Robert Khuu Presents

In Iowa, the Constitution Trumps Religion

As many of you have probably already heard, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage is protected under the Iowa Constitution. Significantly, the opinion references both the Federal Constitution and SCOTUS case law. More »

Boardgame: Settlers of Catan

After some trying and doing, I finally got the chance to play Settlers of Catan. I know, I know. It’s an old game and everybody and their brother has been playing it for years. I just haven’t been around a circle of friends that had/played the game until recently. Hit the jump for my thoughts. More »

Rule of Law in an Unfettered Utopia

You can call it a video game or massive social experiment, but EVE Online has several interesting results. For the uninitiated, EVE Online is a space MMORPG made by CCP where players do what most players do in MMORPGs: do things to get better things for their character. The most distinguishing feature of EVE Online is that the developers take a laissez faire approach to the in world economy and legal system. More »

Boardgame: Arkham Horror

In our continuing quest to become ostracized by society, some law school friends and I have picked up the activity of playing boardgames. Think Settlers of Catan minus the resource management. The game that we played was Arkham Horror (pictured below).

The game is set in a Lovecraftian city where all sorts of portals to unknown lore related extra-dimensional locations spring up. The point of the game is to close the portals and kill the monsters that come from those portals before the countdown timer runs out. Oh, did I mention there was a countdown? At the beginning of the game, you randomly draw an ultimate evil and, depending on which you draw, the instant game will be limited by the corresponding number of rounds. To “win,” you either have to seal all portals before you run out of rounds or you can simply fight the “ultimate evil” or you simply lose if you pick the wrong ultimate evil. Strategy-wise, your group is basically working together and has to decide to either attempt to shut down portals or to bulk up with the intention of killing the ultimate evil. There is a lot of long term thinking involved due to the round limitations. Luck is also factored into it in the form of rolling dice and drawing random cards. For example, one of our party members was completely debilitated by a curse that he could not remove for the entire game. That curse he had basically lost us the game.

Overall, a rather complicated game with complicated mechanics, but really easy to pick up and learn while you play.