December 11, 2012

Saltwater, Suntans, Pirates and...Futuristic Sports?!

Just returned home from a 4-day conference for work. Tons of information and lots to do now that I'm back, both at home and at the office. I'm actually glad to be back home, even if it is snowy, cold and nothing at all like Honolulu. Yes that's right feel sorry for me damn it!

Actually I wouldn't mind a little sympathy. Less than two hours off the plane and some infernal plague attacked my immune system and I'm now sick. I'm actually going to blame the air conditioning at the conference for that though... It was really cold in the meeting rooms, but 32 C or more outside on average. So I was alternating between sweating or freezing my ass off for those four days. Top if off with a lengthy dunk in the Pacific for some snorkeling, and then not sleeping on the flights home...I'm not really surprised that I'm sick!

Even under the weather I still soldiered on and went to Trilogy as I had promised, to run some demo games of DreadBall. The reception was positive from all the players and I think at least two of them have placed orders for teams of their own. Not to mention that I probably pulled off the greatest play ever: final rush, my ball, down by four points with two action tokens left.

I was able to pick up the ball in my own end zone with a human striker on my previous action, scoring a double and getting a free move. I couldn't play my last two tokens on him as well, which was what I needed to do in order to score. Gambling, I used a token to buy a card, and got "Striker: Any Action." I played the card to sprint straight up the pitch, getting me just within distance to use my final action token to move into the bonus hex of the 3-point scoring area. With one die I rolled...and scored a 4-pointer! The crowd went wild and the game went into sudden death. Which I had to concede anyway due to time constraints.

Ahem.

Right. So, now that I'm back I'm looking forward to the winter holiday season, putting up my Christmas tree, wrapping some presents and spending some time on my hobbies in the evenings. I see that I have a half painted batch of figures on my painting table, impatiently waiting for some attention. I started the Lycaon faction starter box for Empire of the Dead before I left, in hopes of getting them done but only got around 75% of the base colours done. If my cold cooperates I'm hoping to achieve 100% tonight after work.

I was pleasantly surprised to have a parcel card awaiting my return. Part of my reward from one of the more recent crowd-funding campaigns (the second one I've supported on IndieGoGo) actually arrived while I was away. Inside the deceptively small box was my starter stuff for Freebooter's Fate! What I received is essentially the starter deal from the freebooter website, but packed flat. It included the core rulebook, the cards required to play, and the Brotherhood of Assassins starter crew box. Nicely enough, the box, foam and cover sleeve for the starter box were all included, just packed flat to save space.


I haven't really had the time to do much other than flip through everything, but the book looks gorgeous. Very nicely put together, and from my brief scan, expertly translated from the native German. Another crew will have to be picked up so that I can actually try the game out but I'm looking forward to it.

Now if only the big boxes of Carnevale and DreadBall stuff would hurry and get here...

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