Gaebril

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is coming soon, but the toys will be released today! As much as I would want to get excited though, I'm not. Somewhere between the poor characterization and the rather unconventional designs, I'm not so eager for these toys.

I'm so HARDCORE!!! No, seriously, this is my robot mode.

In other transformers news, TF: Animated just ended last week -- unfortunate, since I rather liked the show and would have been happy to see more. This might be the best TF series overall, depending on how much weight you give to some admittedly shitty filler episodes.

On the upside, the TFA toys were also put on discount, so I managed to grab some of the toys that I didn't before. Now the thing is, I really like the TFA aesthetic. I like the elegant transformations and the clean, stylized look. Some would rather have complex transformations with lots of extra hinges and panels, but I would find that too fiddly -- whereas a simple but imaginative transformation is fun. I think I'll go deep into this line and just skip the Movie line entirely. Some highlights: Prowl, Blitzwing, Blackarachnia. Some mehs: Lugnut, Soundwave, Ratchet.

Cosmic Encounter is a card-based multiplayer light-wargame. Think of it as a cross between Magic and Risk, except it's not really that similar to either of those. Yes, you heard it here, Cosmic Encounter is in a class all to itself.

In Cosmic Encounter, you have a bunch of alien ships, one Alien race, a hand of combat cards, and on your turn you attack a random player. Alliances can be offered and maybe accepted, then players put their ships on the line. Card based hilarity ensues.

This is an old game; I have the 2008 FFG edition, but the first edition was published in the 70s! It's quite amazing then, that Cosmic solves a lot of the usual problems that plague even today's multiplayer conflict games. The random attacks mean that you can't just prey on the weak -- instead, the leader is beaten down while the lagging players have more opportunities to catch up. Neither can players just lurk or turtle; you get no benefit if you don't put your own ships on the line. The huge variety of alien powers means that you'll probably never see the same setup twice, and the game system is open enough that expansions are easy to integrate. There's no player elimination, and the game finishes in about an hour. At the same time, negotiation is key; this is no multiplayer solitaire. And it comes from the 70s!

It's just wonderful overall. Good presentation, good bits, good gameplay. There's a lot of interaction, strategy, and variety, and with the right attitude it's incredibly fun. This game is a true pillar of boardgaming.

Agricola is a Eurogame, like Dominion or Puerto Rico. There's no combat or negotiation here, but instead an economic race, to see who can best put together a working farm.

Agricola is a straightforward worker placement game. Players take turns choosing which resource or action they want to take. There a lot of resources to speak of here, and each of those resources can do various things; taken altogether decisions are complex even if the basic game mechanic is simple. There are a lot of moving parts but fortunately the game is NOT so abstracted; it's intuitive that you would want to Plow, Sow, Harvest, and then Bake Bread, or that a Fireplace is a card that lets you convert your Sheep into Food. The complexity makes the game interesting, and the thematic coherence makes the complexity fun.

There is no direct player interaction in Agricola, but there is indirect economic interaction in the way that unused resources pile up. I find that this gives an auction-like balance to the game -- the "best" strategy will get watered down if too many players try to take it. This action blocking also means that decisions are often made on the fly, even with the "no-luck" basic game -- which is a good thing, although it might occasionally paralyze even the best players.

Agricola's hook over similar games is that on top of an already rich basic game, it has cards that give players extra abilities. It comes with a lot of cards, and the variable powers do a lot to keep the game fresh. On the other hand there's a limit as to how fresh the cards can be, since after all they still deal with the same resources that were in the basic game already. Furthermore the cards aren't well balanced, so occasionally someone will get a good combo that leaves everyone else in the dust. Overall I'd rather play with the cards, but the basic game should not be seen as inferior, particularly for the first several plays.

Overall Agricola is a great game; it might even be the best of its kind! It scales perfectly from 1 to 5 players and plays in about 1.5 hours, so it's quite handy to have around. Admittedly, the low amount of interaction gives it a lower fun factor, compared to an raucous conflict game like Cosmic. This is expected of a Eurogame though, and sometimes you'd really rather play this kind of quiet, thoughtful game.

Anima: Shadow Over Omega is a small adventure game, done entirely with cards. It evokes the feel of a j-RPG; you gather a party, explore exotic locales, and do quests. It's funny -- Anima does this well, and it was fun playing it. On the other hand, it was only good for a couple of plays, and I ended up trading it away fairly quickly. A conundrum!

As an experience, Anima is highly enjoyable. You go around checking out the location cards, digging for treasure, fighting monsters, and recruiting cute anime chicks into your party. Your goal is to complete some various quests, and for the most part they're interesting and flavorful - rescue the princess at the Tower, then bring her back to her home city. It has very pretty anime art, and it's fun! It packs in a lot of the good stuff about j-RPGs into one or two hours.

As a multiplayer game, Anima is kinda bad. Everything is so random, and once a player gains an advantage over the others, it can easily snowball into a win. Worse, there's no meaningful way to interact if you're in a weaker position; you can't even gang up on the leader. Mechanically there isn't anything interesting; just build up as fast as you can and try your luck against the end boss once you've reached the limit. Solitaire play might make this more engaging, but the rules and cards aren't really designed that way. Unfortunately, after you've stared at the art and gone through the cards, there isn't a lot of game to be found here. And with only about a hundred cards total, for everything, this got old pretty fast.

Looking deeper, I would probably have the same problems with even the best adventure game. It would still be best solo, and enjoyment would still be based on the freshness of the cards. It would still be... you know, not a game. I dunno! Maybe if it came with a lot of cards it would be more fun.

At this point, let me segue into a somewhat related topic. Cleaning up my old room, I found a battered copy of Grail Quest. This was a choose-your-own-adventure-ish book, except it had some light dice based combat. Also, it's pretty well written! I played through this when I was around eight, all flippin' to page 224 and rollin' dice like nobody's business. Oh, it probably has its own issues with replayability, but I think I'd rather have this over a random card based adventure game.

Do they still make books, or even games like this? Not just about combat, puzzle solving, or resource management, but instead, about well-written narrative and adventure. I'd buy some.

I've played a lot of boardgames in the past two months, so I figured I should write a bit about my impressions of them. Another review series? Well, why not.

Battlestar Galactica is a boardgame based on the recent sci-fi TV series. The game starts off as a long-ish, complex, cooperative game (sort of like Arkham Horror or Shadows Over Camelot), where the players work together to save the Battlestar from the various disasters that the game throws at them. What makes this co-op interesting is that some of the players are Cylons, secretly working for the other side and trying to sabotage the ship. The game is then somewhat similar to Mafia/Werewolf, although it keeps its own distinct process and structure.

There are a lot of components, but the game is actually pretty simple in the sense that there are only two major mechanics to worry about. The skill checks are a simply a communal set collection minigame, while space combat is based on a single die roll, with some very rudimentary AI for the enemy ships. The rest of it is just a bunch of tracks, dials and tokens representing the various ways that Battlestar Galactica can meet a disastrous end.

The big question is, what makes playing this three-hour game better than just regular live Mafia? To start with there's a good resource management game going on, where you have to collectively decide things like whether risking some population is worth gaining a bit of speed. In addition, the game gives a very good context for the Mafia-style finger-pointing and betrayal; it's ultimately more interesting to play an actual game than to have endless variations of "Hey man you kept blinking that way the last time you were scum".

Battlestar Galactica is a great game. It's kind of slow, but there's always something to do even if it's not your turn, whether it's making a skill check, conferring on a decision, or just keeping an eye out for traitorous behavior. Thematically it's good at evoking the feel of the show's first season, forcing the players to make hard choices in the face of destruction. It all comes together very smoothly and is definitely worth the playtime it demands.

So say we all.

Two weeks!

Pat and I are on Atkins. I've been avoiding sugar for two weeks now. Oh, and also rice, bread, potatoes, and other carbs. But really, I don't miss those starches as much as I miss delicious pastries and fruit shakes.

First, the downsides. It's significantly more expensive. I'm eating more meat, but also more greens, and both are expensive compared to rice. It's also seriously depressing to go cold turkey on sweets, since normally I'm sugared up to the gills.

On the plus side, in those two weeks I've lost ten pounds! Maybe more! Ironically, I've also been getting better nutrients, because of all the fish and greens that I've been having. So hey, things are looking good.

In the long run, I think it's unhealthy to keep a strict ketosis diet, so I'll probably return to a broader diet... but I'll still skip out on white rice, white flour, and white sugar.

Finally, Heroscape.

Heroscape is a game that brings minis into an entirely new dimension... literally. This is a great game, and I'll tell you why. First off, the most striking feature of Heroscape is that instead of a flimsy paper map or homemade cardboard terrain, Heroscape has plastic hex tiles that can stack and interlock to form complete 3D terrain. You can also have walls, rivers, glaciers, trees, roads, bridges, even a castle.

Apart from the scenery, though, is the game any good? Short answer, yes. Heroscape doesn't try for anything too fancy, and scores with its intuitive, straightforward rules that barely need to be taught. Unit stats and abilities are printed on cards. This is so much better than being on the figs (less worry about wear and tear) or in the rulebook (no need to look things up in an expensive, overwhelming codex). Having special cards allows each unit to have unique, explicit special abilities, spicing up the game experience while keeping the core rules simple.

The funny thing about Heroscape is that it's made by Hasbro and is supposed to be a mass market toy, meaning it's found in Toys R' Us, not in Neutral Grounds. Unfortunately, this wasn't really marketed in the Philippines, so most pepople here haven't even heard of it. And since it was released in 2004, this makes it pretty scarce. The Master Set (read: starter) is incredibly good value. The booster packs have roughly the same MSRP cost per fig compared to Clix and Dreamblade, but they're not random. If you just want orcs, go ahead and buy the box with orcs in it.

It's probably a little to early for me to say this for sure -- but I think that Heroscape is the best prepainted minis game around.

This one is a little different. I never got any Warmachine figures. Just a rulebook - a thick, hardbound, illustrated, full-color rulebook. It's definitely awesome, but to be honest, it cost more than I had spent on Heroclix.

Warmachine (as far as I can tell), plays great. The gameplay is pretty similar to Mageknight, but with more stats, more abilities, and more variety - Mageknight designed by serious gamers. Oh, there are some issues about how mechs drain resources too much compared to infantry, but that's something that has a lot of countermeasures.

Warmachine looks good too... but is where I have a problem. Warmachine comes from the grand old tradition of unpainted pewter minis. It comes as little metal bits that you have to assemble using glue, tiny drills and pins. Then you paint the little guy by hand -- primers, body and wash. And hey, that sounds like a fun hobby, but I don't think it's for someone who just wants to play a minis game.

The funny thing is, I casually suggested to a couple of Warmachine players that it would be nice if the game went prepainted, and they started ranting at me like I was a goat-horned heretic. I guess from their point of view, playing with pre-painted minis is like playing with a pre-constructed Magic deck - yeah you can do that, but then what's the point?

I printed out some chits to try the game out, and the truth is I really like it. But having to take up painting and modelling as one more hobby on top of gaming is a really big barrier to entry - a line I'm not willing to cross.

I got into Dreamblade almost a year ago, but I don't think I've ever written about it. Which is a shame, because it's flat out amazing.

Dreamblade is a really really good game. It has a good mix of Ameritrash and Euro-style elements. There's combat with a ton of dice rolls, like a minis game, or Descent. The movement is strategic, somewhat like a light abstract (like checkers or chess). The victory point scoring is straight out of a Eurogame. What's impressive is that it all hangs together -- forming a coherent, fun game with the best of everything. The variety of figures is pretty impressive, even with just the base set, and the four factions differentiate themselves well.

Unfortunately for Dreamblade, it was packaged as a collectible game with a horrible theme (nightmare monsters, wtf). They're well designed, well sculpted, and well painted, but at the end of the day who really wants to collect an army of two-headed gorillas? It would have helped a lot if it were packaged as a boardgame with all the bits in one box. Yes, I know I say that about everything but in this case it's exceptionally true. Unappealing figures and a high barrier to entry killed this game.
So how do you get into a dead collectible game? In this case, I got a few starters when they were on sale, shopped for some singles on local forums. Last month I finally finished my goal of getting two of each common and one of each uncommon in the base set. Fortunately, the way the numbers work out it's easy to put together straight up preconstructed faction armies (ie. One of each blue and red common VS two of each green common). Treating it as an out-of-print boardgame instead of a dead CMG makes it much more appealing to play.

Overall, I really like it. I should bring it out whenever there's an opportunity for a two player game.

I still have an unhealthy fixation on plastic manz, so I ended up getting a couple of minis games last month (and also this month). This could be kind of long, so I'll break it down into bite sized parts.

I found some Heroclix: Batman Alpha boosters on sale at Neutral Grounds, just 150php (normally around 450php). It seemed like an ideal way to start a heroclix collection, so I grabbed a booster (or ten). Now, thing about the Batman Alpha set is that it's geared towards starting players. The character selection here is good: It's just a small set, and the characters are all fairly popular. Opening a booster, I do feel fairly happy unless I get mostly duplicates. And hey, it's Batman! Who doesn't like the motherfucking Batman? Admittedly, I wouldn't have done this at full MSRP, but it's fun to open boosters when it's on sale. On the downside, the figs are mostly mediocre - bland sculpts and thick painting. I'm sick of playing on flimsy paper maps. Also, the idea of having clix bases is interesting, but ultimately I think it's better to just have stat cards and statless figures.

As far as the game goes: Heroclix Alpha comes with dumbed down starter rules that are okay, but have a much shallower gameplay. It does offer a more interesting win condition: Kill 5 units, and everyone respawns when killed. Compared to "kill everything", this makes it easier for a player to catch up, and more attractive for multiplayer. The full rules are a mixed bag; the core gameplay is good, but you can see that grime and clutter has been added to it over the years. (this is not really relevant to the material in the Alpha sets, though).

Overall, I'm happy with what I got. Hey it was cheap! I wouldn't really bother to get more though, and I definitely wouldn't even try to get into it competitively. So... is anyone interested in picking up my duplicates?

We got some more toys and games a couple of weeks ago. I'll skip posting an inventory for now, but let me tell you about the first thing I opened: Dominion.

Dominion counts as a boardgame, but it's really just 500 cards in a nice box. Unlike a CCG, people don't bring their own decks; instead, everyone plays from one common pool of cards. Building your deck *is* the game. The person who can build a deck with the most victory points in it wins, but to do this first you need Gold (for buying things) and various actions (to speed up your deck in various ways).

Dominion is good stuff! The basic rules are easy to learn and the game is easy to play, but there is a great depth of strategy in evaluating cards and choosing what combination to put in your deck. There's a constant impetuous to make you build just a leetle bit better game after game -- the very same thing which kept me interested in CCGs for years (Although without the corresponding need to burn cash).

Dominion tayo!

 

 

Let me tell you about Mageknight.

It was 2002. Pat and I decided to get into Mageknight. Back in those days, XP still was more of a hobby shop than a PC cafe. Greenhills had not yet been razed, and there were still hobby stores on the fourth floor for card and plastic freaks. Me, Pat and my brother would go to Arena and stare for hours at the shelves full of little plastic miniatures. At first, our priority was just to get a playable army as cheaply as possible, so we happily bought anything that was cheaper than 2 pesos per point. This is pretty much the same as deciding to buy cheap Magic cards with high casting costs. It gave the result you would expect: armies full of bad, overcosted figures. But back then, it didn't matter so much to us, as long as we got to play. Most of the time we would just hang out at UP. Between my Quantum Physics and her Instrumentation classes, we'd go behind the CS library for privacy and pit Troll against Werewolf, Tree Elemental against Steam Golem.

After a while, we did end up playing competitively. I'd spend a lot of my online time on the old MKRealms forums, buying cheap singles. We bought Dragons and Giants. Played 2000 point armies. Pat actually paid for and managed her own collection, playing in tournaments with more cutthroat armies than I did.

Unfortunately, the problem with Mageknight were obvious even then. Ranged units were priced only slightly higher than melee units, even though in reality, the melee units would get shredded before they ever got close. Turtling was superior strategy; it was not uncommon in tournament games for time to be called without a single attack. Internal playtesting was a joke. It seems that Wizkid's solution to the dominance of long range was to make even longer ranges. Bigger, and bigger, and bigger.

It all came to a head when they released a new base set, named simply Mage Knight, known colloquially as 2.0. We were given a choice: Play a better game, but know that all of your old figures are obsolete, dead plastic. Or, quit, take your figures home, and never buy new product again.

We quit.

[Magic]

I really like Tribal. I like the synergy and combat, much much more than 5-color goodstuff decks (hence my antipathy towards Alara block as a whole). It wouldn't be a stretch to say that one year after, Lorwyn is my favorite Magic block - the organic evaluations in limited, the tribes of constructed, the semi-classical setting.

Over the holidays, I made decks for the eight races of Lorwyn block. The goal was not to make finely tuned winning machines, but to make decks that were fun and balanced to play against each other - good fillers for boardgame night. 

Last week, I got to try them out with Cels, Jem and Pat. I'm happy that everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, even if the decks needed more tuning - although part of that is because two headed giant plays pretty differently from 1v1. (As an aside: Pat loves 2HG)

Magic On!

It's easy to order things online.

Too easy.

Shit like that is why I don't want to have a credit card, really.

I love the mountains,
I love the clear blue skies
I love big bridges
I love when great whites fly
I love the whole world
And all its sights and sounds
Boom-de-ah-da, boom-de-ah-da
Boom-de-ah-da, boom-de-ah-da
I love the oceans
I love real dirty things
I love to go fast
I love Egyptian kings
I love the whole world
And all its craziness
Boom-de-ah-da, boom-de-ah-da
Boom-de-ah-da, boom-de-ah-da
I love tornadoes
I love arachnids
I love hot magma
I love the giant squids
I love the whole world
It's such a brilliant place
Boom-de-ah-da, boom-de-ah-da
Boom-de-ah-da, boom-de-ah-da

What did 2008 bring for me? Well, a lot, I guess. This post turned out to be longer than I thought it would be. To be honest, half this stuff I've already mentioned here over the course of the year. However, like a low-budget sitcom episode where you have flashbacks from previous episodes, I will dare to repeat myself: I feel that putting everything together in one post will put things in perspective.

WoW
December 2007, I started playing WoW with Pat. I continued to play for the first several months of 2008, grinding my shaman Foluzar up to the mid-60s. My interest petered out at that point, and I stopped playing WoW for a while.

Harvest
I was also the OM IT Row Leader for Japan Harvest. In truth, half the time I had no idea what I was doing, and I spent a lot of extra time running around just to make sure things went right on the project. Harvest finished with an excellent cutover though, so in the end I can say that I picked up a lot of good experience from this.

Singapore
One particular high note in the Harvest was spending a month working in Singapore. At first I was hesitant, because it meant the uncertainty of travelling alone and the sadness of leaving Tesla and Pat behind. It worked out great though, particularly with HP paying for the trip. I didn't get to save any of the pocket money, but I got a lot of books, comics and food out of it.

Obama
One of the things that took up a lot of my mindspace was Obama's election. I read Dreams from my Father a couple of years ago, and felt a connection. I watched Obama as he struggled through the primaries and the general, savored each victory and raged at each loss. Obama made me believe the crazy idea that maybe there are a handful of people out there who are genuinely interested in making this thing work. I despair at the thought of trying to find honest men in the fetid swamp of Philippine politics, but for Hope, I'll give it a shot.

Loss
Speaking of filth, my wallet was stolen this year, at the Luzon bus stop/overpass. Huuuge loss. Ironically, I went home early that day because I was feeling sick; now I actually feel safer commuting late at night.

Boardgames
On the lighter side, 2008 also brought Boardgames. Celsus already had a huge bunch of Settlers of Catan, but finding Gamecrab introduced us to a plethora of board games, most of them good. Puerto Rico was the runaway hit from our first play (although the lack of random/expandable elements stops it from being highly replayable). From Po's shipment, I got a bunch of other games too. Carcassone is pretty, simple, and easy to get into, while having it's own subtle grace. Blue Moon City was enjoyable the first few times I played it, but unfortunately I never got around to playing with my copy yet! San Juan has a superficial resemblance to Puerto Rico, but is a good game in it's own right; unfortunately it's overshaowed at the office by the very similar Race for the Galaxy. I really wanted to buy Descent, but the NG price increase stopped me. In the end, I'm glad Arnold bought it, because it's much more suited to the Ameritrash crowd at work - Descent really has issues with downtime and game length. I'm looking forward to 2009 and the new games that it will bring in.

Essential X-Men
I've always loved the X-Men, and when I saw these books in Singapore, I had to have them (I was flush with my per diem, after all). They're just in black and white, but this is truly the good stuff.

TF Animated
Transformers Animated was released this year, meaning a new show and a new line of toys. The cartoon is pretty decent, although around half the episodes are fluffy filler. The toys had the same clean, stylized look of the show, directly contrasting with the fiddly look from the movie. The style makes it doubly wonderous that they transform so well. I bought a bunch of these, and they're just great. I should take some pics.

Busou Shinki
A cute little toyline that's fun to play around with and display. Well, I guess it's not a time sink, really, but I spend a solid chunk of cash on this, so in the list it goes.

LEGO
One of my bigger hobbies this year, I actually started on Lego because Pat asked me to look into it. Good thing, too: this means Pat pays for half the stuff, which is a rare bonus. A thoroughly enjoyable toy experience, in a year that I got with a lot of toys. Only downside is, the price difference between the US SRP and the local prices are so huge, we ended up ordering a lot online - an activity whose timing disrupts my spending patterns.

Ikariam
This browser based game takes just a few clicks at the start and end of each day, but still it's pretty engaging. Honestly, I can't believe I'm still playing this. It must be that good.

Other Games
The DS is still going strong, although I tend to play 10 minuite games now (like Layton, N+ and Ninjatown), instead of playing RPGs (I am sure I blame WoW for this). As for card games, well, nobody plays the WoW TCG anymore, and while Magic started strong with Morningtide, I stopped being interested after that. Considering that the office is a full proxy environment, that's a bad sign.

WoW: WotLK
Did I already mention WoW? Well, I'm going to mention it again, because when Wrath of the Lich King released this November, everyone scrambled to upgrade... myself included. With a brand new Death Knight on a new server (Dark Iron), I might actually hit cap this time.

Onwards!

King's Castle Siege is the largest set in Lego's current Castle lineup, with 973 bricks, divided into 7 parts. We got this off Amazon for 100 USD. 

The first part is just the minifigs. There are 6 human and 4 skeleton minifigs, and a horse and dragon. Three of the skeletons aren't minifigs in the traditional sense; they're just made of specialized bricks. The humans all have unique faces, and there's more than enough weapons for everone, not even counting the extra weapons found in the actual castle.

The dragon is pretty huge, a lot bigger than it looked on the box. It's built from several large parts, which gives it a decent amount of articulation, with some particularly good range on the head and neck. There's four studs on the back for a minifig to ride, and there is in fact some construction used to attack the wings, but it would be a stretch to call this brick built. The result is a bit duplo-ish, but overall it does look quite good.

The second section is the front gate. There's some playable features here: a drawbridge that you can lift using a lever and chains, and a portcullis that you can drop by pulling out its support. Note also the technic pins and holes at the bottom; this is how each part of the modular design attaches to each other.

The third section is a pair of towers. There's some nice detailing here: small catapults, flags, shields, torches. There's space for minifigs on top of the tower, and also inside the tower, perhaps to shoot out throught the arrow-slits.

The fourth section is a simple wall. There's a large catapult on a rotating platform, and a weapons rack with two swords and a spear, in case those minifigs want extra weapons.  

The fifth section is a wall and tower. Another play feature here: part of the wall can be pushed in. You can also see that the top floor has a small jail cell.

The sixth and seventh sections are the rear gate and the king's tower, respectively. The rear gate has a neat double door, but is otherwise unspectacular. The king's tower has a lot of shiny parts, a golden sword, treasure chest, and throne. It even has a sniper's post up on top! It is pretty airy though, being supported by arches instead of walls.

Overall, it's a pretty nice set. It's mostly built with regular bricks, so it's easy to modify if you have extra parts (explaining why some people end up buying multiples of the set). And I'd say it's justified! If you're just going to get just one Castle set, it had better be this one.

We went to Komikon 4 this weekend, at Bahay ng Alumni. Going in, I made it a point to really set aside a budget for this; still, it's a little hard to take a plunge on the very indie ones. I did end up spending a lot of money though, and I guess that makes this a success for me! 

One highlight would be Zsa zsa Zaturnnah, with a personalized autograph for just 200 php.

Another good one is Elmer, which is a well written SF story about chickens gaining intelligence en masse.

Haven't gone through the rest yet. I'll get back if anything is particularly good.

For the past few months, I've been following the American presidential elections. This is going to sound odd, but I got my news mostly from the Penny-Arcade forums. They're surprisingly good at aggregating all sorts of news and analysis.

I'll pass on talking about the politics, but I have to admit that I became addicted to Obama's message of change. Some have called Obama messianic, and it's true! Listening to him talk about making things better, hearing it echo in the Penny-Arcade community, I caught a glimpse of faith and hope.

Is it okay to believe?