I haven’t mentioned this before because I was embarrassed.

But it’s time to come clean.

After

Here’s what my car looks like now. Pretty good, eh? Thanks to Scotty’s Body Shop I’m all good to go. They did a great job and did it quickly. Their office manager, Curtis, even went above and beyond by ordering my bumper cover early just so I’d have it done quickly. I really appreciate it.

Contrary to my previous tweet, I suppose I will post a before picture.

Before

Note the giant cracks in the bottom.

The first time my car got fixed by Shaffer’s in Ames they did a real shit job of it. The bottom was wavy and droopy so it’d get caught on curbs and parking stops all the time. Eventually it got bad enough that the underside would pull out when I backed up, causing the huge cracks. To add to the fun, State Farm left me twisting in the wind in terms of paying another deductible to re-fix the problem.

Enter Scotty’s Body Shop. They came highly recommended according to my best friend, Google. So I went in for a free estimate. From the very start their employees were eager to make sure I was well taken-care of. They explained the process of dealing with State Farm, how they were going to order parts, and even how they were going to have to have the damage reassessed. I’m pretty particular about my car and I really appreciated the attention paid to make sure I understood everything. That’s not to say they treated me like a dumbass; they were all respectful and seemed to be honestly pleased to help me.

I really have no frame of reference for this level of service. I don’t ever want to get into a car accident or have anything go wrong with my car again. But if it does happen, I won’t waste a second deciding where to go.

A while ago I tried out all the android podcast apps I could find and settled on BeyondPod. Overall it’s pretty good but there’s a few niggling bugs I don’t like. My girlfriend would like to get into listening to podcasts at work and I’m not 100% sure I want to recommend BeyondPod to her without re-checking the competition. Ease of use and a minimal requirement for library-maintenance are primary concerns. So with that in mind, let’s get started.

I did a quick search on Appbrain for podcast catchers and jotted down anything that looked promising. The process of trying some of these apps out is going to be hampered by the ridiculous new 15 minute android market return policy, but I’ll do my best to give them a good going-through when I can.

DoggCatcher ($6.99)

DoggCatcher bills itself as “the premier podcatcher for Android devices” and there’s plenty of reasons to believe them. Paying $7 off the bat with no free trial version (and the afore-mentioned 15 minute window) is a bit of a stumbling block. But plenty of people have taken the plunge and a lot of them seem happy. Looking over the feature list on their site I see plenty I like: automatic podcast cleanup, automatic playlist, highly configurable, and frequent updates.

I finally bit the bullet to try DoggCatcher. The 15 minute window is really a pain in the ass here. I’ve had the app for about 9 minutes and so far i’ve managed to download 55% of the most recent Car Talk episode.

The UI is amazing. It looks really slick and has a sort of intuitiveness that BeyondPod lacks. I really like the minimum number of screens you have to wade through to get into the media player. There’s just a Feeds screen and a Downloads screen. Oh, and there’s playback controls on the bottom of both of them. Nice.

The Add a Podcast menu is great. There’s a nice scrolling menu of all your options including several podcast directories, recommendations, youtube, NPR, a direct RSS feed entry, OPML/XML import, and more.

The Playing screen is sort of hidden. On the main screen there are tabs for audio, video, news, and a filter. I assumed these were just filters for the feeds shown. Actually they wisk you away to a player for that type of media.

There’s no real playlist management to speak of. On the audio playing screen you can choose to sort by feed and then date, or just date. I actually like that. BeyondPod, my current player, has a very flexible playlist setup, but it’s kind of a pain to have to design a playlist and manually change the order when all I really want to do is play all my podcasts, oldest to newest. If you really need to rearrange your playlist, you can do it by long-pressing on an item and moving it.

There’s a 4×1 playback widget (4 icons wide, 1 tall) to control playback from the home screen. Pretty standard faire.

One pain point is that after I added a podcast it took a bit to figure out how to actually get it to download the podcasts. By default Doggcatcher is set to not download anything. I can understand not wanting to waste space, but really, isn’t downloading podcasts the point? In the settings you can specify how many podcasts to download by default. You can also specify per-feed. But you have to go look for the setting.

I guess I’m going to give DoggCatcher a bit of a longer workout. I really like it. Well, also I went over Google’s new 15 minute trial window. D’oh! Seriously Google, 15 minutes? what the hell. But really, I do like it.

Hapi Podcast (Free)

This looks pretty rough. The spelling errors on the description page notwithstanding (the author appears to be a non-native speaker, so I can cut him some slack), it appears to be rather feature-poor. The changelog shows a lot of activity, so that’s promising.

Aside from the obtuse engrish in the interface, it looks clean with nice icons. I don’t like the options for downloaded podcast deletion (At least I think deletion, it’s called ‘expiration’ in the UI). The shortest I can set a played file to stick around is 2 hours. The longest I can set an unplayed file to stick around is 1 month, which isn’t long enough for those of us who like to catch up on new podcasts from the beginning. I have no idea what setting the expiration on undownloaded files means. You need to specify that the podcasts should be downloaded for each podcast you add after you’ve added it. I don’t really understand that. Why am I adding this podcast if I don’t want to download it?

Hapi Podcast lets you import/export OPML files which is great for those of us migrating from other podcast managers.

The UI is inconsistent in its implementation of standard Android UI elements. For example, on the main screen the menu button does nothing. The settings menu is right in the main screen instead. Sure, putting things out in the open is nice, but ignoring UI conventions isn’t. It should be in the menu too.

I can’t recommend this one right now. Maybe in a while after the developer has had some time to add features and to localize it into English a bit more.

PodKast (Free)

The UI looks a bit cluttered but it is made by the guys behind Androlib so it’s probably worth a shot.

The App is named with a period at the beginning so it shows up first in your App drawer. Sure it’s cute, but do we really want app developers clogging our screens up with “…………..My App” in a ridiculous analogue to the “AAAA towing” phonebook phenomenon?

Podkast wants to stream podcasts by default and the only way I can see to download a particular podcast episode is to tap the disk icon while listening. That alone disqualifies it for me; I don’t want to have my data connection up and running all day long. Also there doesn’t seem to be a way to create a playlist, either automatically or manually. You must simply listen to an episode and then choose another one. Not very good for long listening sessions like a commute or while working.

The app loves to pollute my notification bar with spam too. I don’t care about the latest news from Magma Mobile (the developers). I tried PodKast because I figured the creators of a popular android website couldn’t be too bad. And now I’ve changed my mind about them.

BeyondPod (Free trial/$6.99 Full Version)

BeyondPod is free for 7 days, and then $7 thereafter. The way BP gets around Google’s 15 minute trial window is that BP itself is a free download. After 7 days it will stop working. There is a separate app you have to download which is just an unlock key. Once you get that BeyondPod works again. It’s a nifty tactic that several app developers use. I hope more move over to that model.

I paid my $7 for beyondpod quite a while ago. It had the best feature set at the time and has grown. Perhaps not as fast as the competition; it doesn’t see updates very frequently. There is an active google-groups for it, and I posted a question to it just now so we’ll see how fast the response is there.

As far as usage go, it provides a decent UI. Having to swipe back and forth between the various categories, feeds, items, podcasts, and finally the player is a bit much, though. When opening BeyondPod the wait during the “Loading Feeds” screen is excessive. I’m not sure what it’s loading, but couldn’t it just dump me into the player and load that in the background?

There’s a 4×1 playback widget for your home screen. I don’t use it because it has the same problem as the main UI; when you hit the play button for the first time it has to wait 5-10 seconds while it loads up all your feeds when all you really want is to play a podcast. That’s not worth 4 icons’ worth of space to me. I just have the regular app icon to open up BP’s regular UI.

I recently started using Tasker on my phone. It’s a tool which lets you automate a lot of things. Anyhow, BeyondPod has a plugin for tasker which allows you to directly control it. So, for example, I set tasker up to start BP playing my playlist at 6:34 a.m. monday through friday. That’s pretty nice.

Update: During the few days I’ve been working on this article BeyondPod came out with a couple of updates. The first made the Now Playing UI look nice and modern-androidy and a few video features I’ll never use. The second fixed some bugs introduced in the first one. And I still have some bugs with it not responding. The great news is the developer is very responsive on the beyondpod google groups. I don’t think my problem is indicative of problems for “normal” users who are running the version of android supplied for their phone.

Warning, Android nerdery ahead!

His hunch is that the latest version of his app is compiled against the Android 2.3 SDK and that it’s somehow not working with 3rd-party ROMs (myself and another user who reported bugs are running Cyanogenmod 6.1.2). He compiled a version against the Android 2.2 SDK and gave us a link to the APK. So far it’s been working fine for me, but I’ve only had it for a day or so. I’m going to keep him updated of how it’s going.

Android nerdery over. On to the next victim!

Car Cast Podcast Player (Free/$1.99 Donation)

“Car Cast is a simple podcast downloader/player” says the website, and I have to agree. It offers no automatic downloading, no automatic media management, and doesn’t seem to be able to load feeds which aren’t in its search database. I’m going to recommend a skip on this one.

MyPOD Podcast Manager (Free/$3.14 Full Version)

The developer unabashedly claims his app’s UI isn’t very good, but it’s got a lot of unique features. The player screen is very cluttered by the dual playback feature (you can listen to a podcast and music at the same time for some insane reason). It does offer a cool web-based control system so you can remote control your podcast playback via computer. The idea here is that you’d have your phone plugged into the stereo and maybe you’re across the room at your computer and want to change tracks.

It also allows you to add RSS feeds straight from your computer with this mechanism. Though, I have to add, that feature can be had with other properly developed podcast players (such as beyondpod) via chrometophone, foxtophone, etc.

I do like that you can configure your media storage based on free space; i.e. you can tell MyPOD to only use up a certain amount of space or you can tell it to always leave a certain amount of free space. Neat.

Given the garish and clunky UI and the fact that your average podcast listener (I assume my girlfriend will be one of those) won’t use the web UI or dual-player features, I’m going to recommend a pass on this one too.

PodTrapper Podcast Manager ($7.99)

Apparently this app is a big deal in the Blackberry world. Note that you can get a 30 day free trial by visiting their official website linked above.

This thing is insanely configurable. I do like the addition of a wake timer; something beyondpod lacks. The UI is spartan as all get-out. It’s just white text on a black background with little to no flourishes save a consistent header. I really like it. It’s responsive and though the settings menu is a daunting list of buttons I find the rest of the UI pleasingly simple.

Having finally downloaded an episode of a podcast (damn me for listening to long shows) I finally see the downside of the simple UI. The playing screen is atrocious. The buttons are labeled with characters rather than pictures, e.g. “<<” rather than a rewind icon. The menu has two stop entries; I can’t tell what the difference is, nor why they’d be in there anyhow. There’s also a “Fix Player” entry. No idea what that’s for. I don’t see a way to automatically enqueue episodes either.

These downsides are unfortunate. I was ready out of the gates to lambaste PodTrapper for costing $8 and sucking royally. The truth is it doesn’t suck. I really like the UI and the mega-customizability. I really really want to love this app. The bad UI in the player and apparent lack of automatic playlist creation is what does it in for me. Maybe in a couple more versions they’ll have that sewn up.

Since you can get a 30 day trial at their website I say go give it a shot. Maybe you’ll love the UI as much as I do and can forgive the player screen.

Google Listen (Free)

I tried this out a while back and found it lacking a lot of features I consider must-have. It seems to have gone through a few iterations since then so another shot is warranted.

There isn’t an option to automatically make a playlist; you have to manually queue individual podcast episodes to be listened to. That’s a big red mark for my usage, and I imagine for people who listen to more than a few podcasts. I’m not sure what Listen does when I’ve listened to a podcast (does it stick around forever? Delete it? How does it know when to delete them?) so I’m not sure I can trust it as my podcasting app.

I do like the simplicity of the UI (though I fear much of that simplicity is bought at the cost of features). I also like the integration with Google Reader; the idea of managing my podcast subscriptions along with my reader subscriptions on my desktop computer is tempting. Ultimately, though, I imagine this will be good in a few iterations but right now so soon after launch it’s going to have to be a pass.

Verdict

If you actually want to listen to podcasts instead of dabbling you’ve got 2 options. BeyondPod and Doggcatcher. As a total Google fanboy, I’d love to recommend Listen, but it just isn’t complete as far as I’m concerned.

Beyondpod is an app tweaker’s paradise. Just about every setting I would ever want to tweak is in there, as well as Tasker integration (Doggcatcher doesn’t have direct Tasker integration yet. It’s on his agenda to add, though). That flexibility is a hinderence, though. I don’t think most people will zealously organize their podcasts into dozens of categories with independent (but non overlapping!) update schedules. And when you don’t do that, you just end up lumping everything into one category, as I did. Every podcast is Entertainment to me! So I have a totally useless screen (the category screen) and a lot of places it shows the podcast’s category, wasting the space. While I use BP’s SmartPlay feature (to manually setup my playlist), I don’t think it’s really necessary. I’d much rather just have it play them all in order. Needing 5-15 seconds to start up (or longer, yikes) and then having to navigate 2-3 pages to actually get to the part where I can hit play is a bit much.

Doggcatcher feels much more responsive than BeyondPod. The UI is much cleaner because unneeded features like categories and a nitpicky playlist management interface just aren’t there. When I hit the play button on the widget or start the application up directly I hear my podcasts right away. It pains me to say it, but after using BP for quite a while that sort of speed feels like a feature.

Both BeyondPod and Doggcatcher feature OPML import/export and each can play the files on your SDcard as though they were a podcast. That makes the process of migrating from one to the other less painful; I can set up Doggcatcher with the podcasts from BP and then queue up my unlistened podcasts from my sdcard. Or vice versa.

Do this: Go to the android market and download BeyondPod. It is a 7 day free trial and $7 after that. Try it out for a few days. If you’re not 100% in love, download Doggcatcher. You have to pay $7 up front, but I bet you’ll decide you like it within the 15 minute trial.

As for me, I’m switching to Doggcatcher.

I am on drugs.

The problem with personal problems is that they’re so goddamned personal. Some problems you assume you’re the only person suffering so you’re embarrassed to ask for help. Does all the snot run to one side of your head and plug up only one of your nostrils when you lay on your side? Yeah it does for everyone, bub. Some problems you think are just normal so you don’t even contemplate getting help. Mine fall into the latter category.

A few years ago I started seeing a therapist about some of my problems. It came out eventually that I have social anxiety. I get worried about social situations, in other words. This is probably news to many of you; I come across as gregarious and fully at home around you, don’t I? In situations where I was comfortable I was fine, otherwise I was a terrified mess. Throwing a party at my place (my place is a-ok!) was no problem, including any newcomers who showed up. Going in to a see a doctor was horrifying. Doing things I’d done before and often (going to Dining Service at college, going to Hy Vee) were no problem. Doing new things like entering a new store or restaurant were maddeningly difficult.

I developed coping mechanisms. I avoided anxiety-provoking activities. I latched on to a few friends whose presence made doing new things possible.

At one point in college I began skipping classes. All of them. For about a month the only places I went were my dorm room and the dining hall. As time went on my anxiety worsened. “What will they say when I go back?” Eventually the problem went away on its own. Or rather, just receded into the background. I continued on with my life unaware that I even had a problem.

Another problem would soon come to the forefront of my mind. I thought about death a lot. Don’t worry, I wasn’t suicidal. In fact I was as far in the opposite direction as possible. I didn’t want to die. At all. Ever. I was so worried that I would die someday. When I saw something that reminded me of sickness, death, infirmity, or old age, I’d be momentarily paralyzed with fear of my own mortality.

I can’t remember what prompted it, but eventually I dedicated myself to telling my doctor. The problem with my anxiety is that it’s self-sabotaging. Asking for help is mind-meltingly difficult when your problem is that you can’t do things you don’t normally do, like asking for help. I made a list to force myself to commit to asking the doctor. During what my doctor thought was a routine physical (no way in hell could I mention this on the phone to the receptionist as the reason for my visit). I was so worried the doctor would think I was just trolling her for drugs, or that she wouldn’t believe me, or that she’d tell me to just suck it up and deal with it on my own.

I just took a deep breath and blurted it out:

“I want to talk about depression.”

I thought I had depression. Probably I do. I was referred to a therapist and we had weekly sessions. Eventually we decided that what I have is social anxiety disorder. I wish I could quote her exactly, but she took the time to look up and read the definition aloud and I was so relieved that it fit me to a tee.

We decided to try a mild dose of Zoloft to help. You probably know it from the commercials with the little guy sad because he’s rained on all the time. There’s a class of antidepressant medicines called SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) which are prescribed for depression, anxiety, OCD, and that sort of stuff.

It worked great. I was feeling better. I was doing better in my social life. I was doing better at work.

Then I got fired and lost my insurance coverage.

That time really sucked. I fell into a depression, ran out of money, and wallowed for quite a while. After getting a new job and some insurance I found a new doctor in Des Moines. (Obviously I couldn’t go back to my old doctor or old therapist. What would they think? How would they react?)

As an aside, I go to Dr. Marvin Huff at Johnston Family Physicians. He is really nice, respectful, and knowledgeable. If you’re seeking a doctor I strongly recommend giving them a call and setting up an appointment. He’s also really good with kids from what I see and hear.

He got me back on sertraline (Zoloft is available in generic) right away and it helped out.

I kept having problems at work. It was hard to get assignments done and I would abandon tasks in the middle to do other things. ADD is one of those things that people joke about having when they’re feeling harried. But what if you actually had it? What would it be like?

At home I’d often find extra tasks to do when I entered a room. Here’s an example: I want to make some tea. I go upstairs and put water and a teabag in the microwave. I notice the dishwasher is clean so I put some dishes away. There’s some pantry items left out on the counter so I take those over to our shelves and store them. Oh, there’s some seldom-used kitchen gadgets on the dining-room table so I put them in boxes to take upstairs. The dog bowls are empty so I fill them up. Man I could use a drink, so I grab a diet coke out of the fridge. The microwave goes off.

Yeah, that actually happens. I thought I was being efficient; finding things to do while I was up and around. Turns out I just was getting distracted. I often just stop talking in the middle of sentences when I think of something else. When working on a long task at work at the first sign of difficulty or a decision that had to be made I’d stop and do something else. Like browse the internet. When your job relies on being on a computer with a working internet connection that’s a problem. It’s like a sex addict working the bar at a strip club.

I just started a low dose of Adderall XR. Its in generic too but I can’t remember the name of it off-hand. It’s an ADHD medication that works via stimulating the brain. It’s actually a very low dose of kinds of amphetamines. Speed. Neat, huh?

I’ve only been on this for 5 days so I hesitate to call it a roaring success so early. However, I feel a lot better. I’m more alert; no more slogging through my day half asleep as i used to. I don’t fall victim to distractions as easily and when I come to a hard part of a job at work I just…do it. Seriously folks, I’ve gotten so much work done this week. I feel great about it.

I am looking forward to being able to do some of the stuff I used to. I used to be able to play long-form RPGs (like the final fantasy series). Recently I couldn’t get past a day or so of playing due to distraction. I used to be able to program for fun. Now maybe I can finish up some of the half dozen half-done projects I’ve started. The toilet used to be the only place I could read due to a built-in time limit. Now I hope to start in on the gigantic stack of unread books I’ve piled up over the years. I used to share my thoughts more frequently via blogging. I feel like I can again.

My dosage might not be right yet. I do feel myself getting distracted somewhat still. Of course perfect concentration isn’t normal either. I will have to talk to my doctor about it because frankly I don’t know what a normal level of concentration is any more.

I do have occasional headaches. I don’t know if that’s from the Adderall or because I’ve had a head cold the past few days. If it’s really a side effect it’s worth it. Another side-effect is decreased appetite. It’s not just that I’m not hungry; I feel full. Losing some weight would be a welcome bonus so I don’t mind at all.

Now to clear up the misconceptions.

I am not a zombie.

My personality isn’t changed.

I am not just using these drugs for extra advantages.

And I certainly couldn’t just “deal with it” and live a full and happy life without treatment.

Mental disorders are a touchy subject for some people. Some armchair psychiatrists declare that it’s all made-up or just a cynical ploy by drug companies to manufacture illness (and then treat it). Since they deal with all of their problems without “resorting” to drugs, they reason, we are cheating or something. If you’re feeling the slightest bit judgmental (I doubt you’ve read this far) please consider this: I am likely not your only friend on antidepressants or ADHD medication. People you already love, trust, and rely on are on antidepressants or ADHD medication.

We are doing much better with the medical intervention that we’d be doing without. And everyone deserves a chance to live a somewhat normal, somewhat happy, somewhat productive life.

If you think you need help or would like to do some research on your own, please check out these resources rather than your local quack:

• For reliable information on depression, ADHD, anxiety, or anything else, search http://www.webmd.com/.
• If you are feeling suicidal, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. They can help.
• If you want to chat personally with someone who’s going through a little bit of the same stuff you might be, give me a call.

The game, err movie is just pandering to video game players. Why? Simple. The story might even stand on its own without it. It just adds a distracting layer so a significant portion of the audience can exclaim “HEY THEY LIKE THAT THING THAT I LIKE!” And no, you can’t excuse their pandering just because it happens to pander to something you like. That’s not “not pandering”. That’s pandering working.

And listen, it’s not like video games are a cult phenomenon any more. Anyone under the age of 40ish grew up playing video games and probably still does. So it’s not some big in-joke. It’s just a ploy to make you like an otherwise uninteresting movie.

The fighting was alright the first time. The rest of the battles (aside from the botb 5&6) were just more of the same. The movie was repetitive in that respect. I understand that the filmmaker’s hands were pretty tied in that respect; the comic is about 7 evil exes and cutting several out would have made you comic nerds howl. The movie spent too much time on the Scott-Knives story. I think she would have been fine with a text blurb like the rest of the cast is introduced and the film started when he met Ramona.

Ramona. Aside from being pretty, she has no redeeming qualities as a character. She’s just there, taking up space and being a walking (seldom) talking macguffin. The audience gets no compelling reason whatsoever to like her. Even at the end of the movie I couldn’t bring myself to give a tiny squirt of a shit about what ultimately ends up happening to her, and I have diarrhea all the damn time. She, as a character, manages to make Michael Cera’s Scott Pilgrim seem interesting.

As for Michael Cera, well, I can’t really blame him. See, I’ve reflected on this and I can’t actually blame him as a bad actor. Because he’s not an actor. To be an actor you have to pretend to be someone else; to act. Michael Cera has only 1 character and that’s Michael Cera. By god I hope that’s an act, but I fear it isn’t.

Now, there’s plenty of people like that. One such fellow is Chris Rock. In every movie he’s in he is essentially Chris Rock. That’s fine if you like him. I do. It’s torture if you don’t. Michael Cera is just awkward and unfunny. Oh, and he doesn’t have any other skills. Rock is at least a comedian too.

Pilgrim, like Ramona, gives us little in terms of character arc. You can’t just write on the screen video-game HUD style that Scott learned self-esteem. That’s lazy cheating.

What did I like? The Culkin brother was pretty funny. The supporting cast in general is top notch. The chick from parks & rec was great. And sure, Cera pulls off a few good funny moments here and there. But not enough to warrant a rewatch and certainly not enough to warrant a full-price theater viewing.

Box art

Been looking forward to this since I heard about it. Dungeon Lords is a worker-placement board game where the players are competing evil dungeon lords who each have to dig out tunnels, build rooms, buy traps, and hire monsters for their dungeons. Every year some hapless adventurers come to conquer your dungeon. Obviously that ain’t gonna happen.

Game Contents

So far this is the bitsiest game I own. And it’s the bitsiest game I’ve played. Now, I know you may be ready to argue this point, but hear me out. Sure something like Arkham Horror may have more bits in total, but they are easily categorized and not a pain to deal with. The array of baubles, cardboard, and chits contained in this box are a nightmare of special cases. In other words, awesome.

Some highlights: The first thing you notice are the imps. They’re very well detailed, each about 1cm tall and cast in orange plastic. Very cute looking. The art overall is top-notch. While it makes the game boards look a little busy, the intricate and humorous background art really sets the mood.

Some lowlights: As I said before the boards are a bit busy and there’s a lot of setup to get all of those bits into their appropriate piles and places.  Since each player has their own board and there’s 3 (three!) central boards we’re talking a full banquet table for the 4-player game. In one session we managed to squeeze it onto a card table, but there was a lot of stuff sitting precariously close to the edge of the table.

Dungeon Lords tamed via tackle box

I’ve recently become a convert to the fishing tackle box method of game storage. The local Walmart had a plano tackle box that fit just right in there. The customizable compartments made it pretty easy to get all the various cards and chits to behave.

Gameplay

It’s very similar to Agricola and Stone Age. The players take turns placing their minion figures (minions, imps, monsters, and ghosts are all separate things) from their own boards onto a central board indicating which actions they will take. This is all done by a roborally-type of order placement where you have to choose which options you’re going to do up front and can’t react as your opponents place their minions. Over all I really like these mechanics together. It cuts down on the analysis paralysis since everything has to be chosen up front. And since there’s 3 slots for each action there’s little chance you’ll get totally screwed out of performing your action (not like that damn sow fields action in Agricola).

So basically you do this 4 times (once per season), digging rooms, recruiting imps, mining for gold, buying food, hiring monsters, etc. After the first year you’re attacked by some adventurers. I really like how this feels like two games in one. First you’ve got the dungeon building part, then the good guy killing part. The adventurers follow predetermined rules for what they’re going to do so there’s a lot of strategy in choosing which monsters to use and how those monsters are going to attack. The big downside is it’s really easy to be totally unprepared for the adventurers; in each game I’ve played so far there was at least one new player who got totally rocked by the adventurers.

After your 4 seasons then attack cycle you do it again. In the second year there’s a few minor differences, chiefly that the adventurers and monsters are tougher. That’s it. You only get to play two years. Now, I know it’ll sound silly saying this about a 2 hour game, but it really feels like the game should take longer. Maybe 3 years? After everyone knows how to play the game really speeds up, at least.

Oh, one last mechanic I like: The evilometer. As you progress throughout the game your current reputation is tracked on a ladder with the rest of the players. If you get too evil a paladin (a super strong adventurer who can do everything) will come to your dungeon with the adventurers to kick some evil ass (yours). There’s several points in the game where the evilometer matters; when assigning adventurers (the most evil gets the strongest) and so on.

Scoring / Wrapup

The end of the game works very similar to Agricola, carcassonne, and lots of “Euro” type games. Everyone plays to the end and the winner is determined by an exciting round of math. You get points based on how big your dungeon is, how much remains unconquered, and you get penalized for conquered rooms and failure to pay taxes. Bonuses are handed out based on a trophy system; the evilest player is the “Lord of the Dark Deeds”, et cetera. Gretyl, a fellow Central Iowa Board Gamer Anonymous member, suggested making victory point chits to hand out during the game to alleviate the pain of last-minute math. I like that idea. Despite the utter bitsiness of the game there is room in the box for more stuff once a tackle box is shoehorned in there to wrangle the bits and cards. The idea of making tangible trophies is also intriguing. I’m thinking of the same scale as the D&D figures.

I really like this game. It’s got a very fun theme that permeates the whole play. I enjoy all of the little fiddly bits and there’s a great deal of satisfaction in moving all of your little guys around to do things. As I said before, scoring is an opportunity that I look forward to fixing. The game time is a bit long, especially for a game night where more people might show up mid-game. But at the same time I keep wishing it were longer. In the end, you have no choice. If you’re a regular of our game nights I’m going to make you play this. Often.