702.29a Cycling is an activated ability that functions only while the card with cycling is in a player’s hand. “Cycling [cost]” means “[Cost], Discard this card: Draw a card.”
602.2. To activate an ability is to put it onto the stack and pay its costs, so that it will eventually resolve and have its effect. Only an object’s controller (or its owner, if it doesn’t have a controller) can activate its activated ability unless the object specifically says otherwise. Activating an ability follows the steps listed below, in order. If, at any point during the activation of an ability, a player is unable to comply with any of those steps, the activation is illegal; the game returns to the moment before that ability started to be activated (see rule 730, “Handling Illegal Actions”). Announcements and payments can’t be altered after they’ve been made.
Triggered abilities that trigger from cycling also go on the stack, on top of the cycling ability (because the process of activating cycling will have finished before the triggered ability is put on the stack).
603.3. Once an ability has triggered, its controller puts it on the stack as an object that’s not a card the next time a player would receive priority. See rule 117, “Timing and Priority.” The ability becomes the topmost object on the stack. It has the text of the ability that created it, and no other characteristics. It remains on the stack until it’s countered, it resolves, a rule causes it to be removed from the stack, or an effect moves it elsewhere.
117.3c If a player has priority when they cast a spell, activate an ability, or take a special action, that player receives priority afterward.
The MurderbotDiaries, Martha Wells’ popular series of darkly comedic science-fiction books, are coming to Apple TV+ in the form of a new series starring Alexander Skarsgård and created/written/directed by Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz. As with any adaptation, however, some pretty big changes are being made, and after watching the series, I wanted to know why. So when I got the chance to ask the creators, I did just that.
For anyone who has read the first Murderbot novella, All Systems Red, you know that the book is both short and yet somehow packed full of wonderful story moments and character traits. The story of Murderbot, a hacked rogue security bot who just wants to be left alone to watch TV shows but ends up being a hero, should fit perfectly into the length for a TV series or film, leading to the idea that the Weitz brothers had the opposite challenge of most adaptations. Whereas most require changes by cutting down the storyline, Murderbot needed fleshing out. Of course, any of those changes went through Wells first, and it was important to respect the source material.
“I think everything that’s in the book is in the show basically,” explained Paul Weitz. “We early on got in touch with Martha Wells kind of as fans and, so there are things that are added to the story, sort of like filling in the cracks, but anytime that we had an idea like that, we would call up Martha and say, ‘Hey, here’s what we’re thinking of, what do you think?’ And she’d either say, ‘Oh, that’s a cool idea’ or ‘Well, maybe think about this instead. That was a huge, huge relief.
“I think that part of the thing for us was never feeling like we were like we were padding stuff,” he continued as he explained why they made the changes they did.
To be clear, the series follows the first book’s story as a whole and does an incredible job adapting the tone and themes of the first novella, but there are a few major key moments that are different. This includes a very sudden and violent moment that’s a major change from the story. The Weitzs said they made such a big, impactful change to help maintain the tone of the books.
“Well, one thing that Alexander was very conscious of, even more so in a way than we were, was that you don’t want things to thaw completely,” Chris Weitz said when discussing the change. “Possibly ever, but even to appear to thaw until the very end. So I think at the very point at which everybody’s thinking, ‘Oh, it might not want to look at us or give us a hug, but it’s part of the team.’ Murderbot does something which reminds everyone that it’s a being that has done violence and that that’s part of their experience and their DNA.”
It wasn’t just the storyline of Murderbot that needed to be tweaked, however. The directors felt they should dive deeper into the lives of the rest of the characters, with particular attention given to fleshing out Garathin, who is played by David Dastmalchian.
“Part of it, in a way, was looking at the characters in the book, which might not have much said about them, and being like, ‘OK, these people exist, so why are they behaving this way? Why are they doing this?’” explained Paul Weitz.
“Doing a lot of work on that,” Chris Weitz commented. “Like, Garathin has a backstory in this, but we checked with Martha whether that was cool, and we also checked with David (Dastmalchian) whether that was cool because it’s trading on a little of his personal, you know, his personal experience. Just playing with the characters with utter respect and belief that they actually exist. (The characters) act in worthy ways, but they have neuroses, they have idiosyncrasies, and that was part of the interest (making changes).”
Murderbot will premiere on Apple TV+ on May 16.
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While all the old and busted Elder Scrolls fans (all my coworkers) are excited and popping bottles around today’s The Elder Scrolls Oblivion Remake stream and shadow drop, those with an eye for the future may be happy to learn that Todd Howard took time to acknowledge that The Elder Scrolls 6still exists! He was even so bold as to state that the team was working on it.
The full quote, stated ahead of a plentiful feast of Oblivion Remaster news and footage, is as follows: “obviously we’re working on the 6th chapter here”.
Wow. Fantastic. This is the biggest info drop we’ve had for The Elder Scrolls 6 since March 2024, when Bethesda confirmed that early builds of ES6 were out in the wild for testers to mess around with. They were even so generous as to hint at the game being fun, which y’know, you’d certainly hope so.
It’s worth noting that in terms of actual, concrete updates from Bethesda, there’s been crickets for years. Back in August 2023, the company confirmed development had started, roughly five years after the announcement during E3. I may be going out on a limb here, and feel free to call me nuts for suggesting as much, but do you reckon they may have announced the game a touch too early?
Listen, all joking and snark aside, it’s good to see at least a faint sign of life from Elder Scrolls 6. It’s been so long. I was still at school when Elder Scrolls 6 was announced, and now I’m an adult with bills and bad habits and dating apps on my phone. Bethesda, probably still the most acclaimed first person RPG developer out there, I’m sure will do a cracking job at it. Just like, release some art or something? Liam Neeson had more concrete proof his daughter was alive in Taken than Elder Scrolls fans have for this game being real.
Let us know below if you feel anything anymore, and how much student loan debt I’ll have by the time Elder Scrolls 6 comes out!
In today’s article, I wish to discuss the context around designing A Fading Star as an ongoing conflict. The game covers a pivotal period of the Somali Civil War (2007-2014), which one could term “the golden age of Al-Shabaab.” But since I started working on the game and researching this topic, the situation that stemmed from this timeframe evolved. As the designer of a game about an ongoing topic, how do I position myself with those developments? What are some of the themes approached in the game that are still relevant today?
Let’s look at a timeline of the Civil War.
A timeline of the Somali Civil War, as covered by various different games
About a decade will have elapsed between the end of the timeframe depicted in AFS and when the game should hopefully hit the player’s table. Within that decade, the latest documentation I used to establish the model was from 2021. Simply put, there will be a 5-year “information void” where the latest expert studies and journalist investigations on the civil war will be unaccounted for in my model. And…that is all right! The first challenge in designing a modern ongoing conflict is to accept that we have to set hard bounds if we want to achieve a cohesive result, and to learn to not look back on this decision.
A less easy task is to contemplate the war’s latest developments and avoid seeing validation bias! In AFS, we ask open questions, some biased, some open-ended. How about checking some of those developments and how they relate to these game statements? Rather than a faction-per-faction analysis, let us focus on the Federal Government and how the institution operated over the years.
A “fixed” Somalia?
The Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) is comprised of six federal member states (FMS), each with its own degree of autonomy (or independence in the case of Somaliland). The biggest challenge for the internationally recognized government back in 2007 was to earn legitimacy and the trust of the FMS through state-building and interclan diplomacy. Not quite the easy fit when your seat of power is besieged by an all-mighty Islamist insurgency and your only military support at the time came in the form of an unpopular foreign occupation from eternal rival Ethiopia.
Through combined efforts with African Union forces, Al-Shaabab was ousted from all major urban centers in the country by 2012, allowing the FGS to achieve the minimal degree of legitimacy it needed for the country to start recovering from its status of failed state. The same year, delegates from most FMS would gather to approve a Provisional Constitution, setting another important milestone. A Fading Star’s timeframe closes around this period, with Al-Shabaab on the backfoot and still a looming number of tasks for the government to settle now that the country is back on track.
Navigating through several crises between institutions in the following years (2021 and 2024), the FGS would also see several political figures from various horizons being voted in by clan representatives, alternating between rival sides without blood being shed. After two traumatizing decades of warlord conflicts, Somali political apparel finally reached a minimum level of maturity, despite an endemic level of corruption at all levels of the state. This new state of affairs led to other important developments for the country: the lift of the weapon embargo in 2023, Somalia joining the Pan-African EAC economic alliance in 2024, and a victory at the International Court of Justice on a maritime dispute with Kenya. Without a doubt, the Somali State was back. However, this would be seeing the glass as half-full.’
With Great Power…
One important obstacle for the FGS has consistently been achieving authority and legitimacy among all member states. With foreign aid and weapons pouring into the hands of the new country’s military, a new temptation was born: bypassing interclan talks and instead coercing or corrupting the weaker states into submission.
Under President Mohamed Abdullahi “Farmaajo” Mohamed’s presidency (2017-2022), the FGS focused on large centralization efforts, using all tools available to bolster the government’s reach to the FMS, at the expense of the more autonomous Puntland and Jubaland.
In a more recent example set in 2024, an attempt by elements of the Somali National Army acting on behalf of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud to oust Jubaland State President Ahmed Madobe was thwarted, ending with dozens of federal soldiers captured.
They were already prominent personalities in the” Al-Shabaab Golden Age” era portrayed in A Fading Star, and faces of the decentralization vs. federal consolidation efforts.
The same president has also been accused of focusing the counter-offensives against Al-Shabaab in his home region rather than in more militarily relevant areas. This temptation is nothing new, and interfaction violence has always been a large obstacle towards stabilizing the country and unifying the war effort against Al-Shabaab. In A Fading Star, this uneasy relation is reflected through the ability of the federal government to attack any Somali elements (unlike African Union forces), regardless of their affiliation, or to redirect foreign aid towards subjugating FMS elders (as a reminder the Pirates faction also include minor clans):
With friends like that…
Somalia’s relationship with its neighbors Ethiopia and Kenya is another important factor in the fight against Al-Shabaab and in stabilizing the state. Both countries have contributed an important number of troops that helped retake large parts of South-Central Somalia from the Islamist group, especially in the mid 2010s. Until recently they manned many of the Forward Operating Bases established to maintain a military presence in the areas reclaimed by Al-Shabaab.
It is an understatement to say that without those states, the situation would be most certainly different today. However, this assistance did not come out of pity, and it is no mystery that both Addis Ababa and Nairobi have a vested interest in stabilizing the country … up to a point, solong as it serves their national interests.
For example, with the FGS’ reach and potential increasing over the years, the relationship between Somalia and Ethiopia has been rocked from places like presidential bromance to Somaliland-related tensions, nearly bringing the countries to the brink of war.
While Mogadishu accepted the presence of Ethiopian troops in the peace-keeping process to make up for the small size of its forces, Addis Ababa was primarily seeking to secure its borders and did not hesitate to undermine any process that could have led to a strong, centralized Somalia. That is the adversity of these two actors, who need each other to achieve their short-term goals but whose long-term policies will inevitably clash and result in heightened tensions, threatening the whole region in the process.
An example of major development in this aspect came with the de facto dismantling of Ethiopian-backed Ahlu Sunna Waljama’a (ASW) after clashes with federal forces in 2015. ASW is a Suffi militia that was instrumental in fighting against the Islamist militants but also an entry tool in Somali affairs for Addis Ababa in the earlier years of the war.
This agitated relationship is nothing new in the Horn of Africa’s political landscape. In A Fading Star, it is reflected through the tumultuous link between the federal government player (TFG) and the AMISOM (African Union) faction, which includes forces from both Kenya and Ethiopia, and their respective goals.
The former tries to achieve a greater centralization of power through territorial control and the establishment of allegiances with local clans and embezzlement of FMS funds. The latter pursues the decentralization of Somalia through the ”4.5 formula” seeking more autonomous (some would say easy to manipulate) member states.
This political rift and manipulation of the Somali civil canvas are modeled through game elements such as the Support level in an area, the Patronage accumulated by the government, and the inescapable Clan Trouble that will appear when those factions try to contain one another (sometimes at the expense of the minor clans).
Some of the Events that reflect Nairobi and Addis Ababa’s long-standing policy of containing the influence of Mogadishu in its own country
A problem: Al-Shabaab is still (very) relevant today
I would like to clos0e this article with an important statement: as mentioned in the timeline above, the military situation on the ground to this day was close to a stalemate with none of the factions involved making breaking progress. The Somali National Army was being retroceded by many of the countryside FOBs as African Union peacekeeping troops were rolling out of the country. The Somali were now in charge of their own security, with the backing of many countries such as Kenya, Turkey, Egypt or the US still contributing essential logistics, troops, or trainers.
ATMIS is the transition mission that succeeded to AMISOM, with a role focused on support rather than kinetic operations against Al-Shabaab. Source : ACLED
However, at the time I am writing these lines, the situation in South Somalia is degrading as Al-Shabaab is making important progress towards the capital, Mogadishu, in a trend not far akin to the existential threat they posed back in 2007-2011. This situation could be the very consequence of the interclan fighting and political instability that the federal government has been navigating in recent years and described in this article.
This is a good reminder that modeling an ongoing conflict is about providing the tools to understand its underlying trends and dynamics, rather than “forecasting” an outcome. I hope the game will help you understand why past and future events transpire a certain way and what we can learn about matters such as small-state diplomacy, terrorism, state-building, and counter-piracy. But ultimately, when A Fading Star hits your table, please take this product as a modest take on the Horn’s affairs, during a precise time frame of the Somali civil war (2007-2014). Nothing else.
Despite the signs of progress made in securing Somalia’s future, the White Star is still not safe from fading away. As the country is especially sensitive to humanitarian crises amid conflict and climate-related disasters, please consider donating to NGOs that help on the ground, such as Action Against Hunger or the Danish Refugee Council.
