Da Friday thread!

[Rekim]

kicked my weekend off with some ASLSK, scenerio S1 'War of the Rats'

about to fire up Case Blue.

deja vu?

off to a good start anyways...

[Huw the Poo]

Well, I just bought Conquest: Divide and Conquer (awful name, huh?) which is a nice little indie wargame.  I've also bought To The Moon, about which I have heard nothing but amazing things; I thought I'd finally see what all the fuss was about.

Both purchased via Desura.

[Barthheart]

Was hoping to break in the Sergeants Miniatures Game...but opened up the base game from my lot purchase to find no Story Deck. So that's pretty much a pretty looking paperweight until the replacement deck gets here from Lost Battalion.

I still need to mess around with Okko and try it out, so that will likely be my board game for the weekend.

On the computer front, I may start making my way through my strategy game backlog. Not sure what that will specifically entail yet, though.

I'm really interested in what you think of this minis game. Looks good and easy to get into but very expensive. Please give us a mini review (pun intended) when you are finally able to give it a spin.

Raining like the proverbial 40 days and 40 nights here for the last couple days and for the next few so no outdoor chores (yeah!).

So more CiV G&K, got Kerbal Space demo to take for a spin, U-Boat Leader on the table....

[junk2drive]

Well, I just bought Conquest: Divide and Conquer (awful name, huh?) which is a nice little indie wargame.  I've also bought To The Moon, about which I have heard nothing but amazing things; I thought I'd finally see what all the fuss was about.

Both purchased via Desura.

I've never used Steam or Desura, how is Desura? I like that they offer linux, Mac and Windows.

[undercovergeek]

Was hoping to break in the Sergeants Miniatures Game...but opened up the base game from my lot purchase to find no Story Deck. So that's pretty much a pretty looking paperweight until the replacement deck gets here from Lost Battalion.

I still need to mess around with Okko and try it out, so that will likely be my board game for the weekend.

On the computer front, I may start making my way through my strategy game backlog. Not sure what that will specifically entail yet, though.

I'm really interested in what you think of this minis game. Looks good and easy to get into but very expensive. Please give us a mini review (pun intended) when you are finally able to give it a spin.

Raining like the proverbial 40 days and 40 nights here for the last couple days and for the next few so no outdoor chores (yeah!).

So more CiV G&K, got Kerbal Space demo to take for a spin, U-Boat Leader on the table....

can we get a linky too?

[Huw the Poo]

I've never used Steam or Desura, how is Desura? I like that they offer linux, Mac and Windows.

Desura's great.  They mainly cater to the indie segment and they have quite a library of good, cheap games as well as some bigger ones from such publishers as Paradox.  They do a lot of alphafunding games too - essentially you pay a very low price to get in on the alphas of games.

They have a client which you kind of need to use, although a lot of games allow you to download independent installers too.  But the client is nice; it offers easy, one-click installation of games and apparently makes downloading mods just as easy, although I've never used that particular functionality.  Many games also come with demos which you can also grab via the client with a click.  There's also lots of community stuff all built-in too, like forums and reviews and stuff.  Everything available through the client is also available on the website.

I really like Desura, and although I've never had to contact customer support I've heard they're great in that area too.

Edit: Oh, and yeah, they always support as many platforms as they can.  Most of my Desura library can be played on Windows, Linux or Mac, and you only pay once.

[junk2drive]

Thanks for that. I tried to buy an alpha today and it wouldn't take two gift cards or my regular credit card. I hate to get a paypal account but I might have to.

[Huw the Poo]

Huh.  It has no problem with my credit and debit cards.  You could try shooting them an email.

[junk2drive]

The error said that the bank may not allow foreign transactions.

[Huw the Poo]

Perhaps something you have to ask your bank to allow, then.  Using Paypal isn't much hassle mind, I've been using it for years.  I'd never use them to accept large volumes of payments if I were an indie dev, but for buyers making the occasional purchase it's absolutely fine.

[Barthheart]

Was hoping to break in the Sergeants Miniatures Game...but opened up the base game from my lot purchase to find no Story Deck. So that's pretty much a pretty looking paperweight until the replacement deck gets here from Lost Battalion.

I still need to mess around with Okko and try it out, so that will likely be my board game for the weekend.

On the computer front, I may start making my way through my strategy game backlog. Not sure what that will specifically entail yet, though.

I'm really interested in what you think of this minis game. Looks good and easy to get into but very expensive. Please give us a mini review (pun intended) when you are finally able to give it a spin.

Raining like the proverbial 40 days and 40 nights here for the last couple days and for the next few so no outdoor chores (yeah!).

So more CiV G&K, got Kerbal Space demo to take for a spin, U-Boat Leader on the table....

can we get a linky too?

Link to Lost Battalion Games: http://www.lostbattaliongames.com/

[Nefaro]

The error said that the bank may not allow foreign transactions.

As Huw mentioned, that's on your bank's end most likely.  Mine doesn't do that but I'll occasionally get a phone call from them asking if an overseas (foreign currency) charge on my debit card is legit.

Sounds like your bank just has that currency or nation blocked by default.   Isn't Desura located in Australia or something??

Having PayPal is kinda nice, once you go through the bit of work to get it set up.  It's nice to have the extra in-between if you ever need to log a disupte.  Plus, and most notably, I fairly regularly don't get charged the extra pocket change for currency exchange when purchasing foreign such as at GamersGate, Desura, etc.  Supposedly not supposed to be charged for any of that through places that support PayPal payments, but you gotta shoot PayPal an email to right that problem when that occasionally happens.

[bob48]

I did have a similar thing with my bank when I brought a game from LnL, but they cleared it ok for me.

[Greybriar]

The error said that the bank may not allow foreign transactions.

A while back my bank blocked every foreign purchase I tried to make. I had to call them every time I wanted to buy anything outside the United States. They explained that there had been so many incidents of credit card fraud overseas that they had been forced to be extremely cautious with overseas purchases. This went on for weeks with me getting irate and them getting tired of me calling them up every time I wanted to charge a $1.99 game in a special sale on GamersGate, for example. The next to last time I called, I asked the woman working in customer service how many times my credit card had been used fraudulently. She asked me for how long a period, the last month, year, etc. I told her over the entire time I have had a credit card from them (over 20 years). She looked it up and replied that my credit card had never been used fraudulently. The next time I called them to get a credit card purchase cleared, I was told it was no longer necessary for me to phone them because they had unblocked my foreign purchases.

I hope that helps you out.

[Toonces]

I just got done a marathon 4 hour session of CK2, continuing my Iceland playthrough.  I'm not sure exactly what is going on, but I think I'm enjoying it.  I had a pretty good run going and then sparked a civil war with my neighbor on the Reykjavik side that went on for about 10 years before we agreed to a white peace.  I married several daughters to Swedish and Norwegian princes but then somehow screwed up because I ended up with my female character married to a prince of Sweden, a son as an heir that would have ended the game for me due to the succession laws.  For about 2 years I was trying to save up enough cash to assassinate my husband but then I figured out how to change the law to seniority so that the heir changed from my son to a male kinsman. 

The last 5 years or so have been a bloodbath with pretenders to the throne getting knocked off left and right. 

I sort of get what's going on but I can't imagine how to manage a kingdom filled with vassals!  I have so many half-brothers and -sisters and aunts and uncles and who knows what, half of them love me, half hate me...it's a bit bewildering!

So, right now I'm going to try one more time to unite Iceland and then press a claim on the Faroes and see what happens.  Neat game!