Gods, Champions, and No Barbarians

Daily Ramble 141: Gods, Champions, and No Barbarians

I finally had a chance to watch a bit more of American Gods episode 2 today. It’s still as good as I recall, but I can’t believe it’s been over a month since I took a look at it. I gotta get back up to speed on that more often.

Beyond TV, I made more steps in Civilization VI by pushing forward another 10 turns with Spain. I know the expansion is coming out soon and I wonder if it’ll be on the iPad right away or if it’ll take a bit to port it over. In any case, I’m just happy to have played 10 turns without having to deal with Barbarians.

Finally, I finished off my placements in League of Legends and found myself put down in Bronze IV. Not bad since I expected Bronze V as usual but I have a long climb to get where I think I should be. Hopefully the match maker will hold up.

American Gods Episode 2, Part 3

In the last installment of American Gods, Shadow was propositioned by Media in the guise of Lucille Ball. He didn’t want anything to do with her though and headed back to Wednesday who’s been meeting with other “beings” that we haven’t met yet. Shadow’s starting to question his sanity with all the supernatural stuff he’s been exposed to and while Wednesday doesn’t tell him that he’s rational, he does suggest that “the world is either crazy or you are”. And I think the main take away from this little conversation in the cafe is the concept that there may be larger sacrifices ahead than just going a little insane.

Wednesday and Shadow head back out on the road and we get another scene of Bilquis getting her freak on. She seems to be charging up for something but I’m not sure how she’s connected to things yet but we do see her longing for the dressings of the past as she visits a museum of antiquities.

What I love about this show is how artistic and beautiful everything is. The cinematography is just incredible and it’s such a joy to watch. There are whole scenes that have no dialog but you certainly get a feeling for what’s going on.

In the next installment we show up in Chicago with Wednesday and Shadow and I’ll try to get to it sooner than a month from now.

Spain 131–141

With how hectic the past bunch of turns have been, I was surprised that these 10 seemed pretty empty. But even though not much went on, now that I’ve killed off all the Barbarians in the areas around me, things still happened. The biggest thing had nothing to do with me really – Egypt declared war on Arabia. I kinda saw that coming since Arabia was focusing on all kinds of development and religion rather than military and Egypt clearly was not impressed.

Beyond that war, which I’m staying out of for now, I moved forward with Apprenticeship and Military Tradition and I’m getting close to the Renaissance. Without all the Barbarians, I’ve been able to build up a few Holy Site and builders are getting produced to improve tiles again. It’s really quite fun even though not much of note happened.

One thing I need to work towards is getting a supply of Iron so I can start make swordsmen. If I can get some of those and conquistadors, I should be in a good position moving forward.

Starting in Bronze IV

As I mentioned a few posts ago, SMITE had been having some issues so I started up League of Legends again. So far, I’m feeling they might have gotten some of the toxicity under control since I haven’t seen much of it.

I did go through the season opening placements and ended up in Bronze IV but I feel ok with that. As usual I’m pretty sure I’m starting well below my actual rank, but I’ll keep winning till I get where I should be. I’m also getting a bit used to some of the new items and runes. Actually, they took out the Sight Stones and that threw me for a loop initially. Yeah, apparently they integrated the wards into the ‘starting’ support items. After using them for a period of time, they gain the ability to drop wards like the Sight Stone used to do – it’s just weird though, not seeing my stone in inventory.

In any case, I’m gonna be casual about things for now with my primary MOBA focus remaining SMITE, but I’ll throw down a game or two of League every once in a while.