Games Review

Experts will tell you that a nuclear war will result in the near-complete decimation of the human race, with survivors slowing starving and dying of radiation sickness. But those of us who know better have a different scenario in mind. Namely, people will mutate into totally kick-ass monsters, probably with green skin, and have giant battles against evil robots in dune buggies. At least, that outcome would be a lot more interesting, and maybe even make it worth having a nuclear war just to see the sentient plants.

And if you play Neuroshima, the RPG about life after the end of the world as we know it, you can see all that stuff. You can fight mutants and robots and evil plants, and scavenge for supplies, and blow up monsters with plasma guns.

But if you play Neuroshima Hex, you won't do any of that stuff at all. You'll just put out hexes with arrows and symbols on them and try to point the right direction so you can win. It's almost a shame to see an exciting post-nuke fantasy turned into a game this abstract - or it would be, if the abstract game in question were not blatantly awesome.

There are rules in the book for playing with three or four, but the game was really designed to play head-to-head. You take turns putting out your soldiers, who do stuff like shoot or stab or throw nets. Then a battle breaks out, and you figure out who is smart and who is dead. The overall goal is to damage your opponent's base, but this can be a lot harder to do than you might imagine, especially if you're playing somebody who knows what they're doing.

When you place your fighters, you'll have the best intentions. You'll have a straight shot on the path from your sniper to the enemy base, but then the other guy will put a really fast stabby guy right behind your sniper, and since your sniper is slow, he'll die before he ever gets to shoot. But you've still got a chance, because if you can throw a net on that mutant bug with the finger claws before he cuts your assassin into tiny cheese cubes, you can bust out that killer shot and put a hole right where you need it. Of course, right after you do that, your opponent will throw a grenade at your netter and you're back to square one.

Before you're ever really happy with the layout of your fighters, one of you will end up playing a hex with an explosion on it, and then all that maneuvering is resolved. You'll start with the fast guys and start killing things, and if you planned well (and didn't get totally hosed somewhere along the way), you'll be able to do more damage to the other base than he can do to you. Once you run out of hexes, you get one more big melee, and then whichever player has a healthier base wins the game.

If you just look at the description of Neuroshima Hex, it might seem like a kind of fighting game or simulation of a battle. But it's really not. It's more like hexagonal chess. Every move has a counter move, but some moves are devastating while some are lame. The theme is there, and makes itself felt through the special abilities of the hexes you place, but this really doesn't feel like a fighting game. If you want a simulation, there are tons of games you can play, but this won't be one of them.

On the other hand, if you want a very smart, painfully vindictive game with abstract rules, Neuroshima Hex is brilliant. As the game progresses, you'll find yourself reenacting chains of actions in your head. Your internal dialog will sound something like this:

"So I'll play this guy here, and he'll make that guy fast enough to kill that dude, which will keep this guy alive to snipe at the net guy, but the net guy is holding a fast guy who won’t get to go, so then this original guy will be killed before he ever existed, which will result in a time paradox that will destroy the universe and bring us face-to-face with Gene Roddenberry."

In other words, there's a lot of thinking in Neuroshima Hex. You're not running and gunning and grabbing cover, you're placing and blocking and planning and analyzing. And then for good measure, you're analyzing a little more. This is not a game for people who want to recreate epic battles. It is, however, a game for people who like highly-abstracted games that make your brain sweat, and that still have bodies piling up all over the place.

So you won’t get to reenact nuclear frostbite if you play Neuroshima Hex, but you will get to exploit special abilities, plan five steps ahead, consider far-reaching ramifications and be totally mud-stomped when your opponent plays something you hadn’t considered. And that makes it good in my book.

Summary

2-4 players (but really, 2)

Pros:
Super-cool setting with groovy art
Lots of planning and thinking
Challenging and smart
Four different factions to play, and they all play different

Cons:
Theme seems a little bait-and-switch

Neuroshima Hex is an older game, and it can be tough to track down a copy - unless you shop at Noble Knight Games:
MOLOCH AWAITS

Here's a quick anecdote to illustrate what a smart son of a bitch I am.

Several years ago, I was walking through the toy section of my local Target store and noticed a couple Star Wars games. These had pictures on the front featuring miniatures that were painted by aboriginal chipmunks, and a bunch of art cribbed off of movie stills. I was momentarily intrigued, but then I remembered that when I was a child, I had a game based on Captain Caveman, and it sucked. So I turned up my nose, insisting that I would only buy games I could find at hobby stores, because mass market games were clearly only for idiot children.

So yeah, I passed on Epic Duels and Queen's Gambit. I also missed out on Buffy, but in my defense, I was really broke when that came out and couldn't have bought a copy anyway.

I then spent years kicking myself for being an elitist asshole. But it was only in the last few weeks that I was able to redeem myself in some small way, by buying a copy of Epic Duels off an auction site.

To rub my nose in what a total douche I was for not buying Epic Duels the first time I had a chance (and paying like 20 bucks for it, instead of the small fortune it ended up costing me), the game had to go ahead and just plain rock my face off. Man, was I a tool. It's entirely possible that I still am, but at least now I will buy a game at Target. I've learned my lesson - Epic Duels clearly shows us that you can buy really fun mass market games, even if they are based on popular franchises.

I should have known right when I saw it that I wanted to buy Epic Duels. It's not based on Captain Caveman, it's based on Star Wars, and I love Star Wars (although in my defense, when I was a kid, I also loved Captain Caveman. The sidekick chicks in their skimpy bikinis made my prepubescent pants confused). You pick teams to fight each other, like Boba Fett and Greedo against Han Solo and Chewbacca, and then they battle to the death. In terms of a theme, you can't do much better. And to really mix it up, you can do Mace Windu and a couple clone troopers against Darth Vader and some stormtroopers, or Anakin and Padme against nobody at all, because no self-respecting Star Wars fan would willingly play the two lamest main characters in the entire Star Wars universe.

On the surface, Epic Duels doesn't look all that deep. You roll a die, which tells you who can move, and then you play cards to attack. If you're shooting guns, you don't even have to worry about range, because any gun in Star Wars will at least shoot across a room.

But it's not that easy! For one thing, you can only attack in a straight line, which means even if you've got the range, you need to position yourself for a shot. And if you do line up a shot, you're leaving yourself open for a counterattack, so it might be a good idea to send your lackeys out front, so they can get killed instead of losing Luke Skywalker to a two-bit battle droid.

The cards also provide a fantastic layer of tactical play. You get two actions every turn, and each action can be to play a card, heal your main guy, or draw a card. Since you can't attack or defend if you don't have cards, you'll need to time your big moves so that you don't wind up with Yoda standing right in front of Darth Maul with his pants around his stubby green ankles. Not only that, but you'll want to watch your opponent's hand and rush in when he's low on cards, while still leaving yourself enough defense cards to avoid losing your hero just because you couldn't throw up a force shield.

On a completely different level, every set of characters plays differently. Darth Vader's lackeys are just a couple of cannon-fodder stormtroopers, but the big man himself is a total bad-ass who will absolutely throw heavy boxes at you from across the room. Han Solo is nowhere near as impressive, but Chewbacca is no slouch, and between the two of them, they can give Emperor Palpatine a run for his money.

I could go on about how well the special abilities on the cards bring the characters to life, or how you can sacrifice your minions to save your main guy, but all of that discussion is academic compared to the most important thing about Epic Duels - it's really, really fun. When Han Solo blasts a hole right through Greedo's face, you'll stand up, all cocky and full of swagger, and say, 'boring conversation anyway' (I know, that was on the Death Star. Still a great line). When Vader force-chokes a clone trooper into an early grave, you'll throw your voice really deep and say, 'I find your lack of faith disturbing.' And when Chewbacca throws a battle droid out an airlock, smashing it into a dozen pieces, you'll stand up on your chair and let out a wookie roar that will make your wife yell at you to keep it down, she's trying to watch Real Housewives.

I've started on my penance for not buying Epic Duels. My first step is to visit big-box stores and look for fun games. Right now I'm trying to decide between a Harry Potter retread of Candyland and something with My Little Pony. I'll probably just settle on some Cars 2 licensed pap designed to appeal to small children so that their parents buy the game just to shut them up.

For the second part of my penance, I'm going to play Epic Duels again. Sure, that's like telling an alcoholic that he has to drink a fifth of whiskey to make up for being a drunk, but I'm comfortable with it.

Summary

2 players (or 4, if you like the team game)

Pros:
Simple rules that end up being surprisingly robust
Really damned fun
Lots of different characters let you play almost any fight you want
It's freaking Star Wars

Cons:
Pretty darn expensive now, thanks to being both out of print and awesome

I would tell you that it would be hard to find a copy of Epic Duels, but Noble Knight Games specializes in old games that are out of print. They've got a copy, right here:
LET THE WOOKIE WIN

Nightfall has one of the cheesiest settings I've ever seen in a professionally published game. Not only that, but the setting has almost nothing at all to do with the actual game you're playing. And yet I have absolutely no problem at all overlooking the thematic flaws, because Nightfall has grown on me like a fungus, and is now barely edging out Puzzle Strike to be my number-one go-to deckbuilding game.

And if there's one thing that games like this need to really shine, it's more cards. More cards mean more variety, more strategies to uncover, more combinations to try. So every time Nightfall comes out with an expansion, I get all excited (of course, since Blood Country is only the second Nightfall expansion, it's not like there's a longstanding precedent). And every time I am delighted.

Blood Country takes the three-way monster mash of Nightfall and moves it into the country. New vampires have mullets, new hunters sport trucker caps, and new werewolves ride motorcycles. There's even a card called Wight Trash. I am not making that up.

But honestly, the theme for Nightfall is completely discardable. It could be flying monkeys and cowardly lions, for all I care. With Nightfall, the game is what counts. Attacking your friends, chaining your actions, building your combinations - that's what makes Nightfall so awesome. And so for Blood Country to be a success, it has to make the game better. I could care less if there are hillbilly bloodsuckers, as long as they give me more ways to have fun.

And so I am pleased to state unequivocally that Blood Country is awesome. In fact, I think it's potentially better than Martial Law, if only by a little. It does introduce a big random factor, but at the same time, it also gives you a lot more ways to exploit kickers and create wild combos, even building off your opponents' plays to improve your own.

For a more concrete example, consider the new card Shotgun Party. The chain effect lets you get more minions in play, but that's not the best part. The best part is that the next card gets its kicker - twice. This is really cool if the next card lets you throw some pain around. It's less awesome if it says you have to kill some werewolves, and you're the only guy with werewolves. Then you get to feel stupid. Trust me - you will feel stupid. I can vouch for that.

I also like Shut Up and Soldier. This one lets you choose an effect in play - anywhere in play - and make it happen, with you choosing all the targets. This has the potential for madcap hijinks if played at the right time. You could use somebody's monster-damaging effect against their own guys, or damage an opponent with his own cards. That's pretty fun, and really opens up the possibilities for creating wild combinations and Machiavellian card plays.

Another neat new element in Blood Country is the specific wound effect. That sounds like a medical school term, but all it means is that a lot of cards are keyed to the type of wound you can get. Up to this point, the only reason you cared what kind of wounds you were getting was if there was a tie, and in the 50 or so games I've played of Nightfall, that has never happened once. But now a Bleed wound might reduce the damage you take from an attack, or a Burn wound might let you strike again. It's capricious, of course - you might buy a Vampiric Turning, hoping to use Bite wounds to grab up enemy minions, and then spend the whole game earning Burns and Bleeds, so that you never do get to use that cool stealing ability.

Lots of the cards in Blood Country are more powerful than what we've seen before, but they tend to come with downsides. For instance, that Wight Trash I mentioned earlier hits like a freight train, but gets discarded before he can attack, unless you time it just right. The Infected Ghoul is a really great defender and a dangerous attacker, but unless you get the kicker, he dies as soon as he hits the table. There are some really impressive cards in Blood Country, but to exploit their power, you have to be fairly good at this game.

If you're new to Nightfall, or just haven't played at all, you don't really have any reason to pick up Blood Country. But if you're as big a fan as I am, and you play it anywhere near as often as I do, you should be ordering Blood Country the next time you can afford it. Just keep in mind that Blood Country only comes with new order cards - no starters or wounds - so you'll still need either the original Nightfall or Martial Law if you want to play Blood Country. But then, if you're in the market for Blood Country, you probably have everything, anyway. This isn't an expansion you would bother buying unless you already know you love the game. But if you do like Nightfall, you should get Blood Country, pronto.

Summary

Pros:
New cards for Nightfall - that's a Pro all by itself
Neat new ways to mix up combos and power up other cards
Exciting new possibilities for kicking your friends in the privates
Some interesting powerful cards that come with instant drawbacks
Specific wound effects add more meaning to the various wound types

Cons:
Specific wounds also add a greater random factor than the game has ever had
Theme continues to be pointless - but now it's pointless and wearing bib overalls

If you like Nightfall as much as I do, you should get Blood Country. And you should get it from Noble Knight Games, so you can save money and so they keep thinking I'm good for business.
GETERDUN

If I ran an ancient civilization, it would be called Drakatonia, and I would rule it with an iron fist. I would be an immortal god king, sending bloodthirsty soldiers to every corner of the globe to bring me back tasty exotic fruits and the heads of my enemies. I would have a harem the size of Madrid, and a collection of rare action figures (all of which would be carved out of stone, because this is pre-plastic).

And if I had a card in 7 Wonders: Leaders, my special ability would give you one extra victory point. As a leader of warriors, I would rock. As a Leaders card, I would be underwhelming.

But then, most of the cards in Leaders grant an incredibly minor benefit, so I would be in good company. Sure, it's great to have King Solomon let you root through the discard pile now and then, but am I the only one who remembers that he was the guy who would cut babies in half just to shut up their mothers? Compared to what these leaders did in real life, I'm a little underwhelmed by their translation to board gaming.

However, the purpose of the Leaders for 7 Wonders is not to show off what total bad-asses the real people were. The purpose of having the Leaders cards is to make the game more fun to play, and in that regard, they're absolutely successful. They create an additional layer of strategy that will alter the way you play the game.

For instance, if you have Aristotle, he adds victory points for building scientific resources. This means, obviously, that you will want to do more science. You may want to do more science anyway. After all, if the movies are to be trusted, science can help you create Kelly LeBrock in your attic, and she will make you very popular and also shower with you.

Different leaders provide different effects, too. Many, like Amyitis or Nefertiti, have silly names, but can also grant additional points at the end of the game. Some help out right up front, like Hannibal, who is worth one extra point of warmongering, and who loves it when a plan comes together. Some cards help you build stuff, like Hammurabi, who will help you build blue cards as long as you can pronounce his name properly. Others just provide one-time bonuses, like Croesus, who just gives you a bunch of money and then goes off to cry in the corner because he isn't as cool as Leonidas.

You only get three chances during the game to play leader cards, and every time, you have to pay for them. That makes sense - nobody works for free, except Doctors Without Borders and the guy who washes your windows while you're waiting at a stoplight (and he would really like a tip). So you'll have to balance their worth against what they can offer - Archimedes can help you come up with science stuff on the cheap, so he would be good early in the game, while Alexander offers extra points for winning battles, so you wouldn't want to play him until the end.

In typical 7 Wonders fashion, you won't get to pick your leaders. You'll have to do the standard pass-around-the-table at the beginning of the game, so you might not get the best combination of brilliance. That's part of the game, though, and adds to the litany of painful decisions you're going to have to make while you play. Keep Vitruvius and get paid when you build for free, or pass him along and keep Caesar, so you have someone to stab in the back when you lose (that's not his actual ability, but you never know, it could come in handy)?

If you hate 7 Wonders because it's so wildly popular and wins so many awards, then you're probably not going to be rushing the gates to pick up the expansion. But if you're a fan of one of the most clever games to hit the market in 2011, Leaders should be in your online shopping cart (or you could get it at a game store, assuming you like paying retail). It's actually a pretty simple decision - if you like 7 Wonders, Leaders will make the original better. If you don't like 7 Wonders because you would actually like some interaction in your games, Leaders isn't going to change your mind. And if you want to join Drakatonia, just bring your driver's license, some exotic fruit, and the head of someone I hate. I'll be at the job fair in the Howard Johnson's.

Summary

Pros:
Adds new layers of strategy to the game
Focuses your play style a little, so you're not just slapping down random cards every turn
Same great art that makes the original game so much fun

Cons:
Doesn't add any more interaction than was already there

If you've got the guts to be a Drakatonian shock trooper, then you probably have enough sense not to pay retail for your games. You can visit Noble Knight Games and get Leaders, and save a bunch of money. Smart soldiers don't pay retail.
RECRUIT YOUR LEADERS

Gamers as a group tend to be biased against really small games. I have a few theories about this. See if any of these make sense:

1. You don't want a tiny game because you will lose it behind all the big box games you've got stored on bookshelves lining your basement walls.

2. You don't buy the tiny game because when you get to the store, you're dazzled by all the enormous boxes covered in sexy art drawn by people with more talent than is easily explained.

3. The value you place on a game is directly proportional to the cubic feet the box consumes.

4. Small games frighten you, the way snakes scare Indiana Jones.

Personally, I think it's option four. There are some really strange phobias out there.

I mention this bias because if you skip over games on account of them being too damned small, you'll totally miss out on Kamakura. And that would be a shame. It's not often you get a lovably violent game with tasteful art and clever rules, all packed into a tuck box you could conceal in your underwear. Why you would feel a need to hide the game in your drawers is none of my business. My point is, you could.

And it's deceptively simple. On the surface, Kamakura looks like a fighting game, where you send your soldiers out to grab up territories in feudal Japan, and then ninja assassins strike down on them with great vengeance and furious anger, and then there's blood. But it's not really that. I mean, that's in there, but until you play, you won't see that there's a heck of a lot more to do in Kamakura than send brave men and women to their untimely deaths.

The game is really straightforward. Each player has four territory cards face-down in front of him, valued from one to four. On your turn, you lay down a soldier and a weapon on an enemy territory, with a strength determined by the weapon in question. If you've got a play, you have to make it, even if you're virtually guaranteed to get your ass kicked. Then the other guy looks through the cards in his hand, picks a soldier and a weapon, and tries to defend his homeland. That, or he just gives up and you take the land.

It gets interesting, though, because there are three different soldiers. The samurai is a bad-ass who makes every weapon hit harder. The ninja can use a holdout blade on the attack and turn a loss into a full-on carjacking win. And the most interesting soldier, the geisha, can persuade the attacker to go back and steal land from the aggressive jackass who sent him over in the first place. So when you're picking your cards for your turn, you have a lot more to consider than just picking the strongest combo and going in heavy. You don't want your geisha on offense, if you can help it, but then, if you think your opponent is coming in hot next turn, you'll want the samurai who can bust him one to stay in your hand. You might send the ninja and hope to use the hidden blade, but if the other guy just pulled a fresh hand of cards, he might have a sneaky knife, too, and then your ninja is going to wind up wearing that knife for a monocle.

To really complicate matters, you only get to draw cards when you can't play. That generally only happens after your hand is almost empty, and it means you want to hold on to some really good defensive cards just in case you get jumped when your hand is empty. It also means you may want to choose a losing combo, just for the chance to use a couple extra cards and run out sooner. It also means you have to time your plays just right - you don't want to be empty when the next player runs out, but you don't want to leave yourself open right after everyone draws new hands.

Kamakura is a very clever game that combines two of my favorite things - violence and tough decisions. I mean, in games. In real life, I like easy decisions. And between my bad back and my creaky knees, anything more violent than painting the cabinets would put me in traction. But in games, tough decisions are more fun, and the violence all happens to fake people, so it's OK.

So it's small. It's like 52 cards in a tuck box, which makes for a game you could lose under the fridge. But it's smart and it's fun and it's fast. Kamakura packs a hell of a lot of game into a tiny little box, which makes it more valuable than a lot of games that come in boxes big enough to hide dead cats.

Summary

2-4 players

Pros:
Excellent art that shows admirable restraint
Easy to learn
Lots of subtlety and tricky decisions
Plays lightning fast and leaves you knowing you did something fun

Cons:
Really small (only a con if your a size-ist)

I can't figure out how you could go about buying a copy of Kamakura. Maybe if you cruise around the Dyad Games website, you can find a hint:
http://dyadgames.com/

I hate having to give bad reviews to guys who are trying really hard. It's hilarious fun to slam the piss out of a Reiner game - after all, he can have a bowel movement and wind up with a new game. But when a guy is really putting out the effort to create something, and just doesn't have the sense to make it an actual interesting game, it's a little sad.

On the other hand, I did warn him. I showed him some of the reviews I've written that were downright uncomplimentary. I told him, 'there's a real good chance this happens to you.' I told him not to send me a game if it wasn't a good game. But they never listen.

The game we're discussing is called Terrax Warriors. And it's really not very good at all. It lacks all the basic components that would make a game popular, fun or interesting. The art is hideous, and at points, makes the game hard to play. The premise is derivative and uninspired. The mechanics are total retreads. Basically, Terrax Warriors is a blatant crime against gaming. The best thing the creator can claim is ignorance, because he certainly cannot claim to have made a good game.

Terrax Warriors is a skirmish battle in an absurdly generic fantasy world. While it is not impossible to create a decent fantasy skirmish, this one is an abysmal failure. I can name several fantasy battle games without even thinking about it, and every single one makes Terrax Warriors look as fascinating as an empty toilet paper tube.

If nothing else, he could have put a little thought into the factions. If your factions were giant wolf things, mutant zombies and musketeers, at least your setting would be interesting. But Terrax Warriors gives us elves and dwarves, men and orcs. There was absolutely no attempt to be the least bit imaginative. At least put your goblins on dinosaurs.

And the rules are about as exciting as the races selected to participate. You move, you attack, you roll a few dice, and that's it. Sure, there's more stuff, but there's nothing you haven't seen dozens of times before. Spells for the wizards, bows for the elves, boredom for the poor bastard who says, 'yes, you can send me your game, and yes, I will write about it.' No consideration at all for the sad sacks who had to play it with me, either.

I take it back - there is one thing that's new. It's the end conditions. When your army drops below a certain point value, you're out of the game, even if you have a bunch of people left on the field. And since that number is actually higher than the army you start with, it's not very difficult to knock someone out of the game. To be honest, we were actually relieved by these end-game conditions, because it meant we got to stop playing before the game should have ended. Drop a couple berserkers and steal a couple gold mines, and the orcs disappear. We could have called that an arbitrary rule that ruined the game, but instead, we just called it mercy.

Even if you could get past the thoroughly bland races or the completely uninteresting rules, Terrax Warriors is still hard to play just because of how tremendously bad the art is. The game is played with cardboard tokens, but the art on many of these tokens looks like horribly miniaturized clip art. And then the art is reduced down so far as to make it all look like colored blobs of spilled paint, and you can't tell which guy is which. I can see a scenario in which you defend one position for ten minutes before someone realizes that the Amazon warrior was actually behind the forest, and you've been rolling dice for a mustard splatter.

If the designer of Terrax Warriors considers what he's got, completely retools it, adds some interesting elements, and hires an actual artist, he might have something he could sell. But as it stands, this is one of the worst games I've played in 2011. I cannot imagine any reason I would play it again. If I were stranded on a deserted island with my friends and this game, we would invent an abstract played with coconuts and use the cardboard from this game to create a ham radio. I would also be responsible for bedding Ginger in my hammock while the skipper smacked people with his hat.

Come to think of it, now that I'm at the end of this review, I don't feel that bad any more. Terrax Warriors is an exercise in laziness. The races were stolen from every generic fantasy setting ever created. The mechanics are cribbed from every half-popular war game published since 1960. The rules need an editor like I need a shave (and by Sunday, I start to look like a cross between a homeless bum and a German Shepherd). The game shows virtually no effort to be interesting, original or inspired, and I can only hope that nobody ever buys a copy of this derivative, tasteless pile of ugly.

Summary

2-4 idiots who can't find anything better to do

Pros:
This space intentionally left blank

Cons:
Boring theme
Boring rules
Butt-ugly art
Poorly written rules
No reason whatsoever to play

Under no circumstances should any sane human being buy a copy of Terrax Warriors.

Surgery today was a beating.

No, not me. I'm fine. No surgery for me, at least until I get prostate cancer or my kidneys throw in the towel and decide that thirty years of diverting hard liquor to my bladder is two years too long. My wife had surgery today, because she has lupus and she's been getting sicker for the last several years. Her doctor is pretty confident that it was caused by a body part I don't understand doing something it wasn't supposed to be doing (which I also do not understand).

So today, they went in with a camera attached to a razor blade and took some part out of her gut. This offensive part was originally supposed to do something useful, like guarding the refrigerator or gassing up the car, but had recently begun to work with the Russians on secret plans for world domination. This diabolical organ had been turned by the KGB and was slowly infiltrating my wife's body with sleeper agents designed to poison the water supply and double-dip in the guacamole.

If you've never had the chance to spend an entire day sitting around an outpatient surgical center, I really can't suggest you go out of your way to try. For one thing, it's rather expensive. Insurance pays most of it, but even ten percent of ten grand is still enough that I could have refurnished my living room with my co-pay. And because they know damned well that a lot of people are going to stonewall them, you have to pay up front. It's understandable, really. It's not like a car, where they can repossess if you don't pay. What are they going to do, put the parts back in?

It's also kind of annoying. The thing about medical facilities is there are so damned many sick people. You're sitting there trying to ignore the rasp of the octogenarian with the oxygen tube, and it would be working if only the family of five could have found a babysitter for Mom's most recent spawn while she's having her fallopian tubes tied up like a theme park pretzel.

And there's really nothing to do for a huge part of the day. You sit around the waiting room while they prep your wife (or friend, or sister, or postal carrier), then you go into the room in the back and say, 'have fun! If you die, I'm keeping your stuff!' Then you go back to the waiting room, where you sit around for another hour or two while doctors who make more in a week than you make in a year root around in her insides with a robot filming a YouTube video.

It doesn't get much better when she comes out, either. When your loved one finally emerges from the operating room, she is on enough drugs that she believes you are not a person at all, but a gas bubble caused by a badly digested frozen burrito. Eventually she will recover from her dementia, and then be so weak that you will spend the next four hours hand-feeding her crackers and water.

To make matters considerably worse, if you are in one of these day-labor surgery houses, the recovery area is basically a hallway with curtains. Every time anyone within thirty feet talks about how they just had a mechanical bladder installed, you get to hear all the details. And not everyone who gets surgery is as stoic about it as my wife - or as quiet. There was a woman a few booths down who, to hear her talk, must have had her toe eaten by zombie squirrels. I'm sure she was in some pain, but at least nobody stuck a Roto-Rooter through a hole in her stomach and came out with internal organs. My wife was hurting, but she managed to do it quietly, and with as much dignity as a person can manage while wearing one of those ridiculous medical skirts whose sole purpose appears to be making you look like you just wandered out of an orphanage for the mentally retarded.

Of course, I really have no business complaining. I left with the exact same set of body parts I had when I went in. The only pain I had today was from sitting in crappy hospital chairs, and maybe the headache I got from listening to old people blather at length about the boils they had lanced on their lower intestines. I have my health, or as much of it as I have left after decades of poor life choices and spicy Indian food.

My wife is home now, resting comfortably and not complaining at all. In fact, if I don't make her sit down, she'll probably get up and start cooking something. I'll tell you right now, if a doctor scoops out my guts with a melon-baller on a string, I'm going to bitch like I just got stabbed in the scrotum. I'm really proud of her, though I guess having her ass kicked by her illness every day for the last five years has toughened her up.

Just wait until my appendix bursts. I'm going to make you all bring food by the house.