Catalyst Castle

I just got some new Star Wars Miniatures the other day. Wizards of the Coast just released a new set for the game called The Clone Wars. The set includes 40 new miniatures of characters from the time period of the clone wars, including new-comer Ahsoka Tano!

WotC is reducing the size of SWM sets from 60 figures to 40 figures, and this was the first set to use the new format. It certainly made collecting all of the new figures a lot easier and a little less expensive. Having less figures in a set also means that they could spend more time and budget on the sculpt and paint job for each of the figures, so the overall quality of the figures has improved somewhat.

I haven't been able to play with any of the new pieces yet, but looking over their statistics I know that a few of them will be new favorites. Captain Rex has some crazy abilities that allow him to move and shoot 4 times in the same turn, which is incredibly good. The Star Corps Trooper is a new clone trooper variant that isn't incredibly powerful, but he has a neat combination of abilities that would make him fun to play with. It's the type of piece that, if played smart, could be very effective.

The starter box for this set also included 2 new play maps that are both very attractive looking and present interesting tactical challenges.

This is a post to consider my activities over the past month, and identify trends in how I spend my time. My idea was to do this after 4 weeks, but I accidentally let a 5th week slip by.

Here are the top 10 activities I spent the most time on in the last 5 weeks:

1. Sleeping
2. Work
3. Theocratic Activities
4. Reading
5. Movies/Shows
6. RPG Preparation
7. Housework
8. Card/Board Games
9. RPG Play
10. Blog/Wiki

A few observations about those:

I'd like it if I could have RPG Prep time no greater than RPG play time. Doing so requires that I get more efficient and more disciplined about how I prep, and not over-prep. I have a feeling that I'll never get this where I want to though because, honestly, I like fiddling with RPG systems, building character stats, and detailing story ideas.

I was surprised how much time I spent on housework, because it never feels like I spend that much time on it. I guess that's good though. I suppose that it's spread out enough that I don't really feel like it imposes on my life.

It's a shame that writing doesn't even appear in my top 10 activities, because I enjoy it so much. Actually it's been hard to write with family visiting, because more activity in the house makes it harder to concentrate on writing. Not that I'm in a hurry to get rid of them, but hopefully my writing will increase when my family has finished their visit.


Now, the whole purpose of logging my time was so that I could see how I was using it and make adjustments where necessary. So here is a summary of some of the adjustments I've made over the last 5 weeks. The first week my theocratic activities only tied for 3rd place with reading. This past week they were firmly in 3rd place, with reading in 4th. My time spent reading has varied from one week to another, but overall it hasn't decreased much. So, I've actually been able to increase my theocratic activities. Work has been picking up, so I'm spending more time on that than I was 5 weeks ago, and my housekeeping has increased slightly. Other than that, not much has changed, at least not drastically.


So, what now? Over the next few weeks I'd like to continue raising my theocratic activities by maintaining and increasing my spiritual routine, especially in the areas of personal study and field service. Thanks reading my weekly time logs. I encourage everyone to try keeping a similar log. You'll be amazed how it can effect your productivity.

This post is coming a little late because I've been busy. Here's my report for last week. It wasn't as great as the previous week, but it was OK.

The biggest disappointment was that I didn't get out in service at all. Also, I missed 1 day of personal study. My theocratic activities still held third place amongst all of my activities though, right after sleeping and work. Reading was a pretty close fourth, and movies/shows and housework tied for fifth.

While I did miss service last week, I guess I can still be happy that, overall, I didn't let my spiritual activities drop below third place. That means I spent more time on personal study and meeting preparation to make up for it. I'm not entirely sure why I missed service both Thursday and Saturday, but I suppose a big factor might be my sleeping schedule. Sleep has been a bit erratic for me lately.

My brother Brian and his wife Cherie finished their visit last week, however, and my brother David will be leaving tomorrow. While I enjoy their company, I know that their presence disrupted my schedule somewhat. Hopefully things will begin to stabilize more soon.

In the coming weeks I need to refocus on service and personal study in order to keep up my spiritual routine.

Here are a few more words of wisdom I wanted to share. This time they are taken from the Lord of the Rings novels by J. R. R. Tolkien.

"'I wish it need not have happened in my time,' said Frodo.
'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.'"

-The Fellowship of the Ring

I really like this thought. No one, if given the choice, would choose to face the kinds of problems and challenges that we deal with on a daily basis. Oftentimes, we can do little to control the circumstances we live in or to prevent bad things from happening to us or around us. What we can control, however, is how we react to them. A man's (or woman's) character can often be judged by how they react to adversity.

"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."

-Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring

The above is good council not to judge others to harshly. We cannot see every aspect of any situation, and many people get judged wrongly by short-sighted people. I wouldn't want to be guilty of committing such an injustice. Actually, that's something I have trouble with. Sometimes I can be quick to judge, or see things in stark black and white when I could be more understanding.

Please share your thoughts on the quotes above. Are their any book or movie lines that mean a lot to you?

Gareth and I missed playing "Times Forgotten" campaign of the Mutants and Masterminds RPG last week, but we finally played out Issue #3 this morning. Issue #3 will be called "Battle in the Web of Darkness" because that's pretty much what it was about. It was a fairly short game, and it basically involved just a single fight scene.


In the last issue, Claas and Lynn were exploring the dungeons underneath Kingstown's massive cathedral. Issue #2 ended with them opening a door into a darker section of the dungeons where the ceilings, walls, and floor were covered in giant black spider webs. As Issue #3 begins, Claas and Lynn delve further into the darkness. Eventually they reach a place where the corridor splits. To the left, they hear the sounds of someone crying out. To the right, they hear the sounds of heavy machinery operating some ways away.

Claas and Lynn choose to go left, looking for Lynn's brother Larry. After traveling down another corridor, they arrive at a large open chamber. Pillars support a high ceiling. Across from the entrance they came in through there is another passageway, and there is a tunnel leading upwards through the ceiling. The chamber is covered in the same dark webs as the corridors, and littered with various medieval torture devices. On the far side of the room they spot Larry. His arms and legs are chained and he's held in a large water tank, with only his head above the water. The water boils around him as he tries in vain to use his powers, and he calls out for help.

Lynn immediately rushes to her brother's aid, but Claas takes a more careful approach, hiding behind a pillar and examining the chamber more carefully. He spots a shadowy figure descending through the tunnel in the ceiling, creeping along the dark spider webs. Claas grabs a couple of torches of the walls and uses his time-slowing run to move along the edges of the chamber, setting fire to the webs on the walls as he goes. Battle quickly ensues, as the shadowy figure on the ceiling moves towards Lynn and Larry, and three hounds come charging out of the other entrance to attack the intruders.

The shadowy figure can soon be identified as a man in black robes, bearing the same symbol that has been seen all over the cathedral, and also appears as the pendant on the necklace Claas wears. From his perch on the ceiling, this mysterious villain begins spraying black webbing at Lynn and Larry, threatening to entangle them. As Lynn struggles against the webbing to release her brother from the water tank, the man drops from the ceiling to inflict a venomous bite on her.

Meanwhile, the hounds chase Claas around the chamber until he comes to Lynn and Larry's aid. Lynn manages to drain the water from the tank Larry is in, allowing him to use his fiery powers. He begins hurling balls of fire at the hounds and their master, and engulfs his body in flames, frightening one of the hounds away. While Claas battles with the spidery villain, his fist begins to crackle with blue energy again. A final blow knocks the man prone, rendering him unconscious and dying with blue energy crackling across his chest where he received the hit.

Claas says that he believes there is more going on in this cathedral than is obvious, and wants to investigate things further, but Lynn and Larry just want to return to their own time. They begin to retreat towards the entrance. To be continued...


So, as you can see, the game basically consisted of one big boss battle. I was pleased that, in spite of this, Gareth said he still didn't get bored. I always worry that combat might become drawn out, but Gareth made things interesting by finding creative things for his character to do in combat. The only thing that disappointed me a little, was that I gave Gareth an opportunity to discover another one of Claas' powers, but he let the opportunity slip by. Oh well, all of his powers will come out eventually, it's just a matter of time.

I have to say that I'm a bit frustrated with how some of the characters' powers work in Mutants and Masterminds. Some of them just seem needlessly complicated. One power, for example, requires that the person using it roll to see if they aimed properly, then the target character must roll to see if they can minimize they effects of the power, and then the target character rolls again to see how much damage they take. It's hard to remember all of that. I practically need a flowchart just to make sense of it, and it seems like it ought to be able to be reduced to just a single die roll. Probably between now and the next time we play, I'll try to see if I can rework some of the powers so that they're more streamlined in how they function.