iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Stephen Rochelle

This rulebook just talked about "mid-turn" actions but I got news for them: all my turns are mid.

Stephen Rochelle @stephen.rochelle.name · 5h

Ah, I see another brave truth-teller at BGG wants to make sure that we know that beyond-the-pale bigotry/racism/etc is just "controversial", same as "you can't shuffle one card". The mods don't always get it right, but "just how offensive am I allowed to be?" doesn't need to stick around.

BoardGameGeek screencap. The thread title in the URL is "What are the rules when typing controversial stuff"; the thread has been wholly deleted and the page is just an error message.

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Stephen Rochelle @stephen.rochelle.name · 05/09/2026

"not doing" is an excellent plan for Labor Day

A view from a small wooden dock jutting into a fishing pond surrounded by woods

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Alexandra Petri @petridishes.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

the year is 2027. gas costs $83 and lettuce is at war with us. however every location on every map now says AMERICA

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Stephen Rochelle @stephen.rochelle.name · 23/08/2026

The longest losing streak in football history is at 101 games - but they take the lead 6 seconds before halftime tonight

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Stephen Rochelle @stephen.rochelle.name · 22/08/2026

First time thru the order: 9 up 9 down. *Second* time: uhhhhh...

Box score for a baseball game showing 0 runs scored in innings 1 through 3, and 8 runs scored in the fourth.

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Reposted by Stephen Rochelle

Birds Are Dinosaurs @birdsaredinosaurs.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Four years ago, Google fired Blake Lemoine, one of their senior software engineers. Lemoine had been working on LaMDA, a transformer-based language model—a forerunner to GPTs. Blake had spent endless hours talking to LaMDA and claimed it was sentient. He posted the chat logs as proof.

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Stephen Rochelle @stephen.rochelle.name · 23/06/2026

With a career 1 G 14 A, Pekka Rinne is in the Hall of Fame! www.nhl.com/predators/ne...

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Reposted by Stephen Rochelle

Jason Matthews @jasondcmatthews.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Giant Magnetic Twilight Struggle Lives! @gmtgames.bsky.social #Origins2026

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Stephen Rochelle @stephen.rochelle.name · 19/06/2026

Torch and Tunisia from a CGSC student. The Axis has to make a fighting retreat to Tunis to stall the eventual invasions of Sicily and beyond. So much Allied firepower late game that I can't help but ask "why isn't some of this going to England to prep Normandy?"

Late-game state of Torch and Tunisia, a block wargame on the French North Africa campaign of WW2. Axis blocks (red and gray) are facing the camera, showing unit stats. Allied blocks (various green) are reversed, only showing that something is present, but not what or how strong. Yellow cubes represent supply that has to be moved up to the combat zones.

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Stephen Rochelle @stephen.rochelle.name · 13/06/2026

Fort Sumter by @markherman54.bsky.social and @gmtgames.bsky.social with my daughter. She won with the Unionists by a point after grabbing the arsenals early and then fighting me tooth and nail in the border states. She covered the Cuban Missile Crisis this year; I'll have to find 13 Days next.

Final board position in the board game Fort Sumter, a card-driven area control game. Unionists control the federal arsenals and forts against no opposition; Secessionists control the border states and other secession considerations against significant opposition. The Unionists win by a point.

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Stephen Rochelle @stephen.rochelle.name · 23/05/2026

Come play Rebel Fury with the @armchairdragoons.bsky.social at @originsgamefair.bsky.social, Thurs PM and Fri AM. Tickets are sold but no-shows and team play can make space for more! The battles of Chickamauga and the Wilderness, by @markherman54.bsky.social and @gmtgames.bsky.social .

Game setup image for the ACW board game Rebel Fury. Shown are hex maps of central Virginia and northwest Georgia for the battles of the Wilderness and Chickamauga, respectively. Union divisions are blue counters, Confederate divisions are gray. Also shown are various play aids.

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Reposted by Stephen Rochelle

Defector @defector.com · 30/04/2026

Subscribe to Defector: defector.com/products

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ArtButMakeItSports @artbutmakeitsports.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Proposal for a PROUN street celebration, by El Lissitzky, 1923

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Stephen Rochelle @stephen.rochelle.name · 20/04/2026

The boardgame space is endlessly inventive, but I - speaking as someone who taught a four-year-old to count in binary yesterday, just for fun and to perplex his parents - do not want to gamify .zip file compression.

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Stephen Rochelle @stephen.rochelle.name · 16/04/2026

The worst people you know having to hear that "just war" doesn't mean "I just wanna start a war"

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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 15/04/2026

Happy Tax Day, New York. We’re taxing the rich.

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Ken Tremendous @kentremendous.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

Besides being...horrifying?, this is the absolute bullseye of the AI grift. Take something that's free and has always been free -- faith -- and put a price tag on it. If you use any of these tools, you are a sucker, and are being suckered, and the people who make this slop are laughing at you.

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Ken Tremendous @kentremendous.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

A bunch of loser dork billionaires built a machine that tells them everything they do is cool

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Micro SF/F by O. Westin @microsff.com · 07/04/2026

"No," the swordmaster said. "One does not refuse the king," the herald said. "I do. I will not train his soldiers or officers, I will not tell my students to join his army, I will not support his unjust war." "You will regret this!" "No," the swordmaster said.

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Matt Ghoulberg @mattgoldberg.bsky.social · 24/03/2026

This deal was announced 3 months ago in case you’re wondering how generative AI, “the inevitable technology we must all adjust to,” is going.

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Stephen Rochelle @stephen.rochelle.name · 23/03/2026

2G 3A in the tournament championship game is a pretty good way to close out a hockey season

A youth hockey player celebrates a goal. The goalie is looking over his left shoulder at the puck resting in the net.

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Reposted by Stephen Rochelle

GMT Games @gmtgames.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

For those interested, here's a great video from Mark Herman showing the map evolution for the future 3rd volume of the Civil War Heritage Series that covers the Antietam (1862), Gettysburg (1863), and Monacacy River (1864) campaigns. Check it out here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJzI...

youtube.com

Lee Moves North Map Evolution

YouTube video by Mark Herman

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Reposted by Stephen Rochelle

🥧 suzanne 🥧 @425suzanne.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

Reposting with ALT because this kind of phenomenal disdain and disrespect from within the industry literally against two of their own titles and the designer who made them is important to recognize.

Ryan Dancey - Chief Operating Officer of Alderac Entertainment responding to:

Baffles me why people think AI should be included in any serious business when it's like the office four year old.

Ryan writes

Because three years ago, it was essentially nothing but a curiosity. Now it’s useful, but in limited cases. In a year or two it will be as useful as any new hire. A year or two after that, it will be used useful as an experienced employee. And any field. For a few dollars day in cost.

15 years ago the best humans could be any computer playing chess. 10 years ago a human checking the work of the best chest plan computer could be the best human. Today the best humans cannot beat a chess playing computer. This is what is happening with AI except the timeframe is months not years.

I have zero reason to believe that AI couldn’t come up with tiny towns or flip seven or cubitos. I can prompt any of several AI‘s right now and get ideas for games as good as those. The gaming industry doesn’t exist because humans create otherwise unobtainable ideas it exists because many many previous games exist feed into the minds of designers who produce new variance of those themes. People then apply risk. Against those ideas to see if there’s a product market fit. Sometimes there is, and sometimes there’s not. In fact, much more often than not. Extremely occasionally quotes twice in my lifetime (D&D and magic the gathering) a human has produced an all new form of gaming entertainment. Those moments are so rare and incandescent that they echo across decades.

Game publishing isn’t an industry of unique special ideas. It’s an industry about execution, marketing, and attention to detail. All things AIs are great at.

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Reposted by Stephen Rochelle

Marcus Hutchins @malwaretech.com · 14/02/2026

It’s so funny to think about the fact that there’s people out there deferring every life decision to this

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Armchair Dragoons @armchairdragoons.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

Origins is 17-21 June & it's time for #wargamers to get in gear to come join us We've had a dedicated #wargaming program in the main game hall since 2014 & it's continuing to expand But don't take it from us! Read what our players said in the feedback survey originsgamefair.com

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Reposted by Stephen Rochelle

Armchair Dragoons @armchairdragoons.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

Approaching the Campaign in Barbarossa: Army Group North, 1941 The game sets absolute boundaries between Army Groups North & Center but does provide a few VP obj's off the direct Leningrad route that speak to wider coordination w/ AGC & the drive towards Moscow wp.me/pae4WL-dMp

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Stephen Rochelle @stephen.rochelle.name · 07/02/2026

Churchill by @markherman54.bsky.social - we spent way too much time bickering over political games to defeat the Axis (also, I rolled a 1 with a +8 mod to move two spaces into Germany - turns out a better Market-Garden still fails)

Mid-game image of Churchill, a 3-player game of Allied great power negotiation during WW2

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Reposted by Stephen Rochelle

Bulbous Potato @cklein86.bsky.social · 20/12/2025

The best part of this game Notre Dame sitting home furious about how terrible it is while they lost to BOTH of these teams

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Stephen Rochelle @stephen.rochelle.name · 14/12/2025

Between youth hockey games and under a winter storm, I'm playing around with how to crack open the line in Frank Chadwick's "Battle for Moscow"

"Battle for Moscow" board game, after the initial combats on turn 1. 3 attacks in the middle have opened a gap for armored forces to exploit.

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Reposted by Stephen Rochelle

Ken Tremendous @kentremendous.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

Woman: The baby is mine Woman #2: No it's mine King Solomon: Both of you say this baby is yours. Hang on a sec *types* ChatGPT: Cutting the baby in half is your best move Solomon: Someone get me a sword ChatGPT: Also pre-heat the oven so it's nice and hot when you cook the juicier half of the baby

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Adam Weinstein @adamweinstein.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

'Four cones wins, but in order to get a cone you have to build a civilization. Which is where the spirit cards come in'

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Revan @revan.eurosky.social · 02/11/2025

Did not expect one of the best paragraphs I’d read about baseball would come from an Irish newspaper www.irishexaminer.com/sport-column...

And in that pause between pitch and contact - longer than logic, shorter than hope - we remembered why baseball existed long before we judged a sport's value by viral moments and betting apps. It is the romance of failure. The mortal beauty of trying and missing seven times out of 10 and still being considered great. It is the only sport where patience is a weapon, and panic the surest death. You cannot simply run out the clock in baseball; you must face it, pitch by terrifying pitch, until it finally releases you.

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Stephen Rochelle @stephen.rochelle.name · 12/10/2025

Initial setup for @gmtgames.bsky.social Army Group North, kicking off Barbarossa toward the Baltic States and eventually Leningrad. #furloughgaming #boardwargames

Initial setup for Army Group North. The German army is in the foreground with tall stacks of counters. Leningrad is in the far distant corner of the map.

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Stephen Rochelle @stephen.rochelle.name · 06/10/2025

Inflection Point by @calvinboy24.bsky.social @multimanpublishing.bsky.social finishes with a narrow German win when 5th Mech can't advance one last empty hex and all the other SNAFU rolls come up bust #furloughgaming #wargames

Final situation in the Chir Short scenario of BCS Inflection Point. Soviet 5th Mech has cleared all resistance up to the last VP hex (marked with arrow) but traffic from fierce fighting precludes an advance into the hex before the scenario ends.

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Stephen Rochelle @stephen.rochelle.name · 01/09/2025

Thanks for suggesting @allplay.bsky.social Ruins, @maudineormsby.bsky.social - you should have heard my son's yell when I dropped six 25s to win the game.

Final play of Ruins - a 10+6+9 x2 with a pair of wild x2s for a set of six 25s. On a deck that starts valued at 1-10.

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Stephen Rochelle @stephen.rochelle.name · 25/08/2025

@gmtgames.bsky.social proposal for 2025 counter errata sheet for Space Empires. These are actually from way back at the Close Encounters expansion but they've never been fixed. Labels didn't get left-right reversed on the sheet and so front/back doesn't match

Counters from Space Empires 4X: Close Encounters expansion with named fleet markers for the four factions. The front and back of each counter should match (e.g. "Battle Fleet" on both sides of counter A, and "Frontier Fleet" on both sides of counter B). Instead, each name appears once on each counter (e.g. "Battle Fleet" on side 1 and "Frontier Fleet" on side 2 of both counters). This increases the chances of confusion if a counter is accidentally flipped.

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Stephen Rochelle @stephen.rochelle.name · 18/08/2025

@markherman54.bsky.social Mark. Mark. *10 maps??!?* (just listened to your conversation with @playersaidblog.bsky.social )

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Timothy Burke @bubbaprog.xyz · 08/05/2025

you're welcome

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Stephen Rochelle @stephen.rochelle.name · 22/03/2025

Operation Watchtower studies learning @markherman54.bsky.social South Pacific at the hockey rink - CA screen of Rabaul plus CV standoff doesn't carry enough power to force the landing.

Opening move of board game South Pacific, attempting the 1942 invasion of Guadalcanal. US cruisers screen the Japanese surface fleet at Rabaul (representing historical Savo Island); that unit will be eliminated. Japanese air concentrates to contest the landings. With the US carrier fleet in standoff position, the Japanese are likely to win the air/naval battle and prevent US 1st Mar Div from landing.
Assuming both players roll 5s in combat.

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Stephen Rochelle @stephen.rochelle.name · 08/03/2025

First stab at an EotS offensive, executed badly. Savo Is. counterattack should commit naval even if the carriers hold offshore. Best way to learn is playing badly and then asking why history didn't work like that. #boardwargames #hockeyrinkgaming

Aftermath of Operation Watchtower in board game "South Pacific"; Japanese player response was badly done.

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Stephen Rochelle @stephen.rochelle.name · 23/02/2025

Checking the road network for opening moves at Chancellorsville in Rebel Fury by @markherman54.bsky.social @gmtgames.bsky.social . 19 moves to get Hill and Colston to the far edge of command range. Gotta fill time at youth hockey practice somehow #boardwargames

Opening CSA moves at Chancellorsville. Two d10s show "19" for a moves counter. "Ghost detachment" markers show the limits of command range. Colston follows the Mine Road behind the entrenchments, while Hill countermarches past the widow Alsop. Hill finishes in column on the Orange Turnpike with Colston south on a minor road. Anderson's brigades behind Marye's Heights can either lead Colston's column or reinforce their division near Bank's Ford (latter option shown, but "Must Attack" markers show the alternatives).

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