New in the New Year

Having New Year’s Day on a Thursday is weird. While I got January 1st off, I had to go back to work today. Kinda strange to basically start a new work period that only lasts one day and then you get a weekend (although it would be great if this was how every week was). In any case, I did get the day off yesterday and got to watch some good football, start up a new television series, and play a few games.

A Little New Year’s Day Football

With the new playoff system, the NCAA football season does not end with the bowl games on New Year’s Day, they just set the stage for the Final Game. I enjoyed both games. It was great to see an overrated team – one that has been called the worst undefeated team in football – finally get put where they belong. The Oregon Ducks stomped Florida State and not only was the game fun to watch with the quick Duck offense, it definitely showed that there IS football on the West Coast.

The second game was a nice upset. It was good to see Ohio State prove that they deserved their ranking by beating #1 Alabama. Written off by most when their starting quarterback was injured a few games ago, Ohio State had something to prove and it was fun listening to the announcers try to come up with things to say as the team they expected to run away with the game lost.

I am looking forward to the final game. Ohio State showed they are a contender, but I think Oregon’s Ducks will fly away with the game.

Marco…Polo…Fish out of Water?

I really want to like this new series on Netflix but I may have to suffer through a few episodes first to figure out if I do.

Here’s the description from their site…

“Marco Polo” is an epic adventure that follows the early years of the famous explorer as he travels the exotic Silk Road to the great Kublai Khan’s court. But Marco soon finds that navigating the Khan’s world of greed, betrayal, sexual intrigue and rivalry will be his greatest challenge yet, even as he becomes a trusted companion to the Khan in his violent quest to become the Emperor of the World.

But after watching the first episode, I question this description.

As far as I can tell, there is no following Marco along the Silk Road before he gets to the Khan’s court except for a scene or two showing how his father did not know he had a son for over a decade until the mother died. And then a brief scene where the father tells him to run off with the priests back to their boats.

I would have liked a bit of back story or something before he gets dropped into the court, but for the most part, I was left confused as I watched his father basically turn him over to the Khan as a slave. I guess I was supposed to have an emotional tie to either the father or the son, but I was just confused – they talked about how it was an honor to serve the Khan, but I didn’t see any of it so far.

As for greed and betrayal, I suppose we got that with Marco’s father leaving him as slave to the Khan so he could go off and make his riches along the Silk Road. For me, this just was not right, and in my view it was a poor way to start off a series that some have said is the Netflix answer to The Game of Thrones.

I guess if you consider nudity for the sake of nudity similar to GoT, then that description is apt, but so far I am not seeing it.

But then, I only watched the first episode.

The Wayfarer

After three years crossing seas, deserts and the Silk Road, a young Marco Polo finds himself a prisoner of the great Kublai Khan.

And it had me pulling up Wikipedia for information about Kublai Khan, the Sung or Song Dynasty, Marco himself, and maps of China. The cinematography is great and I think the sets are beautiful, but one thing that they could use is a map. Game of Thrones throws up a map at the beginning of each episode – kinda like a novel that shows you the lands that will be involved in the story. Now, I know where China and Mongolia are, but I have no clue where these city states and regions are or how close they are to each other – I thought China was a pretty big place, but one scene shows a preparation for battle when the next shows the same people in the court. I don’t think these places are next to each other, but there was no indication time had passed – how fast are those horses?

On top of that, I felt ignorant when I tried to remember when the Great Wall was built. I had thought it was there to keep out the barbarian hordes, but isn’t that what Khan’s army is?

I will say that I have hope for the show. The people and places are interesting by themselves and as long as Netflix doesn’t try to mess with them too much, I think the setting can take care of the show. As the AVClub mentioned, they kinda portray Kublai as Jabba the Hut, but that hopefully is just transitory and future episodes will flesh out his character.

I’m gonna give this a few more episodes before I decide if I like it or not, but I am definitely pulling for it. I’d like to learn a bit more about the history of this region of the world and if nothing else, this show will remind me of that.

Tabula Rasa in LoL

Starting fresh in League of Legends means a lot of things.

• You only have 1 Rune slot
• You only have 1 mastery slot
• You have a limited selection of champs (unless you pay for some, it is only the free champs for the week available)
• You only have access to a few abilities – Flash and Ignite are a long way off.

Starting fresh also means you are primarily playing games against the AI bots.

I am going to make things a bit more regimented for this summoner account to try to ensure a ranking that is appropriate for my current skill rather than one burdened with 1000 games where I was doing a lot of learning and making a lot of mistakes. Believe me, I make plenty plenty of mistakes even now, but fewer than I made when starting out.

In any case, I am going to promise myself not to play any champ I am not familiar with in a meaningful game. By this, I mean that I am going to work to make sure that I only play champs that have gone through a vetting process. I am going to force myself to do the following before playing a meaningful game with any champ:

• Win 5 games against AI bots so I am familiar with the champion’s skillset
• Win 5 games against normal competition I. team Builder
• Win 3 out of 5 in a series of Team Builder or Draft games (similar to the series needed to advance tiers in ranked play)
• Oh yeah, I need to own the champion too

By requiring this of myself, I will hopefully stop from playing champs that sound good or supposedly match up against someone well without having any knowledge of the champ. I think this has hurt me many times in ranked play. It also means I won’t be playing any ranked games for a while. Since I have to have a few champs for each role to play ranked, it means I’ll have to play about 40 games at each position before I start ranked games. Hopefully this will set me up well to play ranked and attain a level that is more appropriate for my current skill.

So with that huge preamble, I am starting a new summoner named IntrepidRedshirt and hoping to rise up the ranks.

Sadly, my old recording mechanism (Baron Replays) is still messed up, and my alternate does not record bot matches, so I don’t have any footage of my play to review.

I did play Ashe though.

Jinx and I went top lane against Warwick and Leona, and Jinx was good. She finished with a stat line of 26/2/6/183, while I ended with 5/4/6/103.

It was an interesting game as the other 3 players seemed to be actual beginners because their builds were not appropriate and none of them had KDAs greater than 1.

The biggest take away that I have from this match is that I need to be less reckless. I died for no reasonable reason each time. I over-extended, I over-stayed in lane, I tier dove a Leona. All of those deaths should have been prevented and need to be purged from my gameplay before I get this summoner up to ranked play.

I just need to keep reminding myself of these mistakes and how to avoid them.