Thinking Outside the Box

We had brutal, brutal weather here yesterday. The temperature dropped throughout the day while we got hammered with even more snow starting about nine in the morning. By supper time several of the main routes around the city were closed due to accidents. My trip to the shop was uneventful, but took longer than I'd expected. I was also the only person to show up. I can certainly understand not wanting to brave the weather and road conditions to go out and play a game. I'd have encouraged folks not to come for their own safety, had I known what I was getting into before I got in my own car. On the plus side however, I did pick up wave 2, and had a quick look over the OP4 kit. When I finally arrived home I sat down to open up my new toys. Sitting next to my little Christmas tree it felt a little like an early Christmas present. A present I had to pay for, but still fun nonetheless! The first ship I opened was the USS Excelsior . On first glance I don't think that Captain...

Several months ago I mentioned having bought a set of rules for World War II era skirmish gaming called Operation Squad WW2 . Shortly after I picked up a set of 1:48 scale German Panzer Grenadier figures by Tamiya . Happy with the scale once I'd put a few together I headed off to pick up some more sets so that I could field squads from several different nations for the game. The second batch that I decided to put together was their Russian Infantry box. HMG and assistants The Tamiya figure sets are very price effective, costing anywhere between $12 and $16 Canadian. I put together 12 figures from the Russian set, and I believe there are still three figures left that can be constructed if I buy vehicles or want to add variety. sergeant and lieutenant Something to keep in mind is that these are not necessarily great gaming figures because they're a little fragile. They're models intended for display, not play. The construction time can be a little high due to th...

After playing in two tournaments for the Star Trek: Attack Wing OP3 last week, this week feels like a bit of a letdown. All the wave 2 previews have been released. The OP4 prizes have been spoiled. Now most of the players are simply awaiting the arrival of wave 2 in their local stores or in their mailboxes if they ordered online. And the next tournament seems far, far away. Wizkids Dominion War  tournaments have been a lot of fun through the first three months. With the various winter holidays and new year coming up OP4 is slated to run through Dec/Jan, which means fewer events. I know of one shop that is running theirs in December but it's on a day I can't attend. Another has scheduled theirs for mid-January. The shop I'll be running at hasn't gotten back to be to confirm if my suggested date is acceptable. December is a busy time for most folks, so I can understand. I'm quite looking forward to wave 2, which is sort of ironic actually because I've not use...

Just a quick follow-up to my post earlier this week after playing in my second OP3 event of the "Dominion War." With my Klingon fleet not performing as well as I'd hoped I decided to make some modifications for my second event by shuffling captains around to get access to another action. I replaced the 9-skill Martok with the 8-skill one, and swapped Nu'Daq out for Gowron. Not a surprise to anyone who plays Klingons, and also fairly reminiscent of the fleet I used in OP2. The first game was against our resident Romulan player with two Valdores and two science vessels packing cloaked mines. I was much more careful about my ships flying in formation in this event and was largely able to avoid the mines he dropped on either side of the planet. We fought over the planet but I was again hampered by my dice, although it was much closer. Martok's barrage of fire damaged Donatra's Valdore down to no shields and one hull, but her return volley punched through his...

The Plan So far in most of my games of Star Trek: Attack Wing I've stuck to in-faction builds wherever possible because I find that to be more fun than min-maxing across factions. So far I'd have to say that it's working out fairly well, as I've been able to come in second and take home a prize ship in the three organized play events; even giving away my second Ch'tang to a fellow player. Admittedly I have mixed Dominion and Ferengi  ships just so I could use my month 1 prize Krayton in a game, but it didn't prove very successful in my first test attempt. I haven't given up on the Ferengi yet though! Otherwise I've played faction-pure squads in all my other games. Ok, ok you caught me. I did sneak one Federation talent into my Romulan build last time, but in my defence I didn't use it in any of my games. I really enjoyed playing my Klingon list from last month. Cloaking ships with high attack values were very useful in the Month 2 event of th...

Jeremiah over at  Front Toward Enemy has a ton of great content for Tannhauser . If you've ever had any interest in the game itself, check out the extensive video collection he's put together. If you're looking for custom content for the game the most notable creation of theirs is, in my opinion, the excellent Mercenaries team and accompanying mummies put together using the figures from The Adventurers: Pyramid of Horus  board game. However, I noticed that he used all of the Adventurers figures except for Rasputin! So I set about trying to create some statistics, objects and a scenario. Thanks to Jeremiah for the help and feedback. Please feel free to give the profile and scenario a try and let me know if you have any feedback. I'll be putting together proper tokens and card images for download as soon as I paint my figure. Aleksandr Rasputin Aleksandr is the disgraced son of the Matriarch and her husband Grigory Rasputin. When it was found out that the young m...

Since the release of Star Trek: Attack Wing , any regular visitors to my blog has probably noticed a rather high frequency of posts by me about the game. If anything, that should tell you simply that I think it's a good game. A very good game in fact. There are several things that I think it has going for it: 1. The universe - Star Trek has been around for decades and has a rich history to pull from, which makes it extremely good for gaming. With new releases every two months, it would still take YEARS to cover off all the ships we've seen on screen, let alone ships like Riker's USS Titan . 2. The engine - WizKids decision to license a proven system for the game was a good one. I feel that this has allowed them to concentrate on building on a good system by truly embracing the subject matter when making changes. 3. The factions - Directly linked to the universe, Star Trek offers numerous factions to explore. Mixing and matching factions is allowable (which I thin...