The Game Collector

Where Do I Go From Here

2012-01-03T23:06:00.005-07:00

Well, 2011 is over and it has been a very crazy year. I spent a lot of time refocusing my hobby efforts. This lead to several things. First, I split my time between miniature gaming and board gaming. It seems that I like to go in spurts between the two. Second, I decided to sell off a good chunk of items that I was not using anymore (not that you could tell if you look at my game room).

So first, out with the old. Things I sold off in 2011:

- Several boardgames that I will not miss. Instead of keeping games just to keep them, I decided that if I did not like a game, I would just sell it.

- All GW products. At this point, I do not own any GW products except for my blood bowl teams. I do not miss those games one bit

- Uncharted Seas. After playing Dystopian Wars several times, I decided that I no longer needed Uncharted Seas. Dystopian Wars uses a similar system but it combines air, ground, and naval. Unfortunately, at the end of the year, Spartan Games decided they would make some "rules clarifications." By clarifications, they mean rules changes and big modifications. This game is now on the back burner again until the new rulebook comes out so I do not have to shuffle through the old rules and 3 separate PDF documents.

- Infinity. Overall, the game was decent. However, the rules were a pain and hard to memorize unless you played it all the time. The biggest flaw in the rules is that the books do not come with any scenarios. Unfortunately, the game requires scenarios to be good. Otherwise, there is no reason for either side to leave cover. I could make my own scenarios but I am lazy and frustrated by game companies that do not produce a complete product. Most importantly, this game was beaten out by Urban War which I will discuss later.

In with the new. What I focused on most in 2012:

- Solo Boardgaming. I spent a lot of time playing solo boardgames. I found two companies that focus on the solo gamer, DVG games and Victory Point Games. Both companies produce hi quality and fun solitaire games. I cannot say enough about the two companies and their games.

- Combat Commander. I got to play tons of my favorite WW2 board game, Combat Commander. If you have not played it, do yourself a favor and check it out. It is by far the best war-game I have ever played.

- Gears of War. This game was released in August this year by Fantasy Flight Games. It is an awesome cooperative sci-fi dungeon crawl game.

- Warmachine/Hordes. Mark II of the rules turned out to be a terrific second edition of the game. I got in several games with one friend and even got another friend to dust off his models after 7 years. These rules are by far the best set of rules I have seen. Whether you like the game or not, the rules are airtight. They are relatively short, easy to follow, and are very comprehensive. It is one of the few games I have played where the answers to questions that pop up are always in the book.

- Urban War. This game took off like wild fire for me. I tried the first edition a few years ago with my friend Tim. We both thought the game was decent, especially since it was skirmish based and only had about 10 models a side. However, the rules were written between 3 magazine articles so it was tedious and hard to find stuff. It never got played again. This summer, while cruising on the net one night, I found that they released a second edition of Urban War. Luckily, the rules were released as a PDF so I had to buy them. I read through them and loved what they did to the game. They kept the core of first edition but streamlined it and made it a quick, simple game. My friend Rob and I tried it and we were immediately hooked. Armies are roughly 8-12 models and the game is very scenario oriented. The company is fantastic (Urban Mammoth) and has posted at least 15 scenarios in addition to the several included in the rules. Games take about an hour, they are always close and each faction has its own play style. This game is perfect for me in every way.

- Malifaux. This game is a skirmish game that hit the scene in 2010. I have been playing it since it came out and overall it is a decent game. Again, this is a skirmish game and each army has about 6-8 models. The games play in an hour or so and overall the game is decent. I think there are some play balance issues but if you play with the right people the game is fun. I expect this to get less play in 2012 and I will likely sell of some of my collection.

- Two Hour Wargames. I have had mixed feelings about this system for years. Originally, when Ed from Two Hour Wargames started pumping out rules, I began to purchase them to support him, especially since he was from Arizona. The most intriguing part of the game company is that all of their games are designed to be played solo, cooperatively, or against each other. This is a very unique concept. About 4 years ago, I sat down with Tim and tried THW's WW2 game NUTS!. About 20 minutes into the game, we were both miserable. The rules were poorly written and disorganized. We called the game a disaster. About 6 months after that, my friend Tom and I decided to try another one of the THW games, All Things Zombies. This time, we played on the same team fighting against the evil horde. This game was more enjoyable than NUTS! but the rules were poorly written and hard to find things you needed during a game. Since the game of All Things Zombies, I have purchased almost every rules set THW has produced but I never played them. The games seemed to play themselves and quite honestly, the rules are so poorly written that I did not want to deal with them. Oddly enough, as I became so interested in solo games this year, I decided to give them another try. My friend Jerry was nice enough to run me through a game of 5150 Star Army, Two Hour Wargames' new sic-fi game. It was amazing. I have never played such an immersive miniatures game before where I felt like I was playing out a story. Don't get me wrong, the rules are still horribly written and it is impossible to find things in the rule book, but I am willing to over look that for such a fun solo game.

- Blood Bowl. The end of year saw a resurgence of this classic board game. A friend of mine started a league in December and it was tons of fun. The second league should be starting in January.

Flames of War. FOW has a huge resurgence this year and I was able to get a lot of games in. I hope to continue this trend.

Where do we go from here:

2012 should be a great gaming year. I expect to have a lot of free time and I plan on splitting my time between board gaming and miniature gaming.

Boardgames I am looking forward to playing:

- Combat Commander

- Commands and Colors

- Gears of War

- Descent (second edition releases first quarter!)

Miniature games I expect to play:

- Lots and lots of Urban War

- Warmachine/Hordes

- Two Hour Wargames

- Blood Bowl

- Force on Force. This game is from Ambush Alley Games and produced by Osprey Publishing. I recently bought the rules and some scenario packs. The system looks very interesting and I want to try these in the coming year. Basically, the games focus on platoon based actions which is the largest I like my games to get.

- Tomorrow's War. Sci-fi version of Force on Force.

- Flames of War. I still really like this game. I would like to round out my mid-war Germans and mid-war Russians this year.

- HOTT. Several of us have toyed with small scale fantasy games for a while and this year is probably going to be the year we give this game a shot.

As 2012 continues, I am sure that I will come up with some more gaming ideas. I am sure I will focus on skirmish gaming since that is my favorite. Possible genres include Old West, Pirates, WW2, fantasy, Gothic Horror, and Pulp.

Let's see what the new year brings. Happy New Year!

Purge, Purge, Purge....

2011-05-01T23:18:00.003-07:00

Well, it's been a very busy couple of weeks around here hobby wise. As I mentioned in another post, I have started to lose interest in miniature games. I am tired of collecting, cleaning, assembling, not painting, and hauling tons of crap around to play a game. It led me to the decision to sell off a lot of my miniatures. For the first time since 1995, I do not own any Warhammer 40k or Warhammer Fantasy miniatures. I have also sold off my first of three Lord of the Rings armies. While I am tempted to keep my last two LOTR armies (Uruk Hai and Dol Guldor), I will likely put them up for sale on eBay by this coming weekend. I used to love LOTR, but in the past couple of years, the shine of the system has disappeared. The game that I used to think had lots of maneuver and strategy is really a game of who can roll the most sixes. If you roll sixes, you will win. If you cannot roll a six, you will certainly lose. Not my idea of fun.

So, what am I going to be doing hobby wise? Lately, I have really enjoyed the simplicity of boardgames. Get the game of the shelf, open it up, and play. Very simple and easy. For the time being, although I rather play board games, I am not purging all of my miniatures. I will be keeping Flames of War, Malifaux, Uncharted Seas, Infinity, and Hordes for now. What do these games have in common? Other than FOW, they are all skirmish games.... my favorite.

Not Collecting Much Anymore

2011-04-07T00:20:00.001-07:00

It's been a really long time since I have posted to this blog. I hope to change that this year. There have been a lot of changes though..... My interest in gaming has changed drastically. How you may ask?

I've branched out and met some new friends to game with. I've lost interest in most of my miniature games. I've sold all my Games Workshop games except for a few Lord of the Rings tidbits. So long GW. I'm done with you. I've also sold off about 400 boardgames.

It's time to focus on quality, not quantity. It's time to play quality games with quality people.

Stay tuned for this new gaming adventure......

Warhammer Fantasy Battle

2010-04-11T23:17:00.003-07:00

As many of you know, I try to play a lot of games in my free time. One of the games I wanted to get to the table a lot this year was Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Since December 2009, I have been able to log 6 games which is pretty good.

My friend Tom had some free time this weekend and a new/old army to try out. What is a new/old army? Tom bought a Tomb Kings army several years ago off of ebay when a small group of us started talking about WHFB. At the time, our talk never made it anywhere so Tom traded the army to Tim. In December 2009, I had some Orcs and Goblins that I was not thrilled with so I traded my O and G to Tim for the TK. After a couple of games of TK under my belt and a new dwarf army from my wife for our anniversary, I traded the TK army back to Tom.

Tom decided he would jump in with two feet and we played a game at 2250 points. Overall the game went very smoothly. Tom chose a really interesting army list that consisted of 3 chariots, a unit of skeleton warriors, a unit of tomb guard, 3 units of archers, a unit of carrions, a unit of skeleton cavalry, and a bone giant. I took a non-standard dwarf army, Why was it non-standard? I only had 20 handgunners, 4 combat blocks, and no anvil. My list consisted of two units of handgunners, 2 units of warriors, 1 unit of longbeards, a unit of ironbreakers, 2 bolt throwers, an organ gun and a cannon.

The first few turns consisted of the TK trying to work their way across the table to engage the dwarven battleline. As the TK marched across the table, they met heavy gunfire from the dwarf warmachines. The cannon and bolt throwers were very effective. However, the Tomb Kings started to close by turn 4 with a pretty decent force. Tom was finally able to get the bone giant into my battleline. Tom deployed the giant very well and he was protected by several units to make sure I did not kill him before he reached the dwarf side of the table. Tom's tactics were rewarded and one of my dwarf warrior units failed a terror check and fled off the table. This lead to an overrun into the dwarf ironbreaker unit. After a round of combat, the ironbreakers needed snake-eyes to stick around. The break test was not successful and the giant smashed into my bolt thrower. The warmachine was destroyed the following turn which allowed the giant to smash into my longbeards. At the end of turn 6, both armies had taken a decent number of casualties. The TK had about 150 more victory points than the dwarfs which meant the game ended in the a draw.

Overall, the battle was great and I am fairly confident that any mistakes in the rules were minimal. I look forward to playing many more games of WHFB this year.

Time to prime the dwarfs!

Warmachine MkII

2010-04-10T08:17:00.002-07:00

Well, after a long and horrible game of Warmachine last year, I said I would never play again. I sold all my stuff, made some money. and reinvested in my hobby with other games (have you seen my collection?).

Along comes Warmachine MkII, the leaner, meaner and better Warmachine. Privateer Press is really a great company. All of the models from the previous edition are compatible, there is no "model creep" in the new edition, and PP listened to the fans and let them help shape the game by creating an open public beta test to formulate the second edition rules.

My friend Eric is as big of a game whore as I am when it comes to miniatures games. He has been known to get me into games head first and I have done the same in return. So, when Warmachine MkII came out, Eric jumped in. How could I say know to Eric when he has spent lots of money on games that I wanted to play.

Being a fan of Cygnar in first edition, I set out and bought some Cygnar models. I quickly got the models together. This is a huge accomplishment if any of you have ever played Warmachine. Their models are a real pain to put together. Anyhow, last night I got in 2 games with the new edition of the rules.

I am sold on them. Simple as that. Privateer Press did a great job with the new rules. The rules play quick. I was able to play 2 games in one night which I could never do with the older rules. The gameplay is more streamlined and makes a lot more sense. In first edition, every unit did something special. Every unit had a leader that had different abilities than the rest of the unit. Every unit could be in three formations. Come on!!!!! All of this is gone. Units have one formation, they may have one ability, and the leader has the same abilities as the grunts. This is a much better system that helps the game play much faster.

My biggest gripe about Warmachine was that the game sold people on the idea that big steam-punk warjacks ruled the battlefield. By the time PP released all the books for first edition, there was no reason to take warjacks and the best armies were infantry armies. Furthermore, warjacks died easily on the battlefield. Each jack has a damage matrix. When it receives damage, a d6 is rolled and the damage is taken to that column of the matrix. If the damage spills over, you carry over to the next column. Arms, movement, and things of that nature have markings in the damage column, when all of the markings of a part are gone, you could no longer use that part. One part, called the cortex, was the heart of the jack. In first edition, when the cortex was gone, your jack was finished. This essentially meant that one or two shots on a jack would kill it. In second edition, every damage box must be filled in before a jack is useless. Now if the cortex is destroyed, your warcaster (your general) cannot feed focus to the jacks. Focus is essentially points that your warcaster can assign to itself or jacks each turn that allows the caster or jacks to do special things in the rules. So, with this new damage system, jacks stay on the table much longer and earn their points. Another nice touch is that each warcaster receives a certain number of bonus points per game. Those points must be spent on jacks or forfeited. As an example, Stryker is +6 which means I can spend an additional 6 points on my army as long as I field a jack with those points. So, in a 25 points game, I can essentially field 31 points. While this sounds like a way to model creep the game, it does not. It makes sure you field jacks. In the army list I played last night, my army only had 19 models. Not bad for Warmachine.

I would like to point out one last nice touch. Privateer Press revamped the points system. Instead of having 500-1000 point games, the point system has been restructured so games are now 25-35 points. It is much easier to show up for a game and build your army on the fly. I should also mention that if you own an iPhone, there is a decent Warmachine army builder application.

So, where does this leave me now? I cannot wait to play my next game of Warmachine. The model counts are low and the games are quick. This is my type of game. Oh, did I mention I have a ton of Cygnar now and just started buying Khador...........

A busy 3 months

2009-05-27T19:33:00.003-07:00

I have not had any posts since mid-February but it does not mean that I have not been busy. I have been able to get a few games in... mostly Combat Commander: Europe, Uncharted Seas, and a game of Flames of War.

However, in the last 3 months, I have been very busy with work. As most of you know, I am a lawyer by day and only a gamer at night. I have spent the last 3 months in trial on a case I have been working on for years. It was a very high profile case with a lot of pressure. On May 10, 2005, the Defendant shot and killed a police officer in cold blood during a routine traffic stop. The jury found him guilty of First Degree Murder and other charges in early May. For the past couple of weeks, we have been doing the penalty phase of the trial. Justice was finally served when the jury sentenced the Defendant to death.

If anyone is interested, you can see the entire verdict and sentencing at www.kpho.com. If you look today (May 27, 2009), you want to click on the second local video on the right middle part of the screen. The video is 3:40 and you can see the verdict through the sentence. I think it is rather chilling.

Anyhow, on to more fun things.... More posts about games coming soon!

Le Havre

2009-02-17T00:11:00.004-07:00

It is has been a while since I have talked about board games but that does not mean I have not had the chance to play. Lately, I have wanted to talk about my miniatures because I was very happy that I sat down and painted minis during the past month. However, I have recently played a boardgame that I want to talk about, Le Havre. Le Havre is a little gem that is not readily available in the United States, although you can find a copy at Funagain Games if you really want one. There is not an official English edition of the game (yet), but the publishing company, Lookout Games, printed a German and Austrailian (what the fuck) edition of the game. Let's just say that the Austrailian Edition is pretty much English...

One of the main design credits for the game goes to Uwe Rosenberg. Now, to you non Euro-gamers, that name really will not mean much to you. Uwe has been around awhile as a designer and received some recognition for his 1997 game Bohnanza ("The Bean Game"). He became really popular in 2008, when his biggest game, Agricola, made it to the United States for its first English/US printing. Agricola became so popular that it shot to the #1 game on Boardgame Geek rather quickly and unseated Puerto Rico, which had been the #1 game for a really long time (actually, for too long of a period of time. It is one of the most overrated games ever). I really do not want to turn this post into a discussion about Agricola, but I will say that it is an ok game, it is very overrated, and now that I have played Le Havre, I have no interest in playing Agricola again.

Le Havre is resource management and worker placement game. The board is made up of 7 port spaces, resource warehouses, buildings that can be used, and buildings that can be purchased or built. Players alternate taking turns. Every player starts their turn by moving their boat to the next unoccupied dock space on the board. Every time a player does this the dock space indicates which two resources are generated for the warehouses. After the player generates resources for the warehouses, the player much decide whether to take all of the resources from any one warehouse or use a building. The pressure part of the game is that this choice alone is critical and stressful as you always need more resources and you always need to use buildings to manipulate your resources.

For instance, on my turn, I can choose to take wood, money, cattle, grain, clay, iron, and other resources for one warehouse or I can use a building which will enable me to convert grain to bread, cattle to meat, or iron to steel, etc. Why is this important? First, at the end of every round (7 turns), you have to provide a certain amount of food to your people. Food consists of fish, bread, or meat (or you can use money but that hurts you in the end game as money counts as victory points). If you do not have enough food, you have to take out a loan which is negative points at the end of the game if they are not paid off. Second, you need to manipulate your resources in order to create resources that you need in order to build other buildings in the city. Buildings cannot be used until they are built (or bought). Furthermore, if you own the building (you built it our bought it), you receive its victory point value at the end of the game. Now, this game sounds a little complicated, but it really is not. The rules themselves are simple. The "stress' factor of this game comes from the agonizing choices you have to make each turn.

I probably have not done Le Havre justice in my description as it is a hard game to discuss when you are trying to keep the word count down. However, I am willing to teach any of my friends how to play this excellent game. I have had the chance to play Le Havre 3 times in the past week and it is already one of my favorite new games. I can see this game being my game of the year even though there is plenty of 2009 gaming left.

I want to play pulp!

2009-02-16T17:39:00.003-07:00

I am a big fan of pulp gaming and I do not get to do enough of it. I sat down and painted a pulp guy. I have to say he sucks. He is from the Pulp Figures line. I generally like their pulp minis but this figure is completely uninteresting to me. At least the other minis in the pack were better. The most I can say about it is that at least he is painted. I think I have painted more miniatures this year already than I did for the past two years.

Near Future - Robots

2009-02-16T16:54:00.002-07:00

A group of us have been planning on doing Near Future miniatures gaming for years. Unfortunately, we have not found any rules we have liked. Anyhow, here are some Copplestone Castings robots I painted for when we do find some rules to play.

These will match well with my other five minis that my friend Tim painted for me a couple of years ago. His had a little more brown in them but both sets will look good on the table.

The Necromancer

2009-02-08T20:18:00.004-07:00

I finally got my Necromancer done. Here is a front and back picture. Not a bad picture but I need to learn how to photograph miniatures a little better. Maybe one of my friends will have some tips.

I am looking forward to trying him in a Dol Guldur list with spiders and orcs. Overall, I think he came out good. There is a little bit of frosting on the model. I am not sure if that is from the dulcote (either not shaking well or it was too cold outside) or if it is from the wash I put on the model. Maybe it is a mixture of both. Luckily, it works with the model. It also is not nearly as pronounced on the table as it looks in the picture.

Uncharted Seas - Elves

2009-02-08T17:38:00.004-07:00

Here are some test pictures for my Elven fleet. I painted one cruiser to completion to see how the paint sceme would look. I have several more in various stages. Please offer some feedback. I would appreciate it.

And my Necromancer should be done in the next day or so. I will post that too!

Uncharted Seas Revisited

2009-02-07T13:30:00.003-07:00

I've been a little busy lately so I have not gotten as many miniatures games to the table as I would have liked. Friday rolled around and my friend Tim mentioned that he wanted to play Uncharted Seas again. I absolutely love the game so I was definitely up for that.

This time around I wanted to try my new elf fleet and Tim wanted to stick with the dwarves. We decided to play starter pack v. starter pack again but this time we threw some terrain down on the table. It makes a world of difference in the game as you would expect. Maneuvering is key. The elves were interesting to play since their ships are very fragile. To compensate for this weakness, they are very fast and can shoot a little better at longer range than some of the other races in the game.

We decided to roll off to see who deployed the first squadron and then alternated placing squadrons until everyone was on the board. Tim did a good job playing his fleet as usual, but he made one critical mistake in his deployment in that he split his fleet. On one side of his deployment zone was 3 cruisers and on the other side was 6 frigates and a battleship. Since the dwarves are slow, but have high defense and firepower, they really need to stay together. I grouped together and sailed my entire fleet along the board edge with the hopes of eliminating his cruisers and some frigates while avoiding his very dangerous battleship. I was largly successful except everytime I hurt his cruisers he was able to fix them. Eventually I wore them down and knocked them out. By the time the dwarf cruisers were eliminated, I was able to destroy several of Tim' frigates (which is good as they a really good ships for the dwarves - who knew that such a small ship would have as much firepower as my elf cruiser). That left the dwarven battleship and a couple of frigates to face the elven battleship, 2 groups of frigates and a couple of injured cruisers. It was getting late so we called the game, but the writing was on the wall and the elves were going to win.

Sorry for the lack of pictures as I know it would make the battle report much more interesting but we were in the playtest phase and the ships were not painted. The fleets should be painted by next time; however, as the elves were primed today.

I should have some more painting updates soon as I just sprayed a protective polyeurathane coat on my Lord of the Rings Necromancer. After it dries and I get it based, I will post some pictures.

Wargs Attack!

2009-01-24T00:17:00.005-07:00

News flash... I got some painting done. Here are 6 wild wargs that I painted for use in Lord of the Rings - Strategy Battle Game, which is one of my favorite miniatures games. They will see a lot of use in my Dol Guldur army list.

I do not have a whole lot to say about them other than I am not the best photographer at 12:30 in the morning. I am not fond of the basing but I think that is because the wargs and the bases are brown. On the table, it is not so bad. Also, I do not care what anyone says, painted miniatures do not fight any better than unpainted miniatures. My friend Tim and I got together for a couple of games so I could test my list for an upcoming tournament. While I won the first game and got crushed in the second game, the wargs died quickly and gloriously each game!

World of Warcraft: The Adventure Game

2009-01-18T10:08:00.005-07:00

Generally, when it comes to playing boardgames, I prefer a wargame or one of the medium to heavy eurogames. Occassionally, I will play Ameritrash or roll and move games but not often. Last night, Damian came over and we were both in the mood for something simple and fun.

I broke out World of Warcraft: The Adventure Game which is a Talisman style game based on the WoW license/theme. I actually liked it quite a bit for what it was. It takes about 45 minutes a player which does suck if you want to play a 4 player game but we played it 2 player and it was a nice, light, quick game. Basically, the board is color coded based on level. Grey, Green, Yellow, and Red are the different levels in order. You cannot move to an area higher than your level. On your turn, you roll an average die and move up to the number of spaces on the die. The die face with your movement roll also contains information telling you how much energy you can spend that turn. Energy is used to play your ability cards (they cost zero to three energy each), which are unique for each character in the game. Once you move, you resolve tokens in the space you moved to. These tokens can be good or bad game effects. If there are no tokens, you must resolve one of the icons on the space you landed on. These icons may let you heal, "fly" to a different place on the board, draw an ability card, draw a token to place on another game space, etc. You then enter combat with any monsters on the space. If there are none, you draw an encounter card. If it an event, resolve the event and draw again. If it is a creature, fight the creature. If you win, you get the reward. Dead simple.

There are two unique parts of the game. First, each character, which is themed for a WoW counterpart, plays completely different. Second, there is a quest system. To win the game, you need 8 valor points. You gain valor points by completing quests which are worth 1 to 2 points each. There are some spaces on the board which give you 4 valor points for completing a specific encounter. The quests are neat in that they require you to travel to certain areas of the board, kill a certain number of a type of creature, etc. I am not aware of any other Talisman style game that has that so it is a very fresh take (borrowed from WoW) on a very tired theme. One not so unique but cool thing was that each character can only use certain type of items. Every item in the game has a "potion" icon on them. There are three icons: heal, mana, and swiftness. During your turn, you can discard an item with the heal icon to heal a wound, you can discard a mana icon to make one of your abilities cost one energy less and/or you can discard a swiftness icon for one extra movement. This is a nice touch that makes every item useful.

If you are an old school Talisman fan, then you have several decisions to make. There are three Talisman or Talisman style games available right now. Fantasy Flight Games just released Talisman 4th Edition Revised. This is a solid version of Talisman. The art is beautiful. Gameplay is similar to the third and fourth editions. There is also a new expansion out, The Reaper. Prophecy is another Talisman style game being offered by Zman games. Prophecy is a very good game design that plays like Talisman but does not take as long. There are three problems I had with Prophecy. First, the art is just ugly and unattractive. Two, the game does not have a lot of event or encounter cards so you are recycling through the same stuff a couple of times in one game. Third, Zman is taking a really long time to publish the already done expansions (this game is a Czech game and there are several expansions already published overseas). One thing Talisman style games really need are expansions. It keeps the newness in a very old style game. The last Talisman style game on the market is the World of Warcraft Adventure Game (also by Fantasy Flight Games) and this is the one I am choosing to support. Fantasy Flight Games has released 4 character expansions for this game already and I intend to track them down. Not only does each character expansion give you a new unique character, but you also get 21 new encounter cards per character pack and new quests. There is no need to have all three of these games in your collections so choose one and choose wisely. Of course, being the collector I am, I really do want the new Talisman 4th Edition Revised too...

The Cold War

2009-01-13T23:51:00.013-07:00

It has been a little while but I was able to get some weekday gaming on Tuesday. My friend Damian came over and we played Twilight Struggle for the first time in a really long time (probably 2 years or so). Twilight Struggle is a terrific card driven "wargame" that simulates the cold war between the United States and Soviet Union. The best part of the game is also the worst part of the game. There is so much tension in the events that are played during a game turn that the players are pretty tense during the game!

Twilight Struggle is a ten turn game (unless a victory condition is met that terminates the game early). Each turn a player is dealt cards equal to their hand limit of 8 cards (or 9 cards in turns 4-10). The cards can be used for two purposes. Each one is worth a certain number of "op" points which can be spent to complete different actions on the board. Additionally, each card has an event that causes some sort of disruption in the game. Each event is coded so that it applies to the US only, the USSR only, or to either side (but the effect is applied only to the person who plays the card). Each turn is divided into 6 phases (7 in turns 4-10) in which players alternate playing a card and carrying out actions. Each time the active player plays their card, they have to decide whether to use the "op" points to influence the board or the execute the event. If the player chooses to use the "op" points on the card and the event is coded for the opposing player, the event triggers anyway. This is why the game is so good and so tense. No matter what you do in a turn, something bad is going to happen and you have to minimize it.

I opted to play the USSR in this game since I was the US last time (well, really I picked the USSR because Damian and I played a game last weekend and he won. The USSR has a slight advantage and I wanted to win!). The USSR has an advantage in the beginning of the game that quickly deteriorates as the game progresses. This trend was obvious if you watched our game. I led Damian every turn of the game, including the 10th turn. What happened after final scoring? Damian and the US won by 9 points! I suck.

Now I just have to convince my friend Charles to play.

Goals for 2009

2009-01-01T19:26:00.004-07:00

Well, it is January 1st, so it is time to do what every good gamer does on this day.... make a list of goals for 2009. My goals are very simple this year but I have divided them into boardgame goals and miniature gaming goals.

For boardgaming, I would like to make fewer purchases in 2009. My goal is that simple. My game room is running out of space and I have limited room for new games unless I get rid of some of the ones I have.

For miniatures, I am trying to keep my goals simple so I can actually complete them. I would like to limit my new projects, which is a first for me. I have a few ideas for new projects this year which I believe is going to include 28mm American Civil War and 15mm Napoleonics. I would like to do 2 Warmaster Ancients armies but I think that is unlikely.

As far as old projects go, I will be adding to my pulp collection with some evil troops. I bought a box of Tomb King Warriors by Games Workshop, which are essentially Egyptian skeletons since my pulp minis and games always take place in Egypt. The box comes with parts for 16 miniatures so I made 4 archers, 4 spear, 6 hand weapons, 1 captain and 1 army standard. I assembled these minis over vacation and primed them today. These are some of the most annoying minis I have ever put together. They were a pain to clean, so you can still see a lot of mold lines (I even thought about throwing them in the garbage). They were also a pain to assemble. For whatever reason, the plastic hobby glue I use from Testors did not work on these models, so I had to use super glue gel. Despite using super glue, the models have still had pieces break off and need repair. I hope to get these painted soon.

Another continuing project for 2009 it to grow my 28mm WW2 collection. Over vacation I prepped and primed most of a platoon of Russians (I need to order a few more models). I am hoping to paint these soon as well. The next thing two things for me to work on are Uncharted Seas and Check Your Six! I assembled 2 more dwarf cruisers today and I am hoping to start painting my fleets tonight. Check Your Six! is shaping up. I touched up the Wildcats today because some of the paint was chipping off. I did a very mediocre job and it is bugging the crap out of me. There is a decent chance I will touch them up again after the decals are on. I poly coated the 16 planes today and I am hopeful I can start the decals next week. I also primed my Alkemy miniatures today. The game looks great and I cannot wait to try it. Also, the biggest task of the year is for me to paint my EIR WAB army. Wish me luck on that one.....

Racing Madness

2009-01-01T18:36:00.007-07:00

After some quick errands, we thought we would lounge around with the kids today since our vacation is dwindling to an end. I thought it would be fun to play some family games so I combed my shelves for something the kids could play that would not bore my wife and I to tears. I had taught them Pitch Car earlier in the week and the oldest loved it so I decided I would bust out Pitch Car Mini this time. Pitch Car was a lot of fun but it was hard for the girls to reach some of the board to flick their cars. Pitch Car Mini is identical to Pitch Car but the track pieces and the cars are smaller and take less space to play. Pitch Car Mini can be played on our 3' x 3' kitchen table so the kids would have no problems reaching the track.

If you are unfamiliar with pitch car mini, it is a fairly simple game. The base game box contains various straights and curves. The instruction booklet lists 10 or so different track configurations you can make with the base set. Each piece has a slot for a plastic strip that you insert which acts as a wall for the cars.

After the track is built, each player gets a car (also known as a small circular disk in different colors). Basically, you pick a turn order and then take turns flicking the car disk around the track. It sounds easy enough to play and anyone can pick it up. The hard part is having the skill in flicking the car where you want. If you leave the track, you put your car back where you started and you lose your turn. If you knock another car off the track, they go back where they left the track, you go back to where you started, and you lose your turn. Whoever completes 3 laps first wins. Simple game and very fun for all ages. There are a few expansions which add a lot to the game. One has a jump and a cross-over and another expansion has dividers in the turns so their are two lanes. Basically, you can make the track as easy or as hard as you want depending upon who is playing.

Game of the Year

2009-01-01T10:38:00.008-07:00

In 2008, I decided I was going to log the games I played for a couple of reasons. First, I was curious as to how many games I would play in the year. Secondly, I wanted to see if I could use it as a mechanism to pull out games to play that were not hitting the table as often as they should. I was able to log 543 games played in 2008, which is including expansions played but not any playtesting I have done. Not too bad!

My most played game in 2008 was Dominion. I was able to play this game 49 times last year. The number is quite staggering when you realize the game was released in early November. This is a great card game that anyone will enjoy and it does not take more than 20 minutes to get a game in. Essentially, Dominion is a deck drafting game. You start with 7 cards in your hand. 7 of them are copper worth 1 dollar each and the other 3 are estates worth 1 victory point each and serve no game function other than to clog up your hand. During the game you will have 16 stacks of cards in front of you available for purchase. Each card has a different game function. Some let you draw more cards, some let you buy more cards, some are victory points, some are money, etc. The game ends when any 3 stacks of the 16 different cards run out or the stack of 8 point victory cards are gone. Whoever has the most victory points wins. The 16 cards create lots of variety, interaction, and card combinations. On your turn, you start with a hand of 5 cards. You get 1 action in your turn which means you can play a card and carry out its actions (some cards give you more actions, allow you to draw more cards, etc). After you carry out your cards' action, you can buy a card. You have to give careful consideration to your strategy and what the other players are doing when you make your purchasing decision. Do you need more money? Should you buy victory points? Should you buy cards that give you more actions? It is a tough balancing act. Whatever card you buy goes into your discard pile, so you are buying cards for future actions. When your turn is done, you discard whatever cards you did not use and draw 5 new ones. If you run out of cards, you reshuffle your discards to make a new deck to draw from. This game is very clever and will get played a lot in 2009.

So, is my most played game of the year my favorite game of the year? Nope. The game I chose as my game of the year was introduced to me in late 2007, but I played it regularly in 2008 and introduced 3 new players to it.

My game of the year is Combat Commander Europe. CC:E is an East Front WWII wargame that is unique to any WW2 game I have ever played. It is very dynamic and the game can change from turn to turn. The game has your typical counters and maps but instead of dice and odds tables, the game is card driven. Each nation has a 72 card deck. The top of your card tells you what order the card can issue on your turn such as move, fire, rally and rout. The middle section of the card has actions you can play whenever appropriate such as adding +2 to your die roll for firing machine guns or allow you to target 2 adjacent hexes with spray fire. The bottom section of the card has 2 game functions. In the lower left is a map hex. Whenever you need to generate a random hex, you turn over a card from your deck and look at the hex. The bottom right of the card has a die roll from 2-12 on 2d6. You need to check if the die roll has a red box around around it because that creates an in game event. The red box can say jammed, which means any machine guns you fired jammed (they may fix later), sniper, which means you draw another card for a random hex and break a unit in or adjacent to the hex, or event which means you draw a card from your deck and read your event. The event can do things like give you a hero, replacement units, rally a troop, etc. The game never plays the same way twice even if you are playing the same scenario. I have 3 favorite parts of the game. First, this is a wargame that only takes 2 hours at most to play. Second, the game end is variable. CC:E has a time track. Every time someone goes through their entire deck of cards or "rolls" boxcars on the dice, the time marker advances on the turn track. When a certain number on the time track is reached (based upon scenario), a card is drawn for a die roll. If that die roll is less than the number on the time track, the game ends. If it is equal too or greater than the time track number, the game continues until the next time the time marker advances and another roll is made to see if the game ends. Third, every time you play the game the objectives change. CC:E comes with about 25 objective chits. At the beginning of the game, each player draws a chit in secret (this may be modified by scenario). The chit indicates what your objective is to obtain victory points. I love this game and I know this game will get played a lot even in 2009.

Games, Games and More Games

2008-12-23T22:15:00.010-07:00

I have not talked much about what I have been working on lately as far as miniatures games go so I thought I would take some time to do that. As usual, my gaming ADD has hit badly so I have been jumping around.

I have stayed up the past couple of nights until about 1 a.m. putting together 2 warbands for a new fantasy skirmish game called Alkemy. This game is designed by the folks at Kraken Editions, who are made up of the original developers of Confrontation, another fantasy skirmish game which has recently been revamped by Rackham publishing. Gameplay looks very solid and I will go into more detail once I get a game under my belt. The standard game is 300 points which means only a handful of miniatures each side. I can even get those painted. I will post some pictures of the figures soon. I wanted to get them primed before I did that and that will have to wait until the weekend.

I have also been working on my EIR army for WAB, which I talked about a couple of weeks ago. I have several units assembled and I need to get them primed as well.

The game I am most interested in right now is Check Your 6!, which is a well received WWII air combat game. I am a huge air combat game nut and this one needs to get to the table. What is the hold up? There are several factors. It took me several months to track down a mat suitable for playing this game. I was able to finally obtain a 4 x 6 aerial mat from Monday Knight Productions with 2" hexes. The mat is a blue sky background with cloud cover and it should look nice on the table. Secondly are the airplanes. I found some prepainted 1/300 scale planes that are designed for the game. They are pretty well painted and only need basic work such as a protective coat and decals. So, you must ask, what is the hold up? Simple.... I am afraid to apply the decals - yes afraid. I am a very amateur modeler at best. The models I put together when I was kid were very rough. I did paint them but they really never saw any decals. My last memory of using decals was when I was about 10 years old. I put the sheet in water in the bathroom sink and I watched them go down the drain. That was the end of those decals. I am obviously a little more capable now but I am still gun shy, so this project will sit until I can get passed that. It is really a shame too, since I am dying to play this game.

The last thing I am working on is painting my fleets for Uncharted Seas. I really enjoyed this game and I want to play again. However, this time, I want the fleets to be painted. I am hoping a few more people in the miniatures group get interested in this game (come on Tom!!!). I am shooting to have at least one of the fleets done by the end of my vacation. We will see.

And I still cannot decide if I should buy that darn dragon fleet...

Pretty Sneaky Sis

2008-12-23T22:06:00.005-07:00

My oldest daughter received a couple of games for Chanukah this year and she asked if we could play Connect Four tonight. I will never turn down a game (or 9 games) with my kids as I consider it one of the best ways to spend quality time with them. Melissa already knew how to play so we were able to just bust into some games. Well almost.... Since when do you have to assemble Connect Four to play???? Anyhow, after a quick board assembly, we ran through some games. I have to say that Melissa was pretty good at the game. Although I won 8 and we tied 1, she was able to see that she was had to block me as long as I was not going to win diagonally. She has a tough time with that although I expect that to change after a few more plays.

Hammer and Anvil

2008-12-21T19:12:00.003-07:00

Today I will talk a little bit about a set of rules my friend Rob is developing, Hammer and Anvil. I apologize ahead of time for the lack of pictures but I am a retard and I forgot my camera today. Anyhow, Rob sent out an email to a group of us to see if we wanted to play some WW2 using his rules which he has been developing for a few years. My wife was taking the kids for the day so I was up for a game.

I won't talk too much about the rules work in Hammer and Anvil because Rob is developing them and would like to see them published (and they should be). However, in simple terms, they are a very good set of platoon sized action rules that combine the best elements of Lord of the Rings and Warhammer 40k (both created by the evil empire). The game is very good, innovative, and a lot of fun.

The battle I played in featured a platoon of Americans, which consisted of 3 full squads, a platoon command squad, a mortar unit, a bazooka and some characters. Tim was my victim who played Germans consisting of MMG support, a mortar unit, and 4 squads/fireteams. Each army had 2 objective markers that they had to place on the board. The rules for placement are simple. They cannot be within 6 inches of the board edge or within 18 inches of another marker. I placed an objective first and I placed it inside my deployment zone so that I would already have a marker under control. Tim also placed his first marker inside his deployment zone. My second objective was placed inside a building just outside of my deployment zone (but 18 inches away from any others) with the idea that it would be easy to grab. Tim, who wanted to make the game "interesting", decided he was going to place his second marker on my side of the table within easy reach. Even worse for Tim, he placed the marker near some low walls, so my troops taking the marker would have cover to boot (thanks Tim!).

I essentially spent the 1st turn (out of 6) grabbing the 2 nearby objective markers and also moved a platoon into the woods nearby. That basically was all the movement I had for the entire game while I waited for Tim's Germans to come to me. By the end of turn 4, it was pretty obvious that Tim could not win. I won't add too much more to this battle report since it is hard to visualize without pictures but I will share the one highlight (from my point of view).

I had an American squad sitting on an objective inside a wrecked building. Tim knew that there was no reason for me to advance so he sent a squad and a fireteam, which totalled about 15 figures into the wreck. I knew he would outgun me since he had 2 LMGs and several SMGs, so I decided to engage him in hand-to-hand combat. Luckily for Tim, I rolled 2 dice and came up with a 2 inch move in difficult terrain. This meant I could only move 3 miniatures into hand-to-hand combat. I sent one figure to engage the large squad charging me and I sent 2 miniatures towards the 5 man fireteam coming after me. The Americans pulled out an upset and won both combats. Tim failed his 2 morale checks and the Americans thwarted the German advance!

There are a few things I would like to say about this game. First, Hammer and Anvil has tons of potential. Sometimes our group has some heated discussions over some rule ideas but when push comes to shove, the rules are fairly solid (although not done yet). Second, Tim is a great opponent to play against even though he had a bad game and is getting even more ribbing in this post.

The main lesson learned in today's playtest is that the Americans are tough.... maybe too tough. They have a huge firepower advantage over the Germans. The Germans really have to decide between moving and shooting each turn and the Americans do not since they can move and shoot without penalty. Is there a fix for this? Probably and we kicked around some ideas today.

I am looking forward to my next game and hope to play more WW2 in 2009.

You Sunk My Battleship!

2008-12-20T00:20:00.008-07:00

Friday night was closing in and I really wanted to play a miniatures game since I have not had the chance to do so in the past couple of weeks. I got in touch with my friend Tim, who was in the mood for something naval. I suggested The Uncharted Seas, which is a relatively new fantasy based naval game from Spartan Games.

The Uncharted Seas utilizes a fairly simple game system that is easy to learn but requires a bit of thought while playing. Basically, the turn starts by rolling for initiative. Once that is decided, one of the players rolls to see if the wind direction changes. This can be a real bummer as some ships are much slower if they are sailing into the wind. Next, players alternate activating units of ships. When a player activates a unit, they move the ships, shoot with the ships, and if a player rammed another player, they do boarding actions. The second player then does the same thing with one of their units. To spice up the game, each faction has 26 cards made up of 13 generic cards and 13 race specific cards. These cards help influence your strategy by introducing bonuses, events, etc. Each player's hand can have one card for each unit in its fleet. If you lose a unit, you lose a card towards your hand size.

Tim and I played Orcs v. Dwarfs. Tim was the Dwarfs. They are steam driven ships so they are not affected by wind. Furthermore, they have high defensive values and the ship guns pack a punch. I was the Orcs. They love to move as fast as they can and ram enemy ships in hopes of claiming a prize (which is worth double victory points). The goal of our game was to learn the rules and get an idea of the mechanics. Tim set up much better than I did and he did not have to do too much maneuvering to avoid his own ships. I had a strategy that sounded good in my head but did not play out nearly as well on the game board. I even had ships in my own fleet collide with one another! In any event, by turn 2, we had a very good idea of how to play the game. Our game came down to the last turn with Tim's Dwarfs squeaking out a victory.

I am looking forward to my next game of The Uncharted Seas. I hope to add some terrain to the table next time (hint, hint, hint). We also made some minor mistakes with the rules that should be sorted out by next time. I encourage fantasy fans, Man O' War fans, and naval fans to check out this game.

A Saturday Full of Gaming

2008-12-14T21:28:00.004-07:00

For those of you who have small kids, you probably know that sometimes they need to be separated. Saturday was one of those days so the wife took the little one shopping for a couple of hours. The oldest was sad since she did not get to go with Mommy so I broke out a few games to cheer her up (and show her that Daddy really is the cool one). The first game I taught her was Blink. Blink is a very simple game but it is great for passing time with the kids. Furthermore, it the game helps with counting, colors, and pattern recognition. After three quick games, I busted out a meatier game for her to try, Micro Mutants Evolution. Micro Mutants is essentially tiddley-winks on steroids. The game comes with four armies. Each army contains various types of bugs that have different abilities that come into play after you shoot them with the shooter. The game ends when one team only has two bugs left or only one of their three bases left. My oldest daughter absolutely loved this game. It is a great dexterity game for adults and kids. After about 20 minutes, the wife and little one came home with dinner so we had to stop. It was a good thing we stopped too since we were neck and neck with each of us having lost a base. I bet she would have pulled out a quick victory if we went the distance.

After dinner, the wife wanted to go see a movie with a friend so I invited my friend Damian over to learn Through the Ages which is a game I have wanted to play for over a year. The designer must have been a huge fan of the Sid Meier computer game because his game is basically a direct port of the computer game to the tabletop. Eagle Games (FRED Games) is the distributor and the rulebook was obviously influenced by them since it is broken into three parts: the basic game, the advanced game, and the full game. The basic game is recommended to first time players since you only play through the first two ages (out of four) and all you need to worry about is creating farms, mining and buy technology, which is the basic mechanism of the game. After about an hour or so, we finished the basic game. Damian had pulled out a victory as he was able to develop a lot more technology than me. The basic game was a great introduction but we wanted more so we went right into the advanced game. The advanced game adds a lot more meat to the game in the form of corruption, civilization happiness, and military cards. The advanced game takes you through the first three ages and has different victory conditions than the basic game. In the last two turns, Damian was able to squeak out a win by 4 points. It was a great game that was neck and neck the entire way. I can't wait to play the full game next time which adds a fourth age, war, and a few other surprises. In case you cannot tell, I am a huge fan of the game and it is already one of my favorite boardgames.

Friday Night Gaming

2008-12-13T01:27:00.005-07:00

My friend Charles sent out an email a couple of weeks ago trying to set up a game of Starcraft for tonight. As the game night got closer, we decided to play A Game of Thrones instead, which turned out to be a great thing. AGOT is a terrific game based on the George R. R. Martin books that does not see enough game play. The thing I like most about this game is that it is filled with agonizing choices. Every turn you have to order your units and, of course, you never have enough orders. This is compounded by the fact that the board is tight and everyone is always trying to gain more gound to meet the victory conditions. As most games of a AGOT that I have played, the winner was decided on the last turn. Charles was able to secure a win on the last turn with some good plays.

A Weekday Night of Gaming

2008-12-09T23:42:00.006-07:00

My friend Damian was able to come over tonight so we could play a couple of games.

The first game up was Agricola. For those unfamiliar with this game, it is one of the hottest worker placement games of the year. Some people do not like this as a two player game but I think it works very well. Even with only two players, Agricola requires you to make some tough choices and you always want to be able to take more actions than you have available on your turn. I was surprised Damian picked this game because the last time I showed it to him he really hated it. It had been a few months and he did not really remember the game so he wanted to try it again. I had a good time with the game and Damian confirmed that he despised it. I was able to squeak out a win with a score of 29-26. For those of you familiar with the game, these scores are terrible. Most people I have played the game with can score in the 40s or 50s without much effort. I really suck at this game. In fact, I should have had 35 points but I really hosed myself the last turn (well that and Damian had a really good play on the last turn).

After debating a few games for our second game, we decided to bust out Starcraft, a monster game based on the Blizzard computer game. I had only played the game once and that was in July 2006 when a friend bought it at Gen Con during its release. I have wanted to get it to the table for quite some time but never had. After a review of the rules and explaining the game to Damian we set out to try this beast as a two player game. While the game probably works best as a four player game, I felt the game worked surprisingly well two player and I would it play it that way again anytime. We called it quits after a few turns since it was getting late but I think my Terrans would have defeated Damian's Zerg if it went the distance. I am sure this will get to the table soon again.