Thinking Outside the Box

Last night we played our Star Trek: Attack Wing  month 6 Dominion War event at Trilogy Games . After a quieter month 4 and 5 we returned to a full six-player group to close out the series. I had double-checked all of the previous month results to make sure that there were no mistakes, but before we got started I opted to keep those standings hidden, in order to add a little drama to the event. The truth is there was one player way out front, and I was the only player with a chance to catch him. For that to have happened however he would have had to lose all three rounds, and I would have to win all of mine and I knew that just wasn't going to happen. All that aside, the turnout was very good and I think everyone had a great time. I played a revised Dominion list, which I had come up with the day before to play against Teri in a preview game of the upcoming "Tholian Web" scenario. You'll have to keep an eye her YouTube channel for that video, and while you're ...

"Boom Can't Halt the Horde" The Etherian Horde took to the field against Cosmic Boom in a Sunday matinee game yesterday. Being the underdogs by 28mc, the home-team Horde brought in two Orx guards from the free agent pool to bolster their ranks against the speedy and lithe Judwan team. Having extra players was a first for the Horde, and so their coach decided to deploy the two Orx guards in his starting six. The Boom lined up in an extremely offensive stance across the launch line, obviously looking to capitalize with an early goal. When the ball launched the Horde Orx laid out some hurt to start the game, knocking down several opposing players. Transforming into striker mode, the Horde's #06, Hexatron, picked up the ball and ran in a two-point strike to end the rush. The Cosmic Boom were unable to reply immediately, having to dust themselves off a bit in their first rush. The third rush of the game saw more slamming (and a stomp) from the free agent guards, the ...

With spring rapidly approaching I started cleaning up around the house, and happened upon a pile of stuff I ordered way back last fall. I ordered these with the plan to use them as a basis for some 3D models that I could animate. I haven't yet got a 3D scanner, so that's likely why they were piled up in a corner and forgotten. Looking to maximize space (and have some fun), I set about opening them all so that I could give them a nice spot on my shelf together somewhere. I've never purchased any Diamond Select toys before and I have to say that they're very nice! I'm sadly one piece short (I think?) of having a complete Atlantis stargate. :( The two characters I'd really like to add to my collection seem to be very difficult (or at least expensive) to find. Rodney is reported a short-packed figure, and I think he came with one of the gate pieces I'm missing. Ronon was a Previews  exclusive, so it's extremely unlikely I'll find one. I'm ...

Back in January of this year we started playing a new league setup, organized by Zac. I'd run a short league the previous year and had tried unsuccessfully to garner interest in a new one late in the summer. Since starting up things seem to be going quite well, and there are eight regular players signed up, with a few more looking to join in from what I hear. This time around I decided to try playing one of my season 2 teams, The Etherian Horde. I've only been able to paint four of my twelve teams, and didn't really fancy playing my S2 female team (The Synergy City Holograms). I was looking for something a little different and I thought the females wouldn't be enough of a departure from the S1 humans. I had played a few one-off games with the robots and knew that my core game strategy would have to change. The starting roster is six players only, so I'm immediately left at a disadvantage: I have no substitute players to bring onto the pitch during the match! Thi...

Finally had a chance to try out the rules for Operation Squad WW2 . It's, as you might expect by the name, a squad-level skirmish game set in World War 2. Shocking right? Anyway, we set up a basic table and just tried a straight-up fight, rather than using any of the six scenarios from the core rule book. We played using my Tamiya 1:48 scale Panzer Grenadiers and Russian Infantry sets. Rick chose the Germans, won the initiative and started setting up first. The deployment of your figures is done in alternative order. Once we were all set up we rolled for first round initiative and started declaring our actions and reactions. Without duplicating the entire rules here's an example of how it works. The player with initiative can decide to go first or second, and then we make declarations. Say my opponent decides to go first; he picks a figure on the table who hasn't acted and says what he'll do. Maybe he's going to run into the trees over to his left. The mini...

Over the family day weekend I was able to get some time to myself to catch up on some TV. I've been using my Sunday (well, in this case it was actually Monday) evenings to plunk down and do some multi-tasking. Next up for construction were the  Plague  figures for Deadzone . The basic box game comes with eleven plague figures total: - 1x stage 1A - 3x stage 2A - 4x stage 3A - 1x stage 3A with heavy machine gun, and - 2x stage 3D "hellhounds" With the Kickstarter level that I pledged at I got some bonus troopers as well: - 4x stage 3A - 2x stage 3A with heavy machine gun I do wish that a few of the bonus figures had been hellhounds, or even an extra stage 2A instead just to add some more variety. Here are a the hellhounds and some knife-waving stage 3As. With the bonus figures I essentially ended up with triplets of three different figures. Since the main bodies are one piece, and the arms are keyed to a specific body, it's a little tough to modi...

The box that I received containing my first shipment of Deadzone items was second in size only to my Zombicide   Kickstarter  package. What I mean by that is simply...holy crap more stuff. As I've mentioned previously I'm a fan of Mantic Games , even if their resin-plastic model material isn't fabulous to clean up. After spending several hours (far too long really), sorting out all the contents for Deadzone I was able to get all of the items into the base game box barring the scenery sprues. Those I sorted, labeled with sticky notes and wrapped with an elastic band each. I clipped all the connectors from the sprues and dropped those into a bag for later use. I know that I could have primed the connectors on the sprues first, but it didn't seem to be worth the effort. The shipping box barely survived mailing so I cracked it down and threw it out. Less wasted space, but the scenery will need to be stored in something eventually. Out of curiosity I clipped all the ...

For some strange reason I got it into my head that I was going to build as many figures as I could from my awaiting lead and plastic pile in February. I still haven't had a chance to set them up for photos but it's finally on my to-do list tonight. Anyway here's a quick run down of what I was actually able to put together. I was pretty happy with the total! - Deadzone : Enforcer starter pack (12 figures) - Deadzone : Plague starter pack + bonus models (17 figures) - Project Pandora : Veer-myn squad (10 figures) - Project Pandora : Corporation squad (10 figures) - Dwarf King's Hold - Ancient Grudge : Ghouls x7, Dwarfs x2 and Elves x2 (11 figures) - Sedition Wars : Keegan, Dekker?, Jade Lily, Akosha, Vade and Dead Space dude (7 figures) So in total it looks like 67 models put together in February. I've also primed the Deadzone figures, so I'm actually doing pretty well with getting that game on the table to some 'figure out the rules' games. I...