Thinking Outside the Box

While we are waiting for the next organized play kit to show up at Trilogy Games, a few of us got together yesterday to play some 100-pt games just for fun. I know, I know, playing a game without prizes or tournament support?! What were we thinking... I played a Mirror Universe fleet with two ships. Beardy & S miley Go For A Drive  (100pts) - Mirror Universe Galaxy Class w/ Riker & We Won't Go Back, Jennifer Sisko, Multi-Targeting Phaser Banks and Dorsal Weapons Array - ISS Defiant w/ Miles O'Brien & Rebellion, Ezri Tigan, Elim Garak and Quantum Torpedoes - Improved Shields Alex was playing a TOS-era fleet with Sulu on a flag-shipped Excelsior, Terrell on The Reliant and a generic Constitution class. The second round saw some heavy firepower tossed among the ships and it was looking like it would be a quick game. By the fourth round however most of the ships had passed beyond useful weapons range, although there was the odd torpedo fired off. Ezri picked...

Yesterday we played our final Organized Play  event of the year for Star Trek Attack Wing :    "The Tholian Web." Now you might wonder why we were playing a scenario from six months ago, so I'll explain. Back when this tournament was supposed to be run our shop didn't get the OP kit in time for me to hold the event. It did arrive later, but we had other kits for tournaments to run and I didn't want to be running a month behind for the rest of the year, so I opted to wait for an opportune moment. After "Resistance is Futile" OP2 it was looking very likely that we wouldn't be receiving the month 3 kit in time to hold that event before Christmas, so we played the Tholian Web scenario, but this time with a twist: we played 100-point lists but used the extra RiF boosters to add an extra 30 points of mayhem to the games. I'm happy to say that everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves and we had an excellent turnout. There were a few Federatio...

Last night we played our "First Contact" OP event at Trilogy Games . I have a bunch of expansions that I've not yet used, so I wanted to start working through the backlog of those. It's been a while since I played Federation, and the new Enterprise had some good looking stuff in it. "Mostly" Movie-TOS Federation (90pts): - USS Excelsior w/ Spock & Attack Pattern Omega, Valtane and Quantum Torpedoes - USS Enterprise (refit) w/ Kirk (8) & Disobey Orders, Worf, McCoy, Lojur and Photon Torpedoes - Command Tokens I ended up with the Dominion booster pack and kitted it out with: - 3rd Wing Attack Ship w/ Gul Damar & First Strike, Ion Thrusters and Photon Torpedoes I was matched up against a Dominion battleship/Koranak fleet that had a Maquis Raider booster pack and a loaded up side-board. My opponent set up the raider and Koranak on opposite ends of his starting area. I set up all of my ships in formation opposite the raider. ...

Tholian Web A few weeks ago I posted up my planned fleet list for the "Tholian Web" event. When I found out that my regular venue wasn't able to get the kit I resigned myself to not getting to try the fleet list. If you want a quick recap, it was two Bajoran scouts, a Defiant-class and some Federation fighters. The full list and my thoughts about it can be found  here . Pleasantly enough, I had a chance to run this fleet at Sentry Box's event last Monday! The first match put me up against a two-ship Federation build that made quick work of my Bajoran ships. The Defiant class survived long enough to take out Picard's ship, and with time called, my fighters took out the second ship with just enough damage to take down its last remaining hull point. The second match was against a fully loaded Voyager clocking in at 98 points. I wasn't quite sure what to make of the build. It had some good tools and those 10-dice torpedoes are scary. However, the attack us...

What seems like a long, long time ago...I received some of these 6'x4' mats for my birthday (nope, not last year's). They're really good looking but the size makes them difficult to paint in my house. The only way I can do that is to put both of my large folding tables out together, push most of the living room furniture out of the way and try not to get paint on the floor. I've got my Broken Blacktop mat about halfway done...but that's not what I'm here to talk about today. A few days ago I stopped in at Trilogy  with the intent of picking up a  Gale Force 9 mat for playing Star Trek: Attack Wing  on. They were supposed to have gotten some in stock, and I was happy to find that the rumours were true. Looking around the shop a little more I saw that they had a "Scourged Forest" 2'x3' Zuzzy  mat. I have a 6'x4' one, but since I've been playing a lot of Strange Aeons  lately and all of my home-built scenery is of the grass-and-...

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 ...

We played our month 4 organized play "Dominion War" event at Trilogy Gaming Club  last night. I have to say I was really disappointed to have only two other players in attendance, especially after having to go through all of December without an event due to the holiday break. Needless to say I was looking forward to playing some games of Attack Wing! Lewis and Shane line up their fleets (Romulan and Federation respectively) for the first game. It was a relatively short affair with the two-ship Federation fleet being highly outmaneuvered and outgunned. We opted to play a three player game afterward so as not to leave anyone sitting out for a lengthy stretch and selected one of the scenarios from the rule book. Although "The Chase" was written with each player controlling a single 40-point ship in mind we decided to play 100-point fleets to make it more interesting. Since I had planned to play a Romulan list for the tournament, and I've played Klingons several...

With everything going on in the city, I think it makes sense to postpone the start of our Dreadball league by a week. Trilogy should be posting an update on their Facebook soon stating the same. If anyone was planning on coming out to play or register, please wait. I'll post more news as soon as I'm able to about upcoming plans for the league.

League Overview: Monthly round meetings will be held on the last Thursday of each month, from 6:30 to 9:00 pm at Trilogy Games. Regular league play will consist of six rounds. The dates for each round are: Round 1: June 27th Round 2: July 25th Round 3: August 29th Round 4: September 26th Round 5: October 24th (in place of Halloween) Round 6: November 28th The championship tournament will be played on Sunday, December 8th. Registration will begin at 12:00 pm, the first round will begin at 1:00 pm. The tournament will be single-elimination, round-robin play consisting of a minimum of three rounds. Registration: Entry to play in the league will be $30, which includes entry into the championship tournament. Prizing for the league will be provided by Trilogy Games. The number of prizes, levels of prizing and specific items will be determined by Trilogy Games after registration for the league has closed. Coaches can register at the store any time on or befor...

Well we've finally completed all five rounds of our regular season Dreadball play and I have to say that it's been pretty interesting. It's also been a lot of fun! I've collected in all the game results from the players and I have to say that the top four is not at all what I'd expected it to be. I had done some private forecasting based on the early rounds, factoring in the performance and death tolls, and man was I ever wrong about who came out on top! Anyway, here are the standings at the close of regular play. Team Value Win Pct Points Wins Losses Played Avion Yellowhawks 134 80% 10 4 1 5 Funky Fathers 129 60% 6 3 2 5 Royal Eternian Rams 146 57% 12 4 3 7 Seb's Veer-myn 122 57% 10 4 3 7 Da Bombers 148 40% 5 2 3 5 Snake Mountain Smashers 145 14% 7 1 6 7 As you can se...

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 ...

The first season of  Dreadball  started last Sunday at Trilogy Gaming Club. Two of our three 1st round games have already been played: a Forge Fathers mirror-match and an Orx / Veer-myn dustup. A rather unique set of pairings. The Forge Fathers game was a slow moving, low scoring affair, with only three strikes being scored in the game during regulation time. We did forget about the 'steady' ability for the first few rushes, but remembered shortly after most of the guards had been knocked down. The low speed of the Forge Fathers is definitely going to require some finesse-coaching to develop a viable and adaptive game strategy. In the other game the Orks under Coach Eisnor opted for blood, and man-oh-man did they get it! Three of the furry Veer-myn strikers left the pitch in body bags by game end. It was a very costly victory for the Veer-myn team, but a win nonetheless. Interestingly enough the Veer-myn guards tried to lay down the pain in return but had no success agains...

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 ...

It would seem that I'm a total sucker when it comes to new games these days, especially when they have little plastic people/monsters involved. The latest (although in this case, not-yet-released) one that I've been following with high interest is Mantic Games' DreadBall . Upon seeing the initial teasers and game explanation floated around I, like almost everyone else out there, thought it just looked like a futuristic version of Blood Bowl . Now, I have never played Blood Bowl, nor do I have any interest in it whatsoever. I know it's got a huge cult following and has been around for a long time, but it looks way too fiddly and complicated for my tastes. Granted, I've only seen a few games played at my local shop and I have no idea what the rules are like or anything else. Nonetheless, I'm simply not interested. Then back to DreadBall, and why am I interested in this if it's just a Blood Bowl clone? When Mantic announced their Kickstarter campaign (som...