Nothing lasts forever

We are a unique group of individuals, you and I. We collect little things, play with little things, obsess with little things :)

I love collecting small scale miniatures. The assembling and painting, well...it doesnt always happen, but I'll spend hours pouring over army lists and working on finding proxy models, etc. Once these armies have been ordered, they usually sit :(  BUT I have them, and they'll be ready when I am.

The frustrating part of this hobby is finding or getting into a game years after it's heyday has passed - in my case, Epic Armageddon and Warmaster come to mind. You'll find someone's post about the perfect model to proxy for something, but the company that makes that model disappeared years ago, or something along those lines.

The closing announcement of Exodus Wars this week brought this little truth to light once again:
http://www.taccmd.tacticalwargames.net/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=29959

We, as a community, are served by some pretty amazing people; people with skills, talents, dreams, motivation, and even personal lives, tragedy, concern, loss and failure. We are niche community, hungering for more and more, but all in all, things in this hobby are fleeting. The items wont be around forever, nor will the creative minds who bring us these things.

As far as Exodus Wars goes, I have 2 huge armies in bags waiting to be assembled, so I'm good there - but I've wanted models from Microworld Games and now Onslaught Miniatures for some time. I know I don't have the funds to grab huge amounts of models that I want, and who knows - maybe in these individual cases they'll both be very successful and I'll have my decade to wait - but maybe not.

Then there are the giving souls who make being a part of this gaming community so rewarding. As I've delved into the world of 10mm fantasy, I have decided to stick with 6mm terrain as I don't find the size difference too jarring - and I do have an awful lot of 6mm sci-fi anyway. In particular, dealing with and purchasing from Mick at Leven Miniatures has been fantastic. His customer service and responsiveness has been refreshing, and his models, well...so cool!

The most recent treat was during a recent order, I asked if a particular building type (a forge or blacksmith's shop) would ever be on his radar - to which he responded that he was actually already in the process of making one! He kept me appraised during the creative process, and is shipping out a prototype with my other stuff this week. It's stuff like this that makes me want to continue contributing with my dollars to this community of ours, so that it can keep growing and thriving.

I'll wrap this up with a few of the  "small" people that I'm happy to have interacted with recently - not a complete list, not trying to dis anyone by omission, etc...:

Leven Miniatures for levels of awesomeness as already described
Brent Spivey of Bombshell Games for his group rules and responsiveness on the forums
Pendraken Miniatures
Robert at Shogun Miniatures for his great magnetic bases


Yea...this is a pointless task because soon I'll be thanking the entire world.

Let me wrap this up:
Buy now - the items you want may not be available forever!

Gaming without terrain

Two years ago I came to the conclusion that I just didn't have enough room for 28mm, 15mm, AND 6mm gaming, and since 28mm was my least-used scale, it drew the short straw. Warhammer Fantasy armies, 40K armies, two Infinity armies, even a gorgeously painted all-female cowgirl posse got sold off. I sold my entire collection of fantastic handmade trees, forests, foamcore buildings, and all my scatter terrain. I was richer, and sadder, but I had something that had been in short supply for some time:

S P A C E.

Yea, while I felt like a part of me was walking out the door (I started gaming in 28mm, if you don't count Battletech 20 years before), I just didn't have the room for all my stuff. I blame Infinity - that game is a terrain whore! It was because of Infinity that I LIVED over at http://www.terragenesis.co.uk/, always reading, and came up with some really cool stuff. I bought playsets at ToysRUs to use as scatter terrain, but in the end, I just ran out of room.

So now, my son is 7 and he loves watching me play my games (what little I get in these days). I wanted to include him in some small-scale gaming, so I pulled out my Reaper figs that I've had for decades, and I went through the different rulesets I had. I settled on the newest one, Iron & Honor (discussed somewhat here). It was a decent, quick little "build your own" ruleset, but....

Terrain? Aww crap.

"Hey son, go get your Legos". Yea. It was sad, but he was happy :)  And honestly, it did the trick.

But there had to be something better. I was NOT going to start over again. I have a pretty addictive personality (heck, most gamers do, since we take the crap that the hobby throws our way and keep coming back for more...don't believe me? Look over at your paint table :P ) so I refuse to start building terrain for 28mm again. No way...

A ha! I found something that might work! Heroic Maps over on Wargames Vault has some pretty cool printable PDFs/jpegs that might work, so I bought the Wilderness and a few others. NOTE: many of the titles aren't gridless, so much of the $25 purchase I made isn't feasible yet, but they are supposedly fixing this soon. [EDIT - the following day, all maps that I owned with grids were updated - Heroic Maps had some heroic customer service!]

Anyway, yea, I got me some nice cardstock 11"x17" paper, and with the office printer, got some cool stuff printed out. Now I had a whole bunch of 10"x10" tiles, trimmed them with my wife's paper cutter (see, I KNEW her scrapbooking addiction would come in handy), and came up with this:

Now, Iron & Honor was decent, but it is in the infantile stages of development. I looked into Skulldred, but I reacted to quite a lot of what I read, and he has been insanely stale getting his next revision out. I actually began merging the two into what I considered a decent ruleset, but as with most of my projects that I do alone in a vacuum, it petered out, and anyway, I realized I was writing what I wanted, and not what would work for my son.

So now I need to make a quick apology. Back in 2008 when Ganesha Games came out with Song of Blades and Heroes, I bought it and a few expansions, but was quickly bored with how overly simplistic it was. For the past, what, six years, I have not exactly badmouthed it on forums or public gatherings, but really just expressed my derision that people (adults?!) would take it seriously and actually play it.

Well, it dawned on the other day that this might be exactly what my son could get into, so I started lurking on the TMP SoBaH forums to see what the current status was. One comment I read in the thread "Measuring sticks....why" stuck with me. A posted named Inner Sanctum said,

"Two things about Ganesha Games:
We have never had a "bad" or boring game
No plan survives contact with the dice."

Isn't having a good game what gaming is all about? Another friend once said to me that he didn't care what game he was playing as long as he was with friends and having fun. Now, I have very little patience as it is, so I cannot completely buy into such a patient attitude, but I get it. I don't game at my FLGS because I'd rather be with friends in the comfort of a non-loud, non-smelly home, drinking wine, playing with the dog, etc...so that comment about having good games stuck...

I'm sorry, Ganesha Games. I gave you too little credit. I take back what I said all those years!

So, that being said, the game is still DAMN SIMPLISTIC and I cannot see me taking it too seriously and suddenly having it become my favorite game, but I put together some forces for my son and I, and yea, we had fun!

Remember back when I mentioned getting into minis again? I realized my Reaper collection was decent, but was somewhat lacking, so I spent DAYS on Reaper's website looking for two new warbands. I came up with barbarians for me, and my son (who gravitates towards the bad guys, believe it or not) got what will eventually be a Blood Elf band (aka World of Warcraft) using the drow/dark elf line at Reaper. I found what I needed at Miniature Giant, which is AWESOME at locating old Out of Print models, and so some of these hit the table today. Unpainted. Unassembled. Ugh. Really? I'm out of patience, too ADD to do this...but that's a battle for another day :P

We used Frog Tape, which is like a painter's tape, to connect the boards. I would have preferred a draftman's tape, but this worked fine and was pretty easy to remove afterwards.

Jadon ended up wanting to play the good guys once he saw the giant and werewolf I had...so I played the elves. He smooshed me, but I didn't care. I was actually impressed with the board, and yea, the ruleset was quick. I will definitely play it again...

So how can I wrap this travesty of personal apology up? Be careful what you buy, as they aren't all gridless yes, but the Heroic Maps make a cool table, SANS TERRAIN! Song of Blades and Heroes is indeed simplistic, and probably overly so, but it's going to work fine for my son and I. Now to wrangle someone to pin, assemble, and paint my minis for me... :P HAH!

The Perfect Game.

I posted my last blog about the state of 6mm rulesets on a number of forums. Most notably, it got a massive response on The Miniatures Page and on Tactical Command. I then took it a step further and got into a long discussion with a friend, a pillar in the 6mm community, who has designed his own rulesets many, many time, and I knew I was in trouble when he defined Strike Legion as "Too Simple."

Oh boy. I am on this quest for the Perfect Game, but does it exist? Can it exist? I am beginning to think not. Perfect for whom? Perfect for what? My "perfect" will clearly be someone else's nightmare, so why bother?

It has been said that a perfect night of gaming includes great friends, good food, and drinks...and I agree. I don't go down to the FLGS for pickup games, because if I dont know you, or know your reputation, I am loathe to give you a few hours of my time that could, conceivably, be highjacked by your antics (no offense - this is hypothetical, you see). You might not even be that bad...but beating you (or losing to you) won't have that thrill, because I dont _know_ you.

But what if the Perfect Evening could include all this fellowship, but also include a Perfect Game as well? Not possible? I wonder.

My needs are different than yours. My desires and hopes are likely light years from yours...so how do we reconcile this?

I am beginning to think we can't. I think I am back to the drawing board, and I must design my own.\

OK. I can do this! I've edited and play tested and helped come with solutions for quite a few games, and writing is my forte...but...but...there is more to a game than writing. Play any game by Spartan Games and you'll see: games need to be playtested!

Simply put, I could quite easily put down on paper my favorite mechanics from this game and that game, combine, tweak and edit a bit, and come up with a formula that might LOOK like a few games on the market, but be different than all of them...but I dont have time or opponents to play a published set of rules, let alone write and develop my own.

It could be a labor of love, spanning years and decades and a million miniature manufacturers...but do I want this to be me for the next 10 angry years of my life, conning friends to play my frankenstein and give me feedback on it, only to tweak some more?

Or do I think, Fuck It, and play your game and like it?

Dont drink and blog, btw. You keep having to hit the backspace to correct your stupid typos... :)

6mm Wargame Rulesets - What I like and what I want

I was in a discussion with a friend over what I was looking for in a 6mm wargame, or even more specific, what I thought MADE a good 6mm wargame. Here are some of my ramblings:

Gavin’s 3 Questions Regarding 6mm Sci-fi Miniature Wargames:

What do I want in a 6mm Sci-Fi game? What do I think makes a perfect game at the level I am looking for? Why would I want to play my game instead of some of the other games I have experience with?

Gavin’s Background:

Much of my gaming experience is with the 28mm, typically in the Skirmish genre. However, as more and more smaller-scale miniatures began showing up on news sites such as Tabletop Gaming News (TGN) and The Miniatures Page (TMP), I became enamored with how much detail some of the figures could possess, and so I began my foray into games of a larger scale but using smaller scale miniatures. This was near the end of 2008 or so. I quickly settled on 6mm, and in my search for a rule set to use, I came across “Epic: Armageddon.” There were a few competitor rules I looked at, but at the time, Epic suited all my wants.

What do I like so much about Epic?

Epic had a few things that I have since included in my definitions of a perfect game: REGIMENTAL GAME (8-12 units): The size of the game feels just right. Having 8 to 12 units on the field, each anywhere from 5 to 20 models strong, was the regimental-level game I was longing for. It gave careful balance to “combined arms”, and including infantry, armor, and air support/artillery all worked well with each other. ALTERNATING ACTIONS: The alternating activations was good as well. I cannot stand IGOUGO rules, so taking turns after each unit was activated helped the game feel fluid, and allowed nearly-instant reactions to opponent’s actions. I also really liked the Overwatch mechanic, as well as Retaining Initiative (which had a nice risk vs reward element: yes, you can double up on front-end actions, allowing for carefully coordinated assaults or firing for effect on a wounded-but-not-killed enemy unit, but it also increased the chance that a unit wouldn’t activate correctly, and if your surprise didn’t work, you might be outnumbered in activations near the end of the turn, letting the enemy act with impunity and without response. EASE OF GAMEPLAY: I really liked the ease of game play as well. If Games Workshop does one thing well, it is writing pretty straightforward rules. The act of attacking is really quite simple: count up all the attacks coming from my unit, roll the dice. Any hits are saved against by the target unit; if there are multiple types of viable targets, allocate hits before rolling. Then all failed saves are removed, front to back. While there may be a case that requires the two players to think about how hits are allocated, etc, in general it is quick and efficient, and allowed players the tactical considerations of who to place up front, because location mattered.

So why didn’t I keep playing Epic?

Honestly, it isn’t so much that I stopped playing Epic as it is that I just haven’t gone back to it yet. I still feel it is one of the best, most elegant rulesets I have ever played. However, as I started collecting more and more models for my different armies, I started looking at them and wishing I could use this unit with that army, and my hunt for new armies revolved around unit types rather than tactical considerations…and so I began the hunt for a ruleset that allowed me to “Make My Own Army,” or even, in some cases, “Make My Own Units.” I also really wanted just a tad more in my games. I wanted a rocket battery to feel just a little different than an anti tank missile, or to have a unit that had a cool defensive measure or little extra that might make it more unique than another, similar unit on the opposing side. A few extra special rules wouldn’t be too bad, and if done properly, could really add some extra flavor to the game. As an aside, my gaming time and availability of viable opponents has dwindled to the point that I rarely get the chance to put lead on the table any more. This has much more to do with my lack of playing Epic than any other decision. SEEDS OF WAR: Once I realized I wanted to “Make My Own (MMO)”, I stopped considering rulesets that had their own universe (“Seeds of War” by Dark Realm Miniatures, for example, no matter how good the ruleset was supposed to be) and started really examining the rules that let me MMO. There weren’t many. FUTURE WAR COMMANDER: The first I bought was “Future War Commander.” When considering games that cater to the “collector”, ie the gamer who buys figures “just because” and then wants to use them all in a game, FWC is the current leader and has quite a following. I admit, I wasn’t thrilled by what I saw, but couldn’t put my finger on exactly why, so it gathered dust until Aron ran it one weekend for his birthday. I did, however, get a chance to play “Warmaster” with him, and this was my first experience with the “Command” system. I hated it. I wanted to move my units as I saw fit, and have them fail to accomplish their shooting, or armor saves, or Morale Checks, but not just to do something! Epic had Activation Rolls, but if you failed the roll, the unit could still do something, just maybe not exactly what you wanted, or maybe it would just suffer a penalty as well as the blast marker. And more importantly, failing an activation roll didn’t end your turn. This goes back to my dislike of IGOUGO, but I just don’t fancy games that don’t allow me to marshal my forces how I want (in board game form, this is the “Battle Lore” system by Richard Borg – it’s just something I don’t enjoy). The other small thing that bothered me about FWC was the stat lines of units. Often times, special abilities are represented by “#” or other symbols. I prefer a Notes section on my unit that has an entry there to remind me; nitpicky, I know, but there it is. STRIKE LEGION: The next ruleset I found that let me MMO was “Strike Legion.” The more I read it, the more I saw potential in it. I felt that it was like “Battletech” – it had so many options, and picking and choosing what to use was half the fun. I even ran some games with friends, just to get the feel of it. I really loved how the game seemed to encompass all the stuff I was looking for. Missiles and Rockets and Electronic Warfare were all really represented well. Field Guns looked and felt like they should, and offboard artillery and ortillery was quite a reality. However, the execution just fell a little flat in my opinion. LACKING SHOOTING MECHANIC: For one thing, the shooting mechanic was anything but elegant. As mentioned before, in Epic, my unit of 4 tanks firing at your 4 tanks was a pretty straightforward affair. In SL, it wasn’t. I had to declare each of my tank’s targets, and then make separate rolls for each. Your tank 1 might have been hit once, tank 2 was hit twice, tank 3 was missed, and tank 4 was hit once. Not only was dice rolling not quick, but you had to accurately mark who got hit and with what. In addition to this, SL added Hit Location, and differentiated between Hull and Turret, so now you have to denote that Tank 2 was hit once in the turret and once in the Hull (or what have you), and remind me when it came time to inflicting damage where it was that I hit. In a game that should be streamlined at the regimental level, this wouldn’t fly, and this is why I believe that SL is more of a battalion-sized game and not the large-scale combined arms regimental combat I want. EXCESSIVE COMBAT TABLES: The other thing about SL was that it had tables to refer to in combat. Once I hit and rolled for damage, I had to see what I hit. I imagine that in time I could memorize the tables (two, since there are different locations for hull and turret-ish), but that isn’t the speed of play I am looking for. Combine this with unit cards for each unit, complete with hit points and hit locations and expendable munitions that need to be tracked, and it just slows play down. STRIKE LEGION’S GOOD VARIETY: I do, however, really like the way SL uses different sizes of dice, and I do appreciate the different weapon types. Having an Armor value work against ballistic/gauss weapons, and Shields work against Lasers or energy weapons, was kind of cool. If the to-hit process was more streamlined, it could have been a winner. I’ll revisit this later. DIRTSIDE II: I admit that this is pretty much my experience with rulesets at this scale. I have read, but not played, Dirtside II, but can’t stand the idea of chits for combat.

What else do I like?

Dice: As mentioned before, I like different types of dice. I like them representing troop quality and shooting values, I like them representing different weapon strengths, and I generally prefer anything to the bog-standard d6. I just don’t like the d6 as a randomizer, and the d20 is way too generalized. The d6, d8, and even d10s all can work in concert together, if done properly. I feel that SL got a lot of this right. I DON’T like weapons that cannot damage a potential target. This could lead to something running rampant and without consequence. There are many ways to represent a horribly tough unit, such as incredible defenses, multiple wounds, etc, but weapon strength to armor strength tables (as seen in both “Warhammer 40K” and “Dropzone Commander”) have at least a few situations where something cannot hurt another unit. I think, in general, this should be avoided. Bases: How a unit is based is important to me. Having a unit based for one game, which then does not work for another, pretty much defeats the purpose of having a generic game that works with everything. Epic did this really, really well: it stated that there are minimum measurements for basing, but that “almost anything goes”. Tech Levels: I like the fact that not all armies are created the same. I like the concept of defining different technologies and assigning them to Tech Levels. I think that when building an army, taking the TL of the units should be a major consideration, and should affect cost of the units in general. I think Strike Legion did this pretty well, but his unit building computations got so insane that many of us tried to write a “Unit builder spreadsheet” and failed. I hear buzzers going off in my head at the thought of this, showing just how wrong this is! TECHNOLOGICAL COST EFFCIENCIES: I also think SL did it right by allowing a unit at a higher level TL to buy a lower level tech item and get some savings from it. My TL 10 tank with TL 10 gear and an average crew should cost slightly more than your TL10 tank that is running TL8 gear and an average crew. It might be minimal, but I think it should exist. It could be even just that a d6 gauss weapon requires one tech level, while a d8 is slightly higher, and a d10 is even higher still. This is, in my opinion, one thing SL did really well. If only the author had the foresight to then print the TL of the unit on the unit card! This is such a major considering while building the unit, that it should be shown to the world during game play. Close Combat: Who doesn’t like the idea of sword-wielding tanks?! This is one of those philosophical issues that is almost too scary to touch, but that I feel both “Epic” and “Dropzone Commander” got right: Epic’s Firefight (FF) and Close Combat (CC) stats work really well, I feel… And so does DZC’s restriction that Close Combat really only ever happens indoors, because seriously, if you have a working gun in your hand, would you really drop it and charge the enemy? Again, this is a touchy subject, and making CC too hard to manage would really be eliminating or penalizing an “Aliens-type army” maybe too much.

So what do I wish I was playing?

Epic, with build your own rules. Seriously. Add a bit of meat from SL and you could have a perfect game. But how do you marry two differing game concepts: The regimental fast-flow game and The battalion-sized near-skirmish game? Man, isn’t that the million dollar question? Again, if SL had simplified its to-hit system, and then had a competent unit builder that didn’t require calculus, I’d be all over it. How do I think it should run? Let’s say I have a unit of 4 tanks, each with a burly gauss weapon and a smaller laser gun. Your 4 tanks have medium armor and medium shields. I roll my 8 attacks: 4 gauss and 4 lasers. This is probably done with one die per attack, which is based on my Quality (like “Tomorrow’s War”). Maybe in my case, I am veterans and am throwing d8’s. Three gauss and 2 lasers hit (maybe the formula is similar to SL: base range gives a to-hit, modified by what, armor, special defenses, your skill, terrain, Electronic Warfare?). I roll my 3 gauss versus your armor and get 1 hit, and roll my 2 lasers versus your shields, and get 2 hits. Now you assign 3 hits and be done with it. Maybe these tanks are 2 wounds per, and one is knocked out right away. Maybe the extra wound, if it just “sits” there until the end of turn, is discarded like it is in FWC – not sure. I typically prefer higher defenses rather than multi-wound models, to ease record keeping, but certain circumstances like ‘War Machines’ in “Epic” might call for it.

What will I play in the future?

I’d play most anything that let me play with anything from my collection, and would really love something that let me build my own units. I think keeping a Force Organization in play is important, otherwise I could really take a 100% air force army and mob an unprepared enemy with it (even in Epic, taking 2 units of flyers versus someone with little to no Anti-Air is a train wreck waiting to happen). Maybe giving three or four doctrines to choose from, which defines how many of any given unit type you could take, wouldn’t be amiss…but that’s another hard call. I wouldn’t play anything that made me roll to activate my units, “Warmaster-style.” I wouldn’t play an IGOUGO system, and in the vein of my first point, might buy the rules for (but not play) rules that wanted me to own proprietary models. Why do I write all this? Do I have hope for the future of my own wargaming? Yea, I think so. I think I am desperately hoping that Polyversal is the next "big thing". Commercial games are important to me because they bring people together (just look at the Epic community over at Tactical Command and how massive and international it is) and can be easily shared and played with other people. If it isn't the "one" (and let's face it - many of us gamers suffer from the "looking for the next big thing" syndrome), then maybe I'll need to embrace FWC, or SL, regardless of their faults, or just get used to forever proxying in Epic. Or maybe someone else will bring out "the next big thing" and it'll be something I feel comfortable getting on. Or...I'll just be stuck daydreaming and not actually playing. Wow, what a sad waste that would be...and something I should really be conscious of and avoid! I know this was a lot of free-form rambling, but I wanted to get this down while I had the creative juices going. I hope this helps, and I would be certainly willing to expand on any point I made here, or on any that I missed. Thanks, Gavin McClements, February 2013. [For completeness, I also posted this on TMP and TacCom]

Adventures in Applied Kinesiology, Part II

My wife asked me to write a follow up to the October rant I put up last year. Has it really been only 11 months since I saw my wife's kinesiologist? Well, that's a fair amount of time to wait for an update.

In  the past year I have lost a total of 40 pounds, and have averaged out to weighing 25 pounds less than my average was last year.  And I think in all fairness, most of it was a result of my trip to my wife's specialist.

Now, I still think this particular lady was a bit of a kook. I absolutely refuse to go back to see her, BUT...getting off the specific foods she told me to get off has done wonders. Going from an average of 215 lbs (high of 225) to an average of 190 (low of 184) and losing 3-4 inches off the waistline has been nice. We have made new friends as a result of our new eating style (its really been a lifestyle change: joining CSA's, really watching what we buy at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, almost never shopping at Safeway any more, and learning about what our favorite restaurants cook with), and learned a lot of our health in general.

I preach this where I can: most people are sensitive to foods they have no idea they shouldnt be eating - as evidenced by belly paunches (ESPECIALLY if the rest of you isnt fat!), bags under your eyes, lack of energy...you know, all that mumbo jumbo, but not everyone is allergic to gluten. This isnt something I can walk around to people and say, "You know, you'll be a lot healthier if you stop eating wheat."  It might be true, but we are all truly different.

That being said, eating healthy is a commitment, but it isnt as hard as I envisioned: I am dairy free, peanut free, wheat and corn free, gluten free (basically the same thing as no wheat), and soy free. I prefer foods with fewer, not more, ingredients. I drink sake, wine and brandy (E&J XO, my favorite ever, is made from grapes, who knew!) instead of beer (Bud Light is almost gluten free, at 20 parts per million, but it still takes like, well, you know...). I eat UDI's Whole Grain bread now from Whole Foods, and I admit, I miss the heck out of french bread, but UDI's rocks (we toast all our bread for sandwhiches now, and use butter instead of mayonnaise). Quinoa (pronounced "Keen-wah") is an amazing and tasty alternative to pasta - thank goodness Willow Street Pizza, our favorite place to eat, uses it so much.  I can do egg whites but not egg yolks, so I still have to eat carefully.  We accept that I basically have Celiac disease and eat accordingly.

All in all, if you can find someone who tests for food sensitivities in your area, that you look into it. Some of the techniques they use are a little odd, but let's face it: food isnt processed the same as it was, let alone even grown the same!  But health is life, and having been over 200 pounds since before I was married, to be under 190 again at the age of (almost) 40 is amazing. And it is all from my diet change - ZERO exercise, people. Zero. So while I still maintain that the experience I had 11 months ago was bizarre, the aftermath has been amazing. Thanks to my wife for her dedicated work, but Ive become a proponent of alternative medicine in my own little way.

Im alive...promise!

I have been out of the loop for two months now, so I wanted to put the proverbial pencil to paper and remind myself what's been going on recently.

I manage a motel in an amazing town, and the property has never done justice to the setting in which it sits. All that is changing now, however, as the owners have finally begun a massive renovation that will make it fit in, thankfully.  How does this affect me? I live onsite, and my apartment is slated to become office space, so I will be moving offsite shortly (within a few months, it looks). So I am in this horrible limbo and have been since Christmas, because the house shopping being done could have come to fruition at any time.

Now it looks ready to be settled - a small townhome (more like an apartment) across the street is opening on July 1, and the owners have all but closed on it. Let the packing begin!

This also means that I havent had the craft space to do what I want, and my game room has become a repository for all the household crap that is also in limbo, so just getting the game table and terrain out has been a huge task in and of itself. Thus, no tabletop gaming for the past few months, and maybe not till after the move. Bummer.

I do, however, have some games I am really looking forward to playing, once the move is done. Strike Legion is on the top of my list, as are more games of Epic: Armageddon. 6mm is still my first love. In the 15mm realm, Strike Legion just published Platoon Leader, and I helped edit and playtest it a bit, I received a complimentary copy. Super cool, and I want to get it on the table. Brent over at Bombshell Games, the maker of OP4S, is also working on a new version of a game called The Battlefield and I hope to put some editing work to that as well.

Why havent I done more 15mm? After all, Im pretty sure thats what I opened my blog with!  Well, Tomorrow's War just wasnt what I was wanting, as it didnt have the Army Builder aspect to it, and it fried my brain while playing. Gruntz was fun, but a friend of mine didnt dig it...but now Robin is working on his Army Builder program, so I'll likely give it another shot once that comes out.

I started work on an Excel sheet for building units in KJ's Strike Legion game, but the formulas were complicated enough to give me pause. I found a volunteer to help from the TMP forums, so we'll see if he is able to deliver.

What have I been doing recently? A whole lot of no wargaming, but Ive been idle!

I bought a metric ton of World of Warcraft TCG cards around Christmas (I LOVE CCGs) and have been sorting and cataloging them. Ive played some Battletech, been kicking around with Mechwarrior 4 in anticipation of Mechwarrior Online coming online this summer (I even bought a Logitech G940 Flight System in preparation of this, on crazy sale!), and even have started up Tera Online, my first MMO in years since World of Warcraft. I love MMO's also, but tend to get addicted to them, so Ive eased up over the past few years. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 on my PS3 has been getting a lot of play time as well.  In short, Ive dabbled in most every medium except miniatures. I even got a big shipment from England of Exodus Wars 6mm stuff, so I can finish my Death Korp of Krieg and start a Harakoni Warhawks army for Epic...but alas, it'll likely wait till after the move to get finished.

Of course that's not all I've done. Ive been in a weekly D&D 3.5 campaign, and I've even begun working on a fantasy setting for my own Champions/HERO game (combining L5R, WoW, and a lot of other fantasy genres into something fun), but am highly annoyed that most of the basic books I need for HERO arent available right now. /frustrated!!

So fear not - more work will be done on this blog coming this summer. I'll get more terrain done, post painting updates on my Krieg list, and try to get some Epic and Strike Legion batreps posted. Hang in there. Im not done yet!!!

Im not alone when it comes to not wanting to paint rank after rank...

Ive been surfing over at Tabletop Gaming News today as I often do, and came across this article reviewing Warpath, the to-be-40k-competitor by the guys over at Mantic Games. You can read it here:

http://thefrontlinegamer.blogspot.com/2012/03/games-that-currently-intrigue-me.html

But what caught my eye was the comment at the end:

"The reality is that I'm not quite as enamoured with the idea of mass battle games like I once was. It no longer fits with how, or indeed where I want my hobby to go. I've done that for roughly the past 15 years or so and in the end I didn't find it a very enjoyable all round hobby experience. I guess it's because deep down I love painting and being forced to have to paint row after row of identikit miniatures fills me with dread now, no matter how I approach it. Painting them to as high a standard as I can achieve, which is what I'd normally choose to do, scares the hell out of me. Especially when I think of the time commitment I'd have to make to such a joyless task. Yet speed painting them, and just doing the basics isn't what I like doing either and I find it a bit soul destroying. Big games take a big commitment and I guess my life isn't quite in that same 'hobby zone' right now that it used to be."
You've just nailed my attitude exactly. I can't tell you whether it's a general trend or just a few of us, but I'm over the whole fill-the-table-with-28mm models thing. It's an excess I can no longer afford either time-wise or cash-wise.
I love painting, which might be evident in the terrain I have done lately, but I think this is because the pieces themselves are so individualistic that it is almost like a skirmish game with terrain :)

I have a new JR Miniatures building to show, maybe tonight, but I wanted to get this out there. It echoes how I feel a lot too...and is one of the reasons that 6mm is such a joy to me right now.

Roleplaying and 15mm

I havent posted anything in a while, I know. I dont tend to paint much on my own as I get cramped backs and cricked necks, so I wait for friends to join me. The holidays being what they are, most of us were too busy to game, let alone get creative.

However, I able to get most of my Khurasan minis MOSTLY finished last night. A few more details, then I can gloss coat them, which will allow my Secret Weapon weathering pigments to go on, and the dull coat after that will enable me to take the guys off the popsickle sticks and play a proper game of Tomorrow's War and Gruntz.

However, this isnt the reason I am writing today.

I think I've mentioned in the past that I wanted to start roleplaying again, but I think I was in love with the fantasy of playing a character in a game; the actual act of "roleplaying" isnt as fun to me as it used to be.  I know this because I finally got back into a D&D v3.5 game with some of my old gaming buddies, and I just really let everyone else talk to the NPCs or do their thing. Being a miniatues gamer, I just live for the combat. it may be limiting, but its true.

Now, I had actually gotten so tired of 3.5 that I sold all my books but kept my 4e books. I still havent played 4e, but was still interested. However, as I toyed with buying more books, I had a first-hand chance to see how WotC has messed 4e all up. Three Players Handbooks. 2 DM guides. No more PHB1, because it was screwed up, so now you get to buy Essentials Rules Compendium. After looking at THIS book and THAT book, I realized, I just dont really want to spend all that money on book after book. A good RPG doesnt need all that!  Sure, Players Options are HUGELY important to a success of a game, I believe, but heck, HERO/Champions does all that in just ONE book (well, 6th Ed has 2 core books, but big deal).

SO once again I was on the hunt for a new RPG. Alpha Omega by Mindstorm Labs is still a really good Sci-Fi game in the vein of Shadowrun, and has at least one unique combat mechanic (the dice pool) that I felt was really refreshing.  I have a penchant for games that dont use classes, so AO is still a keeper (I played it a few times with a fun group, but we had too many rookies to make it really work that time).

After much looking, I came upon Arcanis by Paradigm Concepts thanks to a thread over at ENWorld. Arcanis USED to be a 3.5 OGL product, but when 4e came, the people at PC made it into a game of their own. The influence of D&D is there, which is nice, but it also doesnt use classes (it uses Archetypes and Backgrounds, which are mostly interchangeable) and has a neat combat shtick that reminds me of AD&D's initiative system).  Anyway, I purchased it and have been enjoying its layout, presentation, flavor and mechanics.

When my group's D&D game wraps up this spring, I will be presenting Alpha Omega and Arcanis as my options for our next game. HERO 5th or 6th will be a backup. After all, playing D&D isnt bad and doesnt make you a bad person, but if its all you ever play, you're limiting yourself from experiencing that yes, there can be LADD ("Life After D&D").