Six Sided Rhinoceros

Yeah... I can relate

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:08:00 +0000

If you're a miniatures wargamer, this should make you chuckle.

Courtesy of Larry Leadhead.

Game Zombie

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 01:56:00 +0000

And like a zombie, he emerged from the sodden ground, caked in filth, stench-ridden, and ready to feast on... GAMES!

I've been away from this blog for quite some time. Changing jobs and drastically altering your life as a result tends to do that to a person. It has taken me 3+ months to return to normalcy; albeit a new form of normalcy. Anyway, I'm back from the dead so to speak. I hope I can hang around for awhile this time.

My gaming life has been ultra quiet since mid-July. I've taken a hiatus from development of my Sword of Severnia fantasy miniatures wargame, but work on that is about to resume. The playtesting group and myself will be meeting tomorrow afternoon to reignite the SoS fires, and hopefully get things moving again. We've come so far on this marathon; I'm not about to quit on it 1-mile short of the finish line. I'm resigned to the fact that it will take longer to finish everything to my satisfaction now that I'm only able to spend about 1/10th of the time on it compared to when it was part of my daily work-week. C'est la vie. But I'm still excited about the game, and one way or the other, it WILL see the light of day.

On the miniatures front, I have made some recent eBay purchases over the past 6 weeks. I acquired a nicely painted set of 10 new Khorne Bloodthirster Demons. They look menacing and fill a previously empty niche in my sizeable fantasy-minis collection. I also got a cool looking Cyclops from Reaper. He has a professional, well-executed paint-job and I can't wait to let him see some battlefield action on the well-trod fields of Severnia.

I also purchased some reptilian dino-riders (GW figures) from a seller in Hong Kong. Overall, they're solidly painted, but I was disappointed with the lack of detailing on the faces of the lizardmen riders. When paying $100+ bucks for a set of painted minis, I expect eyes and teeth to be painted, no unpainted areas in "hard to reach places" and tiny details which separate an average mini from a top-notch one. I'm going to have to touch-these up myself, which I shouldn't have to do. I'm iffy as to whether I'll buy from that seller again. Live and learn.

I'm also hoping to get some well-painted Foundry Vikings in sometime soon. I'll post pictures when (IF?) I get them. I'm hoping to cobble together a Norse/Viking (barbarian) army for SoS, but also have enough troops that can serve double-duty in ancients/Dark Ages wargames.

On the boardgaming front, there's a hell of a lot to get excited about. It always seems like a slew of great games come out during the 2nd-half of the year, usually starting in August to coincide with GenCon and continuing into late-October when Essen Spiel takes place in Germany.

New games that have landed squarely on my radar include:

Dice Town = a light, dice-rolling / poker style hybrid with a Wild West theme
Chaos in the Old World = a 4-player conquest game where each player takes the role of a chaos-god and his minions in the Warhammer fantasy universe. Lotsa buzz on this.
Richard III = the long-awaited block-wargame from Columbia Games that takes place during the Wars of the Roses period in England. I loved Hammer of the Scots, and this promises to be as-good or better.
Space Hulk (3rd Edition) = limited-run of the new edition of this GW classic are hard to find, but the game oozes theme and features awesome Space Marines and Genestealer (aliens) minis.
Dungeon Twister 2: Prison = DT is one of my favorite games, despite having not played it nearly as often as I'd like to. With new plastic minis and new rules including a solo variant, this is an absolute no-brainer MUST BUY for me.
The Adventurers = an Indiana Jones style adventure game with promising minis and a fun, beer & pretzels play style. Lotsa room for expansions.
Cyclades = an upcoming game about building cities to earn the favor of the Greek Gods, and featuring some awesome minis and great artwork. High on my Want-to-Buy list.
Dungeon Lords = basically the boardgame version of the video-game Dungeon Keeper.
Stronghold = a 2-player strategic, siege warfare game with a gorgeous looking board. Seems like an interesting mix of Euro and wargame mechanics. I'm intrigued.
Dominion Intrigue = I'm behind the curve on the new "hotness" that is the Dominion craze. I was initially skeptical of how fun a deck-building game would be, but the opinions of several podcasters whose opinions I respect has me itching to try the game and its new expansion.

And the most recent buzz on BGG is the news of an upcoming big-box game from Fantasy Flight Games called RUNEWARS. I've never succumbed to the lure of Twilight Imperium 3 (not a space-opera aficionado). And I've even resisted buying Descent, because I just don't have enough people who can get together to play a 4-5 hour game that isn't a miniatures wargame. But Runewars may be just the game that breaks my will. It's a remake of Battlemist, and sounds somewhat like a mix of Wizard Kings, Quest of the DragonLords, and Twilight Imperium, set in the world of Runebound. Okay FFG, you got me. Unless the early-reviews on this are awful (which I highly doubt), this will be the big-box, time-vampire game that finally lures me in to the world of massive FFG goodness.

And last but not least, some game conventions are on the horizon. I'm still deciding on whether I'm heading to FALL IN 2009, the annual Fall miniatures wargaming convention of HMGS East. This year's convention is in Gettysburg (at the Eisenhower Convention Center) from 11/06 thru 11/08. I'm not sure that most of my wargaming buddies are able to make it, so it might be a "go solo or don't go at all" deal for me this year. We shall see....

There's also a local gaming convention in Lemoyne PA the following weekend (Nov 14-15) which is being run by the owner of That Game Store (Lemoyne), who took over the store from my friend Mayer Foner when he retired last year. The convention is Organized Kahnfusion 26, and offers local Central PA gamers a chance to get-together and play boardgames, RPGs, card games, and wargames. I think there's even a Johnny Reb minis game being held.

So that's the scoop on games. I hope they start becoming a regular part of my monthly schedule, now that fantasy baseball season is over and I've become more acclimated to my new work environment in Chocolatetown USA.

See you next time.... Have fun gaming!

Summer Gaming

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 20:35:00 +0000

Although my Summer gaming has been lackluster so far, things are about to pickup. Read on and I'll tell you why...

HISTORICON 2009

Summer's biggest miniature wargaming convention is right around the corner. Historicon 2009 is being held at the Lancaster Host hotel and resort from July 16th thru the 19th in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. This is HMGS East's Silver Anniversary, so this show promises to be a great one. It's hard to believe that HMGS East has been kicking around for 25 years. Has it really been that long since I started going to wargaming shows at the old Penn Harris in Harrisburg, PA?

I'm planning a foray down to this wargamer's nirvana on Saturday, July 18. This is mainly a shopping excursion for me, unless I can convince my friend Kevin to hang around and join in an evening game at the Host (they have a few pretty neat fantasy/pulp style games running that night, although I'm always up for a Dark Age or Medieval battle as well).

I certainly don't need to buy any more unpainted metal soldiers. My paintbrush has yet to touch the minis that I purchased at the last two HMGS East cons. I've got Eureka frogs and a Beowulf warband, croc-men from Crocodile Games, Swiss Gnomes for Gnome Wars, barbarians from Bronze Age, and medieval knights and archers from Fronk Rank lined up in the painting queue. My New Year's Resolution to PAINT MORE OFTEN has failed miserably! But hey, there's still half-a-year left. It's never too late to get started on some new projects right?

I am, however, VERY tempted to look at the IRON WIND METALS booth this go around as they're supposed to be carrying figures from DragonBlood and Otherworld. Both of the manufacturers make absolutely spectacular models. Dragonblood has some really cool Lizardmen and Troglodytes, and a brand new Forest Troll. They don't have a bad figure in their whole range, and that's truly saying something. Otherworld is a UK based figure-maker, and they make a range of fantasy minis that will warm the cockles of any old-school D&D gamer's heart. These figures look like living incarnations of creatures from the 1st Edition Player's Handbook. Their pig-faced Orcs and Bugbears are amazing! I must have some....

My biggest focus will be on nicely painted figures and terrain. That means must-stops at Stan Johansen's, Evil Bob's, Toy Soldier Gallery, Acheson's Creations, and Albright's booths, a swing by David McBride's Splintered Light Minis stand, and lots of scouting for other cool stuff in both the vendor hall and flea market. Plus, I can damn-well guarantee that I'll pick up something at LITKO. They make the best bases and markers in the industry in my humble opinion.

So it should be a fun Saturday. Hope my wallet holds up!

SULTANS GAME DAY -- JULY 25

The next scheduled Game Day for the Sultans of Severnia wargaming group will be held on Saturday, July 25 at my house. We'll be fighting some more battles using the brand new Sword of Severnia fantasy mass-battle rules that I've been developing.

The wargame system is coming along quite nicely. Over the past 18 months, the game has undergone lots of tweaking and rules revisions as I've continually tried to streamline things to make the game easier to learn, less fiddly, faster playing, more strategic, and more fun. The wargame group is pretty darn happy with the way the game is working right now, and being my own harshest critic, I think I finally agree with them. It's certainly true that the sheer number of rules adjustments have slowed down to a tiny trickle. Aside from a few final tweaks, I would say the overall rules system is 98% finished.

The wargame, however, is still a fair bit away from final publication. I've still got to write the final, full-edition of the rulebook. Currently we're using a living, breathing playtest-version of the rulebook and some supplementary add-on booklets covering Special Abilities, Special Events, Scenarios, and so forth. All of that needs merged together, some fluff material and graphics added, and a nice index created for the whole thing.

Plus, the biggest thing is that I've still got the WarBuilder software to finish. This companion PC software comes with the Deluxe version of the game. It enables you to create your own custom regiments and characters, assemble them into an army, crunch their Point Values, and print out custom Stat-Cards / Stat-Sheets which are used as important reference materials during game play. It's been close to 6 months since I last stuck my paws into the PowerBuilder desktop environment and created database tables and wrote programming code. I'm hoping to get started with that again now that the game rules have stabilized.

Throwing a BIG monkey wrench into this whole process has been my move from a full-time, independent software developer running my own micro ISV, to working as an application design consultant for Hershey (yep, the chocolate folks). Right now, I'm on a 6-month contract. Whether it lasts longer than that is unknown at this point. It depends on whether they find me useful and have more projects to work on once 2010 rolls around, and whether I like it enough to stay there. The jury is still out on that one. Returning to work in the corporate environment after being a small business owner for almost 15 years is a MUCH BIGGER CHANGE than I ever imagined it would be.

PS: If anyone is looking to hire a full-time game designer / desktop software developer or small business partner, then please give me a holler. I'm keeping my options open.

Anyway... the next Sultans Game Day should be a blast. I'm really looking forward to it.

WORLD BOARDGAMING CHAMPIONSHIPS

This August, I'm finally planning on heading down to Lancaster, PA to check out the WBC (World Boardgaming Championships). My old friend Mayer and I are planning to day-trip down there sometime in the August 7th to 9th timeframe. I'm not sure if Mayer has ever been to the WBC, but being a former long-time game store owner I wouldn't be surprised if he had been. I've never been to the WBC, which is odd considering I only live 45 minutes outside of Lancaster and have been playing boardgames for many years of my life. Sometimes you overlook the things that are in your own backyard!

I like to WIN at games. Really, who doesn't? But I certainly don't consider myself to be a competitive tabletop gamer. That's really the domain of people who play boardgames to pretty much the exclusion of doing anything else for a good time. I'm more eclectic in my hobbies and don't have the time or desire to focus 100% on just one thing. To me, games are a chance to kick back with your good friends & family and enjoy a fun, social experience together. Sometimes that experience can be mentally challenging and thought-provoking, while other times it may simply be centered around laughs and beer & pretzels shenanigans.

The WBC doesn't strike me as an event for the non-competitive gaming bunch. Perhaps it's the fact that it contains the word CHAMPIONSHIPS in its title. That evokes images of Chess masters poring over checkered boards, stroking their beards, and fretting over the movement of a single game piece. Although at the WBC, it's really wargamers pushing chits around on paper hex maps. Or at least that's how it has always SEEMED to me. And perhaps that's why I have never gone to this convention. I just don't feel like sitting around for 6 hours gaming with a bunch of tight asses. Hopefully, I'm DEAD WRONG about all of this.

I did hear that the WBC has open-gaming. I even hear that some non-competitive folks venture down to the WBC every year just to play for fun, rather than prizes and trophies. That has my curiosity piqued. Perhaps I've been missing out on some gaming fun? We shall see. Hopefully, I'm not up to my eyeballs in tight-asses. As Nacho Libre says, "sometimes, a man needs to put on his stretchy pants".

GAME ON BROTHERS and SISTERS!

Boardgame Ramblings

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 13:33:00 +0000

What's currently on my board-gaming radar?

BGG Census

If you haven't taken a look at it yet, surf on over to BoardGameGeek and take a look at the 2009 Census Poll created by LankyEngineer. It's pretty interesting. Anyone who has been gaming for a long time or visiting BGG for years won't be the least bit surprised by certain outcomes (such as 95% of the respondents being Male, over 90% of the folks liking Euro games, 75% of the gamers being college educated, and the most popular beverage consumed while gaming being Beer at 41%).

But there were some really interesting results, at least in my view. Did you know that the prime age range for boardgamers was 31 to 40? I was shocked to see how few people under the age of 25 responded to the census. I grew up on boardgames, playing a LOT of them in my teen and college years. Perhaps today's youngsters focus on video games and RPGs to the exclusion of boardgames, and then discover them once they're more established in life? Or perhaps young people don't like Euro games, which is undoubtedly a strong focus of people who frequent the BGG website?

I also found it interesting to see the precipitous drop-off of boardgamers once you hit age 46 (which I'll be hitting next year!), and especially once you reach age 51. Obviously, lack of free time is an issue for everyone as they get older, especially for mid-lifers who are often juggling the demands of wife, kids, job, and general home tasks. Some of us have too many other competing hobbies (such as fantasy baseball, miniature wargaming, and painting for me). But still, why should you stop having fun just because your hair is turning gray?

It was also eye-opening to see the number of people who shared the same profession that I do. Almost 25% of respondents listed Computer Science (IT) as their profession.

There's probably 3 major reasons for this. First, computer folks are THINKERS and ANALYZERS by nature. Most boardgames (especially medium/heavy Euros, wargames, and meatier Ameritrash games) are "thinker" oriented activities. Secondly, computer people spend so much time on the computer, it's refreshing to get away from their machines and play non-digital games. It's our chance to be touchy feely and grab tangible game pieces instead of just pushing bytes around with our minds. Third, computer folks often work in semi-isolation. Sure, there are design meetings to participate in and think-sessions, but activities like programming are pretty much a solitary pursuit. Playing boardgames enables you to interact socially with your friends and share in group-based fun. So I guess when all is said and done, boardgames fulfill some very human needs that our computers don't!

Another surprising tidbit in the 2009 Census was that half of the respondents don't go to any game conventions during the year. These are serious gamer geeks, and half of them don't travel to those heavenly meccas of Geekdom? Shocking! I must admit that I don't really go to conventions to PLAY games all that much. I go to BUY STUFF and to GET INSPIRED by seeing all the cool stuff in one centralized place. You also meet some nice people along the way, which is a major bonus. So if you're one of those folks who has never attended a game convention, I strongly encourage you to try it, at least once. Check out the National Gamers Guild for a list of major conventions across the USA.

Summer Boardgaming

The 1st Quarter of every year is usually a "dead period" for me with regards to boardgames. I'm always crazy-busy with preseason fantasy baseball stuff, working on updates to my Rhino Baseball software, and organizing league events and prepping for my HARL baseball draft. Plus, I generally spend more of my time involved in miniature wargaming than boardgaming, so any free time for tabletop gaming during the early part of the year is allotted to my tiny tin men. I usually take a trip down to Lancaster PA for Cold Wars in March to get my early-year miniatures fix and spend some birthday money that's been quietly sitting around since January.

Once summer rolls around, I try to get my gamer friends to play some boardgames with me. Finding mutually agreeable weekend gaming dates for a bunch of 40-somethings, many of them with small kids, is often akin to herding cats. But I try to do my best.

Recently, I've acquired a bunch of new boardgames to add to my over-large collection. Truthfully, buying more new games is NOT a practical thing for me. I've already got more games on my closet shelves than I can possibly play over the next 4 years. But there's such an addictive quality to getting new games. Every once and awhile, you need a fix!

To support "my habit", I got the following new games and expansions over the past 2 months:

Fire and Axe

Age of Conan

Shadows Over Camelot: Merlin's Company (expansion)

Cutthroat Caverns: Relics & Ruins (expansion)

Dragon's Gold

Cave Troll

Dungeon Twister: Forces of Darkness (expansion)

Four of these are completely new games to me, while the others are expansions to some of my favorite games of all time. You can probably tell from this list that I absolutely LOVE fantasy, adventure, and war/combat themes in my games. The game styles run the gamut from co-op to negotiation to conquest to strategic-thinking to beer & pretzels madness. I tend to shy away from rules-complex and ultra-long games, because if I desire to go that particular route then I'd much rather play a miniatures wargame instead. Sorry BGG geeks!

Hopefully, I can get many of these games to the table this summer. Plus, I have a bunch of unplayed Euro gems I want to play as well (Big City, El Grande, Aladdin's Dragons, Wallenstein). Wish me luck!

Culling My Collection

Despite my recent game purchasing spree, I've resigned myself to whittling down my boardgame collection to 40 or 50 or so great games. This summer I'm hoping to sell off games that I simply don't forsee playing anytime soon or perhaps ever again. Can you say eBay?

When you have over 150 games, you start to get irrationally attached to them. I played countless games of Strat-O-Matic Hockey and Sports Illustrated Baseball when I was growing up, and I'm pretty sure I'll never play them again. But due to the fondness I have for those games, it's difficult to part with them. Sentimentality is often a hard thing to break.

I was enamored by the cool bits of Doom and Tide of Iron, and the good reviews many people had of them, but they remain in their shrink-wrap, unplayed. Sometimes, games just don't scratch enough of your personal itch. I'll usually always choose a fantasy game over a sci-fi title. Dragons, orcs, and wizards trump space marines and aliens for me. Thus, Doom has languished despite the fact that it was one of my top-3 favorite video games of all time and I loved the theme. Tide of Iron has remain unplayed because I'm more interested in ancient and medieval warfare provided by games such as Hammer of the Scots or Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage.

There are plenty of games in my collection like that; interesting, well-designed games, but games that haven't lit my personal passion enough to get them to the gaming-table ahead of other more enticing titles.

Game length is also a factor. I sold off Arkham Horror awhile ago after it languished on my shelf for 3 years. Sacrilege! Maybe. I was VERY enamored with the theme. Who doesn't enjoy running away from tentacled monstrosities and trying to avoid getting their brains turned into mint jelly? But getting that type of game (complex rules with 4+ hour playing time) to the table with my particular game group proved to be highly daunting.

So I'm going to have to make some tough decisions. Sticking with only 40 or 50 games seems like a prudent and practical idea. But can I really break my addiction? That will be the true test.

Shout Outs

Just a couple of quick shout-outs to some new gaming related blogs, podcasts, and news that I've come across recently...

For some informative video reviews of boardgames, including the weirdly captivating time-lapse game session videos, check out Josh Jenkins's blog called the Non-Stop Tabletop.

If you're a game addict but want to try and save money, check out A Year of Frugal Gaming blog. It's especially useful for miniatures enthusiasts. Some recent articles of keen interest were one on stripping paint off of plastic minis, and a nice article on scratch terrain building.

For those of you into JRR Tolkien's Middle Earth, bookmark this page which points to Fantasy Flight Games upcoming release of their massive Middle Earth Quest boardgame. It sounds pretty neat. I'm curious just how well a LOTR game that doesn't feature Frodo, Sam, Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and Gollum will really do. Removing the key characters that we all know and love from the world of Middle Earth would seem to suck a huge part of life out of that storybook world. We shall see...

I'm a huge podcast listener. I've got over 400 shows loaded into iTunes. For a long-time, my top-3 favorite game-related podcasts have been The Dice Tower (with Tom Vasel), The Spiel (with Stephen Conway & Dave Coleson), and Meeples & Miniatures (with Neil Schuck).
There are several other excellent podcasts, but none that have consistently measured up to the stellar quality of these 3 shows....until now.

One of my new favorites is the terrific podcast put out by Cody Jones and John Richard entitled Game On! with Cody and John. These guys bring a hefty enthusiasm to gaming, do some excellent in-depth reviews, aren't afraid to share their honest opinions, and are the type of gamers who don't take themselves too seriously (my kind of guys!). Plus, they love baseball! How friggin cool is that! Give them a listen today!

Another fantastic podcast is The D6 Generation (with Russ Wakelin, Craig Gallant, and Raef Granger). Perhaps the funniest podcast of the bunch and the most Ameritrash focused (as these guys truly love fantasy/sci-fi games, miniatures, and beer & pretzels boardgames). Nobody goes as in-depth on a single game as these guys do. If you can't make a decision on whether to buy or pass on a particular new game after hearing this trio talk about it, then you've probably had your brain eaten by zombies. The only negative about the show is that it's too damn long, often running over 3 hours. It's not something you can listen to in one, or even two sittings unless you have lots of free time on your hands. But hey, it's their show and they can do whatever they think is best! Still, it comes highly recommended.

And lastly... give the Noisemaker miniatures podcast a listen. Bert is the type of enthusiastic old-school minis gamer that gives the hobby a good name. This isn't a flashy show with high production values. Rather, it's just good, honest CONTENT with a focus on FUN. I find the podcast to be a source of inspiring ideas and useful opinions. Check it out.

Until next time.... SEVY out!

The Brown Eyed Man and the Chocolatier

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:01:00 +0000

Once upon a time there lived a brown-eyed man. He was a creative soul who toiled in virtual obscurity, doing what he loved. But after many grueling years of being overworked and underpaid, the frustrated man sought out a new path in life. He shouted into the digital ether, hoping that some sentient being out there in the vast cosmos of 0's and 1's would hear his plea for guidance. He sat back, drank a raspberry margarita on Cinco De Mayo and waited.

The call came from the mystical chocolatier, Mr. Goodbar, who lived high upon a hill in his shining factory. The brown-eyed man sat down for a pow-wow with the chocolatier and they chatted about manufacturing candy bars, building software, and appeasing the Oracle. It was a good meeting.

Days passed. The brown-man spent the time watching the Steel Magnolias grow, and engaging his friends in mythical warfare with scores of tiny tin troops who battled across a killing field made of fake grass. He celebrated his wedding anniversary, taking the girl he loved to a land where tasty Italian dishes were served in countless numbers to patrons of all shapes and sizes.

He met with the chocolatier again. They seemed to hit it off. The brown-eyed man was intrigued. Perhaps his future was in the candy making business? Time would tell.

The brown-eyed man traveled to the far reaches of Virginia to contemplate his future. He walked the fields of Fredericksburg, consulting with the ghosts of long-dead Civil War soldiers. He chatted with Martha Washington at Mount Vernon, who told him there was no dishonor in working for a chocolatier. Even the men at the Game Parlor in the duchy of Woodbridge agreed, but then they would probably say anything nice just to ensure that the brown-eyed man paid for his $100+ boxes of board games and tin soldiers and went out the door wide-eyed and happy, not knowing what damage he just did to his now appreciably lighter wallet.

Upon his return, the brown-eyed man got a phone call. It was from a representative of the chocolatier. The candy-maker wanted him to come work for his company. Heath Bars, Peppermint Patties, and Reeses Peanut Butter Cups were calling. A few were even eaten in celebration, and there was much rejoicing.

And then it was JUNE...

Yes, it was a crazy month for me (the brown eyed man), one filled with lots of excitement and anticipation. I landed a new consulting job as an Application Design Analyst working at Hershey (the candy folks). I'm optimistic that it will work out well. But it's scary. After running my own small company for 14+ years, the thought of working for someone else is a very strange feeling to be sure. I hope I like it, and I hope they like me. Wish me luck!

The Goblin Hordes Arrive

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:57:00 +0000

I haven't done much eBaying in recent months, but about 2 weeks ago I finally broke down and made a purchase. I won 3 separate auctions for some painted Heartbreaker Goblins. These were painted by John the OFM, a well-known poster on TMP and fellow HMGS East convention attendee if memory serves me correctly.

Heartbreaker figures were a competitor to Citadel back in the 80's and are now out-of-print, but you may be able to hunt them down in various backwoods haunts on the internet. Many of these gobbos were sculpted by Kev Adams, known affectionately as "The Goblinmaster" in minis gaming circles for his excellent goblin ranges. Here's a link to a reference site for the Heartbreaker line. You can also order OOP Heartbreaker figures from Ral Partha Europe.

First off, are some Goblin Spearmen. These guys are very cool looking, with classic old-school goblinoid features, and are probably my favorites of the bunch.

Next up are some Goblin Archers. They're also quite neat. I especially love the guys with the pointed helmets, and they're worthy of gracing the front-rank of any Archer unit. I got enough of these little shooty buggers to form 3 or 4 regiments of Heavy Archers for use in my Sword of Severnia wargame.

...looking to shoot down some fat Dwarves and pansy-livered Elves....

And last but not least is a warband of Goblin Swordsmen. These fellas come in 2 varieties. The ones shown here (helmeted) are the best of the two sculpts and fit in really well with the archers and spearmen character-wise. There are also some non-helmeted gobbos (not shown). They're okay and remind me a little of the goblins from the old BattleMasters game from Milton Bradley, but they seem smaller and less fierce than the other gobbos.

So there you have it. A quick look at some of the troops that will be joining the Trolls, Redcaps, and Giants in the goblinoid army of Zidda Zobba.

Mmm.... roasted dwarf chops! Nuthin like 'em!

Hockey Magic

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:58:00 +0000

For all you ice hockey fans out there....

Check out these two videos of Linus Omark, a European hockey player whose breakaway moves are beyond compare.

This guy will be in the NHL some day.

http://www.totalprosports.com/blog/index.php/2009/04/linus-omark-embarrasses-goalie-with-crazy-shootout-goal/

--- And remember... Britannia rules the waves....

Somebody Clone Me -- Please!

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 20:11:00 +0000

I have a problem. I like too many things.

My interests run the gamut from things like playing fantasy baseball to watching American Idol with my wife to developing software to painting miniatures to reading books & blogs to designing tabletop games and playing them to spending time with my family to playing the drums to chasing my 2 cats to finding a great new restaurant to eat at to whatever else excites me at the moment. I'm exhausted just thinking about it all.

Maybe you're like me. Maybe you've come to the frustrating conclusion that there are just so many things to spend your time on that you're an ideal candidate for cloning. I mean how else are you going to find the time to do all that stuff? There needs to be 5 or 6 of you.

Let's set aside one Sevy for work and business. He can develop great software and bring home the cash. Hell, you know that the rest of us clones don't want to work for the man anyway.

Clone #2 can serve as the Font of All Knowledge. His job is to voraciously read everything and soak up every worthwhile scrap of knowledge that he comes across. The group will go to him when it needs guidance and answers to difficult questions. Better get him a Kindle, because we're not gonna have enough bookshelves to store all those books he'll be reading.

Clone #3 can be the Socialite. He'll happily flit back and forth amongst family and friends, spreading love and joy, lending an ear to the troubled, offering a hand where needed, and making sure the bonds of blood and friendship remain strong.

Clone #4 can be the Uber Geek. He'll organize boardgame nights, run the local rotisserie baseball league, serve as gamemaster and secretary of the ongoing miniatures wargaming campaign, organize outings to game conventions, spend countless hours reading BoardGameGeek and The Miniatures Page, and listen to 20+ podcasts from the geek community at large.

Clone #5 will be the Artist (or artiste for you French buggers). He'll paint. He'll draw. He'll pick out cool patterns for his wife to cross-stitch. He'll select the color of frame and matte used for all the pictures the family decides to hang on the wall. He'll stroke his imaginary beard at the art show and discuss impressionism, cubism, pointillism, art-deco, and whether Frank Frazetta was a greater artist than Boris or Larry Elmore. He'll leave Frank Lloyd Wright and I.M. Pei architectural books on his coffee-table.

And on it goes.... Clones will be generated and sent off to focus on a specific area of expertise. They'll convene once a week in the great Clone Convocation, probably in my living room. Each will be required to bring a covered dish. It gets expensive feeding all those clones every week. After hours of swapping stories, they'll retire to their separate bedrooms on the 2nd Floor, for as we all know too well, my clone sleeps alone.

And maybe, just maybe, I will finally achieve peace and happiness. I will have mastered and learned everything there is to learn; at least the stuff that I give a rat's ass about. I will finally be satisfied. Until I uncover the next cool thing...

Draft Prep -- The Best Thing about Rhino Baseball

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 16:35:00 +0000

For those of you who don't know, I'm the creator of a rotisserie baseball program called Rhino Baseball Deluxe. It's the only available desktop software for fantasy baseball that combines everything from managing rosters and crunching stats multiple fantasy leagues, computing customized player projections, computing customized dollar values, preparing for your annual rotisserie auction, tracking live draft results and assisting you to make the best possible bids/picks, computing in-season player and fantasy team projections, creating trend graphs, and evaluating players and teams during the season in a variety of ways.

Although this software was initially released in 1998 (as Rhino Scout) and has been around ever since, not enough fantasy players really know enough about it. Ultra conservative marketing is somewhat to blame, as is the complexity of the program -- it contains so much stuff that casual users and inexperienced fantasy baseball enthusiasts are quite intimidated by it. There are also a host of other reasons why I've never gotten rich off the darn thing, although it has done well enough that it has been continually enhanced and sold for 12 years now.

I really love this baseball software (I'm a little biased!) and have been using it to run my fantasy league for 13 years (since the 1st beta version) and to prepare for my rotisserie auctions for many years now. I've also used the live draft tracking / management tools since they became available in 2005, and have had great success with them. Since 2000, I've finished in-the-money (top 4) every year in our HARL league and have captured 4 HARL championships. I owe much of that success to the fantastic draft prep and stats analysis of Rhino Baseball.

One major feature of Rhino Baseball that non-users don't know anything about are the Draft Planning tools in Rhino Baseball; in particular the Draft Assistant, Draft Plan Analyzer, and Draft Advisor. They're definitely unique to this software program; I haven't seen anything else like them in any other software package. So just what is a draft plan?

Many inexperienced rotisserie GM's make the mistake of grabbing a set of player projections, crunching player dollar values off of those projected stats, printing out player rankings (sorted by dollar value), and then thinking they're done with their draft prep. Unless you're in a league full of newbies, you haven't gone far enough in your draft preparation. Dollar Values and player rankings are great, but they must live and die within the context of two major things: Your Fantasy Team Budget and the Statistical Goals you need to reach in order to win. The simple facts are: (1) you cannot afford to fill out your roster solely with superstars, and (2) just because a given player has a high projected dollar value doesn't mean he's the perfect fit for your team at a given point during the auction.

Here's where Rhino Baseball comes to the rescue. Rhino Baseball includes a really neat function called the Draft Assistant. It lets you search through the available players for your draft, and build a POSSIBLE ROSTER of players for your fantasy team. Each player's DRAFT PRICE is based on his projected dollar value, although you can tweak it as necessary (e.g. perhaps you think you can get a player for his Optimal Bid price, generally 70% to 85% of his projected value).

Building these draft rosters or DRAFT PLANS is an eye opening experience, not to mention a hell of a lot of fun. You quickly realize that you've got many tough choices to make. You cannot afford all the studs. So do you spend the money on 1B Lance Berkman to get his great OBA and top-notch run production, or do you grab 2B Brandon Phillips who offers a nice power/speed blend at a position which lacks depth after the top 3 or 4 guys are drafted? Can you afford to pay for a stud Closer and 3 excellent Starting Pitchers? How many dirt cheap $1 guys (one bid unit) must you draft to compensate for all that money you're spending on studs? These are the kinds of choices that the Draft Assistant alerts you to. It helps you build a great team that's WITHIN YOUR BUDGET.

The really neat thing about Draft Assistant is that you can create MULTIPLE draft plans (budgets). I often build 6 or 7 of them. Once I've spent the time to do that, I open the Draft Plan Analyzer function to evaluate which of my plans is gives me the best chance to win. Here's how that works.

In the Draft Plan Analyzer, you enter your STAT GOALS into a popup window for all the stat categories your fantasy league uses. For instance, if you play in a 5x5 league that uses Batting Average, Runs Scored, RBI, Home Runs, Stolen Bases, Wins, Saves, ERA, Strikeouts, and WHIP, you enter a target value for each of those stat categories. This is the stat level that you want your team to reach. Generally, it's going to be the stats level you'll need to reach in order to finish 3rd in each category (or perhaps 4th in a large league with 13 or more teams). I usually look at the last few years of our HARL fantasy league stats to derive realistic stat goals for my team.

Once you've entered your goals, you click a button and the Draft Plan Analyzer does the heavy lifting. It computes the projected stats for each of your selected draft plans (you can select all 7 at once if you like), compares those projections against your given Stat Goals, and calculates a Plus/Minus Factor for each plan. The plan with the largest plus-factor gives you the best shot to achieve your goals and garner enough points in your league standings to win. That's the draft plan that becomes my PRIMARY draft plan to follow on Draft Day. The 2nd best draft plan serves as my fallback option or SECONDARY plan.

Armed with these draft plans, I use them during my live rotisserie auction using the program's Draft Advisor tool. Rhino Baseball and its associated SQL database can be loaded right onto your laptop and you can take it with you to your annual draft. There are several "Live Draft" related functions, but I won't delve into them now. Most of them are for tracking which players are still available (ranked by best-to-worst value), adjusting player prices due to draft inflation/deflation, checking Drafted Rosters for all the teams, looking at Projected Fantasy Team Stats at any point of the draft, and so forth. But the coolest and most helpful tool in my opinion is the Draft Advisor function.

The Draft Advisor function lets you look at a selected draft plan (usually your Primary plan, unless you've gone to your fallback plan). You can see which players you've drafted (highlighted in green), which are still available (not highlighted), and which players (highlighted in red) your fellow owners have drafted out from under your nose (bastards!!!). For players who have been poached by someone else, you can click on a player then click the Recommended Replacements button to find suitable available players whose stats-production and player-values are similar to that player who was in your original plan. This is a huge help, and let's you quickly adjust your Draft Plan on the fly. It also keeps you on track Budget-wise, so you know when you've got extra money to spend (time to pounce!) and when you need to cool your jets and sit back.

On the right-side of the Draft Advisor screen, you can also see how the team you've drafted so far are stacking up against your Stat Goals. How short are you on Home Runs or Stolen Bases? Can I stop worring about ERA and Saves? It gives you a good idea of where your strengths and weaknesses are, so you can draft accordingly. If you're solid in power but are severely lacking in speed, you'll need to pay, pay, pay for the best available Stolen Base guys.

Drafting based on pure dollar values is a recipe for disaster. The Draft Advisor takes the core data (projections, dollar values, available players, frozen players, statistical goals), and helps you FOCUS your attention on what you need to do to win. Plans do change in mid-draft -- often a lot. But in order to succeed and win, my strong belief is that you need to "work your plan during the draft". It's hard to be successful if you just wing it and go entirely on gut instinct.

Those draft plan and advisor tools are really what makes Rhino Baseball Deluxe and Draft Magic (the draft-only version) great from a draft prep and management perspective. I wish more people knew about it and learned to use it to their advantage. I know there are a few guys in my HARL league who have used other software packages for their draft prep and tracking. They continually fail to beat me. I wonder why?

Peace out!

Color it Purple

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:39:00 +0000

Just a quickie post today...

Like to keep on top of the interesting news in the world of tabletop games? Most serious gamers have heard of the major gaming sites such as BoardGameGeek, The Miniatures Page, and BoardGame News.

One website you may never have seen is The Purple Pawn, a website founded by Yehuda Berlinger which covers a wide assortment of board games, miniatures, classic games, wargames, RPGs, card games, and electronic games. It's a great blog-like site, and one which I heartily recommend checking out.

-Sevy-

Gamer Perspective -- March 11

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:21:00 +0000

Hopefully.... maybe just maybe.... perhaps.... Those are the types of words & phrases that pop into my head when I want to blog, game, paint miniatures, or start reading a new book that's been sitting on my nightstand for 3 months, but I just don't make the time for it. I've been in Hopefully-Maybe-Perhaps mode for awhile now. And dammit, I need to break out of that mode!

So apologies to all those blog readers who were about to give up on me because I've been practically AWOL the past few months. I'm still kicking.

Anyway... Enough personal crap. What's been going on in my gaming life?

Sword of Severnia

I've briefly mentioned this before, but I'm currently developing a fantasy miniatures wargame called Sword of Severnia. I've been working on this game for just over 3 years; pretty much full-time the past 2 years. Things are coming along quite nicely, especially over the past six-to-eight months, and I'm finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. With persistence and one final big push of work, I'm hopeful that I'll get this darn game published in the later-half of 2009. Join me in crossing your fingers and toes!

Late last-year, my miniatures wargaming group and chief playtesters (known as the Sultans of Severnia) began joining me in a monthly Sultans Game Day held at my house. We've enjoyed several really fun get-togethers and have been playing Sword of Severnia (SoS) exclusively these past few months. Over that time, a menagerie of fantasy races and cultures have been battling it out for tabletop supremacy and we've really gotten to dive down deep into the underlying SoS game system. After numerous rule changes and system tweaks, I'm finally starting to feel satisfied with the wargame design. The game is certainly fun and challenging, encourages the use of smart tactics, includes some neat elements of surprise and tension, and is tremendously customizable and replayable. And I'm finally starting to get the typical playtime pared down to my goal of 3 hours.

The Sultans meet this Sunday for our next set of battles, and I'll keep you posted on how that goes. I'm hoping that we finally hit the point of saying "okay, the rules are looking tight, it's time for Sevy to start hammering away at the WarBuilder software."

WarBuilder is a desktop software application for the PC that works hand-in-hand with the Sword of Severnia tabletop wargame system. It enables wargamers to create customized regiments (units) and characters (leaders, heroes, magicians, specialists), generate army point and victory point values for them, and print stat-cards listing the critical game statistics and special rules for your troops. In essence, there's no need to buy supplemental "army books" for this wargame or build rosters by hand; all your army building and organization is done via the WarBuilder software. It will even create printed cheatsheets that include the specific spells and special abilities that apply to your army, so you won't have to constantly reference the rulebook during play.

I've already designed a good chunk of the WarBuilder database and have programmed one major function, so at least that's a good start. Once the rules stabilize to a safe point, I'll resume design/programming on the core Troop Builder and Character Builder program functions.

Cold Wars

This weekend is the Cold Wars miniature wargaming convention in Lancaster, PA. With the terrible economic situation which has hit many folks in America quite hard (including my family), I almost decided to skip this year's convention. But it looks like I'll be heading down to the con on Friday with one of my buddies for a day of wargaming fun. It's always a blast.

I'm certainly going to curtail my spending this time, to about 1/3 to 1/4 of my usual amount -- sorry vendors! Unfortunately, paying the bills is more important than buying hordes of model soldiers right now. Plus, I haven't painted a single figure since my last model shopping spree in November at Fall In. So my new Eureka frog warriors, Beowulf barbarians, West Wind mummies, WarGods gator-men, and Front Rank foot knights remain the shiny color of tin. Not to mention I've got a whole slew of Gnome Wars arquebusiers and halberdiers to paint, and need to get off my butt and finish the paint-jobs on some trolls I started awhile ago.

My goal was to paint a LOT more this year, and so far, I've failed miserably on that accord. Once April rolls around and the crazy preseason baseball crush is over, my "fun schedule" frees up somewhat and provides me with more time to paint. And now that we've got regular games of Sword of Severnia going on, I'm more eager than ever to get some new troops to the table. So Hopefully-Maybe-Perhaps.....

My buying focus at this Cold Wars will be painted figures. Since my budget is quite limited, I probably won't end up with all that much stuff. I refuse to buy complete crap, and nicely painted minis usually aren't cheap, so I need to be very particular with my purchases. Here's hoping for some great finds in the Flea Market!

I'm kinda torn of just what to buy. A typical Sword of Severnia army is around 60-75 figures (12 units plus characters), so that's small enough to build several armies. I've already got enough figs to field about 4 or 5 different armies (goblins/trolls, arthurian-style knights, undead, elves, and dwarves/gnomes). I'm also trying to round out a decent swamp-army (reptilians, gator-men, dinosaurs, frog-men), a Krone barbarian force (vikings, valkyries, ice trolls, yeti, giants), and a mythic Jartan force (hoplites, centaurs, minotaurs, greek monsters). I'm also keen on building up a Broog army (beastmen, dogmen, deermen, anubis warriors, wulfen). And more than anything, I'd like to beef up my cavalry in just about every force. I guess my problem is that I love everything, and just can't choose 1 or 2 favorite armies. They're all good!

Anyway... maybe Kev and I will snap some good pictures at Cold Wars and be able to share them with the blog readers sometime soon. Stay tuned.

Board Game Roundup

It has been a fairly quiet few months for me in the boardgame world. My good friend Wally and I got to play a game of Wizard Kings in late-December. It was great fun and truth be told, I'm itching to play it again.

For those of you not familiar with the game, Wizard Kings is a strategic level fantasy wargame played on geomorphic maps which can be assembled in a wide variety of ways. Like most of the wargames designed by Columbia Games, your troops are represented by wooden blocks with colored stickers attached to one side which show the type of unit and it's corresponding attack, movement, and strength stats. These blocks are nice & chunky, visually appealing, easy to use, and simulate fog-of-war superbly.

What sets Wizard Kings apart from most of the other block wargames is it's interesting variety of troops and maps, which provide for truly awesome replayability. Many people describe this game as a "kit style" wargame, where you can customize your armies to some degree, build a huge variety of battle-maps to fight on, and design your own wargame scenarios. I absolutely love games like that (I'm a miniature wargamer after all, where creativity is king). As much as I really like a historical wargame like Hammer of the Scots, it's not a game I can see playing 30 times without getting bored with it. Conversely, with 7 different armies, a nice variety of maps with interesting terrain effects, support for multi-player games as well as 2-player, and the ability to design your own battle scenarios, Wizard Kings is a game with lots of staying power.

Other than WK, I haven't been playing any boardgames of late. Hopefully, we'll start up some regular weekend boardgame sessions this Spring. This always seems to be the time when people free up and shake-off the winter doldrums. There are definitely some great games in my collection that I'm eager to revisit, and some new-to-me games that I'm hoping will hit the table soon (such as El Grande, Aladdin's Dragons, Prophecy, Wallenstein, Last Night on Earth, Downfall of Pompeii, Hannibal, and Big City). I've also got my eyes on a few new or upcoming releases that are must-buys: Age of Conan, Small World, and the new edition of Cosmic Encounter by FFG.

So that's the scoop for now. Hopefully-Maybe-Perhaps... I can start blogging more frequently! Perhaps I just need more encouragement? Or maybe a swift kick in the nads? Option #1 sure sounds better!

Peace and pray for Spring to arrive soon!

Courseware for Game Designers

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 21:44:00 +0000

I wanted to post this link from one of our blog readers (Kelly Sonora) because I thought it was interesting...

70+ Open Courseware Links for Game Designers and Developers

http://www.bachelorsdegreeonline.com/blog/2009/70-open-courseware-links-for-game-designers-and-developers.

Caution. It's VERY "mathy". Hope that you'll find it educational. Peace!

-Steve-

A Detour into a New World

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:13:00 +0000

For awhile there you might have thought that this fun little Blog had died a grisly death. What has it been, about 2 months and I've posted nary a word? The silence has been deafening.

Fortunately, I've held off the saliva-dripping hounds gnawing at my ankles and have escaped with my dignity and my tootsies intact. Well, at least my tootsies. Reclaiming my dignity may take some time. You see, I've made one of those major life-altering decisions to leave my current full-time job as a micro ISV owner (not entirely, as my tiny software development company will live on as a part-time gig), and return to working full-time in Corporate America.

There are several reasons why I'm making this move, but the overriding consideration is a purely financial one. Despite pouring lots of time, money, creativity, software development skill, patience, and hard work into my micro business, it has never become the money-maker that I had originally hoped it would become. Developing a great product and providing top-notch customer support for it isn't nearly enough to succeed. You've got to out-market and out-sell a large portion of your competitors. That's extremely difficult to do when your biggest competition can spend $1,000 for every $1 that you spend to promote your product. Eventually, you have to confront reality and admit that you're not going to win every fight.

There have been successes and accomplishments to be extremely proud of, and many new friends made along the way, but in the end the reality is that except for a few very fortunate software entrepreneurs, working for someone else pays a helluva lot better.

So I'm in the midst of re-assimilating into the world of "working for somebody else". On one hand, it really sucks. I will sorely miss the benefit of choosing my own projects to work on; projects that I'm intensely passionate about. I'll miss picking my own development tools to use, and implementing my own personal procedures and methodologies. I'll miss setting my own work-schedule. But I won't miss being underpaid, working mostly in isolation and anonymity, working lots of nights & weekends, and frequently feeling completely overwhelmed by the sheer variety of tasks that need to be done to keep a micro ISV running to even a mild degree of success. I've "worked for the man" before. Let me say that it is a much easier job and usually less-stressful than running your own business.

What's hardest for me to deal with right now is the loss of dignity that comes with moving from full-time self-employment to hunting for a position working for somebody else. Most of the people who you'll interview with have absolutely no concept of what it takes to run a small software development business or all the things you do to make it happen. They don't realize all the hats you've had to wear and all the things you've had to learn entirely on your own.

The simple truth is that you come from a totally different world than they do and they don't really value it like they should. If they want a VB.Net developer and you've been using PowerBuilder or Java for years, they scoff and kick you to the curb. If it's NOT EXACTLY what they want, they move on. It doesn't matter whether you've designed software for 20 years and can probably run circles around them as an analyst & developer, or can learn the language well enough to be teaching it to new programming recruits by next year. Nope. They want what they want; who cares if you actually ran your own company or not? I'm slowly learning to swallow my pride, like it or not.

Working for someone else will probably always be "just a job" to me. It helps pay the bills, but it's unlikely to become something that I'm completely passionate about. Who knows, maybe I'll catch lightning in a bottle? But I kinda doubt it. Most people just aren't that lucky.

That's why I'm keeping my business around as a part-time hobby gig. That will be one way to satisfy my personal desires, to work on stuff that I truly love. I can dabble in what I enjoy and will no longer need to worry about whether it's a big financial success or not.

I'll see how it all works out. Until then, I'm taking a detour into a New World; one with bosses, co-workers, time-sheets, business attire, rush-hour traffic, meetings, and office politics, but most of all, one with health benefits, regular vacation, and a steady paycheck. Wish me luck!

Fearsome Arena

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:13:00 +0000

Last night, I finally got the chance to play some boardgames after a gaming hiatus of about a month or more. The four of us (myself and my friends Kevin, Wally, and Hunter) played two games which were completely new to us: Fearsome Floors (by Friedemann Friese) and Colossal Arena (by Reiner Knizia).

What follows is my overall impression of each game...

FEARSOME FLOORS

The gist of Fearsome Floors is that each player controls a band of hapless travelers who have entered a gothic fortress that's home to a terrifying and very hungry monster named Furunkulus. You are attempting to move your group of travelers through this dungeon and escape out the exit before you're eaten by the monster and before your fellow players get their travelers to safety.

In a 4-player game, the first player to get 3 of his travelers safely out of the fortress wins the game, provided that the preset time-limit (14 turns) doesn't expire. So in essence, this is a race game with lots of suspense.

Movement is very straightforward for the travelers. They can move X number of squares horizontally/vertically when it's their turn to move. Move rates are listed on the traveler's playing pawn which is a 2-sided disc. The disc gets flipped over after moving, so a traveler's move rate increases and decreases from turn-to-turn. Travelers can hide behind stones scattered throughout the dungeon, or push them around to block or open up pathways. There are also blood pools that you can slide through to move faster.

Where the real fun lies is in the monster's movement. The slobbering Furunkulus moves towards the closest visible traveler. If he lands on your location, he eats you (gulp!). He can also squish you by pushing your pawn and the stone you're hiding behind into a wall. The monster also moves much farther than the travelers, can push mutiple objects ahead due to his immense strength, can step on magic portals to rapidly teleport to another location, and can even walk through walls and suddenly emerge into the midst of a throng of startled travelers on the opposite side of the dungeon! In short, he's a mean eating machine!

Strategically, you're not only trying to avoid having your travelers get eaten by the monster and outrace him to the exit door, but you're trying to goad old Funky into chasing down your opponents and turning them into lunchtime snacks. Sometimes this means sacrificing one of your travelers to ensure that a whole bunch of opposing travelers get eaten. Oftentimes, clever positioning will force the monster to alter his course, squishing opponents into walls, stepping on teleportation portals, or walking through walls to thwart travelers who thought they were in a safe spot. Sometimes, you have to screw over the other guy to survive!

I thoroughly enjoyed Fearsome Floors. Although the rules are on the simple side, this is a challenging mid-weight strategy game that plays in about an hour. There's lots of chaos which keeps things interesting (the dungeon floorplan is ever-changing and the hungry monster twists and turns a lot), and the light-horror theme lends itself to lots of laughs. I found myself cheering for Funky to "eat, eat, eat" whenever he rumbled towards my opponents' pieces.

COLOSSAL ARENA

The second game we played was Colossal Arena, a card game by the good Doctor himself, Reiner Knizia. In this game, mythical monsters are duking it out for supremacy in a gladiatorial arena. Eight monsters enter this grand free-for-all, but in the end, only 3 are left standing.

The fight lasts for 5 rounds. During this time, you are placing bets on the monsters who you think will make it out alive once the dust has settled. The earlier you place a bet during the monster slug-a-thon, the more risk you're taking, since there are more beasties still alive. But betting early potentially reaps big rewards. Bets placed later on in the competition are much safer, but pay out much less.

The cool part of Colossal Arena is that you have a direct hand in how the fighting turns out.

You have a hand of 8 combat cards which you may play onto the table to influence how well (or how poorly) a particular monster is faring in the fight. Each combat card identifies a monster and has a combat value of 0 to 10. During a round of combat, players are laying cards on the table, trying to allocate high valued cards to the monsters they want to win (those they've bet on) and low valued cards to those beasts who they want to suffer defeat (those of opposing players who have bet many chips on them).

There's an additional twist to all of this action. If you're the BACKER of a given monster (the person who has placed the highest bet on him), then you can use that monster's Special Power whenever you play a combat card associated with him. The special powers allow you to do all kinds of neat stuff like take cards from other players, play 2 combat cards, discard a combat card that someone has already laid on the table, draw extra combat cards, etc. Taking advantage of the unique abilities of the monsters you're backing adds a whole layer of nuanced strategy to the game that's easily overlooked when you're just learning to play the game. But to me, this variety is what truly moves Colossal Arena from a simple betting game to something great.

I'm not averse to "screw your opponent" type of games, and Colossal Arena is certainly that style of game. In order for your bets to payoff, you need to ensure that your behemoths come out on top, and that means whomping on your enemies in every way possible. This isn't a game to play with your Mother or those with tissue-thin sensitivity. Being a fantasy fan, I also love the monster slug-a-thon theme and it's successfully executed by gorgeous card art.

I highly recommend Colossal Arena. It plays fast (45-60 minutes), is highly interactive and never dull, and packs a lot of replay value for your $20 bucks. Go get it.

Out of Kilter

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:40:00 +0000

My life has been out of kilter lately. You can thank my Mother-in-Law for that. You see, she's been staying with us for over a month as she recovers from major surgery to fix her broken hip.

Oh, we've been getting along just fine. So I won't go into Mother-in-Law Bashing mode. It's just that having another adult staying in your home messes with your usual daily routines and really twirls all aspects of your life into unexpected directions. Couple that with the fact that I spent many October evenings watching and rooting for my Phillies in the major league baseball playoffs, and not a whole lot of tabletop gaming, mini-painting, or other extracurricular stuff was being done.

Of course as we all know, the Fightin' Phils won the World Series (WOOHOO!!!), their first in 28 years, so it was entirely worth it. But I'm glad the series is over; my heart couldn't take much more of that nail-biting, gut-wrenching excitement!

Anyway.... I've had no time or desire to blog lately. Hopefully, that will change sometime soon, once my life returns to normal.

At least one major gaming thing is on my horizon.... I'm heading off to FALL IN this weekend! Looks like all of my miniature wargaming buddies are off doing family-related things this week, so I'm going solo. That's a bit of a bummer, but such is the life of 40-something gamers.

This time around, I'm going to focus my wargame shopping on some cool stuff that I've consciously backed away from over the past year or so. Namely, unpainted miniatures. I already have overflowing tubs full of unpainted figures to paint, but it has been awhile since I've added anything new to my cache of tiny tin men. But it's time to unshackle my slobbering inner lead junkie and have at it. SULTAN... NEED... TIN... slobber slobba drip drip....

I recently became a member of the Old Glory Army. This shopping club, which costs $50 per year, entitles you to 40% off most products sold on the Old Glory website and at HMGS East shows. You're also entered into regular prize drawings for free goodies and get a set of 12 free specialty figures with your first order. You need to spend $120 bucks to break even, before you start realizing large savings. But that's not very hard to do, especially since Old Glory has their own massive miniature range to pick from, and you can buy models from Crusader USA (great line of ancients and dark age minis), Blue Moon (cool pulp, horror, swashbuckler, and Robin Hood figures), West Wind (love their Dwarf Wars and Gothic Horror ranges), and Ghost Miniatures (some classic fantasy figs -- great dwarves, ice trolls, orc, and barbarians).

But the thing that really sold me on the Old Glory Army membership was their recent release of Old Glory Painted. These are painted versions of some of OG's metal minis. They're initially releasing Romans and Zulus, but within the next few months we'll see a host of new historical periods offered (including Vikings, Greek Hoplites, Persians, Macedonians) and even Dwarves and Orcs. NICE! The jury is still out on the quality of the figs & their associated paint jobs, but I'm optimistic and hope to see some of the Romans for myself at FALL IN.

Besides whipping out the Old Glory Army card and spending money on the previously mentioned stuff, I'm definitely interested in visiting the Eureka stand. In addition to their awesome warrior Frogs (gotta get some!), I'm smitten with their new range of Beowulf figures which are truly excellent sculpts and full of character. The Empire of the Petal Throne stuff is also enticing. I'm hoping that Age of Glory will still have some Front Rank medievals on hand (they're not going to be carrying them anymore -- damn shame). These are my favorite models for 100 Years War and War of the Roses by far. And finally, I need to check out the WarGods stuff for assorted goodies (Anubi, Sebeki, Spartans, Typhons, Yeti, etc.).

Okay... almost finally.... I forgot about the cool stuff from Bronze Age and Hydra Miniatures. I'm not a huge sci-fi gamer, but some of their stuff is too cool to resist. The Hydra minis have a retro sci-fi feel that really pushes all the right buttons for me.

As for painted stuff, I'll definitely visit Stan Johansen's stand, as his fantasy stuff is beautiful and reasonably priced. Plus, he's a great guy and I love supporting the truly good people in this hobby.

Anyway... Enough rumblings for now. I'll report back here once I return from my journey down to Gettysburg and FALL IN 2008. It will be VERY interesting to see if the piss-poor economy has a negative impact on the convention. I hope not, but I fear it will hurt somewhat.

Reports from Essen

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:48:00 +0000

The largest tabletop games convention in the world is underway right now in Essen, Germany. Spiel 2008, which will draw approximately 150,000 people, is THE PLACE where hobby game companies release their new games for all the world to see.

I've always wanted to go to this mecca of game conventions, but have never made the trip from America to Germany yet. Hopefully that will come in the future, when the US economy and my fun-money budget are in much better shape!

I truly love boardgames, and especially conventions where you can Try and Buy, which is precisely what SPIEL is (or ESSEN as it's commonly referred to by gamers in the know). Since I cannot be there myself, I'm living vicariously through the daily news reports of Frank Kulkmann. Frank is a gamer and native of Essen, and his excellent daily round-ups can be read by going here: Kulkmann's Gamebox. Check it out for yourself; it's a great little read.

Cheers!

Gamer Perspective - OCT 14, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 20:32:00 +0000

Yeah, I know that I need to post here more often.

After one year of doing this, I'm still striving to figure out the perfect balance of blog-posting frequency versus article "meatiness". Writing often is doable if the articles are quick hitters that don't take much time to create. But then, they lack the depth and variety that's often more entertaining to a wider scope of people.

So.... What to do? I'm going to attempt to go the shorter, more frequent route. I say attempt, because finding the time to pull away from work & family to write is always tricky. But let me try it at least and see what happens.

This month's Gamer Perspective has me thinking about miniatures, books, wargames, and board gaming.

As a longtime lover of miniature wargames and game designer, my Excitement Meter rose when I read about John Bobek's new book entitled The Games of War: A Treasury of Rules for Battles with Toy Soldiers, Ships, and Planes.

There just aren't that many good, general purpose books available about the fantastic and engaging hobby of miniature wargaming.

Many of the classic wargaming books were written 30-40 years ago and include the likes of Featherstone's Complete Wargaming (by Donald Featherstone), Charge! (by Peter Young), Battle Gaming (by Terence Wise), Setting Up a Wargames Campaign (by Tony Bath), and others.

The recent book on miniature wargaming by Neil Thomas (Wargaming: An Introduction) provides a solid introduction to the hobby for newcomers, and Big Battles for Little Hands (by Buck Surdu) is a good entry-level book for youngsters.

But compared to the books by Thomas and Surdu, John Bobek's book seems to have a much broader, sweeping approach to the miniature wargaming hobby, offering up close to 40 different sets of rules for every period and style of wargame imaginable (ancient, medieval, napoleonic, colonial, WWII, fantasy & sci-fi, ship warfare, aerial combat, etc.). That's pretty adventurous.

Although my understanding is that the rules provided here are quite simple in complexity and depth, that's certainly to be expected when a broad-brush approach is taken. Too many newcomers to miniatures gaming can be turned off by games requiring 150-200 models per side to play, ultra-complex rules, and by highly restricted choices with respect to the models you can use to play the game. Bobek takes a more user-friendly approach, trying to keep costs down, options open with regards to models you can choose from, and simple rules whose focus is squarely on fun rather than ultra-realistic simulation.

This is a book that has immediately made my MUST BUY list (or perhaps it could be a Christmas present). Once I get it into my hands and have read it thoroughly, I'll give you a more in-depth review and opinion of the book.

In the neverending quest of miniature manufacturers to try and deplete my bank account faster than a 600-point drop on Wall Street, I bring to you news of these cool developments in the minis world.

Bronze Age Miniatures has released a new Norse Troll (pictured at left) whose dynamic, menacing pose is just fantastic. I'm a sucker for trolls, so I'm sure I'll add this guy to my collection fairly soon.

Plus, there's a whole new set of babelicious female barbarians who are obviously members of the "We Don't Believe in Bras" clan. Conan would be pleased.

Old Glory recently announced that they're offering pre-painted metal miniatures (called Old Glory Painted) to their line of products. Right now, the range consists of Romans and Zulus warriors. Celts, Napoleonics, and American Civil War pre-paints are on their way.

I'm very interested in the Romans and Celts. A unit of 20 painted soldiers costs $70, or $3.50 per figure. That's a very attractive deal, especially for folks who dislike painting figures. Members of the Old Glory Army (a special shopping club that entitles members to save 40% off all purchases) can save even more.

Next year, Old Glory plans to offer Spartan Hoplites, Macedonians, Dark Ages (Vikings), Orcs, and Dwarves to the available range. COOL!!! Hmm... I think it's time for me to become an Old Glory Army member.

Perhaps the biggest change in the historical miniatures industry this calendar year has been the emergence of two companies who produce affordable, 28mm plastic multi-part miniatures.

The first company to make a splash in this field was Warlord Games, a british company who released some very nice Romans and Celts. I saw these figures at Historicon and they're very nice, but are a little bit on the smallish side for those of us who play with true 28mm or 30mm figures. I'm primarily a fantasy gamer and often use ancient/medieval soldiers as forces in my fantasy games, and prefer that they match up well with 28mm to 30mm figures from Games Workshop, Reaper, Crocodile Games, West Wind, Rackham, Front Rank, etc.

The second company on the 28mm plastics scene is an American company called Wargames Factory. They're releasing figures that work well with the Field of Glory rules from Osprey, although you can certainly use these models in just about any other ancients/medieval game imaginable.

I'm hoping to get a glimpse and perhaps buy some of the Wargames Factory minis at Fall In in Gettysburg this year (provided my plans aren't squashed at the last minute). From what I've heard, these models are a bit beefier than the Warlord figures and probably more in tune with other 28mm models size-wise. We shall see. At $30 for a box of 48 soldiers (plus shield transfers), how can you really go wrong?

Moving onto board games... The huge SPIEL convention in Essen, Germany is coming up this month. When you hear gamers talking about ESSEN, this is what they're referring to. It's a massive show that draws 150,000 people and it's where the majority of new board games (especially Euro style games) are first released on a major scale. Essen is the center of the boardgaming world in the eyes of many gamers. One of these years I'm going to go there, perhaps when the US economy isn't in the shitter like it is right now.

There are several new game releases that I'm looking forward to. One is the Age of Conan, a strategic multi-player wargame created by the Italian design team at Nexus, and due to be published in the USA by Fantasy Flight Games. This game appears to be chock-full of excellent looking plastic models, provides an interesting mix of diplomacy and conquest elements, and borrows the "action dice" mechanics from the design team's other highly regarded classic, War of the Ring. Me likey!

According to the synopsis on BoardGameGeek, Krakow 1350AD is a 4-player trick-taking card game set in Medieval Poland that interacts with a map board. Players form into 2 teams of ruthless crooks, competing for influence and riches. While there's an element of cooperation with your teammate, every player has a hidden identity and secretly competes against the others, meaning that there's only 1 winner at the end of the game. This game sounds like it has a very different feel than anything else I've ever played. Plus, the artwork is eye-catching and has a humorous bent to it. That all adds up to a game that risen into my Top-10 Want-to-Buy list.

And thirdly, like many fans, I'm still waiting for more news from FFG on their upcoming release of Cosmic Encounter. I'm ready to ditch my old West End Games edition for a newer, shinier model. FFG mentioned a November release, but at this point, I'll bet 1st Quarter of 2009 is the more likely scenario based on the lack of news about it.

Until next time, PEACE!!

Kingsburg

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:11:00 +0000

Looks like my board games play-meter is finally on the rise. Hoo-ahh! Over the past six weeks or so, I've played a whole bunch of games (at least for me) including:

Kingsburg
Cutthroat Caverns
Drakon
Shadows Over Camelot
Cash N Guns
Wings of War - Miniatures
Pennsylvania Underground Railroad Game

I own all of these games except for the PA Underground Railroad game, which is a self-published game designed by an old friend of mine (Mayer Foner). Many of the commercial games on this list are fairly new acquisitions (by "fairly new" I mean games that I've purchased in the last 6 months or so). So it's great to finally be getting these new games to the table.

I won't bother providing in-depth reviews of these games. You can find scads of excellent, detailed game reviews over at BoardGameGeek, so it's really not worth rehashing what has already been done there by rabid fans of these games.

But... I will at least give you my quick & dirty opinions regarding these games. Perhaps that will help if you're considering buying any of them and adding them to your games collection.

Since I'm a little strapped for time, I'm going to spread these quickie reviews over a few separate blog posts. Today, we'll begin with Kingsburg.

KINGSBURG = I'll be the first to admit that the whole genre of Euro games is very hit or miss with me. While there are lots of euros with slick, engaging game mechanisms, a huge number of them simply fall flat from utterly boring themes and the lack of exciting game play.

But Kingsburg is different. It's a euro with an interesting theme: construct buildings to expand your provincial wealth, while recruiting soldiers to protect those valuable assets from being destroyed by marauding invaders such as goblins and demons.

Like all good euros, Kingsburg features smooth game mechanics and enough interesting decisions to engage the minds of most gamers. It's also got dice and an element of confrontation (things often regarded as anti-euro by many geeks). Those are winning points for me.

The dice are used in an innovative way. You roll 3 dice and then place them on various spots on the board to claim gold/stone/wood needed to construct buildings and to recruit soldiers who are needed to fight off the invaders who arrive during the harsh winter. Suppose you roll 1-4-6 on your dice. You could place one die each on the 1, 4, and 6 spots (provided nobody else has taken those spots), or put something on 4 and 7 (1 + 6), or on 1 and 10 (4 + 6), and so forth. Part of your strategy is to choose which dice combos let you place your dice on choice-spots which will yield the materials needed to build the most valuable buildings. The other part of your strategy is to block those choice-spots from your opponents, so that they can't build what they want or recruit soldiers.

You're also balancing Greed (the need to build and gain wealth / Victory Points) versus Military Might (the need to stay strong enough to defeat invaders at the end of each turn, so your buildings aren't smashed to teeny bits).

All of these factors taken together meld into an excellent game. Once you play 1 turn, it's pretty easy to get the hang of the rules, and the strategies start to become more apparent. I would highly recommend this game to anyone who likes moderate-weight strategy games, choosing between multiple options, and a light amount of confrontation/screwage. The game artwork is also absolutely gorgeous.

On the school grade scale, Kingsburg rates a solid A.

Saving the World, One Toy Soldier at a Time

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 23:20:00 +0000

Time to get political, but in a gaming way.

MSN recently asked the question, "is America on the decline?" Many people are passionate in their belief that the USA is sinking quicker than the Titanic. The economy sucks. Just look at the stagnant housing market and the recent woes on Wall Street if you need proof about that. Consumerism runs rampant through our society.

We're mired in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that show no immediate signs of ending, while more and more American boys are killed and maimed each day. Diplomatically, more and more of the world hates us with each passing day.

Faith in our politicians to remedy these problems has faded to an all-time low. So what do we do about it?

Well... I'm an American. I'm also a miniature wargamer. And you can learn a lot from a miniature wargamer. Sometimes more stuff than you really care to know. Maybe, just maybe, we can learn something valuable from the way these gamers approach their hobby and use that knowledge to model changes in American culture? Hell, it's worth a shot, right?

You probably think I've been smoking crack or that I've been toking on the Wacky Weedus. Maybe you just think I'm a jackass. That's okay, but please bear with me.

It seems to me that our society is plagued by 3 evils that will eventually drive us to ruin unless eradicated. Those three bugaboos are (1) rampant consumerism, (2) an entitlement mentality, and (3) the general malaise of laziness that has crept into our culture.

Rampant consumerism revolves around our society's need to buy everything they see, whether it's really needed or not, and then throw it away in search of the next big thing to lust after. Today's American culture is burdened by the "gotta have that, and gotta have it now!" mindset. We're big-time gluttons.

Take video games as a sub-group. There's a palpable lack of innovation in the video/computer game industry. For years, vidiots have been stuck with a never ending flow of 1st-Person shooters, RPG adventure games, and interactive sports games. Not that there's anything wrong with these popular genres, but when will new ground really be broken here? The video game industry is driven by giant companies hoping that they'll produce one mega-hit out of a bunch of mostly lackluster titles and that one hit game will make them rich. If they produce a hit, they continue to make slight variations of that game formula, over and over and over again. The little software companies don't have the financial resources to develop and market their products to a large audience, and as a result, innovation on the whole suffers.

So what do video gamers do? They scarf up a butt-load of new games, churning through title after title like Pac-Man on speed. Most of them are mediocre rehashes of a few great games, and end up getting pawned back to GameStop or auctioned on eBay for pennies on the dollar. Not to mention that even the best video games don't really last. I have board games and miniatures from the 1970's that I still use today. How many video gamers can claim the same thing? Technology charges ahead, rapidly making older games extinct. It's a consumerism based industry. You gotta buy the latest & greatest games now! Once you buy into that, it's hard for addicted vidiots to jump off the merry-go-wheel.

More and more Americans have also been brainwashed to accept an Entitlement Mentality. Young people feel that society owes them a good job that pays high wages. Customers feel that no matter how unreasonable their demands are or how rudely they act, that companies simply owe them fantastic, bend-over-backwards customer service. Ultra left-wing thinkers believe that everyone should have a nice home and get free health care, even if they make zero-effort to get a job and contribute something helpful to society. People are clamoring for more and more free stuff all the time. C'mon gimme free stuff! Gimme gimme gimme! You owe us!

This mentality of entitlement fosters a delusional sense of pride in Americans. If they're entitled to good things it's only because they deserve it. Oh yes, don't you think for a minute that we don't deserve these things. By God, we're Americans. We're the greatest nation in the world. We're smarter, stronger, and richer than everyone else. We're better than everyone else. George Bush and all of our politicians believe this. They're swelling with pride. It's the kind of pride that infers we can do no wrong.

Too much pride is a dangerous thing. A self-absorbed, vain society is one that asserts how it's always right and everyone else is always wrong. And that's just ridiculous because nobody in the world is always right. We're not gods.

When I think of pride like this in terms of gaming, the great "Euro vs. Ameritrash" debate in the boardgaming world quickly comes to mind. Surf on over to the BoardGameGeek website and you will inevitably stumble upon a myriad of forum posts from Euro-gamers asserting their intellectual superiority and telling you why "their games" are so much better than the inelegant, overly time-consuming, and mindless adventure games and wargames that you play. They profess to know what true gaming genius is. If you disagree with them or criticize a Euro-game for being bland or too lightweight, they become apoplectic and spew an endless stream of venomous words.

But Euro-gamers aren't the only ones who are prideful. There's a whole contingent of Ameritrashers (those who enjoy meaty, old school, theme-rich games about war, zombies, space-men, pirates, and monsters) who can hurl insults with the best of them. In fact, the debate over at BGG has gotten so heated that a group of Ameritrash game enthusiasts, feeling unloved and jabbed in their pride-swelled egos, have formed their own website called Fortress Ameritrash. To them, it's the last bastion of sanity in a world filled with foofy Euro-snoots who don't share their impeccable taste in games.

And lastly, we come to the general malaise of laziness that pervades our culture. America didn't always act this way. We were once manufacturing giants, technological innovators, and financial gurus. American people built our country on an ethic of hard-work. We put our minds and bodies to the test and great things were accomplished.

Fast forward to today. It's sad to look at the back/bottom of so many products and see the words "Made in China" instead of "Made in the USA". We're outsourcing tons of technical jobs to India and other foreign nations. Perhaps it's because people just don't want to work as hard anymore. Why should they; they're entitled to take it easy after all. Americans just want to work hard enough to bring home a decent paycheck, and then sit back and buy more and more shiny things that provide the illusion of happiness. They can't be bothered to solve the problems of the world anymore.

Much of the gaming world has responded to our culture's overall laziness in concrete ways.

Remember back in the 80's when you played adventure games like Zork and had to figure out all the riddles yourself? Nowadays you just buy the cheat-book to your favorite video game and it tells you all the secrets you need to know. Remember when you could look at the actual source-code of games you played on your Apple II+? If you were really curious and hands-on enough, you could learn Basic programming and tweak the code to do new things. I fondly remember editing some lines in my Tuesday Night Football software so that I could play games with Dracula at QB, Frankenstein at tailback, and the Wolfman at wide-receiver instead of using the Cowboys and Steelers rosters that came with the game. I don't see too many average Joes doing those kinds of things today (most programs aren't designed to allow that sort of thing).

In the board-gaming world, the explosion of light, family-friendly Euro games is a clear indicator that the majority of people want fast-playing games where they don't have to think very hard. While Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride are both fantastic games, they're certainly not brain-burners that you immerse yourself in for 3 hours. Playing long games with fairly complex rules just takes too much effort for most folks.

So what's the solution to these cultural woes? Well, you've stayed with me for this long, so let me put it to you simply: we need to think more like veteran miniature wargamers. Seriously.

Unlike the gluttons of our society who buy up all the latest mass-market stuff only to throw it away in short order in search of something new, the veteran miniature-gamer tends to hold onto his precious toy soldiers for a long time. This isn't a quick-fix hobby. Buying miniatures in any appreciable quantity can be costly. So you need to pace yourself. You buy what you can afford and build up your minis collection slowly, over a period of years. Remember that H.G. Wells wrote his famous miniature wargaming book, Little Wars, in 1913. People have been playing with toy soldiers ever since. You don't have to buy every single available model today; they're not going to run out anytime soon!

Miniature wargamers who paint their own models become very attached to their little guys. When you spend all that time putting your own love & attention into something, you don't just toss it aside willy nilly. So while many of us will be the first to admit that mini-gamers love to amass scores of toy soldiers, they're usually treated like tiny treasures, often passed down to friends and family through generations. This isn't a chew'em up, spit 'em out glutton-fest.

By and large, I never think of miniature wargamers as being lazy. They work hard to enjoy their hobby. This form of gaming takes some effort. You've got to plan what types of armies you want to build and research the marketplace to discover what available models are out there. If you buy a batch of unpainted models, then you'll need to set aside time to assemble and paint them. Or if you're lacking free time or artistic talent, you can pay someone else to paint the soldiers for you. Or you can buy pro-painted figures at conventions or off eBay. All of this requires you to get up off your ass and do some planning, and what you ultimately decide is whether you're more comfortable spending time or money.

Mini-gamers are typically a highly creative bunch; much more so than any other type of gamer. They paint. They build things. They dabble in writing their own home-grown rules. They build fictional armies and craft background stories for fictional leaders & heroes that fight for fictional countries. They read history or fantasy/sci-fi to get cool ideas to use in their games. No my friends, being a miniature wargamer is not the domain of the lazy. You need to work at your fun.

While every gaggle of gamers has its overzealous know-it-alls and holier-than-thou jerks, my experience with the majority of veteran mini-gamers is that they're an extremely hospitable bunch. We respect the effort that our peers put into painting their figures, writing their own rules, and crafting their own battle scenarios, because we've done it ourselves and appreciate all the effort it takes to accomplish those things. Miniature wargaming is such a broad-hobby from a creative perspective that you can't help but be humbled by the variety of people doing amazing things with their various talents.

While we take pride in being able to outsmart a friend in a head-to-head military conflict, us old-school tabletop generals value good sportsmanship and know that it's wise to be gracious when we've gotten the stuffing beaten out of our tiny tin army. Friendly competition is what it's all about.

What I've learned over the years as a miniature wargamer is that owning more models doesn't make you happy. Consumerism isn't the answer. When your closet is loaded with too many boxes of unpainted tin soldiers all you feel is overwhelmed that you'll never have time to paint everything.

I've learned that having an inflated sense of pride is just a quicker way to make enemies. There are all types of people involved in the miniature wargaming hobby. Some are masterful painters. Some are innovative rules writers and scenario designers. Some are historians. Some can build wondrous terrain. Some are fantastic storytellers. We should embrace them all, because they all have something to offer. You're not better than they are; you're simply a part of their number.

Happiness in the miniature wargaming hobby is gained through the journey. You can't sit back and wait for everything to magically fall into your lap. You must do something. The thrill of the hunt as you search for cool models to add to your collection is a lot of fun. Taking the time to paint your own models is artistically fulfilling. Those are your shiny little masterpieces! Crafting your own scenarios or wargame rules set is tremendously satisfying. So soak it all in and enjoy the ride for as long as you can.

So America listen to us wily miniature wargamers. When you buy things, savor them. Don't be a voracious glutton hungrily chasing down material nuggets with the hope that the more you consume, the happier you'll become. Check your pride at the door. Don't feel that you're entitled to things because you're better than everyone else. You're not. Everyone has something useful to offer. Respect that. And finally, get off your ass and do some work. Nothing good ever gets done when you sullenly lay around hoping that you'll miraculously win the PowerBall jackpot. Hard work doesn't guarantee success, but laziness is a surefire road to failure.

My name is Steve. I'm a miniature wargamer. And I'm saving America, one toy soldier at a time.

Zen Again: Hot Lead Painting DVDs

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:38:00 +0000

Listen up miniature wargaming geeks! If you enjoy painting miniatures (toy soldiers), then you should check out the HOT LEAD website today.

Master-painter Laszlo Jakusovszky has created a series of instructional videos aimed at both newbie and veteran painters.

The Hot Lead series is comprised of 3 DVDs (1 basic and 2 advanced videos) that give you that "up close and personal" look at miniature painting. Trust me, that's something (close-ups of actual techniques) that's usually either missing or not all that nicely done in some of the other mini-painting videos I've watched. So I'm very eager to see what Laszlo has to offer.

Even someone like me, who has been painting casually on & off for 15+ years can learn some new tricks from a master.

The entire set of videos provide 8 hours of instruction. Price for the 3-disc set is $40 + shipping. That seems quite reasonable for a niche product of this sort. Let's face it, when you're used to paying $20 bucks or more for a movie DVD, it seems to me that 8 hours of instructional video for $40 is a LOT of bang for your buck.

I'll report on these videos sometime in the future once I get them and watch them. Until then, if anyone else has watched the Hot Lead DVDs, please feel free to leave a comment on this blog and share your experiences with me and everyone else who stops by for a read. Thanks!

Gamer Perspective -- 9/02/2008

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:41:00 +0000

There have been many occasions when I thought about sitting down at my PC and writing the next great deeply considered treatise about X and Y. But then I look at the clock, see how late it is, and stop myself before I ever put fingers to keyboard.

Writing an in-depth article is fulfilling, but at the end of another brain-burning workday, sometimes I just want to wing it and shoot from the hip. Can you really blame me?

While I've written random babblings several times before on this blog, I never came up with a formal name for these little forays into the world of tabletop gaming. So starting today, let's call these my Gamer Perspective series. There, I feel better now. My inner urge to categorize and organize things has finally been satisfied. For now.

So what exciting things have been happening lately in the world of board games, miniatures, and wargaming? Well let's see...

BGG Ratings

I'm starting to feel that BoardGameGeek is losing its relevance to me as a source of game ratings. Yes, it's still a fantastic website, filled with a treasure trove of useful game information, FAQs and reviews, game aids, and captivating pictures. But in my eyes, there's a strong inherent bias towards Euro games there. Euros (aka: German or Designer games) are considered "the cream of the crop" by the burgeoning cult of gaming elitists that have infested the waters of BGG.

I don't begrudge anyone for liking Euro games. There are several of them that I really enjoy including Domaine, Kingsburg, Through the Desert, and Carcassonne. But when you look at the top 100 games and see that half of them are Euros, you can't help but feel like a minority voice in the gamer world, especially if your favorites happen to be wargames, miniature games, adventure games, sports games, party games, abstracts, classic games, and the like.

The hot new board game that people are drooling all over themselves to play is Agricola, a game about farming. It has surged to #1 on the BGG game ratings, bumping Puerto Rico (another euro with a somewhat bland theme) from the top spot. I have no desire to play either of those games, simply because the themes are tremendously boring to me. Sorry gamer geeks, but good, elegant game mechanics can only take a game so far. If the theme is about exciting as filling out your federal tax return then count me out. Ain't gonna buy it and ain't gonna play it.

I wish BGG offered a feature in its database to have users categorize themselves as either Euro gamers, Ameritrash gamers (adventure and battle game oriented), Miniatures gamers, Party/Social Gamers, Wargamers, or All-Inclusive gamers (like every style pretty much equally). Then we could filter the game rankings based on how different categories of gamers rated the available games. For instance, suppose you're an Ameritrash gamer. Wouldn't it be cool and informative to see how your fellow Ameritrashers ranked each game, and see what their Top 100 rankings list looked like? It's kind of like taking the GeekBuddy analysis tool and ramping it up a few notches. I would certainly find the game rankings much more useful if such a filtering mechanism existed.

The Recession and Game Spending

I've cut back on my game-related spending of late. Some of it is simply due to a lack of funds. Blowing a large wad of dough at both Origins and Historicon definitely put the kabosh on my stash of "fun money".

The recession certainly isn't helping me any. I can't wait until Bush leaves office. Say what you will about Bill Clinton's morals and poor judgement when it comes to women, but the simple fact is that under Clinton the USA had a huge economic surplus and we weren't engaged in a protracted, senseless war in the Middle East. Under Bush, our economy has lurched into the toilet, American morale is lower than I can ever remember over the past 40 years, and an ever-increasing number of countries around the world now hate us. Thanks for nothing George W.

The recession notwithstanding, I've also come to the realization that I had been plagued by that insidious brain-eating worm which gnaws away at the reasoning center of your mind. You know the one. It's that awful thing which forces you to keep buying new games and new miniatures even though you already own scads of board games that are still unplayed and boxes of minis that remain unpainted. Call it the Consumerism Bug. In most walks of life, I don't fall prey to that. But games are my soft spot. It's taken me awhile to build up my mental defenses and resist the urge to overspend.

During the month of August the only game-related things that I purchased were the Field of Glory rulebook for ancient/medieval wargaming (which was done primarily for research purposes since I'm also a game designer) and these painted Ghouls to use in my Sword of Severnia fantasy wargame:

So far in September I haven't even peeked at eBay. Now if I can just go another 28 days! Backing away from something you love is REALLY difficult!

The Death of Gaming Magazines

Just like the internet age is killing the circulation of local newspapers, the emergence of high quality hobby gaming websites such as BoardGameGeek, The Miniatures Page, ConsimWorld, Tabletop Gaming News, Gaming Report, and others have sounded the death knell for many hardcopy game magazines. Within the past 2 years, I've seen promising magazines such as Harbinger, Ragnarok, Wargames Journal, and Knucklebones all shuffle off to the print-publishing underworld.

I miss the glossy rags. Back in the 1970's and 80's we had an assortment of cool magazines to choose from including Dragon, Different Worlds, White Wolf, Space Gamer, Adventurer, Miniature Wargames, Games Master, and White Dwarf when it was at the peak of its quality and not just a glorified GW catalog.

Sadly, those golden days when you could kick back on the couch or lie in bed and scour through a bunch of glossy games magazines has passed. There are still some good magazines out there; most notably the excellent Battlegames in the miniature wargaming field and Kobold Quarterly and Polymancer for the RPG crowd (although Polymancer could be dying as the company website has seemingly been kaput for close to a year).

I think the key to a successful game magazine nowadays is to produce "timeless" articles. Forget writing about game news or the latest releases. There are too many other places online that can beat you to the punch and provide up-to-the-minute breaking news. Creative content is king.

Battlegames does it right by focusing on battle scenarios, specialty rule sets, ideas for running wargame campaigns, how-to articles on painting, terrain building, and rules design, and so forth. Board game mags could succeed by offering house rules or variants to popular games, sets of free print & play rules, ideas for customizing game components, and providing Q&A articles with famous designers and tips on designing your own games.

Some people will argue that BGG is loaded with so much information that there's no real need for a glossy magazine covering boardgames. I argue that:

There's so much info on BGG, it becomes daunting to find exactly what you're looking for. A monthly magazine would be more tightly focused and would cut through all the noise which exists on BGG.
Oftentimes, it's much more enjoyable to read OFFLINE (on the couch or in bed).

I wonder if we'll ever see a board game equivalent of Battlegames someday? What I'd really love to see is a broad "hobby games" magazine that covers board games, card games, miniature games, and RPG's in one mega-publication. I would subscribe to it. Would you?

That's all for today... Until next time, this is SultanSevy wishing you mucho fun!

Catching Up

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 23:03:00 +0000

You thought I was dead didn't you? Not posting for 5 friggin' weeks can cause that reaction. All I can say in my defense is, "I was busy". Busy doing what, you ask? Well...

HISTORICON

I went to Historicon in late-July and I bought some new toys. I pretty much stuck to my preset budget and my goal of focusing entirely on buying nicely painted figures.

I purchased five gorgeously painted minis from Stan Johansen: a Sylvan Elf ranger/hero, a Black Elf witch, and three very cool Dogmen (Hundags in Severnian-speak, or Gnolls for you D&D folks). All of these were Reaper figures I believe. Stan does beautiful work. He's one of my top-4 Must Stops at every HMGS East convention that he attends.

I also spent some dough at Evil Bob's, snagging a venerable old Wizard (replete with floppy hat and owl perched on his arm), a High Elf hero/lord with a fancy-schmancy shield emblazoned with a colorful peacock, and a huge Tree Man with an equally large price tag (but he was worth every penny of it I swear!). All of these terrific figures were painted by the very talented Allison Thiel. She's not only a highly skilled painter, but she's a very friendly person as well. Thanks for the friendly help and great work Allison!

My other big stop was at the Splintered Light booth. In my opinion, David McBride and the folks at Splintered Light make THE VERY BEST fantasy minis in 15mm you can find. Although I'm a 28mm minis guy and have never really been tempted to take the plunge into 15mm scale wargaming, Splintered Light stuff is doing its best to weaken my resistance. I ended up buying a bunch of painted 28mm figures that David was selling from his Dad's collection (I think). I got a large lot of some unusual Great Orc infantry (not quite sure who the manufacturer was, but they were pretty cool; perhaps Black Tree Design or Mirliton figs?). I also purchased a cool Goblin Lord riding atop a Raptor, and a pair of Vampire Lords. All solid-looking stuff at decent prices.

I also bought another trio of pre-painted Wolfen from Rackham (for their Confrontation game which is distributed by Fantasy Flight Games). I don't play Confrontation, but I like the Wolfen minis and use them in other fantasy wargames. And yes elitists, I know that they're not of the same high paint quality that many of the pro-painted minis I purchase are, or for that matter, as pretty as the minis that I paint myself. But they're very solid tabletop quality and work great in most fantasy wargames. Let's be realistic folks, you're usually 2-3 feet away from the figures when they're sitting on your tabletop battlefield, so thumbing your nose at pre-paints is completely silly (you can always touch-up or re-paint if you're anal about it!). Rant over!

I haven't taken any pictures of my new little dudes yet, but hopefully I can squeeze that in sometime soon. Visuals are always nice.

All of these minis will serve as leaders, heroes, and troops for use in playing my Sword of Severnia fantasy tabletop wargame. I'm very eclectic when it comes to collecting, buying, and painting miniatures. That's probably because I like EVERYTHING! Variety is KING! One of the reasons that I've designed Sword of Severnia armies to be about 60-80 figures in size is so people can realistically organize and build several armies. You don't need 200 figures per side to play an engaging mass battle. Rather, you can take your sweet time to collect and/or paint up 2 or 3 different armies instead. Heck, my personal goal is to have about 7 or 8 different armies to play with. All that variety not only keeps your interest in the wargaming hobby high, it makes for infinite replayability and just looks damn cool!

DISPLAYING YOUR MINIS

Speaking of looking cool, a little over a week ago I purchased a narrow bookcase at IKEA that has adjustable glass shelves and a glass door on the front. It's a little over 5-feet high, but can be mounted on the wall. I'm going to use it as a display/storage case for a portion of my miniatures collection. I'm sure I'll fill it up rather quickly since my collection is fairly large (a 2nd display case is probably in my future). The bookcase cost $100 bucks, which is actually a good deal in my humble opinion. I've researched miniature cases in the past, and most of them of any appreciable size run in the $250 to $300+ range. So if you're looking for a nice way to show off your handsome minis, while keep them dust-free and highly accessible, check out IKEA.

FAMILY... WORK...

Early August saw us entertaining Anna's family. Her brother Vince and his family were visiting from Holland. Her Mom & Dad, and brother Michael (from Las Vegas) were also visiting as well. Man, the house was jam-packed with people!!! We had a fun week, doing some shopping at the Lancaster outlets, going to HersheyPark, and catching a Phillies baseball game at Citizen's Bank Park in downtown Philly. My two young Dutch nephews seemed to take a real liking to me despite the fact that I've only seen them a couple of times in their entire young lives, so it was fun being Cool Uncle Steve for awhile. It's a shame I haven't had any sons of my own. But it's no sense crying over what could have been. God has other plans sometimes.

I've been steadily plugging away with work on Sword of Severnia. We got another playtesting session in during the first-half of August, but have taken a little break from that. I've made some additional tweaks, and the rules are coming together quite nicely. I'm currently spending my time analyzing and adjusting the Racial/Creature game statistics and adding some new beasties into the mix. All of this stuff will be fed into the wargame database engine that drives the army builder companion software I'm creating for the game. Also on my plate is another pass-thru on the Special Abilities rules (refining things to work more nicely with recent changes to the game resulting from playtesting), and continuing work on Magic Spells. Once school is underway and my playtester's kids get settled in, we'll hopefully start cranking on additional playtesting come mid-September. I'm enjoying the respite though. I need to focus on the last few facets of the core rules that need completing, and it's great to have some quiet-time to concentrate on this and not spend every day of the week tweaking the rules.

GAMING

In terms of boardgaming, gaming sessions have been sparse as of late. I recently got a chance to play Kingsburg with a game-designer friend of mine. Man, what a truly fantastic game! Not only is the game very pleasing to look at (I absolutely love the board artwork), but the game design is elegant and engaging. It's a fairly easy game to learn, but there are plenty of interesting decisions to make and lots of possible routes to victory. Choosing where to place your dice in an effort to grab the resources you need (gold, stone, wood, soldiers) to construct buildings and successfully defend your homeland, while trying to block your competitors from getting the good stuff is lots of fun. The game features some nice balancing mechanisms to help keep the victory-points race tight, which makes for both a great 2-player and multi-player experience. I won't go into any great depth reviewing the game here, as there are already several nice reviews on BGG (check out the one by Neil Thomson) and the video review on Obsessed With Gaming. Check them out. Then buy this game. I heartily recommend it.

Lots of little things have been on my gaming brain as well. I saw a great video review of the fantasy adventure game Prophecy on the Boardgames With Scott website. Anna Claus got me this game for Christmas in 2007, but I have yet to play it (just read through the rules). Scott's excellent review got me really pumped to try it out, so maybe (just maybe) I can get the guys to try this sucker before Christmas rolls around this year!

I recently purchased the Field of Glory rules set for ancient/medieval warfare. I just got the book yesterday and haven't had the chance to read through it yet. I have flipped through the pages quickly though; doing that at Origins and Historicon is what really spurred me to get it in the first place. I'll say this as my first impression... There isn't another rulebook (aside from those produced by Games Workshop) that rivals Field of Glory in terms of production value. It's a lavishly produced hardback book and truly cream of the crop from a visual perspective in terms of historical wargame rule sets.

I was hoping to go to Fall In this autumn in Gettysburg, but I'm a little short on funny-money funds right now. All my spending on games & minis at Origins and Historicon put a sizeable dent in my wallet. I really need to sell off some unwanted stuff on eBay. It's time to take a good hard, HONEST look at those boardgames I will probably never play and put 'em up for auction. Not to mention old RPG stuff I'll never use again (my days of playing D&D have long passed). I've also got lots of unpainted toy soldiers I could part with (or sell to my wargaming buddies who are building up their own armies). And there's always non-gaming stuff to get rid of... Anyway, I digress.

Some new and soon-to-be-released games have popped up on my radar. Fantasy Flight Games has a bevy of new goodies coming soon including:

Age of Conan = a multi-player campaign style wargame set in Conan's world of Hyboria, designed by the Italian design-team who created War of the Ring.
Red November = a Bruno Faidutti game featuring gnomes commanding a submarine. Now that's a unique theme!
Cosmic Encounter = a new, updated version of this venerable hobby games classic.

In other FFG news, I recently heard that they're taking over control of Battlelore from Days of Wonder. Woo hoo! Battlelore is already a great game, but in the hands of a company who really knows how to do FANTASY properly, it should hopefully prosper and become the behemoth fantasy boardgame that many of us expected it to be when it was first released a few years ago. Gimme more large creatures, more fantasy troops besides goblins & dwarves, and a way to introduce heroes into the mix!!!

Another game that has piqued my interest is Tomb from AEG. Think a much faster playing Descent based on cards kinda like Talisman and you have this game. At least that's what I gather from the reviews I've read. It sounds too good to pass up and is shooting up my must-have list of boardgames.

And that's about it for now.

Hopefully I will start blogging more often. I enjoy writing and sharing stuff with those who drop by for a quick read. But truthfully, I need to setup a schedule for this or else other stuff in life gets in the way of my writing. I need to clone myself.

Be good!

Blur Boy

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:16:00 +0000

WHAT'S NEW?

Life has been pretty much a blur since I got back from ORIGINS. I've been knuckling down on design work for my Sword of Severnia miniatures wargame. Progress is being made in huge chunks of late, which is always a good thing. The rules are nearing completion. I can finally see this darn thing getting done. Don't get me wrong, there's still A LOT of work left to do. But it's doable and I'm beginning to feel the wargame taking on a more concrete shape. Yea!

We had a very interesting playtesting session of SOS this past Sunday. It spurred a bunch of refinements. Miniature wargames, especially big battle games, are notoriously complex, so I keep striving to streamline, refine, streamline, and refine. So far so good. Aside from tweaking and adding to the Racial/Creature Game Stats, writing the detailed rules for magical Spells, and designing the Scenario Deck, there isn't anything that major left to finish rules-wise for Version 1 of the game.

With the help of my friend Barbarian Geoff, we're more than halfway finished with the formulas for the Point Costing system. That will be tied into the Army Builder software that I'm developing for the game (this wargame has some computer assisted components). I need to get cranking on this soon. With all my focus on design & writing these past 6 months, my PowerBuilder skills are starting to get rusty!

HISTORICON

Only 8 days left until Historicon 2008! That's just unbelievable to me. It really snuck up on me this year, probably because I was at Origins less than a month ago.

Unlike most HMGS East miniature wargaming conventions, I'm not really dying to buy anything specific this time out. Perhaps it's because I spent $400 bucks buying boardgames at Origins and haven't recovered from the sticker shock of that, which really ate into my wargaming budget. Oh whatever, I find it virtually impossible to go to Historicon and not spend at least $200 (oftentimes much more), so I know I'll be walking away with new toy soldiers and/or terrain.

I need to slowly back-away from all the unpainted tin, because I have too many unpainted minis as it is. That said, damn those Crusader and Artizan vikings look sweet, the Renegade Orcs are way tempting, and I can never resist the Gnome Wars figures. And I gotta get me some Eureka Frogs, and Croc-Men and Ghouls from the WarGods of Aegyptus range! Heck, the new Warlord Games plastic romans even scratch an itch. Down boy!

Mostly, I'll be looking for nicely painted minis that are affordable. That's a real trick. Most inexpensive minis generally look like crap. I'm not going to buy something I can paint 10-times better myself. But the cool stuff that I really like can get pricey fast. I have a difficult time plunking down $175 to $200 for a beautifully painted unit when I can get something just as nice on eBay for 60% of that price. So I'll hunt around and hope I get lucky. I love Stan Johansen's stuff, and Albright's and Evil Bob's are always worth a good look. Everything is else is hit or miss. Barbarian Geoff and I are heading down on Thursday (7/24), so hopefully it will be more HIT in the vendor hall at least.

The flea market at Historicon is always a crapshoot. Last year's Historicon flea market was quite disappointing (I'm a fantasy and ancients/medievals guy, so your mileage may vary). But the flea market at the last two Cold Wars was good. So it will be interesting to see how it turns out this summer. It's always a friggin' zoo in there. The crush of bodies (some of them fat & funky smelling) can be a real turnoff, but it's the price you pay to find miniature wargaming treasures. And we tin-pushers love our treasure! Arrrgh! Anyway, I'll report back here and let you know how it turns out.

PAINTING

I've started to paint miniatures again. Now I just gotta keep it up. Right now I'm repainting a unit of large Troll-bloods that I got off eBay, along with a Cave Troll (Privateer calls it a Dire Troll). They're about 85% finished and just need some final highlights to really make them snap. Then I'll move on to something else -- probably some Gnome Wars minis that are softly cooing to me. Although I've got a nice batch of Front Rank Hundred Years War figures (foot knights, archers, men-at-arms) that are enticing as well. There's also a box of GW lizardmen cavalry that's lurking in the shadows. And I could go on...and on... and on. Tough to make a decision when there's so much to paint and so little time to do it all. Oh well, Rome wasn't built in a day!

My buddies and I are talking about sending a pile of unpainted lead to Fernando Enterprises to get more troops painted. We'll see how that goes. Fernando does great work, it's just that the shipping to Sri Lanka is pricey. But I still think it's worth it, especially for us wargamers who don't have nearly as much time to paint as we'd like.

BOARD GAMING

Soon. Soon. Soon. Soon I will get together with my friends and play some of these new board games that are stuck in my closet, wondering why they haven't been opened and gotten the chance to breathe fresh air. I gotta call Wally... and Kev... and Mayer... and get in touch with a few other folks as well. I mean two gaming session a month isn't too much to ask is it? How do some of those boardgame geeks end up playing 10 or more games per month? I mean c'mon. Don't they have a life? Maybe I have too many competing interests compared to them. Between rotisserie baseball, wargaming, reading, work, going to dinner/movies/plays with my wife, and everything else, there's only so much time available to squeeze in board gaming. I love it, so I need to make the time for it. Nuff said.

ALL STAR GAME

What in the hell was Major League Baseball thinking when the All-Star Game didn't start until 9 PM Eastern Time. I mean crikey, I stayed up until almost 2:00 in the morning to watch my National League squad get beaten yet again. It was a really good game (some spectacular fielding and great pitching), but man this is getting ridiculous. I don't really like the AL, so to get continually beaten by them pisses me off... at least a little.

They need to start the game at 7 PM EST, like a normal baseball game. Are you listening Bud Selig?

Until next time.... BE GOOD!

Zen Again: Midgard Models

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:39:00 +0000

For those miniature wargamers out there who like me, enjoy purchasing nicely painted miniatures on eBay to add to their collections and supplement their own painted models, I wanted to alert you to the fine work done by Midgard Models (eBay is = midgardmodels).

These guys are located in Venezuela and do a great job painting fantasy miniatures and offering them at reasonable prices on eBay. I've bought several pro-painted minis from them in the past, including 2 recent purchases that I'll show right now.

The first, and most recent purchase, is an Orc General (or Hero) which is absolutely fantastic. Here he is in all his grisly glory...

I believe he's a Citadel (Games Workshop) model, and he'll make a fantastic Orc General for the marauding Odessian armies in my Sword of Severnia wargame. He's quite an imposing presence on the tabletop, sized more like a Troll or Ogre than a standard orc. The rock-like base is exquisite.

My second MidgardModels purchase (from 8 weeks ago), was this splendid Troll Lord...

He's a Reaper model and would serve as an excellent Hero. The shading and highlighting, terrific basing, and nice blend of colors makes him really stand out.

Both of these models were marked as "Master Painted" and were in the $20 to $25 price range, which is reasonable for expertly painted special characters of large size.

So if you find yourself short on time to paint, or overwhelmed with way too much stuff to paint, you owe it to yourself to check out some of the minis for sale on eBay. Prices and quality vary widely for painted miniatures on eBay, but I gladly recommend MidgardModels for nicely painted figures at fair prices. Expect to wait around 3 weeks to get your figures if you live in the USA since they're coming from South America. But it's well worth the wait.

My ORIGINS Game Haul

noreply@blogger.com (Steve Severino) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:45:00 +0000

Sultan Sevy (that's me in Orcish form on the left) reports about his trip to Origins...

Greetings, hobby game lovers! I'm back from Ohio. I spent a fun and exciting 3 days at the Origins game convention from June 27 thru June 29 in Columbus, Ohio.

In actuality, it was really more like half of a Friday afternoon, a good chunk of Saturday, and a quick Sunday morning last-chance visit. Prior to the trip, I hoped that I might have a little more time available to engage in some open-gaming, but unfortunately that didn't turn out to be the case. Bummer dude. Maybe next time. I still had a blast anyway.

The trip was bookended by a 6.5 hour drive on Friday from Harrisburg, PA to Columbus (we got caught in a long traffic jam created because a stretch of the interstate was flooded), and a 6-hour trip home on Sunday afternoon. In between those lengthy drives, I spent time at the convention and also wanted to make sure to spend some quality time with my wife Anna. She told me it wasn't necessary ("just go have fun" was how she put it), but anyone who sacrifices their weekend so their hubby can act like a kid again deserves some quality time! Anna is a casual gamer but wasn't too keen on going with me to the geek infested Convention Center, so she hung out at the hotel and worked on a cross-stitching project while I went on my game shopping sprees at the Origins Exhibit Hall.

My basic day consisted of:

Get up, get washed and dressed, and go to breakfast with Anna.
Make the 8 minute drive from the hotel (Homewood Suites) to the Chestnut Street Garage and park the car.
Hoof it from the Garage through the Skywalk to the Convention Center.
Make a beeline for the Exhibit Hall and shop 'til ya drop!
Carry packages back to the car -- a damn long walk when the games are heavy.
Cycle thru steps 3 to 5 as many times as necessary.
Drive back to the hotel around 6 or 7 PM
Go to dinner with Anna. (We went to the Cheesecake Factory and Smokey Bones, both located in the Easton Town Center, which is a superb place to shop & eat.)
Go back to the hotel and crash.

We added going to the movies to that fine mix on Saturday Night (we saw Wanted -- a really weird, far-fetched movie, but loaded with tons of action. Angelina Jolie is easy on the eyes too).

So what did I do while I was at ORIGINS 2008? See item #4... I shopped until I dropped!

There are very few things in life that stimulate the "shopping lobe" of my brain as much as tabletop games and toy soldiers. Since I usually go to 3 miniature wargaming conventions in central Pennsylvania every year (Cold Wars, Historicon, and Fall In), my focus at Origins was going to be mainly on board games and card games.

I stayed within my pre-con budget, but still spent a darn good chunk of change. Thank goodness the hotel was relatively cheap! By the way, here's a fond shout out to the folks at the Homewood Suites. It was a really nice place to stay (quiet, clean, comfy, plenty of space, free breakfast) and I would gladly stay there again.

I picked up 8 games (one was an expansion), along with some sexy new Chessex dice, a pack of pre-painted Confrontation minis (Wolfen), and some neat terrain from War Torn Worlds. I also purchased a copy of Campaign Cartographer 3, a software program for creating maps. I'm going to use it to create the world map and some battlefield scenario maps for the fantasy miniatures wargame that I'm currently developing (Sword of Severnia).

So what tabletop games did I end up buying?

All of these games were on my personal Hot Games WishList, so I was pretty ecstatic about this haul of goodies. By adding these games to the batch that I recently picked up on our wedding anniversary trip to New York City in May (a group that includes Kingsburg, Colossal Arena, Cutthroat Caverns, and Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage), and several games I received for Christmas and still haven't gotten to play yet, I'm pretty well set game-wise for quite a long time. At least that's what I'm telling myself today!

So what are these new games all about, you ask?

El Grande is a game about spanish knights acquiring territory, and it's widely regarded as the definitive euro-game focusing on Area Control (a category of games that I really enjoy). This is a truly elegant game and one that I've wanted for quite some time.

The Downfall of Pompeii was another euro-game that I was after because the cool theme (getting your people to escape from Pompeii before the hissing volcano erupts and they become extra crispy) sounded too fun to resist. The fact that it was designed by Klaus Jurgen Wrede (of Carcassonne fame) and includes a volcano cone game piece is icing on the cake! The folks at the Mayfair booth suggested using M&M's instead of the wooden bits that come with the game so that you can eat your little people when they get drenched in lava. I guess gaming can be fun and tasty at the same time!

I really wanted a light, fast-playing card game that I could play with my family. No Thanks fits the bill and I've heard good things about it from members of the Dice Tower podcast whose opinions I greatly respect.

Everything else falls into lighter, beer & pretzels fun with themes that I absolutely love (monsters, zombies, fantasy dungeon crawls, and heroic battles). While I like a wide variety of games, I am unabashedly a person who gravitates towards exciting, colorful themes in games. When faced with the choice of a picking a dry game about finance, farming, colonization, or medieval merchants trading goods, versus thrilling games about war, knights, flesh-eating monsters, robots, baseball, gangsters, tanks, or trolls, well I'm gonna pick the later types of games in a heartbeat.

I stopped by the Red Juggernaut booth and was shown a demo of Battue. Not only does it look nice (lots of nice minis), the tile-flipping mechanic, card draws, and swarming style of play should make for a very chaotic battle game full of surprises. Matt Drake's review on his excellent blog (Drake's Flames) also played a big part in selling me on the virtues of this game.

I also stopped by the Flying Frog booth and saw a demo of Last Night On Earth. Like Battue, it comes with some very nice minis, and the production values of the game are just excellent. It's a zombie-killing adventure game with a heavy emphasis on theme and capturing the campy feel of classic zombie movies, rather than on heavy mind-taxing strategy. It's basically a fun little romp of blasting zombies before they eat you. Sounds like plenty of fun for me and the guys I regularly game with. I even got to talk to the very polite and soft-spoken lady who adorns the Lizzy the Shopkeeper card in the game's expansion set (Growing Hunger). I didn't even know who she was until I turned to see her gun-toting visage on a display piece in the Flying Frog booth. Kewl.

Fearsome Floors is a game about racing through a dungeon before it collapses on top of you and before a Frankenstein-like monster eats you for dinner. It's another beer & pretzels game, but since it's designed by Friedemann Friese (the man who invented Power Grid) it's bound to have some interesting strategy to it.

Drakon (3rd edition) is a dungeon crawling game designed by the famed designer Tom Jolly (the man who created the classic fantasy game Wiz-War among other games). It's a fast-playing dungeon crawl / strategy mix, with some nice production values from Fantasy Flight Games. I can't wait to try this one.

Lastly, I picked up the first expansion to Cutthroat Caverns, a game where an adventuring party cooperates in killing a series of monsters, but each character backhandedly tries to "steal the kill" and screw everyone else out of the glory. It's a lighthearted game of screwage with a fantasy twist. The guys at the Compleat Strategist in Manhattan told me I really needed to buy this some day because it made the game tougher and better, so I went ahead and took their advice.

There were a few games on my wishlist that I simply couldn't find (Manhattan, Aladdin's Dragons, Wallenstein, and Dragon's Gold), and a few others I passed on for now but hope to add to my collection some day down the road. But you just can't afford to buy everything you want. Nor do I have the room to store it all. In fact, I'm looking to sell off some of my other games on eBay to make room for the new stuff and recoup some of my expenses.

So that summarizes my game haul at Origins 2008. It was a blast. I saw lots of really cool games being demonstrated, lots of people having fun, and it got me really excited to start organizing some summer gaming get-togethers with my friends and family. I'm so loaded with new games now, that I probably won't be going back to Origins for a few years!

If I had to find fault with anything at Origins (which is something I really hate to do because there are much bigger things to worry about than finding perfection in life), it's that the miniatures gaming room was not nearly as impressive as I remember it in past years. Perhaps I'm spoiled by going to the 3 excellent HMGS East conventions each year and seeing the massive amounts of stunning games played there. Maybe I wasn't there at the right times. Whatever it was, Origins just didn't measure up to Cold Wars or Historicon in regards to the sheer amount of miniature wargaming spectacle or the massive variety of awesome toy soldiers to buy that's for darn sure. Origins is the place for board gaming; everything else (although fairly represented) comes second.

One final note to my readers: If you've never been to Origins, GO! There's so much to do, you'll have a hard time fitting it all in unless you stay on-site and devote several 10-12 hour days to it. If you live on the East Coast and love games, it's worth doing at least once in your life. I can't imagine you would be disappointed. And if you're a board game enthusiast, this is basically heaven. I've never been to GenCon, so it's not really fair to say Origins is better, but I can't imagine Origins being less-fun than GenCon from a board gaming perspective.

Anyway.... Sultan Sevy out!