Fouling Power!

The Blood Bowl league I'm playing in on FumBBL just hit the halfway point of the season. 7 games down, 7 games to go. I started the team from scratch before this season and got to play 3 training games against other new teams before getting thrust into real games against teams who could have entered at the 1750 TW mark. I had an average preseason getting 1 win, 2 draws, and 1 loss. That was good for 14th place of 32 teams. It also gave me a few skills and he money to buy my second bull centaur which was really important.

Heading into the start of the regular season I had 8 skills. 3 of those 8 skills were dirty player. My assertion was that most established teams were going to be running light on players after having to cut down to the salary cap before the preseason and I could use inducement money on bribes to try to get a man advantage. Also I can't see any other skill for a hobgoblin. They suck. I don't want them in contact with the enemy. I don't want them carrying the ball. I think my absolute first skill was guard on a hobgoblin, which made me sad, but having a slightly more mobile source of guard hasn't been bad.

Through 7 games I have 6 wins and a draw which is tops in my division and the league as a whole. I've been very lucky as far as injuries go with not a single death or permanent injury across the whole team through the 14 games thus far. I've had one death in several games this season but the apothecary has always worked on them. That's kept my team from falling down, and has helped win games I'm sure, but the big thing has been fouls. Foul early, foul often. My team is #2 in casualties inflicted with 32 in 7 games. But if I look at the casualties I've actually earned SPP for the number is only 19. Which means the other 13 have been fouls! Almost 2 players removed per game, every game, thanks to fouls. I've taken the foul action 46 times which is by far the most in the league. One of my players, Monsieur Brunette, has 20 on his own. That's more than every team in the league save 2.

Have I been getting lucky here too? Well, I crunched some numbers on fouling a while ago and I'm going to assume I didn't make mistakes in those odds. I try to gang foul when I can, but my guys move slow. I'm going to assume I've been mostly aiming needing a 6+ to pierce armour. (3 assists against someone with 8 AV.) In that case, with a dirty player foul I expect a casualty 22% of the time and to get kicked out 29% of the time. With a regular dude foul I expect a casualty 12% of the time and to get kicked out 27% of the time.

13 casualties in 46 tries is a 28% success rate. That's definitely higher than it should be. I have played against goblins and niggled players which helps a little but it feels like I can't expect that to keep going. On the other hand on 19 fouls I expect to get kicked out 6 or fewer times 70% of the time. So only getting 20 fouls in over those 7 games (this is assuming the last foul is an ejection in the last game) isn't lucky for Monsieur Brunetter. Especially considering I've had bribes for several of those games. On the other hand he does get punched some of the time. Just going from raw numbers it's hard to tell but it doesn't feel like I've been getting lucky on staying in the game. I also don't have KO numbers so I don't know if I've been overall lucky in removing players from the pitch with fouls. Definitely lucky in terms of doing damage as I've done about 3 more casualties than I should have assuming I have been needing the 6+ with dirty player every time.

Another area I've been getting lucky is MVP distribution. I got a bunch of early hobgoblin MVPs to get those dirty players but since the season has started I've gotten one hobgoblin level total. It was on the guard player, who now has block. All of my dwarves have guard now which is very nice. None of them have claw, which makes me sad, but hopefully it will come soon. I have two elf games to start the second half of the season before I get into the heavily armoured teams again and could really use claw by then.

My team is #3 in SPP earned, and has to be #1 in fewest SPP lost given that I've suffered no injuries, but I'm still lower in TV than 5 of the 7 teams I'm going to be playing in the second half of the season. So I should get to continue to implement the bribe plan and keep on fouling all day long. I decided to skip the minotaur thus far because I'm worried about his 8 armour and wild animal screwing things up. But if I end up at a sweet spot in inducements I may pick one up for a game to see what happens. I have 380k in the bank and will have to burn it before next season anyway! Or maybe I should just save it to throw extra cash in for bribes during important games? Hmm...

FORCED

Sceadeau recently sent me a multiplayer game on Steam that he likened to a Diablo puzzle game. The basic idea of the game is 2-4 players get together, take one of the four classes, and smash some monsters. There's a tank, and archer, a rogue, and a barbarian style character. Each character will eventually unlock something like 8 active abilities and 8 passive abilities and can choose to use 3 of each for any given level. Combat mostly entails hitting enemies with a weaker ability in order to stack up marks on them and then using a powerful ability with a cooldown to consume the marks and do tons of extra damage. There seems like there's a reasonable amount of interplay deciding which class should be using the marks on which levels and that sort of thing but the combat isn't terribly exciting. Good enough, but not spectacular for the genre or anything.

Where the game really gets interesting is the puzzle aspect of the game. There's a floating orb on your team and each player has a button they can press to 'call the ball' and make the orb go in a straight line from where it is to where the player was when the button is pressed. If someone else hits their button it overrides the old order and the orb will go from where it currently is to the new destination. Then the levels get filled with things to do with the orb. Shrines that get activated when the orb touches them which heal the party, or damage the enemies, or charge the orb into a bomb which detonates the first time it contacts anything solid. Like an enemy, or a wall... Or a player! KABOOM! Some levels make you stand near the orb or take massive damage. Some levels have gauntlet style enemy spawners that can only be destroyed by the orb. We just did a level where we had to charge the orb into a ball but the charge point was buried deep in a tunnel and would explode if it hit the wall. We couldn't enter the tunnel because the entrance has a short ledge we couldn't walk over, but the orb could fly over. So we needed to charge the bomb and then walk parallel down the tunnel on opposite sides calling the ball back and force so it wouldn't hit either wall. Tricky, but doable with some coordination.

There's a leveling system, but it's not grindy the way most leveling systems work. Instead every zone has 3 levels that can be earned in it. One for completing the zone. One for completing the zone under a specified time limit. One for completing the zone while accomplish some challenge along the way. Kill a tough monster within 8 seconds of it spawning. Kill the area boss without getting hit by his stomp ability. Kill 5 enemies with one bomb (on a level where enemies spawn in waves of 4).

This game reminds me of the good parts of raiding in World of Warcraft. Figure out how to do a puzzle, actually implement the plan. Get a reward. Move on to the next level. Ok, in WoW those last two things actually took months to happen, and that wasn't exactly a good part... On the other hand I expect this game will probably only be fun for a couple weeks and then we'll have beaten all the challenges and move on. But maybe that's a good thing too... I have lots of games to play, after all!

We've been playing with 3 people thus far (Robb, Sceadeau, and I) but there are 4 classes and it goes up to 4 people...

Blood Bowl: Break Tackle

A few weeks ago my chaos dwarf team had its second bull centaur, Mr Boddy, gain his first level. I rolled doubles and asked on Facebook what people thought I should take. I also looked up the bull centaur info on bbtactics. Duncan thought I should go with dodge because he'd be a better player with it in the long run and he can only get dodge when he rolls doubles. (And probably not on double 6s either, so there's only about a 14% chance of it happening. Better get it now when you have the option.) Steve thought I should skip the double and take break tackle. The bbtactics site had a few opinions but mostly seemed to think skipping the double and taking break tackle was the way to go with a couple options for block instead.

I ended up grabbing block because I like to punch people. He leveled again in short order (turns out he scores most of my touchdowns) and rolled doubles again. I looked ahead, saw not too much tackle, and took dodge. Ostensibly with the plan of taking break tackle next because it combos well with it on top of making him hard to take down. And by this point it was becoming clear he was going to be my ball carrier and making desperation blitzes on him work less often seemed like a good plan.

I just played a game yesterday and got yet another level. On both bull centaurs, actually! One has block and mighty blow and the other has block and dodge. I've skipped what most people seem to think is the obvious first skill on both of them thus far. Should I be taking it now? I rolled normal skills with both of them so there aren't any super fancy options.

The thing is, I just don't get break tackle. I mean, I know what it does. By letting the player use his strength instead of his agility on a dodge roll it turns the bull centaur into someone who needs a 2+ to dodge away instead of a 4+. 2+ is something that you can reasonably expect will work most of the time. 4+ is a disaster waiting to happen. So that seems like a pretty good upgrade. It opens up more options for what the players can do on their turn. They can take shorter paths on movement by dodging by one guy in the way. They can get out of contact with people standing beside them at the start of their turn. And because you choose to use it after you see the roll you can often chain together dodges if you start off with a high number. It certainly has a game effect...

But why am I doing those things? Taking a shorter path is an interesting idea, but bull centaurs can already move 9 spaces by rolling some dice while most of my team only moves 4. Squeezing out even more movement by going in a direct path feels like it's just going to spread my team out and let either the bull centaur or the remaining dwarves get beat up. Dodging away from someone who's marking me just feels wrong too. Why aren't I just punching that guy instead?

I think it may come down to me having a different idea of how to play Blood Bowl than most people. I like punching people, getting a man advantage, and then doing things with the ball. The idea that I might want to not hit someone because I want to go blitz someone else is one that feels like it's letting me hit one fewer guy this turn. I'd rather his the guy beside me and blitz somewhere else. Injuries are a numbers game and you simply need to throw lots of blocks in order to expect lots of injuries. Sure, I'm probably getting an extra hit on someone less valuable... But a hit is a hit! If I keep not hitting the least valuable guy he keeps existing on the field taking up space and forcing me to dodge away. I'd rather hurt him and get rid of the problem.

Now, sometimes hitting someone specific is critically important. The ball carrier took off down the field and will score next turn or something like that. I find that as long as I keep my team together I can probably free up a bull centaur to go blitz him down anyway. And if I have to dodge away... I'm still going to succeed 75% of the time without break tackle! That's not great, but it's not terrible. Besides, mostly I'm happy to let my opponent score if it means I get to hit more dudes. I'll just score twice myself!

That said, there is power in having the option to make that roll 97% of the time instead of 75% of the time. It's also quite useful to be able to easily threaten a score from mid field even if someone gets in the way. I like standing in a pile with the ball a little ways into the enemy territory while just punching people who come to try to take the ball away. A common tactic is to try to bog down movement so the 'cage' can't get close to the end zone, but having a guy who can move 9 spaces means I don't have to get very far before it's far enough.

What are the other options? Well, the mighty blow guy can make a case for wanting all of tackle, frenzy, guard, and piling on. I do have 6 guys with tackle, but they all move 4 spaces. Having one high movement guy with tackle and mighty blow feels like it can potentially do some real damage. I miss having a copy of frenzy on the team. I love being able to threaten the sideline push because it forces the enemy to play in a smaller area and my 4 movement guys like having less space to cover. Frenzy can be a little scary to use, but on a 4 strength guy it feels like it could be gold. Frenzy is also rough on positioning at times, but with just one copy of it I should be able to make it work. Guard is just a good thing to have. I have 7 copies of it already, and it really helps make with the punching. Piling on is something I'd rather have on a dwarf with claw but I have yet to roll doubles on any of those and they do all have guard now. I don't like having both piling on and guard on the same person, so this bull seems like the place to put it if I'm going to take it.

Dodge guy wants guard if he doesn't want break tackle. In my last game I was in a situation where dodge guy had the ball and was beside three enemies with guard. If he'd had guard it would have been trivial to break him free. As it was I had to put a lot of effort into pushing them all away and had to skip a good blitz elsewhere to do it. Of course break tackle probably would have solved the problem 97% of the time, too? Some people also think sure hands should go on the primary ball carrier but I have 4 rerolls and am more than happy to use them picking up the ball. Sure hands doesn't make you any better at picking up the ball it just conserves rerolls and I'm fine with my reroll usage most of the time. It does also protect against strip ball, which could be nice I guess.

My gut feeling for now is that I should take break tackle on the dodge guy. Maybe it will open some plays up that I'm not seeing now because I don't have it, and it will make the turn 8 final push for a score a little safer. I don't think I'm going to be dodging away much just for the sake of dodging away because I hate 1 in 6 chances of failure. Mighty blow guy I'm not sure about, but I think there are too many good options to take the second break tackle. Piling on is top of the list but I'm going to sleep on it and maybe take frenzy instead. I do like pushing people out of bounds... And once I see the order of my opponents in the second half of the season I might decide I really need tackle or guard right away?

Aardwolf Primary Class

Back in the day when I used to mud on Aardwolf the class system was relatively straightforward. You chose a class when you first started and leveled up to the max level of 200. Once there you could do 'end game' stuff or you could start over back at level 1 with a second class. This time through you'd have all of the abilities of both chosen classes and would need more experience for each level to compensate. You could keep repeating every 200 levels. Restart at level 1 with a new class. Once you had all 7 classes at max level you could stop for end game stuff or you could start over at level 1 of just a single class again, but with extra powers. (Some bonus stats and you got to use spells and wear gear 10 levels above you.) You could repeat this up to 10 times! So much leveling!


Which order you chose the classes didn't really matter. Thief/warrior or warrior/thief were just as good at fighting as one another. I can only remember three ways in which your first class mattered... That was the class you represented in class wars. There was one zone with a room for each class and you could only explore the room for your class (which meant you couldn't explore the whole zone until you'd completed 6 entire tiers of leveling and had started in on the 7th). And your displayed name was a function of your first class and your tier number.

Despite that I can remember staying up late debating the 'right' order to choose the classes with Byung and Tom. You really wanted to be a mage because they had the best damage spells. Thieves had the best opening round with backstab, especially when you had high level weapons. Warriors had the best auto attack damage. Clerics were the best healers, and had great buffs. Psionicists were almost as good as mages at doing damage and brought a bunch of utility and more buffs. Paladins were worse than clerics at healing, and worse than warriors and fighting, and worse than psions at damage and buffs. A fine first class, but once you had 3 classes you really didn't want paladin to be one of them. They did have a couple unique buffs though, so they weren't terrible. Rangers were terrible. The only thing they had going for them was the ability to skin the corpses of every monster you killed which would give you an item with random stats. If you got lucky you could make best in slot gear for several slots at every level. But you were so bad! So there were interesting decision to make while leveling based on what combo you wanted at each number of classes. Mage/thief/warrior/cleric/psion/paladin/ranger may have been 'best', but there was definitely debate to be had. It looks like Byung's last setup was thief/psion/mage/warrior/cleric/ranger/paladin!

When I stopped playing I was midway through my 4th tier. I don't even remember what my first 3 primary classes were but I know I chose different ones because I wanted to explore that entire zone. This time around I was a paladin because the display name was slayer and one of the available races is vampire. So I was a vampire slayer. Woo? And I had to get paladin out of the way at some point!

Things have changed significantly since then. They decided they didn't like that all characters with all 7 classes were pretty much identical and looked for a way to shake things up a little. The solution they came with was to make your primary class much more impactful. Each class now has a few spells/skills that can only be used if you have the right first class. Many of the other skills which carry over are significantly more powerful with the right primary class. For example, I have thief as my third class so I have access to the backstab skill. But I don't have access to the enhanced backstab skill as only primary thieves get that. Also, my backstab is worse than a thief's backstab would be. Right now I seem to be backstabbing for around 12% of enemy health. I'm just guessing here, but I bet I'd be doing more like 40% if I was a primary thief. On top of that change, you also get to pick a subclass for your primary class to get even better at something they do. I appear to have chosen to be a guardian which gives me improved safeguard and rescue abilities in order to protect other people in my group. I bet it's a useful subclass for endgame PvPing, but it's absolutely worthless for leveling and questing. If I was a thief I could subclass into assassin to do 25% more damage on backstab. That's probably 10% off the health of every monster I engage on instead of the nothing I have now!

Because they made this change they've granted everyone the ability to change their primary class once for free. You can also pay quest points to change again after that. This means exploring that one zone is a lot easier, and it means I could switch up to something better for more power. (I've also already visited the paladin specific rooms in that zone, so switching out for free makes a lot of sense regardless.) The way it works means if I switch one of my current classes in as my new primary class I end up just swapping and keeping paladin. So I can be a thief/mage/paladin or a mage/paladin/thief or I could throw paladin away entirely and be something like warrior/mage/thief.

I wish I could remember what classes I've already done for that zone. Wait! I have random logs saved from various clan applications over the years... YES! Tier 1 I was a ranger (got that out of the way early) and tier 2 I was a cleric. I'm 95% sure my tier 0 was mage. So I still need to make my primary class thief, psion, and warrior. But I can do that for a bunch of quest points if I end up exploring all the other zones and really need to get the last few rooms in this one. So probably what I should do is pick the primary class/subclass that I actually want and maybe use exploring as a tiebreaker.

Back To Mudding

Sceadeau has been trying for the last little bit to get Robb and I to start playing on the Arctic mud with him. I went to give it a spin the other day but ended up learning some things that made me uninterested in playing it heavily.

While I was playing I got to overhear a shouting flame war between some other players. It would seem the mud is what they call 'oPK' or open player killing. This means anyone can attack any other player in almost any room at any time. From what I was able to gather about this particular situation one of the players attacked someone else. Said someone else then sent out a request for help via some out of game channel (a Skype chat room or a Facebook group or something) and then 10 people were suddenly involved in the fight. They killed off the attacker, took his stuff off his corpse, and then proceeded to taunt him via shouts.

I find this very disturbing. In particular the idea that a high level player can decide on a whim to kill me and take all my items is very bothersome. It pretty much negates one of the best things about games like this: collecting gear. Either gear is so trivial to come by it doesn't matter if someone takes your stuff or gear is hard to obtain and then the best way to get gear is to find someone with gear and gang up to kill them. I am not terribly interested in being a bully, or in getting bullied, or in having my progress removed on the whim of a stranger on the internet.

Another problem was the inability to log out anywhere you wanted. If you quit the game anywhere but an inn you instantly dropped all your stuff on the ground. If you rented a room in an inn you had to pay an hourly fee based on your gear. So again, either gear is irrelevant and it's ok to lose it or you have to go to great lengths to protect it. The worst would be taking a few extra days off, running out of money, and losing all your stuff.

Now, maybe you can make the claim that this is pretty realistic. Having to watch your back all the time and not being allowed to just quit when you want does make for a more realistic virtual world. My problem is I don't think it makes for a particularly fun one. Sometimes I want to play a hardcore game where I can lose all my progress if I make a mistake or forget to eat or whatever... But then I'll go and play Don't Starve or zAngband or something where if I fail or not depends on my skill and random luck and not on some high level guy having a bad day and taking it out on me.

Maybe the last straw that drove me away was the non-Euclidian geometry in the starting town. I'm fine with weird room layouts in dungeons and the like, but the starting town? Are you trying to confuse me just for your own kicks? Walking in a circle should get me back to the same spot, not get me to a room above the starting room. It didn't help that I'd downloaded a new mud client that had automap software that was really, really confused by it.

After futzing with that client I decided to see about logging into the mud I used to play a lot back in the day, Aardwolf. I finally went and salvaged the hard drive out of my old dead computer and hooked it up to my working computer. I was able to get all my old scripts and import them into the new client. Woo! Most of them didn't work because they changed how brackets and quotes work between zMud and cMud but at least it gave me a framework to work with. I cleaned most of them up and now I have a functioning spellup script and a campaign window like back in the day. I even managed to win a global quest!

So much has changed, with the world layout completely redone (busting most of my speedwalks), the class system changed, and all sorts of new stuff added. I got kicked out of my old clan (probably for not really playing in 6 years or whatever) which is a little sad. I did get a couple tells from people though! One from someone who used to be a clannie in Amazon (I think) and one from someone trying to recruit me into the big evil clan. I'm not a huge fan of random PK, but at least on Aardwolf there aren't really negative consequenced for being PKed. You lose a bit of time casting your buff spells again and whatnot but you don't get any gear stolen or anything like that. There's a lot of new stuff to figure out, but I still have my old gear and all my big numbers from before which is nice. I like big numbers!

Bridge Match 2 - Board 24

Board 20 – Dealer West – None Vul

Opponents convention card: Bridge World Standard
Opponents playing strength: Fair

My hand: ♠ J 7 6 2 ♥ A 7 ♦ Q 4 3 2 ♣ K 8 5

Partner opens 1 club. We're playing Walsh, so I'm supposed to bypass diamonds with a bad hand. A fairly balanced 10 count  probably qualifies as a bad hand, so I bid 1 spade which gets alerted. Partner bids 1NT, also alerted. I can't see us making game here so I pass.

East leads the 6 of diamonds.

	NORTH ♠ A 9 4 ♥ K Q J T ♦ K J 9 ♣ Q J 3
		EAST ♦ 6
	SOUTH ♠ J 7 6 2 ♥ A 7 ♦ Q 4 3 2 ♣ K 8 5

West	North	East	South
Pass	1♣	Pass	1♠1
Pass	1NT2	Pass	Pass
1Walsh
2Strong NT w/o spades

Right, we're playing weak NT, so he has a better hand than I thought he was going to have since he's have opened 1NT with the weak balanced hand. I wonder if that takes away some of the power from the Walsh convention? Oh well. We have 3 diamonds, 2 clubs, 4 hearts, and a spade. So 10 tricks as soon as I lose those minor suit aces. Maybe they can set up some spades first, but the diamond lead makes that unlikely...

6-2-T-J. I force out the diamond A. East returns a club. So much for them setting up spades first... I win, cash my diamond from hand, and pound out the club A. I cash out. Making 4.

	NORTH ♠ A 9 4 ♥ K Q J T ♦ K J 9 ♣ Q J 3
WEST ♠ Q 8 ♥ 9 8 6 3 2 ♦ T 5 ♣ T 9 7 2		EAST ♠ K T 5 3 ♥ 5 4 ♦ A 8 7 6 ♣ A 6 4
	SOUTH ♠ J 7 6 2 ♥ A 7 ♦ Q 4 3 2 ♣ K 8 5

The other 7 tables played 3NT. Some made 3, some made 4. So this is a solo bottom board.

Captain Jack disagrees with my pass of 1NT. He wants me to bid 3NT since partner has a strong NT hand. Fair enough.

I do wonder what would happen if he was 2-4-2-5 or 2-2-4-5 with 11 points...

Ranking after board 24/60: 8/16 with 51.19%.

Grand Prix: Toronto 2013

At the end of November there's going to be a big Magic: the Gathering Grand Prix out by the airport in Toronto. I assume it's going to be big because apparently there was a PTQ in the same location that got in the neighbourhood of 350 people. That's an insane number of people for a PTQ! The last event I played in was a PTQ in Toronto back in 2011 and it only had 84 players. The last limited GP Toronto that I went to, in 2010, had 1361 people in it. If it goes up at the same rate you'd be looking at more than 5000 people! I can't imagine that actually happening, but I'm expecting a really large number of people to show up.

I haven't played Magic in person in more than 2 years and I haven't played much online either, but I still feel like I should head on out to a local GP. Last time around I had two byes thanks to my limited rating but unfortunately that system went out the window since then. Now byes are awarded based on recent Planeswalker points of which I have none. I could get 2 byes if I find and win a GP trial, or I could show up with no byes and need to go 7-2 or better to make day 2.

Finding a GPT is unfortunately easier said than done. There's a link on the GP overview site but it doesn't seem to do what it says it does. Searching Google is no better. Eventually my brain suggested I look on mtgontario and lo and behold they had an event list. No idea if it's comprehensive or not, but it at least has SOME info, which is more than I could get out of the Wizards site. There are GPTs on the 27th of October and on November 3rd and 17th. There's also a PTQ on Nov 9th. I have plans to stay awake for 25 hours until 8am Nov 3rd so that trial is probably out. This weekend is probably too soon, and there's an online PTQ too. But maybe I can fit the one on the 17th in... Of course the listing on the mtgontario site doesn't say where it is... *sigh*

I also need to, you know, learn the new set. I get a brief overview of things by reading Matt's Facebook posts but playing enough to understand the tricks that exist seems important. I did a swiss draft online last night and went 2-1 with what felt like a terrible deck, but this format might just be really screwy. I sided in land destruction in all three of my matches because people seem intent on paying 8 mana for things. Of course my deck mostly cost 4 and 5 so I can't really talk. I drafted several rares that ended up being underwhelming, like the new Fact or Fiction. I had the red mythic god and won the game I played him on turn 4 but every other time I drew him he had no impact on the game. Devotion is weird, and I think I needed to ignore a second colour entirely and just play a lot of cheap red creatures to power him up. Try to win before people can pay their 8 mana! I liked the red common monstrous creature who cost 4 for a 3/3 trample and then 6 more to power up to 6/6. He's probably even better in a deck with cheap stuff so you have something to do when you hit 6 instead of my super slow deck that had other 6 drops competing for time.

There's an online PTQ this weekend. I'll need to wake up early to play in it (it starts at 10am) but it's probably worth doing just for the experience with sealed deck.

SNES Top Licensees

16 months ago I started playing through all of the US released games in the SNES library on my other blog, Ziggyny's SNES Adventure. I've been assigning a personal rating to a game each week and I've been wondering which company is going to end up having made the best games for the system. And how would that even be defined? Average rating? Sheer quantity of games with a high rating? Percentage of games with a high rating? I wish I'd thought of this when I started up so I could have made some predictions before getting involved with some of the games.

I feel like my initial guess would have had Square end up at the top of the heap. I know of four incredible games they put out at least! Koei would have been next since I spent a ton of time playing some of their simulation games. Aerobiz, Uncharted Waters, PTO, Romance of the Three Kingdoms III... And more! Third would probably have been Nintendo since they put out some really spectacular games. But they also put out a lot of games and there's bound to have been some stinkers. So if I'd be using an average metric it probably falls down below Square and Koei. Then there'd be the other game companies I remember putting out lots of games. Capcom, Konami, Electronic Arts...

One company I wouldn't have put on the list is Enix. Why? Because my mind thinks terrible things about them from when they merged with Square. The internet likes to blame that for the 'downfall' of the Final Fantasy series. So those thoughts aren't actually grounded in fact, but in internet bias. That's not good!

The reason I started thinking about Enix is I've spent all week playing the next game to be posted: Soul Blazer. Which happened to be put out by Enix. The only other game thus far in the adventure put out by Enix? ActRaiser. The single game I was most psyched about playing again when I started running the adventure. Ok, so they had a couple good early games... They must have put out a lot of junk afterwards to justify my not liking them, right? Well, it turns out they put out 10 games total on the SNES according to my list. And the next one after Soul Blazer is EVO: the Search for Eden! Another game I really, really, really want to play again. Later on they have 2 RPGs my brother had growing up which I remember liking (Paladin's Quest and Robotrek), 2 hard/annoying games I finally beat after sinking a ton of time into them (The 7th Saga and BRAIN LORD), an ok sequel (ActRaiser 2), a game from a series I've heard good things about but never played (Ogre Battle), and a game I've never heard of (King Arthur & the Knights of Justice). That is quite a line-up. Depending on how I feel when digging into the frustrating games Enix could end up putting up a really high score in any metric.

Enough to pass Square? Well, looking at that list I have to say there's no way. Square only put out 7 games for the SNES. Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, Chrono Trigger, and Breath of Fire. Yowsa! Soul Blazer is fun and all, but it is no Final Fantasy VI...

I ended up putting together a static page to go on my other blog listing the companies, the total number of games I've played thus far, how many got at least an A rating, and the average rating thus far. Most companies only have one game played thus far, so things could easily change, but the top two right now are Enix and Square. SunSoft is number 3, I guess because I really liked Lemmings. I don't recognize any of the other 11 game names though so they may end up tumbling down the list. Nintendo is far and away the leader in terms of A or better games with a full third of all good games coming from them. It's their forays into terrible sports games which are dragging them down in terms of average. Nintendo is also below Culture Brain, LJN, Acclaim, and Data East. Acclaim even has 3 games in the clubhouse and still average out to A-! Acclaim actually put out the second most games of any company to Nintendo, though I don't recognize very many of them.