Thinking Outside the Box

Feb 25, 1923 From: Carl Selinger, Commanding Field Agent To: Director Silver, Calgary Field Office RE: Case File SA-130207-F Director, After our long trip over the Atlantic we finally arrived in London and then traveled by train to Braunschweig. Our journey was uneventful, and after the good professor consulted with some of his colleagues at the university, we set off into the northern forest to follow up on Agent Monique's report. She is to meet us with further intelligence when her duties permit. We found the sacrificial circle exactly where she had described it would be. We immediately began to investigate the outlying area. With dusk rapidly approaching we were completing our preliminary survey when suddenly set upon by uniformed soldiers. They were well trained and extremely well armed. We were quite simply not prepared for that level of firepower. Both Agent MacIntyre and myself were able to take cover, but were immediately flanked and took heavy fire. Luck...

Our league is still rolling along. We've got two more rounds of regular play before we vie for the crown of "Champ-peen". I asked each of the players what they thought would be good for choosing the top two teams to play for the top-place and we decided to go with the top two winning percentages. Any ties that arise will be decided by league points, and then, if necessary, team value. This feels good to me for a few reasons, first it doesn't punish anyone who may have won a lot of games, but not had the in-game luck to acquire experience, or have rolled low in the income part of the post-game sequence. Secondly, it gives players a chance to increase their odds of getting a championship berth by playing extra games, without requiring them to simply try to up their value. Wins matter here. The number of wins isn't the only thing however, as a coach who plays some additional games can improve their win percentage, increase the number of league points that they...

Sitting around on a quiet Sunday evening is one of the few times of the week that I actually have to myself. Often I'll just sit and watch some TV and try to decompress a bit before Monday morning responsibility thunders back into view. Last Sunday I didn't even watch what was on the TV, I merely listened while I put together some more models from my ever-growing mountain of lead and plastic! The Zombie Horde  pack is, to my knowledge, the only Judge Dredd set that comes with plastic components. Interestingly enough, the plastic parts in this kit are zombie sprues by Mantic Games . The pack contains a zombie mistress, a zombie judge, a sprue of metal heads and two sprues of metal shoulder/elbow/knee pads, a few pouches, six identical metal torsos, eight bases and two sprues of Mantic zombies. I received this pack as part of my Council of Judges  pledge on Kickstarter from before Christmas, so they arrived without retail packaging. That said, I'm uncertain if this is ex...

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...

Starting in mid-January I organized a small Dreadball league to try out the rules. I decided to try the rules exactly as they're written, since making changes to them didn't seem to make sense without having  at least tried them first. Initially I had six players signed up including myself. We lost one player early on because she decided the game just wasn't for her. Due to that, I decided to play an additional team so that the Corporation humans wouldn't go unrepresented and we would have an even number, so as not to leave one team with a bye each round. One of our players still needs to pay his league fees, and another isn't available every Sunday but otherwise things seem to be proceeding fairly well. If there's enough interest in running another league I will likely have to stipulate that players should be willing and able to play on league days. Of course life will get in the way occasionally, but that should be the exception rather than the norm. A ...

I received my first package a little over a week ago, and was finally able to spend some time going through all the stuff that came in the sizeable and nicely packed box! I won't be posting up any photos for this article, because dozens of other folks online already have. First off, there's a lot of stuff in the base game box: a full-color rule book, 2 token sheets, 5 doubled-sided board tiles, 50 profile cards, 50 figure bases, 8 dice, clear green counters, red and blue base inserts and of course figures. Lots and lots of figures. I pledged for the Biohazard level on the Kickstarter campaign, so I also received an extra box with even more figures in it. The base game has 50 figures, and the additional figures totaled another 30+, including the special resin Kara Black sculpt. Lots of monsters and troopers to provide support and cause trouble for our character models! I also received the Vanguard patch (which I have no idea what to do with), a signed print and some custom di...