→ July 3, 2019
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Music update, June 2019.

Solid month in June for new music from some old favorites, plus three singles here from albums released before June that I’ve especially enjoyed (whenyoung, YONAKA, the Amazons). The first song here gets the closest thing I’ve done to a full album review in many years, but it deserved the time. As always, if you can’t see the Spotify widget below you can access the playlist here.

black midi – Reggae. black midi are the critical flavor of the month after their debut album, Schlagenheim, appeared in June, to effusive acclaim … and it’s true, the album is unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. It is dense, intellectual, and challenging, often asking you to rethink the basic tenets of melody and rhythm that have been part of rock music since its inception. It’s also pretentious and at multiple points seems to dare you to skip to the next song, especially with Geordie Greep’s weird intonations and sudden dives into extreme-metal screaming. The album doesn’t include their strong lead-up singles “Talking Heads” or “Crow’s Perch,” which would actually be its most accessible songs if they’d made the record. “Reggae” was my compromise choice for the playlist, because it shows off their tonal oddities and still adheres a little to some rock conventions. The closer “Ducter” has some of the album’s highest points, as does the eight-minute “Western,” but they are endurance tests as well. “Near DT, MI” is a two-minute burst of ideas, but you have to get past Greep screaming at you – and his lyrics typically make little sense. “Speedway” could be a better introduction to what black midi, named after an obscure form of music that can only be played by computers because there are so many notes that sheet music for the songs would appear smudged with black ink, are trying to express through dissonant chords and polyrhythmic drumming. I don’t think it’s my favorite album of 2019, but it is the most interesting by far.

Sløtface – Telepathetic. These Norwegian punk-popsters are back with yet another frenetic, extremely catchy song with quirky lyrics.

YONAKA – Rockstar. YONAKA’s debut full-length Don’t Wait ‘Til Tomorrow is full of catchy songs with smart lyrics about toxic masculinity and modern culture, but this is a diversion, a lighter song with great hooks.

whenyoung – A Labour of Love. The Irish trio whenyoung’s debut album Reasons to Dream is probably my favorite album of the year. I can’t escape the automatic comparison in my head to the first Cranberries album – Aoife Power’s accent evokes Dolores O’Riordan – but there’s more depth here, including tempo shifts and rapid jumps from low to high as you’ll find in this song.

Phantogram – Into Happiness. This is the first Phantogram song I’ve liked where Josh Carter sings; any other song by them that I’ve ever included on a playlist had Sarah Barthel singing alone. I assume this is a precursor to a new album, which would be their first since 2016.

The Regrettes – I Dare You. Critics seem to tag The Regrettes, led by 18-year-old singer/guitarist Lydia Night, as a punk band, but this song could just as easily have come from The Strokes’ catalog.

Metronomy – Salted Caramel Ice Cream. So I thought this was a different band, then pulled up the song on Spotify and realized I had the wrong group but really liked the track. It’s kind of wonderfully silly, and the electronic trappings mask the fact that it’s a basic 12-bar blues pattern.

Temples – Hot Motion. Temples has made my year-end top 100s twice before, with 2013’s “Colours to Life” and 2017’s “Certainty,” although if you know anything by them it’s probably their first hit, “Shelter Song.” The sound here is similarly retro, with a strong dose of psychedelia, with a jangly guitar riff driving the song.

Belle & Sebastian – Sister Buddha. This is the first single from B&S’s upcoming soundtrack to the film Days of the Bagnold Summer, a comedy due out in September from actor Simon Bird.

Floating Points – LesAlpx. Floating Points is neuroscientist and electronic musician Sam Shepherd, whose 2015 album Elaenia was a masterful work of experimental, sparse electronica. This new single seems more accessible and more in line with current trends in EDM, but it’s no less compelling.

Goodie Mob feat. Organized Noise – No Rain No Rainbow. Goodie Mob aren’t just founders of the Dirty South scene, they made the term mainstream in their 1995 song of that name. They’ve only released one album in the 15 years since Cee-Lo first departed the group (he returned in 2011), and this single appeared without any announcement of a forthcoming record. It’s pretty strong for a group that’s barely put out any music in two decades, although I can’t include them without at least acknowledging Cee-Lo’s problematic history: a woman accused him of slipping a drug into her drink and raping her, which led to him pleading no contest to charges of supplying her with ecstasy (but no charges for rape).

Spoon – No Bullets Spent. A solid album track from Spoon from their upcoming Everything Hits at Once: The Best of Spoon.

The Wants – Clearly a Crisis. A new Brooklyn alternative-rock trio, the Wants deliver a funk-tinged slice of post-punk on their newest single, like something captured in the fleeting moments before post-punk decayed fully into new wave.

LIFE – Hollow Thing. We’re really just calling everyone a punk band now, aren’t we? There’s a punk influence here, but this Hull-based quartet, who toured with actual punk band IDLES, are definitely more in the “snotty English rock band” vein – and I mean that in the nicest possible way.

Thrice – A Better Bridge. Thrice’s A Deeper Wells EP includes cuts from the Palms sessions that didn’t make the album, but if anything I think I like several tracks from the EP more than the songs that likely took their place.

The Amazons – Dark Visions. Future Dust, the Amazons’ second full-length album, dropped in May, and it’s a big move forward from their debut, as the great guitar work from their 2017 single “Black Magic” is all over this new record.

Lightning Born – Renegade. Lightning Born features Corrosion of Conformity bassist Mike Dean, but this is more vocalist Brenna Leath and guitarist Erik Sugg’s show, with a clear ’70s classic metal influence all over this two-and-a-half minute track.

Pallbearer – Atlantis. American doom stalwarts Pallbearer haven’t announced plans for a new album yet, but they released this one-off track as part of the Sub Pop Singles series.

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→ July 2, 2019
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Claim.

Claim is a 2017 trick-taking game from designer Scott Almes, whose best-known titles are the Tiny Epic series (such as Tiny Epic Galaxies and Tiny Epic Zombies). Claim pits two players against each other in a two-phase game where the first phase allows players to battle to build their hands for the second phase, where the more traditional trick-taking mechanic kicks in, but is altered by the five factions (suits) in the game that have unique powers.

The Claim deck has 52 cards, and you’ll use half the deck in each phase. Each player starts the game with a hand of 13 cards, and in phase one, the top card in the deck is flipped over for the two players to try to win by playing the highest card. The Leader – the start player, or whoever won the last trick – plays first, and the second player usually has to follow suit; the higher card wins. In most cases, the cards used to bid are discarded, the winning player gets the face-up card from the deck, and the losing player gets the top card of the deck as a consolation prize – which, of course, can be better than the card the winning player got.

Phase one continues until the players have used their entire hands, by which point each player has a new deck of 13 cards to form their hands for phase two. Players then proceed to play another round of 13 tricks, this time with the winning player usually taking both cards. At the end of the game, players will count up how many cards they’ve won in each of the five factions; a majority of cards wins that faction, and with five factions you’ll usually have one player winning three or even four to win the game. Ties are broken by whoever has the higher-valued card in the faction.

The big catch is that the factions have different powers that can apply in phase one, phase two, or both. The base game comes with five factions – goblins, knights, dwarves, undead, and doppelgangers. A knight automatically trumps a goblin, regardless of numerical value, although you must still follow suit. You can play any doppelganger without following suit, and it becomes the suit of whatever your opponent played. (If you lead with a doppelganger, that is the suit for that trick.) In phase one, the player who wins the trick gets to keep any undead cards played by the two players and put them in their scoring pile for the end of the game. In phase two, the player who loses the trick gets to take any dwarf cards played in that trick – so, yes, you can lose the trick but still take both cards. (For example, I lead and play a Dwarf card with value 9, the maximum. You follow suit, playing a Dwarf 6. I win the trick … but you get both of the cards.) Only goblins have no special power.

The factions themselves are fun; each one asks you to think a little differently about how to approach it, and the hands you get in each round will require you to come up with different strategies. The one big negative in Claim is that the first round involves so much randomness – your starting hands are random, of course, but the player who loses each trick gets a random card from the top of the deck and can easily end up with the superior card. You could lose all of the tricks in phase one and still get a better hand in phase two. It’s not really a flaw, but a different kind of game, where you know you can play pretty well and still get beaten by the deck.

I picked this up at Origins, and since I bought the game, I got a bonus faction pack as well – ghosts, where you can choose instead to keep the ghost card you played rather than the card you’d normally get during Phase One. You can replace the dwarves, undead, or doppelgangers with ghosts in the original Claim game. There’s a separate, standalone game, Claim 2, with five new factions, and you can mix and match the factions from both games in certain combinations, so there’s fairly high replay value here if you get tired of the base game. It’s a solid filler, nicely portable (the whole game is the deck), quick to play, although I think there are better trick-taking games out there, like Fox in the Forest.

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→ July 1, 2019
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The Woman in the Dunes.

I’d never heard of The Woman in the Dunes, the 1962 novel by Japanese author Kobo Abe, before literature professor Daniel Burt included it in the expanded second edition of his book The Novel 100, which ranked the 125 greatest novels of all time. This slim, bleak, almost dystopian novel draws on the existentialist traditions of Camus and Kafka, thoroughly dehumanizing its main characters, and pushes its protagonist into a philosophical dilemma that causes him to question the meaning of his life.

The book opens by telling us that a man has been declared dead after going missing seven years earlier, so we know going into the novel at least some of how it ends. The man, Niki Jumpei, is an amateur entomologist, and arrives at a town with interesting specimens, only to find he needs to stay the night. The town is slowly losing ground to endlessly advancing sand dunes, and the home of the woman who hosts him is on the front line of the battle, so that she must work daily to clear some of the sand so that the entire village isn’t lost. The next morning, the man finds that the rope ladder he used to descend into the pit of the house is gone, and within a few days realizes that he’s a prisoner of the village, forced to work on the Sisyphean task of shoveling back the sand with the woman. He rages against her and his captors, and pleads with them, and attempts to bargain with them. He tries to escape once and fails. When the story ends, he’s on the verge of escaping again … but chooses to go back.

Abe rarely refers to Jumpei by name, and never names the woman; their identities are immaterial to their function in the story. The man, as Abe calls him, could be any man, feeling alienated from everything about his life – from other people, from his job, from his community – in an increasingly isolating, urbanized world. I think you can read this novel in multiple ways, but I couldn’t get away from the idea that the sand was time – like sands through the hourglass – and that the villagers’ struggle against it is man’s attempts to deny his own mortality. It’s replayed through the man’s own reactions to his understanding that he’s a hostage with no hope of rescue; even though the book predates Kübler-Ross’ five stages, the man goes through at least four of them once he realizes he’s trapped. While neither he nor the woman fully lose their humanity, Abe writes of them in a disconnected, impersonal way, and he does have them devolve in some ways, like sex, that emphasize our animal nature.

There’s another interpretation that’s a bit less grim, that the man’s decision at the end not to flee when he has the chance is a sign that he’s accepted reality and, given back some agency over his own life, is making a choice on his own terms. It’s a kind of enlightenment that I might associate with Buddhism or even some new age spiritualism, although I couldn’t get to the point where I’d view the man’s journey through the book as any sort of positive.

Abe’s style absolutely presages later Japanese authors, notably Haruki Murakami, whose prose and themes seem to be direct descendants of Abe’s work here. There’s no magical realism here, unless you consider some of the sand stuff to be such; I never could get a reasonable picture in my head of what was happening or what the woman’s house looked like. It probably doesn’t matter, since the point is that the man is trapped on one side by other people and on the other side by an inanimate force that will simply keep on coming and eventually kill him – and lots of other people – unless he starts to help the woman work to hold it back. Abe’s prose is brisk and sparse, presumably influenced by the existentialist masters in that regard as well, but there are passages where I could see a direct influence on Murakami (including the latter’s particular focus on cooking), especially in the dialogue. As bleak as The Woman in the Dunes is, it’s actually a fast read; Abe wastes little time on frivolities and keeps to the plot. I’m not sure why Burt included it in the top 125, but I wonder if it was more for its influence on modern Japanese literature than its own merits.

Next up: I just finished Caitlin PenzeyMoog’s On Spice this morning – and yes, she’s part of the Penzey’s Spices family, although she now works for The AV Club.

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→ June 29, 2019
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Stick to baseball, 6/29/19.

I had two ESPN+ pieces this week, my annual look at the top 25 players under 25 (which has an error in it around German Marquez’s contract status, sorry) and a scouting blog post on Grayson Rodriguez, Deivi Garcia, Alec Bohm and more. I also held a Klawchat on Thursday.

This piece went up a little while ago but I waited to post it until some small editing mistakes were corrected: I listed eight of my favorite noir and neo-noir films for Caavo and my friend Desi Jedeikin.

I’ll be at the MLB Futures Game in Cleveland on July 7th, and I’m staying in the area Monday night to give a talk and sign books at the Hudson Library and Historical Society at 7 pm. I hope to see many of you there.

I’ll send out the next copy of my free email newsletter this weekend, so feel free to sign up for more of my words.

And now, the links…

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→ June 28, 2019
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Century Eastern Wonders.

Emerson Matsuuchi’s Century Spice Road was a modest hit in 2017 that earned a lot of comparisons to Splendor, although it gave players more of an active role in trading the goods they were collecting before they cashed them in for points tokens. It’s the first game of what is now a completed trilogy with this summer’s release of Century A New World, three games that can be played alone or in any combination of two or even all three, each of which shares a core mechanic (you have four goods of increasing value, and will trade them up so you can collect certain combinations for points on objective cards) but approaches it in a unique way. Spice Road is a card game that focuses on hand management; A New World, which I’ll review for Paste next month, is a worker placement game a bit similar to Stone Age. The second game, Century Eastern Wonders, has players moving around a map, with a bit of pick up-and-delivery to it, but the heart of the game is route planning, as the board varies in each game and you will have to figure out the most efficient way(s) to get around the various tiles to get the cubes you need so you can score.

Once again, we have four goods, in the same four colors – yellow is the least valuable, brown the most valuable – and players try to collect sets of them and then go to one of the four port tiles at the corners of the modular board to trade in a specified combination of the goods for a points tile that is worth anywhere from 11 to 20 points. Each player has a boat to move around the board, moving at least one tile per turn. When you land on a tile, you can place a trading post on it, doing so for free if it’s empty and paying one cube for each opponent’s post already on the tile, after which you can use the trading function of that tile as often as you’d like, including more than once on this turn. (In a two-player game, you pay two cubes to build on a tile with your opponent’s post already on it.) All trades on the board are net-positive, so there are no bad tiles, but some are more useful than others, depending on what objectives are present at that time in the game. You can also move to a tile and choose to ‘harvest,’ taking two yellow cubes for free, rather than trading.

Eastern Wonders adds an additional layer on top of this mechanism, as you gain points and bonus abilities as you place trading posts. Your player card has 20 spaces on it that are covered by posts at the start of the game. Each tile has an icon representing one of the four trade goods, and when you build a post on a tile, you take a token from that row on your card. Once you’ve emptied a column on your card, you may take one of the game’s bonus tokens, which can confer valuable abilities – moving one extra space for free each turn, getting a free pink cube when you harvest, storing 13 cubes instead of 10 – or just give you points at game-end. The second post you place from each row is worth a point at game-end, the third and fourth two points, and the fifth post three points.

Moving around the board gets more difficult as the game progresses. If you move to a tile with an opponent’s boat, you have to pay them a cube, so doing this is generally not a great strategy. Building posts on tiles that already have two or more posts on them, or just one in a two-player game, is costly, and you’ll often find yourself less willing to pay that penalty as the game progresses because you’re trying to scrape enough cubes together to fulfill another contract. The game ends as soon as any player finishes their fourth objective, with players just completing that round, so usually you’ll end up with one player getting four objectives and their bonuses and everyone else ending with three; it’s possible to win with only three objectives, especially if they have higher bonuses, but it’s harder, so there’s a bit of a race to the finish. You can improve your chances by figuring out optimal paths around the board that work a bit like engines – a sequence of three or four tiles that quickly let you go from some low-value combination (usually including two yellows from a harvest move) to the higher-value set that fulfills an objective card, or at least gets you some brown and green cubes you can then trade down for whatever you need for objectives on the board at that point.

Of the three games in the trilogy, Eastern Wonders is the most complex (although it’s still on the lighter side) and takes the longest to play, and while I like it quite a bit, I also think it’s my least favorite of the trio. The Eastern Wonders box includes a separate set of rules and a few additional components that let you combine it with Spice Road for a single game called Sand to Sea, although a glance at the rules seemed to rob the games of the elegance that makes them both fun. Eastern Wonders plays two to four, as do the other games in the series, but in our experience can easily run an hour for even a three-person game with fairly quick turns, longer than the other two require, and I would say this is the least appropriate of the three for younger players because of the route-optimization aspect. For adults and older kids, though, I recommend it.

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→ June 27, 2019
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Klawchat 6/27/19.

My ranking of the top 25 MLB players under age 25 is up for ESPN+ subscribers, as is a scouting post that covers Grayson Rodriguez, Deivi Garcia, and more.

Keith Law: Well known in the streets and the gutters. Klawchat.

Dave C: If the Mets didn’t make that ill advised Cano/Diaz trade would they have a top 5 minor league system after this past draft?
Keith Law: Probably? Have to factor in what other teams have done since as well, but with Kelenic/Dunn both doing so well plus a very strong draft and only one major graduation (Alonso) they’d be in great shape.

Chris: What is Tony Gonsolin going to be long term?
Keith Law: Still TBD. Starter potential.

Scott: How close was Victor Robles to making your top 25 under 25 list?
Keith Law: I didn’t go beyond 25. Sorry.

Dave C: Now that he’s signed where would Allan slot versus the Mets other top pitching prospects- Kay, Peterson, Szapucki and Woods-Richardson?
Keith Law: Behind Kay. I think ahead of the others.

Zach: Are we finally seeing the version of Kevin Newman you’ve long championed?
Keith Law: Mostly. Bear in mind his BABIP is not going to stay at .400+ – same for Bryan Reynolds – but Newman’s high contact rates will help him even as that drifts downward.

Dave C: Can Dominic Smith be an effective Left Fielder? He’s at 0 DRS, -.2 UZR on fangraphs but I don’t know if that’s sustainable.
Keith Law: My guess is no, although I’d like him to prove me wrong on that.

Hollis: Cody Bolton just got promoted to AA. Is he a Top 100 guy in your next round of evaluations?
Keith Law: No.

Moe Mentum: Is the skepticism more about the two-city model in general, or specifically about Montreal’s and/or Tampa’s support system (investors, fans, voters, etc.)? In other words, could other cities pull off a shared team approach?
Keith Law: Two cities that were closer might pull it off, but why would two different cities fund stadiums that would only be used 40-41 times a year? No team is paying to build two; most refuse to even build one.

Scott: How do you grade the year that Carter Kieboom is having? He was over matched in the big leagues although in a very SSS. He has however absolutely RAKED in Fresno. How do you reconcile that and how has it changed your thoughts on him as a prospect either for better or worse?
Keith Law: Raking in AAA doesn’t change my view on any prospect given the juiced ball there.

Dan: Jazz Chisholm seems to be hitting the ball hard, just not all that often. Any reason to be concerned about the hit tool in his exposure to AA pitching?
Keith Law: Nope. I’m still in.

Keith Law Disciple: Should I have any optimism for Logan Warmoth – got promoted to Double A, but not showing much in the way of power and strikes out a ton.
Keith Law: I’m out … every scout I’ve asked who’s seen him has buried him.

Jake: Are you downgrading Royce Lewis because of his swing change? Do you still think he can be a 60 hitter or is there legitimate concern here?
Keith Law: He’s not a future 60 hitter with the current swing/setup, but what prevents him from going back to his old mechanics? I take guys like him and slide them down a little bit to acknowledge the change, but it’s not like I’d drop him out of the top 50 for this. There is no reason he can’t just restore the way he hit last year and become a top 10-15 prospect again.

Andrew: Who would you rather have for the next ten years, Paddock or Gore?
Keith Law: Gore.

Jake: Kowar got the bump to AA and had a nice first start. How long before Lynch follows the former Gators?
Keith Law: He hasn’t pitched in almost four weeks, so it may be a while.

Todd: Whats Deivi Garcia’s ceiling?
Keith Law: Good mid-rotation guy. Lot of risk with that frame, but the stuff is real.

Jose: Do you go to Cape this year?
Keith Law: Although I’d love to, my schedule in July is not cooperating and I may skip it this year for minor league stuff, Under Armour, and non-baseball commitments.

Tim : I watched the college World Series and thought it was great baseball. But I didn’t understand why there was so much bunting. Can you explain it? Aren’t the analytics against bunting at the mlb level the same at the highest college level?
Keith Law: Yes, but college coaches are obsessed with sac bunting as a whole. It’s easier to teach bunting than to teach hitting, I guess.

JC: Hi Keith- I know you haven’t been as high on Torkeleon as others. While he isn’t a good defender, has anything on your opinion changed at all?
Keith Law: That’s simply not true.

cm: Are you aware of any studies that say changing arm slot while pitching can increase arm health? If not, any thought on this idea?
Keith Law: Doesn’t it depend on the before and after?

Nelson: Keith, ever consider putting more uplifting links in your stick to baseball page? Sometimes its 25 downright depressing links
Keith Law: Well, the world is burning, diseases are spreading, and the Supreme Court just told voters democracy is optional. My links aren’t depressing; reality is.

Dd: I would have a really hard time getting excited for Biden, his voting record, Anita Hill, the gaffs.. 100% of my energy would be Anti- Trump. Not sure that Biden turns out young/unreliable voters out either because he isn’t that progressive.
The Dems are probably running at least 10 people who are a better choice.
Do you think we see Biden drop in the polls as people learn about his lousy voting record and voters get to know any of the four female Senators, all whom would be excellent choices?
Keith Law: I really don’t think he’s going to end up the candidate.

Steve: Think Adell gets a call up at some point this season?
Keith Law: No.

Jeff: With the picks Atlanta made from rounds 11-19, how much did that increase their draft haul? Is this a long-term strategy or just a one-time thing?
Keith Law: Very good strategy for this year’s draft class. It turned their draft class from “huh” to “pretty good.”

Jordan: What the heck are the Astros going to do with Kyle Tucker? Springer, Reddick, Alvarez and Brantley are blocking him and he needs to be playing in the big leagues right now.
Keith Law: Feels like trade bait. Doesn’t help that someone in Houston keeps leaking stories that he’s not liked in the clubhouse.

Neema: Hey Keith, love your work on ESPN! What are your thoughts on JP Crawford’s improved play this year? Do you think the breakout we’re seeing so far is legitimate?
Keith Law: Like Newman, his BABIP is unsustainable, but I still think the rest of the skill set is real – he’s always had a good eye and willingness to get to two strikes, and he has all-fields doubles power, but he got very pull-happy in Philly (and in AAA). He’s gotten back to using the whole field again and it’s helping.

Matt: How uncommon is it that Giolito has found success by largely going away from his curve, which it seems like most prospect evaluators (including you I believe) saw as his strongest pitch when he was coming up through the minors. Thanks!
Keith Law: It’s very surprising but if the pitch isn’t working for you you can’t force it. The changeup is plus, and he’s commanding the FB like never before.

Mac: You a Tesla or other EV guy?
Keith Law: Would love one but not at the current cost. I have had a Civic hybrid for six years and love it.

Kevin : In a fair world MLB would help pay for a new Rays stadium in Tampa Bay after using the region to create leverage for other teams for decades, but because life is shit should I just resign to losing my team in 8 years?
Keith Law: Yep, I think they’re toast.

Gary: What do you think is Jeff McNeil’s true talent level?
Keith Law: He’s third in the majors in BABIP, so we can probably bet on a good bit of regression. (Sorry, I didn’t mean to make this the “so-and-so’s BABIP is unsustainable chat.”) That said, as long as he keeps his K% so low he’s going to have plenty of value even without much power. Probably makes him a soft regular whenever the BABIP comes down to earth – although his ‘natural’ BABIP is probably higher than league average, given what we’ve seen in the last 11 months.

Brian: I’m not sure if you saw deadspin’s piece today about foul ball injuries but after reading it, how can MLB defend not extending netting at every park?
Keith Law: I haven’t seen the piece, but come on, are we waiting for a child to die?

Joe: Aside from drastic moves organizationally (like the Astros a couple years ago) is it common for scouts to change teams somewhat frequently? Or would it not be uncommon for one scout to spend an entire career with an organization despite several changes in GM?
Keith Law: Scouts change teams all the time. There’s still too much of a sense in front offices that they’re … not quite disposable, but more easily replaced than they actually are.

Ryan: The Dbacks tried hiring an agent to be their GM and it was a train wreck. Same thing seems to be happening to the Mets
Keith Law: Never hire off the interview. Hire off the CV, and maybe references, but never, ever hire off the interview.

Todd: Did you think Gleyber would have 30HR type potential?
Keith Law: No but the current baseball has skewed any HR projections I had for players. I thought Alonso would be a 35-40 HR guy and he’s on pace for 50.

Jack Meoff: Keith big fan!! Thank you for all you do. Is Catan a top 10 board game for you?
Keith Law: In historical importance and influence, yes. It might be #1. In my personal preferences, no. It’s a fine game, but you can wait too long between turns, and it doesn’t work with two players.

Josh Nelson: Is having just three starting pitchers the new market inefficiency? Asking for White Sox fans.
Keith Law: It’s a bold strategy, Nelson. Let’s see how it works out for you.

Kevin: With the Red Sox bullpen struggles is there any chance someone like Tanner Houck can provide relief help in the 2nd half of the season or is it too soon for him? Keep up the good work!
Keith Law: Would love to see him.

Eric: Was Yordan Alvarez eligible for your 25 under 25 list?
Keith Law: Players who still have ROY eligibility are not eligible for the list.

Ben: Would you guess we see some more deals happen earlier in July this year? 1 win would make a huge difference for a ton of these bubble teams
Keith Law: Yes. That’s my hope as well.

TheLostBoy: Are you a weekly watcher of “Last Week Tonight”?
Keith Law: I was, and I still like the show, but in this environment it’s just more things to get angry about when I am already angry enough about the world we’re creating for the next generation. (Or the generation after that, if we haven’t scorched the planet by then.)

Adam: Mackenzie Gore is dominating A+ and doesnt look like he’s being challenged. Do you see a quick ascent to the majors in the next 12 months or is he still a few years away?
Keith Law: I could see him mid-next year; the Padres don’t wait, and why would you wait on an arm that good already? But I can’t see them pushing him to the majors this year.

J: Do you happen to have like an author page, that has all of your articles for e+?
Keith Law: No, ESPN discontinued those. I asked for a new one but was told they don’t do them. (shrug)

Ben: Starting Adley at a bad level?
Keith Law: Have they announced where he’s starting? I haven’t seen that. Also, I assume that was a typo.

J: Okay, so instead of changing the literal distance a pitcher must pitch the ball, the chance MLB addresses the problem with the ACTUAL ball?
Keith Law: First they’d have to admit they have a problem.

Jason: Drew Waters is raking in AA, but he’s only 20. What’s a realistic ETA for him? And how excited should I be about him, recognizing I’m just scouting a stat line.
Keith Law: He’s raking but also striking out a lot and barely walking, which isn’t a fatal flaw but could indicate some deficiencies in the approach that are getting masked by the high average and power.

Ben: How come the Dbacks didn’t select Matt Allen with any of their picks if he was so good?
Keith Law: Because they didn’t want to commit well over slot to signing him.

Baltimurph: Following up on your scouting report, do you think Grayson Rodriguez is a future MLB starter as is or do you think his mechanics need to be totally rebuilt?
Keith Law: I can’t think of an MLB starter who throws like that. Any examples I could come up with who were close ended up getting hurt.

romorr: Adley was thought of as a fast riser. Him going to GCL/A- should put that to rest, right?
Keith Law: Wrong.
Keith Law: Where he starts isn’t really relevant to the question of how fast he’ll move. He may start in Aberdeen because it’s so close to Baltimore, for example.

Zac: Is Kumar Rocker trending towards a top 5 pick in 2 years?
Keith Law: I said on the podcast this morning that I’d go top 10, but not stronger. There’s a whole class of players we’ve barely seen for the 2021 draft, and putting Rocker in a bucket like that now doesn’t adequately consider the rest of the candidates.

John: Esteban Florial a future all star?
Keith Law: I don’t see it. Pitch recognition is still a problem.

Ben: Have you ever had surgery? Would you be scared?
Keith Law: Twice. Wasn’t scared but can’t say I enjoyed any of it.

Chris: Given how bad the Mets pitching is, I’d consider selling incredibly high on Alonso for 4-5 good young arms and bump Smith to 1B. Am I crazy?
Keith Law: I can’t imagine ownership would allow it, and fans would riot, but trading Alonso now for something – they’re not getting 4-5 good young arms, those deals do not exist – would have merit. I think it’s way more likely they deal Dom.

Rick Saul: What happened to Manuel Margot’s offense?. Has ship sailed on him being a productive MLBer?
Keith Law: Still just 24.
Keith Law: All the ex-prospects who broke out this year should serve as a nice reminder to stop giving up too soon on ex-prospects.

Sally: Hello Keith big fan. Is the Ooni oven great?
Keith Law: I love it. I’ve gotten it up to 900 degrees (actually too hot, the bottom of the crust started to burn), can hold it in the 770-800 range for a while, found it easy to work with. You just have to keep feeding it pellets to keep the temp up; once it drops, it drops fast and takes a while to heat back up.

Ryan: Did you see the article on The Athletic on the Ranger’s failed de-load program? Are there any other teams trying new throwing programs to help prevent arm injuries?
Keith Law: I haven’t seen that either but I have heard a lot of whispers of something they were trying that pitchers/agents suspected was contributing to their rash of injuries. Always hard to tell what’s legit and what’s griping.

cm: On the arm slots, I meant using more than one slot while pitching. For example, like David Cone used to at times.
Keith Law: Ah, thank you, I did not understand. I don’t think so; I would guess that for most pitchers it would increase injury risk because you’re trying to use muscles you don’t normally use to throw.

Adam: WIth so much young talent under the age of 24 succeeding early in MLB, do you see arbitration years being adjusted with new CBA? Seeing players like Judge/Bellinger/ getting under 1Mil per year is insane
Keith Law: I would really like to see that. The union has to change its focus for the next negotiation towards paying young players more, whether via more arb years or earlier free agency.

Mike: Are Casey Mize’s mechanics going to lead to continues arm problems?
Keith Law: No.

Frank: As a D-Backs fan how excited should I be about Tommy Henry? He was dominant in the CWS. While he doesn’t have the velocity everyone is obsessed with now the control and movement looked outstanding.
Keith Law: Back-end starter.

Indians system: Is Mahoning Valley key to Indians’ future? Rocchio, Valera, Hankins, Delgado
Keith Law: Their strongest affiliate for future talent.

Sally: How often do you and Chris Crawford hangout? Love you both on twitter
Keith Law: We’ve only hung out 2-3 times, but we talk online every day. Mostly baseball and movies but other stuff too. Great dude.

Robert: Does the uniqueness of Nick Madrigal’s profile make him more difficult to assess as a prospect?
Keith Law: No.

Uli Jon: My friend is going to Gen Con. Do you have an updated dining guide or just a few places you can recommend?
Keith Law: I eat at the food trucks that line up next to the convention center. There are some great ones – Keplinger’s Fresh Catch is the first place I eat each year.

Feeling A Draft: Based on what you said about this coming year’s draft on the BBTN podcast do you think it would be smart of teams at this year’s trade deadline to try to acquire competitive balance picks?
Keith Law: For sure. But most teams want to retain those, so my guess is only 1-2 get moved.

BigDaddeh: Do you think the Mets success is going to lead to other teams using former agents as GMs?
Keith Law: (spit take)

Paul: Hey Keith – your love for Oreo’s is well-known and righteous. I saw your tweet last night as I happened to be eating an Oreo Blizzard from Dairy Queen, and it got me wondering: any KLaw thoughts on Oreo Blizzards? Also if this question makes the chat, I’d just like to also announce that Oreo McFlurries are trash and don’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Oreo Blizzards, thank you for your time.
Keith Law: I do love oreos mixed into ice cream. When I go to Culvers (rare, but I love it), my go-to is a chocolate concrete with oreos and pecans.

Bob Pollard: Sorry if you’ve addressed this (probably have many times), but where do you stand on “clutch is a myth/no it’s real”?
Keith Law: It’s a myth. I explain at length in Smart Baseball.

BigDaddeh: Is Nick Solak an every day guy one in the majors?
Keith Law: I’d bet the under.

Tom C: Why don’t you think Adell will get called up this year? Setback because of his injury earlier this season? I was thinking maybe it could be like a Trout scenario where they call him up late and prep to be up for good next year.
Keith Law: He’s barely played this year, and they’d be adding him to the 40-man before they needed to do so.

Andrew: Corbin Martin BB/9 at A and AA was 2.5, now this year 4.5 in AAA (was 5.5 w/ HOU). Reason for concern or just growing pains?
Keith Law: Again, the ball in AAA is different than in AA.

Dave: What did you think when you heard that the Mets were having Rosario take reps in CF? I don’t know what the heck happened to his defense at SS but it has been atrocious going on two years now. Do you think he could make a plus defensive CFer?
Keith Law: His regression on defense has to be laid on the coaching staff. I saw him in the minors, so did everyone else. Nobody had him playing like this.

Mat Ji: I’m old enough to remember back when Bauer was going to stop being an internet troll….way back in January of 2019.
Keith Law: He’s gone out of his way to attack at least two women writers I know just since this season began. He can say whatever dumb shit he wants to me, but the story I heard the other day – I don’t know if I can repeat any of this – is beyond trolling. Writers who continue to talk him up are just enabling him.
Keith Law: And, by the way, there are 750+ other players out there. I’m sure there’s at least one more guy who is analytically-minded and focused on self-improvement through modern methods, and would be happy to talk about it on the record.

JP: Is Yamamoto a mid-rotation starter?
Keith Law: No.

alek: what is Alec Bohm’s offensive potential
Keith Law: I think there’s some middle-of-the-order potential there. He’s 90% likely to do it at first base, though, and the Phillies have a pretty good one.

John: What’s Luis Arraez’s ceiling, everyday 2B? More likely outcome utility guy?
Keith Law: More likely utility guy but I wouldn’t rule out everyday.

romorr: Adley to GCL to knock off rust, then to A-. From press conference.
Keith Law: Yeah I don’t see how that would mean he’s not a fast mover … why couldn’t he start next year in AA?

Chris: Would you include C Will Smith in a trade for Felipe Rivero? What else would the Dodgers have to kick in?
Keith Law: I would not but I value relievers lower than the trade market seems to.

Mark: When do you think Luis Urias gets recalled?
Keith Law: I mean, he should have been up a month ago.

Jackson: Do you project Alzolay as a SP? Ceiling?
Keith Law: I think so, as long as he can get LHB out with the FB/CB (or his CH really improves).

Capt. Gore: “if we haven’t scorched the planet by then” he said as he hoped in a plane and flew across the country….again…
Keith Law: Capt. Gore: “Yet you participate in society. Curious! I am very intelligent.”

Jonathan: Thoughts on Jake Cronenworth. Hitting well and heard he was up to 95 from the mound.
Keith Law: Interesting. Up to 96 with a plus CB, small mechanical tweaks last year at the plate that let him drive the ball better. Older guy for a prospect, so I’m skeptical as always of how much is just age vs level, but there are tangible skills there.

Trey Anastasio: Have you ever seen Phish live?
Keith Law: OK someone’s trolling me. I’m seeing them for the first time this weekend and I think you know this.

James: Do top College pitchers get time to rest their arms? Seems like it is year round pitching with fall ball, summer Ball and then the season?
Keith Law: More college arms skip the summer than ever before. As much as I would like more chances to see them, this is the right call for the pitchers.

Craig: Do you think a “deader” ball would reduce the reliance on 3 True Outcomes baseball, mainly because it would quickly become inefficient for average/mediocre players?
Keith Law: Yes. That said, I don’t want a ball that leads to even more strikeouts. I just want a HR rate more in line with historical levels.

Jonathan: Is Shane Bieber the next James Shields, which is a good thing, or is there more there?
Keith Law: No, this is it. And it’s fine. Back end starter type because he’ll always be HR prone.

Kev: What is your % belief that Vargas actually has legit dirt/excuse for why he was being a gigantic asshole bully to the reporter last week?
Keith Law: Zero. And frankly, even if he does have it, just apologize in public and deal with this in private.

Jesse B: Keibert Ruiz has really struggled this year, obviously he’s still really young. Meanwhile, Will Smith is thriving in AAA, and done well in his cup of coffee. Is it safe to say that Will Smith will be the starting catcher for the Dodgers next year?
Keith Law: Yes but that doesn’t dim Ruiz’s potential, as he’s so much younger.

Jeries: Could Nick Madrigal play shortstop? Tim Anderson has been BAD this year
Keith Law: I don’t think so.

Trey Anastasio: My take on the Red Sox future is that they would be wise to lock up Devers & Betts (Xander already signed)… and use Benintendi as a trade chip for a young SP. What you be on board fo that strategy?
Keith Law: Yes but it sounds like Mookie wants to go to free agency, no? Devers I’m sure they could lock up.

Alex: Hey Keith, I haven’t had the chance to write in since the Kumar Rocker 19 K start. I 100% agree that he was left in too long, especially seeing as he hasn’t received his baseball millions yet. Still, in the moment, that was the most fun random baseball game I have watched from beginning to end in ages. It’s kind of similar to knowing that home runs and fly balls above all is a better strategy than small ball and putting the ball in play. I don’t really have a question, except to bemoan that the more we learn, the less exciting baseball can be.
Keith Law: Sure, I don’t disagree. But I will say that this idea that Rocker did something he’ll remember forever is a bit much. Maybe in the moment it felt that way, but “threw a no-hitter in a college playoff super regional” is pretty niche. Great personal achievement but hardly worth pushing a kid’s arm too far.

Jon: Never hire off the interview. Is that for all jobs in your opinion or just baseball? If the former, why have interviews? Thanks.
Mat Ji: “Never hire off the interview. Hire off the CV, and maybe references, but never, ever hire off the interview.” Having sat through multiple pointless interviews with candidates this week, I am not sure I could agree more.
Keith Law: I feel like Mat just answered Jon a bit. Why have interviews? Aren’t they 90% eyewash? They likely often deter decision-makers from hiring the better employee because they hire the person they liked more (perhaps for subconscious reasons, perhaps even biased ones) or the person who was more animated or funnier or energetic.

Ben: This time next year Reilly Greene will be playing at ____ level?
Keith Law: Low A.

fish: christian pache will be an elite defender T/F? pache will be a league-average hitter at best T/F?
Keith Law: He is an elite defender. He will find his way to league average with power.

Sally: Why have you not be as hard on Dodgers Urias for domestic violence as you have on others? Such as Addison Russell
Keith Law: Charges were dropped and MLB declined to suspend him. Russell was suspended, so MLB found sufficient cause, and his ex-wife came forward with a very detailed account of the abuse.

Mike: What do teams do with players and prospects like franklin Perez and Roman Quinn who always seem to be hurt. Do you rush them and hope you can extract value until they are inevitably hurt again or try and move them to a team that thinks they can unlock the potential and cure their injury issues.
Keith Law: If you have the playing time to give them, you try to hold on to them and give them opportunities until you either have a better option or you need the 40-man spot.

romorr: I just figured since the Orioles are so far away from being good, that they would be conservative with him. You know, maybe 3 years down instead of 2. Was thinking he was bound for Delmarva from the start, so just trying to understand.
Keith Law: I would guess he starts next year in Frederick, moves quickly to Bowie, and is in position for a major-league callup by August. They may choose not to do so, as you said, because they’re not good, but in terms of his readiness, I’ll be shocked if he doesn’t blitz his way through the low minors to double-A.

Biff: What do you make of Alex Reyes’ inability to stay healthy?
Keith Law: I’ve always disliked his delivery. Maybe that’s why. Maybe it’s just bad luck.
Keith Law: I mean, maybe he can’t stay healthy because of his delivery, not because I don’t like the delivery. I’m not that powerful.

EG: Gerrymandering okay, says US Supreme Court. The 2016 Electron will haunt us for decades.
Keith Law: Yep. We got what we deserved.

Magoo: Hey Keith, huge board game nerd with a 9 month old here. Obviously still quite early for me, but good suggestions for beginner games, and what age would be good to start?
Keith Law: There are really good games aimed at kids 4+. Before then just play anything at all that they like – it’s the playing with them that matters, not the game.

Jofp gallagher: Do you believe the Lucas Giolito in the future will be more like this year’s Giolito or last year’s Giolito?
From worse to one of the best pitchers is a remarkable achievement so I wonder.
Keith Law: I’m in. Real changes to delivery and stuff.

Jason: Ceiling on Austin Riley?
Keith Law: Got to make more contact first.

Ridley: I’m always excited to see Elizabeth Warren speak. Is that legit, or is it just the novelty of potentially having a President who is willing to do the work to learn a subject and come up with an intelligent policy for it?

P.S. Regarding interviews: Never hire off an interview, but you can absolutely disqualify candidates based on ’em.
Keith Law: She’s my favored candidate right now, as she has real policy proposals with substance behind them, and everything she says seems well-considered. What a concept.
Keith Law: Gotta run – thanks for all your questions, as always. I’ll be back next week for one more pre-Futures Game chat. And come see me at the Hudson Library & Historical Society on July 8th in Hudson, Ohio. Thanks again!

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→ June 27, 2019
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The Satanic Verses.

If you knew one thing about Salman Rushdie, it’s probably that he spent much of his life under an Islamist death sentence known as a fatwa, issued by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 in response to Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses. The Ayatollah claimed that the book was blasphemous, and he refused to retract the order – which said that any Muslim would be a martyr for killing Rushdie and also issued the threat of death against his editors and publishers – even after Rushdie issued a half-hearted apology. The Iranian government has only backed away from the fatwa in the intervening three decades, never lifting it, and the massive bounty on Rushdie’s head is still in place.

The Ayatollahs would have done far more for their own cause by ignoring the book, because I find it hard to believe enough people would read this dense, highly metaphorical, bloated novel, and understand its implications for devout Muslims, to make one iota of difference in the Islamic world. They Streisanded the whole thing by drawing attention to it, and made the book a global best-seller when it would probably have faded into oblivion had they done nothing. I’m not even sure the book is that good, but I feel confident few readers would have waded far enough into it to care about the parts that so offended the Ayatollah.

The Satanic Verses starts with two men who fall from an airplane that has been blown up over the English channel by a suicide bomber but are saved by an unknown miracle, after which they are transformed into the archangel Gibreel (Gabriel) and into a devil, or perhaps the devil. (The book was published less than three months before Libyan terrorists bombed Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.) The two narratives split and then twist around each other, with Gibreel’s story drifting into dream sequences of magical realism or simply the delusions of a man with schizophrenia, while Chamcha, the man who sprouts horns and a tail like a devil, encounters a more mundane series of nightmares that begin with abuse by immigration authorities.

Gibreel’s dreams include visions of a businessman named Mahound – itself a derogatory name for Mohammed – who becomes a prophet, is fooled by a scribe who deliberately errs in writing down Mahound’s words, and whose wives are mocked by the twelve prostitutes at a brothel in Jahilia, which is a pre-Islamic name for Mecca. They also include the incident to which the book’s title refers, in which Mohammed exhorted Arab followers to keep three of their pagan goddesses, only to later recant the statement and claim he was fooled by Satan into making it. The depiction of the prophet Mohammed as a rube, a con man, or a sexual libertine was sure to anger devout Muslims, although some of this is buried beneath Rushdie’s dense, florid prose, and nearly all of it is written in the unreality of Gibreel’s visions.

Chamcha’s journey is much easier to follow, even with his on-and-off transformation into a hirsute demon, and explores more humanist themes of alienation from country and family. His domineering father tried to control Chamcha through money and familial obligations, an oppressive maneuver that helped encourage the son to flee India for England, where he encountered a new type of social and cultural isolation. The metaphor involved, of the father standing in for one’s country of birth, and the natural desire to reconnect before it’s too late to matter, is easier to grasp, and the narrative of Chamcha’s life is mostly linear and grounded in reality. Except for the horns.

Parsing what’s real in Gibreel’s narrative and what’s imagined or hallucinated is difficult enough, but it’s exacerbated by Rushdie’s prose style, between his prodigious vocabulary and often poetic musings, and his lax attitude towards time. The novel’s great climactic scene includes a march of penitents to Mecca and to the sea, led by a young girl Ayesha who claims she’s communicating with the Archangel, where the faithful follow her into the Red Sea. Whether they survived and transcended or merely drowned is left to the reader – and to the surviving, less faithful neighbors and family members who watched them disappear.

Rushdie also engages in substantial wordplay and masked allusion that went well over my head because I have no background in Islamic history or writings and minimal knowledge of even geography in that part of the world. I didn’t realize until after I’d finished that the Mount Cone of the novel is Jabal an-Nour, which houses the Cave of Hira where Mohammed meditated and, according to Islamic history, received his first revelation. Rushdie renames the mountain and then delivers puns on the name, including Gibreel’s very human objet d’amour, Alleluia (Allie) Cone, who has no interest in the spiritual mountain and instead spends her life trying to climb the most materialistic of peaks, Mount Everest.

One recurring motif I did catch in The Satanic Verses is that of characters falling; in Rushdie’s world, a whole hell of a lot of people either jump or fall, mostly to their deaths, except for the two main characters who inexplicably survive. Gibreel, in fits of either madness or jealousy, kills several people by throwing them from buildings. At least two minor characters die by jumping from heights. Allie’s treks on Everest are marked by reminders of the possibility of falling, and eventually hypoxia causes her to hallucinate as well, although her eventual death comes off the mountain. The falls are always in the physical world, but given the context of the novel and Rushdie’s staunch atheism, it seems likely the falls represent man’s ‘descent’ from naïve superstition into the harsher world of a materialist, unthinking cosmos.

I had mixed feelings on Rushdie’s Booker Prize-winning novel Midnight’s Children, but it was a far more successful and accessible novel than The Satanic Verses. This latter book felt a bit like Joyce’s Ulysses, which Joyce made clear was a book to be dissected and analyzed, not to be read. You could write papers just on side characters or word choices or recurring images across the book, to say nothing of the overarching themes of identity, alienation, or religion. But as a straight read, The Satanic Verses is maddening, and not in the way the Ayatollah meant.

Next up: I finished Kobo Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes this morning.

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→ June 25, 2019
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Downforce.

Restoration Games has brought back a half-dozen old board games since the company was founded a few years ago, including one of my childhood favorites, Stop Thief!, which was kind of a precursor to modern games that ask you to download an app to help you play. (The original Stop Thief! came with a battery-operated “phone” that would give you clues in the form of sounds to tell you if you’d found something or even located the thief – and, if he escapes, sounds of him running or breaking glass so you can guess where he went.)

One of their first redesigns was the game now known as Downforce, which has existed under multiple names going back to 1974, when designer Wolfgang Kramer released his first game, an abstract game called Tempo. He repurposed the basic mechanics of that game for a series of car-racing games, including 1996’s Top Race, which seems to be the last iteration of this game until Restoration brought it back in 2017. This new version has slick graphics and very simple to learn game play that still has the same core mechanic where players play cards to move six cars around the track, but where the card you play likely moves some of your opponents’ cars forward too, and you can win the race but still lose the game depending on how every player bets.

Players begin the game with a hand of cards that varies with the number of players – you deal out the entire deck of 42 cards, ditching any remainder if you have 4 or 5 players – and then use those cards to bid for the six cars in the ‘auction’ that ends with all cars assigned to players. When you win a car in the bidding, you get two additional cards: one that lets you move that car 8 spaces (and doesn’t require you to move any other cars), and a card with a special power unique to you for that game, with some more useful than others. (My favorite is the one called Tricky, where you have the option to execute the moves on any card you play from the bottom up, rather than from the top down, so you can choose which is most advantageous and may be able to use the card to create or clear a bottleneck.)

Each player then plays one of their cards on each turn. The cards have from one to six rows, each row showing a number and a car color; the player moves all of those cars the displayed number of spaces, going from top to bottom, if possible. (Cars can be blocked when the track narrows in the three turns; you can and should use that to your advantage.) Some cards have spaces marked ‘wild,’ which you can assign to any car not already shown on the card. Players go around the table playing these cards until all six cars have crossed the finish line or the remaining players with cars on the track have run out of cars.

The track has three yellow lines across it, roughly at the quarter marks, and when the lead car crosses each line, every player bets on which of the six cars will win the race by marking it on their scoresheets (in secret). This can give you an incentive to help a rival player win if you realize your car isn’t likely to do so, and creates a way for a player hopelessly behind in the race to at least have a chance to win the whole game. Your final score is your winnings from your car(s), ranging from $12 million for first place to $2 million for fifth, plus your winnings from the betting (you can get money if the car you bet on at each point finishes in the top three), minus the cost you paid at the auction. A perfect bet, where you bet on the eventual winner in all three betting periods, would get you $18 million, enough to win some games even if you get nothing from your car.

Games take about 30 minutes to an hour, depending on the number of players and how quickly everyone takes their turns. My seven-year-old niece had no problem keeping up with the game after she sat and watched the adults play once, just needing a little guidance on using the cards to her best advantage. (I think it took a little longer for her to grasp the way the cards worked when certain cars would be blocked partway through a move.) And who doesn’t love a race car game … especially one that doesn’t suck?

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→ June 24, 2019
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Lanterns Dice.

The 2015 game Lanterns has been one of my favorite titles to play on my iPad for since the app version came out in 2016, which in turn led me to trade for the physical game as well. It’s a quick-moving game that appears light but has more depth to the long-term strategy than it seems, especially because players all place tiles into the same space and have to plan for the potential for someone else to screw up your little plan.

Renegade Games is about to release Lanterns Dice: Lights in the Sky, a spinoff, roll-and-write game that incorporates similar themes to the original but gets rid of most of the directly competitive elements of the original, asking players to fill out spaces on their individual sheets to match set patterns and create contiguous areas for more scoring. That lack of interaction on the table itself makes this a very different experience than that of playing Lanterns, which makes this more of a competitive solo game – what you do almost barely affects anyone else’s game or score. That said, it’s still a solid roll-and-write game because of the variability in game setup and because of some new quirks on the sheets that can let you chain together certain moves.

Lanterns Dice comes with four six-sided dice, each side showing a distinct color, and gives each player a sheet with a 9×6 grid of “pools,” each of which contains two triangles of different colors. When it’s your turn to roll the dice, you roll them into the tray and shake it until the four dice sit in the center, and then you orient it so one die faces you. You get to fill in one triangle of that color on your sheet; every other player has a die facing them at the same time, and they fill in triangles of those colors. On your roll, you also get a free fill from a color specific to that round, shown on the right of your scoresheet.

The primary goal in Lanterns Dice is to fill in complete pools (both triangles) to match any of the four patterns that you’ve chosen for scoring in that particular game. The box comes with eight patterns, two of which cover three squares, four of which cover four squares, and two of which cover five squares; you pick which four to use, using one small, two medium, and one large. The point value for each pattern declines the more it’s used over the course of the game, so being the first to score a pattern has a modest baked-in bonus of an extra point or two. You will also score at game-end for the second-largest contiguous block of completed pools on your sheet, so you need to create two disconnected chains and try to keep them close in size to maximize these points. There’s a third way to score by surrounding pools with boat symbols on them, filling in the four orthogonally adjacent pools but leaving the boat’s pool untouched.

The interesting aspect of Lanterns Dice comes from two other symbols that appear on certain pools on your sheet. When you complete a pool with a square platform, you get to fill in one triangle on any adjacent pool. When you fill in either triangle on a pool with a circle on it, you get one “gift,” tracked at the bottom of the scoresheet, and you can redeem those for valuable prizes. You can spend one gift to reroll your four dice one time. Each game also has three bonus moves you can buy with one to three gifts, such as letting you fill in a second triangle of the same color you rolled, or letting you fill in one or both triangles on a separate pool somewhere on your sheet. These can be very powerful if you plan them out a little, because you can set yourself up to get a chain of free moves, especially later in the game.

Games take about a half an hour, and setup is really very quick – you just have to sort and choose the fireworks tiles showing the patterns you can match and score in that game. It’s a nice filler game, but I think it loses the facet of the original Lanterns that I liked most: the interaction among players on the main board, where you’re competing to place tiles in the most valuable places, and your placement can interfere with someone else’s plans. The dice game also isn’t as visually appealing as the base version, if that’s your thing. It’s a solid addition if you love the original or enjoy roll-and-writes, but I don’t think it’s going to be a regular play around my house.

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→ June 22, 2019
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Stick to baseball, 6/21/19.

No new ESPN+ content this week, although that will change next week after I get to a few more minor league games. I did hold a Klawchat on Friday.

On the board game front, I had two pieces up at Paste this week. One is a straight review of Corinth, a new roll-and-write game from Days of Wonder that is sort of Yspahan: the Dice Game, but with a new theme and much altered rules. The other recaps the day and a half I spent at the Origins Game Fair, running through all the new games I saw or played.

On July 8th, the night after the Futures Game, I’ll be at the Hudson Library and Historical Society in Hudson, Ohio, talking baseball, taking questions, and signing copies of my book Smart Baseball.

And now, the links…

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