill each other. Since they both know it can't happen it's where they can just let go and fight to their little hearts' content. They have different fighting styles, there's a lotta gore, and I love it. There's a break in the fight scene where both of them are sprawled out over seats in the minivan and I'm so going to get a screen capture of Wolverine from that. Deadpool is admittedly in a similar type of position but he just doesn't do it for me and never has, in that way.

The fight is creative and has elements of humor from both of them that make it so much better.

I have to do this and I apologize in advance. There's a fan theory out there that the fight is a metaphor for a different kind of, um, action. I can see that. I can see how it was intended to evoke that question. But I'm gonna leave that one alone because there's other points in the movie where they also tease the question.

The Headquarters Fight

After meeting up with the resistance group they were told about earlier the whole team heads over to do two things - get the boys back to their multiverse and give the variants 'an ending' since they're tired of living in limbo in The Void. Wolverine gets to make an entrance since he at first declined to join them then hitched a ride in the still functional Odyssey, just so he could unfold from the hatch and make up the iconic standing team pose.

Much fighting. They get back to the multiverse. The fate of the others isn't known but at last seeing they were all still standing. Which makes sense since it didn't need that kind of tragedy.

The Deadpool Fight

As a diversion the head bad guy brings in all the variant Deadpools to prevent the boys from doing what they need to do. So one yellow suit in a sea of red. Both red suits and gore. I had to watch the movie twice and focus on following Wolverine because it's fast paced action. I'm honestly not sure if they sped up footage or not. But Mr. Jackman's arms and back must have been sore after filming those due to how many times he punched those claws into various Deadpools.

I'll watch this one a few more times to get a feel for what's going on but overall, not bad. It's going to be more of a challenge to pick out Deadpool Prime (his own term) from the others but I should be able to do it. I like seeing the choreography.

There's variants here from a lot of the comics. There's some cameos as well but it's more difficult to know since they all wear freaking masks. Go to IMDB or fan sites if you want to know those. I won't bother here.

The Ending

The ending has predictable setup of something that needs to be done but will kill whoever does it. There's some pretty good stuff between Wolverine and Deadpool over who should do it. And, predictably, it will end up needing both to make it happen.

This is where the Hugh Jackman shirtless scene occurs. Some people are saying it's CGI enhanced and I can see why but I think it's just good lighting and baby oil that makes the difference. Mr. Jackman works hard to get into shape for these and he went through the standard dehydration routine to make sure the muscles showed to their best advantage. The pose helped too.

Was the shirtless scene gratuitous? Of course it was. But it was also enjoyed and didn't last long beyond the pivotal scene. Then it was mocked so it all works out.

Spoiler - they don't die.

There's a bit of a redemption arc in the final scenes but it works given how things have developed. There's also a little more of why fans are talking about the two of them being closer than buddies, if that's what you want to see in it.

The mid credit scene is backstage, blooper, and clips from all of the X-Men movies. Even never having seen them I will admit I teared up a little. It was a lovely sendoff to the Fox versions.

The after credit scene? Well played indeed.

Summary

I'll get this out of the way first. Deadpool is comic book canonically unapologetically pansexual. Comic book Wolverine is in a thruple with Jean and Cyclops and they've hinted that it's a true thruple with the men also being involved in the situation. In that case Wolverine is at least heteroflexible if not bisexual. So it could happen.

As I said earlier I felt the story was thin. That happens and honestly there was no way the plot was going to or should compete with the two main characters themselves. It was a reason for them to do things and that's enough for a comic book movie, really.

With the amount of money Deadpool movies make and the recent MCU flops I think Disney had to sit on most of their objections and let this movie be a hard R. That gave them creative freedom to decide where to push limits and actually toned down what they might have done otherwise. When you have that freedom you can direct it to where it's best suited to be.

I asked a friend if Wolverine was more openly violent in this movie than in the others and the answer was an emphatic 'Yes'. Fox must have also reined in the visual violence to keep them at PG-13. It makes sense given the atmosphere at the time and the desire to have a larger audience. Comic book movies were meant for kids and fans. They weren't as mainstream as they are now.

The fights all made sense in context. The characters were consistent. The cameos were good. It was a solidly entertaining movie and I look forward to watching it again.

If you have your own opinions or want to correct me about something feel free to comment. If I'm terribly wrong I'll update the post. If it's an opinion thing we'll duke it out in the comments.

Note 1

That whole 'unkillable' thing has issues. There's a lot of debate about just how unkillable each of the characters really is and why. They do have different types of healing factors where what is worse for one is not much for the other. The healing factors are also plot armor in all cases so they're what they need to be in the story. I'll just say 'unkillable for the needs of the MCU' and there you go. No need to rip me a new one.

In the first Deadpool movie Ajax/Francis injects Wade with what looks like blood droplets in plasma. As with so many things it's questioned whether or not that's Wolverine's blood. Given the healing factor thing it would make sense. The comics bring up Weapon X. It's never explained in the movies and I doubt it will be so make up your own mind on it. Didya even remember that injection thing?

But Am I Having Fun?

 

That's always my baseline when playing games - if I'm having fun. Not if I'm winning, even though I like winning, but whether or not I'm having fun.

This brings us to Magic: The Gathering again. There's almost infinite ways to build decks and with that the ability to set them up to play in a way you like. I'm having fun tweaking mine in response to how they play and as I go. I can do that because I don't use real cards, so I have an advantage there.

That advantage is mitigated by my cardinal rule of whether or not I think it would be fun to play. There's a lot of cards and card combinations that would be great if I were a cutthroat competitive player. I can see the advantages and risks of those. But when I look at them I find that I don't want to do it.

One thing I avoid is something called 'infinite combos'. Those are sets of cards that create a situation that create an infinite loop to win the game or at least knock out a player before someone breaks them. I don't like those. I don't want to win that way. I prefer to use tactics and luck rather than a game mechanic that, while perfectly legal and acceptable, isn't fun for me. I also find infinite combos boring since they just sit there and do their thing on their own.

I accidentally had a different type of win condition using a set of cards. I honestly didn't realize that by putting all three together it would mean no one could do anything else (called a deck lock since they can't do anything with their card decks). Again, that's not how I like to win.

I'm finding my current favorite deck has a problem where it becomes a war of attrition. Again, not fun for me. I've had two games where it was obvious that's what would happen unless the other player had some way of chipping away my protection so we called the game. I don't consider that a win or a loss. It's a stalemate and I don't care who would have won since it could go either way in any game.

I spent last night finding and printing cards that would let me get more options while taking out cards that create true attrition. A number of people would say that weakens my deck because I'm making it so other players can attack me. They're right. But I see it as game interaction and it makes it more challenging for me because I don't have the ability to block everything, all the time. I think it makes for more fun play all around.

I did stop into another game store that plays a lot of Magic. I wanted to see what the crowd was like. Overall it was fine but the group I was with also plays a lot of the tournament style game (the format I play is casual) and they play in a tournament fashion. That means playing fast and not always announcing what they did. There's nothing wrong with that play style and I will play there again but if I find that I'm the odd person out by playing slower and playing strictly for fun then I'll move on. I don't have a tournament mindset for any kind of game.

I'm still ambivalent about the game itself. It's enjoyable. It gets me out and social. But there's no way I'm going to turn into someone who has to play it. I'll play it when I want to play it. I'll play it when it's the only game that's going on around the city. But I'll continue to build my random decks in ways that I like and play them in a way I like. If the group doesn't enjoy it I'll find another one because I'm not going to drag down their fun.

I'm finding that the hard core players tend to have very odd decks they like to play at times. They're gimmick decks or odd configurations that they find amusing. I skipped out before someone could pull one of those out last week but I know I can't avoid it forever. Since I'm pretty sure that it's not a deck I'll like I'll use one of my other ones to practice it and see how I want to tweak it.

One thing I have found is that my limit is two games in any one day. After that my brain hurts and I'm tired. There's a lot to keep track of, there's tens of thousands of cards that could be in people's decks, and it's the limits of my need to be social. Maybe three games if two of them are quick but overall it's been two games and done. That sets me apart from the people who can play literally until they're kicked out of the store.

So back to the question of if I'm having fun. Overall I am enjoying myself. I'm finding the social aspect important to me and the ability to play a game well (or well enough) is good. The fact that I don't have to spend money on it means I don't feel I have to pay since I've made the investment in the game. I also like making the cards because it's crafty and I like crafts. So. Yeah. I'm having fun for a given definition of fun.

Some Blog Housekeeping and A Request

 

I've finally started going back into the old posts and replacing the missing pictures. They got lost during one of the many blog migrations and I just hadn't gotten around to doing it. It will take some time but it will be nice to have a complete blog again.

That was the housekeeping portion of the post.

My request is simple. I'm seeing some heavy traffic here but I'm not seeing comments. I like comments. So please leave at least a couple of comments on posts you like to cheer me up. From the high level stats (the only kind I get) I'm concerned my blog is being scraped for nefarious purposes so comments means humans are reading it.

I do have comments set to approval to weed out spam so if you don't see yours, assuming you were nice enough to leave one, wait a bit and it will show up.

The Inertia is Strong

 

Yeah, well. I know there's been a very distinct lack of hobby posts here. And that makes me sad because it means a distinct lack of hobby activity here as well. That's all on me. I'll refrain from adding that to everything I'm going to post about where it applies. You'll figure it out.

The painting area still isn't usable but it's a little better. One thing I've really slacked on is finding a vinyl floor remnant to put under the desk because of the whole paint situation. Better safe than trying to get paint off the laminate floor. There's an independent carpet and flooring store just down the road but I haven't bothered to go there. Maybe this week? Maybe this will be a kick in the pants to get things done?

My friend's brother did stop by to help me sort out some stuff and he's a worker bee. He/we got half of the stacked up area in the front/gaming room out of there and made space for me to start putting things away. I've done a little of that work but kept getting myself blocked when I thought I'd made progress. I need to plow through that and just get things done for now. The refinements can happen when they happen.

Without the painting area there's no need for more miniatures and terrain so the 3D printers are still sitting idle, almost two years later. That bothers me but it's also a testament to me being smart enough not to add to things that won't get done.

I half unpacked a box in the living room because I was looking for stuff and figured it was in there. I was mostly right. That box had split along a side so I took out some things and put the rest in a smaller box. Yes. I know. That's not the right thing to do but it's progress in the respect I can get to the two boxes underneath now.

I'm one again stymied by not being able to do some things. The bins of unpainted minis need to go into the small shed, which opens up the area behind the couch. But getting them there is difficult for me both because of carrying and because getting into the small shed is difficult for me. The area in front of the doors has sunk/eroded so it's a big step up and down. I think I'll get those bins filled (maybe even tracked) and have them as something I'll ask my friend's brother to haul out the next time he comes over.

And he is going to come over again. I'm bribing him with vintage Pyrex cookware but he'd show up anyway. He's a nice guy, he knows I need help, he likes doing stuff like this, and he wants my gaming room set up so I'll run a D&D campaign or two. So he's got an interest in getting this done. I'm OK with that. The only thing is I feel the need to make progress between his visits because I haven't. So no stress, right?

I'm still playing Magic when I can. I started going to another game store that has games on Saturday afternoons as well. I've got three (proxy) decks of my own that play in three different ways. To tell the truth I'm not that happy with the decks the other players use but that's just me. It limits which deck is most effective for me to use but luckily that's becoming my favorite deck anyway. The Friday night group has moved to the new Star Wars game so there's no playing with them and that makes me sad. It's kind of funny that I just get into playing because there's always players only to find that there aren't always players.

The new rules for Warhammer aren't that interesting to me. Maybe when the ork codex comes out I'll get some excitement back but so far they've taken a lot of fun stuff away from us, nerfed other things, and make some of the fun things they left us cost too much. And the new way of building armies flat out sucks because it's tied to the models they sell. That's a big thing now. The armies are designed around the product where in the past they'd put all kinds of stuff out there and let people scratch build what they didn't sell. With 3D printing they're clamping down to only making the rules for models they sell. That's pushing me to a different but similar rule set, to be honest.

Board game night still mostly happens. The problem is that there's generally five people and games are more focused on four players. That and finding games that don't take overlong to play. A 120 minute game is not suitable for a Tuesday evening because it will always take longer. So many games are long games. I'm digging through mine to find ones that fit the criteria and coming up darn short.

I seem to have become the leader of monthly paint day at the store. The owner figured out I know how to paint so he left me in charge the last time and said I can take it over going forward. Um. Ok? I don't really mind because I don't like painting away from home so doing basic stuff and helping others fills the gaps. I still need to write up a PR thing he'll use to promote the paint day. I hate talking about myself so that doesn't help. I think I'll ask someone else to write it up and I'll tweak it.

I'm in an article in the local paper. The student was doing a story on the second game store when I was there and I got quoted a few times. There's pictures of me too, which displeases me but it's done. I'm not saying a word about it anyone because I don't want them to know. I'm fine with being in the paper. I'm not fine with people I know reading the article. If they find it on their own, great. I'm not pointing them to it. I don't think I said anything very insightful. Mostly my part got edited down to how the stores are friendly and safe. Being a girl gets me boxed into those sentiments and yes, I did say it. Oh well.

The sewing room? Still a jumbled mess. I'm back to the 'need to do A so I can do B and then do C' situation. An example is that I need to empty the bookcase that was partially filled, move it out away from the wall, vacuum the whole area, move the bookcase closer to the window so I can fit a set of plastic shelves next to it, then fill it with books. Again. Then I can put the sewing pattern boxes on the shelves. That will empty a number of boxes and free up space. No guarantee I'll get the sewing area set up but the more I can put things away the better the chances.

The living room is another situation of tripping over my own feet. The area behind the couch has bookcases but I can't do much with those until the mini storage bins are out of the way. I also need to swap the extra bookcase for the one my friend insisted I bring but then didn't take. I kind of want to raise the floor lamp behind that bookcase so that means building or finding something to do that. But once the bookcases are available that's more boxes to unpack and get rid of.

So yeah. Plenty to do, not much motivation to do it. I won't even get into the kitchen. I can reach the pantry but the shelves are stupidly spaced to be useful so I'm trying to figure out how to take the stuff from the floor pantry (as I call the bags) and put them in there in a useful manner. I'll always need the steps to get to the top shelves so that's not a concern. I've also got the cabinet in the laundry room that's available for kitchen pantry use. It's also got stupidly spaced shelves. I just can't win sometimes.

The office is a mess and that's something I can do bit by bit, if I wanted. The shelves are up and designated so it's a matter of taking things from boxes and putting them on shelves for the most part. But do I do it? Oh heck no.

My entire hobby situation is at a standstill and I hate it.

I Finally Gave In - I'm Playing Magic the Gathering

Yeah. Whatever. I finally played some MtG. As with pretty much every gaming store in the country my local store has Friday Night Magic along with various and sundry other times when people play. As with Warhammer 40k this is one of those games where you're pretty much guaranteed to find other players.

Now before you start doing the Nelson 'ha ha' at me I have a caveat. I'm not buying cards. Nope. Not a single one. I borrowed decks at the start and I still do. But for my own decks I'm printing proxy cards. 100% printed proxy. I know I can't use these in sanctioned and/or sponsored events and I'm fine with that. But I'm also not buying into the cardboard crack.

The game has thousands of different cards. Each card can have multiple printings. The cards vary in rarity and therefore in price. You can get cards for pennies. You can get cards that cost more than cars. Most of them fall in the lower range of that spectrum but I am NOT going to pay $20 for a piece of printed cardboard that has no actual value. It's ink on cardboard. It's got a secondary market scarcity price. And I just don't care.

So my decks can be 'expensive' decks. Why? Because they don't cost me anything I don't already have. I know that's not completely fair to the people who do collect the cards and buy into the game. I do. And I'm very up front with the fact my deck is a full proxy deck in case they don't want to play against me. It's the same as my 3D printed 40k army. It's a choice the other player makes.

All the disclaimers out of the way, lets talk Magic!

When I told one of my friends I was starting to play he mocked me and rightly so. I can take it. He immediately knew what kind of deck would be best for me and it turns out I had already played a deck like that and found it to suit me. Go figure. Because there's all kinds of decks.

There's five colors that relate to the major play style of the cards. There's also colorless but that's kind of a mix into all of them. And those five colors can be mixed into the same deck if you like. There's names for the various mixes that I'm still learning and then there's the single color - mono-color - decks that are one color and colorless.

I'm a brute. I like to go in and hit things. That's my strength and weakness as a tabletop player. When I play D&D I'm a fighter or a cleric. When I play other games I build my armies to curb stomp my opponents. So it only made sense for me to go with the color that's designed to roflstomp my opponents. That color is green.

I'm going to get spanked for this but I don't know how many people reading this have played Magic. Probably more have than not. But if you haven't played it's a mystery like any other game. I've been learning and still have questions as I go.

The core of the game is to get mana (a term we've all heard) which is what you use to 'cast spells'. Everything is casting a spell. Almost everything. But we'll get to that.

You mostly get mana from the land cards. I put a picture of one because it's pretty. Each turn you get to add more land if you have it in your hand and then use it all to do stuff. There's a few things you can do but the core of it is putting out creatures to attack and defend.

This is what took me longer than it should to figure out. You're not fighting the creatures. Nope. You're fighting the player. The creatures are just there to take the damage that would have been done to the player. For some reason I was more focused on the creatures than the player. Blame role playing games and tabletop for that one. Once I got that through my thick skull I started playing a lot better. Fine. A little better. I still suck.

Each turn has a player setting up to do combat and nasty things to the other player(s), then they each do their thing. A few of the cards let you do things out of turn so that can make it interesting. But in general you're trying to hit the player for more points of life than they have. That's the goal of the game. It doesn't matter how many creatures you destroy, etc. It's all about the life points. I have to keep remembering that.

My first printed decks were ones I found pre-built on one of the many sites that has decks. There's also sites that let you print out cards. This all made it very easy for me to turn a list into a sheet of cards to be printed, cut, trimmed, edged, and sleeved. After all that I end up with a deck of my very own that I can bring to the game.

My local friend has thousands of cards and he's building me a deck that I want to try. It's a pair of colors that take more finesse than the brute strength of my precious green. I asked him if he would make one before I started building my own decks and only then realized just how much work it can be to do that. I consider it work even though I'm doing it all online. I can only imagine how bad it is when you actually have to dig through cards. I'm not pushing for him to finish that. He's got enough going on without that.

The format I've been playing is 100 cards where you have one of each card, except for basic lands. A basic land is what that picture is. It just gives you mana. It doesn't do anything else. You can have as many of those as you like but they recommend your deck has about 40% land since you need that to buy the other cards and do stuff with them. That's a big freaking deck and shuffling is interesting, to say the least.

Games tend to last about five turns or so. It's a build up to get enough mana to start buying things to put into play then it goes in all kinds of directions based on what color(s) you're playing. So it can be a fast game and this format can be multiplayer which makes it more interesting in a lot of respects.

So how do I feel about this? I'm fine with playing. It's not a bad game. I can see where people would get into the artwork of the cards and want to have special sets. I haven't played the other game formats where the decks are built and work different. I haven't had to do it so I don't bother right now. I'm sticking with the format that's most commonly played around here.

Because I print my cards I don't have to swap them around. If I were buying them I wouldn't buy a full deck and then buy duplicates for the next one. That would be wasteful. It would mean tracking what cards I have, what decks they're in, and moving them around. For me it's flat out easier to print an entire deck at once, even if I'm printing thirty of those land cards at a time.

Why would the cards have to be moved? Because the decks are sleeved. That means the cards are in plastic sleeves with opaque backs. That's to protect the cards but more so to make sure that they're not identifiable from the back. There's been big cheater scandals about marked sleeves in the tournaments. So if I were to take cards from Deck A and use them in Deck B I would have to move them. But if I wanted to play both Deck A and Deck B in the same evening in different games I'd have to shuffle cards around. Playing proxy it's just easier to make entire decks.

I just made a new deck tonight, using what I learned from the previous deck I built. I think I may have gone too hard on this one but I won't know until I play it. It may be a nasty deck but in my hands there's no guarantee it will play that way. If it does play too heavy for our casual games I'll sit down with the other players and see what's wrong with it so I can fix it. Again, I can print new cards.

I mentioned all the steps involved with me making a deck. I'll expand a little here.

I print them, either on the inkjet or color laser printer. The inkjet gives a bit of a brighter and clearer image, at the cost of using photo paper and all that ink. The laser printer is a bit duller and lower resolution but they're still perfectly usable. I have a lot of inkjet photo paper I bought at the thrift store over the years so that's not an expense. And now that I have the inkjet working properly again I can take the time to print some that way. The laser is faster and easier.

To cut them I use scissors. I have a fancy paper cutter somewhere but in this case it wouldn't be as much use as it could be. There's a gap between the cards so no matter what the cuts aren't going to be usable right out of the box.

Trimming takes off the bits that were left behind so the cards are nice and clean. I'd have to do this with scissors anyway. Probably. I might be able to do this with the paper cutter too for most of them. I'll have to try that when I find it. But for each page I cut I then carefully trim off any offcuts so the cards are just that card.

I make a decent amount of print and play games so I have a corner rounder punch. You'll notice almost all the cards in games have rounded corners. This is no exception. By rounding the corners the cards suddenly look much nicer.

Magic cards have black edges (mostly) and are printed on black core cardstock. I therefore take a black Sharpie and carefully color the edges so that they're black. I do this on game cards too. I have a bag of colored Sharpies and can edge the cards to match their inks but most of them are black. This step makes a surprising difference in how the cards look. You might want to try it on one of your own games.

The final step is putting them in sleeves. Open the sleeve, slide in the card, push it gently so it's firmly seated in the bottom, put it in the box. Lather, rinse repeat.

I spend a lot of time on this and I don't mind. I like doing print and play stuff. I have the time to spend. I have all the materials here. I did have to buy card sleeves and boxes because what I have here wasn't game appropriate. But that let me spend some money at the local game store so it's not a total waste.

So there it is. I'm one of those people who show up on Friday night to sit around playing cards. Honestly it's not that different than the people who get together to play poker, in my opinion. We're playing cards and having fun.

For everyone who's laughing at me for finally getting sucked into the game you can see where I've kept a bit of my distance. I'm really not going to spend money buying official cards. I just can't deal with that. I'm not kidding about the card prices. There's one I like and I have it in two decks now. The card price is $700. For one card. For a small piece of printed cardboard. People play with proxies for those far more often than the ones that go for $0.05 but for me it's the principle of the thing. I'm not buying into the game any more than absolutely necessary.

I'll get this deck ready tomorrow to use Friday. Hopefully there will be players I like there this week. Otherwise it will wait until they do. I'm not going to jump into another deck type until I've got one or two I'm happy with in green. Then I'll start to branch out. It gives me something to do.

Warhammer 40,000 - Thoughts on the Emperor

 

Let's start this out with a little background. If you're here then you probably already know all this but if you've stumbled on the blog for the other stuff I do this may prove helpful. Summary - Games Workshop created a tabletop wargame set in the year 40,000 (40k) and has a shit-ton of books/lore about the setting. At the top of the heap is the Emperor of Mankind - this dude up here who likes gold armor and stuff I'll talk about later. Before you ask there are no good guys anywhere in the lore. Seriously. No one is good. The genre is 'Grimdark' and it really is both grim and dark.

Now that the base concept is out of the way, let's talk about this guy. Colloquially we refer to him as Big E. There's other versions of that but it's kind of a nickname and also has a bit of snark because of what he is. One big reason for it thought is that we don't know his actual name. The lore (as far as I've read and per the wiki) does not give him a name, at least not yet.

Another concept that wraps around the story is Chaos. That's a whole 'nother universe that is trying to take over this one. That's important for story and game purposes. It's also known formally as the Immaterium and the shorthand version is the Warp. The Warp serves three functions in the game and lore:

1. The source of physic powers
2. Their way to do hyperspace travel
3. To corrupt humanity so that there's bad and other bad guys fighting each other

Side note. If you've ever watched the movie Event Horizon it's mostly canon 40k at this point and the first time humans have encountered the Warp/Chaos. The writers were big 40k fans and after much fan discussion GW just gave in and said that sure, it's canon, go with that. The movie is pretty good so watch it if get the chance.

OK. I think we've got a setup going on here. If you're a lore person this would be the absolute barest introduction to one small section of the larger universe and the jumping off point for far more discussion than anyone into the game - and many who are - would not want to engage in if they had the choice. Because there's also a shit-ton of 30k lore that builds up to 40k lore. Lore enthusiasts who find each other tend to become bestest buddies. I'm an enthusiast and it probably explains why I can't get a date. But I digress.

The Emperor is considered the most powerful psycher (that's their term for someone who can use the Warp for psychic effect) in the universe, has the Perpetual gene so he's immortal, is stupid smart, has an expert understanding of genetic engineering, and doesn't actually give a rat's ass about humanity in general no matter what he says. He's got one friend who's been with him since the start of his real rise to power, who is also a powerful psycher but not immortal by nature. That guys name is Malcador the Sigilite but we won't get into him because he doesn't weave into the part of Big E's story that I'm going to focus on.

The Emperor was born in the Bronze Age of humanity. There's backstory on how he got the powerful psychic powers that's not really important but he knew early on he could do stuff with his mind. He also got the Perpetual gene and a taste for temporal power at the same time. Yes. The dude has been around since the Bronze Age. That gives you an idea how far back the lore goes.

Funny enough GW has been stingy with information about what happened with him between then and the current game era. There's been little throwaway short stories and throwaway references but in general he didn't do much visible stuff in all that time. There's reference to him occasionally showing up to lead parts of humanity but then he wanders off again. Personally I think he was biding his time until he could take complete control. He didn't see the point in being leader of one country because it would make him known to the world in general. It kind of makes sense when he knows he's not going to die any time soon and he's got Big Plans for the future.

Let's jump forward to another period of history that's left vague by GW - the Unification Wars. Earth is a mess, warlords are all over the place trying to grab as much as they can, and Big E finally saw his opportunity. As he worked his way around the planet and took over the various mini empires he also took the relatives of the defeated warlords, gene engineered each of them into his own private army, and moved onto the next.

He also did something not very cool. He made a foot soldier army called the Thunder Warriors. Consider them the Bic lighter version of his future gene engineered warriors known as the Space Marines that the game and lore is so well known for. There's not a lot known about the Thunder Warriors except that they were an experiment that the Emperor knew would be a short term project. After he won the Unification Wars and became the supreme leader, he killed almost all the Thunder Warriors. The official statement is that they died heroically in one last battle. The reality is that he had no more use for them and had them eliminated. A few survived and show up in short stories, etc. But in general they were made a footnote in the story of the empire he was building.

Dude. Not cool. But it's a very good example of his attachment to his creations.

Funny thing. He went into the Warp to learn his advanced genetic engineering and seems to have weaseled out of whatever bargain he made to get them. That matters in a bit in two ways.

So the guy is now top dog of Earth. What's left of Earth after centuries of decay and war but now he's got the power to try to repair that. To his credit he does start doing that, probably for selfish reasons because he wanted a pretty planet to be his home base. With Earth under his control it's time for the next phase in his plan - a universal Empire.

You do have to admit the guy had ambition and the power to back it up. By this time he had his personal guard of bespoke genetic engineered warriors to be his bodyguard and elite strike force. Note the term 'bespoke'. If you aren't familiar with it think 'custom made' since each one was individually genetically engineered using their original bodies.

This is where things get hinkey. He knew he needed to be in more places than one to build an empire and that he needed generals to do what needed to be done. Of course he went the genetic engineering route, using what he learned/stole from Chaos. This was not his finest hour.

Let's introduce Erda. She's not referenced much but she's generally considered the woman who contributed the necessary half of genetic material for the next project. She's also a Perpetual and once her role was done she shook Big E's dust off her feet and went .. somewhere. She's a Perpetual so she's probably still out there but doing her own thing but so far I haven't found anything that says what that is.

If you haven't guessed the lore deals almost entirely with men. This has caused much vitriol in the community. It doesn't help that the game itself started out advertising to teenage boys with their parents' credit cards. It's got a much broader customer base now that those kids have aged into adults with their own disposable income.

Anyway. Onward.

Picking up on his Galactic Empire project Big E decided to make brand new generals. Not just any generals but more or less superhuman generals. Big feckers. Each one of them would have unique qualities for specific areas of his new empire built into their DNA. Well. HIS DNA because of course all the generals were dudes. This time around he made them from scratch, using that nifty knowledge he stole. This was not a good idea.

He made 20 (or 21 depending on whether or not you count the 20th set of twins as one or two, in lore they're considered one) and created a special place where Chaos couldn't get to them. Yeah, right. Chaos got their mitts on them and flung them out into the universe. Now Big E had to find them. But first? He needed his army and this time he didn't want mistakes. The Space Marines were the new ones and while the were assembly line genetics each set was infused with some of the DNA from the Primarch who was going to lead them.

GW is big into pseudo-Latin. They call it Gothic. High and Low Gothic, depending on how formal they're being. There's a bunch of it scattered throughout the lore. Get used to it and if you know actual Latin be prepared to wince a lot.

So Chaos took the incubation pods and sent them to various and sundry worlds. Now the Emperor not only has to build his empire but he has to find these kids to do the jobs they were created to do. As he does he gives them the legion they were meant to head, all of which have already been fighting in the Crusade.

I think you can already see why lore discussion require people who get into the lore itself. It's a rich world that's been created but it's a lot of stuff. And this is just background, mind you.

The Primarchs are gathered up and each one has two things going on:

1. They've all got a touch of Chaos in their makeup. Go figure, given how Chaos knowledge was used to make them
2. They've all taken on qualities from the world where they grew up. Conveniently they went from infants in the incubation pods to adults in stupidly short periods of time

Cue the Galactic Crusade. As you can expect it goes pretty much like any crusade. They find a planet they like, they conquer it. then they remake the society to be what Big E has in mind and make them send resources to fund the Crusade, they move on to the next one. This was happening while the Emperor was looking for his lost sons.

Let's talk about 'sons'. The Primarchs all refer to him as their father. That makes sense given a broad definition of fatherhood. Canonically the Emperor considers them tools for his empire and indulges them by letting them call him father. He honestly doesn't care about them as individuals. It's something that's easily missed since he does call them 'son' when he talks with them so it would be easy to be fooled into thinking he cared about them beyond their usefulness to his wars.

He finds all the Primarchs. He gives each one their legion of Space Marines, all of which are renamed to match up with their new leaders. Then he makes a mistake. Yes, even all powerful guys make mistakes and this one is both valid and a reason for the rest of the lore. His mistake was to leave the Crusade to return to Earth and work on his long term project. He appoints the Primarch designed to be the best general in charge.

This went .. OK. The guy he appointed knew is stuff and with only some resentment the rest of the Primarchs accepted him as the new general. A handful thought they should be the one but overall they dealt with having someone they considered a peer elevated over them. BTW - in the cartoon the Emperor skips the one with the wings to tell him not to fight. That's because the guy with the wings is more or less totally good but still isn't a good guy. After that Big E goes back to Earth and the absolutely massive palace he's building to work on the Secret Project.

Now it's time to summarize because there's dozens upon dozens of books going over the 30k/Horus Heresy situation. Horus is the guy chosen to be general and because he's a fucking idiot he decides that he should rule the empire. One of the higher placed Space Marines has already been dabbling with Chaos and gets him to turn traitor. Fucking Erebus. We all hate Erebus. As part of turning traitor the most psychic of the Patriarchs is convinced he needs to tell the Emperor what's going on and does what he's been told specifically not to do - to use his psychic powers to take him to the palace.

See, the long term project is the remove the need for Chaos from Humanity. There's another way to get from place to place that an alien race has been using for pretty much forever and it's isolated from Chaos. Big E is working on a way to use that and one of his Primarchs was made to keep that way available. That would be Magnus the Red. Who was specifically told to do nothing with is psychic powers. In fact the use of psychic powers by anyone except the Emperor and his buddy Malcador are expressly forbidden. But, fuckin' Erebus.

This is where things go wrong. The Emperor's careful work to connect Humanity with the other way (the Webway) gets kinda borked by Magnus and it just happens to open a hole between the Webway and Chaos. The exact thing that the Webway was set up to avoid. Now more trouble happens since the Emperor has to mitigate that damage.

Wrapping up now. Horus is being very efficient at turning other Primarchs and their legions to Chaos then making war on them and various planets in the current Empire. The Emperor is stuck on Earth using all his psychic power to hold Chaos from coming through the hole Magnus made. And Horus is intent on taking over Earth/Terra from the Emperor.

Whew. That's a lot even as a summary.

Where was I going with this? Back to the Emperor. He's a true emperor in that he doesn't give a damn about the people he's ruling. He really doesn't. He doesn't care about the people living on the planets he conquered except that they pay their tithes. He doesn't care about his Primarchs, who consider him their father. He doesn't care about the Space Marines, leaving them to their Primarchs to handle. He doesn't care about the state of the Crusade he started.

His real concern seems noble - keep the forces of Chaos from meddling with/taking over Humanity. But even that is because he doesn't like Chaos. In theory they would take over Humanity if left unchecked. At least that's what he says. Now he's trapped by his own creation to never leave the control throne so the hole doesn't get breached. The empire he was building is still limping along but the Primarchs are gone (I haven't gotten to the books where most of them were removed - there's a few who have been killed in the 30k stuff). The Space Marines are all over the place, doing Space Marine stuff based on the nature of their Primarchs. Some are loyal, some are chaos, all hate anything that's not human.

The Emperor is stuck on the Golden Throne because he was almost killed in the battle with Horus and his minions dragged him to the throne to keep him alive, for a given definition of alive. He's been there for 10,000 years, holding the forces of Chaos at bay. Except for the ones that the heretic Space Marines have been playing with, and there's a few Primarchs who are over in the Warp being powerful and stuff. He needs a little help in that his priests feed 1,000 people with decent psychic ability to the cause. And literally feed since those 1,000 never come back out of the throne room.

During his (active) lifetime the Emperor denied being a god. He considered religion irrational in general and wiped it out of his empire. That caused some problems with one of the Primarchs but we're not getting into that. He kind of let the technicians on Mars consider him a sort of god so that he got access to all the cool things they were building but never really admitted or denied the whole thing. After he couldn't take an active part in the Empire the people deified him. So now he's a god whether he likes it or not.

Why did I bother to write all this out? 

I have a bit of a fondness for the big guy. There's a ton of fanfic out there about what he did in all the time between the Bronze Age and after the Unification Wars. There's very little canon. Personally I think he laid low, maybe played kingmaker, and let things settle themselves until he saw the time to take the reins for everything. It would make sense since he needed technology to advance to the point to match what he wanted to do. And since he was the next best thing to immortal he could wait it out.

Let's have a brief chat about that immortality thing. He wasn't the only person who had that gene. I mentioned Erda. There's a few others (John Grammaticus! But he's not immortal anymore) that show up in the books/lore and he was friendly with at least one of those people. Being immortal could have a big impact on how he viewed humanity since they never stuck around for long. I'd say he never passed along the Perpetual gene into his creations but the first set of genetic engineered guys seem to last and at least one Primarch has survived well beyond anything someone should survive. The Primarchs are tough but they're not immortal.

More about immortality. It seems that it only goes so far. If the damage is bad enough, it can't stop death. The thing that seems to override it is severe damage to the spinal cord. There's far too many times someone was killed by being broken over someone's knee in general. Far too many. It's kind of a theme and heavy foreshadowing. That's how Horus almost killed the Emperor. Almost and it may have worked if the throne, with its life support capabilities, wasn't conveniently right at hand. Horus was also directly/indirectly responsible for the death of Malcador since he took the throne while the Emperor fought Horus and he wasn't nearly as powerful as Big E so he got sucked dry by the effort.

And what was the Emperor going to do once he carved a hole in the Webway for humanity to use and needed to keep it open? He built Magnus specifically to do nothing but sit on that throne and keep it open. For the rest of time. It's kind of ironic that Magnus did what he did and made it so the Emperor had to take that role. I think it serves the Emperor right.

Afterword

The 40k universe has been devoid of the Primarchs as active participants, has the Space Marine legions either loyal to the Emperor or fallen to Chaos, and alien races of various kinds have been around for all the legions to fight when they're not fighting each other. In lore the planets of the empire are treated pretty badly to the point of eliminating all life on them if someone thinks it's a good idea and they don't figure into the game at all except as an origin point for a couple of sub factions of human soldiers.

The current lore and game have Primarchs returning by various means. What that means for the whole thing I'm not sure about yet and I'm not sure how I feel about it. The Emperor also seems to be waking up so that's going to be a whole new kettle of fish when he finds out what's happened since he was plopped onto the throne. Funny enough the original Emperor's guard has been the biggest deterrent in the empire since they're still the same as when he was around even though they've had to replenish their ranks without him.

As for the various sizes of the groups I mentioned here's something that's vaguely considered canonical.

The Emperor is a tricky one to pin down since he appears however he wants to appear so he's not on the scale. The Primarchs vary in height and the books aren't consistent. The Custodes are generally big. Space Marines (Adeptus Astartes so GW could copyright/trademark the name) are about right although they also vary in height since they all start out as humans before they're upgraded into what's called transhumans. Figure that's a six foot/almost 2 meter tall human because they're noted as chest high or shorter than the Space Marines.

Attribution

The top artwork is uncredited because I can't find the original artist.

All the cartoons are the work of emwattnot and I dearly love those. However if you're not into the lore most of them won't make sense and/or be as funny. He uses current memes as a base for a lot of them, as you can tell.

The size reference is attributed to Tim Remin but he's not on Patreon anymore it seems.

I used the fan created Warhammer 40,000 Wiki for the bits and pieces where I needed to get things in order.

The 'Common' Language in RPGs - Some Thoughts

 

Disclaimer. I'm not a linguist. I'm not a sociologist. I'm not any kind of '=ist'. What I am is someone who plays different RPGs and discusses them online. I know that makes me a geek/nerd but I'm not sure if it makes me anything else.

There was a bit of a discussion about having a common language in a game setting. Most of them do for the purpose of having an easy way for everyone to talk without a problem. Very rarely do PCs not have Common as a default language and very very rarely does even the most basic village not speak Common. Anyone else find it weird that there's a single language that everyone in the world seems to understand?

That got me thinking about the situation and what shenanigans could happen if Common wasn't what players expected. That's what this post is about.

It would make more sense that Common was more of a trade language than a full featured one and that's a pidgin language by definition. There may be some negative connotations to the word (or not) but it seems like it would be the best way to consider Common, if we were looking at it from a more real world viewpoint.

That would mean a lot of things in a role playing game. Characters would only get to express complex ideas in full languages. Entertainers would be in various languages. Everyone would be stuck for conversation if they were in an area where no one spoke the local language.

Now this might be a really fun way to role play. I can see a game of telephone through several people as they translate more complex statements. Frasier had a bit of that in one episode and it worked very well for comedic effect. The same thing can happen in game but only if one of the links is an NPC. Otherwise the translation is flawless unless the players decide to muck it up. It would make the game longer and after a few times it would get tedious, maybe.

I like the idea of keeping Common as a strict, basic language. Having the players reformulate their questions into simpler language would be quite fun occasionally. Having them do the telephone translation thing would also be fun occasionally. It would certainly keep them on their toes and remind them that they're out in a much larger world.

It would take GM planning to make it work. Having a local NPC that speaks one of the languages negates the telephone aspect since they can talk to them directly. Having another adventurer that has the bridge languages can do it. Rolling for accuracy will also help with how well the translation chain works.

It's something to think about in a game. How does it work when the characters are in a location where there is no common language they share with the locals and no single person can translate within their group? It's tricky but it can be done. It takes the right setting, the right location, and the right group.

That 'right group' is the other variable. You need to be sure the group is going to find the game of telephone as engaging as you might. If you know one of the players is going to flip the table at an extended attempt to get information they feel should be a simple question and answer session then you may need to set it aside. If the rest of the group is having then then that player needs to sit down and accept that the game isn't all about them. As with so many things it's up to the GM to balance it based on the players.

I would never expect my players to actually speak in that form of Common. I'd be their guide to let them know when they need to rephrase things more simply and to give occasional incorrect answers based on the questions. But it's like asking the bard to actually perform when they say they're going to do it. Players are not characters and should not be expected to be able to do what the characters can do.

Anyway. Think about it and how you might want to use a less built out Common language in your game. To learn more about it, since GMs tend to have very odd search histories, here's a link to the Wikipedia article about Pidgin so you can get a feel for what it is and what it isn't. That may help you decide if you want to bring it into your game or not.

I don't recommend thinking of it as Esperanto. Just .. don't.