Thinking Outside the Box

Whew, two more boxes of figures arrived in the mail last week. I had some travel plans for the weekend and thus didn't have a chance to really have a look at everything until now. First up is my second and final package from the Freebooter's Fate - Legends campaign on IndieGoGo . I received 17 figures, each with a square plastic base, character card (actually two or more cards in both German and English), and a sculpted integral base that fits into the plastic one. A few of the character's names changed from the time of the campaign to release, but it only took me a few moments to figure out who was who. The first package that I received back around Christmas included the rule book, game cards and a starter box. I'm quite looking forward to putting together a bunch of these figures. Several of the 'legends' figures come with extra components like alternate heads and arms with which to class them up. Likely I'll start with two of the starter boxes and ad...

Starvation / Demos Shortly before Christmas I posted up some pics of the massive box of toys I received from Vesper-On Games for their skirmish game Carnevale . Essentially an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink purchase in support of their Morgraur-Rahaar IndieGoGo campaign late last year. There were a LOT of models in that box and I didn't really know where to get started until now. So a little over a week ago I hear about a worldwide campaign that Vesper-On was doing entitled "Starvation." Tournaments were to be played at venues worldwide, the results sent back to them, and then used to modify the game world in some way in future expansions. Not having any other people to play the game with yet, I decided to do something a little bit different. I dug through my box of stuff and pulled out the rule book and all the starter boxes. After going through them to figure out what components went with each figure I was then able to stat up lists around 190 points each. Inte...

This post may not be of great interest to you, but I wanted to collect all my thoughts together about several items I've ordered, pledged for or am planning to do this year. Not really a resolution list, but more of an...itemized accounting I suppose. I supported a lot of crowd-funding efforts in 2012. Sadly the first one that I supported I've not yet seen anything from and they seem to be suffering delay upon delay: Sedition Wars . As of early this week though, it does sound like they're finally getting on track. This was the first time I really jumped in and pledged for stretch goals or extras, and the amount of stuff I will (eventually) receive for my money was pretty astounding. While I am looking forward to the game itself, I'm also looking at using the Vanguard figures for other things, more likely as Colonial Marines for some Aliens-related gaming. The next thing I jumped on was the now-ubiquitous DreadBall . I went way overboard throwing cash at this beast...

Holy crap, I can't believe that it's the year 2013. What the hell happened to time? I remember being a kid and watching movies like Transformers  and thinking "2005, that's so far away!" Maybe I'm just getting old(er) and starting to wondering what I've been doing with my life. Regardless, 2012 was mostly good, with some unpleasantness occasionally thrown in to mess it up. Not unlike most everyone else's I'd imagine. Overall I can't complain too loudly. It's a New Year full of promise, just like every new day should be. I won't be doing a full recap of the year, because well...that'll probably be boring for me and you. All the hobby stuff I did last year is available right here on the blog, so you can go through it at your leisure. I'd rather fill you in on all the stuff that's happened over my winter break! We'll just skip the parts about the exorbitant traffic ticket I got from less-than-honorable traffic cop, and ...

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 pos...

So things have been pretty exciting on the miniature gaming front for me recently. First off the DreadBall campaign recently finished and the survey was sent out by Mantic shortly afterward. I had already pledged for all the extras I thought I'd need and filled my survey out quickly. I did end up adding a few more things but missed two of the MVP figures because I didn't realize they weren't included in the Striker package. I'm sure I can pick them up at a later time easily enough should I desperately decide I need them. There have been some preliminary conversations between myself and the folks of my gaming shop of choice (Trilogy Gaming Club) about DreadBall as well. We've made some plans for demoing the game at an upcoming Blood Bowl tournament; to be followed up by two different league nights. Originally I had thought there would just be one event weekly. After talking about it however, it looks like we'll try doing two events per week. The one I'll be...

I thought I'd post up some thoughts on some other skirmish or boutique miniature games that strike me as interesting. It could prove quite boring, so feel free to skip this one if you already have enough unpainted lead and plastic on your workbench. Bushido I've found Japanese history interesting since seventh grade social studies. There's something very interesting about it being the lone country in Asia to develop a feudal system resembling that of Europe in near total isolation. Bushido is not a historically accurate game, but rather a game inspired by Japanese history with a lot of fantastic elements from legend and mythology mixed in. I haven't had a lot of opportunity to look into the game very deeply, but the rule book and character cards are available for download from their website. I really dig when companies do that. It gives me (or you) a chance to proxy up some models and give the thing a few test drives before laying out any cash. From what I've...