Jack of all games

It's not you, it's me.

2011-12-21T09:49:00.000-06:00

Oh... Hi there, blog. It's been a long time hasn't it? Yeah, I know it's been a rough blogging year all around. No, it's not that I haven't been doing anything..

I've been steadily working on my Heavy Gear army. It's slow going to be sure, but I'm making progress. Five Gears, a tank, and some infantry painted and done with more on the way. I've also been assembling some Skaven slaves that will eventually form the core of my Warhammer army. Then there's also the two Dystopian Wars fleets (Antactican & Prussian) that are assembled and primed but just need to feel the caress of my paintbrush. That's all been within the last several weeks.

I've also been gaming way more than I have in years past. Dave and I have established a regular game night. Though the night itself varies, we've been gaming almost every week now. We've played Heavy Gear: Blitz and Dystopian Wars, along with a bunch of board games like Stronghold, Summoner Wars, Quarriors, and Rune Wars.

Then there's the video games. While my Xbox has been falling out of favor as my desire to play Halo Reach has faded, I have been playing quite a bit more on my PC. Since most of the MMO's out there have been going free-to-play, I've created characters on Dungeons & Dragons Online, DC Universe Online, Warhammer Online, and Champions Online. These have been nice for when I just feel like running around another world for a while, but they don't hold my attention for very long. Recently, I also purchased the Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition from Steam. This game is fantastic and I've really been enjoying every game I've played. Even the ones I've lost.
Now, however, I have found a game that is likely to pull me in to the exclusion of all else, much like City of Heroes did years ago. You may have heard of it.. Star Wars: The Old Republic. Yes, I have joined the ranks of lightsaber-wielding maniacs running around the worlds of the Star Wars galaxy. More on that in a later post... probably.

So anyway, the irony of why I haven't been posting is that, while I have been gaming and doing hobby things, I've been feeling less interested in writing about them. It's not that I don't want to write, more like I don't want to take the time. But, I have missed you, my little blog. I've always wanted to fill you with more interesting content and I've had my successes and failures with that. I think this coming year will be the defining moment for you. If I can't bother to fill you with more than one post a month in 2012, maybe it's time to call it quits.

Don't fret though, we still have one more year. I want to get to a few more conventions this year and continue with the gaming I've been doing. I'll be trying to balance leveling my SW:TOR characters while I still continue to work on my miniatures. And yes, of course, there's Gen Con.

I will have plenty to post about, lets just see if I can find that urge to write..

Until next time,
Jack

So what's been going on?

2011-10-07T01:11:00.003-05:00

It's time to get this blog up and rolling again! So, to that end, here's what have I been up to since getting home from Gen Con.

For the most part, it's all been Heavy Gear: Blitz. Dave and I have been slowly working our way through a HG:B game. We've been taking our time, learning the rules over several weeks of game nights. The funny part is that we both love to talk. We can literally spend two hours talking before we even start going on the game! It's okay though, since we still have a good time. I keep telling myself, however, that I should turn on my microphone and make an awesome gaming/general geekery podcast out of our pre-game ramblings.

Game start (photo credit Dave P.)

Despite the chit-chat, we both feel like we're starting to get a good feel for Heavy Gear and are starting to see the deeper tactics that are there and how different units fulfill different roles. There's a lot of depth in here and a lot of stuff your forces can do. I'm really enjoying it and it's been getting me to paint up my Gears in-between game nights.

From meh..

As usual, I was not very happy with the first paint scheme that I came up with (Shut up, Dan!). It had potential, but it was just too blah and even the red that was supposed to make them stand out just didn't make up for the very boring grey.

So, one quick color change and an expansion of my alternating pattern later and... voila!


..to much better!

I'm very happy with this new blue/tan scheme. They look great on the table and, for once, are relatively fast for me to paint. Relative meaning that I can get a mini done in a couple of nights instead of a couple of weeks.

Dave's been painting too and his big, resin hovertank is looking fantastic. I forgot to take a picture of it last time, but I will try to remember to get one next time as well as some more battle pictures. Our goal is, for once, to both have a fully painted army for a game that we play.

Next time I'll give a quick rundown of the colors I'm using for my Gears.

Until then,
-Jack

The clouds of Gen Con

2011-08-17T14:06:00.004-05:00

I had a rather funny olfactory experience at this year's Gen Con. This led to a tweet, which in turn has led to this blog post. I present to you..

The clouds of Gen Con! In descending order of offensiveness.

7. The overdone perfume (or cologne) cloud.

This one took me by complete surprise! Passing through the dealer hall, I walked through someone's excessive perfume trail. Now, under normal circumstances, I find this particular habit disgusting. A person is not supposed to put so much on that they can smell it themselves. However, given all of the smells to be taken in at Gen Con, I found it to be quite refreshing!

6. The smoke machine cloud.

You're not going to run into the smoke machine cloud just anywhere. More than likely, you'll be in the middle of a True Dungeon run, the Gen Con dance, or perhaps a special event put on by one of the bigger companies. It's not particularly annoying or nasty, but smoke machines do tend to leave a bad taste in my mouth.

5. The cigarette smoke cloud.

You might think this particular cloud would rate more highly on the offensiveness chart. However, since smoking is prohibited except for outside, it's easily avoidable. A lot of smokers still tend to congregate on the steps on the north side of the convention center leading out to Maryland St. But, with all of the 'hamster tubes' leading off everywhere, you barely have to set foot on the street if you don't want to. I just made the mistake of crossing over to the Marriott at street level at one point. *cough*

4. The excessive application of onions cloud.

Ah, onions. Natures tasty stink bomb. This one can be avoidable, as long as you stay away from the concession stands in the main dealer hall. I did see enough people heading away with piles of chopped onions on a bun that I actually wondered whether they had a new menu item or if there was, in fact, a hot dog under there. Yuck! It can also lead to #3...

3. The belch cloud.

Yeah, gross! Thankfully, most people are polite enough not to just exhale their chili dog & root beer combo in your face. That doesn't mean that it won't happen though. Gen Con was more packed this year than ever and more than once I heard the rolling gargle of a burp blasted right near by me. I usually have enough wits about me to quickly shut down any inhaling until I've passed the immediate area. At least you can hear most burps and take evasive action. But, then there's..

2. The fart cloud.

Okay, I know we're all human and we all have gasses to let go of, but, be humane people! I ran into it almost as often as the dreaded #1 smell this year. At least try to make it to a more isolated corner of the hall before letting rip. Think of the children! Their little heads are usually right at ass level. Isn't it bad enough that a gas mask is nearly required life support to enter any of the bathrooms on the show floor? It also doesn't help that in the roar of the dealer hall, all but the most intense flatulence will be rendered silent. But, at least a fart dissipates relatively fast. Unlike..

1. The body odor (or B.O.) cloud.

The most dreaded smell ever. Rancid, unshowered, non-deoderant using, STINK. Your only hope is to walk away fast. This stuff clings to the person carrying it and it's constantly replenished over time. It is perhaps the most vile and disgusting smell, if only because it can be helped. There is no excuse for it. There is no "oops" when it comes to B.O. unlike an accidental belch or fart.

How can a person's sense of smell be so deadened that they noxiously poison everyone within 10 feet of themselves, but are blissfully unaware of their own stank? Or is it that they just don't care? No type of gaming is immune, either. You're just as likely to be asphyxiated by someone perusing the newest miniature release as you are by someone carrying their entire Dungeons & Dragons collection around.

I know people love to game. Sometimes to the exclusion of all else, including hygene. But, assuming you're not a computer or console gamer, you generally need someone else in the same room to play with. How is it then that these people actually get to partake in this hobby of ours? I can deal with a little bit of sweatiness, but if someone dared to enter my house with the level of funk that I encounter at Gen Con, they would be permanently banned until they shaped up their act.

Seriously. Don't be this person. Ever.

I hope you've enjoyed this list of the many odors of Gen Con.
May we never smell them again! (not likely!)

Until later,
-Jack

Gen Con 2011 Picture Dump

2011-08-16T23:21:00.000-05:00

I took quite a few pictures at Gen Con this year. Some I tweeted right away. Some have already ended up in this blog. But, I still have more to show off. So without further ado..

Game Tables:

A nice little adobe wild west town.

The FFG Dust Warfare demo table.

I thought this was a Malifaux table, but I see D10s scattered about. Hmm...

Battletech board #1

Battletech board #2

An awesome looking dungeon layout. I wish I would have asked what they are playing.

A mech game with cool buildings and what I believe are hover trains.

Settles of Catan for people who REALLY love Settlers of Catan.

Cool stuff at booths:

New Dystopian Wars releases at The War Store's booth

Heavy Gear: Blitz stuff at Dream Pod 9.

Some HUGE new Dust models at FFG's booth.

Also at Fantasy Flight Games...

The upcoming Runewars expansion..

..some new Tannhauser units..

..a new game called Rex and the remake of Wiz War..

The ships for Rex.

The wizards for Wiz War.

Some Super Dungeon Explore..

And some Relic Knights..

And finally I leave you with my surprise of Gen Con. Quarriors! from WizKids.

Think Thunderstone but with dice.

Until next time.
-Jack

Gen Con 2011 - Relic Knights Demo

2011-08-15T08:38:00.000-05:00

Stopped by the Cool Mini or Not booth and gave the Relic Knights games a try. This is the game to go along with the very anime styled miniatures from Soda Pop Miniatures. The style may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I really like the look and this is definitely on the comedy/action side of anime (i.e. large breasted, scantily clad women, chibi familiars (think pokemon), mecha, crazy-looking demons & monsters, etc. I think they're awesome! Okay, so how's the game you ask? Honestly, I was quite impressed. Think Warmachine & Pokemon combined. It's a skirmish level game. You have a hand of cards, each with up to two colored symbols on them. These are your power cards. On the back of your unit cards are your attacks and abilities, each with corresponding colors. You spend the cards in your hand to use those abilities. Plus, when you do attack, you gain extra cards from what stat your attack is based on so you're not just stuck with what you have in your hand. The same goes for defense. Many abilities allow you to enhance the attack or defense by using yet more power cards. So it's like Warmachine, but instead of using focus, you're using the different color power cards like Pokemon.

Here are some of the painted figures they have in the display case. Each one comes with it's unit card and the color of the card tells what faction it's part of.

Sorry it's a bit blurry.

I also took a video of the demo. It's my second (and last) video demo from this year's con. Much like the Dark Age one, I filmed this one vertically, (D'oh!) but at least I did not turn the camera this time.

Chris from Soda Pop Miniatures was nice enough to let me film this demo. Although I felt really embarrassed at the beginning when I can't remember the name "Soda Pop Miniatures". It was because we were at the Cool Mini or Not booth and that's all I could think of.

It's not nearly as long as the Dark Age video, so this one has only two parts.

Note: The booth was very loud & busy when we were doing this and the Phone wasn't picking up Chris as well as I would have liked so you may have to turn up the volume a bit.

Enjoy!

Part 1-

Part 2-

That's it for the videos from Gen Con this year. I hope to do more next year (widescreen of course).

Until later,
-Jack

Dark Age Apocalypse demo at Gen Con 2011

2011-08-10T01:04:00.003-05:00

So that Dark Age demo I spoke of before? Here it is.
In three parts, no less!

Please click the button in the bottom right of the videos to watch them full-screen.

A quick note:

Yes, I filmed this the wrong way. I just don't do stuff like this often enough and I totally forgot that my iPhone needs to be held sideways. I also forgot that the camera does not change the perspective of the video if you turn it. Because of this, there's a few minutes in the first video where the shot goes sideways as I try to get the table in the shot. I apologize and I thankfully realized this a few minutes in and it disappears around minute 6 or 7.

Enjoy!

Part 1-

Part 2-

Part 3-

And there you have it. I hope you enjoyed it despite the shoddy camerawork :) Look for another video demo very soon!

Until later,
-Jack

Gen Con 2011 - Day 3 & 4 recap

2011-08-09T13:41:00.002-05:00

Saturday was pretty mellow for me in the morning. I did have another FFG game of Civilization to play at 9am, but I decided to skip out on it. I was tired and, while I was playing Runewars the day before, I had overheard one of the FFG guys commenting that none of the Civ games so far had finished within the 4 hour time slot. I did not really want to get bogged down into a game that we wouldn't finish in time.

So I spent most of the morning in the dealer hall, which is not a bad place to be at any time.. well, maybe not for your wallet.

I happened by the Dark Age booth and was offered a demo while I was ogling their miniatures. Dark Age is a post-apocalyptic 32mm skirmish game set in a sci-fi universe and based on the artwork of Brom. Humanity settles on an inhospitable planet to harness it's resources but when the corporations suddenly pull up and leave, the rest of the population is abandoned with no incoming ships to provide food or goods. Survivors scramble to rebuild as best they can in the anarchy over the next few centuries.
It was a great demo (look for another post very soon about that) and since they were running a good deal (Buy the 2 books and get $20 off up to 2 starter sets) I bought in. I went with the Forsaken, the 'somewhat' more civilized humans, and the Dragyri, the honor-driven alien race that's indigenous to the planet. They are really cool miniatures and I can't wait to get started on them.

Saturday's loot pile.

After that I bought a couple of things at the Dream Pod 9 booth for Heavy Gear: Blitz. Although, I really wish I would've waited until Sunday when they were taking 20% off of everything. D'oh! Ah well, live & learn for next year. I also ran back by the vendor who had the markdown 40K stuff and found one more box of Dark Eldar.

In the afternoon, I had a game of Malifaux to get to. This was meant to be a set of demo games called 'speed dating' to give you an idea of how the different factions play. Since I already have my faction and my crew picked out I just asked if one of the guys would walk me through a few turns to cement the concepts of the game in my head. I have read the rulebook, but I figure out how the game plays much better by actually doing it. Things really clicked after a couple of activations and I feel ready to play. Now I just need to find someone else around here to play with.

Don't lose your paper clips!

Later that night was my new experience for this Gen Con. I finally submitted to my curiosity and played in a True Dungeon event. I had been wanting to try it for years now and since I had heard nothing but good about it, I had to give it a go. As I walked in and sat at the table, however, I was still a little leery. Was this going to be lame? As a 'noob' was I going to not have a clue what was going on? Was my group all going to be all ultra-geeks who have done this since year one?

My worries were put aside when I sat down and started chatting with the other players in my group. A couple others were 1st timers, which was refreshing, but even those who had gone before were very helpful. I was asked if I would play the Druid, as no one had taken it yet, and I didn't mind one bit. I've always liked the class anyway. We traded around the collectable tokens that depict what weapons, armor, equipment, & magic items you have, with several being outright given to me to full out my Druid's combat abilities.

Finally it was time to go and we went in to face the Sea Lich. I'm not going to go through and explain every last detail of the experience. I wouldn't want to run anything for anyone thinking about doing True Dungeon in the future. Yes, they will be new dungeons, but some of the riddles and concepts might be similar. I will leave you with a few tid-bits, however..

I rocked as a spell caster! Magic users have to memorize shapes when you train (right before start the dungeon) to make their magic checks. Druids had to memorize the shapes of real-world leaves. Two years of biology came in very handy! Also don't forget your class abilities! The druid's ability to speak with animals can not be overlooked.

I was not so good at the puzzles. They vary in difficulty. Some require you to think a bit outside of the box, but don't look so far as to miss the obvious answer, and beware of red herrings. For example, One puzzle gave us the letters to spell out the answer, but, because there were multiples of each letter, we missed the obvious conclusion.

They're like poker chips, but for geeks.

I can see why there is such a market for the item tokens. Some magic items, in particular, are very powerful when used in the right circumstances. My Wand of Tentacles, which I didn't think too much of it until I was using it on the end monster, made sure she never laid a claw on us. Powerful indeed!
Obviously, we were victorious!

Overall, I had a great time and I plan on doing it again next year. Probably only once per con though as $38 per run is not cheap. My only gripe is that it felt like it was a bit short, but when you get out, the allotted time has passed so it's more that you wish it would go on for longer instead of it being rushed.

So that was my Saturday at Gen Con.

Dark Age junkie!

There's not too much to say about Sunday. It was mostly just packing up and then taking one last run through the dealer hall. Having been totally suckered into Dark Age, I bought several more packs to beef out the two factions that I picked in the deal. Beyond that, I didn't see too many outrageous deals on anything I really wanted (except the aforementioned Heavy Gear deal) and I really didn't have too much money left to spend. I did buy a few things for the kids and then we were on our way home.

In conclusion, this year was a blast. I had a lot of fun and I ran into several old & new friends while I was there. I'm grateful that it's over, but I still can't wait for next year.

There's still more Gen Con posts coming though! Demos, pictures, & final thoughts, so stay tuned!

Until later,
-Jack

Gen Con 2011 - Day 2 recap

2011-08-06T09:22:00.002-05:00

Friday.

This one is going to be a quick post because I was doing a lot of my own personal shopping in the morning and then had a long game in the afternoon, but I'll quickly cover what I did do.

I did find a couple of awesome deals at two different booths. At the first one (I apologize that I can't remember the name) I found a bunch of brand new Warhammer & Warhammer 40K stuff that was already priced at 10% off with a further 25% taken off of that. A pretty nice score since the best you will find online is 20% off these days. I picked up a couple boxes of Skaven Clanrats and then got started on a Dark Eldar army for 40K with 2 boxes of Scourges, a Raider, and a Razorwing. I wish they had more!

The next big hit was at The War Store again. I'm so glad I stopped by there! They had their Uncharted Seas stuff marked down to 70% off!! Now, they aren't dumping the line, but if you follow Spartan Games you already know that almost the entire line is getting re-sculpted digitally. Emphasis on the word 'almost'. Apparently, The War Store was not aware the the Ralgard faction was already digitally sculpted and therefore will not be getting the same treatment. So I picked up a current fleet plus a few more ships for 70% off. Score!

The lesson learned is: if you look hard enough, there's some great deals to be had here. Keep your eyes open and your wits about you as you traverse the chaos of the dealer hall.

Bad map layout but fun anyway.

The rest of the day was taken up by gaming. Played a fantastic game of Runewars by FFG. Didn't win, but had a good time anyway. Then later, after dinner, I played a game of Quarriors with Dan & Buff. Quarriors is a fast and fun dice-building (think deck-building but with dice) game. I really enjoyed it and I'm seriously thinking of picking it up as I think I can get Dave to play this one. Dave always liked the Dragon Dice game from TSR years ago. No pictures sadly since our lighting was terrible, but I'll try to get some later.

So, again I leave you with my purchases from today..

40K, Fantasy, Uncharted Seas, AE-WWII, & T-shirts!

P.S. The internet here in the hotel is HORRIBLY slow. Because of this, I'm only posting the pics that are immediately relevant to what I'm writing about. I will have some after-con postings where I will dump the rest of my pictures.

Back to the dealer hall!!

Until later,
-Jack

Gen Con 2011 - Day 1 recap

2011-08-05T23:32:00.002-05:00

Thursday. Opening day. It was a great day!

Started out early this morning as I had some ninja shopping to do for a couple of my twitter buds over in the UK. However, despite prior knowledge of the changes, I did not take into account the fact that the dealer floor is laid out completely different this year. In previous years, the little booths might change a bit, but the big boys like Fantasy Flight & Privateer Press were relativtely in the same spot. Not so this year. The dealer hall is much larger and therefore required a new layout. I chose the wrong door unfortunately and ended up in a 45 minute line at Privateer Press because of it. But, I did manage to score the minis I had promised to get.

Then I worked my way back to The War Store's booth because I knew they had some Dystopian wars stuff I really wanted. Picked up two of the new Magenta Class French battleships, as well as both the naval and land battle groups for the new Antacrticans plus their carrier. I'm really excited about them and can't wait to get started cleaning them up when I get back home.

Stopped by the CoolMiniOrNot booth and played a demo of Relic Knights (watch for another post for that one) and looked at the impressive figures from the upcoming Super Dungeon Explore game.

That's a lot of minis!

Of course I had to run by Fantasy Flight Games to check out the new X-Wing miniature combat game. It looks very cool, and appears to pull some inspiration from their successful Wings of War game. The minis are pretty impressive for the scale (I'd say about 1/250th). As quality goes, using a scale of 0-10, with 0 being WotC's crappy warped plastic prepaints, and 10 being the 1/144 scale models from F-Toys that I have, I'd give these about an 8. Still, FFG clearly wants my money on this one and I will be hard-pressed to resist.

Oooooh..shiny!

Spent most of the rest of the afternoon finishing up the dealer room and then went to play a very fun game of Descent. This was an official Fantasy Flight run event, so no repeat of last year's weirdness thankfully, but the custom-made scenario kicked our collective Hero butts. The Overlord took the day pretty easily, but it was fun regardless.

Death comes in red plastic these days.

Lastly, I met back up with Dan, and our other friends Craig, & Buff (short for buffalo) to play Fortune & Glory from Flying Frog Productions. Again, as with their other games, this one's a winner. A very Indiana Jonesish pulp adventure sort of game. Even though I was incredibly tired, I still liked the concept and I'd be interested in giving it a try when I'm fully conscious.

I'll leave you with a picture of my purchases today. More coming tomorrow. Stay tuned for more Gen Con info!

Dystopian Wars & Dice.

Until then,
-Jack

Gen Con 2011 - Prologue

2011-08-03T22:56:00.001-05:00

It's here! It's finally here! It's Gen Con time!

That's right, the gamer equivalent of the Super Bowl has descended on Indianapolis once again, and once again my plan is to tweet and blog from the con. So here we go...

There's really not too much to talk about on the night before gaming-wise except for the swag bag. Which, I'm happy to say, is halfway decent in comparison to other years.

Swagtastic?

While I'm certainly going to miss the Miniature Market coupon this year (unless they are handing them out at the booth), but I have to say that it's pretty impressive.
The first thing that sticks out is the full software for the Rift PC MMO game. Not too shabby, I'd say. Not sure if it comes with any free game time or not, but I will still probably give it a try.
You also get a 30 card deck of Magic cards of a random color. Mine was blue and Dan got red. We've already played a couple of games with them and they aren't bad decks for 30 cards.
There's also one of these in there...

The matching weapons in this set are the Katana, Bo Staff, Nunchucks, or Sai.

For those of you who don't know what this is, it is a loot token from True Dungeon. That's the popular live action dungeon run that goes on every year here. I hear nothing but good things about it (other than last year's runs were too hard) and I'm seriously considering doing a run this year myself since there's still tickets available for may slots. A bit expensive at $38 a go, but everything I read and hear points to the fact that's totally worth it. If I do try it out I will let you know. I'm more apt to now that I already have some armor, however light, to head in with.

Most of the rest of the swag bag is the various coupons and advertisements that always fill out the bag. Some of them, however, are pretty good. Several are for free things at different booths! Honestly, this is the way to go for vendors wishing to draw people to them. Sure, opening your bag to see a cool freebie or two is awesome, but it doesn't really draw you to a company's booth. Giving you a coupon for a freebie when you visit their booth, however, is a much better return on their investment since you might stay for a demo or buy into their line. I know there are a bunch of stops I'm already planning on making tomorrow for said items including free miniatures, free t-shirts, free cards, free True Dungeon tokens and more.

My only other thoughts about the con so far is that this one already feels like another record year for attendance. I mean it's only Wednesday, but all afternoon the Will Call line was full. And I mean FULL! It stretched for several hundred people every time we walked past it and only seemed to grow in length as the day went on. All I could think to myself was that I was glad that I chose the FedEx option and had my badge shipped.

As I close down for the night, I will leave you with this picture I took at sunset.. Good night from Gen Con!

Sundown in the blue monster of the JW Marriott

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

Gen Con 2011 on the horizon.

2011-07-28T10:31:00.002-05:00

Ah, my poor neglected blog. At least I've still managed to put up a post a month. Now that the pre-Gen Con eBay rush is over for this year, I can relax and get back to hobby stuff, including my blog.

So, as I write this, Gen Con 2011 is exactly one week away. Four incredible days of gaming fun are merely 7 days away. I can't begin to tell you how excited I am, but I can tell you what I'm excited about. To that end, here are the things that I am most excited about.

3. Dark Age Apocalypse.
This one had been flying under my radar. I knew of the miniature line but I wasn't as aware of the game itself until now. As always, I'm a sucker for cool miniatures when there's a good game to go along with it, so I'll be stopping by Dark Age Games' booth for a demo to see if I like it. If I do, they have a pretty good deal going where you get $20 off a starter box for the faction of your choice if you buy both the rulebook and forcelist book. This one's a try before you buy, but if I like it, I'll likely be bringing it home.

2. Super Dungeon Explore.
This was first shown by Soda Pop Miniatures at last year's con and I thought it looked pretty cool back then. Now it's been more refined and really looks fun. It appears to be a Descent-lite type of game, which is a nice change of pace as Descent can be overwhelming. The figures are also very fun, since they are styled in the cutesy, super-deformed or 'chibi' style of anime. This may be not everyone's cup of tea, but with two young kids (and one being a girl) I can see this getting to the table often down the road.
Unfortunately, according to TGN, it does not appear that Soda Pop is going to have this fully available for sale at Gen Con. However, it can be pre-ordered directly from their booth with free shipping and get an exclusive figure plus a free t-shirt. Plus, those who do pre-order will have the chance to receive one of the 20 sets they did manage to get to Gen Con. Sounds like a sweet trade-off to me.

1. The Magenta Class French Battleship.
Dystopian Wars from Spartan Games has been a huge success and I've been suckered in completely. a few months back they previewed a 3D CAD sculpt of a new battleship for the French (who are allies to my Prussians). The twist of this particular battleship is that it can fly.
After the preview, not much else was heard about it until it was posted on Tabletop Gaming News that it would be released at Gen Con by the The War Store and would come with both a flying version and a waterline version. This one I can not wait for and I'll be making an early stop at this booth.

Of course, these are just the tantalizing tip of the iceberg to what is all going to be there. I'm sure there are lots of surprises in store that I'm not even aware of. Nothing is more fun then stumbling across something, from some new company, that you had no idea about.

As with last year, I will be tweeting often ( @Jackofallgames ) and I'll try to update my blog at the con with cool stuff I see. The goal would be to do it every night, but I know how hard it is to fulfill that promise. There's just too much cool stuff going on!

Until next time,
-Jack

More work accomplished!

2011-06-27T00:57:00.000-05:00

I finally got around to painting again and took some time with my Houseguard Riflemen. They are coming along nicely, if not excruciatingly slowly and really aren't that far away from being done at this point.

Step 8. GW Adeptus Battlegrey on all of the fabric
(mostly the leggings and the bedroll on the backpack).

Step 9. GW Badab Black wash to shade the fabric.

Step 10. GW Codex Grey as the first fabric highlight.

Step 11. GW Fortress Grey as the final extreme fabric highlight.

Also, on a day that I just needed a break from both eBay and painting, I put together my Prussian airships for Dystopian Wars. These models are simply amazing and are covered with tiny little details.

I left the carrier deck unglued so I can remove it for painting.

The two smaller Zeppelins needed next to no work done on them. They were nearly perfect casts. The carrier was almost as good, but did require quite a bit of sanding where the front Tesla Cannon piece fits onto the rest of the hull. Even this, however, is a far advancement over Spartan's first batch of minis when The Uncharted Seas first came out.

That brings my workbench up to date for the last month or so. As Gen Con looms nearer, the excitement has been building and therefore increasing my desire to work on painting or modeling.
I'd like to at least see the Riflemen done before Gen Con and if I can get them done, then maybe a Warjack or a solo or two.

Until next time,
-Jack

A few more steps

2011-05-18T22:20:00.000-05:00

I took a few more steps on my Houseguard Riflemen today. Nothing too exciting, but hey, it's progress!
I believe I was on...

Step 5. GW Mithril Silver on the guns, and parts of the knife on the backpack.

Step 6. GW Asurmen Blue wash over all of the silver to give it a blue tone and pick out the detailing.

Step 7. A drybrushing of Mithril Silver again to tone down the blue and to bring up some highlights.

Next up will be the pants and the bedroll that each rifleman carries on his backpack. Hopefully I will get more painting done tonight before I get distracted with something else.

Until next time,

-Jack

What I did on my Spring vacation

2011-04-23T00:29:00.001-05:00

Greetings from sunny Houston, Texas!

Um.. what sun?

That's what I'd be saying if I had been writing this blog post about 3 weeks ago. See, I drove down there with the family to visit our good friends Dan & Jenny and stay with them for a week. We had a blast! We went to see so many cool things including a WWII Destroyer Escort & Submarine, the Gulf of Mexico, Johnson Space Center (Complete with Saturn 5 rocket), The Houston Zoo & Aquarium.


Signal Operator Ensign Ethan reporting that we've run aground.


Will the owner of a large white rocket, license number.. um.. U-S-A.. please report to the front desk. You're double parked.

Check out the cougar!... No, not THAT kind. The real kind.

Dan and I also managed to sneak in a bit of gaming when I broke out Summoner Wars while the wives were out one evening. I still love this game, despite the fact that Dan won twice in a row!


Skunked by the Undead!

Also, in an awesome bit of coincidental timing (seriously, we did not plan for it) there also happened to be a great little gaming convention in Houston that week called Mag-Con. What this con lacks in size (our own Rock-Con is a fair bit larger) it makes up for in robustness and friendliness. Once again I got to see Dan's friends from Little Wars (their local game store) and got in several games with Brett, Craig, & Jon, as well as chatting with Buffy for a bit. Here are some pictures of the games I played while I was down there.

Civilization from FFG. Great game! So much going on though.

Formula D from Asmodee. I really love this game with a big group. Hilarity ensues!

Finally got in some Warmachine! My opponents were exceedingly patient with me. Thank you!

Dan's All Things Zombie game. Always a big hit and such awesome terrain!

So yeah, I know it's been a while from the last post and sadly I haven't accomplished anything since last time. At least the Riflemen that I had been working on made their first in-game debut at Mag-Con. But now my difficulty is that Gen Con is looming on the no too far off horizon and it's full-bore eBay time as I try to get us to Indianapolis all expenses paid for the third year in a row.

We're off to a good start with Dan's old OOP Warhammer Goblins making an awesome showing last week and I have some more painted stuff up this week. You can keep an eye on my stuff from here if you'd like. In the next several weeks I'll be posting High Elves & Wood Elves for Warhammer Fantasy, lots of Epic & Warmaster stuff, as well as two separate painted Warmachine armies.

I desperately want to try to keep painting as we go forward this summer though. I was making such good progress and I hate to see things stall out. I will try my best as my goals for the year are still nagging at me much like my Mom nagged to get me to do my homework when I was a kid.

Can I juggle eBay and hobby time? Stay tuned!
Until next time,
-Jack

Goals update 2011 - Weeks 8 - 12

2011-03-24T09:06:00.002-05:00

Well I'm tired of making excuses and I'm tired of not getting anything done so here we go. The first three weeks of this last update were mostly spent playing Halo: Reach. Great game, but it doesn't get any hobby work done and if I'm going to even come close to any of my goals I need to get cracking.

This week I started work on finishing the last six Riflemen for my Houseguard unit. I'm batch painting them. It's not my favorite way to paint, but it needs to be done so that I can get some sort of volume out of my hobby time.

I thought I would post pictures of the process, step by step.

Step 1. GW Hawk Turquoise base coat for the armor.

Step 2. GW Asurmen Blue wash, to provide some depth.

Step 3. GW Ice Blue drybrushed over the armor for highlights & texture.

Step 4. GW Chaos Black painted over all of the straps, pouches, & gun.

This part is hard because I have to cut in so much, but to do it before the armor drybrush would just mean I'd have to go over it again anyway. Of course, because of all of the cutting in, I've gotten black on some of the armor as well. It's kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

Also, at this stage, I've used sticky tack to mount the riflemen onto cork so that I have something to hang on to besides their base.

That's where I'm at as of this morning. Next up will be to fabric on the leggings and the bedroll on the backpack and probably the silver on the gun.

Until next time,
-Jack

Goals update 2011 - Weeks 4 - 7

2011-02-24T21:09:00.000-06:00

Those of you without children may not be able to relate to this, but for about the last month my family has been taking turns being sick. It was as if the entire house was one boiling pox. I felt at times like I was Papa Nurgle and I had married a Plaguebearer and we were raising two Nurglings. It's very hard to get brush to mini when you're chasing your cranky, sick, & teething daughter around the living room with a tissue because she's dripping snot onto the carpet.

Who's got a kiss for Daddy?!

As we close towards March, however, things seem to be getting back to normal (except for the teething part).

I did manage to actually get some work done during all of that mess. It was just coming along too slowly to report on it until what I was working on was all done. It's nothing too major. Just three more Retribution Houseguard Riflemen. Which brings that unit to 40% done and gives me a total of seven painted Iosans so far.

Yeah, I'm no speed painter. Even when conditions are perfect and I am in the zone, I still spend way too much time agonizing over my guys. I'm a very clean painter. Oh, nothing of mine is ever likely to win any contests (unless very few enter) but they are clean paint jobs. I go over a mini several times (once for each color) with a figurative fine tooth comb looking for mistakes (even on the underside) before I call it finished. This is ridiculous, I know. I know that the odd goof here or there will never be seen on the tabletop. I can't help it. It's like an OCD. Like having to wash your hands every time you touch something. I wish I wasn't like that, however, I'm always happy with what I do finish because I have spent so much time on it.

The Three Stooges: Curly, Curly, & Curly!

So here they are, three more of my Riflemen. All the same mini/pose. I did assembly-line paint these somewhat, but it's hard for me to do for the same reasons I spoke of before. However, these came out great and I'm going to do it again with the next batch.

A few more guys and I may just have a playable force.

So, it's been seven weeks since the start of the year and I have seven painted minis. Not too shabby for me (seriously!) but I'm going to have to step up my game quite a bit if I'm going to hit all of my goals for the year.
Back to the table!

Until next time,
-Jack

Goals update 2011 - Weeks 2 & 3

2011-01-25T17:06:00.001-06:00

For every yin there is a yang..

So much for the accomplishments of the first week. For the last two weeks, my time has been mostly spent being sick. So, unfortunately, I didn't get as much done as I wanted to, but I still managed to get a little hobby time in and I built and cleaned five Nobz for my 40K Orks.

Were iz da rest uv us?!

And, I finished one of my Houseguard Riflemen for my Retribution Force, bringing my total of painted Iosans to four.

This is my BOOMSTICK!!

I know it seems like I'm being a little random with my painting (what? me? random?) but actually there's method to my madness. The only reason I haven't finished the other four Battle Mages yet is because they need to be stripped of their test paint jobs. Probably won't re-prime them 'til the spring so I had to move on to something else. I picked a Rifleman to start with and now that I have the 'what color goes where' part of the process, the other Riflemen will go fast. I started base-coating the next three last night, but I can only "assembly line" paint so many minis at a time otherwise I get bored and frustrated.

Hopefully this weekend I give an update for this current week (week 4) that will see me back to the output that I had when I started the year.

Until next time,
-Jack

Goals update 2011 - Week 1

2011-01-09T00:29:00.001-06:00

So far so good! It's been a very productive week!

A Chimera Myrmidon & two Shyeel Battle Mages

I managed to fully finish three of my Retribution minis and build 23 Ork Boys. Now, the only caveat is that I had started all three of the painted figs before the end of last year. But, I'm still happy with the progress. Especially since I have a tendency to not finish models if they are frustrating me. I never felt that at all with these guys.

Um.. WAAAAAGH!

The Orks are all new builds from this week though. The nice part about them is that I can clean and assemble them while my daughter is napping. Painting all has to be done at night though. Too much of a pain to drag everything upstairs.

I'm going to get more elves basecoated this week and probably more Orks assembled as well.

(P.S. If you checked in earlier and tried to click on the pictures, I apologize. I wrote this post on my iPhone and the app is not the greatest, especially if you're adding pictures. Didn't realize the goofy formatting & bad picture links until tonight.)

Until next time!
-Jack

Happy Birthday!

2011-01-03T21:06:00.000-06:00

I had almost forgotten all about it, but I just realized that my blog is now two years old today. Woo!

It's hard to believe it's been two years already. Last year's posting frequency aside, I'm pretty proud of myself for keeping this going for as long as I have. I'm going to try and make year three very interesting as I work through my goals for the year and, of course, my popular Gen Con coverage (seriously, it's like my most read time of the year).

As a quick update, I know it's only 3 days into the year but I've stuck with my hour a day of hobby time with no problems so far. I've been splitting my time between painting Warmachine and assembling Orks, but it's been working very well. It's very rewarding when you actually get something completed.. go figure ;)

Time to get back to the painting table, so again, thanks for reading and here's to many more years of gaming & geek goodness!

Until next time,
-Jack

2011 Goals

2011-01-02T20:24:00.002-06:00

Another year has passed and so it's time for another set of goals. I say goals rather than resolutions because of something I saw on twitter the other day. Forgive the paraphrasing, as I don't remember the original tweeter nor the word for word quote, but they went along to say that they don't make resolutions as they are just empty & vague promises to yourself. Goals, on the other hand, are something specific to work towards.

That really resonated with me. So with that in mind, here are my goals for 2011.

1. Spend at least one hour a day working on something hobby related. Assembly, cleaning, priming, painting, building terrain, etc.. This should be a no-brainer, but I just need to get into the habit of putting in some time everyday. Even if I only hold true to my goal and nothing more, that's still 365 hours spent. If I can't finish something in 365 hours, then I'm doing it wrong.

2. Fully paint my Retribution army for Warmachine.

3. Purchase & fully assemble my Ork 40K army. If I get it painted too, great! But I'm trying to stay within reason here.

4. Figure out what I want to do for Warhammer Fantasy. Then purchase & assemble whatever Is needed to fill out that army. I have Lizardmen, but I'm really being drawn in by the High Elves & Skaven now. Island of Blood anyone?

5. Paint up my Malifaux crew.

6. Paint up my Heavy Gear: Blitz army.

7. Finish painting my Human fleet for Uncharted Seas.

8. Assemble my Relthoza fleet for Firestorm Armada.

9. Game at least once every other week, but weekly if I can help it.

10. Sell enough on eBay to get Dan & myself to Gen Con fully funded for the third year in a row.

I think that's enough to keep me going for quite a while. If I did manage to get all of that done it would be a HUGE accomplishment for me. Wish me luck and I'll update with where I'm at throughout the year.

On a more personal level, I do have one more goal. With the baby coming last year, I gained a bunch of weight sitting around with her and watching TV (& snacking). It's time to get back to being healthy. I want to be 30 pounds lighter by July 1st and 20 pounds more by December 31st.

That should put me around 35 pounds lighter for Gen Con. If I can do it, that will feel so awesome!

Time to get to it!

Until next time,
-Jack

It's December 31st already?!

2010-12-31T23:44:00.001-06:00

So.. where does the year go anyway? One minute you're finishing up your massive priming marathon, the next you're sucked back into City of Heroes on your snazzy new computer. And then it's December 31th and you haven't blogged in over a month. Ugh.

Touchdown!!

I'm happy to report that there have been things accomplished though. I re-finalized my paint scheme for my Warmachine Retribution army. I wasn't very happy with the 'all green' scheme I had going from last year, so I was going to do this extravagant thing where I painted up six different minis and then let you readers vote on which one I went with. Yeah.. My first couple of attempts were meh at best, but then I thought of colors I really liked on other studio miniatures. GW Eldar Swooping Hawks kept coming to mind- turquoise, grey, & black. So I gave it a try.
As soon as I started putting those on, I knew I had my color scheme. I have the one Battle Mage already done and I'm already nearly finished with another one plus one of my light myrmidons.

Then, I bought a new computer. And, as cool as it is, it's a big distraction from my tabletop hobby. I have, however, rediscovered City of Heroes. There's been a LOT added to the game since I was last big into it and it's been great fun running around the new areas and making characters with the new costume parts and powersets. In other words... SQUIRREL!!! (but it's still gaming right?)

Scarlet Strider on the Freedom Server

In other distraction news, while my main love at the moment is still Warmachine, I have some friends at work who are pulling me back into Warhammer 40K. Now I haven't played 40K since 3rd edition so it's kind of all new to me again. I don't even have an army anymore and one of my friends is just getting into it for the first time around. He wants to play Dark Angels and I want to give Orks a try so we split two boxes of Assault on Black Reach. What a great improvement GW has made on the starter boxes! I have to say that I'm truly impressed with the plastics this time around. While still easy to assemble, the completed minis fit seamlessly in with the rest of your army. No longer is there the "Ew, you have the starter box minis" look to your force.

I've also been getting in more regular game nights. Thursday seems to be a good night and I've gotten games in of Summoner Wars, Settlers of America, Uncharted Seas, and a fun old micro scale sci-fi game that my friend Dave has called MAATAC. It feels good to be gaming again and it also keeps me interested in working on miniatures.

So that's been the last month and a half in a nutshell. Now I sit here finishing this post at 11:30 pm on New Years Eve, thereby making sure that I had at least one post in every month this year. Hey, sometimes it's the small victories that count. ;)

Finally, to all of my readers out there, especially the ones who still check in all the time regardless of my frequency of posting, I'd like to say thank you and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

It's prime time!

2010-11-22T00:59:00.000-06:00

Or at least it was anyway. Hey, everyone. I know it's been a couple of weeks again, but I have been busy with gaming stuff at least.

My mad rush to assemble and prime everything I wanted to before the temperature dropped is finally over and I can say that I'm pleased with the results. I don't think I'll be able to use the excuse of "nothing I want to paint is primed" this winter.

I have to paint all this crap now? Oh, my aching fingers!

As you can see in the picture, my entire Warmachine Retribution army got done, as well as my Colette and crew for Malifaux, plus a few Heavy Gear: Blitz figs.

The only thing missing from the picture is my House Shyeel Battle Mage unit. That, however, is a special project and a separate post so check back soon for what I'm doing with them.

I only regret not getting the Relthoza Fleet assembled in time. I was looking forward to getting a brush to them, but that can be a winter project I guess.

Until next time,
-Jack

Relthoza fleet incoming!!

2010-10-28T21:59:00.000-05:00

Welcome to my first attempt at doing a video that I'm providing commentary on. This was supposed to be just a short unboxing video of the Relthoza starter fleet box for Firestorm Armada from Spartan Games. However, it kind of turned into a mini review. Overall, I'm very pleased at how it came out and I will likely do more in the future. So sit back, enjoy, and if you liked it, please let me know in the comments.

A couple of notes-
1. The word I was looking for when I used the term "gee-gaws" was "greeble"

2. Upon watching the video, I think I was being a little cheap for griping about the counter sheets not being punched. How many other box sets for any game system give you all the counters you're likely to need? It's actually a very good value.
However, I didn't feel like re-recording to change that one little gripe.

Until next time,
-Jack

Project: Hirst Arts Watch Tower

2010-10-24T12:00:00.000-05:00

I've been itching to make some terrain lately and after buying more Hirst Arts molds at Gen Con I thought I'd get some casting done.

I've been casting them in large batches, often eight molds at a time, and building up an extensive inventory of pieces so that I can just grab them as I need. I've also sorted them out by general type so that I can easily find the pieces I want.

Once I had enough pieces done, I thought it would be cool to make the octagon tower. Once I got going, however, I wanted to change a few things to make it unique. I decided to make a watchtower.

I built up a square room to the top of the building to act as the watching area. It needed to be fairly large because I wanted to actually be able to use it during gaming and therefore it would need to hold several figures or even possibly a war machine. I also gave it large arched windows on each wall so that a few minis could shoot in all four directions. To add to the viewing capability, I made four large oval windows on the other four walls so that archers or snipers could cover the corners of the building.

The building comes apart in multiple pieces to allow for access and to place miniatures inside. Besides the floor of the watch room up top, there will also be two removable wooden floors inside. One will act as a break between the entrance floor and the interior. The other will be a platform for the smaller windows. I will also add a ladder along the interior wall for access to that platform and the top.

I've added a few decorations and built up the removable roof, though it obviously still needs to be finished. The corner roof pieces come in two different wood grains on the mold and you only get two of each piece per cast. I didn't realize this until I had started gluing everything together and then found out I was short several pieces. I'll need to cast the mold four more times to have enough pieces. Once I get that done, all it will need is a few finishing touches and painting.

Over 14 inches tall! GW Lizardmen Saurus for scale

I'll finish it soon, but it means I need to set up my casting workspace again. Maybe that will be an opportunity for another post.

Until later,
-Jack

Review: Warmachine Stormfall Archers

2010-10-22T09:14:00.000-05:00

My last review of miniatures proved to be pretty popular, so I will continue with more.

Up this time are the excellent Stormfall Archers (PIP 35017 - $24.99 US) for Warmachine by Privateer Press. They are the Retribution of Scyrah's mobile artillery unit and they come in a blister pack of four metal miniatures. In the game, this unit is only four archers strong so everything you need comes in one pack.

Once opened, the pack contains a total of 17 pieces including the plastic bases and unit stat card. All but one of the bodies are multi-part, with the completer piece(s) being the bow arm, arrow, or both. Also each mini has a quiver that attaches to the back.

After inspecting all of the pieces, I can say that, once again, the casting quality is excellent from Privateer. There are barely any mold lines to speak of and those I did find took me very little time at all to smooth out. The only real problem area I saw was along one archer's shoulder armor, but again, it took no time at all to fix. The only other stuff to clean up was a bit of snap-off venting and just a smidge of flash between the arrows on the quiver pieces.

Assembly was deceptively easy. Upon first glance, as two of the archers are in the process of drawing their bow, I thought that putting them together might be a challenge. Once I got started though, everything fit very snugly. I was a bit concerned about joint strength, but, since the arrow is touching the bow on both models, I put a dab of glue there as well to provide a very strong two-part join. The archer that is leaning forward also needed his bow arm attached, but again, I did not pin as I felt the join was strong and the bow piece didn't seem to be heavy enough to warrant it. The last archer did not have any assembly beyond attaching his quiver.
Speaking of the quivers, they went on smoothly as well. The join with the back is a little shallow, much like the Halberdier's bakpack from my last review, but the saving grace here is that the quiver has a second join at the miniature's shoulder where the leather strap comes down across the torso. Between these two points, the piece holds securely. All that remained was placing them in their bases.

As far as sculpt goes, these are, by far and away, my favorite miniatures for the Retribution. Being only a four-man (er.. elf) unit, the sculptor took the opportunity to give each archer a lot of detail and character without repeating themselves. The poses are awesome and express four different stages of firing; nocking an arrow, drawing back, just after release, and looking downrange to see if they hit their target. The details are excellent too. Every little pouch, strap, and buckle looks good and will take paint easily.

Final thoughts. The Stormfall archers have a great look to them that fits their job as mobile artillery. I love the light armor with lots of pouches that signifies mobility and long times off on their own. The quivers are a bit cumbersome looking but when you consider that they are lugging around artillery warheads on arrow shafts it makes more sense. A beautiful unit that I own two of and I'm actually looking forward to painting up.

My ratings for the Stormfall Archers from Privateer Press are as follows, with 5 being the highest number achievable:

Casting quality - 4.5
Ease of assembly - 4.5
Design/detail - 5
Posing - 5

That comes to an average score of 4.75 which is near absolute tops in my book. Privateer really came through on these guys and in a faction that has a lot of "love 'em or hate 'em" miniatures in it, these boys stand out from the rest.

Until next time,
-Jack

And this time, with content!

2010-10-21T22:24:00.001-05:00

Sorry it's been a while again. Even though I haven't been posting, it's mostly because I've actually been working on quite a bit of modeling stuff!

I've had a rather large terrain project that I've been working on, and I've also been assembling and priming miniatures like crazy. Fall is here, and since I really don't have anywhere to spray once the temperature drops to below 50°, I've been trying to get as much stuff done as possible. Nothing is more frustrating to me than having the painting bug during the winter and not having what I want to paint primed and ready to go.

The good news is, while I've been doing all of this over the last few weeks, I've been taking pictures and doing some reviews of the minis I've been working on. I have a few things already written up so keep checking back over the next few days and hopefully I can maintain a little higher frequency of posts in the future.

Until later,
-Jack

Looking forward to Gen Con 2011

2010-09-16T00:03:00.006-05:00

It might be just a wee bit early for this article, but I wanted to lay down some thoughts I had from this year's con to make 2011 even better.

1. Travel lighter. At Gen Con, I am almost always lugging around my gamer backpack that I've had for years, as are nearly all of us there. One thing that I noticed though is that I was needing to get into it much less often this year. Due largely in part to having my iPhone with me and using it for my camera. With that in my pocket instead of my backpack, it's one less thing that needs carrying back there.
The only times I really needed to dig into my backpack was either to dump some swag into it, or to pull out my water bottle or a snack. Even that was usually only when I was actually sitting down at a game.
Therefore, in 2011, I am going to try and either go backpack-less in the dealer hall and just bring it to games, or find a lighter & smaller way to carry around a few essentials throughout the convention.

2. Buy cheaper. Now that I have the internet on the go with my iPhone, I plan on making next year's dealer area runs a lot more frugal. I kind of started this on Sunday of this year when I was planning out my last few purchases. While trying to maximize my spending, I went through the dealer hall, made notes of what I wanted to buy and what price the dealer was asking, then checked them against a couple of my favorite online retailers. Nearly 100% of the time the online shop had the better deal and often by a large margin.
There is the need for instant gratification, and there's nothing wrong with buying 1 or 2 things at the con, especially if you are getting some sort of deal, and/or you want to play it at the con. But next year, my plan is to buy nearly nothing from the hall that I can't get through my online sources, and order it right from there so that it gets to my door on the Monday or Tuesday after the con.
Now I do understand that this point may be a trifle controversial, especially if any store owners read my blog. So let me finish up by saying that I don't really have a decent FLGS (friendly local game store) in my area anymore. At least not one that carries the stuff that -I- want to buy. So I don't feel too guilty about it.

3. Schedule less. Before Gen Con, I know I kept blathering on about how I wanted a full schedule and I would just get refunds for whatever games I didn't want to play in blah, blah, blah... It sort of worked and sort of didn't. Out of the 14 events that I had tickets for, I only ended up going to 6. And 1 of those I regret playing in at all (see below).
In addition, Dan's friends came up from Houston again this year and I felt like there were several times that I would've preferred playing games with them instead of what I had scheduled. I also felt like I spent more time playing in demos of new games (like I need another damn game to get into) and not playing anything I already own. I stopped by the Privateer Press tourney area for a bit and really felt like I missed out on some fun.
So, next year I think I will try to plan one BIG thing like one of the many Warmachine/Hordes tournaments, fill in here or there with a couple of other games, and otherwise keep myself pretty open.

4. Be more wary of games that are not run by a game company or reputable group, especially if they are asking for more than $2 to play the game. I already covered my bad experience here, but it's worth repeating.

5. Tweet more. I really enjoyed running my twitter feed through the convention and I gained a bunch of followers from my coverage. I did kind of let it die off some towards the latter half of the weekend though, mostly due to exhaustion. But next year I hope to be in better shape, and since I'll be worrying less about my schedule and not weighted down with crap to carry, I can keep that feed full of interesting stuff all weekend.

6. Take the next step with my blog. Huh? Okay, what I mean by that is I'd like to try to be more aggressive with my reporting next year and try to have more interesting content beyond "Here's what I did at Gen Con". While there's nothing wrong with a personal journal sort of blog like this one, I think I could really step up and have more content that gamers would like to see, hear, or read about. I can immediately think of several people/companies that, in hindsight, I would have loved to asked for a quick interview. They're also not ones that every other podcast talks to (FFG, PP, etc,.).
I do have a very nice portable mic/recorder (this one) that I intended to bring this year and kicked myself because I forgot it. Next year, however, I'm going to have it with me and see what I can do with it.

It's a.. well, you know.

7. Wear more funny shirts. I'm normally not your "Hey, look at me!" sort of gamer. I don't cosplay. I don't do funny things with my hair. I'm usually content to just be part of the crowd. That was until I wore my Admiral Ackbar "It's a trap!" woot! shirt. That one shirt got so much positive attention when I wore it on Thursday, that I washed it so that I could wear it again on Saturday. It was very cool to hear people say "Awesome shirt!" or get their various renditions of Ackbar's gravelly voice as they called out his signature catchphrase to me. Not sure if I can top it next year, but I'm sure going to try.

8. Stay downtown again. Unless Dan can get us a deal through one of his hotel points programs or through his company, I will probably stay at the Springhill Suites by Marriott again next year. It's part of the new J.W.Marriott complex that's kitty-corner to the convention center and was a great place to stay. The hotel was convenient to the ICC and will be even more so next year when the 'hamster tube' walkway will be done. The room was fairly spacious and comfortable, with a modern European design that I really liked. The breakfast buffet was included every morning and was quite good, although I did like the lobby in the adjoining Marriott Courtyard hotel a little better. Regardless, it's so nice to have a hotel room within 5 minutes of the dealer hall. I'd stay there again in a heartbeat.

Those are the things I can think of for now, which should just about round out my Gen Con coverage for the year. Time to move on to other things. At least until next August, anyway.

Until later,
-Jack

Gen Con 2010: The Loot

2010-09-13T21:21:00.002-05:00

Finally getting around to finishing my Gen Con coverage. Today's post is all about the loot I brought home. This is everything that was either purchased or acquired as swag.

Up first, the swag-

Once again, the con swag bag that you get when you arrive at the convention center sucked eggs. The same die from Crystal Caste, the same coupon book, etc. Lame. Lame. Lame. There were a couple exceptions. The D&D comic book that you see was at least something new and mildly entertaining for a few minutes. Also, a couple of companies has decent fliers with coupons on them, but that was about it for the bag. The best swag these days, however, comes from the dealer hall, playing in demos, and ticketed games.

Mmmmmm... Swag.

In no particular order-

As you can see above, I picked up two of the Privateer Press bandannas (I wasn't even trying to get two). There's some cool dice and tape measures from the Table Top Gamers crew who ran the Spartan Games demos I played in. Two t-shirts; one of which I got from buying into Summoner Wars and the other came from paying attention to the Gen Con twitter feed. A couple of small dice bags (too small to be really useful but I'll give them to my son). A free Dust: Tactics miniature and decal sheet for playing in the FFG demo of the game. Some other odd minis from playing in various games and a Warhammer 40K book from the D6 Generation seminar. Lastly, a couple of playable promo cards for Summoner Wars. Other than that, a few odds and ends of promo cards, flyers, catalogs, & stickers.

Now on to the stuff I bought-

Doesn't seem like much but I'm happy with it.

Clockwise from top-

1. I finally got sucked into Malifaux from Wyrd Miniatures. I had been avoiding it because the theme just did not interest me at first. But now that the game is a little more established, I'm getting more and more drawn in. That and I really like some of the new models that are coming out. I bought the main rulebook and the new expansion: Rising Powers but I did manage to hold off on buying any minis yet so I could figure out what faction I wanted to play instead of buying random miniatures I thought were cool.

2. Both expansions for AE-WWII and the new AE Bounty rulebook from Darkson Designs. Again, both are games I don't have any minis for yet, but I want the books so I know what to buy when I get around to getting some.

3. Summoner Wars from Plaid Hat Games. Fell for this game hook, line, & sinker when I played the demo. It's a great, quick game that has tight, simple mechanics but still has plenty of depth. Bought the whole line: both 2-deck starters, both expansion decks, and 2 of the beautiful folding game boards so that I can have up to 4 people play.

4. Two packs of the IronDie starter set. This was purely frivolous. I really don't have any intention to get into this game, but the dice are very cool. I bought one pack for myself and one pack for a friend who had been helping me out at work lately.

5. The only miniatures I did buy at the con this year were for Heavy Gear: Blitz from Dream Pod 9. My friend Dave and I have gotten sucked into that game and I wanted to fill out my Northern forces a bit with some infantry and a couple of the sweet new Badger APCs that just came out.

6. Last but not least, four molds from Hirst Arts. I've been wanting to make my own dungeons for a while now so that eventually I can play D&D with my son. These four molds complete my set of the Gothic Dungeon line.

And that was it. I was really proud of myself for not buying too many new miniatures since I still have a ton of Warmachine and Warhammer ones to assemble and paint. It's so hard when you're there and everything's all new and shiny and in your face though. I do have a plan for next year's spending that will help to mitigate some of that and should save me some money too. More on that next time!

Until later,
-Jack

Gen Con 2010 Recap: Day 4

2010-08-26T00:34:00.003-05:00

So Sunday rolls along and there's that bizarre feeling that comes over me. Part of me is depressed that Gen Con is almost over and feeling like I didn't do everything I wanted to do. The other part is exhausted and looks forward to getting home.

Other than doing one last serious patrol through the dealer hall, I really didn't do very much. I thought about doing one more run through the Battletech Pods but the line was huge all day as people tried to burn through all their left over generic tickets.

I did stop by the Mayfair booth for a few moments when a Microsoft Surface caught my eye. It was Settlers of Catan being played on it so I took some video of it.

It was very cool and was running way better than I thought it would. I will be interested to see if these take off over the next few years. Like most new entertainment tech, the price will come down rapidly as interest builds and competition increases. I can only see this as a good thing. I know I already want one.

After that, I made my final purchases, and Dan and I headed back home. All and all, a great con this year, with a few bumps but nothing that could even come close to making it a bad time.

I still have more posts coming about Gen Con, including more pictures, the loot I bought and didn't buy (swag), tips for next year, perhaps a review of our hotel, and maybe more.

Thanks for reading and until next time,
-Jack

Gen Con 2010 Recap: Day 3

2010-08-24T00:27:00.011-05:00

Hey it's the super-belated Saturday recap! No excuses this time. Just me being lazy.

Saturday was a kind of an up and down day for for me. I was still excited for the con, but by now I was dog tired. After a couple of days of what felt like non-stop gaming goodness, I was beginning to wear down a bit.

Still, I managed to get up relatively early for my Firestorm Armada game at 9am. It was just a quick, hour-long demo, run by the same gentleman as the Firestorm Invasion intro on Thursday, but it was still very cool and walked me through the main rules. The ships were painted up nicely, but sadly I didn't think to take any pictures of them. What I did take pictures of, however, was even better. Our GM had some of Spartan's pre-production models and brought them out to let us see. Some were for the 15mm version of Firestorm Invasion, and the other was a War Balloon for Uncharted Seas. All looked great and the Invasion vehicles were even painted as you can see below.

15mm Terran Flyer (Firestorm Invasion)

15mm Terran Walker & Infantry (Firestorm Invasion)

Ralgard War Balloon (Uncharted Seas)

I was supposed to play in the Car Wars: Rogue Arena game next, but ended up getting a refund for my ticket. The set-up looked awesome, as it always does (see below) but I had overheard a few comments about the game from people who had played it previously. They basically said that it was cool but it was a slog and the turns took forever. I had decided that by now, I was too tired to enjoy something like that. In fact, at that point I was too tired for much of anything, so I walked back to the hotel room and took a nap. Sure, I missed a few hours of the con, but I'm glad I did or I would not have been able to function later that night.

Car Wars: Rogue Arena set up

After my refreshing nap, I played in an Infinity game. Yet again, another game that I love and own some of the miniatures for but have never really played. This was an intro game again, but was more robust than the other games I had played in earlier. The GM had a bunch of painted minis from across all of the factions, all pointed up to be relatively even. I picked a squad from the new ALEPH faction and we got started. Overall, I really enjoyed myself and I really like the rules as they definitely give that feel of highly tactical, small squad skirmish where you need to hug cover and plan your moves carefully.

I only have one gripe about the rules as we played them. In your opponents turn, your units get a chance to take shots at your opponent's units as they move or fire, much like the old Overwatch rules in 40K from years ago. While in theory this is realistic and makes for a very interactive game, I found it a bit frustrating as two of my guys died before they even completed their first move. Now the board was FILLED with terrain, so it was not like I was making a mad dash across an open field. But, both miniatures moved through a window of line of sight to the enemies that was about an inch wide. It just seemed more than a little too easy and I'm not sure that the GM was running that rule correctly. I'll have to find out when I get the rules.

The Infinity terrain

My sergeant getting a kill

Lastly, the final event of the day was the Descent: Journeys in the Dark game I had been looking so forward to. Unfortunately it was, by far, the most poorly run, disappointing, and totally bizarre Gen Con event I have ever had the misfortune to pre-reg for. Our "gamemaster" if you could really call him that, walked us over to the Hyatt where he said he had found the perfect tables since apparently the board game room was too crowded and noisy. Instead, we were placed at a table on the 3rd floor of the Hyatt and Dave (the GM) brought over the game box. The problem was, since they had played the night before, the box was barely sorted at all and it took us nearly an hour and a half to set up.

Now the game started at 8 and so by the time we were ready to begin it was after 9. The problem with that is, since the Hyatt has a huge atrium, it relies on natural light coming through the skylights far above. This is not conducive to playing a board game after sunset. It was so dark by then that we were having a problem telling the difference between the black and blue dice. Our host came over to check on us after a while and noticed how dark it was and said, "I'm going to go get you a lamp." We thought, hey maybe this game will be fun after all. Wrong again. Next thing I know, our GM had forgotten about us and was playing in a completely different game a few tables away. He wasn't even running his own damn game. Oh, he would check in on us from time to time, realize that he had forgotten to get us some form of light, and then disappear again, only to reappear several minutes later back at his other game. This happened a total of 4 TIMES and I am not exaggerating here.

Where am I again??

Now you may be wondering why anyone would stay playing under such ridiculous conditions. Well, when I pre-registered for the game, it cost $8.00 (yes, you read that correctly) but the reason for it was that you were supposed to get a free Fantasy Flight miniature at the end. So, we all stuck around because we all thought we were getting one of FFG's very nice metal Descent miniatures that are available. Oh, how wrong we were.

So, after slogging through a very literal 'Journey in the Dark', when midnight came around we called it and I went off in search of the GM for our miniatures. He came back over and started picking up the game and we helped just so we could get out of there sooner. After thanking us for playing, he went off to get our prizes. He came back with a large Ziploc bag filled to the brim with PLASTIC miniatures. He dumps them out on the table and goes on to explain that Fantasy Flight had provided these to give to us, but that they were not Descent minis but were from the War of the Ring game instead. I was so disgusted that I just wasted 4 hours in the dark for a few crappy plastic minis that I almost went off on the guy, but I was so tired and just relieved that the game was over with I just walked away (though I still grabbed a couple of minis that looked kind of cool).

Lesson learned- If a game at Gen Con is asking for more than the usual $2.00 for a game and it's not being run by a company or reputable game group, BEWARE!!!

And that brings Saturday to a close. It ended on a bit of a down note, but still Sunday beckons. More soon!

Until later,
-Jack

Gen Con 2010 Recap: Day 2

2010-08-11T10:41:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to pull together enough time to post any more at the con, but I'm only a couple of days off, right? Anyway, on to day 2...

Well, after playing in the Firestorm Invasion demo on Thursday, I wanted to make sure I had one solid day in the dealer hall to see what was new. I cleared my schedule and dove right in.

Look at all the colors!!

I stopped by the IronDie booth for a moment. This company and game are new to Gen Con this year and I had only just heard about them right before the con through Russ Wakelin's twitter feed. Their hook is that their dice are metal. Mostly shiny metallic colors too. The dice come in very interesting shapes which relate to how they play in the game. I ended up buying two packs because a friend at work wanted a set and I grabbed one for me as well. I did not, however, manage to get a demo of the game in. Everytime I walked by, the booth was pretty busy and everyone knows that fancy dice booths are like crack dealers to gamers.
The only bad parts are that the game is collectible (meh) and expensive (double meh). I can see myself buying a couple of expansion tubes, just for a few more dice, but unless the rules are really cool, I doubt I'd drop any serious cash on this game.


I've got wood. Anyone have BRAINS?!!

A couple of interesting new board games kind of jumped out at me. The first was Zombie State from, who else but, Zombie State games. This game, at first glance looks very intriguing, despite the fact that I am not a lover of the whole zombie Renaissance going on right now. Again, in my mad rush through the hall, I didn't get a chance to try a demo. But I will say that I overheard them talking about getting resources. Hmm.. Yeah, I'm not sure if resource gathering really fits into a zombie game. That is, unless the resources are bullets and gas for your chainsaw.

Sorry for the glare.

The second board game was Globalization from Closet Nerd Games. This time I didn't have to demo this game. John, one of Dan's friends from Houston, bought it and we gave it a try. It's a little like the old 80's game Supremacy meets Monopoly. Sadly, we didn't get very far before everyone got tired of it and decided to play something else. It is playable, but a bit clunky in places and could use some refining or an expansion to take care of some issues. However, the one thing this game has going for it is humor. The first time you open it up, you will spend about an hour going through and reading all of the funny company names. All of them have names that are puns or other clever plays on words. For example- There's a South American company named "Brazillion to one", and then there's the Japanese "Super Happy Fun Time" company.

Both of the above games looked very slick and seemed to have excellent components as well. They may just need a bit more polishing before they become big hits.

I had an odd moment later in the hall when I hopped onto the #GenCon twitter feed and saw a post by the Gen Con staff that if you went to a certain booth in half an hour, you would get a free signed t-shirt. I thought, "Hey, free t-shirt!" When I got there, I found out that the shirt (which was a promo for a new MMORPG) was to be signed by R.A.Salvatore and Curt Schilling...

Schilling's texting- "Geez these gamers stink worse than Philly!"

Um... What?

Ugly, but free!

Okay, Salvatore I totally get. He's always at Gen Con, usually signing yet another Drizzt book. But Schilling?
Really?
Yes.
What I did not know until I Wiki'd it up later, is that Curt is a huge MMO player. He started out with Everquest, and went on to play World of Warcraft, then went so far as to create his own MMO company, 38 Studios, which is making the new game and Salvatore's writing for it I guess.

Since it is not Star Wars: The Old Repubilc (the only MMO on my radar right now) I honestly couldn't give a crap about the game. Buy hey, free T-shirt!
Score!!

The last actual game I will talk about in this post is Summoner Wars from Plaid Hat Games. I had heard about this game before, but with me not having a decent game store in town, I had never seen it. I stumbled upon their booth and asked for a demo. I was quickly taught the rules and in no time my Goblins were laying the smackdown on the opposing Dwarves.

It's not looking good for the Dwarves!

I won't go into a full review here. The game deserves it's own blog post. But, suffice it to say, I loved the game! It plays very quickly but still gives a very rewarding experience. The gameplay also has a clock aspect built-in so that no game becomes an un-fun slog. The best part of all? It's not collectible. Yay!!
I fell in, hook, line, & sinker, and bought all of the army decks plus two of the very nice game boards so that up to 4 players can play. It's a great, quick game that I can't wait to introduce to my friends.

Nicole, Russ & Raef of the D6 Generation Podcast

The pinnacle of the day had to be the D6G live podcast seminar. Those of you who have been coming to my blog for a while know it's my favorite podcast. They did a similar show last year, so it was a no-brainer to do it again. It was a blast! This year Craig couldn't make it due to a new addition to his family, but Nicole (of the Total Fan Girl segment & Russ' wife) came and it was great to finally meet her. The crew ran an audience participation bit that was incredibly fun and taped it live so you should be hearing it in another week or two. Afterward, I managed to get everyone together for a picture.


From Left to Right: Nicole, Me, Russ, Raef, & my friend Dan.

Friday night was filled with playing Globalization as I mentioned before, so that brings a wrap to Friday. Saturday coming soon! Stay tuned!

Until later,
-Jack

Gen Con 2010 Recap: Day 1

2010-08-06T09:40:00.001-05:00

So here I am at Gen Con finally and so far it's been a blast. I apologize again for the lack of posting lately. The last couple of weeks have been a frenzy of getting enough stuff on eBay to make sure that Dan and I had enough money to play around with while we are here. Speaking of, if any of you fine readers bid on any of our auctions I'd like to say thanks for helping getting us both here for the second year in a row! :)

But, you didn't come here for that did you? You came to hear about Gen Con!!! So let's get to it.
I don't have a ton of time, so I'll recap some of the cool things I saw yesterday and I can go into more depth when I get back. (Sorry if the pics are a bit blurry. It's hard to tap the button to snap a pic with an iPhone without bumping it)

One of the coolest surprises so far has been Earth Reborn by Z-Man Games.

I had not even heard about this yet. It looks to be a post-apocalyptic boardgame that has excellent minis and a modular (and reportedly interactive) board.

Unfortunately, every time I walked past the game, no one was running a demo. However, I did get a chance to talk to Zev (the Z in Z-Man) and he told me the game is heading for a mid-late fall release and is looking to be about an $80 price point. This is just a prototype and it's already awesome so I'm thinking the released game will blow us away. I hope to get a demo in while I'm here.

The other cool thing was actually a demo I played of Firestorm Invasion.

Spartan Games, maker of Uncharted Seas and Firestorm Armada, is coming out with a small scale sci-fi ground combat game to match with Firestorm Armada. It was just an intro game that only ran an hour and just gave us the basic grasp of the rules. It has similar concepts to Armada and Uncharted Seas, like exploding dice (6's are 2 hits and are re-rolled), and the cards which allow you to do special actions above and beyond your normal abilities. This is nice since it immediately makes the game feel familiar even if you don't know all of the rules yet.

The minis are only prototypes so far, but look awesome already and carry the same feel of the different faction designs. The game we played was 6mm scale, but our host told me that Spartan is also planning to release a 15mm scale version to allow for more infantry, and then even a 28mm scale game??. Interesting, but perhaps overly ambitious? Spartan does like to dream big though, and apparently they've been enjoying enough success to continue with the projects that they want to do. That's great, but I just hope they continue to flesh out the games they have going already and not just completely move on.

Lastly, and I really need to get going so this will be quick, I played a demo of Dust: Tactics from FFG last night. Miniatures = AWESOME. Gameplay = Eh.. not so much. I think my opponent summed it up best when he said, "You know, this game could be played equally well with chits". And he was right. Really, what is the point of having these awesome figs if you're just moving from square to square and the 'terrain' is just 2D blah-looking bunker/tank trap/building looking things. Now games like Tannhauser have this too, but they succeed by having innovative mechanics and beautifully illustrated game boards. Dust: Tactics has nothing innovative about it really and was rather boring to play I thought. So, I think I'll be passing on the game and maybe picking up the minis to use them instead with AE-WWII or the like. Sorry for no pics of this one guys, my phone died right before the game.

Well, that's it for now. Back to the con floor with me! GEENNNNNCCCOOOOONNNNNN!!!

Until later,
~Jack

What's a month between friends?

2010-07-15T00:13:00.003-05:00

Yes, it's been a month since I posted last. I stand ashamed of my blogging ability. But then, I really haven't done much in the way of gaming for a month either. Most of my free time has been working towards a certain special event that I will come back to momentarily.

A couple of weeks ago, I did get a chance to introduce my friend Dave to Battlelore at least. We just played the very first scenario, Agincourt, to shake the cobwebs out of my knowledge of the game rules. Interestingly, I broke the first law of suckering your friends into a new game- "If thou wants thine opponent to like a game, then thou shalt not win while teaching said game" Despite the fact that I won, however, Dave still liked it and looked forward to playing again. Next time we'll use the magic or "lore" rules.

That's really been about it. Oh, well there is this one thing I do have coming up. It's just this little con in Indiana...

GEN CON!!!!

Yes, it's that time of the year again. The Super Bowl of gaming culture. Gen Con 2010 is August 5-8 in Indianapolis, IN. As I write this it is only three weeks away and I can not wait! Dan and I have been planning for this year's con for the last several months and I've been selling a whole lot more of his stuff to pay for the pilgrimage to Geek Mecca.

I have my badge and tickets finally in hand and I'm ready to game my ass off. I have a pretty busy schedule too. As I've told Dan, I'd rather have too much to do than too little. You can always get a system credit if you know you can't make a game beforehand. Here's what I'll tentatively be playing-

Thursday-

2-3pm Firestorm Invasion (demo of a new miniature game)

3-5pm     City of Thieves (new boardgame)
6-8pm     Dust Tactics (new boardgame)
9-1am     Runewars (boardgame)
Friday-
10-12pm Mercs (demo of upcoming miniature game)
2-5pm      War Rocket (new miniature game)
6-7pm      D6G podcast (live show recording)
8-10pm    Dust Tactics again (there's a contest for players)
10-1am    Battlelore (boardgame)
Satrurday-
9-10am    Firestorm Armada (miniature game)
12-4pm    Car Wars: Rouge Arena (miniature game)
5-7pm      Infinity (miniature game)
Sunday-
10-11am Leviathan Demo (miniature game)

And pretty much any other time I'm not eating, sleeping, or going to the bathroom, I'll be wandering though the dealer hall. So yeah, a very busy four days. On the slim chance that any of you who read my blog are coming to the con and playing in any of these games as well, say hi :)

One item of note about the con. Even though we will be staying at a place with free internet this year, I'm not sure if I will be able to blog from Gen Con. I may not have a computer available to me since the wife won't let me bring the laptop (there's a good reason). However, my plan is to tweet like crazy. If you aren't already following me and want to keep up with what I'm doing at the con and the cool stuff I see, make sure you get set up on Twitter and follow me. My handle is @Jackofallgames.

I will update my blog when I get back, much like last year, although I hope not to wait as long.this time. My posts about Gen Con last year were some of the most read posts I've ever written! In the meantime, I've been itching to work on something so hopefully I'll get some more posts up over the next couple of weeks.

Thanks for continuing to read, gang! Makes me feel good and gives me that desire to write when I still have people checking in on my blog even when I hadn't posted in a month. I really don't want to let that happen again.

Until later,
-Jack

Warhammer 40K Dark Millenium MMO trailer

2010-06-15T13:29:00.002-05:00

Oh E3, what glorious news won't you bring us this week? Well no sooner had a I posted about the Star Wars MMO and then this gets released.

I'm not going to kid myself that it's going to reach quite the level of awesomeness as Star Wars: TOR.. But still, who wouldn't want to run around as a Space Marine? Especially with Titans roaming around.

Star Wars: The Old Republic 'Hope' trailer

2010-06-15T09:11:00.004-05:00

Here's the newest trailer for the Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO. I won't lie, it's unbelievably awesome. I do have a couple of comments, but I'll save them for after the vid so as not to spoil it.

PC Games - E3 2010 - Star Wars: The Old Republic

1. I like how they've adapted the Old Republic to look very similar to the clone wars/Empire eras. I mean the bad guys have wedge shaped capital ships, fighters that look vaguely similar to TIEs, and all the sith wear Vader armor, while the good guys wear clone-like trooper armor. It looks both awesome and still very comforting that it's 'Star Wars'.

2. How badass do we have to make Jedi powers these days? Jeez! I think Force Unleashed went to Lucasarts head a little. Stopping a lightsaber blade with your bare hand? Seriously? What's the point then? Oh and who else wanted her to yell "HA-DO-KEN!!" when she sends that fireball at the Sith dude at the end? Come on.
Oh sure, it will be pure awesome to play, but these powers do leave the realm of what I think of when it comes to Jedi/Sith abilities.

3. I find it very interesting how the idea of levels plays out in the video. Obviously, the Republic trooper dude is pretty high level because he's able to get past all those Sith grunts. With lightsabers, no less. The same goes for the Jedi girl. I do understand there has to be a way to gain levels in the game and yes ALL classes have to be equally powerful or the game breaks. It does, however, lessen the idea that anyone with a lightsaber (red or otherwise) is going to mess you up. I'll get over it, but that does take away a key element of Star Wars from me.

Regardless of my niggling fanboy gripes, this game will be 100% incredible with a side of awesomesauce. I do plan on buying a new computer before this game comes out in Spring of next year. Assuming it doesn't get pushed back again :P

Until next time,
-Jack

She may not look like much..

2010-06-05T18:00:00.014-05:00

..but she's got it where it counts!

Yes, it's the most glorified space truck in the galaxy: The Millennium Falcon. Now in spectacular 1/144 scale to match the F-Toys Star Wars models that I showed off yesterday. Made by Fine Molds, which is the parent company of F-Toys, it is an actual model and not a pre-painted, snap-together model. Of course this means that my chances of actually fully completing Han and Chewie's legendary pimp ride are pretty low, but I do try to remain positive.

More to come when I actually assemble the thing!

By the way, I bought this and the other Star Wars models from this place- Hobby Search.
I highly recommend them if you need something like this from Japan. Both of my orders were shipped quickly and were well packed. They were also on sale, so even with the conversion rate & shipping, it was still a good deal. If you go there and are looking for Star Wars stuff, go into the Gundam catagory unless you want to sift through pages of anime girl PVC figures.. but then again, maybe you do!

Until next time,
-Jack

All wings report in..

2010-06-04T18:00:00.004-05:00

To catch up a little, I thought I'd write about a few of the cool things I've bought recently. Long-time readers will remember back here and here that I've been collecting 1/144 scale Star Wars models from F-Toys in Japan. After searching for the newest models on eBay and never really seeing much of a good deal, I finally broke down and bought two cases of the most recent set direct from Japan. Two cases is twenty models, which may seem crazy, but since they are blind boxes (like trading cards) I wanted to make sure I got the ones that I wanted.

I lucked out and got the number of B-Wings and A-Wings I wanted, several more X-Wings and the best part - two of the hard-to-find and valuable secret model: the TIE Interceptor. These things go for over $20 a piece on eBay and get snapped right up by collectors. W00t!

The funny part is, when this series was announced and the secret model was revealed to be the Interceptor, I had a short conversation about it with bluedonkey99 on his blog (Kampfgruppe1/144 on my blogroll) about it. I made the suggestion that they were going to be hard to find and expensive on eBay when they came out. He disagreed, using as evidence the fact that the secret models from the first two series were as common as dirt and cheap. However, both of those (TIE Crawler & Clone Wars era Y-Wing) are extended universe vehicles and never appear in the films. The TIE Interceptor features prominently in RotJ and I knew it was going to be valuable. Especially if there were any other gamers out there like me who wanted them for more than a lovely little desk model.

So anyway, my bookshelf is now fronting as a hanger for both Imperial and Rebel starfighters at the moment. I now have the following-
Rebellion: 7 X-Wings, 3 Y-Wings, 4 A-Wings, and 4 B-Wings.
Imperials: 10 TIE Fighters, 2 TIE Advanced x1 (Vader's TIE), & 2 TIE Interceptors.

Eventually I'll do a few more detailed posts about them as I get them ready for gaming.

But the mailman also brought me something else... What could it be?

Find out next time,
-Jack

Review: Houseguard Halberdiers

2010-06-03T14:39:00.015-05:00

As a little change of pace, I thought I would mix things up by offering some reviews of the miniatures I buy. I recently added a box of Houseguard Halberdiers to my Retribution of Scyrah army for Warmachine, so what better place to start?

This all metal kit (PP 35010 - $54.99 US) comes with 10 multi-part miniatures. The 10 bodies included come in 4 different poses, with a distribution of 5, 2, 2, & 1. While not a huge deal, I was a little put off by the fact that 50% of the minis included had the same pose. This is mitigated a bit by having poseable arms but still a mix of 3, 3, 3, & 1 would have been better.

There are also 10 weapon arms, 10 shield arms, & 10 backpacks along with the 10 bases included to finish off the models. 7 each of the shield and weapon arms were exactly the same, with the other three being variations that fit only specific poses due to larger arm sockets. The backpacks were exactly the same across the board. Finally, the unit's game card was included as well.

As usual, Privateer's quality control was high and I wasn't missing any pieces, nor were any miscast. PP is also known for their high quality casting and so far I've had very good experiences with their models as far as flash and mold lines go. The Halberdiers were a small exception to that, however, as I did have a couple of bodies that did have fairly significant mold lines due to slight mold misalignment. One or two shields also had some venting (little tabs of metal) but that is so easy to clean up it's almost insignificant. The mold lines are the big pain and are difficult to remove without obliterating the fine detail.

Moving on to assembly. Once cleaned, the pieces went together fairly easily. As said before, due to the 5 models with the same pose, I had to alter the angle of the weapon arms so as not to have 5 cookie cutter miniatures. Not a problem due to the socket joint. The three remaining minis had specific arms that have two holding their weapon at rest, while the third acts as the unit leader and is pointing his halberd forward. Again, easy assembly with correctly sized ball & sockets.

My one gripe about assembly comes from the backpacks. Yes, the most insignificant part of the model is the biggest headache. As usual with this type of piece, the body has a bump on it's back that matches up with a divot on the backpack. The two come together and should hold with a dab of superglue. Unfortunately, due to the shoulder armor on the arms, and the shape of the backpack, the join is too shallow. This is easily corrected with some filing, but across 10 miniatures it seemed like an unnecessary pain. To fix I just took my round needle file and worked it straight across the backpack right where the shoulder armor rested. After taking about .5mm off, they fit pretty well.

Now that they are fully assembled I can relay my final thoughts. The detail on the miniatures is excellent. As usual, a hallmark of Privateer quality. The armor joints are sharp and the leathers underneath are well sculpted and will pop with even a mediocre paint job.

Aesthetically, I love the overall look of them. I like the lighter armor that they have as core troops compared to the somewhat ridiculously cumbersome armor that the Retribution's elite forces wear. Their halberd and shield are also very nice and fit right in with the theme. I think my favorite part is the helmet, which allows full face visibility, but still believable protection. I also like that the elven pointed ears stick out through holes in the side. This is notable as the elites have tiny, fully-enclosed helmets which look like they'd have to tie their ears back to get on.

The only problem that comes from these guys is their poses. Seven of them have legs that are striding forward, which would be cool if it weren't for the fact that their head is looking to the side. Of the other three, two are looking forward with a walking pace suggested by their legs and their weapon at rest. Of all the Halberdiers, the only one who's pose really looks good is the unit leader, weapon outstretched in typical Games Workshop fashion. Although even he looks out of place as the rest of his unit appears to be slowly advancing behind him, either looking around furtively or sauntering lazily. This unit should have been modeled to look like they were ready to receive a charge, or deliver one. In game terms they are pretty awesome (which I won't go into here) but their lackluster poses suggest otherwise. Perhaps that is a blessing in disguise?

My ratings for the Houseguard Halberdiers from Privateer Press are as follows, with 5 being the highest number achievable:

Casting quality - 4
Ease of assembly - 4
Design/detail - 5
Posing - 2

That comes to a score of 3.75 which is on the high side of average. I normally expect very good (4) to excellent (5) from Privateer Press, so these figures were a bit of a let down. However, I'm still excited to use them in-game and to paint them up so they are still worth the money to me. I just wish a little more thought had gone into them.

Just for the curious, my ratings system is thus:
1- Dont bother.
2- Meh.
3- Average.
4- Very good.
5- Excellent!

Until next time,
-Jack

Still Alive

2010-05-31T08:58:00.003-05:00

Yes, I am still here. I do apologize for the lack of posting lately. For those of you who didn't know, I moved to weekend shift at my job so that I could be home with the baby during the week and save money on day care. That's great, but it did kind of turn my world upside-down.

I think I have a grip on my new schedule now though and I should be able to continue to get some work done on hobby stuff once again. So for today I leave you with this little gem...

P.S. I haven't begun to run out of cake yet.

Until later,
-Jack

(LEGO + Star Wars) x YouTube = Awesome!

2010-05-05T23:15:00.003-05:00

No longer a Warmachine virgin!

2010-05-03T23:01:00.004-05:00

I finally got in my first official game of Warmachine on Sunday night and had a blast! Got smacked around, of course, but I expected to and just wanted to learn the game more than anything.

This all started a couple of weeks ago. I really had no idea there was anyone playing Warmachine here in town so I had figured I was going to have to try and convince someone to get into the game with me. Thankfully, I happened upon a thread on Dakka about a Warmachine tourney going on at the Little Wars HMGS convention. Long story short, I found out that several of the guys who were coming to the tournament were from Rockford!
Who knew?!

So I took the trip into Lincolnshire that Saturday to meet the guys and watch them play. Met Dave, Jim, Scott, Colin and another Dave. Good guys all around, and everyone seemed eager to have a new opponent even though I'm definitely a noob to this game.

So Dave (the first one) invited me over. I grabbed the Retribution stuff I had put together and I was able to work up a 35 pt Rahn list. Opposite me, Dave played Menoth with Reznik (I hate Witch Hunter!). On the other half of the table it was Jim vs. the other Dave, both using Cryx with Deneghra against Asphiyxious.

Dave was great about playing and teaching, letting me ask questions and being very patient with me as I sweated over my cards. The hardest part about this game is trying to remember the multiple and different things all of your guys can do and how to tie it all together effectively. Something that only comes with practice. I missed some stuff, but overall I think I had a pretty good showing for my first time out. Before he got curbstomped by the Avatar, Rahn's feat allowed the Shyeel Battle Mages to smack on Reznik pretty good and could have possibly killed him if it weren't for less than stellar dice rolling. As it was, I managed to get him down to 6 wounds left which was awesome and validated this game for me even though I didn't win.

It was a great feeling to head home knowing that I picked a great game to get into. Now I just need to work on remembering all the abilities and powers that everything has.. Oh and to get my Halberdiers an Stormfall archers put together. Next time Dave! *shaking fist in challenge* Well.. maybe the time after that.

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

A little more painting

2010-04-27T22:36:00.007-05:00

Apologies for the break in the painting action, folks..

~Did I just say "painting action"?~

After a huge eBay week and helping with the baby, I'm terribly exhausted. But, I did manage to get my intrepid elves of Ios up to their next step.

Step 2. Click on pic for better view

Step 2: GW Dark Angels Green on the tabard and leathers. On these models, that's just about everything that isn't flesh or armor.

Now Dark Angels Green is a pretty thin color. It doesn't really need to be thinned very much with water, if at all. However, this also means that you may not get the depth of color you want in one coat. I find that to get the nice, even green I want, I have to do two coats. This is pretty easy since the paint dries very fast. I simply work on one side, then flip over to the other. When I'm done with the back, the front is dry and I can put on the second coat, then repeat with the back again. Viola!

More to come!

Until tomorrow,

-Jack

The eBay report

2010-04-23T01:48:00.007-05:00

Just a quick pause in the painting posts to let you know that I do have stuff up on eBay this week. Quite a lot really. In fact, an entire painted Dwarf army for Warhammer Fantasy battles. Not only that, but also several models for the Legion of Everblight for Hordes, and lastly, a bunch of historical 15mm miniatures from the renaissance period.

The Dwarves have done very well for me in the past, but it is time to move on and try something else. I'm hoping that selling them will force me to work on my Lizardmen army. It has been a very cool army to play though, and I went the extra step and magnetized all of the movement trays. Any Dwarf unit that has a movement tray has magnets keeping the minis in place.

Now, there is one more thing about the Dwarf army. I'm selling it piecemeal, but, if one bidder wins all of the Dwarf auctions (not Hordes minis or the Historicals), I will also include the Battalion size Army Transport bag that I've kept them in, for free. It retails for $75!

Just to show everything all together, here's the army in it's entirety.
Click on pic
(the terrain is not included in any of the auctions and is just for display purposes).

And here's the bag

Here's one of the custom-plucked trays that go inside the bag.
All the units stay on their trays during storage/transport

Take a look at my auctions here and good luck if you bid!

I will ship anywhere :)

Until tomorrow,

-Jack

OMG! Painting!

2010-04-19T23:19:00.004-05:00

As another catch-up post, I thought I'd show off the fact that I have, in actuality, been painting once again. By far, the most impressive part of this is that I've settled on a paint scheme for my Retribution of Scyrah force. This always takes me forever and it's usually frustrating. I often don't like how a new scheme looks the first time around, or I don't like it until I've set it down for several days and come back with fresh eyes. In this instance, it took me a few tries until I settled on this:

My 1st finished Retribution miniature- A House Shyeel Battle Mage.

(I really need to figure out a better way to take good pics of my minis)

I have noticed a trend towards green in my last couple years of painting. That's okay, however, because I really like green (as if you hadn't noticed by reading my blog). However, I'm not a big fan of the olive greens and teal that the studio models have on them, so I went with something more bold. I also find painting white a total pain, so for the armor bits I went with a light grey.

More on that later though, as I plan on finishing the unit step-by-step through my by blog. Now as you'll notice below, even though the Battle Mage unit has six guys in it, you'll only see three at first since I already took two of the other figures through the first couple steps.

Step 1. (click on pic for better view)

Step 1: GW Astronomicon Grey on all of the armor parts.

One thing that just really hit me as I started this is that I just was not thinning my paints enough. I often get lazy and try to get my color on in one coat. However, these new (I know they aren't new, but they're new to me) Foundation paints are the shizzle! Even thinned down to fruit juice consistency, they will still cover white primer in one coat.

Next steps coming soon. In case anyone is wondering, the corks that I have the models sticky-tacked to are available at Hobby Lobby. They make a great handle to hang on to your minis while you are working on them. This size can be hard to find though as they trend a little smaller so take along a base or two to the store to make sure you are buying a good size.

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

I'm on a podcast!!.. kind of.

2010-04-13T22:40:00.005-05:00

Ok. So, I don't have my own podcast yet, but my voice can be heard now every two weeks on the the D6 Generation podcast. You see, I'm the guy who won their last contest (which I also came up with the idea for).

It all started a couple of months ago. As some of you already know, I'm a big fan and loyal listener of the D6G podcast. Now every episode, during their intro, they give credit to their listeners and play a little sing-song clip that someone sent in from back in their early shows. Well, in one of the episode commentary threads on Dakka Dakka, I mentioned that it would be cool to have a contest for a new Loyal Listener show sound clip. To which Russ, of the D6G, replied that he thought it was a brilliant idea!

So, on to the next episode, where they unveiled their latest contest- my idea!! I was really excited, but I had to laugh when I realized that they hadn't given me an ounce of credit for the idea. Now, the D6G guys wouldn't know me from Adam (though we have met before at Gen Con) but all I wanted was just a little- "Thanks to Jack of all games over on Dakka for the contest idea". After a little guilt-tripping, I got my credit in the next episode ;)

Now, on to the contest itself. After having almost forgot all about it, I threw together four little soundbites on the last night you could enter for the contest and sent them in. A couple were references to D6G inside jokes, but one was a little different...
I've always loved the 80's classic: One Night in Bangkok by Murray Head. Anytime I hear it, I sing along. My favorite line from the song is "One town is very like another when your head's down over your pieces, brother." It's referring to playing chess, but it always makes me think of gaming in general. So much so, in fact, that I used to use it as a forum signature. Well, since I had that song still in my head from hearing it at work that day, suddenly I was using it for the contest. I came up with; "One game is very like another 'til the D6G reviews it, brother." I didn't think I had any chance, but it was fun to mess around up with.

The episode aired (ep. 51) and they played all of the entries. A couple of them were better than mine, with more time invested. However, something about mine tickled them a bit (well Russ & Raef anyway) and I actually made the final cut. It came down to a die roll to decide the winner, and despite Craig rooting for the other entry, I won!
Needless to say, I was ecstatic! The rest of the house was asleep so I was jumping around pumping my fist in the air in celebration...silently. Which was pretty funny itself in retrospect.

So there you are. I am now the official Loyal Listener soundbite of the D6 Generation podcast. At least until someone else gets tired of me and suggests another contest. I know I cringe every time I hear it now because I'm not used to hearing my own voice on air (yet).

Oh, and my prize? Two hardback supplements for the Dark Heresy RPG from Fantasy Flight Games. Ascension and The Radical's Handbook. Very cool indeed! Especially since Ascension will bring Dark Heresy characters up to a comparable level with Deathwatch when it's released this summer.
What made this doubly awesome, was that I received my books on the day my daughter was born. A perfect end to a perfect day.

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

Playing catch-up. (Spring Auction)

2010-04-07T10:50:00.008-05:00

Well, my plan to get more blogging done while I was home with the baby didn't pan out so well. So, to rectify this I have several posts lined up which will catch me up with what has been going on with me gaming-wise.

Firstly, and perhaps most spectacularly, was the Games Plus Spring auction. Back during the first weekend in March, the auction was again in full swing. I did some selling. I did some buying.
Boy, did I do some buying!

I won't go into everything I bought. Suffice to say that I picked up some incredibly good deals. But, I will show you the crown jewel of the swag- My fully painted Cygnar army for Warmachine.

When I bid on this, I didn't even know what all I was getting. I had not gotten the chance to dig through all of the foam trays in the box the army was in and had only seen a few of the figs on top. I'd been dying to get into Warmachine, so when it came up for bid, I went for it. There had to be at least $200 worth of models in there...

I ended up winning it for $160 and I was incredibly pleased. At home, I started digging everything out of the box. I was astounded at everything that was in there! When it was finally all out and arranged on my table, I took a few minutes to calculate how much everything was worth. By current prices, I had just bought $470 of miniatures for $160 and that doesn't even include the painting!!

This, by far, has to be one of the best deals I've ever won at the auction. Now, I have a fully painted force that I can start playing with while I work on my Retribution of Scyrah army.

Here's a full list of what's in the army:

3 Warcasters: Darius, Stryker, Caine
5 Light Warjacks: Lancer, 3 Hunters, & a Sentinel
4 Heavy Warjacks: Defender, Stormclad, Hammersmith, Ironclad
5 Units: Sword Knights, 2 Arcane Gun Mages, & 2 Long Gunner Infantry
2 Solos: Journeyman Warcaster & a Gun Mage Captain Adept (which must be an alternate sculpt or a conversion because I've never seen this uh.. particular model before)
There's also one extra solo in there: Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator. I won him in a separate auction, but he fits right in.

Now, I just need to start getting some games in!
Who's interested?

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

Battlefront getting Star Wars license?

2010-04-01T00:57:00.004-05:00

Don't think April Fools just yet..

Battlefront just sent out it's Flames of War email that I get, oh, about once every couple of weeks. Now, normally I'm not super excited by this as I really don't play much FoW currently, but I still skim through it and ogle some of the new releases.

This one is a bit different. I have copied the text here and I've made notations in red as to my thoughts.
Enjoy :)

April Fools’

It is traditional on this day to tease and confuse people by having fictitious and spurious stories appear in the guise of having a bit of fun.

The creative team came up with a few ideas that would set tongues wagging but all of them seemed very obvious, so I decided to try something a little different. I am taking the opportunity today to tell you ten things that Battlefront Group has planned of which half are true and half are not. The ensuing discussion and speculation will hopefully be taken for what it is, fun, and at least let you know some things that until today you were not aware of.

1. We are making a 15mm Captain America figure with special rules so he can join US forces in Flames Of War.
A good possibility, since also mentioned in #9
2. We have the rights to produce the Star Wars tabletop miniatures game now that the Wizards of the Coast license have expired.
SWEET MOTHER OF GOD LET THIS BE TRUE!!!!!
3. A free Osprey book with be given away with every issue of Wargames Illustrated in June.
This would be pretty cool, and certainly within reason.
4. Early War has proved to be much more work than we expected and we have to move its release back by six months.
Hard to say.
5. Our next big thing is going to be a Pirate vs. Ninja skirmish game in 30mm.
Obvious BS.
6. To help improve morale in the Battlefront offices, all staff is being given a uniform consisting of a black shirt with silver skulls on the lapels and pink piping.
Just silly
7. Having looked at the Pacific theatre, we have decided to make a naval game to go along with the Flames Of War books we are working on.
Smells like BS.
8. We have a World War Two aircraft game almost finished so you will be able to dogfight your way through the war.
Possible, I'd like to see their take on this type of game.
9. As part of a new license deal we will be releasing themed dice and gaming sets for the greatest comic book heroes in the world.
Again, seeing #1 listed as well raises the possibility factor.
10. German forces will soon be able to add the Ark of the Covenant to their lists as a special occult unit.
Nah..

Have fun with this and remember five things on this list are 100% true but five are not, so don’t hold me to everything the next time we meet.

~ John-Paul.

I can only reiterate that I hope #2 is one of the truisms. Star Wars is an expensive license, but honestly, I can't imagine the license sitting for long before someone picked it up. 15mm would be an awesome scale for epic battles, yet still big enough for good detail, especially on the vehicles. Only bad thing about something like this is I would feel bad for the retailers. You think carrying the full line of FoW is hard now? Just add a couple hundred skus of Star Wars stuff on top of it. ;)

So, yeah. Fingers crossed and all that.

Until tomorrow-
Jack

This week on eBay

2010-03-31T23:23:00.002-05:00

My latest round of eBay listings include several lots of Cygnar 'jacks, units, & solos for Warmachine. There's even a 'caster in there as well (the ever-popular Lt. Allister Caine).

Also up for sale are a few AT-43 rulebooks as well as some of the old West End Games' Star Wars Miniature Battles rulebooks. They are OOP but are still great for running Star Wars games for the WotC pre-paints.

Take a look here.

Thanks for looking, and remember that I'll ship anywhere :)

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

I'm a little girl in a gamer world...

2010-03-20T22:31:00.001-05:00

Well she's here! And what a sweet little princess she is. My daughter was born yesterday evening, happy and healthy. Mom's doing great too and my son is excited to have a little sister.

All is right with the world.

I'm off work for the next several days so that I can spend time with my family. That's either going to mean I catch up on some posting when the baby's asleep, or that I'm tied up and don't get any time to blog. I guess we'll have to see.

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

The waiting game

2010-03-19T16:35:00.001-05:00

Hello readers,

I apologize for the lack of posts lately. Been a bit busy what with eBay, and the Games Plus auction, oh and my wife's pregnancy.

Speaking of which, today is the day! So here I sit, with my trooper of a wife in the pre-op waiting room. We're just waiting for the operating room to be prepared since she's having a c-section.

To tie this in at least a little with gaming, I would lay money down that I am the only father here in the hospital who is reading the Warmachine MK.II rulebook to pass the time.

Until next time, when I can say I'm now a proud father of two...
-Jack

Only one day left!

2010-03-06T11:28:00.001-06:00

Sorry, gang. I forgot to post this week's eBay stuff and it's almost done. It's the last of the 6mm sci-fi stuff that Dan had and it's mostly still new in the package.

You can check it out here.

Dan has told me that he's officially able to make it to Gen Con this year and we're both well on our way with eBay sales. If any of you have been bidding on our stuff, I would like to give a big thank you and say keep checking back because I still have a bunch more left to go.

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

And they shall know no fear.

2010-02-28T18:56:00.002-06:00

So we all knew this was coming, right? In 2008, Black Industries (through Sabertooth Games) came out with Dark Heresy: The Warhammer 40K roleplaying game. Back then, everyone was so excited that you could now roleplay in was has to be the most well known science fiction universe outside of Star Wars & Star Trek. But there was a catch. You only got to play as a very lowly Inquisitorial pee-on. Oh sure, you were head-and-shoulders above the average slug of an Imperial citizen, but you were no Space Marine by any stretch of the imagination. So of course, the first question on everyone's lips was, "Can I be a Space Marine?"

The answer was no.

Then, no sooner than it had been released, Dark Heresy appeared to be in jeopardy as GW went through some restructuring and shut down Black Industries/Sabertooth. Quickly things were sorted out, deals were made, and soon Fantasy Flight Games had the license to make the game. This was great. If any company could handle this license and it's heavy duty fan base, it was FFG.

Fast forward to Gen Con 2009 and FFG releases the stand-alone Rogue Trader RPG. Now you can play someone much higher up the food chain. It's a slightly different formula, but all of the mechanics are the same. As a Rogue Trader, you and your stalwart crew take to the stars with your expeditionary fleet to conquer new worlds for the Imperium of Man.

Still no Space Marines...

UNTIL NOW!!

From the Fantasy Flight Games website - Used without permission

Undoubtedly crashing through the ceiling of the Indianapolis Convention Center in a steaming hot drop pod this August, is Deathwatch. This is it kiddies! Your chance to don the ornate power armor of the Imperium's genetically created warriors and take on the horrors of the galaxy. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Deathwatch in the tabletop 40K game, it's a group of Space Marines, pulled together from several different Chapters, to fight xenos scum (the aforementioned horrors of the galaxy).

This is brilliant! By going with this concept, this will neatly allow players to be a Space Marine from any Chapter, including, I would assume, their own invented one. This appears to be another stand-alone RPG, and rightly so. The story of the Space Marines is far too epic to try and shoehorn into either Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader.

I do own Dark Heresy though I've never played it. I didn't pick up Rogue Trader because it just wasn't my thing. This, however, I will not be able to deny myself.

FOR THE EMPEROR!!!

Now if only I knew CAD...

2010-02-23T01:35:00.004-06:00

From Dimension Printing comes your own personal 3D printer. Imagine the possibilities for gaming! You could make your own models, terrain, pretty much anything you could think of.

..and it fits on a table!

These aren't new, and I know a lot of sculptors already use these to get prototypes of their sculpts, albeit through outsourcing usually. But here's one you could afford in your own home. Assuming you have a spare $15,000 lying around.

When I win the lottery, I am so having one of these. Either that, or I will just wait the 10-15 years until they come down in price to the point that they are affordable to the common gamer.

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

Small scale sci-fi on eBay

2010-02-21T21:05:00.002-06:00

This time on eBay, I have several lots of sci-fi tanks and infantry up. These are all in 6mm or 1/285 scale and a couple of lots are fully painted.

They are originally from the Renegade Legion series of games (specifically Centurion), put out by FASA in the mid-to-late 80's, but they would fit in perfectly with any sort of large force/small scale game like Battletech, Future War Commander, Stargrunt, etc.

Take a look!

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

Microsoft Surface D&D!!

2010-02-12T00:51:00.001-06:00

D&D on the Microsoft Surface from CrunchGear on Vimeo.

I had seen this before but it was in a much less refined state back then. Looks like the programmers have come quite a ways and it really shows off how awesome this could be down the road as 'surface' computers hit the market and eventually come down in price.

My only issue is, the lack of 3D terrain. Oh sure, it's nice to have a computer that will guide you through the complexities of the rules (D&D or otherwise), but when it comes right down to it, you're still just playing on a flat table.

I envision this making a big splash with the boardgame, collectable miniature game, & RPG markets. I don't see, however, it making an inroads with the miniature wargamer crowd anytime soon. At least not until we can develop solid holograms, ala Star Trek.

From the CrunchGear website via Topless Robot

More eBay stuff up!

2010-02-07T21:25:00.003-06:00

If anyone's interested, I just posted several more lots for sale of Dan's.

This time it's more Vietnam stuff in 10mm flavor. Lots of resin terrain, painted infantry, vehicles, and tanks. Also, just for something different, a few lots of 28mm amazons!

Take a look!

If we do well enough, Dan might just be able to make it to Gen Con as well.

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

The REAL Avatar!

2010-02-05T01:09:00.003-06:00

Okay, Avatar was and still is pretty hot stuff. But then, I'm not talking about James Cameron's mediocre masterpiece. I speak instead of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Fans of cartoons probably already know about this, but Avatar was an anime-styled series on Nickelodeon. The story centered around an 11 year old boy named Aang who was essentially the world's reincarnated messiah. Upon learning that he was to be the new "Avatar", Aang runs away from the heavy responsibility and, through a mishap, accidentally puts himself into a state of suspended animation. He is awoken 100 years later to find that the world has changed irrevocably.

The Avatar world was once controlled by four relatively harmonious powers, each taking it's name and theme from one of the four mystical elements - Air, Earth, Fire, & Water. While Aang was gone, the Fire Nation became aggressive and wiped out the Air Nation and now has it's sights set on global domination. Aang finds that he has little choice but to become the Avatar to save the world.

Beyond the excellent story and art direction, what makes Avatar really sweet is the "bending". Some of the people in this fantasy world can perform a mystical form of fighting that combines actual martial arts forms with the release of elemental energy that takes the form of whatever nation the character is from. The Fire Nation sends out fireballs with their kicks and punches, for example.

Aang is an Airbender. He is now the last of his kind and hunted by the Fire Nation, which has learned of his return. But, to become the Avatar, Aang must master the other three elemental forms. The friends he meets along the way will help him on his journey.

So now, later this year, there is a live action film coming out based on the cartoon. Directed by M. Night Shyamalan, its titled "The Last Airbender" to avoid conflicting with Cameron's Avatar. I've been cautiously optimistic about the film, mostly because Shyamalan has been a very hit-or-miss director. A couple of his movies are great (Sixth Sense, Unbreakable) but a lot of the rest are crap as he works hard to get his famous and often ridiculous plot twists in. The story of "Airbender" is pretty cut and dry, however, so there's not a lot he can do to it without completely ruining the overall story.

Which brings me to this...

If you are a fan of the cartoon and this doesn't give you goosebumps for the possible awesomeness of this movie, you must not have a pulse to begin with.
Thanks to this leaked teaser trailer (its scheduled to show with the Super Bowl commercials this weekend), this movie has now bumped out Iron Man 2 for the movie I am most excited about seeing this year.

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

Lone Wolf Development sends cease and desist to Privateer Press

2010-02-04T00:01:00.001-06:00

If you follow Tabletop Gaming News, you may have heard about a "cease and desist" letter from Lone Wolf Development (makers of the Army Builder force creation software) to Privateer Press. In summary, the letter requested (under threat of legal action) that PP educate their forum users that Army Builder was not a generic term for any program of that type, but was to be used for referring to the actual product only. This is much like correcting someone who refers to some off-brand building blocks as LEGO.

Now I understand that LWD feels the legal need to protect it's copyrighted name, or they lose it and it just becomes part of people's everyday vernacular. But seriously, this seems to me to be beyond ludicrous on several levels.

First, the "education" of the PP forum. I just don't get this. Maybe it's because their forums are owned and run by a corporate entity, but can LWD really demand that PP censor the posts of however many thousands of members they have for the usage of army builder as a common term? I would think that unless an actual employee of Privateer was using the name generically, Lone Wolf wouldn't really have a leg to stand on. Then again, I'm no lawyer.

Second, the letter itself. While apparently the intent was to be friendlier than a formal C&D letter from a lawyer, Lone Wolf's casual way of presenting their demands made it read very much like a veiled threat. Much like you would get from someone in the Mafia - . "Nice store you have here.. It's be a shame if something happened with it." Something like this needs the formality of a lawyer's pen to sterilize it.

Then you also have to take into account the ridiculousness that comes to light when you realize that Lone Wolf has made it's name with Army Builder over the last several years by working with other companies' copyrighted information. They've skirted around legal action by only providing links to "user generated" lists and not hosting any on their own site. I won't delve into nastiness here, just let it be known that I really dislike hypocrisy in general and this situation really seems to take the cake.

So here we are. In response, Privateer not only made the letter publicly available on their forums, but they are now using a word filter to totally block out the words "army builder" on their forums and replacing it with iBodger (their similar program for the iPhone). Some may call this petty, but I say it's just desserts. If Lone Wolf doesn't want to play nice, then Privateer Press will just pick up it's bat and ball and go home.

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

Say it ain't so, WotC!

2010-02-02T23:49:00.009-06:00

Yes, after many years, and some hits and misses, Wizards of the Coast will be dropping their Star Wars license this May. I don't play the RPG so I'm not really commenting on that. I'm only going to be talking about the miniature line.

I'm very torn about this, really. WotC did a passable job with the tabletop. Oh, the game itself was pretty meh in my opinion, but the figures were really not too bad for pre-paints. There were some schlocky ones to be sure, but overall everything looked pretty good on the table. I filled up my collection early and thanks to eBay, I have more troopers for the Rebellion and Empire than I will probably ever use. Most later sets dealt more with the newer movies and extended universe, however, and interested me less since I'm an original trilogy fan. Every so often they would throw us OT'ers a bone like with the Force Unleashed set, which filled in just about everything need to play a Hoth battle. So I will miss it, just for the few odds and ends that would occasionally interest me enough to eBay for them.

However, I do see this as a possible blessing in disguise. Star Wars is an epic universe. It deserves an epic game. I'd really like to see a company try to pick up the license and do 15mm scale with it. I see more and more awesome 15mm stuff out there and I think it's a great scale for both size and level of detail.

What would ultimately make the game for me is getting Lucasfilm to allow a little play with the Rebellion era and flesh out some more Rebellion equipment. I mean, Jeez! In just about every video game, book, comic book, what have you, the Empire had some new version of a TIE fighter or Stormtrooper. The poor Rebellion is always stuck with the same ol' crap all through the OT until you get to the novels after Return of the Jedi. I get the idea that the Rebels didn't have the resources that the Empire did, but they had to have something for land battles beyond the Snowspeeder. Heck, if Incom can defect and make X-wings and Mon Calamari can make starships, why can't someone provide some tanks? Hmmm?

It is a big license though and it comes with a lot of strings attached. I just really hope we don't end up with another pre-paint/collectible line. Or, *shudder* a clicky game. Ugh! No offense to fans of Heroclix, etc,. but I want to be able to use my miniatures in other games too and I don't want some obnoxious dial on my bases, thank you very much.

Regardless, you can bet on one thing- Whomever picks up the license will have their hands full and large boots to fill.

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

Gen Con housing? Check.

2010-01-27T00:13:00.000-06:00

Well it's late January and it's time to gear up for Gen Con 2010 already. Badge registration opened this last Sunday and housing was yesterday and boy what fun that was. Once again, the instant housing opens up, 10,000 anxious gamers plow into Indianapolis' Passkey servers and bam! Instant log jam.

Like any good anxious Gen Con attendee, I had been researching the different hotels for weeks. Planning, figuring out amenities, walking distance, etc,. My time spent was well rewarded as I had put together a list of hotels that fit my needs but also weren't any of the primo hotels (Marriott, Westin, Hyatt, Embassy) that everyone goes for first.

I settled on the new SpringHill Suites by Marriott, which is part of the huge new Marriott complex being built kitty corner to the convention center. I like the extra space that the suite hotels offer. Plus, having a microwave and refrigerator in the room will make eating very cheap this year. Also, free internet! After my inability to blog from the con last year, I made sure I wasn't paying for something that should come with the room anyway. Being kitty-corner is still nice and close and, eventually, it will even have it's own covered walkway (affectionately known as hamster tubes) but that won't be finished in time for the con.

So, getting back to the registration log jam. I got in right away, quickly filled out the forms, clicked book it, and promptly got a "server reset" error page. ARRRGGH! Backed out a page, tried again. Same thing. I was getting a little panicked now, but I kept cool and just backed out all the way, refilled the forms, clicked book it and... *crossed my fingers and watched the page loading status on my screen*... BOOYAH! Confirmed registration by seven minutes after opening.

After calling my wife in victory, I logged onto the Gen Con forums to see how it went for everyone else... Oh, the horror stories! People getting totally locked up. Some, getting as far as having filled out the forms and clicking "book it" only to be told that their room was taken. Some ending up with their 'bottom of the barrel' choice. I was LUCKY! I completely credit it to my choice of hotel and also Comcast's speed.

Oh well, that stress is over. Now I can just concentrate on raking together enough money to actually pay for the hotel stay. Did I mention I have I have some eBay stuff up? ;)

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

I'm back in business!!

2010-01-25T00:19:00.000-06:00

Long-time readers will remember that last year I was selling off a bunch of my friend Dan's gaming stuff that he couldn't take down to Texas. It went very well for us and with the money we raised and split we both got to Gen Con. It was a lot of work but it was totally worth it.

Well I'm back for round two! I still have several tubs and boxes of Dan's stuff to go through. So, after taking a while off, I'm back and trying to clear out what I have left. I'll also be throwing in some of my things as well occasionally.

This weeks stuff is all for Vietnam era wargaming, in both 10mm and 20mm scales. There's some awesome painted figs, as well as some rulebooks and the rest of the minis are new in the package.

Take a look here to see what's for sale. Thanks!

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

Never ask me to spend money just so I can spend money.

2010-01-24T10:01:00.003-06:00

I've talked about and played Arcane Legions from Wells Expeditions in the past. Great game. Great company. One thing from them that I was never very fond of, however, was their Centurion Club. For a monthly fee, you got access to a unit building program that would provide point values and print out tournament legal cards for your custom units. Not only that, but you also were allowed to buy exclusive figures that were available only through the Centurion Club.

Now the custom unit maker is very nice, but mostly I was interested in buying the exclusive units. The problem, however, is that I really hate to pay for a subscription just so I can buy something cool. So I never joined. I just registered with their main site and figured I'd either find the wanted units on eBay or at cons.

No longer! As of Friday, Wells Expeditions announced that the Centurion Club will no longer cost a fee to be a member and anyone who registered on the site was now fully vested for free. This is fantastic! Now I can pick up the dragons I've wanted for my Chinese and I can play with the unit creator.

Although, it does leave me wondering a bit. Was the subscription thing just not panning out for them? Perhaps sales are dropping off unexpectedly and by opening it up to everyone they hope to re-stimulate the game. I do know that the game has been out for a few months now. After a decent release, it had been a bit quiet as other new games came out and stole some of the spotlight away from Arcane Legions.

Whatever reason it may be, I'm glad to see this come along. I think it's a great idea and I hope it works for them to continue to grow interest in this great game!

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

The first step is admitting you have a problem

2010-01-22T11:21:00.003-06:00

I'm a man of distraction. I need to make myself lists of things to do or I can be so easily swayed by things my brain -wants- me to do. Thankfully, this has never lead me towards any actual substance abuse. But it can make for a frustrating night when I have mental plans to do creative things like work on minis or write here, and instead I head over to PlayCatan to play for a few hours.

PlayCatan is a place where you can play the ever-entertaining Euro-style board game known as The Settlers of Catan online. The site starts in German but there's a little button on the right side to make it English. Immediately, without even registering, you can play a game of Catan against two computer opponents as a trial. You can play as many times as you want, but the board layout will always be the same.

If you register on the site for free, then you gain access to online play of the basic game (no expansions) versus live opponents. If you do choose to pay for membership (just under $7 a month US), then you can play many other different styles of the game including expansions and other variations on the theme.

Game play works just like the boardgame. A random map is generated, then players take turns placing their first two settlements. This differs slightly from the original version I have where you start out with a settlement and a city, but it doesn't detract from the game. Then players take turns rolling the dice, generating resources, and building until they get to the 10 victory points to win.

The game's interface is fairly elegant, but it will take a little while to get used to the buttons, especially for trading. A mouse-over explains what the buttons do, but it can easy to misclick if you aren't paying enough attention. Games, however, are pretty relaxed for the most part. Oh, there are a few who take it a bit seriously, but most of the people I've played with have been fun and sometimes chatty as well.

What is especially nice, is the ability to pull up statistics of the game while in play. Think you've seen '6' rolled like crazy but you can't remember the last time an '8' was rolled? Bring up the statistics window and see for yourself. It really helps when you're deciding where to place that next settlement, or what you need to compensate for when a number isn't coming up often enough. It will also tell you how many of each resource has been given out and you can even go further in detail, but I'd suggest not bogging down the game too much or your opponents aren't going to be too happy.

So, if you enjoy Euro boardgames or just need another excuse to waste your time like I obviously do, then check out PlayCatan. Then join me in my recovery program.

Hello, my name is Jack, and I am a Catanoholic.

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

Of Scyrah, Cygnar and Gears

2010-01-16T23:40:00.007-06:00

Hey all, I know it's been a while but I got a lot done over the last two weeks..

I finished off the assembly of my Retribution of Scyrah force for Warmachine. Or, at least everything that I own so far.

Originally, I was going to use magnets on the Phoenix, to be able to change it into either the Manticore or the Hydra, but I changed my mind. I'm likely to want multiple heavy Myrmidons eventually anyway, so I decided not to go through the extra effort. I also added on my Dahlia Hallyr and Skarath models (the snake thing and the model to it's left). They had originally been for my Circle army for Hordes, but since they'll work for the Retribution as well (and she's an elf), I thought they'd make a good match.

Got started on the Cygnar stuff that I have as well. So far just my Stormclad 'Jack and a unit of Sword Knights.

Once I get everything that I have put together for them, I'll be able to start working through the rules. I plan on doing a solo battle or two, just to get set in my head before I start teaching my friends how to play. I haven't picked up a copy of the new Mk. II Warmachine rules yet, but that's the next gaming thing on my list.

Here's some close-ups of the Stormclad, Phoenix, & Dahlia Hallyr with Skarath

I also finished assembling my first unit of Northern Gears for Heavy Gear: Blitz.

I really like these guys, but they do suffer from a slightly less perfect casting process than the Privateer Press models. Unfortunately, I only thought about doing a full review of them after I already had them put together, so I'm going to try and take pictures of assembly from now on so I can put up good reviews.

I also managed to get in a couple of games. On New Years Day I had some of the guys over to play board games. Forgot to take any pictures though. Dave B., Dave P., Jack, & Chris showed up and we played our first game of Descent. I bought this with the last batch of auction credit I had and I've been jonesing to play it ever since then. It took us a while, as we were all new to the rules, and we were missing a few important bits here and there. I was playing the Overlord and I won before they got out of the second room.
Normally this would bother me, as it felt like they really didn't have a chance. But now having played it and seeing what we missed in the rules, I think the heroes would have a much better chance.

Later we played Last Night on Earth: the zombie game. I'm not a huge fan of anything zombie related honestly. I think they are WAY overdone these days. That being said, if I have to play a zombie game, this is the one I want to play. Chris brought along his copy and we had a great time. The survivors pulled of a very narrow victory, which makes for a good movie ending.

Finally, Dave P. came back over on Friday to work through the rules of Heavy Gear: Blitz with me. Since I got it for Christmas, I've been talking it up to him since I know he likes hard sci-fi settings as I'll need an opponent if I'm going to play the game. I didn't take any pictures since we were using a bunch of proxies, but we were able to grind through the rules. I'm planning on doing a full review of the rulebook, but for now I will say that despite having a rather simple core mechanic, the rules as written do not do a very good job of conveying just how it's all supposed to work. Some stuff seems either left out or glazed over. Once we started getting things down, however, we both liked how it was playing out. We still have some questions on how certain parts work though so I'll be doing some research before our next game.

So that's got us pretty much caught up. The only other thing gaming-wise I did over the last two weeks was make a quick trip into Games Plus. I picked up a Thunderhammer Strider for Heavy Gear and the rulebook for Firestorm Armada. No ships yet though since I'm waiting for the two races that didn't release at launch.

As always, I will strive to post more often. So, until tomorrow (hopefully),
-Jack

2009 - Jack's year in review

2010-01-01T09:55:00.006-06:00

Well I have to say that 2009 was a pretty good year for me overall. Both in gaming as well in other things.

A few highlights include:

Found out I was going to be a daddy for the second time.

(It's a girl! Time to buy some pink dice)

Started and maintained this blog.

(For a whole year! woohoo!)

Actually finished some miniatures!

(5 Lizardmen, 7 boats, & 9 Romans - more than 20!)

Seriously, that has to be a record for me.

Went to 3 game cons, including the Mack Daddy of them all-
Gen Con

(Ebayed my butt off over the summer to get Dan and us there)
(but it was so worth it!)

Had two fantastic auctions at Games plus.

(And spent hours there spending my credit)

Ran a game at a con.

(Been wanting to that for years)

Did more actual gaming than I have in recent years.

(Have to justify all the money I spend somehow)

And just a few lowlights:

One of my good friends moved out of state.

Watched this town's one decent game store die a slow death

(Actually closed it's doors for the last time last night.)

I had been shopping there for over 20 years!

Didn't do so well with the daily blog post thing.
I dropped the daily theme but I'm still posting much more often :)

So now we're here in 2010. What am I looking forward to?

The birth of my daughter!

Gen Con!

Getting even more miniatures finished this year!

Trying to maintain a decent level of gaming with a new baby.

Keep stopping by to see how those things turn out!

Happy 2010!

Until tomorrow,

-Jack

Found a new daily hangout.

2009-12-31T00:01:00.002-06:00

I can't believe I haven't come across this site until now. MiniatureReview.com is an awesome blog-style news website about miniatures, miniatures, and more miniatures! The site predominately covers smaller scale sci-fi, mostly from 15mm and smaller, but also covers terrain and news from supporting companies like Litko Aerosystems.

One of the greatest things about this place, is that the author posts comparison shots of similar minis so that you can see size differentials for those of us who like to mix manufacturers.

Check it out! I'm also going to add it to the link bar above.

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

Santa reads my blog apparently!

2009-12-28T00:11:00.009-06:00

I hope everyone had a great holiday season this year! At my house, we celebrate Christmas and boy was Santa with it this time around. My son was overloaded with toys and video games but Santa didn't just stop with him. The jolly old elf took care of myself and Mrs. Jack as well.

I won't go into my wife's loot (unless you really want to hear about food processors and scrapbooking stuff) but I was amazed at the accuracy of Santa's gift giving ability, even at my age.

Last month, I wrote a rather lengthy post weighing the pluses and minuses of the two small scale sci-fi games that I was thinking of getting into; Heavy Gear: Blitz and Classic Battletech. Well, it seems that Santa read that and made the decision for me by giving me Heavy Gear: Blitz. The color hardcover version as well! Also, knowing that just the book wouldn't be enough, he gave me a Northern General Purpose squad to get me started. This has five standard Gears in it, and extra pieces to be able to kit them out with a variety of options. As you can see, I've already started on them.

Another nice gift was the new, revised edition of the Uncharted Seas rulebook. I had been looking forward to getting this to get me back to being excited about the game. Maybe now I can finish the two fleets that I have.

And lastly, the Nerf gun. Now you might be wondering why Santa would give me a Nerf gun. It certainly doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of my gifts. Well, considering that my son received the Nerf equivalent of an M249 SAW, he probably thought it might be a good idea for me to have something to defend myself with.

Now mine has interchangeable parts, with the base of it looking like a very heavy sci-fi pistol. I like adding the barrel extension to get something more akin to a Stormtrooper rifle. It only fires one bullet as a time, but has a clip-fed mechanism that works far better than I'd expect (though it does jam occasionally).

My son's, however, is a true beast. It's really too heavy for him to carry around action movie style (yet), but luckily it comes with an integral tripod. This thing is fully-automatic! It is belt fed, which again, works much better than I expected. And it fires at a rate of almost three bullets a second! Yikes!

Of course, the only bad thing about Nerf gun fights is reloading the damn things. For the approximately 15 seconds of full-auto fun my son has holding down the trigger and watching foam bullets fly down range (the hallway), I get to spend about 5 minutes helping him collect all the bullets and pushing them back into the belt.

Still, it's totally worth it!

Thanks Santa for a great Christmas despite the horrible weather (ice storm) and WAY too much food.
*loosens belt*
If I don't watch it, I'll have to start going by "Jack of all treats"

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

Happy Holidays from Jack!!

2009-12-23T22:21:00.002-06:00

I'd like to take a moment and thank everyone who takes the time to read my little blog. When I first started, I figured I'd be lucky if I managed to get my close friends to stop by and read every so often. Now almost a year after starting up, while I don't have tons of readers, the ones that do read stop in from just about every corner of the globe.
I do appreciate it and it keeps me going even when I get distracted for a few days here and there. Thanks for reading and if you enjoy my blog, pass me along to your other gaming buddies :)

On a holiday related note, I just can't resist posting this little piece of awesomeness from the D6 Generation podcast. If you can get past the questionable singing, it's hilarious in a way only us gamers would understand.

Until tomorrow (or possibly after Christmas),
-Jack

Your LEGO guy just blew up my Pokemon!!

2009-12-21T13:40:00.004-06:00

If any of you remember, I didn't like Ex Illis when I demoed it at Gen Con because I thought it was two separate games trying to blend and doing it poorly. I'd like to pass along this little video that is more in line with how I think computer visuals and miniature gaming could be brought together.

SCOPE - Augmented Reality Toys.v3 from Frantz Lasorne on Vimeo.

It looks like it needs some work yet, but this really does seem awesome to me. However, I still think it just needs to take the extra step and make the models CGI too, in which case it would be a true tabletop video game.

Found it at The Drunk Dwarves blog.

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

A mild case of Gamer OCD

2009-12-20T06:00:00.001-06:00

A few weeks ago I was debating over what RPG I might like to run in the near future. I was leaning towards Mutants & Masterminds but I also said I had been buying some of the D&D 4th ed. books at a pretty good discount...
Well let's just say that I've been finding a bunch of good deals.

This is several hundred dollars with of books and I've gotten almost all of them for well below 50% of retail. Thank you eBay! Given the prices I'm getting some of these at, I don't think 4th ed. has been as popular as WotC hoped, but I really like it. It has options galore and is easily the most wargamer-friendly version of the rules that has ever come out.

I figure it as an investment. Even if I don't end up doing any D&D in the near future, my son will be roleplaying age in a few more years and given what he's interested in now, I'm pretty sure he'll want to play.

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

So just how do you say TWiW??

2009-12-19T06:00:00.005-06:00

tooWEEooo?
tooWOO?
Okay, so it doesn't roll off the tongue like the D6G, but that doesn't make it any less of a great podcast.

Of course I'm talking about This Week in Wargaming, a weekly podcast that summarizes the week's news in, you guessed it, wargaming.

Fresh from a reboot, TWiW is now hosted by Ken Whitehurst after taking over from the original host, "Big Troy" McCauley. Troy has moved on to better things (like getting married! Congrats!) but you couldn't ask for a better replacement.

Now, some of you may already know Ken from his segment, The Score, that makes regular appearances on the D6G podcast. If you do, then you'll already know that he has a mind for detail and great insights, not only into the music he brings for The Score, but also for tabletop gaming in general. His new start in taking over TWiW is proving to be right up his alley as well.

In a typical episode Ken goes through the weeks headlines in gaming and gives feedback and commentary to the new miniatures, games and terrain that are coming down the pipeline. He also plans on having guests on to do reviews and commentary of their own. For example, episode AT-1 (AT=After Troy), includes a great piece from Joe Krause, an attorney and gamer, who discusses GW's recent cease and desist craziness.
Not afraid to mix it up as well, Episode AT-2 also features a new segment Ken refers to as "Dude!" (as in, "Dude, that's AWESOME!"), where he takes a closer look at one news item that really piques his interest and goes into more detail about it.

All in all, I would say that Ken is a great fit for TWiW. He pays attention to the hobby and covers many aspects of it, not just the one game he's most interested in. He also has a good voice for podcasting, which is more important than you think. After all, who really wants to listen to someone who sounds like a bad imitation of the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.

If you aren't already, give This Week in Wargaming a listen. I know I've already added it to my podcast lineup.

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

Scenery on the cheap

2009-12-18T06:00:00.003-06:00

Dan passed along this great site to me. Toposolitario.com is a great resource for FREE scenery and vehicles for your modern/sci-fi wargaming needs.

This is some really cool stuff and it comes with the best price tag. The only thing that would make it better is if it came along with the ink my printer will go through to print up all of the stuff I want to.

Until later,
-Jack

A little more assembly required

2009-12-17T06:00:00.001-06:00

My Retribution army for Warmachine is almost fully assembled. I'm only waiting to put the last Myrmidon together because I still need to order the magnets so that I can switch out it's parts.

The guys in back that are half primed are the Invictor unit. These guys I had started right after I got back from Gen Con last August. Got them primed and started painting but wasn't happy about how it was coming out. I'll probably have to strip the one's I started on. No biggie.

This army is meant to be 35 points. I can pretty much fit everything in, depending on which version of the heavy myrmidon I take. If I go with the Manticore at 8 points, then I can take the Invictor squad's command models. However, with my warcaster's smackdown spell list, I'll probably mostly stick with a Phoenix so I make the best use of the arc nodes. It's giant, bad-ass, flaming sword doesn't hurt either.

I should start up my Cygnar stuff very soon, though I will probably need to add on to them a bit as all I have are a couple of 'casters and 4 'jacks.

Until later,
-Jack

A headful of rats!

2009-12-14T13:35:00.003-06:00

TGN just posted this earlier today. Smart Max has some great steampunk miniatures out and this one has to be one of the coolest I've seen yet!

A cobblestone street golem, complete with pipework and sewer accouterments sprouting out of him. If you look at the other pics of the miniature on their site, you can see the detail also includes a swarm of rats behind the sewer grate that functions as the creature's face/mouth. I also love how it's wading through the cobblestones on the street. Fantastic!

Check them out! http://www.smartmaxstore.com/

Angels in action

2009-12-13T18:00:00.004-06:00

Here's a great clip of a lucky (crazy?) guy who rode in the back seat of #7 during a Blue Angels show. #7 is their two-seater that they use for taking the local media up to see what it's like to fly with the 'Angels and also as a backup. Here #7 is taking the spot usually reserved for #4 in the back of the diamond formation.
You really get to see just how close they get to each other.
Credit to my Dad for the passing along the clip.

Enjoy!

Awesomesauce!

2009-12-10T21:38:00.002-06:00

I happened to open up the Kampfgruppe 1/144 blog the other day and I was treated to this...

Yes, it's the next series of the Star Wars models I've been collecting, and damn if it's not just about everything I wanted! The A-Wing and B-wing were especially high on my list. Wedge's X-wing (Red 2, duh) is also a great addition as it should bring down the price of the X-wings on eBay now that there will be two of them. I'm even excited about the Trade Federation Tank, though now I'll have to pick up some of the Clone Walkers to fight them. The interesting thing is, the secret item at the very bottom of the picture is obviously a TIE Interceptor. I just hope that doesn't drive up the eBay price too much as I'll be wanting a bunch of those too.

When I saw this, I also learned one very important thing. You have to be careful when surfing the internet in public, especially when you're on break at work. It can be a little hard to explain your gleeful cackling to your co-workers. Of course everyone thinks you saw something funny and well it's just awkward to tell them you're excited about tiny Star Wars models from Japan that you want to use for gaming.

Yeah.. don't tell them that.

Here's some higher res pics of the new models:

Coming to a shelf near me in February 2010!

Until next time,
-Jack

Not -another- game!!

2009-12-04T10:13:00.001-06:00

Long time readers will remember that when I started this blog earlier this year my first project was my fleet for Uncharted Seas from Spartan Games.

I've been a little frustrated with Spartan Games for a while because the first release of the Uncharted Seas rules, while good, were quickly rendered obsolete as Spartan used their forums as a giant suggestion box and printed up a much-revised version. While this might be seen as a good thing, especially since by some accounts the rules are better, I'm bothered by the fact that I need to buy a new rulebook a little over a year after the first release.

Well, now Spartan has released its starship flavored version of the 'Seas ruleset.

I'm trying very hard not to be excited about it. After all, I already have so much stuff that I'm either already working on or want to start working on. But the ships are pretty sweet and Russ Wakelin from the D6 Generation podcast has posted his initial thoughts on the game over at DakkaDakka. It's really making it difficult to not want to dive in.

Knowing me, I will probably give in to the awesomeness eventually. For now, however, I can at least wait until the D6G gets in some games and gives a full review on their show.

Until tomorrow,

-Jack

Viva la Retribution!

2009-12-03T06:00:00.004-06:00

Just a quick post for today to officially kick off my next project (which is actually the current one since I've already started). This time my goal is to get the rest of my Retribution of Scyrah army assembled.

The biggest trick with this project is the Heavy Myrmidon (what the elves call their Warjacks). It's a plastic model, and it comes with all of the pieces to assemble it as any of the three variations available; Manticore, Hydra, or Phoenix. This, of course, offers the opportunity to be able to swap out parts via tiny magnets.

I still need to order the magnets through eBay, so I'll probably get around to the Heavy last, but that's alright as I still have plenty to assemble. If I get lucky and I get another warm 50+ degree day before winter finally settles in, I might even get them primed.

After that, assuming I keep up my excitement about Warmachine, will be assembling what I have for Cygnar.

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

Did anyone get the number of that holiday??...

2009-12-02T01:05:00.005-06:00

It seems like forever since I last posted. Which is funny since I used to have much longer gulfs between my updates than this.

Welcome back to the Jack of all games blog. I'm your host, Jack. Freshly recovered from the last two crazy weeks that included everything from a trip into my favorite hobby store, gaming, modeling, Thanksgiving, and of course lets not forget the stomach flu. Bleah. I won't go too much into that last part, for everyone's sakes.

It started out just great. Right about when my posts dropped off, I had taken a trip into Games Plus to finally spend Dan's remaining auction credit for him and pick up Runebound, the boardgame from Fantasy Flight. This just happened to coincide with the fact that my dear wife let me know that she had bought some scrapbooking stuff recently, and to be fair, I should be able to spend a like amount. She's great about that sort of thing.

So, a few hours and a much emptier wallet later, I came home with more Retribution stuff for Warmachine Mk. II and the new Skaven army book for Warhammer Fantasy. I love the Skaven and the new sculpts for the plastic figures are awesome. The only problem is that I haven't played Warhammer in about a year -AND- I still have a very unfinished Lizardman army that is sitting there collecting dust. So I'm really trying hard to resist the urge to buy any figures just yet. I couldn't resist the new book though.
The Retribution figures were easy since the Warcaster I wanted to use, Adeptis Rahn, was finally released, as were the Battle Mage unit and Magister Solo that he works well with. I'm really excited about the Mk. II rules being released in January and I'd like to have two 35 point armies assembled by then so I can start teaching some of my other friends to play. Thankfully, I also won a bunch of Cygnar stuff at the last Games Plus auction, so I think I can pull it off.

On the painting front, I finally finished the bear cavalry for my Romans. I really like how the inking gives the metal a nice sheen like it was actually a much darker metal that's been buffed up. They match pretty well with the heavy infantry behind them in the picture. No, I didn't sneak in a fresh project. Those guys I did back in September or so, but never talked about them. They were my test figures to see how I wanted to handle the armor on these smaller miniatures.

Lets see.. Oh I had a few more gaming acquisitions through eBay. Four more of the 1/144 Star Wars ships. This time two Y-wings and two TIE Advanced x1 (otherwise known as Vader's fighter). This brings me to a total of twelve Imperial ships and 5 Rebels. Now I just need to work on getting more X-wings to fill out a bit and I'll be good to start messing around for what rules I want to use. Likely Check your 6!
I'm really hoping that there will be further series of these models. I really want some A-Wings, B-Wings, TIE Interceptors and Bombers. I also have a source for some bigger ships in the same scale, but I'll save that for another Website Wednesday.
The other thing I got in was was a couple of Dungeons and Dragons RPG books (not pictured). The obsessive/compulsive part of me kicks in with these, and I'd like the full set of core books and supplements, but only when I can find them CHEAP. I always have my eye out for bargains on eBay and almost every book I've bought has been at 50% off MSRP or more and that's with shipping. Just have to look and be patient.

Getting back to projects for a moment, after finishing the bears I kind of put the rest of the Roman cav on the back burner for now. I'm pulling a traditional Jack here, setting something aside unfinished to work on what has my attention. Listening to the D6G guys get excited about Warmachine on their podcast and buying the rest of my Retribution force made me want to start digging into them. I assembled the Gorgon light warjack, Adeptis Rahn, the Magister, and most of the Battle Mages. The thing about Warmachine stuff is that since the sculpts are almost always very dynamic and (in the case of Warjacks) often top-heavy. This requires pinning like you would not believe, but my Dremel makes short work of that.

I'm really proud of my Warcaster even though all I did was was add something for him to stand on. He needed something to make him stand out from the rest of the units, but I wanted something simple. Digging through my drawer full of Hirst Arts casts, I found a piece of circular door that, while being sci-fi in nature, when used as a base it gives a pleasing sense of exotic fantasy appropriate for an Elven culture. I'll be giving updates on these for a while as I build everything up.

I did get some gaming in as well. Played a couple of boardgames with the family after Thanksgiving, namely Settlers of Catan and then Blokus. Both are fun for 4 players and are relatively easy to play while kids are screaming and running around in the other room.

The next day was a full day of gaming out at Craig's in Freeport. Dave and I headed out there for the Battles of Black Friday. First up was a Battlestar Galactica starship scale game that was very entertaining. The Cylons had their metal butts handed to them, and it seemed that they were at a bit of a disadvantage. I think it was mostly because their side was a bit under strength considering the offensive power of the Battlestars that the Colonials were fielding. Still a great game.

Next up was Classic Battletech with no hex-map and using the larger-scale Wizkids pre-painted mechs. This looked cool and probably would have been fun but we ducked out early because Dave had to get going (I drove us out there) and it was just as well since I was starting to feel a bit strange...

Which brings me to the flu. Yes, that night I ended up with a fever, extreme chills alternating with sweating bullets, and an inordinate amount of time spent in the bathroom. That's all I will say about that.

But I'm back to normal now, and all is right with the world again. Well, my world anyways.

Now, lets get back to it!

Until tomorrow,

-Jack

But it corners beautifully!

2009-11-24T06:20:00.000-06:00

Sorry gang. Kind of fell off the daily post wagon. It was a busy weekend and now with it being a holiday week I may not get back to a regular schedule for a couple of days.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving and thanks to everyone who does check in on my little blog!

I should be back on track by the weekend.

Until then,

-Jack

The itch that's hard to scratch

2009-11-20T10:40:00.004-06:00

Hmm.. Perhaps I should have chosen a better title. LOL!
In all seriousness though, this Crazy Idea Theater is about just that - A good old pencil and paper RPG.

Lately I've been dying to play something that requires 3-5 good friends sitting around a table, hanging out and listing to an adventure woven around them as they roleplay, solve puzzles, & fight to get their way through it (in my groups it was mostly the fight option). I also want something that has momentum. I could run a small one time adventure anytime, but I'd rather see the characters, story, and world grow.

However, now that most of my friends are in their 30's and 40's like myself, we all have way more obligations than we we ever did in our teens and 20's. Wife. Kids. House payment. Etc. It's all stuff that makes it hard to meet on a fairly regular basis to play -anything-, let alone an involved RPG. So what to do?

I've been trying to solve my problem by playing MMO's for the last few years, namely City of Heroes, but also more recently Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO). Both are fun and DDO has the bonus of being free to play, but it's just not the same. Oh sure, the world is lavishly laid out before you, that is a major plus. But my problem is that I have a tendency to solo through these games. I'm not sure why. When I am on a team, I enjoy it, but I usually don't go out of my way to join or form one of my own. I just don't have the time to invest in online friendships anymore. MMO's can also start to become repetitive as missions and adventures begin looking and feeling the same.

I think I need to move on to something bigger.

Thankfully, as I do tend to be very random with my gaming purchases, I already have a small selection of good RPG's. I have most of the core books and supplements for 4th edition D&D. Then there is Dark Heresy, which is the first Warhammer 40K RPG. Lastly, I also own Mutants & Masterminds, the superhero RPG.

D&D would be nice to run. I do like 4th edition and I certainly have the books to run it. However, the one thing about 4th ed. is that Wizards incorporated the rules for their miniature game into the combat system of the RPG. To be honest, this is great and for a wargamer like me, it adds the tactical level to the game that just wasn't present before when we would run combat in our heads and on quickly sketched out notepads. The problem is that, to be run right, you really need to have some miniatures on the table now and at the very least a grid map to play on. I actually have very few suitable fantasy miniatures (painted or unpainted) to use, which would require some serious eBay hunting, and no grid map yet. Of course in my crazy mind where I live in a magical land where I have all the time in the world and I'm a dedicated modeler, I would make an entire Hirst Arts dungeon to use. But that's another Crazy Idea Theater post.

Dark Heresy would be cool as well. After all, I'm very familiar with the 40K universe, as are most of my friends, and we've all played the tabletop game at some point. But I only have the core rulebook so I would probably need fill out with some of the supplements. Possibly Creatures Anathema and Disciples of the Dark Gods have some baddies for the players to encounter. The only thing really shying me away from this game is that it's a much darker, grittier setting. I'm more in the mood to run something a bit more upbeat.

Then there is Mutants and Masterminds. As I've said before, I have a love of superheroes that has lasted far beyond my comic book days. City of Heroes has gone a long way to filling that need but I still think it would be cool to run a game that would be essentially like writing your own comic book. I already have the core books for this one too, but my only fear here is that M&M is fairly complex. Not Champions complex, thankfully, but still pretty in-depth for a D20 system game. Not a -huge- problem, but one that I would worry would lead to a lot of page-flipping and "Uhh..." moments as I wrestled with the rules. At least until I got it down.

I'm leaning towards Mutants and Masterminds because I'd really like to try it out. I would probably make up a handful of characters on my own to eliminate character creation time, and run a couple of one-off adventures so we could get the rules down.

Now, I know what you're thinking, "Hey, I would want to make my own character!" That's absolutely fine. However, M&M's character generation is pretty mind boggling, at least for me. There are TONS of options there and I'm just concerned that, at first, everyone making totally new characters would be multiple meetings in and of itself. If I had enough guys already pre-made, we could jump right in and figure the game out. Afterward, after we knew what we were doing, then you could make the decision to either keep the one that I made up as-is, keep it but modify it, or totally make a new one. Then we would start the actual campaign and any discarded characters would then become NPCs.

So that's where I'm at with this crazy idea. Still hemming and hawing about which system to play and really whether I should endeavor to attempt it at all. As usual, I already have a million things I want to do and not nearly as much time or focus as what I want. First, before anything, I need players and a relatively regular time to play. These last two things might be the hardest part of all. Without them, the whole idea is moot anyway.

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

Gold rush!

2009-11-19T06:00:00.003-06:00

Got in a little more work last night. Finished all the gold accents (P3 Brass Balls - no, I'm not kidding) and started one model's red work (P3 Khador Red Base). Once I finish the red and the spears then it's just quick touch ups and a wash over the armor. With any luck I'll finish them tonight so that tomorrow I can give them a sealer coat and call them done.

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

Free you say?

2009-11-18T06:00:00.004-06:00

This week on Website Wednesday, I'd like to pass along an invaluable resource for those of us who don't like getting stuck in the same old battles. Or at least the same old rules.

freewargamesrules is a clearing house for.. well.. free wargame rules. Go figure.

This is an excellent site! It's well categorized by era/genre and kept updated. It has a twitter feed so you can see when links to new rule sets are added. You can also add a link to your site if you have your own rules to use.

A lot of the rulesets are pretty cool. There are even a lot of name brand games that are either out of print or are offering quick start (a.k.a "lite") rules to get players into the game.

An incredibly valuable resource for any tabletop gamer. Credit to my friend Dave for passing this along to me.

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

Progress!

2009-11-17T06:00:00.003-06:00

Well, -some- progress anyways. I know it's extremely hard to tell in the picture (one of these days I'll build a light box) but I did sit down and work on these guys for while last night. I finished off the base coating for the bears (P3 Battlefield Brown) then inked them (50/50 P3 Brown Ink & water) and finally drybrushed them (P3 Bloodtracker Brown). Now over the next couple of nights I can touch up the silver armor, put on the gold and red, then ink the rest and at least the bear cav will be done.

A little better shot of the colors.

In hindsight I really should have made the cavalry three separate tasks. I think I will do that for the rest of it.

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

Your 15 seconds of fame!

2009-11-16T06:00:00.004-06:00

Alright, let's get back to it!

To say that I am a Star Wars fan is a bit of an understatement. Okay, it's a HUGE understatement. I grew up with the movies, seeing Star Wars in the theater when I was 4, which is the same age that my son is now. I had just about every action figure and most of the vehicles, along with a chunk of other stuff.

I have the original trilogy pretty much memorized, especially Empire Strikes Back, which I can recite almost verbatim, down to the musical cues and sound effects. I've easily seen it (or listened to it) and the other movies several hundred times.

Now, if you're anything like me, you fantasized about being one of the characters in the movie when you were a kid. Heck, I still do. Some of us never grow up, I suppose. But here's the real coolness.. Now you can!

Star Wars: Uncut is a site by Casey Pugh where he has cut Star Wars: A New Hope down into 15 second segments. You can browse through the available video clips and pick one to re-enact. You can do this any number of ways with any level of quality. I've seen live acting (mostly hilariously bad) and animation (stop motion, hand-drawn, & computer). You can use the audio straight from your clip or make your own. It's all up to you.

All you have to do is sign up for a free Vimeo account and then you can pick a scene and work on it. Now don't fret if your favorite scene is taken or it seems that there aren't any available. Just wait a few days and check back. Casey is allowing multiple people to try out each clip. Once all the clips are taken, he re-opens up the entire thing again. You have 30 days to complete and upload your scene. Once your scene is done, you can choose another and do the same thing, up to a total of three.

You can watch the scenes that have been uploaded already, and then compare them to the original scene. Some of the scenes are pretty funny! Some are humorously lame. Others are just bizarre. Once he has several versions of each clip he's going to have a way to vote for your favorites and the top ones will be stitched together to make the full movie. That's the plan anyways.

Stop by and check it out! So far I haven't done a scene yet but I've thought about it. Basically it would be just one more distraction that I don't need right now. But I know I won't be able to resist when he does Empire Strikes Back: Uncut.

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

Riding the Fail Train to Failsville

2009-11-13T22:32:00.005-06:00

I thought this picture would be appropriate since I've gotten a little off track. Failed on a few things this week.

1. Barely accomplished any work on my project. Stupid iPhone!
(It is awesome though)
2. Missed my regular posts for yesterday and today.
(Beyond that funny Star Wars clip)
3. Realized after my write-up of the War Store on Wednesday that, despite my disclaimer, War Store ads were actually showing up in my Ad sense box. That was making my review a bit disingenuous. Ads are now removed.
(I really didn't like them anyway)

So, here's the deal.

No posts Saturday. It would normally be a project update, but since there's nothing to update, it's a good day to skip. I may skip Sunday as well. Depends on how much stuff I get done this weekend. My goal is to not only get some work done on my Roman cavalry, but to get myself organized and have some of my regular posts set up beforehand so I don't run into the "What am I going to write about today?" block.
Also, if all goes according to plan, posts should start going up in the early mornings before I head to work so that they are actually readable on the day they are supposed to be.

Believe it or not, I'm actually enjoying the daily themed post and I'm happy that I've been able to keep it up even this long. I just need to stay on top of it to succeed! :)

With that in mind, have a good weekend! I'll continue with regular posting come Monday for sure, but possibly Sunday morning if I get my act together sooner.

Until Monday (or Sunday)
-Jack

Just had to share this

2009-11-13T00:38:00.001-06:00

ALL NEW! Star Wars Gangsta Rap: Chronicles

Atom.com: Funny Videos | Atom Originals | Star Wars Gangsta Rap

Website Wednesday: The War Store

2009-11-11T23:18:00.012-06:00

Today's site of note happens to be one of the best game shops on the web; The War Store.

Vik the Viking - The War Store's mascot

You may have already heard about The War Store. After all, they do seem have plenty of advertising throughout the gaming community. But I thought I would share my 2¢ since I've been a happy customer of The War Store and I'll continue to order from them in the future.

Firstly, a little back story and extrapolation. Don't get me wrong, I prefer "brick & mortar" stores. After all, I would much rather walk into a store and be able to pick up and look at new games up close. Also there is the immediate gratification of buying them right away rather than waiting for days for them to come to me. Finally, good game stores have a place to play so as to meet new friends and try new games.
I would LOVE to have something like that here!
Unfortunately for me, that seems less and less likely in Rockford, IL. Now, believe it or not, we do have no less than four game stores in town. So what's the problem you ask? Well, let me give you a quick rundown;

Tomorrow is Yesterday - Used to be the place to be 5 years ago. Game room. Friendly staff, but clueless to games (they were all comic book geeks). Now it's almost dead. Haven't stocked any new games in nearly a year. There's a fire sale on what's left, which isn't really worth having.
Royal Hobby - Stocks a decent amount of games but not very deep into any line (except Flames of War). More of a general hobby store. No game room. Staff doesn't acknowledge you unless you ask a question or are ready to pay for something.
Robin's Nest - Pleasant folks but a hole-in-the-wall store. Only carries collectible games like Pokemon and Magic: the Gathering.
Games Workshop - I'll admit that it is nice to walk in and actually see people playing games and being part of the hobby. However, I'm the Jack of ALL games. I don't want just one brand of game. Although, I will say that our local staff is pretty friendly once you get past the GW hard sell tactics.

Now, to be fair, I do have one of the world's most awesome game stores relatively close by. Games Plus in Mount Prospect (NW suburb of Chicago) is a fantastic place with wall-to-wall games, minis, etc. A huge game room. Very friendly and knowledgeable staff. But, it's a frickin' hour away through Chicago traffic!
I do shop there occasionally, but certainly not often enough to satisfy my need for the shiny newness.

So, you can see I have a reason to go shopping elsewhere. That's where Neal and his crew come in.
They have a very broad selection, which is organized well on the site. It's pretty easy to navigate too, with even more improvements coming with their 10th anniversary; like drop-down menus for the games rather than having to scroll all the way down the page. You can either shop via the online shopping cart or by phone, and if you do the latter, you'll find the person on the other end to be very knowledgeable. Customer service is also excellent. One of my orders had a couple of damaged items due to rough postage handling. Called right away and had replacement items in hand a couple days later, no questions asked. Also a quick refund to my bank account for the shipping cost of sending the damaged stuff back.

The War Store's new look for the 10th anniversary!

Most everything is at some discount, usually ranging in around 20%, which is always nice, and shipping is quick and always just $5.95. That last part is fantastic, especially when you're buying heavy board games. All in all, a great place to shop.

In closing, if you don't have a brick & mortar store nearby or the one you have just isn't doing the job, then give The War Store a try. I think you'll be happy you did.

Until tomorrow-
Jack

*just in case anyone was wondering, this was not paid advertisement and is totally my honest opinion. I have no affiliation with The War Store beyond being a customer.

Project update #2

2009-11-10T06:30:00.003-06:00

I'm afraid that I'm not coming along nearly as far as I hoped. Had a fairly busy weekend, and getting a distracting new phone did not help at all. Still, I've had more motivation to actually work on them when I've had a few minutes here and there.

What I'll probably do is just continue with this project and not start a new one on Thursday. It will just be a regular update on these guys. I do have the desire to get them done. I just need to get the time now (and put down the damn phone).

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

This might sting a little...

2009-11-09T21:13:00.003-06:00

I'm not sure which is funnier here. The joke itself, or that someone actually assembled a Space Marine in a funny pose. Either way, this one makes me chuckle every time I see it.

Until tomorrow,
-Jack

Arcane Legions and iPhones, Oh my!

2009-11-09T00:43:00.008-06:00

Welcome to Slice of Life Sunday. I really need to get these posts done ahead of time so that they can actually be read on the day they're supposed to be. Ah well, 'work in progress' and all that..

My friend Dave came over on Friday night to give Arcane Legions another try. This time with full 7000 point armies. Dave took the Han and I played the Romans again.

It was a great game. Close all the way through, including the very end where I won by one victory point, which came down to a single die roll. Intense!

My MVP? Familia Bovis. Unit 1-053. Mixed unit of minotaurs, warriors, and healers. 1300 points of smackdown. Moves decent for heavy infantry. Okay saves. Hits hard. Can bring back dead minotaurs. Awesome! Gotta laugh at the name though. Wouldn't that translate to "cow family"? LOL!

There are still a few things in this game that are kind of niggling me. Mostly because, for an army scale game, sometimes it almost feels like a skirmish game with units standing in for individual minis. What I mean is, the rules encourage you to concentrate your maneuvers with 3-4 units, while the rest of your army lags behind. There's really nothing wrong with that. It's just different.

I guess that's how it would work in real ancient armies. After all, they didn't benefit from instant communication, GPS, etc. Some units would surge ahead and do what they were told. Others would hold back in reserve. A few would just stand around and go 'duh'.

More than anything, it's just purely an adjustment I'll need to make. I'm just used to playing Warhammer. When I see that many figures on the board at one time I want to move them all in my turn, and not just 2-3 units.

It does make for a very fast game, however. Which is a rather nice departure from Warhammer and it's 4-8 hour games. Dave and I talked for a good couple of hours while pointing up forces and doing quick assembly on a few last minis we needed. I think we talked for longer than the game lasted.

I also got a new iPhone this weekend. Not overly hobby newsworthy other than I do know that there are some gaming apps available for it. I have to admit that it's one of the coolest things I've ever owned. I know there are some people who don't like them, or think AT&T is expensive and doesn't have enough coverage, but I love it! For my money, it does everything I want it to do and lots more.

Hey! A blog within a blog! ;)

If anything, I'm worried that it will distract me from my projects. At least at first.
Time will tell.

Until tomorrow,
-Jack