College Football Week 2 Predictions 2017

We got ourselves a little appetizer last week with some showings this past week before hitting the main course this week with a ton of great matchups.

The program went 4-1 straight up last week, only missing on UMass falling to Hawaii.  It was rough against the spread though, as BYU looked wholly unimpressive against Portland State.  The program also liked Rice a bit more and Stanford a bit less, but the Cardinal just trashed the Owls.





The best game this week is obviously Alabama and Florida State trading blows.  The program likes the Tide to win this week by roughly a touchdown.  Florida and Michigan also square off, where there is an expectation the Gators can shock the world.  North Carolina should be able to beat up on Cal a bit, while UCLA jumps on Texas A&M. 

Armada Store Championship Report

It had been awhile since any store nearby myself had decided to run any events for Armada.  But the Village Geek up in McPherson was holding a store championship, so a friend of mine and I drove up.  I had been prepping by playing around with a pretty standard build out these days, featuring and ISD2 and a tooled up Victory 2.

Motti's angry triangles  (398/400)
============================
Imperial II-class Star Destroyer (120 + 25)
+ Gunnery Team (7)
+ Reinforced Blast Doors (5)
+ Leading Shots (4)
+ XI7 Turbolasers (6)
+ Relentless (3)
Victory II-class Star Destroyer (85 + 50)
+ Admiral Motti (24)
+ Minister Tua (2)
+ Gunnery Team (7)
+ Disposable Capacitors (3)
+ Leading Shots (4)
+ Quad Battery Turrets (5)
+ Reinforced Blast Doors (5)
Raider I-class Corvette (44 + 7)
+ Ordnance Experts (4)
+ External Racks (3)
Gozanti-class Cruisers (23 + 2)
+ Comms Net (2)
 

Ciena Ree (17)
Valen Rudor (13)
Saber Squadron (12)
 

Most Wanted
Contested Outpost
Solar Corona

I decided to go with the Reinforced Blast Doors because I had thought there would be a lot of heavy carrier wings.  RBD does a bit better against fighters due to ECM having almost no chance to come into play for most attacks.   It also I think does better against some black dice destroyer builds due to the fact that they typically will be lacking a lot of accuracy generation (as H9s seem to have died down following the Lifeboat flotilla rule change). This would end up being pretty critical though, and making me think I need the ECM still on Vics.  I did think Cienna and Valen provided a good speed bump thanks to Valens ability not to get shot, and Cienna's obstruction, both along with scatters.

There were 5 total players at the store this weekend, which meant someone was getting the bye each round.  I was paired with a guy named Josh for the first round, who was running a similar list to mine but a second Gozanti instead of the Raider, and a few more squads.  He chose first player, and picked my COntested Outpost.  I deployed towards one corner, with Josh deplying similarly with his ISD further towards the middle.  He played his ISD aggressively forward, jumping on my Raider and destroying it early.  My counter fire was lackluster thanks to his ECMs keeping his braces going.  His dice were hot as well, as I think almsot all of his shots that he pulled with Leading shots cranked up the damage to 6 or more.  Josh had said his original list had an extra TIE, but he dropped it to get leading shots on both ships.  I made a mistake at this point, and slowed down my ISD to avoid a double arc shot from his ISD, and sheild my Vic a bit.  What I needed to do was speed up actually, and try to reposition my ISD after the beating it had started to take.  This would have allowed me to kill his Victory and second Gozanti, while keeping the station from scoring points.  Needless to say, the rest of the game continued with him wearing down my ISD and Vic and myself not getting to punch back hard enough.  Josh ended up with a 10-1, and I was sent to the bottom of the pile.

The second round saw me play my friend Rob with whom I had driven up with.  Rob and I had traded games back and forth the previous few weeks as we tweaked our lists and got ready for the tourney.  He was running a dual Glad, dual Raider list with a Gozanti and a variety of squadrons.  He tooled his Demo up a bit differently than I would have, choosing External Racks over APTs, and leaving one of his Raiders without OE to be able to get in Tempest and Gamma squadrons.  I had also convinced him he needed to fit in Maarek Steele to pair with Col. Jendon, which I was unhappy to now be facing.  I chose to be first player, and we played Rob's Planetary Ion Cannons.  I deployed all of my ships tightly, with his Demo and Raiders flanked out to my left, and Insidious to my far right.  I ended up sending my ISD to prevent Insidious from flanking me, and after a previous week where I was unable to get my ISD around quickly enough to counter Demo I decided I would just chase down his flanker.  A few key moments came when I removed Maarek Steele early in turn two, and then Rob jumped Demo up a bit early.  This allowed me to put the hurt on it, and then activate first the next turn and roll the exact amount of damage needed to pull him off.  This though allowed Insidious to escape, and left my Vic hurting a bit.  I then failed to get my Victory out of harms way by just barely clipping my Gozanti, which allowed the Raider with External Racks to strip shields and put on some real damage.  Rob ended up getting my Vic, but not until I had taken out another Raider and used some flak to clear most of his squads.  I ended up with a win by just 39 points, so I sat at just 7 tournament points.

I had a bye the last round due to my low score, but I got to watch both of the other games.  The other lists that were there were Jacob running a triple ISD 1 list, and Donovan who had an MC80 Liberty with an AFMk2 and a bunch of squadrons.  Rob ended up crushing down Donovan's fleet, while Josh made several pretty bad mistakes to take a 5-6 loss.  This meant Josh was still able to walk away as the champ, with Rob following in second, Jacob in third, myself in 4th and Donovan in 5th.  Everyone walked away with the range ruler and a host of other prizes.

Overall it was a really good day of Armada.  Everyone was friendly and looking to chat about the game.  I think despite the low turnout, the game is in a good place in terms of folks being excited about playing and getting better.  The store up in McPherson is also a first rate shop, with a friendly staff and a good clean atmosphere.

My takeaway was a need to be a bit more aggressive with my ISD.  I tend to run my ships a bit too closely together, which in both of my games made sure that I had tough positioning challenges.  I was happy with my Vic's performance, reinforcing my idea that the Vic 1 is dead as a ship but that Quad Batteries and Disposable Capacitors are making the Vic 2 an excellent fire support ship.  An earlier version of this list had Moff J as my Admiral, and I'm wonding if I should go back to him.  I missed the extra flexibility of those two clicks several times. 

College Football Week 1 2017 Predictions

It's finally here!  College football kicks off again this weekend.  Sure, its only a handful of games, most with pretty overwhelming match ups.  But, still, its football.




BYU and Stanford should take care of business, although I will be interested to see how the boys in Palo Alto respond without Christian McCaffrey.  It will also be very telling how South Florida comes out against SJSU.  They aren't a powerhouse school, but USF is under new leadership and has a ton of expectations riding on them. 

FFG's bad Armada FAQ model

FFG produces great games.  I was never a miniature gamer until a colleague at work got me into X-Wing. It was soon after that that Armada took my interest away.  I love the tactical choices the game presents, and the wonderfully intuitive system makes the game easy to pick up and go. However, like most FFG games Armada has a lot of complexity in how different upgrades and abilities interact.  The FAQ model they follow should be good enough in theory.  It allows the designers to weigh in on and explain several interactions that are tricky, and it codifies them for all tournament purposes.

The issue arises though, that the folks at FFG don't publish an FAQ very often.  Or at least, not in a suitable timetable.  Let's take the prior wave, where we had Rapid Launch Bays sitting in limbo.  The card was poorly worded, so there was a great debate as to whether or not squadrons that were launched were activated, or if they were actually forced to sit idly by.  It took nearly 6 months for this question to get answered.  This update was followed by a small quick update to errata several cards.  However,it failed to give any answers for two new interactions in this set.  The Marshal for GenCon posted a now infamous thread about how he was going to rule how Admiral Sloane's ability interacted with squadrons, and how Task Force Antilles would stop damage.  Once you got past the initial reaction of lists being somewhat neutered. the real outcry about these rulings stemmed from the fact that it was not an official FFG ruling.  The Marshall had come to this conclusion by talking to play testers and other folks who concluded that they should work this way.  This process produces poor outcomes for a pair of reasons.  The first, is the possibility for nefarious action.  Marshalls and TOs making rulings on cards  by interpretation leaves the opportunity for them to do so in a way that could favor certain players.  As the prize support for Armada grows in value (ie $200 plus dollars for tournament dice), the risk of this happening grows as well.  Secondly, it creates a wildly different play environment at possibly every tournament.  A TO at this tournament supports RAI, while the one at the shop down the street supports RAW.  It creates a position where players cannot build effective lists, and the game will suffer for it.  Why go to a tournament not knowing if your list will be legal and effective?

FFG should amend their FAQ process in a couple of ways to help ease this pressure.  The first way would be to have a full spoiler preview a month and a half or more before the release.  This would give the player base more than enough time to concoct questions and issues with the upgrades known.  The next would be to shift the timing of FAQs.  FFG typically has two release a year, at which point a small update to the FAQ should happen that has an explanation of how each upgrade works.  ROughly halfway between these releases should be another FAQ update that serves as a general update and can make proper modifications to the last wave.  This type of schedule would allow lots of opportunity to tweak rulings and would keep the player base happier. 

Hawaiian Noble House Food Truck Review

As I mentioned in the Kamayan review, Wichita has a burgeoning food truck business.  One of the other peculiar cuisines to make it to us is the Noble House Hawaiian truck. After a rainout for softball, my wife and I decided to try it out.  I was determined to try the Poke, a dish that the truck is well known for (as well as Hawaii in general).  Poke is a raw fish dish, where the fish is cured by citrus or vinegar and is irresistibly tasty.  I had to get it, because my wife is not a fan of Ahi Tuna dishes, so I never get to try them at home or as appetizers when we're out.  We had several friends raving about the physical location they have, with what a good value and tasty meal it was. 

We ordered our food, and it came out rather quickly.  Just one guy was in the truck but he was efficient.  My wife got the Huli Huli Chicken.  We were both a little disappointed by the portion size for the cost of the meal.  While I wasn't expecting a massive pile of tuna, I was expecting more than the small styrofoam container that also had a layer of rice in it.  The chick was also a bit dry my wife complained, until she got down to the bottom where there was a big puddle of the sauce.  I was much more pleased with my Poke.  The tuna was melt in your mouth tender, and the sesame cure was light and pleasing.  My one downside was that there were a lot of onions in it.  Not a bad thing typically, but that several large pieces had obviously not sat in the cure long enough.  This meant several bites were interrupted by a jarring onion bite.

The Poke was good.  Maybe fewer onions next time

All in all, this was not the best first impression. A number of factors could be involved, and I'd be willing to give it another go.  I'm also in the mood to try their brick and mortar location, since its nearby our home. 

Playing with Jupyter Notebooks

I've been taking a few classes through my day job to start doing more data analysis for the company.  The first big project was to due some basic work on some baseball stats.  Right up my alley.  I figured I'd share the notebook here, since Jupyter makes that nice and easy to do.  Its after the jump, since it lays out a little funny on the blog.