Clash of Clans

Reporting three weeks in to my own village: Town Hall is still level 5 (same as last week); most of this week has been a matter of upgrading buildings and participating in my first Clan War.
 
Perhaps this has been done in other games and I'm just ignorant, but I like how SuperCell has created a social game with a PvP element that seems to elegantly avoid the possibility of bullying via ganging up to repeatedly destroy a particular village, all through the simple tactic of not allowing you to search for a specific opponent when you go on a raid. 

There are lots of nits to pick in gameplay, so I'll just focus on the most serious I've seen: it appears to be a valid, possibly even preferable, strategy to purposefully lose trophies so that you can amass enough resources to make a major upgrade in peace.  For example, when upgrading your town hall to level 8, rather than leaving yourself open to loot raids from other members of the Gold league, you can easily make several attacks where you send in a single barbarian in order to get knocked down to the Silver or Bronze league, where no one can effectively steal resources from you.  This is perverse, and staying in your "proper" league needs to be properly incentivized, possibly through sizable loot bonuses for membership, or by not allowing you to drop down a league once you've attained a particular level (though this latter might have its own problems if someone rises too fast through the ranks).

Okay, one more because it's related and I've just been through a Clan War: I don't think there's enough incentive to stretch yourself to go after the best-defended war villages.  Because getting stars is what matters most, too many of our high level clan members are going after weaker villages.  Theoretically, this should backfire against a well-organized clan that right-sizes their attacks, but the reality is that most clans have enough members that aren't participating that this is a valid, even preferable, strategy.  The problem is that it shuts out the weaker members of our clan who are slow to attack the villages that they have a chance of winning against.  A simple solution might be to only give you a maximum of 2 stars if you win against someone weaker than the village that CoC automatically "matches" you against (CoC seems to choose a village that's much weaker than what you can actually beat).

The Incredible Snowman

There must have been some gamma rays in that old fedora they found /
For when they placed it on his head, the Skrulls he began to pound.

A favorite hat and an Avengers-fueled weekend resulted in several rounds of "Frosty Smash!!" play.

Update: Captain America and Baron Zemo settle their differences the old-fashioned way... on the tennis court!

Tablets

I bought a 2013 Nexus 7 off eBay for < $150, have been playing with it for a week, and have the following observations:

1. When searching for Nexus 7's, it's really important to differentiate between the 2012 model, which had a much lower screen resolution, and the 2013 model.  The 2012 models tend to go for less on eBay, but the prices are all over the place.

2. The higher screen resolution on the smaller screen is totally worth it. 

3. The 7" size is a great size for carrying around in my hand, but we also still like the 10" screen (our experience is with an iPad2) for sharing the screen with someone else while sitting on the sofa.  They have slightly different "sweet spots" for optimal use.

4. Compared to the iPad2:
4a. I really like that there are no physical buttons on the face of the Nexus.

4b. I like that there are three virtual buttons on the face of the Nexus that go Back, return to Home, and bring up the List of Running Apps, compared to the single physical button on the iPad2 that returns to Home (1-click) or brings up the List of Running Apps (2-clicks).

4c. I like that the buttons that do exist (sleep/off/on and volume) are right next to each other on the edge of the device, rather than on different edges.

4d. I like the stronger integration of my Google account, so that there is an on-screen widget that displays my calendar.

Some of these features may be equally good on the iPad mini.  I suspect that on the iPad, the integration with an Apple account is better, so the Nexus is a better fit for me personally.

5. Androminion, not Sanger Rainsford, might be the most dangerous game.

VSO: May 3 (Debussy, Ravel, Mahler)

Great concert.  We've been attending Vermont Symphony Orchestra concerts when we can for the last 12 years, and they are noticeably better now than in 2002.  Tonight's program showed off Albert Brouwer's talents as principal fl(a)utist, beginning with Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune.  He managed to linger  over notes in a way that was more suggestive of the sleepy faun than in any other recording or live performance I've heard, and the rest of the orchestra followed suit.  Jaime Laredo should be rightfully proud of this interpretation.

The second piece was Ravel's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in G Major.  It's an interesting piece, and was well-performed, but I didn't realize Ravel produced anything quite so modern -- the Adagio of this concerto is Romantic, but the first and third movements are extremely dissonant -- and it was a curious choice to sandwich between two masterworks of the Romantic period. 

The final piece, after intermission, was Mahler's 4th.  I'm extremely fond of Mahler's 4th and 5th symphonies, and the first movement again featured Brouwer's flute.  I've never seen the 4th performed live, so I've never seen the principal violinist swap between her usual instrument and the violin tuned at a higher tone.  That was fun.  The fourth movement featured the soprano Hyunah Yu, who, in addition to a fine voice, has the most exquisite diction when singing German that I've heard.