Tonight me and Lindsay were joined by Paul to play a game which I really love, Machi Koro.
It’s a few years old now, actually it’s about to have its 5th Anniversary Edition releases, but it’s a game I have always enjoyed even though it’s not the most in depth or strategically challenging game.
The concept is really simple, you roll dice, which activated different building and facilities within your city, and earn money with which to buy other buildings and facilities.
The aim is to build certain landmark buildings, such as an Airport and Amusement Park, the first one to build all of them wins the game.
It’s random and very much filled with luck but a little strategy can go a long way, tonight my aim was to focus on big rewarding facilities when people built their Train Stations and started to roll two dice, so whenever someone rolled a 9, I was getting 15 coins because of my three mines, and that won me the game in the end.
My real issue with Machi Koro is though, that you need to have the Harbour expansion to get the most out of the game, without that its a little less good, it’s still a fun game, but the Harbour takes it to the next level.
Ok, it’s not gonna satisfy players who want to play something like Twilight Imperium all the time, but it’s a light fun game, and my favourite thing is the low downtime (unless you happen to be playing with Lindsay that is).
I would say that if you get a chance to play it, give it a whirl, because I think it’s a lot of fun and a unique twist on city building.
We own the Deluxe Edition which came with both the Harbour and Millionaires Row expansions in a tin with some custom dice.
I am back baby! But why was I away, well my PC decided to die and I hate writing these blog posts on my phone. The motherboard had a catastrophic failure and had taken an age to get repaired, but it’s back and up and running now.
I am not going to go into a full update about what went on over the past two months, but it was cool, I had a nice Christmas, although I was ghastly ill over New Years.
But I will just crack on with the normal categories of updates I do and try and get back into the swing of this next week properly.
What I am Modelling
This week I have been doing a bit of a Heresy mop up and finishing off some units by building them up to full squad numbers, I started with five Volkite Culverin Heavy Support Marines for my Word Bearers and have this week finished up some Destroyers for my Ultramarines.
Not listening to any audiobooks at the minute as I have been catching up with Podcasts, but I have started the next Beats Arises book, The Last Wall, which I do have to say, this far is not as bad as the last David Annandale book I read. He still uses very short sentences which makes reading a bit hard at time, but the story seems solid enough.
What I am Playing
This weekend we made the pilgrimage to Warhammer World where me and Megan used our Blood Angels to play against my friend Nathan’s Necrons.
Nathan brought along a a Tesseract Vault which our army destroyed by turn 2, in fact we had few issues dealing with the big stuff, but we really struggled to take care of the Destroyers and Necron Warriors. Our list was very much a generic Marine list as opposed to a more Blood Angels list so we did fail to take advantage of the Blood Angels strengths but we enjoyed ourselves none the less.
We did lose the game 15-35 though as our cards were very unkind to us, we played a mission from Chapter Approved and it was an awful lot of fun.
On Tuesday I played against James Tyranids at Durham Raiders and that was a major loss, my Chaos Space Marines just couldn’t deal with all the Hive Guard with their good guns and he managed to tear my army apart very quickly, even my Spartan only lasted a turn!
I think part of the problem is that my Chaos Space Marines are just what I have in terms of Word Bearers in Heresy that can be used in 40k and perhaps they need some more specific 40k units in order to shine.
What I am Backing
I am role so I am not backing anything, but I am eagerly awaiting my copy of arising Sun which will hopefully be coming very soon!
What I am Cooking
I managed to make myself an omelette yesterday, but that was a huge struggle.
I did cook some pulled chicken sliders on Friday night, I boiled some chicken thighs in chicken stock, a bay leaf, cumin and salt and pepper, before I pulled it and the cooked it in my BBQ sauce for a little bit.
What I am Spending
Very little, I bought a few bits at Warhammer World, a Mortis Lascannon so I can build a Mortis Dreadnought armed with two Twin-Linked Lascannons for my Ultramarines. I preordered the new Rhino Word Bearer doors for my Glaive and hopefully they will arrive in Friday so I can get started on that model, and I got a Tau t-shirt which was the last one in my size.
I also got the two souvenir coins that Warhammer World now do as well.
Last night was the Feast of Qawl, but because of a family emergency me and Megan couldn’t get to it.
But what is a Feast I hear you ask, well it’s a gathering held at the beginning of each Bahá’í month, and Bahá’ís will gather and “if this feast be held in the proper fashion”, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá states, “ …find themselves spiritually restored, and endued with a power that is not of this world.”
A Feast is split into three parts, spiritual, administrative and social. The spiritual part consists of a devotional in which prayers are read from the writings of The Báb, Bahá’u’lláh and `Abdu’l-Bahá.
The administrative part focus on the work the community is doing and allows the Local Spiritual Assembly (if the community has one) to hold consultation with the community so we can reflect on the goings on of the previous month.
And in the last part, the social, we enjoy refreshments and share cups of tea as we chat and basically be together in a way that strengthens the communities bonds.
As there is no clergy or priesthood within the Bahá’í Faith it is actually down to the community itself to organise the Feast and as such it means that each Feast is very different as it reflects the character of its organiser, especially in the devotional they create for it.
Essentially the Feast is the Bahá’í equivalent of a Sunday service for Christians.
Bit of a hectic night tonight, so I am sharing a short prayer that is to me, extremely beautiful and makes me smile.
“O my God, O my Lord, O my Master! I beg Thee to forgive me for seeking any pleasure save Thy love, or any comfort except Thy nearness, or any delight besides Thy good-pleasure, or any existence other than communion with Thee.”
I have a new nephew and niece on their way so I thought I would share a prayer that I often say for them, and my other nephews and nieces who are already here!
“O Thou peerless Lord! Let this suckling babe be nursed from the breast of Thy loving-kindness, guard it within the cradle of Thy safety and protection and grant that it be reared in the arms of Thy tender affection.”
Most religions have a Qiblih, that is a location to which they turn when in prayer, and Bahá’ís are no different in this.
Our Qiblih is the Shrine of Bahá’u’lláh in Bahjí near Acre in Israel, it is where the founder of our religion was laid to rest when he ascended to heaven.
The shrine and it’s gardens are on the UNs world heritage list, and one day I hope to have enough money to make the pilgrimage there.
I am not a person who is able to be detached very much, but as a Bahá’í I do strive to be a person more detached from the physical things, and here is a prayer is use when I really need to be more detached.
“Say: God sufficeth all things above all things, and nothing in the heavens or in the earth but God sufficeth. Verily, He is in Himself the Knower, the Sustainer, the Omnipotent.”
We Bahá’ís don’t have many temples, there are only nine temples in the world, one for each inhabited continent plus Central America and a single local temple.
They are called mašriqu-l-‘aḏkār (مشرق اﻻذكار) which means in Arabic “Dawning-place of the remembrances of God”. The teachings of our Faith means that one day these temples will be at the centre of a number of community facilities for the dedicated to scientific, educational and humanitarian pursuits, like schools and hospitals.
The first temple was built in Ashgabat in Turkmenistan but was later destroyed by the Soviet government. Since then we have built temples in Wilmette in the US, Kampala in Uganda, Sydney in Australia, Frankfurt in Germany, Panama City in Panama, Tiapapata in Samoa, Delhi in India, Santiago in Chile, and a local temple in Battambang in Cambodia.
These temples all follow a similar design philosophy with a nine sided circular shape, and a dome. We don’t display any pictures or statues and as sermons are forbidden in our temples we don’t have any pulpits or alters.
Our temples are open to people of all religions, and people can come and worship God without any restrictions. Only Bahá’í scriptures and prayers as well as those of other religions can be read or chanted in the temple, and we don’t play musical instruments inside.
And very importantly, no sermons can be delivered inside a Bahá’í temple and under no circumstances can there be any ritualistic ceremonies practised.
On Sunday we had our four weekly board games day, and we decided to have a go at live streaming the games, as I have mentioned, me and Graham want to live stream some games from Company of Legends.
So to try out the technology we gave it a shot on Sunday and below you can watch the results for yourself.
We have been doing dome other tests to see what we can do to make it look as good as possible and we are going to be doing a big test by live streaming a full game of Horus Heresy in the next couple of weeks.
I thought I had decided how we were going to do it, but I have been seeing other ideas that may look better, but its a case of doing more tests over the next few weeks and seeing how we can make this look as good as possible.
Bahá’í Blogging Challenge
I have previously mentioned that as a Bahá’í everyday I say the phrase Alláh-u-Abhá which is Arabic for God is the Most Glorious.
Now normally I use an app to help me keep track, but a few years ago, my wife Lindsay made me this set of prayer beads. They are based on a dream of Mirza Abbas Buzurg, Bahá’u’lláh’s father in which he saw his Son in a vast ocean and Bahá’u’lláh’s body was aglow lighting up all around him. And around him gathered a large amount of fish each of which clung to end of one of his hairs, and they followed him wherever he swam doing him no harm and not preventing him from swimming anywhere he wanted to.
When he awoke Mirza Buzurg who was a minister in the Persian Government summoned a soothsayer to him to interpret the dreams and his interpretation was as follows:
“O Minister, the endless ocean in which you saw your son is the world of creation. Your son will achieve mastery over this world. The multitude of fish are the people of the world and the turmoil that Bahá’u’lláh will generate among them. None will be able to prevent him doing whatever he wishes. Around him the people will gather and to him they will cling. They will be unable to harm him.”
Anyway these are my prayer beads, I love them and I don’t use them as often as I should.
I finished up a Daemon Prince of Khorne model that I built for my Blades of Khorne/Chaos army for Age of Sigmar. He will also find a role in my Chaos Marines army in 40k and as a HQ for Daemon allies for my 30k Word Bearers.
I have now started and have almost finished a few units for my Ultramarines, a Praetor from the MKIV Commander Set and a squad of Tactical Support Marines armed with Volkite Chargers and a Rhino to go with them.
The infantry is nearly finished now whilst the Rhino has a long way to go still. The Preator I managed to finish up whilst I was writing this post.
I had hoped to back Ogre Miniatures Set 2, but sadly its not available for international backers :-(.
What I am Cooking
I have had a poor week pain wise and haven’t cooked anything this week, which has knocked my confidence quite a bit.
What I am Spending
I have spent a bit more money than I planned to this week, I started the week by buying some 90mm Oval Bases and a Lictor from Games Workshop this week and Roboute Guilliman from Forgeworld.
We also picked up a few bits for the podcast, a tripod for the second webcam which arrived this week, a USB sound card so we can plug the shotgun microphone into the laptop and a USB active repeater extension cable, these are for the video work we will be doing.
It doesn’t count as spending but one of my Secret Santa gifts arrived today, this one from The Board Game Group Secret Santa, it wasn’t wrapped and had no indication on it that it was a present, so I opened it and got a wonderful surprise in the form of 7 Wonders Duel Pantheon and Kingdomino!
For today I wanted to talk about a Bahá’í belief that I previously mentioned a few days ago, progressive revelation.
We Bahá’ís believe that God is regular in revealing His will to mankind via Messengers/Prophets, and each messenger forms a new covenant and establishes a new religion.
This is quite different to other religions who often believe that their Messenger is the final one. We believe that religion is something that evolves and that each messengers will bring more revelations so that we better understand God than the previous religion.
The differences in the different religion are, we believe, the result of the different cultures and times in which the Messengers come to us. There are certain universal truths that are renewed by each messenger, but they also bring teachings that reflect the spiritual and material evolution of humanity of the time.
Bahá’u’lláh explained that the coming of a new Messenger is like the coming of spring in that it brings new life to the world, which has often come to neglect the teachings of the previous Messenger.
There isn’t a definitive list of the previous messengers of god, but Bahá’u’lláh and `Abdu’l-Bahá have mentioned that several prophets as Manifestations of God, which include Adam, Noah, Krishna, Moses, Abraham, Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad, as well as obviously The Báb and Bahá’u’lláh.
It’s random and very much filled with luck but a little strategy can go a long way, tonight my aim was to focus on big rewarding facilities when people built their Train Stations and started to roll two dice, so whenever someone rolled a 9, I was getting 15 coins because of my three mines, and that won me the game in the end.
