The Gladdest of Grads (or "Things Going from Sad to Nurse")

To be clear, very few people have an easy time at university, but I feel Glory's time spent working towards her BScN deserves some context and clarification.

Despite being a smart cookie and hard worker, our youngest has never been particularly academically oriented. Her apprehension during testing meant requesting accommodations during high school, and despite the pandemic demolishing her plans for grad, it also meant no provincial exams that year, which gave her a much better shot at getting into the nursing program at MacEwan.

It is a pretty demanding program that combines rigorous coursework with practical experience right from the first year, which sees the second semester divided between labs taught by experienced nurses and actual experience in clinical or hospital settings.

Glory took to the work side of things right away, but often found the theoretical side challenging, particularly in second year. Courses like anatomy and pathophysiology required massive, massive amounts of rote memorization (an 80 minute lecture could easily contain 75+ PowerPoint slides, all of which had potential exam questions) and frankly, some instructors were not even good humans, let alone quality teachers.

But to her credit, she pushed on, spending many late nights studying, and I remember her coming downstairs with tears of relief streaming down her face, unable to speak, and simply handing me her phone to show me she had received a passing grade in Anatomy.

Statistics was another immense hurdle for Glory and her bestie Brooklyn alike. You cannot memorize your way through this kind of applied mathematics, and it was a struggle that also carried very high stakes, as some of their courses in the very next semester required Stats as a pre-requisite. Worse still, Brooklyn had attempted the course on two prior occasions, and not completing on the third try might require her to withdraw from the program and reapply the following year.

They pushed themselves (and each other) to their limits in their studying, but they likely would not have passed except for the patient tutoring by Fenya's then fiancée (now ex-husband) Bobby. The six weeks prior to their writing the final, he practically lived at our kitchen table (working on his own doctorate), all three of them busy on their laptops. Watching the illumination (satori, if you will) on the girls' expressions after Bobby explained something in a way that not only made more sense to them but resonated intrinsically was a real treat, and I will always be grateful to my former son-in-law for this.

After writing their final Stats exam, Glory and Brook looked at each other, admitted neither one had any idea whatsoever if they dad passed or not, then burst into tears. Brooklyn made a point of capturing their woeful expressions in a selfie, truly caught between laughing and crying, and captioned it "Nursing school = torture."

But on the day Bobby and Fenya got married and had their reception in our backyard, the girls shared the news that they had passed, and he leapt out his lawn chair to rush and congratulate them, at least as thrilled as they were.

Following a practicum on the palliative ward at Grey Nuns hospital that featured ups and downs like any workplace does (as well as her first exposure to shiftwork); Glory was confirmed as a graduand and attended the ceremony with her school chums this past Wednesday at the Winspear.

This group of wonderfully random individuals met in just as random a fashion on the very first day of classes, and have stuck together through the past four years. They also took part in a group trip to Mexico in April that I hope will reinforce their friendships for years to come.

On Wednesday though, it was all about reflecting on the hard work and dedication that had taken them through to collecting their degrees, and celebrating the end of schoolwork (but not of learning!).

We took Glory out to Tiki Tiki that evening to celebrate, and then she and Brooklyn got together with many of her classmates at another's home.

Note: only one drink (Zombie w/ flamingo) is hers

The next day though, Brooklyn and her mum dropped by the house to drop off a very special present that might have encapsulated the entire nursing school experience better than anything else:

I am so happy I was upstairs from work having my lunch when they stopped in so I could hear Glory's reaction! (Although she has confessed that seeing her tearstained face every time she opens that cupboard is not necessarily ideal...)

Try as I might, I don't think I can convey in words just how proud I am of this kid. Having been there at the moments of stress and seeing her feeling completely overwhelmed as well as all the smaller triumphs that paved the way for her receiving her degree, Glory has displayed a resolve and determination that I feel vaguely envious of. She has legitimately pushed herself for these past four years, through late nights, wearying nights of studies and coursework punctuated by laughter and tears alike, summer and spring courses and uncertainty about her instructors, her marks and her choice of careers.

But buoyed up by her friends and reinforced by good teams in her practicum placements, Glory has come through and last Wednesday got to cross the stage in front of the chancellor and faculty with her Bachelor of Science (Nursing) degree.

My youngest is now only one exam away from becoming a true Registered Nurse. She has scheduled to write he NCLEX or National Council Licensure Examination in late July and is feverishly studying for it even now).

In the meantime though, for me, this smile says it all (even if the pic is blurry): 

Congratulations, Glorianna! We are all so very proud of your achievement.

G&G XIX: Axes, Battletech, and Formula Dé

A few things conspired to keep us from filling the schedule as much as we would have liked at Gaming & Guinness XIX: not one but two Stanley Cup Final games, the host's brohter getting concussed at a football game, a spasmodic back, and several issues associated with aging (exacerbated by sleep deprivation, spicy food and, in some cases, alcohol consumption that bordered on the heroic).

In fact, on Friday night no one stayed up past 11:30 -  a first for G&G, I am confident.

But our motivation for turning in early was good, as Saturday was actually a very full day, beginning with axe throwing.

We made out way to  Axe Monkeys on the North side by 10:30, taking advantage of their "Rise n Shine Saturdays" BOGO offer. Despite having many newbies in the crew, we managed to get seven people landing shots with decent consistency after about twenty minutes of practice. We had one side of the facility practically to ourselves, with only two people per lane, so we could keep up a good chucking pace.

Legit bullseye scored by Earl J Woods

Even if you don't hit a bullseye, the satisfaction of landing a hatchet with a beefy 'thock' into the two-and-a-half-foot wide tree cookies that serve as target is reward enough.

And sometimes, missing a target in a creative manner is its own special treat.

Rob didn't even say he meant to do that

Best of all, we had time afterwards to try throwing some unconventional objects, like a circular saw blade...

...or this absolute beast of three axeheads welded together:

And although we played a couple of different games, mostly it was fun to get out of the house and do something a little unusual together.

After lunch, Jeff and Scott set up what I think is the largest and densest Battletech table we have seen to date, and we finally played out our long-speculated matchup between bipedal battle robots and conventional tanks.

Now, classic Battletech has a fantastic equalization system built in if you are using equal tonnages per side, but a) that doesn't take into consideration the enormous mobility advantage the 'mechs have over tracked vehicles, and b) it can lead to boring and bog-standard knock-down drag out battles.

I had proposed having the 'mechs run a gauntlet, with minimal scenery in the centre of the table and the tanks having additional tonnage resulting in a 3:1 advantage in numbers. Jeff and Scott put together an idea where six vehicles would face off against four mechs, the tanks had a 50% advantage in tonnage and owuld be each be allowed to respawn at select points on the board.

We ended up abandoning the respawn idea, but after the tanks got a strong initial salvo they stuggled to get clean shots as the mechs tried to outpace them.

Despite their victory conditions being based on evacing 'mechs within 12 turns, the House Davion 'mechs still managed to wreck three tanks and get two mechs away, so we declared their side the winners of this year's Golden Griffon. It was great playing with tanks for the first time though, and Jeff painted them exceptionally.

The final event was an enormous game of the venerable racing game Formula Dé, combining the Zandvoort 1 and 2 tracks from Holland into a true megaboard.

We also introduced the rules for designing cars, which incorporates suspension points, which necessitates inclusion of the debris rules. Long story short, if anyone loses a bodywork point due to a collision, or an engine point (from over revving or 'pushing' into a corner, a marker is set on the track to represent the debris left behind. Driving over the debris runs the risk of damaging the suspension (rolling a 1-4 on a d20), and losing your last suspension point eliminates your car.

Despite all the debris littering Zandvoort, not a single suspension point was lost!

It was a long and grueling race that saw the lead change hands several times. In the end, with two other players running neck and neck, Pete dark-horsed his way up the side from a distant third place, ending up beside the leader but in a higher gear, which allowed him to roll first and win the game!

G&G XIX: Aliens

Finding the right games for our annual Gaming & Guinness get-together can be a challenge, as most most strategic games (whether board, card or otherwise) tend to support 4-6 players and not the 8 or 9 we typically have in attendance. We have repurposed a lot of miniatures games that are meant to be played one-on-one by splitting the forces up (Starfleet Battles, Warhammer 40K, Legends of the Old West, X-Wing, Battletech etc.), but that doesn't always yield satisfying results.

Three years ago I brought Aliens: Another Glorious Day In The Corps, which supports 8 players out of the gate and 9 if you let someone play the Alien Hive Mind with the expansion. It is a solid game with great miniatures but a bit ponderous and almost puzzle-like at times, which is not always a great fit for an event that has an alcoholic beverage in its very name.

And in truth, the experience we were trying to recapture was from a much earlier, much simpler game from 1989.

Leading Edge Games, known mostly for their Living Steel (sci-fi) and Phoenix Command (modern military) RPGs, had somehow netted the game license for James Cameron's hit movie Aliens and made a dandy little tactical game out of it. 

Tragically, their limited production values, noticeable at the time, had become egregious over the years. The 'board' is printed on glossy but flimsy folded paper, and the counters are stand up pieces of thin card punched out along perforated lines.

They expanded upon this with three sets of 25 mm miniatures for the humans and xenomorphs, which, again, were not bad at all for their time, but leave much to be desired today. Great storage cases though!

The game was simple yet challenging: the titular aliens drop onto the map completely randomly, moving towards the closest target. The nine marines each have 2-3 actions per turn which they have to divide between moving towards the exit and shooting hostile bugs. 

Luck plays a pretty major factor, obviously, but there is room for smart play as well, and the tension of knowing that on any turn, a xeno can drop right on top of Sgt. Apone and take your best flame unit out of the game keeps things wound up pretty tight.

But as much fun as it is, the map is not just flat, it is plain, and a bit small for 8 players to clamber around to boot. I know the game is a favourite of Island Mike, who has played an online Flash version of it many, many times. But how to overcome its overwhelming lack of pizzazz?

BoardGameGeek to the rescue!

I had actually contemplated scratch building a 3D board for the game years ago, but faltered when I wondered what I could use for the machinery and xenological corruption that made up so much of the board. 

More recently I had wondered if anyone had attempted something similar for 3D printing, and sure enough, LV427 Designs (nice!) had posted pics of it on the famed boardgame site.

I quickly directed our fabrication specialist Jeff to the site and set him to work printing the plates we needed. A few days (and spools of filament) later he brought over a box of great looking grey plastic, and I cleared a space in the garage to prime it all.

There was very little in the way to supports to trim, but all of the scenery (save one larger piece) print out as attached to the floor. This made priming and painting a little tricky, especially for the ones close to the walls.

But once all the paint was applied (mostly drybrushing and SpeedPaints), adding the numbers was not too difficult, despite all the recounting I did to make sure they were all in the right places.

Only after I was completed did I realize I had used an optional, larger exit instead of the proper one, and rushed to replace it. Luckily one of the extra pieces Jeff had printed was exactly what I needed, and the numbers got added at G&G, about an hour before playtime...

And once all the miniatures from AGITDC were added and I threw a printed graphic under the stairwell, it all looked pretty marvelous!

We had a pretty sound strategy, some lucky xeno deployments (and only one 'bonus bug' all game!) and a couple of very fortunate Alien Attack rolls. Two Marines ended up incapacitated but were successfully carried to safety by their comrades - no casualties!

The best part though, was watching Mike's face at the beginning when I pulled away the paper map and revealed the 3D board underneath - wish I had gotten a picture.

G&G XIX : Fort Revenant

Our first marquee event at Gaming & Guinness XIX last week was presented as a bank robbery in the town of Fort Everett, in the Territory (doesn't matter which one, really). The premise was that we would have two teams of four players - two each for the bank robbers and the law posse. Each player would control a hero and a henchmen, and eight models a side seemed a tidy number. A classic gunfight scenario!

But after getting the group picture taken and getting the town set up, I threw in a monkey wrench, and got the leader of each side to read a short script to set the scene:

After having everyone split up to search the town, I queued up the playlist I had made and while suspenseful music played, I outlined the gear everyone had found: a Buffalo gun in the post office, a scoped rifle in the upper floor of the hotel, a LeMat pistol in the bank, and so on. 

I then dramatized how one of my my two bank robbers had found a man in the cells of the sheriff's office who had bitten him!

Earl's excellent Sheriff's office, with cells

Following a stunning transformation, I revealed the plethora of zombie models I had brought with me, including a number of classic zombie gunfighters from Wargames Foundry.

Then I outlined the real scenario: desperadoes and lawmen must band together to survive the zombie outbreak by getting to the eponymous Fort 'Revenant' and closing the doors before being overwhelmed - no mean feat with characters spread all over the town.

A handful of zombies started on the board in random locations, with more appearing randomly each turn, the majority by the cemetery I had built on the sly, and the two burn piles Bryce had made for me as a gift (he also lent me his sweet NWMP outpost!).

The idea for the scenario was that the defenders would drop a fair amount of zombies (wounding them on 5+ or even 4+ on a d6) but they would get up again the following turn on a roll of 3+. Rolling a 6 to wound represented a headshot, removing the zombie permanently. 

But in the first few turns, it seemed the gunfighters either missed the zombies entirely, or rolled sixes to wound, taking them off the board! Where's the fun in that?

With three zombies in the Emporium Saloon, Marhall Cole elected a strategic withdrawal

I did catch a couple of gunfighters at the far end of the street, but only managed to kill (and turn!) one of them. 

And another human fell to friendly fire when the defenders found the gatling gun in the stable, pushed it into the street and fired into the mob in a desperate attempt to the thin the numbers of undead. A devastating weapon, killing almost a dozen zombies over two turns but also jamming each time.

They also managed to repulse a couple of attacks on the machine gun to boot! Both the gatling and the unfired cannon (loaded with grapeshot) were also loans from Bryce - thanks pardner!

All the meanwhile, an inexorable parade of zombies (with models drawn from four different games) was shambling their way from the graveyard to the fort, which was far better than a ticking clock in terms of maintaining a sense of tension. 

In fact, after Marshall Cole fought his way from the Emporium Saloon at one end of the street to the fort on the other end (but alas, not his deputy, Fergus), the defenders quickly deemed the rest of their comrades as a lost cause and sealed the doors of the fort after him.

"Welp, I'm callin' it - close them doors!"

All in all, it was a pretty fun scenario but I would change a few things if we played again; 

• move the stable and gatling gun away from the fort
• make the zombies Grit 2 instead of 3 to they get wounded by sixguns more easily, and can thus get up more! (thanks Scott!)
• give everyone sixguns so they can move and fire (rifles, shotguns and heavy pistols impede movement)
• leave scoped rifles in the fort and let players know they are there so they can get in early and offer covering fire
• make sure someone goes to the assay office and finds the dynamite!
• put more starting zombies between the defenders and the fort

And to be honest, I was hoping the zombie reveal would provoke more of a reaction, but after a zombie outbreak ocurred in the previous night's game of Bang! The Dice Game (courtesy of the "Undead or Alive" expansion), maybe it was inevitable. Or maybe it was when the bluegrass version of "Thriller" came up early in my playlist. 

Or maybe I just have to face the fact that after all the years we have spent playing together, the lads have just learned to expect the unexpected when playing with me? (Sigh.)

Well, at least they liked the t-shirts!