So I never actually made an introductions thread. I mean a lot of you know me already (kinda) but... whatever.
Let's start with two truths and a lie. To make it extra boring, if you stalk me on the forum hard enough the answers to these should all be available.
- I know the somewhat famous Celestial Chameleon in real life (although not well)
- My original online psuedonym was "I Eat Tables", and I still use it in a few places
- I'm a third year Engineering student, studying at the University of Warwick
So, what are the things about me that are worth knowing? I guess I'll start with my discovery of Dominion.
I first played Dominion at a summer camp four or five years ago, pretty soon after it came out. Back then I wasn't hugely into board gaming, but I really enjoyed it. In the end I decided to buy one game... but choose Pandemic over Dominion. When I came to university two years ago (oops gave away part of my 2T1L) I found some people playing it with expansions (including the new Prosperity). I decided to join a game or two, and loved it. Very quickly I bought my own copy of the base game, and pretty soon after discovered Isotropic. Since then I've been addicted to the game, have expanded my collection to Seaside, Prosperity and Hinterlands, and have followed along with new cards as they've come. While I'm far from one of the great players (despite the claims in my sig), I've managed to reach reasonably high onto the leaderboard at Isotropic, peaking at about 34 before dropping back down from my lucky streak to a much more reasonable 30ish.
Since about 3 years ago I've been very into board games, mostly as a result of my best friend, who showed me some of his awesome German games (these were things like the 1991 Spiel Des Jahres winner Drunter und Drüber and the like!). That set me off on the path, along with my Pandemic purchase.
What about my other hobbies? Well... asides from Boardgaming and University, which take up most of my time, I'm also a videogamer. Not as much as I once was, mind. I've always been a Nintendo fan, mainly because I've always preferred single player or multiplayer with friends, and Nintendo tends to do that way better than the competition. That doesn't mean I don't play others, though, I also like (for example) Portal and Half Life, as well as the Jak series.
A particular gaming sub-hobby is speedrunning - essentially that's just gamer's jargon for a (usually) full game time trial. I'm not great at it (there's some crazy talented guys out there), but I've at least got a few games I've enjoyed doing it on. Most recent is the game
You Have to Win the Game, which I've actually beaten the world record at (with all of it's two guys competing), although I did it in a way that kinda doesn't compare and they'd beat me back easily if they did the same thing. Most websites I'm active on are relating to basically everything I've said now (videogames, board games, university).
Now you know what I do, maybe I should tell you all a little about what I'm like as a person? I'm a generally friendly, but introverted geek, happy to talk with people as long as they talk first. I like to plan and do things, especially when other people can benefit from them - I'm pretty active in the forum games section on here (mostly non-mafia), and enjoy modding games for others, despite frequent mistakes.
I'm a Christian, was raised in a fairly apathetic house but at 12 or 13 years old, found faith had a real glow and attraction that the rest of the world didn't. Through the years I've questioned that, and tried to find anwers elsewhere, but after a lot of searching decided Christianity was the best fit to what I've seen and experienced in the world.
I'm notorious for always planning and optimising and playing games to win, and expecting others to behave the same way - which is often true, but has lead to awkward situations when people have made moves which are suboptimal for them that hurt me.
Also I appear to have not mentioned it yet... my name's Martin, and I live in the UK.
Oh, and to answer a common question, one horse sized duck. To quote
CGP Grey "The cube square laws means the legs of a horse sized duck probably won't be structually sound. Easy win."
In terms of Dominion, I'm a lot more active on Goko than on Isotropic nowadays. I usually play bots, mind (again, it comes down partially to what I said about preferring solo play!), but if you do see me on there I'm happy to play (usually).
Thanks for reading, hope you know a little more about me now
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