Gaming with the Gnomies

Hackmaster: The Journey of Mutumbo #6: Adventure is Missed!

2012-02-14T00:01:00.000-05:00

Check out the roster of the party here. Please check out #5 for the fate of Arbeow Geniped.

The next morning Dalmar met up with Cecelia and Mutumbo. It seems they tried (and botched) the prison break AGAIN! Despite their incompetence the half-elf (Mordeln) wanted them to help him look for papers of succession in the Grand Duke’s castle… and oh yeah, Dalmar’s invited to come along.

With the gnomeling gone and Sabu Tablesmasher III wandering off, the party picked up a half-ogre named Thundar the Barbarian. Despite Thundar’s absolute stupidity, he was vital to the party’s success that night in secretly entering the castle by silencing many of the guards… permanently. The party managed to sneak into Prince Cardor’s chambers. They found a family tree which proves Prince Cardor is next in line for the throne and also mention Mordeln as the bastard son of the Prince. His bastard lineage, mixed with the racist beliefs of the area prevents Mordeln from taking the throne. Dalmar did manage to discover that Prince Cardor suffered from Lycanthropy and under its affects, killed Duke Aldriv and fled. With information and a map that may lead to the whereabouts of Cardor, the group heads out…

In the woods the group meets Brand, a friend of Mordeln’s and up until that morning an inhabitant of the local prison. The party encounters a pseudo-dragon who bargains Cardor’s whereabouts for the party cleaning out a tribe of goblins. For their first prolonged foray into dungeon was a five-day affair, full of fumbles, poor planning, an absolute clusterf**k. The most successful tactic was a phantasmal force of an ettin to scare off some of the goblins, but most wised up, and even illusionary ettins have problems with small goblin tunnels… After five days, the party was near death and had lost their mounts (including the camel), but the goblins had been chased out or killed off. Of course, after five days, any information the psuedo-dragon had was very dated and it fled for it’s life.

The group stumbled into the port of Brymstone and with what little money they pooled together that was not on the horses they bought passage on a ship going down the coast (the last bit of the pseudo-dragon’s info that could have been useful pointed to a fishing village down the coast in the Kingdom of Crosedes. A village known as …. Saltmarsh.

GM Note: The adventure being run was Aldriv’s Revenge, and the party slowly butchered it. As the party left Brymstone, they would never return to Alois. Just because the party never came back doesn’t mean it isn’t a vibrant part of the campaign. The failure to rescue Prince Cardor forced Alois to accept the Duke’s 18-yr old daughter Wendolin as Duchess and the Minister of Agriculture, Dalcom Minifumes (a Halfling) as regent. A marriage was arranged between Wendolin and Cassius Silvershield, crown prince of Crosedes., making Alois part of Crosedes, and breaking a few trade and military agreements with other neighboring kingdoms. The only good news for Alois is that Duchess/Princess Wendolin is far more sharp than many people believe and holds considerable influence in not only the Duchal court in Yelden, but the Royal court in the Crosedean capital of Hydincall. Meanwhile, Prince Cardor’s illegitimate son, Mordeln Larendin is conducting a guerrilla war with local Grel tribes. Mordeln is assisted by Brand, a ranger of some repute.

Next up: The sinister secrets stay secret

(Gnome Wars) In a world of Russian midgets

2012-02-12T09:29:00.000-05:00

It's a month and a half dated, but I found these online:

At first glance, I was ridiculously hopeful. Is the guy from Olleys Armies here, now promoting a line of WWI Dwarves? Alas, outside of a possible gnome tank commander for a T-17, he doesn't have much these days. And more importantly, this is a different dude in England.

Plus, they're a little short. measuring 20mm to the eyes, whereas the Brigade British Marines I have in queue for painting today are 25. As the title suggests, if you prefer your Russians in the midget variety, these might be for you.

The one thing that does pique my interest is his next project: Cossack Cavalry.

http://akulasarmies.blogspot.com/ for more info.

The Last of the Mouse-hicans

2012-02-11T00:34:00.004-05:00

As I've mentioned before, I'm slowly compiling an "unofficial" Gnome World Gazeteer. I'm starting the Gazeteer at 1870 and will try to compile the gnome equivilant of most wars between then and 1914.

There are a few wars that the Gnome Wars range doesn't fill in well: Afghanistan, Polynesia, Sudan. Eureka's Teddy Bears fill in nicely for American Colonials, Wild West, and even African Askaris, and I guess the Frog and Turtle line fill in nicely for more tropical cultures. However, one group had me puzzled:

Indians, as in Native Americans

There are so many Indian Wars, border skirmishes, and outright rebellions involving indians that something needs to fill the lack of gnome gnatives.

I present for your approval, Eureka's Mice Warriors line:

Truth be told, the hand to hand mice wield swords instead of hatchets, long spears instead of short, but the bowmen look nice, the mice shaman on the far right of the second picture is great, and they do have mice riding rats for cav. And for $2.25 a fig, they're a good deal for even a large unit.

And come to think of it, I might need to look into frogs and turles as Polynesians, particularly Hawaiians and Samoans.

Cold Wars and Gnomish Battle Enlistment

2012-02-10T01:01:00.005-05:00

Crap, it's a month till Cold Wars!

Good news is, just about everything major is ready, because I am largely borrowing from the the Gnome Wars' Treasure Island board. I have four parts that need to get finished.

1) Play Cards for Samoans. Oh yeah, nothing like Samoan natives for the Americans and Germans. A few little surprises, I hope.

2) The Californian Imperial Guard. Short of a 25mm California flag, I'll whip these out to assault Apaula Heights. Everyone knows the Empire of California fought in the 2nd Samoan War, with some help from the Kingdom of Hawaii!

3) British Marines. I have 15 British Marines to paint up for the New Providence game I'm running during the Saturdy afternoon tri-mega-game (mega-tri-game?). They're based and primed and ready from some quality speed painting.

4) Two ships. If anyone is a true gnomie, they are following the "Gnome Guy" himself at www.gnomewarsstanton.blogspot.com . He's been casting and painting his own ships for the game, and I've got two of them to paint up. I need a quick run to Michael's for paint. Apparently I short on my selection of browns needed for shading/drybrushing. Again, cleaned and primed and this is my easiest project... until I get to the masts.

I'm also putting out initials feelers for the Unofficial Gnomish Gazetteers. I'm wondering if any of the gnomies would be willing to "host" some of the wars between 1870-1914. I've been collaborating with some of the gnomies, and we have a good grasp of the ancient "Age of Heroes", the "Age of Peace", the "Age of Exploration", and "The Age of Germanic Industrialization" (we're working on that one). After German Unification, there are simply dozens upon dozens of wars to fight to influence the modern gnomish world.

Anyone willing to run a campaign and give results would be much appreciated. I believe we already have the Franco-Prussian, the Zulu, the Boer, and Spanish-American taken, but just look at the imcomplete list of wars available on wikipedia, there's plenty to choose from.

Next up: Native-American Gnome stand-ins?

The Viscount... will return....lalalalala... to Mepacon...

2012-02-08T14:46:00.000-05:00

Is this right? Mepacon XXII? After a two-con and one-year absence, I will be returning to Mepacon, April 20-22, at the Ramada in Clarks Summit. Just drive the Northeast Extention of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and *boom* there we are.

Truth be told, I'll only be attending Saturday afternoon, running a game, catching up with friends, and getting my auction/raffle fix. Mrs. Viscount will be tagging along, as a favor to me. It's my birthday weekend, so she'll hang out, get freaked out by C.J. Henderson, and prevent me from buying a second printing of the beta playtest of the TMNT/Aftermath crossover rpg at the auction, before going out to dinner and a movie.

Without further ado, here is my event for the afternoon slot:
Title: Escape on the Usambara Railway
System: Gnome Wars (duh!)
Description: Outnumbered German forces attempt to escape the evil Swiss forces moving in. . Can the Germans load up enough men and supplies on thetrain until it leaves, or is it curtains for the Kaiser's best?. ...all of this done, of course, with Gnomes.
8 players, beginners welcome, older kids (9+) encouraged.

Yes, my friends, this will be scenario #5.1 of the Tanga Campaign. I've given the German the short end of the stick for the last two games, so I'll give them one last chance to supply the forces in Tanga. Objectives will allow for a fun time by the players at the con, but will influence troop selection, void out special rules, like the machine gun ammo rule, and possibly add troops to later scenarios.

This also gives me enough time to get some buildings together for the city fighting portion of the campaign.

For more info about Mepacon go to: www.mepacon.com

Hackmaster: The Journey of Mutumbo #5: Rotten Cabbage, Flaming Gnomeling

2012-02-07T00:00:00.001-05:00

Check out the roster of the party here.

Finally, the group arrives in Yelden, and Arbeow and Dalmar head to the Drunken Dwarf Inn as the rest of the group finds something to do. They sit at a table along with a racist (humans only) cleric, who begins berating the other races, especially vile half-breeds such as the gnomeling. This tirade goes on for sometime until the gnomeling, who for now had been quietly staring at the cleric, pulls out two daggers and plunges both of them into the cleric’s chest. An all-out bar brawl ensues, Dalmar switches personalities to a little old lady (“blacking out” as he put it). Dalmar came to just outside of the inn, which was engulfed in flames. (as were his robes, as some chap was trying to help him put out the smoldering clothing). He sees the incompetent, now blood-soaked gnomeling staggering out the front door. The flames flare up (doing the 2 points of damage to have him hit 0 and fall unconscious) and Arbeow passes out face-first into a puddle.

Dalmar decided the gnomeling must have had some redeeming qualities as he and this other fellow drag him out of this ignomious death of drowing in three inches of water and rush him to safety before the town guard shows up.

The fire-fighting chap introduces himself as Malven and offers to house as a sanctuary for the night. While all this was going on Mutumbo and Cecelia were distracted by a crowd of townsfolk throwing rotten food at some guy in the town stocks. They were accosted by a half-elf who, after a skin of wine and a few tossed bits of cabbage, managed to convince the pair to participate in the prison escape of his friend Brand, a “political prisoner”.

That night a large black man (fighter) and his blond busty friend (fighter cleric) tried to break into the prison to free Brand. How they didn’t actually end up being thrown into the dungeons amazes me. After a few close calls the pair finally manage to escape the prison first thing in the morning during a guard change, sans Brand and right into Dalmar, who was strolling down the street.

Dalmar had managed to get the low-down from Malven: They were in Yelden, the capital of the Gran Duchy of Alois. Evidently the Grand Duke Aldriv died a few days ago under suspicious circumstances and the rightful heir the throne, the Dukes' brother Prince Cardor, was missing. In the early morning hours, Dalmar transported the unconscious gnomeling from the safety of Malven’s place to the the enormous saddlebags of Mutumbo’s camel (oh yeah, he bought that in Anon-Maxis with his hourglass finder’s fee, along with a large gold chain to put it around his neck... the camel's, not Mutumbo).

Dalmar figured the last place the town guard or whoever would be searching would look was in the saddlebags…. The town guard couldn’t find him, however Mutumbo did. Mutumbo’s player was upstairs making a phone call while Dalmar was hiding the gnomeling. When he came back, he simply stated “Mutumbo is pissed off and I’m going down the stables and turning the camel’s saddlebags into a punching bag.” After a few minutes I tell him, “There’s blood stains forming on the bags… from the inside” Mutumbo quietly took off that portion of the saddlebags and drop it into the camel’s water trough “to wash it out”. Utter silence around the table. Malven was the one to break the news to the party of Arbeow’s demise, by an apparent beating and subsequent drowning. Dalmar quickly took hold of the situation and disposed of the body for the party (i.e. He took the corpse to the town guard so he could pick up the reward money.)

Next up: Duchal court intrigue and half-ogres DON'T mix

Documentaries and the Gnome Timeline

2012-02-06T14:29:00.003-05:00

Last night was another glorious party with the little one until 5 in morn, so pardon me if there are more run-on sentences and fragements than normal.

The one advantage of staying up all night was catching up on my DVR. The Military Channel was running the great First World War documentary, I finally got to see the much recommended episode "Global War". "Global War" coverage Germany's expansion of the war, from the Pacific to the Falklands, and even this little area called Tanga. Not very expansive on the specifics, but the color pictures and rough film made up for it. Plus, I got to see more houses and other buildings for that area. One way or another the Hotel Kaiser is getting built after Cold Wars, and I'd like to see other buildings that fit the town.

Which brings up another point. I had mentioned awhile back about an unofficial Gnome Gazetteer covering some backstory of the various nationalities, while covering different engagements in history, some historical and some very extreme "what-if scenarios". I'm assuming 1870 as the the start date for campaigns and playable scenarios. For starters, it turns the scenarios in the rule book into a gnomish Franco-Prussian war (Swisso-Prussian?) that would cover all items except for tanks and trucks. I picture more Gnomezer Mk Ones on the battlefield than Mk IVs and A7Vs.

The historical timeline should include the Tanga campaign, a wee bit early mind you, going into the Zulu and Bore Wars, the Ham Fighter Rebellion, Russo-Japanese, and all the other classics. I will go into better detail to expand upon the German-American War, and perhaps some Sikh Wars information to explain how they show up in Western Gnomenculture without a dominant British Imperial presence.

Somewhere in there, I'd like to find a simple set of naval rules, so the German-American, and Samoan Civil Wars could be fought properly.

Any suggestions are, of course gladly accepted!

The Michael Lung Gallery #8

2012-02-04T03:47:00.003-05:00

It's been awhile since I posted one of Mike's pics, and since I'm frightened at the sheer awesomeness of what he's working on right now for Cold Wars, I figured it's best if I get some of the old pics up, lest I forget to do so.

Without further run-on sentences, German Mustard Gas Artillery:

I think the shells are produced by Gulden's. French's would be too ironic.

PDF Sci-Fi Tiles? Oh, joy!

2012-02-03T14:22:00.003-05:00

TMP has been quietly recently, with two exceptions. First off, The Miniature Building Authority is having a warehouse clearance sale. ttp://www.miniaturebuildingauthority.com/products.asp?cat=Sales. I'm hoping the either the tax return comes quick, or the sale continues on through Cold Wars.

Today, Wargames Vault announced the release of PWORK pdf Sci-fi Tiles.

Now yes, they are pdfs, so one must print them out, cut them out and glue them to some cardboard, but seriously, have you seen the prices people charge for old LoS tiles? $6.58 a "pack" for unlimited tiles that only require some work is a steal. I am disappointed that all the tiles shown are "double" hallways, more akin to the opening scene of Star Wars than the hallways of a Machine complex. There are plenty of reasons to fight in a space station, however.

http://www.wargamevault.com/ is blocked at work, so I'll need to peruse this when I get home to see what other items are there.

(Gnome Wars) Tanga Campaign #5: Counter-Attack!

2012-02-01T02:56:00.000-05:00

It's been awhile, so a refresher on the campaign special rules can here.

November 3, 1914, 1730 hours - The northern-central slope of Mt. Longido
Lt. Colonel Dykstra's Swiss forces had been on the mountain all day in the hot sun facing stiff resistance from the Germans. Luckily, they had fought off a number of harrassing engagements from German units trying to break up the supply lines, or all would have been lost. As the end of the day neared, the commander was pondering pulling his troops back to a safer location to rearm, resupply, and rest before trying it again tomorrow. Unfortunately, Major Kraut and the Germans had other plans, crashing down the mountain to break the Swiss forces' nerve.

This was a bit of an impromptu solo game. The one guy who was available had to bail, so I drafted the services of my own personal gnomes to aid me.

Amelia (left) and Maja look at the Swiss gnomes hiding in the brushline.

My daughters helped out. Amelia would point when I asked her where to move/shoot. Maja was responsible for all die rolls through turn 3.

German Order of Battle
Objective: Exit at least 50% of their figures off the Swiss edge of the board.
3 Infantry Units
1 unit of Teddy Bear Askari Infantry
1 Light Machine Gun Team

German Variable Attachments (1 roll d20)
1-3 2x skirmishers deploy in the brush in the middle of the table.
4-9 1x Teddy Bear Askari Unit
10-17 1x German Infantry Unit
18-19 1x Light Machine Gun
20 1x Teddy Bear Askari and Roll 1 More Time.

Swiss Order of Battle:
Obejctive: Prevent German victory conditions
3 Infantry (hereby called, Tan, Red, and Orange Hats)

Swiss Variable Attachments (1 roll, d20)
1-10 1x Infantry Unit
11-13 2x skirmishers (2 figures from any one unit can set up in the brush in the middle of the battlefield)
14-18 1x Sikh Unit
19-20 1x Light Mortar (not great, but pinpoint accuracy is a good thing in this scenario)

Besides the elevation rules, two more rules came into play. Areas of vegetation are considered heavy brush, halving movement and completely blocking line of sight, unless the figure is on the edge of the area, where he would receive hard/heavy cover (-2 to hit). Figures firing out of the brush must be on the edge to do so.

Teddy Bear Askari stats: Move 12, Rifles follow standard rifle ranges, but max out at 24". Charging Askari get an additional +2 in the first round of combat. We're playing two round combats each turn so if any opposing figures remain and the combat regroups, they only have standard bonuses/penalties.

The Swiss deployed just within the heavy brush line. Dykstra achieved a coup, not only gathering up a rag-tag unit of Sikhs to support the center of the defenses, but by discovering Bruce Carmezind, famed actor/adventurer/author/zombie hunter in the middle of a safari. Carmezind was always an attention whore, so leading men into battle sounded like good publicity. What he did with them in battle would be another story.

Bruce Carmezind leads his untrusty Sikhs.

Sorry boys, Bruce is a Mike Lung custom Znombie Hunter fig that he gave me as a gift. Not bad for one of his first attempts at sculpting.

The Swiss line up awaiting the Huns

The Grey Germans took a pounding while charging the flank

Turn 1: The Germans arrived on the far side of the board, as their card was drawn for initiative. They arrived haphazardly and cluttered in sections of the board to avoid fire. The two Teddy Bear Askari units (Brown and Silver) dashed for the heavy brush in the center. The Green Germans took up a spot to take a clear shot at the Sikhs. Unfortunately, the Sikhs had better shots at the wide-open Germans and they withered quickly. The Purple Germans used the brush to swing around the right flank, and the Grey Germans blew there bugle horn and charged at full speed (plus six inches) completely exposed on the left.

The worst deployment was the machine gun team. They were the last to enter the board and had deal with cramped quarters and a hail of bullets.

Turn 2: The Sikhs tore into the remaining Green Germans, the rifles completely destroyed the the peasants, grenadiers, and support joining the others diving into the rough. The Grey Germans continued to get picked apart by the Swiss rifles in the brush, the medic rolls were phenomenal, and with another blast of the bugle, they surged forth.

The Greens annihilated from the center, the German dive to the cover of the heavy brush

Turn 3: With only an obstinant Grey German unit to shoot at, the Swiss sent melee experts out to meet the Germans. The Orange Swiss clashed with the Silver Askaris with equal bloody casualties. The Orange medic kept his men going in the fray. Major Kraut began to worry, as none of his men had even come close to descending the mountain, yet the Green Germans were already testing for morale.

Turn 4: The Silver Askari - Orange Swiss melee continue in epic style. The Askaris had managed to kill both NCOs attached to the squad, yet the troops kept fighting. The Purple Germans, who had kept a low profile, emerged from the brush guns blazing and punished the few Orange Swiss still hiding on the defensive line. They were one turn away from exiting the board, but alas, a few Sikhs turned to shoot and gunned down the NCO. The unit would automatically rout the following turn. On the other flank, the Greys and the machine gun got into a decent position and finally dealt some damage to the Red and Tan Swiss hiding, with few casualties in return.

Turn 5: With a war cry that freezes the strongest of gnomes dead in their tracks, the Brown Teddy Bear Askaris charged down the hill and smacked the Tan Swiss around. The first round was devastating. The Teddy Bear Askaris' First Charge

Any sense of equal sense of success with the Silver Askaris was quickly muted. One lone Orange pickaxe remained from the carnage. The Silver Askari Commander left one Teddy Bear to finish him and dashed forward to try to reach their objective. The pickaxe not only dispatched the marauding bear, but attacked the Askari unit and took out two more bears before he was finally struck dead. To make matters worse, the remaining Greens were put out of their mercy and routed.

Turn 6: Medics from both the Tan and Red Swiss ran into the melee to heal all but one Tan Swiss. With that luck, and no more charge bonus, the Tan managed to rally, not for a crushing success, but a bitter obliteration to the man. With no medic on the flank, the Grey German finally pushed forward into the brush, dealing significant damage to the Reds, but not able to leave the board.

Turn 7: At this point the German objective was out of reach. Fifty-one gnomes and bears had already lost their lives for the Kaiser, and that did not include the figures routed off the board. Despite the loss of all figures with rifles for the Tan and Red, the rout of the Orange, and the wait-and-see attitude of the Sikhs, the Germans could not muster up enough strength to continue the assault. For most games I would have called it turn 6, but this was the last game of the campaign, and with both sides at a virtual tie, the only way the Germans could win is if they piled up a big body count. And boy did they try.

First off, Brown Askari Commander Lucius nDwengi Honeypot, his unit in shambles from the rallied Tan, chose death before dishonor and charged the Sikh line.

The resulting melee was so one sided that historians just say he was gunned down during the charge. It would have been a more pleasant experience, anyway.

The Askari Commander charges to his glorious death.

The German machine gun which had been so ineffective all game finally wheeled through the brush and unloaded on the emerging Sikhs with some success. One lone Tan pickaxe, still drunk with bloodlust, charged through the brush to kill the machine gun team, only to be met and shot by Sergeant Bogart of the Grey Germans.

Sgt Bogart was the true hero for the Germans. When the Grey's officer went down early, Bogart took over and held the unit together despite overwhelming odds, no cover, and the fact that Bogart was hit five times during the engagement and got up each time to continue the assault. He would earn an Iron Cross of both 2nd and 1st class, as well as Golden Military Merit Cross for his actions.

Turn 8: Sgt Bogart realized how bad the rest of the battlefield was and pulled back (failed rout check). That left the machine gun and the Sikhs, more specifically Bruce Carmezind. Carmezind alone came out of the bush, pulled out his trusty revolver and killed both members of the machine gun team (double 6's). His legend grows more each day.

Carmezind adds to his legend....

For the scenario to work better, it needs two out of three things to happen. Either (a) one more German unit should be added, (b) Swiss firing out of the brush should only get light cover , and/or (c) I need to remember that light machine guns roll four dice per crew member and not three. The Swiss units were all near breaking and an extra 2 or 3 casualties early on could have changed things for the resilient Grey Germans.

The Swiss obviously won this battle. Point wise, it was Swiss 61, Germans 46, making the final total the Longido Mountain part of the Tanga Campaign Swiss 197, German 181. The Germans will loose considerable manpower for the fighting in and around Tanga, although, given my miscues with the machine guns and cover, I plan on running a scenarion 5.5 at the next con to determine what supplies or manpower can escape from the train station to Tanga. That my friends, is for another post.

Hackmaster: The Journey of Mutumbo #4: Sitooterie Park

2012-01-31T13:58:00.001-05:00

After getting mixed up in a crooked magic exchange and solving a cleric's curse, the group finally got around to heading to Anon-Maxis to return the hourglass (if Arbeow picked the right road.) On the road, they noticed a low-flying sky-ship hover over them, and drop a barrel....on top of the Dalmar! Inside was a dwarf, apparently a stowaway, with one helluva hangover. After introductions (and massive healing efforts for Dalmar) Sabu Tablesmasher staggered along with the group.

In Lansluck, the final village before Anon-Maxis (Arbeow: Honest!!!), as Dalmar was sipping his wine in the tavern, Cecelia was being hit on by the captain of the militia. The captain decided to be fresh and pinch Cecelia...Well, Low Threshold of Pain, Temper Tantrum, and a host of personality quirks kicked in, an Angawa Battle Cry was emitted after a yelp, and the captain was soon on his back, thanks to a lucky knockout punch and subsequent pummeling from Cecelia. She then proceeded to force the other patrons to give directions to the captains home, dragged his unconscious body there, crowd in tow, and had a nice conversation with the captain's wife. Rolling pins do how much damage in Hackmaster???

Finally, the group arrives in Anon-Maxis. Dalmar delivered the hourglass to the Red Mage, and took his 80% cut of the reward, while Sabu took Mutumbo to the docks to learn the multiple uses for the word profit....or was that booty? Even though the group was living high off the hog of their reward and the magic items they sold in town, Cecelia found them a job. They were hired by the Town Guard to investigate some gruesome murders in Sitooterie Park. All sorts of horrible acts (decapitations, severed limbs, etc..) had been committed and the even the town guard was leary of going into the park at night.

The group cleared out the remaining visitors in the park well before dusk and set up a sting operation. Well, Dalmar told them to and proceeded to fall asleep underneath the bushes. The remaining members decided to place someone staring at the stars in a prominently placed gazebo. All went well, before the gazebo attacked! With the gnomeling in the gazebo's clutches, the others attacked. With some speed, and only minor scarring the "killer gazebo" was dead. ...then Dalmar woke up.

The reward they received for stopping the (Dalmar: Dopple-something they called it. The idiots obviously don't know a yellow cephlapod when they see it!) was sufficient for resupplying the group and get them horses. Dalmar offered to pay his "mercenaries, Mutumbo included now" to escort him to Hydincal to live the high life! The group celebrates, Arbeow drinks too much, wanders from the group, and pukes/passes out at the feet of some ornery mercenaries. His unconscious body is used for gnome bowling and the group finds him in an alleyway the next morning.

GM Moral: Never drink heavily, and never drink alone.

The group leaves Anon-Maxis for a 10-15 day trek back to the city of Hydincal, capital of the Kingdom of Crosedes. Arbeow's 7-10 splitting headache helps his guiding, as they successfully make it back through Lansluck, Nobquin's Keep, and Nodhaven. However, the group makes a right instead of a left at a fork in the road, and as the music strikes up, they head into Yelden, capital of the Duchy of Alois. *Group stares at Arbeow*: Where are we now?Arbeow: Let's find out...*Group rides into town*

GM Notes: After going through the Hacklopedias, I was delighted to find out that I could pay homage to the classic KODT strips, but with a little more firepower. Just blame those "news" monitors that some McDonald's have on constant repeat. The word of the day (for a week) was "Sitooterie"(sp) which they claimed was French for "Gazebo" For those of you who figured out the creature type, it was toned down (it was only a small gazebo), but it was immune to missle attacks. As the Journey was completed I didn't know what lay ahead for the group, and after making yet another wrong turn, I broke out the store bought modules, both old and new. Still under the chronic lying machinations of Dalmar Sworin, the group continued as an unofficial adventuring group, and the lack of organization will show in the next steps of The Journey of Mutumbo.

Weekend Update... with ViscountEric

2012-01-30T10:26:00.002-05:00

On Saturday, Mrs ViscountEric had a fun day of shopping down in Philly with her friend, which translates to I've got kids. I shot out a quick email to friends, got one maybe, and said screw it, one way or another, we're playing with gnomes.

The kids are old enought to entertain themselves for short periods of time, so over the course of an hour, I could wrangle all of the terrain from the garage and set it up on the dining room table without any reportable casualties.

When my lone maybe formally called to bail, I again said screw it, the kids will chuck the dice. So they did.

I can formally announce that the final battle in the Longido Mountain portion of Tanga:1914 is complete. My eldest daughter Maja did an awesome job chucking dice, and Amelia, my youngest did a good job pointing from her high chair and telling Daddy which way to move figure, who to fire at, etc. We did so good, that we got everything cleaned up, a light dinner in their bellies, and a quick cat nap before Mommy got home with her treasures. A good day all around.

Other news/follow-ups of note:
*The AAR for Saturday's game will show up on Wednesday. I have an automatic post coming on Tuesday for my old Hackmaster campaign and I want Tanga up as the latest post for awhile. Pics are shot with a camera phone, but they do the trick.
*Still waiting on my ship and marines to paint for the Gnome Wars extravaganza at Cold Wars. Jim has great step by step instructions on his blog: http://gnomewarsstanton.blogspot.com/ . I need to make a quick run to Michael's for some paint. I had a cool alternate uniform for the British Marines, but I realized I would be painting them like formal Army officers. I'll send if I can blend the two uniforms together. Time is of the essence.
*I also have floor space ready for the con for Friday night. I'll play Saturday by ear.
* I will be attending Mepacon Spring 2012 this year. The con runs April20-22, and I'll be running a game Saturday afternoon, with my wife in attendance. It is indeed a strange world! Event description will be posted after the Tanga AAR is posted.

(eBay) My treasures have arrived.

2012-01-29T01:13:00.001-05:00

I continued the tradition I started last year of going on eBay in January, buying stuff when funds are low. Last year, I was at the hospital every other night staying up with my little 3 week old daughter Amelia, as she was fighting RSV. As it began to clear, I would spend sometime on the computers in the lounge area. Ultimately, I arrived at eBay, and a nostalgia for Legions of Steel kicked in. A couple of Black Empire chariots and some random figs later, I could throw together a quick game of LOS upon command. Winning that game, well, that's another story.

This year, outside of a nasty stomach bug that the family's sharing, we're healthier and equally without extra. But I present to you my finds:
The LOS Tabletop Preview was the playtest version of Planetstorm, and to be honest, it played better than the actual rules that were presented in the more "professional" format. I'm anticipating one more snowstorm this winter and a nice comparison read between the two books on my to-do list for that day.

Up until I looked through this guys eBay listing, I had completely forgotten about Global's failed foray into historicals. I was disappointed to see how thin the book was, however, I almost needed a magnifying glass to read the tiny print they used! The system is based on LOS and the random scenario table, even more random secondary objectives, and decent campaign rules might force me to forgo some gnome love for some WW2 action. It'll take some time to determine what scale in figs and investment to do and try it out. Worst case, I believe Steve has enough A&A infantry that we can make some nice door-to-door fighting.

Sayonara Blue!

2012-01-28T03:08:00.001-05:00

Sad news from a couple of weeks ago. I have to inform the world of the demise one of my old school convention companions.

Blue has gone to the scrapyard in the sky. Well, more like a scrapyard outside of Johnstown, PA.

That would be Blue, my buddy Wooly's Jeep.

In our hierarchy of convention vehicles, there are only four of note.

#4: An honorable mention to our buddy George's brand new Dodge Avenger. Technically it was only our first pilgrimage to Crazy Egor's in Rochester, New York. It was truly the last hurrah for the high school gaming group and it involved me going over 110 mph and a 6'8" black New York statie who was pulling speeding cars over with his bare hands. And no, those two actions weren't associated with one another.

#3: Wooly's first car, I believe, was a Chevy Cavalier (or Corsica, they were kinda interchangable). It was the first con-mobile to go up to Buffalo for UBCon. It was the first vehicle to have a giant Elmo stick it's head out the window and terrorize other motorists on the Southern Tier Expressway (Rt 17).

#1: The Duster, as in my '86 Plymouth Duster of legend. Dammit, not only does my car deserve it's own post, there are enough stories to warrant its own blog! When Phil isn't shaking, I may tell them.

So that make Blue #2 on the list. Wooly's Jeep was his second car purchase, and right off the bat it was going to special, especially when the dealer sticker on the back can be altered to read Murray Motors, Hell, PA.

Blue was our main mode of transportation to cons. Not the comfiest ride for 4+ hour road trips, but there was plenty of room.

This is a vehicle we left our friend Scott to a biker gang at a rest stop.

Hell, the guys drove off-road across the campus of the University of Buffalo at night with no lights on, only to emerge out of brush, right along side a New York State Police cruiser, whose occupant must have been either asleep or oblivious. They crept away, with no one being the wiser of their actions.

Heck, this is the vehicle that Wooly and I drove to Toronto to visit the guys at Global Games. At Canadian Customs we were nearly detained because (a) we couldn't decide if the trip was business or pleasure and (b) Wooly had a "Violator" action figure of Spawn fame dangling from the rear view mirror, and the customs official either thought it was alive or it was so cool he wanted more time to look at it.

This is only one of two vehicles I ever slept in, instead of paying for a room at a conn.(Dexcon '96 in Edison). One sweaty night with Wooly was enough for me!

Blue is the only vehicle I know of to be blown up as a result of a LARP. Some of the bombs from my Illuminati University LARP at the Garden State Games Faire somehow ended up inside the front wheel wells of his Jeep and forgotten. When Wooly tried to leave Sunday morning, he turned the wheel to pull out of his parking spot and heard multiple loud pops as the tires crushed the fake bombs. Oddly enough it was the next Games Faire where his front axel, or tie rods, or something snapped in the parking lot. Eerie conicidence, or cosmic fate, you decide.

In the years since, Wooly did what any Jeep enthusiast does: lift the Hell out of it and take it on trail runs, which he and his wife Jenny have been doing on a regular basis. Earlier this year they took the old girl out, ran a few obstacle tests, and one of the Jeep's tires blew. Ultimately Blue flipped backwards and landed on it's roof. With a driveway full of other Jeeps, plus a Willy's project in the garage, they decided the time was right to salvage as many parts and profits from it and scrap her.

Rest well in scrap heaven, old buddy. Thanks for the memories.

(Gnome Wars) Keptin Bilge Rat?

2012-01-27T16:28:00.004-05:00

Lon (or one of his twisted minions) at Brigade Games is updating their website, so it's been a little wonky this afternoon, but this little gem appeared out of nowhere:

As if Captain Alvarado wasn't bad enough, now we have a Bilge Rat Captain? I'm seeing a bit more Muppet Treasure Island than I want to admit with this, but can't wait to see the a bag of them in the Gnome Wars bins at Cold Wars. $2.00

The Apathy of New Releases (February 2012)

2012-01-25T15:37:00.000-05:00

Ah, here we are, finally emerging from the winter doldrums, at least when it comes to Spring solicitations. Game Trade Magazine #144 is out and here are the items pending release for March 2012 or later.

Want list: The French say le sigh, the Germans, das sigh, the Japanese say something I can't type. To me, it's just sigh. There is nothing this month that I need to put on my list.

The Money's No Option List

Fortress Freakin' America, baby! Yeah, it's ridiculously expensive ($79.99) , but back in the day it was even more ridiculously expensive for someone with paper route and lawn mowing money.

And if I saw it on the shelf and had a twenty burning a hole in my pocket, Osprey's The Browning Automatic Rifle would be mine.

It's not in this issue GTM, and it sounds like it should be going through distribution channels soon, but WotC's reprinting of the 1st Edition Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster manual is too good not to list here. Plus every other gamer in the blogosphere has posted about it already (I checked). Different cover art (boo!), but some portion of the proceeds will be donated to erect a statue of Gary Gygax in Lake Geneva. If that doesn't say road trip for future generations, I don't know what does!

Store list: The imaginary store now will have a name. The Pegleg Gnome. Months from now, someone will look at a future Apathy and then google the term for a store. Ah, to sow the seeds of confusion!

The Army Painter is now going through Alliance for an additional distribution channel. Their 18ml bottles are still smaller than the Ral Partha 3/4 oz (21-22ml) bottles of yore, but the price is okay when adjusted for inflation. A couple things I'm interested at: flesh inks and I'm hoping their Greenskin is a nice orc green.

Battlefront: Just a few support weapons and a lot of terrain (barbed wire, trenches, etc) for Flames of War. At $40 a box, I just want to know how much is in each box to determine if it would be a good deal for the customer, and more importantly, a good deal for the store.

Ares: Wings of Glory for World War II

Dream Pod 9: I still comment on Heavy Gear simply because the continued solicitation of vast amounts of product astounds and terrifies me at the same time. I haven't pulled up old issues of GTM yet, but I have a sneaking suspiscion that a number of the items in this months deluge are resolicits, meaning the first wave didn't go over well in the pre-order front, or they couldn't get the items out in time. The Pegleg Gnome would rather support a line that has some customer awareness both old and new school, like Battletech, rather than it's glitzy cousin.

Fantasy Flight Games:
*Arkham Horror Dice Sets $9.95 each.
*Cosmic Encounter: Cosmic Alliance Expansion $24.95
*ROGUE TRADER: THE KORONUS BESTIARY $39.95

Gale Force 9 D&D Invisibility Tokens $12.99 each for sets of 9. And they will sell. P.T. Barnum obviously sold D&D accessories. Litko also has a pile of game tokens being solicited as well, as I believe they make more money off of 4e gamers than wargamers. If 5e emerging from the shadows is still mini-centric, we're in for a world full of tokens.

Yu-Gi-Oh - Another new set. If it sells with a minimum of headaches, why not?

Mongoose: Between A Call to Arms Starfleet and Armadillo Design Bureau releasing a pile of new Star Fleet Battles material, somebody SOMEWHERE is playing it. Here in Pennsylvania I haven't seen anything since '89, although when I worked at Dreamscape Comics in the mid-90's, one dude bought every new SFB item that came out. Never sold another copy, so a handful of restocks sat.
TRAVELLER RPG: DENEB SECTOR
TRAVELLER RPG: FRENCH ARM ADVENTURES

Margaret Weiss: Marvel RPG Ciivil War Fifty States Initiative: If their sales are half as good as their release schedule is ambitious, this version of the game might be around awhile.

Pathfinder:
from Open Design: Midgaard Bestiary and The Whispering Homunculus
Paizo: Advanced Race Guide, Skulls and Shackles part 3, Giants Revisted, City of the Fallen Sky, Blood of Fiends

Pinnacle: Beast and Barbarians and the Horror Companion, each for Savage Worlds

Reaper: some nice zombies and miscellaneous characters, and is that a singular WWI Dough boy I see solicited? Intriguing.

SJG: The Good, the Bad, and the Munchkin 2: Beating a Dead Horse, Munchkin The Guild, and Zombie Dice 2

WOTC:
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: FORTUNE CARDS - SPIRAL OF THARIZDUN
I remember these being mentioned during Gamma World's release. A deck of cards built from booster packs that can affect gameplay? It makes scratch off lotery tickets look like a solid investment deal. Yet, as a store, I would probably sell of case of them. It's so crazy, it'll probably work.
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HALLS OF UNDERMOUNTAIN BOXED SET: An Undermountain boxed set? 20 years after the original? For map heavy 4th edition? And it's only $30.00? Something is either wrong with that price, or this will be a bigger rip off than the cards.

Wizkids: A good pile of Marvel Hero Clix: Galactic Guardians, Colossal X-Men 2, and the annihilators pack.

Hackmaster: Journey of Mutumbo #3: The Ettin's Riddle

2012-01-24T13:57:00.000-05:00

The Journey continued on to Nobquin's Keep, only encountering an underpowered Grel Raiding Party, and monks from the Cult of Apotheoisis, an apocalyptic cult the gives the PLAYERS the hee-bee geebies everytime I mention them.

They learned a great deal from the cult and scared off the Grel using low-level magicks. GM Note: This cult was a huge part of the finale of my last 2nd Ed AD&D campaign. They were tricked by an evil spider god that he was their "God of Goodness and Light Returned." The few PCs that managed to survive did so thanks soley to the NPC relationships they created over the years.

As they arrived in Nobquin's Keep, they spotted a two-headed giant terrorizing the village. After making some connections (and healing the wounded), the group was hired by the town to hunt the Ettin. Early the next morning, while Cecelia was doing her morning jog GM: Gotta work off those gluttony attacks when you're a hot half-elf valkyrie , she spotted the Ettin, one head asleep, sneaking into town and praying behind the Church of Akana.

The party quickly deduced that the Ettin was once a former cleric who had been cursed, and the writing they noticed behind the church was a riddle the Ettin must solve to get his old life back. They met up with the 'good head' and began helping him, but he was still obstinate in his current state, so it was taking awhile....then the villagers showed up with torches and pitchforks, waking up the "evil head" All Hades broke loose, villager's bodies flew everywhere and the mage blacked out (multiple personality of an old lady). After much carnage, Cecelia prayed to Sif that the curse could be broken * bzzztt...2nd wish off the lucksword* The ettin changed back to Kyrin, the formerly full-of-himself cleric of Akana.

Kyrin eventually helped rebuild the bridge he had destroyed as an ettin and became a productive member of the community. The group got paid, and sent on their way (between Dalmar being the a-hole he is, Cecelia's jiggly morning jogs straining a few marriages, and the Arbeow's drunken tomfoolery at the beer pavillion, the town was happy to see them leave).

This was a conversion of The Ettin's Riddle (duh ), one of the original free adventures WOTC put on the website for 3E. I used this scenario for the only game of 3E I ever GMed. One good player turned a two hour game into an hour, by asking the right questionns and emphatic role-playing with the ettin. Since my group had no members so caring, I upped the stubborness factor of the cleric/ettin and agitated the townsfolk a bit more. The only reason I ran this adventure in the opening of my campaign was that I had finished painting an ettin, a cleric of Akana, and a bunch of Ravenloft Townsfolk minis and wanted to use them

Next Stop: The first part of the Journey of Mutumbo ends in Anon-Maxis, and a tip of the hat towards the genius that is KODT.

Hackmaster: The Journey of Mutumbo #2 - The Scepter of Amun-Ra

2012-01-22T15:55:00.002-05:00

Journey of Mutumbo #2 -- The Scepter of Amun-Ra

The party arrives in Nodhaven and spends the night drinking telling yarns, and teaching Arbeow the difference between right and left. As they drank, a young woman approached them, explaining how a band of men had killed her husband and now were looking for her….

Just then, five men burst through the door and chased her out the the back, but not before one stopped to warn the party to stay of their business. (Dalmar's Journal, “I thought it a good idea, and I did”.) Later that night the different men broke into the party’s room searching for a scepter. (Dalmar: “When I said I didn’t know what they were talking about, they just spouted some religious mumbo-jumbo and attacked.”)

Cecelia, warrior-priestess of Sif, chased her attacker out of the inn and into the woods, only to see him struck down by a dwarf and the five fellows she had seen chasing the girl. The dwarf threatened the half-elf to return ‘the artifact’ or else. The party slept uneasy the rest of the night, weapons in hand….

The next morning things finally cleared up for the confused party. The girl showed up at breakfast. She said her name was Katerine and that she and her husband had received a magical scepter by total accident. She was trying to return it to its rightful owner, a Khemet priest of Thoth named Kamen-Non. The rest of the party pressured Dalmar to help her make the delivery that night.

The exchange was your classic FUBAR combat. Katerine and the party at one edge of the clearing, Kamen-non and his cronies on the other side. Of course, the dwarf and his men appeared on a third side and all hell broke lose….[GM Notes: The combats in the rooms were versus Kamen-Non’s underpowered cronies, who quickly ran away. This was the first extended combat of the campaign. Cecilia, lucksword in hand (which she was unaware of its powers, beyond the saving throw bonus), said something to the effect of “I wish you guys would slow down and think about things…” All NPCs were then slowed for a number of rounds…. *one charge burned* Otherwise the combat was incredibly uneventful. Mutumbo dealing the only critical of the session]

Soon, dwarf and his men had either fled or were killed, Katerine disappeared, but Kamen-Non had possession of the Scepter. He healed the party, and was kind enough to explain the Scepter was a holy relic of Thoth and it had been stolen months before….

[More GM Notes: I had converted “The Sceptre of Amun-Ra” from Journeys #1. Katerine was actually a low-level assassin who had acquired the Scepter and planned on selling it to the highest bidder between the Priest and the Dwarven merchant. She killed her partner “husband” out of greed, and conned the party into being her back-up. I planned on using Kamen-Non as a connection when the party was high enough level to run the Mythus version of Necropolis]

Next stop on the Journey …..Nobquin’s Keep.

Adios Facebook Games!

2012-01-20T14:19:00.003-05:00

As someone who's one Facebook with more people than my immediate family and my 7th grade gym teacher as friends, I get a ton of requests for whatever up-and-coming popular Facebook game is out there. The majority of them I quickly press "ignore app", but I openly admit to playing some games, some of those fervently.

I've done Pirates, i've been over level 500 in Mafia Wars, I even looked at Farm/Frontier/Balloon/GangstaPimp-ville before laughing at it and doing something else. Don't get me wrong, these games are a lot of fun, and can take up a ton of your time, but at the time they've been my salvation for someone who hates a lot of what's on TV, has two young children who required tremendous amounts of snuggling, and access to a laptop.

With the latest security patch for xp, most of my games went dead. Zombie Lane won't load. Gnome Town (of course) is just a blank screenl. Even stuff that I've lost interest in months ago and just stay on to help out my friends who still play? Won't fully load. So I figured it would be a good time to just cut the ties clean and focus on other things, like painting.

Adios, Zombie Lane: I fell in love with the premise, it's application, and the fact that most tasks just involve time, rather than needing 500 friends. A dozen active/inactives work great.

Sayonara, Gnome Town: I should have run away when "Disney" appeared on the screen, but it was amusing. Way too many tasks involve large groups of friends or you spending real money to buy game cash to complete things.

Indiana Jones, Castleville, and other stuff I've answered once or twice: To my friends, you shouldn't be surprised when I don't respond to your requests.

Now I do have special places in my gaming heart for MyTown and FarmTown, the unloved cousins of similar games. For starters, most of the game can be played solo, they weren't time intensive, and I was able to customize my game without a huge cash outlay. My MyTown is a replica of town of Wellsboro, PA... with a few personal modifications. Farm Town is actually my uncle's Vermont farmhouse, complete with outbuildings and lazy stream.

Anything else, don't send me anymore crap. I need to get some painting done.

(Hackmaster) The Journey of Mutumbo #1 Backstory

2012-01-19T14:51:00.000-05:00

I've been spending an inoridinate amount of time trying to put together the Actual Play report for my last Call of Cthulhu game. It's outlined and day one of three is finished, but I'm just having a problem keeping the narrative tone of the session consistent. One day, it will be done, hopefully before the next session, but that's not even on the horizon.

So, for the time being, I'm stealing back my actual play reports of my original '01 Hackmaster game I had posted on rpg.net.

I figured it would be good to recollect the damage the Burning Trogs did to the world. But like every good story it has to deal with a girl, er, scratch that… You have to go years before and hundreds of miles away from the Trog’s first adventure, back to the steaming savannahs of Kufrik, to witness the Journey of Mutumbo. (I'll throw GM notes in green)
Mutumbo was not the finest warrior of the tribe. In fact, he was way closer to the bottom rung than the top rung. A portion of his family being slaughtered by berserkers nurtured his martial enthusiasm. Luckily he was not there when a large portion of the tribe’s warriors were slaughtered while hunting. All that was left of the attacker were strange tracks, a body of someone who looked like a beserker, and a strange object [A large indestructible hour-glass] When the object was brought to the elders, they decided that the object must be thrown off the edge of the world to appease the spirits. Mutumbo was given the quest by default.[Gotta love a player who wants to base his PC off The Gods Must be Crazy]
So Mutumbo traveled north, running like a scared gazelle from the beasts, avoiding the unscrupulous dwarves and feral Halflings , until he met “Prince” Clarence the gnome [NPC] . Clarence was a merchant from the far north. He befriended Mutumbo and invited him to join the caravan north. Upon examining the hourglass he found (a) it was magical and (b) it was property of the Red Mage of Anon-Maxis (it said so on a brass plate on the bottom). Clarence changed his caravan’s focus to far Anon-Maxis…for a supposed substantial reward. On the journey Clarence convinced Mutumbo that Anon-Maxis was the edge of the world (situated on three jagged cliffs above the ocean, it looked the part), while teaching him the Trade Khemet (desert tongue), and Trade Prythax (imperial tongue).
When they arrived on the southern coast of Crosedes, a tavern brawl erupted and Mutumbo was separated from the group [Clarence & Co were all in jail] Mutumbo then met Dalmar Sworin, Magus Extraordinaire (Human Magic-User), who was even less scrupulous than Clarence. He saw the gullible, misguided bushman as a quick way to incredible wealth, hot chicks, and eventually magical power! Convincing Mutumbo of the same things Clarence did, he assembled a team.
*Dalmar Sworin, chronic lying, misguided, a-hole Human Magic-User.
*Mutumo gullible bushman with spear (and hourglass) Human Fighter
And the “hirelings”
*Arbeow Geniped Gnomeling Thief: hired as the guide through Crosedes and the duchy of Alois to Anon-Maxis. He had no clue about tracking, survival, or even about his own homeland (Alois) needless to say, they got lost often.
*Cecelia Darkspruce: Half-Elf Fighter/Cleric of Sif: hot half-elf chick with an eye patch who acted like a sorority girl! Sif had responded to her prayers when orcs attacked her father’s estate in the elven lands. [One great big boo-boo on my part: The campaign started BEFORE the GMG was released. When he rolled family weapon on the starting wealth chart I gave the player a chance to get a magic weapon on 99-100 percentile. He rolled a 99. I rolled up….a lucksword (using old magic item tables) with three wishes.]

So this is the group upon the first session, September, 2001. Arbeow had gotten the group lost for a week (12 days) before he found a ramshackle no-name town on the main road to Anon-Maxis….

More Gaming with Daddy's Special Case

2012-01-18T11:18:00.005-05:00

We had another go round with the girls and my D&D minis. Maja seems excited about it and little Amelia is a bit too squirmy to control, although she would like to eat the little people more than look at them at her age. Best of all it keeps them in one spot as my wife can take a shower in peace before everyone goes to bed.

Last week, we had "The Bad Guys" chasing wolves to put them into cages, only for the wolves to be saved by a friendly group of kobolds.

This week, play started with Maja declaring that the head bad guy got caught, put in the corner, and said he was sorry for chasing the wolves last time. He was relegated back in the minis case for the night.

Maja discovered new figures, most importantly an old metal Mage Knight figure I snagged up cheap years ago.

She was a bit perplexed when she picked it up. When I asked her who this guy was, she pondered it a good long while, and her eyes lit up when she said, "The Wicked Witch!" As more figs came out, she had the Wicked Witch and a few goblin henchmen chasing Snow White (a female thief). Maja is a harsh GM, as she did not appreciate me trying to accumulate seven dwarves to save her. It would have been the first good use of a 15 year old box of Warhammer plastic dwarves, but no dice.

One of the horses ran in to save Snow White and they rode off together.

I think she's watched just enough Tangled for a 2 1/2 year old to handle.

Gnome Wars Want List

2012-01-14T10:17:00.000-05:00

I was asked earlier I, the world famous and ridiculously sexy ViscountEric, would want for Gnome Wars new releases. This is a tough one, since I am won who subscribes to the "I'll-take-what-I-can-get" school of gaming and will work with what's available. I'll start with practicality and go to a super-duper wish list.

A gnomeling superpack - the heck with four, I would just like a pack of 20 random gnomelings with a slight discount so I have them at the ready. With talk of civil wars and subversion, the more small, easily forgotten explosive devices, the better

German Flamethrower

Flame Thrower and Cheese Thrower templates

Aussie Foot, maybe a slightly different look for the Kiwis too.

More British nautical figs (marines, sailors, etc) - This leans more to my version of the Gnome World where the British are a mercantile giant, rather than a colonial empire.

Russian Officer fig: The regular infantry would be nice too, but a distinct Russian leader for the sentries would be enough. Worst case, we'll use the German NCO fig

Canadians.... lumberjacks in tooks, hockey players, Canadian Mounties on moose/caribou (yeah, those might get a bit pricey)

Banana Republics.... straw hats, striped pants, grenadiers throw boomarang bananas. That way I could use them as Spanish irregulars, instead of plotting a big German-American War "what-if".

Znombies...

Gingerbread Men Army... more Mike Lung love.

Polynesian natives/cannibals.... more Mike Lung projects that I haven't posted yet.

And since I'm probably picking up a team at Cold War.... a Gnome Hockey team for Fantasy Hockey.

Sorry no love for the French expansion (they're UN "observers" in my world, and just about as useless)

Lessons from Maja #8-10

2012-01-10T14:20:00.000-05:00

Over the weekend, I broke out the mini case for my 2-year old Maja to play with. It's been awhile since we did "The Box", and I figured with the storage spots for each fig I could control the chaos.

She started by identifying the minis she knew, then asking Daddy (me), "Who's this", over and over again. I threw a curveball back at her when I asked her what each guy did, or if he was a good guy or a bad guy. She responded tremendously and soon the sides were drawn in an epic struggle on the bed:

Yeah, the camera phone was bad, and the lighting shoddy, but here's the play by play.

Lesson from Maja #8: The big bad guy (far left) and his skeleton henchman want to chase the wolves into cages. No explanation what they would do with said wolves if they got into the cages. A few other mean and nasty looking figs were added to help them.

Lesson from Maja #9: Kobolds are friends to wolves everywhere. Just when things seemed lost, Maja pulled out some Reaper kobolds, who surrounded the wolves to protect them from the bad guys. The bad guys were quickly put away. Somewhere in Ireland, one of my former players is shedding a tear in pride, since his old PC is the patron saint of lawful good kobolds everywhere.

Lesson from Maja #10: If a kobold pushes over a wolf, the kobold goes to the corner. This discipline thing might be working. Maja declared one of the kobolds was naughty. When I asked why, she simply stated, "He was naughty, he pushed over the wolf, He goes in the corner," and proceeded to put the mini on the far corner of the bed, which in adult terms must be kobold exile.

I'm probably insulting people who don't read my blog, but I've played in convention games with GMs that couldn't tell a story as well as my daughter, and that was pretty stock adventuring stuff. After we paint her bedroom this weekend, I might break out "the Box" and have some more fun, and maybe a little warm-up painting.

Gnome Wars Cold Wars Coverage From the Man Himself

2012-01-10T02:30:00.000-05:00

I was hestitant to post about super-secret-double-special probation things afoot in regards to the Mega Gnome Wars games at Cold Wars, because I didn't know what was super-secret and what should be common knowledge to psych the masses.

My worries have disappeared.

http://gnomewarsstanton.blogspot.com/

Jim is back with a vengeance covering everything for the 59 days leading up to Cold Wars.

59 days? Eeep!!! I've got some painting to do...

What'cha Reading? The Blogs I Follow

2012-01-09T00:45:00.000-05:00

I was going to do a little recap of what I've been reading recently. The problem is, outside of a few of the same gamer books I always peruse, and a pledge to find the short amount of time needed to read a chapter a day of The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey , I'm primarily reading blogs. Of the twenty-five or so blogs that I'm following, these are the ones I'm actually reading on a consistent basis:

First the friend's blogs:
Adventurous Endeavors: My friend Phil stab at the blogosphere. Actual Play posts, tabletop and video game reviews, and general geekery (including Legos now!). No explanation as to why certain people call him Monongahela.

Where There had Been Darkness :Fellow Dreamscape Expatriate Josh Wanisko's blog on the writings of Roger Zelazny. Gamer moment of shame, I actually haven't read of of Zelazny's work, even with Josh's excellent reviews. I do enjoy his other posts, which include reviews of each episode of the Legion of Superheroes cartoon, general geekery, and the wacky adventures of his little girl Lily.

And the rest
Der Alte Fritz - Primarily does Seven Years War, which is not my cup of tea, but he has posted the exploits of he and his daughter's games using the Eureka teddy bears. Plus his work is fantastic.

Frozen Gamer AK - This dude came to my attention when he blogged about his pilgrimage from Alaska to Historicon this past summer. Again, he covers stuff that doesn't interest me too much (Flames of War), but he doesn't do the run of the mill stuff I've seen over and over again.

New Byzantium : What if Olde Byzantium had revolted against the Turks in the 18th Century, plus follow-ups developing New Byzantine armies for 1848 and 1920.

Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog: If all other blogs disappeared off the face of the Earth, I would mourn this one the most. The dude paints prodigious numbers of figs of all different genres armies, he plays a ton of different games, and he's gotten his wife and kids to occasionally game to make it a family activity. And he bikes in the middle of winter in Saskatoon. The dude is impressively crazy.

Savage Timmy's Playhouse - The above Tim's blog for Savage Saturday nights, where he plays Savage Worlds with his friends, as well as his kids. The last two "campaigns" were a gladiator campaign and a Dragonlance one. More miniature eye candy as well.

Fantasy Hockey Update

2012-01-08T14:30:00.000-05:00

As I posted on my 1st day of the 12 Days of Blogging here, the Fantasy Hockey figs from Brigade were not on their website as of yet.

This has been corrected.

Orcs, Dwarves, and Ratmen, oh my!

http://www.brigadegames.com/Fantasy-Hockey_c_57.html

(Gnome Wars) More American Gnomes in the queue!

2012-01-07T00:58:00.000-05:00

Ah January, where holiday exhaustion meets the early doldrums of winter. The world is just blah, and if reading the other blogs i'm a fan of is any indication, i'm not the only one. My tank is empty, the next Game Trade is weeks away, TMP has had some interesting announcements, but nothing up my alley. Heck, I was almost tempted at work to tackle the last Call of Cthulhu session's write-up, and that should require a snowstorm with the wife and kids under heavy sedation...

Then, lo and behold, info and ideas come overnight:

From the Gnome Wars yahoo! group that Lon at Brigade runs:
The greens have arrived for the following GW figs
ACW artillery
North Artillery Crew
South Artillery Crew
North Doctor
North Nurse
South Doctor
South Nurse

This should fill out the American Gnomes nicely, and force my buddy Brian to finally pick up his Southerners. Can't wait for the actual pics. Lon said these figs should be ready by late January/early February, so there should be plenty for Cold Wars.

To keep on topic, the Americans have me pretty excited. I'm still working very slowly on an unofficial Gnome Gnazetter to cover the Americas, justify my California Imperial Guard, and expand on the idea of the German-American War, to correct the abscense of incompetent Spanish gnomes (The napping gnomes you see in people's yards? Siesta Gnomes. They're the only harmless ones.)

As the true believers know well, I still haven't finish our second big campaign, so visions of Rough Rider gnomes and ViscountEric purchasing vast quanities of little tiny ships to play out the essential naval portion of the campaign may never come to fruition. But hey, a man can dream.

More cool stuff to follow, one post at a time....

Contemptible Little Armies Review

2012-01-03T19:23:00.000-05:00

I had picked up a copy of this at Fall-in!, and after much consideration, here's my review of Contemptible Little Armies with two disclaimers.

I am a Brigade Games homer. Most of their products are awesome and this book is a joint venture between Brigade and Rattrap Productions. That being said, if I order something on their website, I pay the same price everyone else does.

I have not actually played these rules! I know that's a big sticking point for some people. I do have it in my top 5 things I'd like to do in January, but as I've alluded to in previous posts, the last few months have been crazy.

Contemptable Little Armies, 3rd Edition. $25.00 48 pages

First off, I picked up my copy from Brigade at a show special of twenty bucks. It must be the grumpy old man wanting to come out, but despite all its glossy pages and color pictures, even $20 seems steep for 48 pages of rules. I'm still happy with mimeographed pages with an oak tag cover that had been stolen from an elementary school's supply closet, but that's just me.

The rules focus on 25/28mm figures, although most scales could be played with some conversion. The majority of the information covers Western Front fighting, although basic stats are given to Russian, Turkish, and Chinese forces.

Initiative/Movement : The rules have the "attacker" going first by moving one unit and alternating with the defender until all units are moved. This does allow some flexibility and adjustment of tactics, although orders will be covered later. With movement each unit rolls dice to determine their maximum move for the turn. Regular infantry move 2d6 inches in good going, and only 1d6 in difficult. This makes those mad charges across No-Man's Land even more deadly. The good news for the stalled chargers is that normal weapon ranges rarely exceed 24 inches, so there is some room for maneuvering, cover, etc.

Firing: Firing continues the tradition of "I-go-you-go" that started with Movement. Firing is resolved in a particular order starting with all anti-aircraft fire "I-go-you-go", followed by aircraft, heavy machine guns, all the way through the list to flamethrowers. All firing is simultaneous for that segment of the fire phase, so if your infantryman was hit by artillery fire, he can't fire back, since that goes before he does, but if he's hit during the infantry weapon segment, he does get one final shot. Coming from the school of Legions of Steel, Gnome Wars, and *gasp* Games Workshop, it took me a second to grasp a unit Tactial Rating. It's definitely not a weapon skill. The higher the Tactial Rating, the more spread out your unit can deploy, and the harder it is to be hit and killed by others! This does make considerable sense: even with modern weapons, it's easier to hit guys forced to march shoulder to shoulder to keep morale than it is a highly trained group of independent soldiers, or even irregulars moving with no predictability. Casualties are determined using the same Tactical Rating, although modifiers are used for the attacking player's weapons, terrain, etc.

Close Combat: is a simple dice-off, with minimal bonuses. The only change that threw me off from my Gnome Wars experience is if a figure is outnumbered (max is 2:1), they choose the first figure to fight at regular modifiers. If they survive, they then fight the second fig, that fig getting a +2. Sort of the reverse to the Gnome Wars rules.

Morale: Ridiculously easy, as it should be. Outside of a short list of exceptions, if your unit takes so many casualties in a turn, they'll need to make a morale check based on that units Morale Rating. Pass and everything's peachy. First failure, they get a marker and nothing else happens, a second failure and they can't advance towards the enemy. A third and they rout. Again, there are exceptions to rolling morale and ways to remove the morale failure tokens, which leads us to....

Officers (Command and Control) - Each unit is given specific orders in the beginning of the game. A unit is assumed to fulfil there duties (raid the convoy, hold the pass, attack the enemy's right flank until they hit a trench) unless discussed otherwise. The author claims the "I-go-you-go" system should counteract some meta-gaming when orders omit specific movement or attack instructions. A few games should prove that right or wrong. Commanders can fight as normal men, but also change orders of the units, call in defensive artillery fire, or rally one morale marker off of a unit during the turn. Staff officers may also rally units, but also be used as a "pass" during initiative, forcing your opponent to move an additional unit before your move. Neat concepts that force enrich your tactics.

On-Table Units - They do go over each troop type and the weapons they can carry, Grenades. Snipers, Field Artillery, Specialized Artillery, Ammo Types (gas!), Vehicles, ranging from cars with light machines guns mounted on it to a healthy selection of tanks. I do like the fact that there is a remote chance that light weapons fire could disable a tank

Aircraft and Anti-aircraft: As in the war, the use of aircraft, even ground attack planes, is high-risk, but questionable reward, depending on the situation.

Point Values: While there are lists of troop types with the Tactical and Morale Rating, you can customize your units towards your scenario and still make it work. The system does allow for a lot of flexibility with stock point cost (tactical rating + morale rating) plus per-figure upgrades (lewis gun, flamethrower, cavalry, etc).

Scenarios and Deployment: The rules cover scenarios in mass generalities: The Prepared Attack, Meeting Engagement, and Fighting Retreat. It does a nice job in further detailing the use of orders for each unit and goes over recommended point totals for "balanced" play. To be honest, I'm more entranced by the color pictures in this section than the rules.

In spite of my grumbling about the price, I'm very satisfied with CLA. This has been my reading companion during breakfast and lunch, and I'm itching to give it a try... just after the other *must do* games get completed.

Outside of my initial enlightenment about Tactical Rating, everything was easy to comprehend. I did notice some sections were written a bit of awkward language, but nothing that requires hair-pulling or legal translator.

For more specific regional fighting, they have released three sourcebooks: Part I: Main European Fronts 1914-18, Part 2: East Africa and the Middle East, and Part 3: Back of Beyond (Army Lists for Central Asia: 1919-26)

End of Year Ramblings

2011-12-30T10:44:00.002-05:00

Just a few little ramblings to get them off of my mind, so it can focus on other things.

The majority of the blog writing is done at work. No, no, I'm not one of those guys who spends all day on his fantasy team, or hunting down eBay treasures. Work does restrict access at my desk PC, but if I'm willing to deal with the unwashed masses at a computer in the middle of the building, I can go to town. If I really have an idea that can't wait, or need to go over a Game Trade or con .pdf, I can always use gmail.

The whole reason I bring this up is last night the workstation I was at actually blocked my blog! The security system loves to block random things. rpg.net is labelled "Games" but The Miniatures Page is good. 6sided.net is completely blocked but yog-sothoth is okay. I was disheartened that not only would I not be able to follow up my blog, but I wouldn't be able to read the blogs that I love. Those fears were partially allayed when I found a backdoor to allow me to post, but completely disappeared when I realized it was just that workstation.

I finally brought in the gnomes from the garage. The entire final quarter of the year has been too hectic, so all the figs are jammed into the boxes with no rhyme nor reason. Part of my quasi-New Years resolutions is to start painting again, so the finished figs will be touched up and I'll see what I can get done.

I also swung by Michael's this morning. The Christmas stuff is 50-70% off, so I picked up a bunch of present boxes that would be perfect for 28mm, and got them for mere pennies apiece. Their Victorian Christmas Village stuff was essentially gone, although if I wanted to give a bunch of ceramic nutcrackers a serious repaint, there were a pile of them there.

I may post some more before the end, but if I don't, I shall steal from other blogs...

If you enjoy the blog, please become a follower, before it becomes all the rage, and people begin to claim you jumped on the bandwagon.

To those who followed/suggested my 12 blogs of Christmas, thanks! I have two or three more I'm working on, although if someone could arrange a Car Wars day, that would be awesome.

Gnome Wars has a Facebook page! I set it up, and may one day add material to it.

And finally, my you, your family, your dice, and your Cthulhu plushies, have a very Happy New Year.

The Awkward Family Photo Board Game

2011-12-29T11:57:00.001-05:00

Gaming was not part of the Christmas weekend, either in playing or in gifts. Sure, my little girl got her copy of Candyland, and we got back and forth on the board before the zillion other toys distracted her. It's okay. She's 2 1/2 and has asked to play it everyday since then.

Our friend Molly did get us a party game for Christmas, Awkward Family Photos The Boardgame. Apparently there's a website dedicated to these photos and this is there official board game. I won't even post the front of the box, cause the back is far more awesome:

Everybody Run! Granny's got a... Luger?

I admit, I only perused the contents of the box, but there are dozens of photos to use (the board is double sided with pics as well), twenty questions to pose to the players, such as "What happened just after this picture was taken," and the old standy, "Caption this picture." The geek high point for me is, yes the game comes with dice (a d20 for the questions). Prices range online from 19.99 all the way up to 38.99, but if you do have a group of mundanes, this looks like a fun party game.

(Cold Wars) Cold Wars 2012 PEL is up - Gnome Games!

2011-12-28T13:25:00.001-05:00

And here, boys and girls, are the Gnome Wars events for Cold Wars 2012

F-209 - Gnome Wars: Surf and Turf
Fri. 2:00 PM, 4 hrs, 8 players
GM: Jim Stanton with Steven Stanton and Stout Gnomes
Sponsor: Brigade Games, Prize: Gnomes!!
Age of Piracy 28mm, Rules: Gnome Wars!
Captain Alvarado and his band of pirates are trying to evade the
British pirate hunters and sneak onto a deserted island and get their
treasure. The Captain best be on his guard for the British Marines
are hot on his trail.
One of the bring your army, don't prereg games. British Marines getting some love for once.

S-355 - The Battle of Apaula Heights - 1898
Sat. 10:00 AM, 3 hrs, 8 players
GM: Eric Jacobson
Colonial 28mm, Rules: Gnome Wars
During the Spanish-American War, the USS Charleston obtained
the complete surrender of Guam with only a small landing party. In
this what-if scenario, the Charleston and the troop transports it was
escorting are rerouted to Samoa instead, to support the rebels in the
Second Samoan Civil War and forcibly remove German influence.
My "unofficial" game, as the army rules does not apply. American, German, Samoan Swiss, and possibly the Imperial Guard of California making their debut.

Then Saturday Afternoon, everything goes crazy!

S-211 - Gnome Wars: High Seas
Sat. 3:00 PM, 4 hrs, 8 players
GM: Kevin Jacobi with Jim Stanton and Stout Gnomes
Sponsor: Brigade Games, Prize: Gnomes!!
Age of Piracy 28mm, Rules: Gnome Wars!
The landing parties have headed to shore to get the treasure. The
members of the crew that stayed on the ship must try to keep it
afloat and free from rival crews, ghost and zombie crews, and
pirates. Hoist the black flag and load the cannons!

S-210 - Gnome Wars: Treasure Island
Sat. 3:00 PM, 4 hrs, 8 players
GM: Jim Stanton with Steven Stanton and Stout Gnomes
Sponsor: Brigade Games, Prize: Gnomes!!
Age of Piracy 28mm, Rules: Gnome Wars!
Standing in the shade of the palm trees on this uncharted island,
looking down at the faded map in his hands, Lon the Lunkhead felt
a tad uneasy. Was the map real? The answer to his question was
just a few feet below his shoes. Lon drew a thin breath and ordered
his gnomes to start digging.

S-212 - Gnome Wars: The Raid on New Providence
Sat. 3:00 PM, 4 hrs, 8 players
GM: Eric Jacobson with Jim Stanton and Stout Gnomes
Sponsor: Brigade Games, Prize: Gnomes!!
Age of Piracy 28mm, Rules: Gnome Wars!
The British Marines are planning a raid on New Providence to look
for pirate scum. What they don't know is that there are more than
just pirates with "business" on New Providence and the marines
are just pissing them off.
Let's just try to comprehend this. Three separate tables, 24 pre-reg slots, one table of treasure hunting, one of a raid on a pirate town, and the last an ongoing ship to ship combat going on in between! And yes, somebody said zombies in there!

S-213 - Gnome Wars: The Raid on New Providence
Sat. 8:00 PM, 4 hrs, 6 players
GM: Steven Stanton with Jim Stanton and Stout Gnomes
Sponsor: Brigade Games, Prize: Gnomes!!
Age of Piracy 28mm, Rules: Gnome Wars!
After being duped on the desert island Lon the Lunkhead brings
his German forces to confront the pirates on the island of New
Providence. Come and help answer these questions: Will he
reclaim his treasure and get his Revenge? Can the pirates turn the
tide and make-off with Lon's
A nice cooldown scenario from the chaos of Saturday afternoon.

and just so everyone can review the entire PEL:
http://www.coldwars.org/2012PDF/Cold%20Wars%202012%20PEL%20listing.pdf

(Cold Wars) Cold Wars 2012 PEL is up - General

2011-12-27T16:05:00.005-05:00

While I was doing the 12 Days of Blogging, the Cold Wars 2012 PEL was released. The listing looks a little sparse to the naked eye, but I anticipate many more games, as some GMs were blindsided the deadline.

Unlike last years' three HMGS cons, there were numerous events that caught my eye. Some are obscure, some are just written well, and some just sound fun! A couple games I'm including simply because I never mention them in the PEL review, yet I post pics of the game every chance I get.

I'll cover the "regular" games that garnered my attention, and in a following post, cover the gnome events that I know "everyone" is drooling over.

Schlegel's Ferry games run by the HAWKS.
The HAWKS have expanded their games this year to focus on holidays. Valentine Day mobsters, Columbus Day with Indians, Explorer's Day Sci-Fi, Halloween with Aliens. Always looks like a hoot.

F-131 - Wolverines! Fri. 10:00 AM, Rules: Force on Force
The Soviet Union has launched a surprise attack upon the United States, attempting to seize key transport locations to continue the offensive. One of these is the critical road hub of Calumet City.Only mixed formations of National Guard and civilian volunteers stand in the path of the onrushing Soviet juggernaut. You know the movie, play the game.
Gotta love a Red Dawn game! Let's hope the rules are adjusted for a "cinematic" approach to the civilian volunteers.

F-193 - The Siberian Rifles - Manchuria, 1905 15mm, Rules: Home Rules
In a rare turnabout of circumstances, elements of the 2nd and Guard divisions of the Japanese First Army (Koruki) are defending a pair of villages at either end of a vital rail bridge. Coordinated attacks by elements from the 4th Siberian Corps (Russian) have hit both sides of the river at the same time. Can the Japanese hold both ends?
A little Russo-Japanese action. Also Saturday at 9am

F-187 - Battle of Lake Erie -WWI version 1:2400, Rules: Fear God and Dreadnough
War has broken out between England and the US over impressment of American sailors and other maritime indignities.Eager to recover lost prestige and control of the Great Lakes, both sides have deployed naval forces to Lake Erie. It's a classic battle from the War of 1812 reset with more 'modern' warships courtesy of the Admiralty Trilogy.
1812 goodness with destroyers and battleships. Actually WWI fought on North America sounds fantastic!

F-223 The Battle of Peitsang
Fri. 3:00 PM, Colonial 28mm, Rules: Colonial Adventures
Chinese Imperial forces have joined the Boxers in an effort to remove foreign influence. The Chinese are blocking access to the Hiksu arsenal to the Western Powers. Russians, German, Italian,French, British, and Japanese forces are sent to capture the village Peitsang and any artillery pieces being used by the Chinese.
Some Boxer Rebellion love...

F-413 - How to build professionally made buildings
Fri. 7:00 PM, 4 hrs, 20 players
This is a 3 hour course on how to build a professional 15mm or 25mm building. Hands on step by step construction of a European Farm House. It's a lot of fun, and you will be astonished with your final result. If we have time we can even paint it. All materials willbe supplied by HMGS and the organizers of Cold Wars.
Even if you will never use a European farm house, this should be the first pick for more than 20 people, hands down.

F-262 - The Canadians Punch Through (DoubleBlind)
Fri. 7:00 PM,28mm, Rules: Battleground WW2
It is May 23 1944. The Second Canadian Infantry Brigade, supported by elements of the North Irish Horse, experience their worst and most costly day of the Italian Campaign as they launch their attack against the vaunted Hitler Line. Can they open a breachfor the 5th Canadian Armoured Div to exploit?Gamers under the age of 14 are welcome with an adult.
Four words stood out: Canadian, Irish, Double Blind. And yeah, some Nazis are floating around as well.

F-202 - Pig Wars – Saxon Raiders
Fri. 8:00 PM, Dark Ages 25mm, Rules: Modified Pig Wars
“Damned Saxons are at it again! How dare they think they can raid our village! We will show these impetuous farmers the true natureof a Dane!” The proud warrior thought as he donned his coat of mail. Can Utrik defend his village against the Saxons? Has an alliance been formed with the Franks, if so with whom? WillUtrik’s brother use this opportunity to claim his rightful place? Arethe Saxons in collusion with Elrick of the White Banner? Multiple plots abound in the morning mist of war.
I have a soft spot in my heart for Pig Wars, dating back to Cold Wars 2001. This might be my Friday night game, depending on what Jim, the Canadian, SONG (Society of Neffs Gamers) are doing.

S-369 - Assault in Helmand Province
Sat. 9:00 AM, Modern 28mm, Rules: Force on Force
The US surge forces are in place in Afghanistan. A recently arrived
US Marine Task Force in Helmand province launches an assault on
a Taliban stronghold. The Marine mission is to root out the Taliban
forces from the area.
I'm warming up to more recent conflicts, probably because they're becoming more recent and less current.

S-397 - French and Indian Picnic
Sat. 10:00 AM Age of Reason 20mm, Rules: Teddy Bear Picnic
The bears are at it again in the Ohio Valley. Who will hold the picnic grounds. Winner of last years best kids game. Kids Game
Much love to the teddy bears

S-318 - The Alamo March 6th,1836
Sat. 10:00 AM, 19th Century 54mm, Rules: Santa Anna Rules
Come defend the Alamo, with Crockett, Bowie, Travis and their
men, whose names aren't as well known, but whose deeds were
just as Heroic. Not recommended for kids.
I believe this is the 54mm Alamo I've normally posted pics to. There is an odd sense of irony that a game played with actual toy soliders is not recommended for kids.
S-192 - Goodbye to Guns or All's Quiet on the Ruritanian Front, 1918
Pulp 28mm, Rules: Astounding Tales/All God's Children Got Guns
Amidst the chaos of the Great War in the Balkans, a brash young American ambulance driver attempts to rescue his true love, a downed Ruritanian aviatrix. But standing in his way is not only the might of the Central Powers but also numerous rivals for this popular lady's affections. It's a love story -- with poison gas.
Pulpy Role-Playing goodness in the Balkans. This I'd like to see!
S-314 - The Cheese Convoy, 1645
Sat. 4:00 PM, Rules: Carnage and Glory Pike and Shot
King Charles has requested his governor of Bridgnorth supply his army in Worcester with ten tons of cheese. Sir Lewis Kirke dutifully obeys, and sets off with his smelly convoy. But the local Parliamentarians are also keen on cheese, and plan to intercept and capture the precious cargo. Based upon an actual historical event, set in Shropshire and Worcestershire 1645.
C'mon, it involves CHEESE!

The Apathy of New Releases (January 2012)

2011-12-27T14:00:00.001-05:00

Welcome to the first installment of solicited items guaranteed to ship 2012.

Okay, stop laughing. We all know a small percentage of the solicitations are vaporware (are minis vapor molds?).

As I have in the past, I'll try to list the new items by (1) items I simply must have, (2) items I would snag up if money was no object, and (3) my imaginary store list. If your favorite game of choice isn't listed or is badmouthed by me, don't take too much offense. I simply have decided over months of solicitations that the effort and capital investment is too much.

Want List: Nothing I simply must have.

Dream List:

Mantic: All I knew about Mantic is that they produce some nice fantasy models which are cheaper alternatives to Games Workshop. The 40k "knock-offs" are piquing my interest. Here's a pic of their Corporation Marines

Knowing it's Mantic, I first though 40k, then over to a little Starship Troopers. Then I realized why I liked them: Legions of Steel UNE Non-Powered Infantry! Now they are all metal, but they don't tell you how many figs you get in a box for $44.99.

COLONIAL GOTHIC: THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR The setting intrigues me enough to pick up any random book that I could find. At worst, it would be a great read.

Warlord: Everyone who's read the blog knows how ga-ga (sans Lady) i've been over their Rorke's Drift "playsets." Now the individual boxed sets are coming available in the US and it's apparent that even with UK shipping, the full sets are steals.

Anglo-Zulu War British Infantry $38.66

Married Zulus $38.66

Natal Native Contingent $38.66

Unmarried Zulus $38.66

Rorke's Drift (building, walls, mealie bags) $299.97

Now, for the quality of figure, $38.66 seems like a decent price and I may pick up a box or two at Cold Wars if price and availability are right. I don't even do Ancients, but the Praetorian Cavalry Command looks sweet (3 mounted figs for $15.47... couldn't get a good pic of it)

STORE LIST:

STAR TREK DECK BUILDING GAME: THE NEXT GENERATION - NEXT PHASE EDITION

Catalyst: B'Tech, Shadowrun, and Cosmic Patrol

OBJECTIVE RAIDS - JIHAD $34.99
COSMIC PATROL: INTO THE COSMOS $24.99
SHADOWRUN: THE TWILIGHT HORIZON

THE LAUNDRY: LICENSE TO SUMMON

STARBLAZER ADVENTURES: THE DEMAGOGUE DEVICE

Decision Games has a huge solicitation this month, and the majority of their product is actually well-priced (re: under $25)
FLYING CIRCUS: AERIAL COMBAT IN WWI
FOLIO GAME SERIES: AACHEN - FIRST TO FALL
LIGHTNING: NORTH AFRICA
Plus two Strategy & Tactics and other wackier game with low prints focusing on certain types of gamers i may or may not have as customers,so i'd hold off on ordering them.

Crazy amounts of Heavy Gear again, is somebody actually ordering/buying this stuff?

CONSPIRACY X: THE PARANORMAL SOURCEBOOK - Eden still makes Conspiracy X? Wow!

DEATHWATCH: THE JERICHO REACH

MERCHANT OF VENUS : Remake of the 80's boardgame with a '10's price 59.99

MARVEL HEROIC ROLEPLAYING: CIVIL WAR EVENT BOOK - holy crap, a sourcebook to follow-up a superhero rpg. The Mayan calendar was right!

Mayfair: Two new boardgames that are questionable for a small store. Rocket Jockeys looks like a better short-term/quantity seller at $15.00. A generic game called Whitewater for $35.00 is only good when the extra fundage is around, and January/February is not the extra fundage time of year.

Miskatonic River Press:

CALL OF CTHULHU: DISSECTING CTHULHU: This collection of essays about the Cthulhu Mythos

CALL OF CTHULHU: HORROR FOR THE HOLIDAYS -stories geared toward the holiday season.

Mongoose:

Call to Arms: Star Fleet releaseas another slew of minis. In the same vein as Heavy Gear, is there a market and are they responding in kind by buying it?
TRAVELLER RPG: ALIEN MODULE 5 - SOLOMAN

Paizo: In addition to 2 3rd party books, Paizo is releasing 5 new products usable for Pathfinder.

Palladium - ooh, Palladium product, a new issue of Rifter, ROBOTECH RPG: GENESIS PITS SOURCEBOOK, and what everyone has been waiting for, RIFTS: PATH OF THE STORM MOVIE SCRIPT for $12.95.

Dystopian Wars - Another mini line, but I've seen some excitement over this. This month's solicitation is for Antarctica (yes, it's a country... or something in this game). Also solicited are scenery sets for the game.

Firestorm Armada - same pile of new releases, although I've heard zero buzz within the area.

Steve Jackson: MUNCHKIN 8: HALF HORSE, WILL TRAVEL and the MUNCHKIN CTHULHU
KILL-O-METER.

New D&D and Magic comics: All together now... yay! Not! Let me get this straight, the new D&D comics will be brand new stories in hardcover graphic novel style, and they'll come with an adventure, which may or may not be in the book? I now IDW will sell enough to pay royalties and pull a profit, but really? Plus the "PI" listing means the retailer usually gets a significantly lower dealer rate. I'd tread lightly on these. The Magic comic comes with a alternative art Magic card. Somebody's always crazy for these, although I'm still hesistant to do anything crazy.

D&D from Wizards

Cathedral of Chaos Dungeons Tiles

Haunted Temples Map Pack

Lords of Waterdeep Boardgame - a Euro style D&D game instead of producing quality product. Is Magestones coming out again?

PLAYER’S OPTION -HEROES OF THE ELEMENTAL CHAOS HC

Magic: Dark Ascension - Hooray Liquid Money! Just in time to pay the rent for March!

WizKids: Marvel Heroclix: Avengers Movie: Slightly gelantinous money! Starters and boosters

STAR TREK HEROCLIX: TACTICS - more liquid money, but there is one thing that worries me. The four ship starter packs sound ok, but they will have ONE SHIP BOOSTERS? At least with Magic, you pull a crappy rare and could salvage the pack with commons and uncommons. With this set-up, everything's fine until you pull your 6th Federation tug in a row!

Gnomecon?

2011-12-26T14:48:00.003-05:00

12+1 anyone?

Just a shout out to GnomeCon 1, coming my birthday weekend, April 20-22 at the Savannah Conference Hotel.

No, I'm not going, but the question I have is, 'How can the GnomeCon name not been used in the last 35+ years of conventions?'

For more info:
http://gnomecon.org/?page_id=5#comment-12

(12 Days) # 12 Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T02:23:00.000-05:00

From mine to yours, have a blessed Christmas, happy holidays all around, and if find yourself in a fight on Boxing Day, don't rip the guy's ear off.

International Arms Manufacturer S. Claus, and one of his ho-ho-h... er... a very inebriated Mrs. Claus.

(12 Days) #11 Preparing for the Big Day

2011-12-24T08:00:00.001-05:00

Okay party people, there's little time between work and my part in wishing everyone a God Jul tonight to get anymore than this to the gnomies faithful:

The Elves are busy assembling the last of the toys (or whacking a few defective xBox 360s)

The relatives are coming, bearing gifts no one wants. (Fruitcake, yum!)

Shoppers are snagging up last minutes deals

And the 1% cackles with Scrooge McDuck glee

Not supposed to be poetry, but enjoy!

all pictures are from gary2bot on the Gnome Wars Yahoo! group. No permission asked to take them, cause c'mon, it's Christmas. Plus they're awesome modifications that everyone knows I couldn't do on my best day. More pics of his and others can be found there!

(12 Days) #10 Lessons of Maja

2011-12-23T14:59:00.003-05:00

For starters, doing this for twelve straight days, making stuff up, rather than a mixture of news and reviews, and opinions, is absolute madness! Doing this at Christmas borders on sheer stupidity! I only have one more post to compile after this (Christmas Day was set up about a week ago, I just need to add some comments).

Today we cover that wonderful little sprite in the house, my daughter Maja. While my youngest Amelia is the one dressed as a gnome on my Facebook page, Maja has demonstrated a love of the gnome and a penchant for silly sayings.

Maja, like all kids, says some ridiculously cute things, but since I don't want to hear most of the things you think are "cute" about your kids, I won't bother you with mine. I will, however, point out the "cool" things she says, that are almost gamer-appropriate.

Arguing with my wife about the difference between Christmas and Christmastime? At home... won't bother you with details.

Explaining that the royal carriage of the prince and princess, when not in royal use, is used for delivering pizza in the kingdom, is a lesson of Maja we all could use.

Calling a Mark I Assault Fiend from Legions of Steel the "Angry Gnome"? A lesson of Maja for all.

Between the lack of minis being painted at the kitchen table and Maja just growing up, there have been fewer and fewer gaming related lessons. Now, that's not a bad thing. She is starting to communicate cause and effect and summarize "stories". She's great with the Wizard of Oz, much to my wife's chagrin. And my favorite part? She can follow along with a made up story, with only a few pictures for visual aids.

Last month, she grabbed my copy of Mouse Guard off the shelf and wanted Daddy to read her a story. I assumed she didn't want to read about dice pools, and just kept a simple story through the pictures in the book. We got about half way through until it was time for baths, and Maja's lesson?

"Mice walk in the snow a lot."

Mouse Guard: a game of epic adventure, fantastic storytelling... and mice walking everywhere in the ^!#$%!@# snow.

I've talked about Candyland before, but having a child has completely changed my gaming perogatives. Not that I don't want to play everyday, because I do... I just prefer to stay married and not have my cajones placed in a decorative container in the living room.

Now, I'm staring at the Wizard of Oz going, how can I turn this into a a multi-session campaign battle with a movable battlefield between sessions? What materials would I need to build Munchkinland? Oz? Can I justify another Swiss gnome unit just to paint them like the Munchkinland Army? When can I order the Flying Monkeys from Eureka? What body parts of my neighbors can I sell to afford them?

Heck, the new Alice in Wonderland was on, I was pondering where exactly Wonderland was located in regards to Oz, or any other fantastic book/story. It would take a little work, but she's still into it, I could put together a game for Tangled (some people like the story, dialogue, and balanced approach to Rapunzel, I just like the brigands and royal uniforms.

And on top of all of that, she'll kick all our butts in a game of Apples to Apples, far sooner than anyone is willing to admit.

Christmas is coming and I am blessed to have two of the best little girls God has put on this Earth. Amelia's still trying to figure things out, but I will do my best to make sure that outside of all the important lessons my wife Michelle and I try to teach her each day, she keeps two of the more important rules true: Always try to be yourself, and have fun doing it.

Her Ladyship

(12 Days) #9 An Ode to Charles

2011-12-22T13:16:00.006-05:00

Alright, I might be briefer than I want to for this, but since certain people caught an early posting error and are excited, I shall try to do this justice.

Since it is the holidays, and we should be spreading Christmas. I shall admit my undying gamer love and appreciation for Charles Schindler

If Charles is reading this, his one eyebrow is already raise with a confident yet confused smirk on his face.

There is a good chance that all of this, the blog, the books, the stories, even the gnomes would not exist for me if it wasn't for Charles.

Flashback, Spring 1987, 7th grade Easton Area Middle School. Once or twice a week the school would compress the other periods 5 or 6 minutes to allow for an activity period. This activity period allowed for hobbies that the staff were willing to supervise. I remember taking golf because we could be outside at the end of the day, but my final activity was model club.

Yep, a bunch of nerdy boys assembling hot rods, tanks, and in my good fortune, Battletech models (oh if I hadn't taken it out of the box, I'd be rich today). I don't remember how the conversation went, but Charles noticed the Btech model, talked up a few other things including D&D and Car Wars, and next week, he "gm'ed" me through one of the Car Warriors books. From that point I was hooked, snagged up a Red Box Basic set over the summer and we became permanent fixtures of each other's dining room tables all through high school.

For some time, Charles' room was the Mecca of gaming, outside of Crazy Egor showing up at Lehicon. Piles of D&D, TMNT, Star Frontiers, GURPS, random board games galore, it was jammed in some box or shelf. Heck, most new games, outside of Recon were his idea. Up until my skills were tested with a new group in Basic Training he was the mountaintop. All ideas, good, bad, or Megaman, went through him.

By the time high school was over and we found other players and other styles, we decided our playing styles were not compatible anyone (that's the diplomatic way of putting it, and I'm sticking to it).

Now, I do believe even Charles will admit that he can be quite um... well... perhaps dick-ish, maybe he acts like a pompous ass, but sort of in a Sheldon Cooper with people skills way. I've seen him begrudgingly back down after he finally admitted he was wrong (which was rare... the being wrong part, the battles he couldn't win were met with indifference), but I've enjoyed him systematically pick apart a players bold face lies with the morbid glee of a public execution.

I fail to understand why a small handful of people project hate and resentment towards the man. Could he be a dick at times? Sure! But he didn't sleep with anyone's girlfriend, not pay back personal loans, or steal anbody's gaming stuff, and I've still gamed with those people. I would game with him in a second if the opportunity presented itself. Could we co-exist in long-term group? Sure, why not! If the GM can satisfy everyone's need for face time, everyone should be content with their lot.

In fact, I might enjoy it.

Of course, that's before you see this!

Sexy, sexy!

L to R, Scott, Crazy Daryl, Charles, and the sexy guy is Me! When I saw our class picture, now taken over 20 years ago, I first though, "Hey, I was okay lookin' back then." In that row, that's like saying I was the skinniest kid at fat camp. I also had a co-worker note that Daryl and Charles make a US flag with their shirts.

Missing from the pic is Wooly (you can see him in post #8), and George is missing, but as is the last 20 years, that's nothing new.

(12 Days) #8 Lazy Day... Random Pics of Doom!

2011-12-21T13:16:00.008-05:00

Today is my lazy day of the 12 days of blogging.... I have an idea for days 9-12, but 8 maids of milking was not doing it for me... So I present nostalgia!

That's me overseeing the climatic finale of the "college campaign" circa 2000. The cardboard standup of the Thing? That's Baraxus the Destroyer, evil spider god, who has just revealed himself. The Party was not amused when anyone revealed themselves. It just ain't polite.
Pictured (l to r) Dalcin, Albert, me, Matt Bailey, Nichols.
Rear view of the same scene. With thousands of figures in the area, we use a LOT of dice to represent troops

This is TOWN (The Other White Nate). He drank a gatorade/vodka mixture in the first hour and wandered around like this for the next two. He spent the remainder of the game passed out on the floor. Ironically, his character Velandro, Defender of Kobold Virginity, was the only PC to die.

East Stroudsburg University, circa 2000. (l to r) Droz, Big Sexy, Scott, a little redheaded boy named Phil, and his even younger looking friend Wooly.

(12 Days) #7 Edible Gaming

2011-12-20T15:12:00.000-05:00

Looking for something simple and pic-related today, and I figured it could be my first ever Gnome Wars game. Personally, I was surprised I couldn't find any references to it in older blog posts:

Historicon 2007, Lancaster,PA

Good God, my memory is slipping cause I barely remember going to con, save this game. This might be time we went down for the weekend with my wife and mother in law and stayed at a totally disgusting Comfort Inn, but none of the other pictures of the game ring a bell anymore. I think this is the con where I learned All the King's Men, but again, five Historicons in a row and I'm losing track.

Anyway, I must have had a good time, because by Saturday night Brian Nichols and I were exhausted. Looking through the con book, only game seemed silly and simple enough to get arounnd our exhausted little minds: Gnome Wars. How bad could it be?

They had shoved the game into some back room of the Host that I've never been to before or since, and we caught off guard at two things:
(1) Two kids under ten were the only other players for the game. No problem, if we keep the game going and the kids stay entertained it should be a hoot.
(2) The entire battlefield was edible!

Trees made out of cotton candy, cinnamon sticks and fig newtons! Walls made out of cupcakes! A river of Fruit by the Foot! Barbed wire made up of pretzels and marshmallows! Even the barricades and bridges were made of graham crackers. And the centerpiece of the battlefield was a castle cake!

We each teamed up with kid for some battle between the invading Highlander/British Teddy Bear forces, and the defending Sikhs/Germans.

Teddy Bears Marching to Their Doom!

The rules were basic Gnome Wars, with one delicious exception: regular artillery fire was replaced with a version HG Wells would have loved for Little Wars. We fired mini-marshmallows off of a plastic spoon. Whatever we hit, friend or foe, was removed. If we hit "terrain" we could eat it!

Damage From Artillery Fire

Results were fuzzy, but I remember my Germans holding off the bulk of the invaders and the Sikhs dying to a man but holding off their attackers. The best part were the GMs, who insisted that for reinforcements, healing, etc, we provide a gnome-appropriate pun.

For most players, it got tough after the second or third round. Me?

I hit a gnome run everytime.

It's games like this that make me want to use the teddy bears, frogs, and gnomes in less historical and more fun settings!

Candyland is coming to Miss Maja in a few days from the old fat guy... This will be fun.

No, not me... Santa!

(12 Days) #6 My Imaginary Stats in Real Life

2011-12-19T10:58:00.002-05:00

Today, I disclose yet another dark secret of my gaming past. I've already disclosed my unhealthy love for dice baseball, and if I'm running low on material for these, I'll drop some phat stats down on one of the teams I run that will make it sound like I should be on Baseball Tonight.

My friend Phil, who does Adventurous Endeavors is also do this 12 blogs of Christmas thing, and I dared him to stat himself out in some crunchy system he possessed. It took some arm turning, but he did pull off a very nice half-orc bard/cavalier/something else for Pathfinder that keeps to the spirit of Phil, and in the spirit of Pathfinder, is decently playable (I think).

Now it's my turn, and I had no difficulty; I just pulled myself right out of the drawer. Secret #1; I've had a GURPS character of myself since 1991, and I've kept in updated semi-regularly.

Sometime in '90-91, I wanted to run a GURPS: Red Dawn. Ah, Red Dawn, where the Soviets invade the US mainland, and the only competent resistance is a bunch of kids with hunting rifles. To make things more ridiculous, I had each player make up a 100-point characters of themselves. Now for those you not in the know, 25 pts is a normal person, 50-75 is above average, and 100 pts is heroic. Where we got the idea that a bunch of nerds who barely held driving permits in the real life could be 100pt heroes, I don't know, but we did it. To make things more absurd, the groups camp site was right behind the Palmer Park Mall, which was being used as a internment camp to boot. I guess it was a case of the 'No one will suspect anything right under their noses!"

I made up a GURPS version of myself to act as a trusted go-between for the rest. I don't know who I was going between for, but I do remember ordering them to assassinate a classmate who was acting as a journalist for the Soviet occupiers. How I allowed a 16-year old boy to get his hands on a Barrett Model 82 Sniper Rifle, I have no clue. Charles with a big gun is a scary thing indeed. He had a +23 bonus to hit his skill check at 13 on 3d6. There was a very messy phone booth in Tatamy after that encounter.

Soon, the appeal of running that genre ran out and we changed to what we know refer to as a the Napalm Death multi-genre-all-in-Easton game. Aliens at the old Pfizer plant, Mad Max-style Thunderdome games in the Easton parking garage. I don't believe we had a strong plot line, but I imagine I sold the group to othe people as fodder and when they succeeded with flair, other groups that were patrons of ours with would fill in the vacuum for power.

I do believe wrapped up that game well before the end of high school, but I could always use the character as an information contact, rather than the spy I secretly aspired to be.

Secret #2: For years I kept a list of weird dreams I had on my old word processor. No, get your minds out of the gutter, the truly weird sci-fi channel stuff: Walking through a nuclear wasteland, or driving around town with my friend Wooly's dad, until we encounter a black man playing a trumpet, leading a horde of undead down the street (and this was years before I read/played Dead Man Stomp.) When I decided to stop typing them up, I updated that old GURPS sheet to adjust the skill points from the weird experiences. I've done this on-and-off for years, and having caught a bout of I can sleep 6 hours straight since the two kids can now, I started jotting this info down again.

GURPS is a tough enough on skills that it made sense. If I did something that had some effect on the dream, 1/2 point. Something solid to the dream and done competently? 1pt. Something extraodinary? 2+ pts.

Without futher ado, Mr. Eric Jacobson, Regional Man of Mystery

ST: 10 DX: 11 IQ: 13 HT: 12

Advantages: Charisma +2 (I am a helluva guy), Common Sense (I'm constantly warning people in dreams not to do stupid things), Luck (if I survived the Red Dawn game, I have it in spades), Voice, Light Hangover.

Disadvantages: Bloodlust (you don't want me angry, I will finish things with a tire iron to your face), Nearsighted (corrected, as in I have glasses), Gluttony (it is one tasty vice), Stubborness,
Sense of Duty (Friends)

Skills: for skill checks, one rolls 3d6 and roll your skill level or less. These are the skills I've put points into, which means most simple actions are automatic. If I wanted to do something that's not on the list, like speak French or pick a lock, my default skill level is usually IQ or DX -5... or worse. A skill level of 10 is average, 12 rather skilled, 14 well-trained, 16+ expert.

Administration 13 (lots of red tape dreams)
Archaeology 10
Bard 18 (let me...entertain you!)
Boxing 10
Brawling 13
Camoflague 13
Carousing 12
Conspiracy Theory 11
Dancing 10
Diplomacy 13
Driving: Auto 14
Driving: Diesel Locomotive 11 (yep, I operated one down the streets of Palmer.. and survived!)
Economics 10
Engineering 12 (I was desinged some structure that didn't collapse)
English 14 (I am well-spoken, and could be well-read)
Geology 10 (I must have been dreaming Volcano III: Livin' La Lava Loca)
Guns: Pistol 14
Guns: Rifle 14
Guns: SMG 13
Hiking 10
History 13
Hobby: Models 12 (The plastic kind, not the International Super- version)
Intell Analysis 11
Law 10
Occultism 13
Punning 11 (yes, there is a Punning skill, God help us all)
Running 12 (I am healthier in my dreams than in real life)
Savoir Faire 16 (I'm classy helluva guy)
Saxophone 12 (I played one in a dream, can't do it in real life... 1/2 pt)
Scrounging 13
Sex Appeal 14 (I'm kinda a helluva guy... around the ladies, that is)
Sport: Basketball 9 (For some reason I was playing hoops and didn't get killed... 1/2 pt)
Stealth 11
Swimming 10
Survival: Mountains 12
Survival: NBC 13 (Some nuclear holocaust dreams, no one died, so I must know something)Sport: Golf 10 (Tiger Woods y'all... )
Tactics 11
Wrestling 10

and my favorite ones
Area Knowledge: Lehigh Valley 12 (I've only had one dream where I needed to know stuff about the area)

Area Knowledge: South Africa 13 (yet I was intimately involved with some intrigue)
Area Knowledge: Iceland 13 (yes, freakin' Iceland, ladies...)

So, for 146.5 pts in GURPS, you can have the 'dream version' of me, a social animal who occasionally can get around procedure and might survive in a gun fight in Iceland. I'm not the international super-spy, I'm the contact the super-spy meets to obtain the information, and I'm careful enough not to get blown up, killed by a sniper, etc.

Good God, I'm a more competent version of Tom Arnold in True Lies!

I changed my mind, somebody please shoot me with a sniper rifle. Charles?

(edit: It's been so long since I calculated the skill totals, that I completely forgot that Voice gives a +2 to Bard, Savoir Faire, Diplomacy, and Sex Appeal, which have since been adjusted. Oh yeah, you know you gonna dig this!)

(12 Days) #5 The Last Words of Talis Makolin

2011-12-18T01:51:00.001-05:00

So, we've covered some of my faults, my big failure, and introduced the world to Echellon, the pigeon raising lesser deity.

I had quickly mentioned the end of that campaign and decided that it would make for a great post for the holidays. Not the blow-by-blow account of the final battle, but more the set-up, and most importantly the epilogue that followed.

If you read yesterday's post, then you know the group was worried about three entities:

A 'Dread Lord' destined to take over the kingdom.

'Spider People' Arachnid dopplegangers taking over everyone's lives, from nobility to the cleaning staff

The Cult of Apotheosis: This cult was predicting the return of their great leader with a great apocalyptic vision.

In proper final campaign fashion 1 had nothing to do with anything, 3 had been duped by a minor god to seize power, and 2 was loosely allied with said minor god.

I ran the final game at Griffon Games, closing up shop early, and breaking out the booze and food. All the regulars came down, and there was an open invitation for anyone with a character who made an appearance in the campaign to come in and help the party. Hell, I think I invited Matt Bailey, Albert Uliana, and Dalcin, and none of them even played a round!

For a little more information, I'll introduce two characters:

Talis Makolin: Flamboyant ladies man, general bs-er, and every once in awhile was a bard. Half-brother of Echellon from the previous post. He had died during White Plume Mountain, and his player had Kyril, an ass-kicking dwarf for the final game.

Rolf Wolfsblood: Barbarian from the western steppes of Galmer. Quiet but incredibly wise when spoken, he had actually part of the group that was teleported to the world of Talislanta in the middle of the campaign. Before they returned, he had just begun the early tattoing process the Thrall warriors do. As final games go, I believe I hit enough of the important tropes: The group assembles to combat a menace, the great secret is discovered, group is betrayed, numerous NPCs/pcs die, group rallies back to win the day.

That, and for about 15 minutes of game time, the ruler of the civilized world was a dwarf named Norm Dingleberry.

The epilogue for the campaign I did in the style of Raising Arizona, sort of floating through scene to scene.

First I started with the awards, royal decrees, and titles the group was bestowed upon from various countries, then funerals of their lost friends.

I then moved forward a bit, families were started, then I moved to a scene involving a monastery for lawful good kobolds (a huge deal from almost the beginning of the campaign, and then I covered each of the characters who went solo seeking adventure, helping their people, or just wanting to be left alone.

But in a final vision, most of the group is back at the Chateau d'Echellon celebrating a great feast. Most of the pcs are there seated at the main table, some with grown family members, npcs both large and small importance are standing behind them. At the head of the table is Echellon himself, much older, but still recognizable. It is his last meal with his friend as his god as told him it's time to take up his duties as God of the Sea... and Pigeons. There is much rejoicing at the table, both pcs and players.

At that point, I threw the group off track. Instead of ending it at that point, the visions moved to a dingy tavern in a village that's barely the size of their dot on the map. A group of small children are surrounding a scruffy middle-aged man telling a story. He reeked of alcohol and depression. A tall muscular man covered in furs, his face a mixture of age, scars and tattoos, walks into the tavern and towards the crowd.

"That's it for now, lads. When you can scrounge up a couple more coppers to quench Talis' thirst, I'll tell you about what happened after we went down the rapids from Silver Valley."

"But Talis, you already told us that story."

"yeah, i want to know how came back to life!"

"But I didn't die, I was rescued!"

"No, you weren't. you said you fell into the mud and the group left you for dead!"

"Enough now kids," barked the tall man, "get outta here"

The kids scattered, and the tall man slumped down in the chair besides Talis. Talis took one last swig of backwashed grog from his flagon, and asked, "Rolf, the farmers will be in here any moment, ya wanna go their homes and screw their wives again?"

Rolf was not amused, "Talis, you really want to spend the rest of your pitiful life screwing the fat old wives of farmers and making kids steal money to hear bullshit stories of things that we never did? They think we're actual heros, for Akana's sake! And here you are, deluding them with your imaginary tale."

Talis paused for a moment from staring blankly at the table and said, "Rolf, it is an imaginary tale, which may or may not be true. It's a story about a bunch of young guys who came to a small village to seek their fortune. By luck and by talent they made a name for themselves and had the chance to travel to exotic lands, met fantastic people, and became heroes because of it. They met the forces of evil head on, and despite all their gallantry, some of their friends fell. Not all of them made it to the happy ending, but they all tried to make in happen, dammit. They brought hope to the people, and just like them, these kids today need hope. We may have died inside years ago, but there's no way these kids need to know that. Of course it's an imaginary story.... aren't they all?"

*fade to black*

(12 Days) #4 The Death of Echellon

2011-12-17T00:35:00.000-05:00

So, yesterday's post tried to address my biggest failure I've dealt with as a gamemaster, and it was tough. Not that I'm perfect, but I do my best to roll with the punches and adapt to the disasters presented to me. I am serious when I tell you it took three days to figure out what exactly could be construed as a disaster.

As promised, I bring you the death of Echellon.
Echellon was a cleric during my college campaign, run by my roommate Steve. After ten years, I know Steve can't run a completely straight character and Echellon was my baptism by fire.

Born out of the brothel in a trade town, Echellon was enslaved by pirates. While aboard one of their vessels, he was befriended by a fellow slave named Mohammed. Mohammed taught him everything about the Chinese god of the sea Tshang kai Ching. Together they plotted to escape the ship and set up a monastery to raise pigeons. As they jumped ship and swam to shore, Mohammed was attacked by a shark! In the commotion, the pirates fired their catapult at the distrubance, hitting the shark and sending both the shark and Mohammed to the bottom of the sea. Echellon got away and began tending numerous animals, continuing his love for pigeons.

That was the back story I got to work with when Steve introduced the character. As to be expected, Echellon wasn't your stereotypical hero, but he was competent comic relief:

He had accumulated a menagerie of animals, including portable coops of pigeons, all of this BEFORE the left the town to explore their first dungeon, The Temple of Alasku. Afraid to leave his travelling show, he stayed above ground to guard the animals and provisions while the rest of the group made their descent.

When the party released Carthon, a gruff looking fighter, from the prison of the Dread Lord, he ran upstairs to find Echellon and the parade of biology. Echellon begrudgingly gave him some provisions and soon Carthon was tending to the animals for pay.

Echellon had not even been in his first fight yet, and already had a hireling/retainer.

In later adventurers, a strange alignment of magic spells and area effects allowed for Echellon to befriend a wolf, and soon thereafter find out he had a telepathic link with him. Pathfinder was a loyal sidekick for the entire campaign, and again, Echellon got campaign bonuses due to a fluke.

Soon the team of Echellon and Pathfinder roamed the area, occasionally even looking for adventure. Carthon tended to more and more coops of pigeons, along with the help of a homeless boy named Timoth, and the group finally got a big adventure, direct from the High Priest of Akana, the state religion, to evict a rogue priest from their compound. I'll spare the details, but let's say the entire party got teleported far, far away, fought gods, prevented invasions, and discovered a dastardly plot involving spider dopplegangers which took months. When they finally got back to the village which was their home base, all trace of Carthon, Timoth, and the animals were gone. A few miles outside of town, the group passed a homestead where a very clean Timoth, and well-feed Pathfinder burst out the front door.

Echellon last's words to Carthon before embarking on their journey, "If I don't come back soon, sell off the pigeons and make sure Timmy's taken care of."

Echellon might have been misguided and self-centered at times, but he wasn't a complete dick.

Echellon had been raising a certain type of pigeon that fetched a pretty penny when they turned into adults. His love of pigeons prevented him from selling any, but following his last words, Carthon turned a ridiculous profit on them which bought them the homestead. The Chateau d'Echellon was created.

At another time I'll be happy to talk about It's a Wonderful Reunion, how the group nearly burnt down the village to avoid a Spider People infestation in the noble ranks, how he discovered he was the half-brother to the party bard, Talis Makolin, or how he became defacto Baron of Eding,

After all that backstory, let's get to the dude's death.

Prophecy had a huge impact on the campaign: The Cult of Apotheosis appeared day one and always lingered in the back story. A wee bit fantatical, but nice guys to have around if you needed food and shelter, so as you let them tell you about their God/King/Spirit/Tuesday Night Bowling Buddy who was coming back soon to reunite the world... SOON! The group didn't even freak out when random fortune tellers, random diviners, and little old ladies off the street would tell them that they were the chosen ones in the battle of the apocalypse. Standard adventuring fare at best.

They did begin to seriously take heed when they came upon an estate auction of a random scholar/wizard. Droz's character Ashe had won a bid on a giant oil painting that would look great over the hearth in the Chateau d'Echellon. When the painting got clean up and hung, the group gasped. There was an odd mountain spewing steam and a team of adventurers standing on another mountain, observing. The members of that party looked a lot like members of the group: Ashe, the half-elf ranger, Norm Dingelberry, simpleton dwarf, and Echellon. What other dude would wander the mountains with a brown sackcloth robe and a trident?

Soon, the research and taverhopping began to find out the legend. The mountain was said to contain three weapons of massive power that the chosen ones would obtain to fight in the impending apocalypse. The group bought into the idea, and prepared a journey to White Plume Mountain to try to find the weapons.

Then Echellon had to up and die.

No review is necessary, The Mark of Amber is a sucky module, but I needed some filler to accomodate a few weeks of low attendance, a weekday desire to get in some extra time to game, etc. During the adventure the PCs were caught in a dream sequence and a mind flayer ate Echellon's brain. After the remaining PCs escaped the dream state, they discovered that Echellon was completely gone, vanished. Nothing.

And with the recent MIA status of Ashe, the Chosen Ones within the party of destiny had been whittled down to a nose picking dwarf warrior a la a smart Ralph Wiggum.

I was willing to continue as is, propehcy is always subject to interpretation, the world was a big place to adventure, and the apocalypse wasn't even going to formally begin for a few months of real time.

Then Steve broke me with his new character.

"I'm going to play a really old guy, 85+. He's been a cleric his whole life, but the problem is, he's a half-orc and they max out at 4th level. "

Why I allowed such a character concept, including the hitting of 'young whippersnappers' with his cane, falling asleep at the wrong times, and completely doing something absurd during the goods times, I'll never know. He did, however fall within the guidelines I provided Steve (-2 levels from the character who died, no more than one stat at 18, only 2,000xp worth of magic items).

Ozark the half-orc cleric was the hyperpole of comic relief. It was almost painful to get through a full session, even with the laughter and good times. Ozark could easily kill off the party through his geriatric incompetence.

Echellon needed to come back, because I feared what Steve's 3rd concept for a character could be.

Even with the bumbling half-orc, I upped the ante with the cults, the apocalypse, and the personal implications they caused to the PCs. The party got back on the save the universe bandwagon and off to White Plume Mountain they went, to get the battle axe Overslayer for Norm, and pray they could find a ranger and a dude proficient in trident to use the other two weapons.

The timing in the dungeon is sketchy after more than ten years, but I think they went for the battle axe first. There was a deep pit full of hot bubbling mud and a series of small wooden discs attached to ropes to get across. Talis the only rogue in the party and only guy with a decent dex tried to get across to help stabilize them and get the rest of the party across. Talis, a suave ladies man, a man who went from legend in his own mind to budding legend, the man who was the party's leader with the loss of Echellon, failed his rolls miserably and fell into the muddy pits, completely unrecoverable.

Some of the group did manage to make it across, defeat the vampire and find the battle axe. The room was subdued, save for Hoyce, the man running Talis. He was in shock, betrayed, and angry, and if I learned anything from kicking his ass at Samurai Swords, no one ever wants an angry Hoyce.

With the party leader gone, the group flopped around the second part of the dungeon looking for the trident. Party cohesion had disentigrated when the party encounted a giant 100+ hp crab. When all seemed lost, a huge flash appeared in the underground cavern, a clap of thunder, and the giant crab was struck down by a man holding a trident.

After months away, his spirits communing with his god, Echellon was returned to Georic by Shiang kai Ching. Ozark had already been conveniently killed in the crossfire.

I guess it worked out. Echellon was back to lead the mini-legion of good (more like a cabal of people who disliked evil), but the face of the game turned grim. Hoyce's new character, a dwarf named Kyril, was all business, and only made attachments with the group through loyalty. Characters were dropping like flies as the evil spread across the vally.

I do question the return of Echellon. I was hoping the over-the-top nature of the character would infect itself within the party again, but I hadn't realized that that particular chapter in the campaign may had ended with a kobold mariachi band many months earlier (yes, a kobold mariachi band). Even if I hadn't planned on the campaign ending at a certain point, the game had evolved, and I should have just killed off Ozark, in a humane and fair way. This wasn't some stupid series of novels where everyone always gets away scott-free. This had been a realistic campaign full of quasi heroes trying to figure out how to become legends, or at least not die.

Hoyce has only told me that the death of Talis sucked. Truth be told, he would have made an awesome Hackmaster character, but the restrictive nature of 1e/2e crippled an awesome character mechanically.

After everything was said and done, the evil had been discovered and vanquished, peace spread across the lands for a few more years, and Echellon even ascended into godhood.

In the end, Talis did get the final words of the campaign in a nod of respect towards the character. And that is where we'll turn for tomorrow's post "The Reality of Imaginary Stories"

Or maybe I'll just talk about ducks.

(12 Days) #3 My Biggest Failure as a GM

2011-12-16T00:01:00.000-05:00

This post is by request from Phil @ http://adventurousendeavors.blogspot.com/ .

Phil asks, "How about talking about your biggest failure running a game of all time?"

Excellent question, Phil. First off, I have to figure out how to define outright abject failure.

It's not your players refusing to take the bait of an adventure hook, getting sidetracked, or even letting a game/campaign fade away from indifference. Those things happen all the time.

I'm not counting the following things as failures, but I'll bring them up for the discussion.

Misinterpreting rules (half-elves backstabbing with polearms in high school, forgetting the casting time of Call Lightning in 2nd Edition, and even misreading rules for Legions of Steel that I demo'ed over and over again). Most times, it did not hinder play, rather it added to the player's enjoyment. We noted the corrections and moved on.

Not being able to run an all-evil campaign that I inherited with over-powered munchkin characters is not a failure. We tried to co-exist. Our playing styles conflicted, and we parted ways amicably. There's no "Evil Campaign" merit badge for a GM to earn.

Some campaigns just whimper out of existence, no matter how good the game was. My AD&D "Army Reserves Campaign" from the mid-90's slowly disentigrated until it was down to two PCs. Even then, both characters final actions impacted the future campaigns of Georic, and elf characters who played afterwards should laud the actions of Torm and Markoos. It was far, far worse back in the day.

It's also not a failure to not get a game running. If that were the case I'd be failure two dozen times over. Lack of enthusiasm, and sometimes real life, was bound to kill Mouse Guard, another Hackmaster campaign, Battlelords of the 23rd Century, or even my homebrew campaigns, City-State of Kathad and "Home." If I get the chance, I'll run them in a heartbeat, it's not as if my notes disappeared from existence.

Regrets don't count as failure in my book, and I've had a few.

Convention Games? The fact that I wasn't charged with the murder of Jim Schwar after years of Bogglecon events means all games were acceptable.

I do regret that I had gone 27 hours without sleep before I ran my friend Droz's Harpers game at Lehicon 5.

I regret not prepping enough for my IOU LARP at the Garden States Game Faire in '96. I had no idea what I was doing, various groups were using different systems to resolve conflict, and we threw Kris Kunkel into the hotel pool and drenched the RPGA tables... in game. FUBAR yes, but not a failure.

I regret that I didn't pursue an advanced degree in GURPS-Fu. GURPS was the 1st backup game behind D&D in high school. We ran numerous genres and I have my Napalm Death campaign in a near and dear part of my heart. My friend Charles was the number cruncher, so his understanding of bonuses and tech levels made some games unbalanced. With my ignorance of more of the metagaming side, a few combats were woefully unbalanced towards the PC side. This lack of GURPS-Fu, combined with years of rust, was the reason I adapted Illuminati University (IOU) to Risus and didn't stick with GURPS. It is easier to play when your in a darkening backyrard during the Day of Sloth and only have four stats to reference.

My biggest fault? (not failure) I can easily be controlled by a dominant player. Charles in high school, Dalcin in the Army Game, Steve from College, and Hoyce in the Hackmaster game, even Chris in the evil game dominated the forfront. This isn't to say that I haven't tried to improve my technique by diverting the attention to other players. Outside of a female thief in Hackmaster, who didn't take any intiative when I handed it to her (she just wanted to get impregnated by the Nubian warrior), I've done well spreading the attention and deflecting the dominating personalities, but an unworthy player/pc could get a half hour or more of time dedicated to them without blinking an eye, if they're just louder than the rest of the group.

But FAILURE? That would be my handling of "THE DEATH OF ECHELLON", but I'll save that tomorrow's post.

In the words of the great philosopher Homer, "D'oh!"

(12 Days) #2 Bumbles Bounce and Bunnies Wander

2011-12-15T04:13:00.002-05:00

Day Two and I better start giving out much love to my fellow gnomies. Today's shout out goes to Gnomie Fanatic #1, Mr Michael Lung. The man's work at sculpting, modifying, and kitbashing has earned him his own tag on this blog, a quasi-consistent series of gallery posts, and post #2 for his bunny herding.

When I was looking for a semi-solitaire system for the sheep herders during my Battle of yellowstone game, Mike was already working on a gnome verion of a solitaire game from Wargames Illustrated #27. While my game's version was very basic and had removed sheepdogs from the equation, Mike had expanded his rules to include a lovable.. er... abominable chap:

Oh, yes, Bunnies and Bumbles, the second favorite running title for TSRs original rpg. Basically the lone peasant herds some randomly moving bunnies around, with the assistance of one or two dogs. It's a nice one or two player game to fill in a small time slot. With the Bumble, it adds an extra level of drama. Fight off the Bumble, or scramble to save whatever of flock remains. Or let the dogs take the fall and dash across the board. I'll see what I can do about posting the rules, with Mike's permission of course.

Don't know the make of the dogs in the photo, or the all of the bunnies, but I will point out the bunny pen made out of a basket. I can imagine a nice Easter game using marshmallow peeps.

He's also made a Smurf soccer that's more tactical and straightforward than a bloody version of Smurf Bowl.

One day I would love to see him run a game at an HMGS con, not just as a very special guest star who brings a billion zombie gnomes to the con. He's tried his hand at sculpting, and if the Znombies are any indication, he shouldn't stop. He may even bring a super special surprise or two to Cold Wars.

As his sculpting improves, I know I'll be inquiring about what odd ranges people would be interested in buying. Armed with that knowledge, I can bug Lon at Brigade to release a few Znombies or other sculpts. If done right, it can be a win-win for all of the Gnome Gnation.

Anyway, Merry Christmas Mike!

I'm still waiting for Sherlock Gnomes....

(Update: I talked to Mike and got his permission and blessing to post the Bunny Herding Rules on here, on the condition that Wargames Illustrated and the author of the original article get credit. I don't anticipate any cease and desist letters from WI because (a) it's rules for herding animals, unless (b) Flames of War: Cattle Drive is being released in 2012.)

(12 Days) #1 When Goalie Fights Get Serious

2011-12-14T00:17:00.003-05:00

Here's the first post in the guaranteed 12 straights with something simple: Fantasy Hockey. No I'm not trading Sidney Crosby for a defensemen and the Winnipeg Defense. Orcs, Elves, and Ratmen on ice!

There's always rats on the ice in these games

Rules written by Jim Stanton, figures available by Brigade Games, Photos by and minis painted by Jim. Mix Blood Bowl and Hockey and you get....er... Hockey!

I don't think anyone wants to crash the net this guy is defending.

(Edit: I let Lon at Brigade know that the Fantasy Hockey minis aren't displaying at http://www.brigadegames.com/ under the Brigade Games Tab on the left hand side of the page. Hopefully that will be remedied soon.)

The Twelve Days of Blogging... Coming Soon!

2011-12-12T14:33:00.002-05:00

I've noticed on a few of the blogs I follow "The Twelve Days of Blogging" or "The Twenty Days of Blogging." Basically, an entire to consistently make blog entries into the holidays. While I don't care about the one blogger getting a dog, or the wife screaming about dishes piling up, it does ensure that something out of the ordinary gets posted.

So, I will succumb to peer pressure, and guarantee a 12 Days of Blogging, starting December 14th, and finishing on Christmas Day. No guarantee about the quality or type of blogs, and yes, I'm pretty certain 90% of my Christmas Day blog will be finished tonight and set to post on the 25th. I have two small kids and a horde of relatives showing up. I love my little gnomie fanatics that follow the blog, but a man still must be practical.

As always, suggestions for particular topics will be accepted, although it will take a major snowstorm or the wife and kids go on vacation without me before I finish episode #10 of my Call of Cthulhu game, "Suffer Little Children". Perhaps some Hackmaster/D&D stories from the past?

Sir Michael Caine Kicks Ass in 28mm!

2011-12-10T01:09:00.004-05:00

Okay, here's yet another post promoting some more Warlord love that I simply can not afford.

This time is the release of the Rorke's Drift Horns of the Buffalo Collector's Set.

Everything that was offered in the previous set, plus the Mealie Bag Redoubt, Kraal Wall, Water Closet, Cookhouse Ovens, and piles of other miscellany. All for only £275.00! Somebody find me a ski-mask and a British 7-11 to rob, please!

The real piece de resistance that made my jaw drop with a resounding "FUUUUUUUUH!" was the inclusion of the movie versions of the characters from classic 1964 film "Zulu."

Oh yeah, nothing like a little Michael Caine (literally!) kicking ass and taking names, not just at Rorke's Drift but showing up in any other Zulu War battle, or better yet, some Victorian Sci-Fi Game. Mars watch out!

Seriously, when can I just order these four?

Battlelords on Twitter

2011-12-08T16:36:00.000-05:00

So, Battlelords of the 23rd Century has gone all Twitty, er... I mean Twitter. The Facebook game I had mentioned in Beta Testing? It's up and running on Twitter.

I fooled around with it on my viscounteric Twitter account (don't check it out, I haven't updated in months). It was enjoyable to remininsce about Ram Pythons again, but it's a Bot23C flavored version of Mafia/Vampire/Smurf/Sorority Wars.

I still have a downtown to clear in Zombie Lane and that involves visual gunfire!

http://twitter.com/bl23c

Rorke's Drift Boxed Set pics

2011-12-07T14:59:00.003-05:00

I've already covered my unnatural lust for Warlord's Rorke's Drift boxed set here.

Today on TMP, Warlord showed the box. And like some rabid fanboy, I'm posting just those pics here:

It's a lot of painting, and they've already said there would be increased shipping cost abroad for this item, but if someone could magically donate £150.00 to the viscounteric non-charity fund, I'll figure out the conversion to pay the wacky S&H.

(Cold Wars) The Second Samoan Civil War?

2011-12-05T11:57:00.004-05:00

Here's the event I'll be running Saturday morning:

The Battle of Apaula Heights
During the Spanish-American War, the U.S.S. Charleston obtained the complete surrender of Guam with only a landing party and thirty minutes of negotiations. In this what-if scenario, the Charleston and the three troop transports it was escorting are rerouted to Samoa instead, to support the rebels in the Second Samoan Civil War and forcibly remove German and the BrItish interests there. 8 players (room for 10)

Okay, I admit that my love for the obscure is going overboard now. I mean, how many times has either Samoan Civil War been played at an HMGS con, much less anywhere else?

Truth be told, I had been planning on fighting the Capture of Guam (link) using the Germans as the colonial masters of the island. That would be a challenging game. Fifty-four Germans, four pieces of artillery vs three troop transports of Americans (Northerner) and the USS Charleston's guns for support. I still think the Germans have a chance, if they prepare correctly. However, I don't know if we'll have enough Americans to run the game. I can't imagine more than a unit of cav to be on the board.

The Samoan allows me more troop variation. Sorry, no Polynesian gnomes quite yet. The Samoans, both loyalist and rebel, will be proxied by Swiss, as they are the default gnome for any nationality. British Marines/Highlanders will be used in an alliance of survival with the Germans.

The best thing of all, since we are running three different boards at Cold Wars, I have three different scenarios runninng in my head. And they all can work with few issues.

This being said, I'm working on two different pages currently. There will be a Gazetteer of the Gnomish Americas, covering some fun optional units to use your American gnomes. Texas Rangers, the Desert Theocracy of Utah, and other options other than Union blue and rebel grey.

The second is a history and battles of the German-American War. The war's name is a misnomer. While Northerners will be fighting Germans on their colonies of Cuba, Port Wilhlem, they were trying to avoid a full-blown hot war with the South again. The entire Pacific campaign that schoolchildren only associate with Dewey and the Phillipines was an expansive seroius of amphibious assaults on German and British colonies involving the California Imperial Navy and the Royal Liholiho Marines from the Kingdom of Hawaii. This should be fun

(Cold Wars) Prepping at the underground bunker...

2011-12-02T14:32:00.003-05:00

I can't make too many comments, but I've been in communication about Cold Wars with Jim and the rest of Team Gnome, or the Gnome Gnation, or whatever we're called (It's not like we have t-shirts or anything official). I'll wait for the PEL to be published to reveal the "official" games, but let's use three words:

Really

Effin'

Big

While Saturday Gnome Wars games are the epitome of organized chaos, I do believe that Saturday afternoon at Cold Wars will outshine them all. On three separate tables at the same time.

Trust me, it will be awesome.

With that finalized, I have a week to scramble to put my little event in for Saturday morning. The Battle of Yellowstone went over pretty good at Fall-in. For this con I need to do a little research, but I believe it will be American troops (with French "advisors") seizing a German coaling station in the South Pacific. Not as historically accurate as the US Cav in Yellowstone, a great what-if game for 6-8 players.

I'll try to squeeze sometime in this weekend for some solid details to submit my event, but I'm on family mode all weekend with trips to Christmas lights, and "The World's largest 30+mm battlefield." Others just call it Roadside America, in Shartlesville, PA.

(Nostalgia) The Garden State Games Faire Lives... kinda

2011-12-01T01:04:00.006-05:00

On TMP, there was a topic: "What was your favorite convention ever?" I obviously answered Lehicon IV, as I had previously documented here. That began a google search at work for new references to Lehicon in any form, and holy crap a new one appeared:

http://gametrader.tripod.com/gsgf97.html

That, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the official site for the Garden State Games Faire 1997 (or GSGF II for those who prefer con numbering). I'm amazed this site is even up after 14 years, and it brings back memories, not necessarily all great ones.

First off, I'll start off with a mention of Wizard's Cove, a little dump of a store in Bangor, PA. Unlike others, I won't trash to place as a dive store full of derelicts... at least at the beginning. We all have dreams of running a store and Tony, the owner, was no different. And despite all his faults and poor decisions, he only made two serious disasterous decisions: he opened up a store in Bangor, PA, the pimple in the armpit of Pennsylvania, and he associated himself with a man I will only refer to as "Stinky Chris."

Before the fall of the "The Cove," we had a crazy idea to run our own con. A con that wouldn't focus on D&D and Magic, but intead focus on all the third-tier games we loved, with a healthy dose of Battletech and other games. We assembled our funds, rented the Blue Valley Farm Show building and began promoting CoveCon. We met some stiff resistance from stores who refused to post our fliers, stating they didn't want to promote a competitor in the stores. Fair enough, but who from Allentown would normally travel an hour to Bangor to regularly buy gaming, when Cap's, Comic Masters, Comic Vault, heck even Dreamscape had vastly superior selection and turnaround time for orders. Again, I digress...

The full story of the con day I'll leave to another post, but needless to say my friend Andy Dawson had approached me about a dealer who wanted to come up last second. I said sure and I met Ron Meischker.

Ron owned the Game Trader in Hightstown, New Jersey. He was a shrewd businessman, a cheap businessman, and most people could tolerate his presence for only short periods of time, but by God, did he have store stock that made even Crazy Egor's look twice. Plus the games auctions he ran at the cons "everything starting at a buck!" were legendary.

CoveCon broke even, Andy and his cohort ran a Lehigh Valley Games Faire which did quite well, and then Andy and Ron truly joined forces to form the Garden State Games Faire '96 in Princeton.

Short-short story: the con was a blast and I ran an epic Illuminati University LARP that deserves its own post.

After all this, what does this have to do with GSGF II? Well, for starters, up until google discovered the site this afternoon, I had completely forgotten it had even existed!

It should have been a memorable con, just look at the events. Raven's Bluff. Multiple 40k and Magic tournaments. Role-playing games that would make me drool if they were in a con listing today, AD&D Land of the Exotic and Erotic notwithstanding. There were multiple Galactic Empires tournaments fer chrissakes, and people who wanted to come to just play Galactic Empires!

The Lehigh Valley had been tapped for GMs and they were all good: Kris Kunkel, Scott Lesher, Bob Bednar, Joe Ward, Mike Griffith, Ed Guerrero, Jen Bullwinkel, Jack Mishko, Phil Carson, Eric Pierson, Todd Furler, Ed Karl for Battletech, Larry Lewis running Magic. If I only had those people available to run events at a con, I would put even more of my own money into it, because I could guarantee that it would rock. Even I was scheduled to run Illuminati: New World Order tourneys and a sequel to my epic GURPS: IOU game that had the Village People in it.

It had all the internal factors for a fantastic con.

The external forces made it implode.

My memories after 14 years of forgetfulness are sketchy, but the first two issues: it was a con on Thanksgiving weekend and I believe it snowed. Then there were the no-shows. I hadn't shown up because 1997 sucked. I had lost the girl, the car, the apartment, and the dog too if we had had one, and was adrift in a sea of suck until the Spring semester at ESU started. I had no funds to get down there, no arrangements for lodging, and I failed to professionally bail out. And apparently I wasn't the only one. I remember this feeling of nastiness from the con staff and other gamers from those who actually made the trip. Anyone with better memories, please fill me in. But I do believe that that officially killed any future GSGFs.

That, and Ron going to jail for mail fraud, my recollections of that are even fuzzier (probably a lot like his books).

Fall-in! 2011 Gnome #3 Games, Jousts, and Beer

2011-11-29T09:14:00.000-05:00

I had prepped a whole spiel about the Gnomanity I witnessed at Fall-in! 2011, but amongst the craziness and a broken camera, I present a handful of shots.

One of the three Gnome Train games

Gnome? Meet Znombies. Znombies? Meet Cheese

A photo of Mike Lung's Znombies, Casualty Markers, and Swiss Cav.

Another Train game pic...

I also won't go into details about Gnomes After Dark, but I will go out on a limb to say that I need to get the first round for Jim and the Canadians at Cold Wars. Of the conversation that
I would feel comfortable discussing, it looks like Italian Gnomes in the foreseeable future, American support troops to flesh out North and South, and whatever you do, don't agree to a full physical right before a quadruple bypass.

We're hashing out the details for the Gnome game for Cold Wars. Let's just say, if Jim has his way, we'll all be doing renditions of "I'm on a Boat!"

(Gnome Wars) Artillery Revisions

2011-11-28T16:13:00.000-05:00

I had some quick thoughts on Thanksgiving. For starters, despite having not played a game of Magic in 5+ years, I can still follow a discussion with my wife's cousin over new cards and new decks concepts despite not knowing a single card. Same concepts: discard, big creature, millstone deck.

Now the important stuff.

In Gnome Wars, heavy mortars can absolutely decimate the battlefield. With line of sight, it can hit the board, it has a 3" diameter blast template, and has a 50% chance of killing a figure inside a heavy cover building yet no matter what distance the target is, deviation is the same (D6+4 inches). This basically ensures a successful hit since the deviation, even after 48+", varies from 5-10 inches max.

Here's my suggested revision that we'll be playtesting:

Heavy Mortar Deviation
Up to 24 inches 4+ d6 deviation
Up to 36 inches 6+2d6 deviation
Up to 48 inches 6+3d6 deviation
And so on until max range (or the size of the board) is reached.

Next, cannons in GW are an anachronism. You can only target solid objects (walls, buildings, tanks) and deviation is only left and right. Perhaps I didn't see those movies that has a cannonball or two decimate a closed formation. Truth be told, I wouldn't remove it from the game, because it has its place. I can imagine a small Swiss village pulling one of these old guns out of mothballs to defened against the German armor advancing across their fields. No changes

That brings me to the new addition to the Artillery section: Field Guns

Three man crew, ANY member of any force may operate a field gun. However any figure designated as crew reduces their melee to d6-1.
3" blast template (auto killed), out to 5" killed on a 6 on d6.

Range:
0-12" 4-6
12-24" 5-6 - Max Range to target Vehicles, no blast radius when used vs vehicles.
24-36" 6

As this is complicated enough, we'll make field guns to opposite to cannons in regards to deviation.

Deviation : Roll d6 (1-3 short, 4-6 long)
up to 12" : 2d6 inches
up to 24" : 3d6 inches
up to 36" : 4d6 inches

On top of that, I'm thinking of trying out a house rule: No more than 1 mortar, cannon, field gun, or heavy machine gun for every three units, UNLESS, you want an artillery battery. In that case all the figures must remain within 12" of the artillery at all times. (Consider this support and defense.)

Thoughts and input appreciated.

The Apathy of New Releases (December 2011)

2011-11-25T10:22:00.000-05:00

This months GTM #142 contains items that should arrive after the Christmas rush: the retail dead zone, when retailers use the Christmas/clearance sale to pay off bills, restock the store of the necessities, and try to weather the literal storms of winter sales. This is not a time to publish obscure tomes or overpriced special limited edition boxed sets.

First off, my wish list: It's amazing what a good pic of a painted mini can do to promote sales. I would have simply passed over the Warlord listing for "US MP on a Harley Davidson," but then they show the pic:

Even at $11.65 apiece, I want a pack of these guys, a la bikers in 40K, and I don't even play WW2 or 40k!

Hitting the Lottery Wish List: Surprisingly, nothing else.

The Imaginary Store List:
Wings of Glory WW2: This is scheduled to be shipped by Alliance in November (which means December... or they already ordered a pile and forgot to solicit them. After 10+ years, they still do that an awful lot.) Of course each of the four planes is packaged in its own case of 6 and each case retails for $77.40. At a 40% dealer discount, that's a outlay of $186.00 just to stock the game. Coming from a small store mentaility, I could do better to spend that on five or six copies of the next hot $40 rpg book, and restock the book and a couple other quick turnover products than stock this and possibly not sell half, much less sell through.
But ViscountEric, you've said that a smart store owner knows his base yet wants to expand! Yes, but (a) I wouldn't stock this with a nice promotion to attract players and to at least cover my expense of the product quickly (b) if this isn't in stock at Alliance right now, I sure as hell wouldn't try this during the Christmas rush and in the middle of winter. Too many distractions, cancelled demos/tourneys/leagues make players turn to the next big thing, no matter what their cash outlay for the game in question.

Memoir '44 Campaign Book Vol 2: I admit ignorance to Volume 1, but anything that gets more play out of the expensive wargames is a plus by me. Drawback: "Please Inquire" with your store as to the price. Probably not a decent profit margin to justify multiple orders for store stock.

Heavy Gear: Jesus Christmas, does anyone have a store that stocks this stuff? And how does one afford to do so with so much product coming out. We aren't talking a couple of fantasy minis at five bucks a pop, or even Battletmechs between ten and twelve buck apiece. Multiple $20+ packs/boxed sets every month is just a huge portion of someone's budget without going balls in to promote it.

Fantasy Flight 40K Rpg books: Dark Heresy: The Chaos Commandment, Black Crusade : Hand of Corruption.

Paradiso: Tile base game creating achipelagos One, it's only $24.95.. Two, they used the word archipelago.

LITKO: a huge number of 4e token sets

Mantic: Warpath vehichles, seriously. Any 40K fan needs to see these, and then buy a couple dozen of each.

Marvel Heroes basic game from Margaret Weis Productions. Yawn, but each game always sells copies.

Mongoose: Star Fleet Minis, near the absurdity of Heavy Gear releases. At $14.99 each, no as bad for the cash outlay, but what store still does gangbusters Star Fleet Battles sales

Osprey: FORCE ON FORCE: DAY OF THE RANGERS - SOMALIA 1993 $24.95 The Force on Force stuff looks better and better, and there's nothing wrong with a little Blackhawk Down love.

Paizo: Six more items in the Pathfinder-esque arena.

Reaper: Lots of neat stuff, but the cost of metal/sculpting confuses me. Two zombies are $8.99, yet a dragon (albeit a small one) is $12.99?

Colonial Gothic: Colonial America with some sorcery, shamanism, and a few other oddities mixed in. Three books are solicited: Philadelphia Affair 13.99, Grimoire 10.99, The Templars $10.99.

Wooly And His Fortress of Middleofnowhere-ness

2011-11-23T14:34:00.000-05:00

This weekend the family embarked on a long, arduous journey to Johnstown to visit my buddy Wooly and his wife Jenny. Our hosts were gracious, our kids well-behaved, and I believed everyone had a great time.

One-completely non-gaming related note: That whole potty training thing? Those golden moments when the little one doesn't need diapers anymore is overrated when you hear, "Mommy? Daddy? I gotta use the potty now!" about two dozen times during the trip.

Early Saturday morning I tried to convince Jenny to have them come with us to next year's Fall-in! in Lacaster. They had left the gaming haven confines of the Lehigh Valley around the same time I had, and Wooly hadn't gamed since. We're talking SEVEN years plus. It's a shame, Wooly has a truly vast collection fo Battletech books and minis, and a sizeable collection of Legions of Steel collecting piles of dust in his basement. It should be used. It NEEDS to be used. But yet, Jeep conventions, real life, and distance have kept him out of the loop.

If I remember Wooly's long-winded stories correctly, Johnstown had a comics/gaming store in the area, but the owner got hit with charges of overdue taxes, child abuse, or something in between. He's found one store in Altoona, but that turns into over an hour drive, and to cultivate a comfortable gaming enviroment does require multiple trips and a few leaps of faith.

Alright true believers, what gaming places are within an hour of Johnstown, PA? Only requirements are that they stock more than Magic/40k/D&D. Any help for the master of the AC-20 to the head would be appreciated.

And I'll see if he's willing to take some time off for Cold Wars to hang with Steve, Nichols, and myself.

(CoC) Random Name Generators

2011-11-20T23:49:00.003-05:00

Stolen from a post on the yog-sothoth.com forums:

Need more random names for NPCs outside of Michael, Joseph, and Luigi for the stereotypical Italian in your 20's games?

This one: http://www.kleimo.com/random/name.cfm provides a huge variety of names and you can set the generator from very plain to very obscure. I did get large number of Neils out of it.

This one: http://www.miskatonicriverpress.com/LCNames.shtml generates "Lovecraftian" names. The Herberts, Harveys, Delberts, and other common 20's names are used.

Warlord Games produces Rorke's Drift gold...

2011-11-17T15:07:00.003-05:00

Now, I'm not a huge fan of Warlord Games. The plastics don't make me go gaga, and I much prefer lead with few fiddly parts.

Today's post of TMP gives me hope.

How 'bout not one, but TWO different Rorke's Drift boxed sets:

Set one:
Laser-cut wooden Hospital and Storehouse buildings with 'teddy bear fur' thatch.
Resin Wagon Barricade
Resin stone wall Kraal (4 x 6″ sections)
Resin biscuit box barricades (2 x 6″ sections)
Resin biscuit box/mealie-bag barricades (3 x 6″ sections)
Resin mealie-bag barricades (3 x 6″ sections)
20 plastic multi-pose British Line Infantry
40 plastic multi-pose Married Zulus
Metal mounted Zulu InDuna
Metal Zulu in British jacket firing Martini-Henry rifle
British characters: Lieutenant Chard (Royal Engineers), Lieutenant Bromhead, Colour Sergeant Bourne and Private Hook.
Pre-order Price: £150.00 (somebody get me a currency converter!)

Horns of the Buffalo – Rorke's Drift Collectors Set
The contents of the Rorke's Drift set as outlined above, plus:
5 extra resin mealie-bag barricades
1 extra resin biscuit box barricade
4 extra biscuit box/mealie-bag barricades
1 extra resin wagon barricade
2 extra lengths of resin walls
Resin broken down walls (6 x 6″ sections)
Resin mealie-bag redoubt (2 x 3″ x 6″ sections making a 6″ square redoubt)
Engineers wagon
Water cart
6 plastic fences (3″ sections)
4 x plastic bell tents
Resin Cookhouse
6 metal African cattle
3 x resin ovens
Resin Water Closet
1 x metal dead horse
1 x dog (Pip the terrier)
British characters based on the film Zulu: Chard, Bromhead, Bourne and Hook (all made by Empress Miniatures).

for £275.00

Now, that is totally out of my price range in pounds or dollars, but I would love to follow Santa around and break into the house that he leaves either set under the tree.

A Romantic Horror Comedy... with Garden Gnomes?

2011-11-16T14:53:00.006-05:00

A while back, I reviewed How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack here . I even had the author of the book link the review to his blog!

Now I find out that Robert Zemeckis is producing a live-action version of the book, aiming for an "edgy" PG-13 horror movie.

Edgy. With garden gnomes.

Oh yeah. I'm hoping that no CGI is used, and the garden gnomes are static, just staring up at you. But yet, weren't they on the OTHER side of the bush a second ago? Mwhahahaha!

I also checked out the authors webpage for the book, aptly titled http://www.howtosurviveagardengnomeattack.com/ and discovered that gnomes are a source of alternative energy.

Exhibit A:

Mouseling Tavern is out!

2011-11-15T12:48:00.000-05:00

I'm a little late to the party, the Mouseling Tavern that I had seen greens for from my friends at GenCon is out, and apparently well-received.

Now, every comment I've seen online has been stressing dioramas and other "cutesy" ideas. Not only would these figures be great for Mouse Guard, but I'm thinking of a non-skirmishing unit for Gnome Wars.

Think about it. Yes, drunken mice make great warriors, but the mouse in the front center could easily be a standard bearer, two other two on the right are musicians, and of course, the bar wench is a furrier version of the Bier Maiden in the game (at least I hope this one's furrier, European gnome at all.)

Ten tiny figs for $40 is a bit much in my opinion, but I'll keep this on my want list.

"The Pub"

2011-11-14T10:06:00.000-05:00

I've always thought that paper terrain had its place on the table when you needed buildings in bulk.

This new release from http://www.wargamevault.com/ not only has me convinced that they can be the focal point of the board, but it makes makes me want to jump in the car with my best mate, pick up my mum, drive over and save my ex-girlfriend, and stop at "The Pub" for pint until this all blows over.

I have images in my head of this on the center of the board with hundreds of Znombies.

The Apathy of New Releases (November 2011)

2011-11-13T02:35:00.000-05:00

It's that time of year that I despise. It's not the holiday seasons that I hate, not even the canned Christmas music pumping through the stores since August. Just like last year, the solicitations for the Christmas season and the going into the dead time of a retailer's year are less than stellar.

Wish List: Nothing

The If-Money-Were-No-Object List:

TERROR NETWORK: AVERAGE JOES: When Terrorists interrupt a day of shopping
at Bellpoint Mall, a group of regular citizens rise to the occasion - and kick butt! This Terror Network scenario/supplement thrusts ordinary citizens into extraordinary situations!
S2P BED2006 ..........................$14.99

A counter-terrorism RPG? eh. A counter-terrorism RPG using civilians as heroes? Something I wanted 20 years ago.

Store List:

A huge pile of miscellaneous Flames of War, Dust Tactics,and Heavy Gear. This could be a solid area of profit for some stores, but the outlay for a decent stock of questionable product is not the way to go right before the worst time of time of year.

Villans and Vigilantes:ANCIENT EVIL

A FEW ACRES OF SNOW : Thousands of miles from their homes, settlers and soldiers were faced with impenetrable forests, unpredictable American tribes, and formidable distances.
Despite these obstacles they were able to engage in bitter warfare, with the British ultimately taking the prize - Quebec. A Few Acres of Snow is a two-player deck-building game that
recreates this contest fought during the 17th and 18th centuries. MFG .$55.00

A great concept for a game from Mayfair. A horrible price for a 2-player game.

4 Pathfinder products

LUCHADOR: WAY OF THE MASK - BRIGHT LIGHTS AND BARBED WIRE : Luchador goes wrestling goes ECW?

THE LORD OF THE RINGS HEROCLIX

Nothing else looks appealing. Prove me wrong by checking out http://www.gametrademagazine.com/downloads/GTM141Games.pdf

Fall-in 2011 Swag and Union Cav!

2011-11-11T14:27:00.001-05:00

So, I survived the Blizzard Weekend of Fall-in! and all I got was some lousy socks. Not quite true, especially since the only thing I asked my wife to pick up at the outlets were some goldtoe socks.

I now have 24 pairs sitting in my dresser. They are quite comfy, and were cheaper in bulk than regular generic department store socks.

What did I snag at the actual convention, you ask? 'Ere we go

From the flea market:
Rifts: Mindwerks
Rifts: Wormwood
Hero: Western Hero
They were 3 for a buck! If I knew anyone who wanted DC Heroes modules, I would have snagged them up too!

Grenadier Gnome Tank: It's only 10mm high (meant for 25), but I couldn't refuse for a buck.

In the Swag/Purchased/Swapped category:

Gnoman unit There are rumors of a massive Gnoman game at Fall-in! 2012. I'll keep you posted.
American (Union) Gnome Infantry unit
American (Union) Gnome Cavalry unit

Contemptable Little Armies: We're looking for a system to run "real" Tanga, and a $5 off promotion Brigade seemed a no-brainer. Still going through it, but I'll have a review up before Thanksgiving.

Mike Lung gave me a couple of creations, although he was under no obligation to do so. Now I have a baker's dozen of his Gingerbread Men, plus two Znombies, and his Gnome Znombie Hunter figure. Hopefully, Sherlock Gnomes is not too far off...

A couple of pics to appease the masses while I go through the rest... and try to fix my camera.

Germans from Derek the Canadian. The scheme makes me want a Flash Gordon gnome. Mike!!!!!!

American Gnomes (Northerner) a la Buffalo Soldier

American Cav ready for battle

(Gnome Wars) Michael Lung Gallery #7

2011-11-10T16:12:00.003-05:00

I could do more Znombies. Lord knows, I have enought pictures of them. But today, I felt it more important to show photographic proof the the travesty known as the Hamburg Corn Syrup riots:

It's not State College after a Board of Trustees meeting, but few things are.

Fall-in 2011: The Battle of Yellowstone

2011-11-07T08:23:00.001-05:00

As I've written before the whole idea of the train game/Yellowstone theme for the gnomish mega-games was my event, the aptly named Battle of Yellowstone. This was not a true Gnome game, per se. Yes, two dozen guys with pointy hats, a stripped down version of the GW rules, and a flock of sheep sounds like a Gnome extravaganza, but in fact, I wanted to run an obscure gaame that fit this year's theme (U.S. Cavalry) and it coniciding with the release of the American gnomes was an added bonus.

To the two naysayers who scoffed at the idea, I stand by my choice. The Battle of Yellowstone was a conflict that stretched over 30 years and helped establish policies of the the National Park Service. Despite a the rantings of peaceniks everywhere, the military management of civilian institutions isn't always a bad thing.

After the establishment of Yellowstone as a National Park in 1872, the park suffered over a decade of incompetent Park Superintendants, nepotism, and budgetary restraints by Congress. In in rush to leave a hot and humid Washingotn in the Summer 1886, Congress basically destroyed the means of civilian management of the park, forcing the Secretary of the Interior to make a request to the War Department for mounted soliders to perform the civilian duties.

For the next thirty years, members of the United Staes Cavalry patrolled the park, kicking out poachers, loggers, miners, and yes, sheep and other herd animals. All the while, they also mapped the park, made improvements, restored the buffalo, and eventually helped "guide" legit campers and tourists around Yellowstone.

Set-up: Even with ten players, the number of figures on the board was more akin to a large role-playing game:

Four units of US Cav (3 figures each)

Two groups of miners (4 figures each)

One group of hunters (3 figures)

One group of rowdy campers (8 figures)

One group of shepherds (4 shepherds, 11 sheep, and a goat)

The Animals

Yes, I gave one player control of the deer (random movement), buffalo herd (represented by gingerbread men, by hey, we are playing with gnomes), three wolves and a bear. I'm very happy I gave the duties to a husband/wife team (hello Derek/Arlene from Ontario!), because it was a large undertaking. The wolves "orders" were to hunt deer and sheep and only attack lone figures. I figured they would be wiped out fairly early. Boy, was I wrong!

For initiative, I gave each unit/group a playing card and put two of each into the initiative deck. I also inserted a Jack (next unit drawn loses their turn) and Ace (next unit drawn takes two turns). I also had Jokers in the deck, which represented actual historical events that took place over the thirty years of occupation. Since it was a three hour game, and I wanted to get through the history, three Jokers to start was a bit much. Some of the "tresspassers" got to move, two units of Cav, and then a Joker to represent wildfires that had to be put out, followed by another Joker for Winter, forcing all cav units to stand their ground until four cav cards were drawn for initiative. By the end of the game, only one event card was in the deck and we finished with 10 minutes to spare.

The Game: With special events distracting the cavalry from ejecting the tresspasser, I believe I made a giant solitaire game for ten players, and no one minded. Each player had to focus on their own objective, and if everyone game each other their space, it could be achieved with absolutely no bloodshed. And for the first hour, that's the way the game went. The miners mined the ore deposits and rushed them back to town. The hunters/trappers killed Bambi:

The father-son team playing the shepherds had a dickens of time trying to control their flock, and defend against wolf attacks. I simplified an already simple set of solitaire sheep herding rules from an old issue of Wargames Illustrated and they worked out great.

The animals made things interesting. The random movement of herbivores, not so much. They remained static and easy targets for the hunters/wolves. The buffalo never left an area more than two square feet and were never in danger of stampeding!

The predators (bear included) did make the other players adjust their actions, and even team up to fight them off. Only one wolf was killed, after killing three of four of the sheep.

A little over an hour into the game, I had a heart to heart with the young man playing the carousing campers. While he had taken some pot shots at other groups, he had remained static on the board. I educated him (and the other players a bit later), that early campers/tourists were destructive, usually out of willful ignorance than malicous intent. I encouraged him to actively shoot at the other group, all the while moving from point to point on the board, knocking down trees, rolling for starting forest fires, blocking up Old Faithful, heck if he made it to the other end of the board, I would have offered buffalo tipping! This turned the game a bit more violent, and also created bad new for the Cav. Earlier contacts with the tresspassers were peaceful, and sometimes profitable. The civilians were returned to their board edge, sometimes with the ill-gotten gains still in their possession, and the Cav would return to their camp. Sometimes there was a bit of a scrum, but in the end, not many people argue with uniformed military . The open shooting and violence was damaging to the Cav, as budget cuts and more winters slowed their progress. Not exactly historically accurate, but easily corrected once the Cav got reinforcements.

Rowdy tourists shoot the Wildman of Yellowstone

Letting the wolf population thrive is detrimental to a lone man on patrol

Improvements begin to appear in the park

At the end of the game, when the Park Rangers took over, Yellowstone was a bit smaller than it is in reality. The Cav had been unable to clear the area on the other side of the river, so sheep, campers, and even the railroad had encroached on the land. On top of that, the military made an illegal deal with a group of miners to allow a mining claim in return for help in dealing with the carousing campers. In this alternate reality, the buffalo were saved very early on, but it would take years to rebuild the elk and deer herds.

Most importantly, everyone seemed to have a good time, and Old Faithful is safe... for now.

Legions of Steel... stalled in China?

2011-11-05T22:08:00.000-04:00

The supposed re-release of Legions of Steel was scheduled for 11-11-11, so I headed on over to the L.O.S boards for updates. I wish I hadn't

Clark Browning, one of the co-creators, and the man who owns the rights to the rules, just posted Thursday. Apparently, the economy thing has gone sour in the Great White North as well, as Clark lost his job this summer and had to relocate for a teaching position.

In China.

With limited space, Chinese internet censorship, and a scratched cd full of LOS rules, all the projects are in limbo.

He did mention about discussion with Ubisoft for an LOS app for the iPad. Throw in a make your own board app and it sounds interesting. He also mentioned about putting the LOS books online for free. Now, I was giddy about Talislanta doing this a few years ago, but to be honest, I haven't referenced the material or even promoted the game beyond a blog post. I'd like a happier fate for Clark and LOS.

(Cold Wars) ATKM looking for Cold Wars GMs

2011-11-05T01:03:00.005-04:00

I might be trying to sell all my All the King's Men Minis ($100 plus shipping by the way), but I do want to spread the the word on a great product.

Per TMP, ATKM will again be offering a $50 bounty in product for each game run at Cold Wars.

Besides that, they did bring up the important point. Deadline for the event entry in the Cold Wars PEL is December 9th.

I can't even finish up the posts about Fall-in! and I'm already scrambling for the next con. At least this means Christmas and tax returns can't be too far off.

Fall-in! Gnomes #1 or "Don't Pee on the Statue!"

2011-11-03T19:23:00.001-04:00

Alright, it's time for the report that everyone who comes here actually wants to see: Hordes of Things

Just kidding

At Historicon, the Irish had kidnapped Lon the Lunkhead and must have successfully fought off the German rescuers. My gnomish geography might be a bit off but they escaped the seaside fortifications and ended up... in Yellowstone Park? The theme for the Stanton-led Gnome Wars games was basically "Escape for Yellowstone... with Lon." The first game was before the train arrived. The second was fought while the the train was arriving, and the third while the train was trying to leave, hopefully with a Lon, a few Irish, and Union gold. As in American (Northerner).

Setup

Game One: The Irish/American alliance was set up in their stronghold to the left. Swiss were at the upper left hand side of the table and a sizeable German contingent just across a river at the upper right hand side. Highlanders set up around some odd burial mounds in the middle, and some hyperactive Sikhs were near the tracks, but eyeing the far side of the board.

Although most groups had the main objective: Seize the compound/rail station/beer trucks, each group had secondary objectives as well. The Germans were hunting big game that was hiding in each cluster of trees. Wolves, bears, and even a dinosaur or two were ready to pounce unsuspecting gnome. The Swiss wished to capture these beasts and save them from the Germans. The Russians, apparently, just wanted to capture the "Gnomish Wild Men" (Gnomo Sapiens). The Sikhs needed to get to the statue on top of the burial mound. I was the Highlanders and my objectives were twofold: Steal the beer truck at the compound, but also steal the airplane at the German camp at the other side of the board.

Early Turns: Lots of posturing and troop relocation. We discovered both the German Bunny Cav and the Witch can't swim (one will drown, the other will melt), and a good portion of German forces couldn't wade through the river. A bottleneck at the bridge was formed, with the Swiss encampment harassing them.

The hunting/saving of the animals took up a lot of the Swiss/Germans time. A few brave Swiss decided to engage the American forces protecting the Irish flank, and the Americans went berserk, charging headlong into numerous Swiss units.

The Sikhs were very whiney, begging not to be shot at as they trekked across the board.

I played the Highlanders very cautious. One group inched along the table edge under cover, trying to find the sweet spot in the Irish defenses to charge. The other group actively engaged the Irish/American defenses at the station, traded some serious casualities and fell back to the high ground (the burial mounds).

Mid-Game: Now I had just gotten to the con as the game was starting, so I completely missed the pre-game briefing, both for the players, and Jim sharing a few little secrets beforehand. When I realized I was out of range, I declared no action for the Tan Highlanders on the mound, deciding to watch things develop. I seriously though Jim was just being Jim when he asked me, "Are they going to do anything to the statue?"

Figuring I am playing Highlander, I said, "Sure, they all whipping 'em out and peeing on the statue. " I mean, with no MBA outhouse on board, the rock is the next best place!

Highlanders Descecrating the Sacred Statue

The clouds darkened, the Earth shook, and Jim and Mike Lung giggled as Mike opened up a container and littered the center of the board with Znombies!

Oh, Did We Do That?

Znombies: group movement (10 figs) 2d6 inches random. Fights in melee with a d6. Weapons fire must first hit the Znombie then roll 1-2 on a d6 for the head shot.

Needless to say most players dropped everything and attacked znombies. The following turn the znombies on the hill wandered away, so I continued to descecrate the statue, creating even more znombies! "If we pretend we're garden gnomes, perhaps they won't notice us!"

With the chaos in the center of the board, the Sikhs and Pirates finally decided to join the fray. The Pirates shot Lucky Lon out of the Lon-a-pult and he began spinning through the hordes. The Sikhs decided a more direct approach was in order and declared a charge with the war elephant. It created a swath of destruction, mowing down, Swiss, German, Highlander, and yes, a couple of Znombies. The driver was eventually shot and killed and the elephant spent the remainder of the game milling about a grove of trees, everyone afraid to get near it.

A Charging War Elephant creates an escape route, and the German bunnies prep for a charge.

The wandering undead little damage to most troops. The Highlanders took the brunt of the Znombie attack just by trying to get out of the way! With angry swiss on one side, Germans on another, Pirates working their way up the river, and a war elephant tearing up the hill itself there were few safe escape routes. Down to two men, the Berserker down off the hill and into the overwhelming odds of the Znombie horde, hoping to win enough battles to go into berserker rage...

He was killed in the first combat.

My other Highlander managed to sneak across the river and spent the rest of the game trying to steal the German plane.

Final Turns: A unit of German Bunny Cav finally got around the burial mound and made a breakneck charge through the Znombie horde. It wasn't even fair to pointy-hatted undead. The bunnies got through without a scratch. However, they ended their charge right on top on some long-fused pirate bombs that were set to go off the following turn. It was tense when the initiative cards were shuffled, the Germans hoping they could go first and get the heck out of dodge in any direction.

First Card: Pirates

KA-BOOOOOOOM!

When the smoke cleared, nary a bunny was present.

The Charge of the Light Hare Brigade

On the other side of the burial mound, the Znombies showed how brainless they were by attacking some Samurai Cav. It wasn't even a fair fight, twelve Znombies swarmed in and all but one was destroyed. Often missed fact. While all cavalry units have d10+2 to melee rolls during a charge, Japanese Samurai Cav ALWAYS gets d10+2, even in defense. Besides a few stranglers, the Znombie menace was over.

We ain't afraid of no znombies!

It's unfair to say that Znombie carnage was the only thing occuring on the table. The American Cavalry kept pressing a very dense pack of Swiss troops and crumbled before game's end. The Germans kept moving cautiously towards the rail station, trading only long range fire with the Irish, who were hunkered down in their compound.

Those other Highlanders? The ones who were last seen slithering through the woods. Their mercenary nature showed through, and for a little gold, and a couple flagons of ale, they would help defend the compound for the second game.

It made sense... it was the safest place on the board to be in case more of those firk-ding-blasted zombies showed up!

Many thanks to Mike Lung, who brought over 70 of his znombie creations to Fall-in! for all of us to play.

Next: The OTHER Gnome Wars Games, plus my Battle of Yellowstone Historical Recreation... avec gnomes.

(Fall-in 2011) Pics, before my camera crapped out

2011-11-02T15:14:00.000-04:00

As I said in the firt FI post, my camera crapped out during the gnome joust Saturday night. On top of that the spirits of the Host must have been stirring, because half my pictures turned into complete blurry crap.

While I did hear a number of people harp on some new games, a number of games were recycled from previous cons, to the point that I've been comparing shots from the past two years of cons, and lo and behold, I took the exact same shot at this con. If you're still getting a full table, I guess it can't be wrong. I'll just wait for Cold Wars for the new stuff, hopefully.

Here are the pics I salvaged:

54mm Sci Fi

Zombies at the North Pole?

Warning: Zeppelin Storage!

Lego Kid's Fun

My Type of Tank Porn

Ingenious use of foam floor mats. The regular mat was placed over this and trees were pinned into the foam.

54mm French and Indian

Transformers, one of those "regular" games I mentioned

15mm Victorian Sci-Fi

Next up: GNOMES!

(Fall-in! 2011) The Good, the Bad, and the Snowy

2011-11-01T11:22:00.001-04:00

After ten long years, The Viscount has returned to Fall-in! Well, I haven't returned exactly, since back in 2001 it was in Gettysburg. I came down this time with my wife and kids, as well as our friend Molly and her little guy. We also decided to use the Lancaster Host's accomodations. I figured the extra $10-15 versus The Continental would more than pay for the lack of playing Frogger across US 30.

We arrived Friday at Noon, and I jumped out of the car to jump into a Gnome Wars, while the ladies took the kids shopping at the outlet. I'll stick to a separate post for Gnome Wars, so I'll focus on the hotel and the non-gnome items in general.

After the game, I went to check in and ask for the first of three requests over the course of teh night for a fridge. The first two girls were indifferent, but finally a third girl at the front desk *gasp* picked up a walkie talkie, talked to maintenance and I had said fridge in under five minutes.

The room at the Host was nice and roomy. The only initial issue we had was the HVAC, which alternated to blast furnance, then switched on the AC to cool it off.

I managed to swing down to a ghost town of a dealer's hall. I was so taken aback by the tranquility there, I finally realized I had forgotten my shopping list in the room! A number of regulars for other HMGS cons didn't make the trip, so a whole corner of the Expo Center was cordonned off. Nothing made me drool, with the exception of the Transylvania Castle that Old Glory was raffling off. I drooled all over it, even if it was 15mm.

Friday evening was spent wandering around the con, giving advice to the Gnome Wars players, and toting around my two daughters. When one would start getting bored/fussy, I'd run back to the room and switch kids. Not productive for gaming, but then the ladies only had two hellions to deal with.

Saturday morning, I grabbed a banana and some cereal bars and headed downstairs to set up my "Battle of Yellowstone" game. The ballroom was light (as it should be). My game was a glorious affair with only a few minor hiccups, I encountered this outside:

The snow did drive away a number of day-trippers, although Mike Lung and his son returned to the con after getting just a Friday pass and driving home to find his son's soccer game was cancelled. Now that's dedication (and the Virginia roads were obviously better than here in PA).

My late afternoon was babysitting the kids so the ladies could get their shopping done before dinner. No one died, and only one failed their nap check.

Saturday evening was an hour in the KidsZone at the Host, a room full of plastic coated foam items that the kids could run, crawl, and fall on without getting hurt. I then ran down to the gnome joust to (a) get royally trounced (b) find out the lens on my camera was busted and (c) have the girls come down to tell me the bathroom had flooded and we were moving. Good news, it was right next door. Bad news, the room hadn't been cleaned properly, so another call to the front desk.

By the time this all resolved I was sent on a fast food run. The roads weren't bad and traffic was light, but all the food joints on 30 had closed early! Even the Wawa was running on with one employee and no deli! I snagged a sack o' food at Wendy's and made it back. I managed to escape the room to put stuff back in the car and encountered Jim Stanton in the bar. Before I could even order a beer, Molly came down to get ice since my littlest one, Amelia, dropped the hotel room phone on her food AND bumped her head on something else.

After quadruple-checking back at the realm of chaos, er the room. I ran back to the bar and ended up closing the bar with Jim, Lon from Brigade, and "The Canadians".

Sunday was completely dead. I snuck down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast (nice and efficient) and grabbed by ATKM and some WWI toy soldiers to the free flea market. $20 for an hour and a half of work isn't too bad, particulary since I forgotted the post-its in the room. The ATKM I have is still available sans Indians for $100 plus shipping.

The hotel did comp us a night for the heat/flooding issue, and the convenience of having the kids on site was a tiny hinderance to me. The Continental isn't anything special, but we've never had a problem in the five years we've used them for the Lancaster cons.

The con attendance was kind of light, although with the economy, the weekend, and the snow Distelfink was still jammed pack. Next year I still get Cold Wars as my "guys' weekend" and the ladies wish to try the family excursion again for Fall-In! Maybe we'll take an extra day or two and hit some touristy stuff. I'm hoping for the Strausburg Railroad and the PA Railroad Museum.

UPDATE: Just found out that the Host did NOT take off Saturday's room charges. Apparently their computer systems have been down since Sunday night. The night manager told to to call late tomorrow morning to get things straightened out. Good thing we kept all our paperwork.

Gnome Wars Errata Page

2011-11-01T07:08:00.002-04:00

I've officially set up a page for all the answers that Jim Stanton was gracious enough to provide for Gnome Wars 2nd Edition errata. Most are simple clarifications between 1st edition, 2nd edition, and the convention version of the rules Jim uses at HMGS cons.

If any other rules issues come up, I'll place the info on the page.

Gnomes at Southern Front

2011-10-31T14:50:00.004-04:00

Still trying to piece together my weekend at Fall-in! Lancaster alternated between tons of awesomeness and a few signicant disasters. Games went well, swag was obtained, but I'm about halfway done typing that up.

While I wait, here are some pics from Southern Front, one of them a Gnome Wars game with the infamous Chocolat Suisse gnomes of legend.

http://mlwodementia.blogspot.com/2011/10/southern-front-convention-part-3.html

And to whet your appetite's here's a pic I found on The Command Tent of my Battle of Yellowstone game:

http://thecommandtent.blogspot.com/2011/10/fall-in-pictures-part-1.html for other pics.

I had camera issues, so I'm editing and constructing my posts carefully. First one should be up tonight.

Off to Fall-in!

2011-10-28T02:03:00.002-04:00

Well, not quite yet, but my riding mates to the first Fall-in! since 2001 are my wife and two young daughters, so I'm amazed I got time to clean out or pack the car.

Somehow I have only one project for Friday and that's finalizing the "random" event initiative chart. My event is historically based, and to cover 30-years of history in one scenario involved a little tweaking. It should go over well, as I will need someone to be in charge of the sheep.

Otherwise, the Missus has a shopping budget (and separate fundage), and I should be able to enjoy the meeting of the gnomish minds, a lot of train fun, and hanging out with my two-year old Maja, during the joust Saturday night.

And of course, I've purge the camera in anticipation of the craziness that Mike Lung is bringing. A full report with pictures is a given.

Strange Aliens from ZombieSmith

2011-10-27T14:48:00.001-04:00

I'm sorry, I didn't read the fluff on the website, but these guys are just too cute not to mention:

Simply called "The Hook", 7 of these bad boys are $21.00. The figures are roughly 21mm.

http://www.zombiesmith.com/products/the-hook for more info

Holy Moley... There's an HMGS Newsletter

2011-10-26T06:58:00.000-04:00

The strangest things happen when I check my email late at night.

Lo, and behold a newsletter from HMGS... With actual information! It seems that the organization is (barely) in the black for the year and that there is no great conspiracy to destroy the HMGS or make the BoD part of the 1% through some underhanded dealings. Just a bunch of people trying to operate a non-profit organization and run some conventions most of us love.

What amused me greatly, and most gentle readers who aren't HMGS, were some fantastic little articles written by Bob & Cleo Liebl.

Thoughts upon the Selection of Armies & Scaling-Down One’s Mistakes : A nice write-up about scale, period, and a beautiful comparion of 54/25/15mm, or my eyes fail me and they're 25/15/6mm.

55 Days in Peking: The Defense and Relief: Some great pics of the 55 Days in Peking game at Historicon.

Kid-Friendly Games: Giving some love to the games played by kids, both young and old. Gnome Wars gets a great deal of love and pics, as do the HAWKS games (Lego Cowboys!)

For all the info:
http://www.hmgs.org/Documents/hmgs%20Inc%20newsletter%2021%20October%202011.pdf

Space Mouselings vs Mr Squiggles?

2011-10-25T09:32:00.003-04:00

I know, I know, Fall-in! is just a couple of days away and I should be focusing on gnomes, but I went on Reaper's site to see pictures of the Mouseling Tavern boxed set and this smacked me across the face with the power of awesomeness!

The display is not for for sale, but the figs on it are available in two different packages.

Space Mouselings are available for $14.99 for three figs.

Terror on Planet X set includes the three mouselings plus "Mr Squiggles" there for $29.99.

If my shopping list wasn't already over budget....

(Gnome Wars) Gnome Wars 2.0 Review

2011-10-24T01:30:00.000-04:00

This July, Brigade Games finally released the much awaited Gnome Wars 2.0, written by Jim Stanton. The Gnome Wars universe had expanded much since the 1.1 release and it was getting difficult to properly play with incomplete or missing nationalities in the book, Australians and Living Gnomelings being just two of them.

I'm assuming a bit of knowledge amongst the casual readers of the blog. I hope you've seen pictures of the figures, know a little of the core nationalities, and might even possess a copy of version 1.0 or 1.1 of the rules. If you do want a full break-down of the core nationalities, drop me a line. I may thrown something together early one in this blog, but I won't mind putting another one together, maybe a "Gnome Wars Primer," or a permanent link on the front page.

The book is 89 pages, spiral bound, although it was noted that future printings may be perfect bound.

Being a Gnome Wars homer, you might expect a rave review. Certain things just piss me off, so I'll cover the negatives before going ga-ga over the new stuff.

Typos: The 1.0 and 1.1 editions were riddled with typos: shaky grammar, bad spelling, and inconsistencies between the the rules pages and the reference sheets. I expected most of them cleaned up, yet upon the first page of rules (pg 5)

Step one of sequence of play.
1) Check Moral.

I don't want to be holier-than-thou, but unless there's a Roman Catholic Gnome Army coming out soon, no morals need to be checked. Not a huge error, but the same one from the 1st edition rulebook, and repeated twice more on the same page

Just reading this got me in a foul mood, but I continued.

Reference sheets are different from the rules pages.
Alphorn: Rules: needs to be tested each turn on a 2+ to see if Swiss units can advance. Reference: one just needs to be in play.
Tunneling Rules 2+ save/ Reference: 3+ . Plus how long does that 16 inches take, one turn the end of the next?
Rule changes
American Medics - Northern medics heal on a 5-6 on d6, Southerners 3+ on d6. They are new units, but a d6 and not d8?
Sikhs can be healed? I couldn't find anything saying they still eschewed western medicine.
Santa: With the new armies, is anyone NOT allied? Nothing is specified.

And while I'm not sure what the best way to construct an index for the book, one is needed for those item not usually found on reference cards. "Vehicles", "Artillery", and "Moral/Morale" might be three broad suggestions for items I regularly reference within the main rules.

System-wise, it's still the same tried-and-true mechanics. d6 to hit, 95% of ranges are in feet, with very basic modifiers to hit.

Moral/morale is a rarely used but critical mechanic that works well. In most units, morale doesn't kick in until 2/3 of the unit has been lost, and then the roll gets progressively more difficult to make each turn until it's impossible. Most of our units here at Casa del Viscount don't make it so well, but we did have some tense moments in the first Tanga game with morale.

Of course, the healing phase is what makes most new players giddy and confused at the same time . After all the movement, firing, hand-to-hand, and artillery one could stand, the medic figures roam the battlefield "healing" their comrades with bier. St. Bernards, Bier Doktors, and a few saucy Bier Maidens have a set amount of special movement to use only during this phase, and each healing attempts deducts three inches from the total. In most cases, a number of figures could never be saved, and even those that do are saved only 50% of the time!

The New Stuff!

The Holy Gnoman Empire. While the name conjures up miniature Charlemanges, These are strictly classic Romans. A lost legion(s), if you would. Unlike the Irish, who have a tendency to be slaughtered in a charge, the Gnomans use a number of different shield defensive formations to provide cover from ranged weaponry, form square to ward of cavalry, etc.

The Americans: The classic Civil War without that whole slavery issue. Northerners are technologically advanced, and their "hero" makes the Terminator look like a jack-in-the-box. They even have to option of creating one "black legion" with extra bonuses depending on the number of Northerner units fielded. The Southerners use their rural homeland to their advantage. Southerners move at normal rate in the woods and gain additional cover modifiers while there. Plus in the "Unit and Army Creation Section" there is mention of Naval units for both sides. Could little gnome sailors not be far off?

Highlander Cavalry - Not only do we have to worry about berserkers, now we have to worry about stampeding Scots? Sweet Baby Jesus in a kilt! The new stampeding rules . Still no medics, thank God! Scottish Golfer is a bit overcomplicated, but right up my alley.

Japanese - Riceball Pitchers and the Sushi Cannons were added.

Irish - A full expansion of the Irish from 1.1 limited info to all the rules from the con games. Rainbow connection, et al. Plus the Orangemen are fleshed out, with room for an expanded mini line.

Australians- Aussie Cav on kangaroos is detailed, but no infantry or other units.

Gnomelings are quickly covered, the clockwork IED that are associated with the Gnome Wizard, and the living breathing ones who drive little tanks and grasshoppers, and attack en masse.

Russians: Officer and regular troops. I never realized the sentries fired blunderbusses!

There is enough new information that the other issues can be forgiven, to a point. The new nationalities with rules has created some excitement. My buddy Nichols, who swore up and down he was happy with 2 1/2 units of Highlanders, giggled with glee at the notion of Scottish Cav and he has callied dibs on an army of Southerners. I, on the other hand, have the Gnomans on my list and can't wait to assemble a Northern army, only it will be the Imperial Guard of the Republic of California.

Rules clarifications need to be made, but I suggest working off the unit cards in the back of the book for the time being. I know I will be at Fall-in! this weekend. I know plenty of people who bring there own modified units that aren't covered in the rules to the con events, and we just work with it. As I have used in another set of rules, "This Ain't No Avalon Hill Game." We have people playing with teddy bears, zombies, gingerbread men, and one guy replacing the alphorn with a gnome in sunglasses with a boom box. If you love the gnomes, and want to play with them the way they initially conceived, the rules are necessary. Mechanics-wise, I find little fault in the core rules. It's my worry that the rules/stat conflicts interfere with gameplay. There are enough discrepancies in the rules for people to bicker over 3+ vs 4+ rolls and forgot that they are playing with freakin' gnomes

And I just want to play with freakin' gnomes.

(Gnome Wars) The Michael Lung Gallery #6

2011-10-20T14:21:00.003-04:00

I'm usually good a keeping a secret, but after seeing getting a series of pictures from Mr. Lung, I'm giddy over the Friday events at Fall-in!

Mike's been working on Znombies, and here the cinematic end result of his labors:

Warning, if you click to enlarge, the pic is HUGE!

We've already been in discussion for rules for these bad bodys, and sorry folks, they're not available for sale.... but perhaps we need a discussion with Mike, Lon from Brigade, Jim Stanton, and an appropriate pile of adult beverage and hash out an agreement. I'm just saying.

Living Dungeons of Corn!

2011-10-19T15:00:00.001-04:00

Two weekends ago, my wife thought it was a good idea to take the kids up to Roba's Farms up in Dalton, PA, for some pumpkin picking and a jaunt through the corn maze. While I had some petty misgivings about the trip, we loaded up the car and headed out to meet the Lasoski/Verbyla clan (My friends who participated in the Hawaiian Murder Mystery I blogged previously).

Roba's is a nice place with plenty of parking and a petting zoo of sorts with Llamas, goats, chickens,and an adorable rabbit town done to 1/20th scale. We barely got to visit the Pumpkin Pillow (a giant inflantible balloon for jumping), the pig races, or the pumpkin cannons, because, we almost became that Massachusetts family that called 911 when they were hopelessly lost in a corn maze.

A corn maze is a living dungeon, especially if you're under 5'10". Outside of a few wider areas, or at one of the bridges could you really see where you were within the maze itself. Plus I hadn't packed for dungeoneering, so there was no chalk to mark the paths, no iron rations, no graph paper, and no ten foot pole!

I'll bore you with the minor details but the gist of the maze was that we received a blank map at the start and within the maze there were 11 different stations, each with their respective piece of map. I believe it took us 45 minutes to find the first one, but we did have a full adventuring party. Three kids under three, two strollers, and five adults. Throw in some mud and no idea who was doing what and it was backtrack city.

We finally reached the first bridge and realized (a) we could see two of the stations... if we could just figure out how to get there and (b) we would have to lung two strollers up and down a flight of stairs. While our flag bearer was coming back with the third piece of the map, we encountered a large family who had collected all 11 pieces. Unfortunately for them, no one could actually read the map and get them out of there! Fortunately we had a postivie reaction check, (go-go high charisma), and we convinced them to lead them out. By the time we reached the commercially convenient snack bar 2/3 of the way into the maze, we had picked up two more groups and I started feeling like Moses leading the Jews around in the desert for 40 years!

For the last third of the maze, I stuck with the tried and true method: I stuck to the left side of the wall and we were out in less than 2 minutes. Of course the young girl who had assembled the map had taped the last piece crooked, meaning we could have gotten out even sooner if they had been line up right to start.

Granted, it was fun, but do I wish to do it again soon. Oh hell no! The only mazes I would like to be involved with have graph paper, 10' spiked pit traps, and random encounters. Roba's did have all the other attractions mentioned above, plus a nice playground for the kids, and I think I heard people mention a train.

But next time I'm bring my horseman's flail +2.

Our intrepid adventurers: Two fighters, a thief, a cleric, and three halfling cuties. My wife (taking the pic) might be a cleric too, as it took divine intervention to prevent her from killing anyone from the group who attached to ours.

The Apathy of New Releases (October 2011)

2011-10-17T23:00:00.004-04:00

Since I was behind on my last "Apathy" entry, I completely forgot about the next. Again, it's only three weeks late and the next Game Trade comes out in eight day, but in my humble opinion, I'm not missing much.

My Wishlist: Nothing

My Let's-Have-a-Look-First Wishlist: The Dewdrop Inn supplement for Tunnels & Trolls. $11.95

My Imaginary Store List:
Ars Magica : Cradle and Crescent HC

A company I've never heard of named Blackwyrm Games is releasing a slew of Hero compatible campaign sourcebooks. I'm not big on Hero, but the settings are "unique" aka weird enought to mention.

PostHegmony: Terra Nomenklatura - space colonization, except that Earth has been colonized by aliens!

EarthLux Aeternum: Space RPG with the 17th c spirt of the age of exploration, including silly feathered hats.

The Wreck of Alpha Central - roleplaying in an alien post apoc future.

Risk Legacy: Campaign rules for Risk? Seriously?

The 40K RPG Block:

Deathwatch: First Founding

Dark Heresy: Book of Judgement.

Dark Heresy: Haarlock Legacy Trilogy

Rogue Trader: Hostile Acquisitons

And for Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play: Lure of Power

Warhammer.. er I mean Mantic Armies. I'm spoiled by my personal wargaming habits, so I don't even know if this is a steal versus Games Workshop. Dwarf, Abyssal (Chaos) Dwarf, Elf, Orc and Undead Armies for $175.00 each

4 Paizo Pathfinder related products

Deadlands Reloaded Players Guide

For 4e D&D
Book of Vile Darkness
Shadowghast Manor Dungeon Tiles

And in the clix world, Incredible Hulk Heroclix.

Outside of a desire to stock Mantic armies, it looks to be a great month for mid-level restocks and expanding product lines in preparation for Christmas.

(Gnome Wars) Civil War Gnomes now available at Brigade!

2011-10-15T13:44:00.002-04:00

Perusing the Brigade Games website, I did find the American Gnomes (North and South) listed on the website. Plus I finally found a picture of the Shetland ponies!

Unit pricing is also available: $65.00 for cav and $47.00 for foot.

http://www.brigadegames.com/Gnome-Wars--28mm_c_42.html

(FOR SALE) 54mm ATKM AWI for Sale!

2011-10-13T00:01:00.000-04:00

The hammer has been dropped. As much as I love 54mm, I can't expect to paint my figs, much less play with them, anytime soon.

Below is the list of all the All the King's Men figures I've accumulated. It isn't much compared to the mega-games, but I've only budgeted a pack per convention usually, and the terrain caught my eye lately. Sorry, the terrain stays. Gnomes + giant haystacks = awesome!

1 unit, British Light Dragoons (8)

1 unit Continental Infantry (14)

1 unit British Infantry (14)

1 unit Continental Skirmishers (8)

1 unit Artillery

1 pack of three pounder field guns (3)

Northeastern Woodland Indians plastics boxed set (18)

Another set of Indian plastics (12)

Litko 1.25 in circular bases, 3mm plywood (25)

I'm asking $120.00 for the whole set, shipping included. I think this is a fair price, given that I do believe Ken at ATKM was forced to increase prices for the new casting.

I would prefer not to sell this piecemeal, but I am willing to make any decent offer. I'm even willing to meet at a "offsite" location to deliver the figures at Fall-in! if need be.

Feel free to contact me at viscounteric at gmail dot com. We can talk turkey get these into the hands of someone who can give them a good home to be killed little lead deaths over and over again.

The Miskatonic School for Girls Deck Building Game

2011-10-08T06:59:00.001-04:00

Thanks to a friend on Facebook for bringing this to my attention, even if she does work for Games Workshop:

The Miskatonic School for Girls Deck Building Game is a combination of cute little girls with horrors of the lunchlady, er, I mean H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.

Miskatonic School for Girls

While I don't think the concept is as visionary as the designers might claim (you play your school students and beset your opponents with evil, corrupting faculty and staff who drain their sanity. Last player with any sanity left wins!), it looks put-together, it's Lovecraftian, and it might just be fun.

While I haven't thrown a cent into their production, this looks far better than 95% of the items solicited montly (Trust me, I'm working on my monthly Apathy of New Releases post for October and this could have the worse mechanics in the history of card games and be game of the year compared to the drivel being released by the "major" companies.

(Gnome Wars) The Michael Lung Gallery #5

2011-10-06T23:47:00.000-04:00

It's been awhile and since Mike is currently working on a super-secret project that requires a lot of brain power, I'll focus his first mark of genius.

I bring you, the Gingerbread Men, as sponsored by the Count of Keebler:

The figure with the baking board is a German peasant, the Baker is part of the French Pastry Mortar. The rest of the unit are original sculpts.

(Gnome Wars) American Gnome Preview!

2011-10-04T06:35:00.000-04:00

Brigade Games has recently released pics of the new American Gnomes!

Basic Cavalry (South - North) Northern Infantry
Northern Drummer / Standard Bearer
Northern NCO / Officer
Cavalry Officer (Southern / Northern)
Musician (Southern / Northern)
Southern Infantry
Southern Musician / Standard Bearer
Southern NCO / Officer

I have a good source telling me that the mounts for both sides will be Shetland ponies. When I find pics for them, I'll post them

(Gnome Wars) Battle of Yellowstone Playtest

2011-10-03T06:24:00.000-04:00

Sunday afternoon, Nichols came up and we playtested my "Battle of Yellowstone" game for Fall-in! I've realized that the scenario could easily be an all day event, like a mega board game that could go on and on. However, with simple reference sheets for each unit and a ref to keep things going, three hours will be a nice change of pace for the average HMGS con game.

Given the dense terrain, the limited units versus a normal Gnome Wars game, and the vast quantity of animals (yes, animals) we may have oversimplified firing, movement, and morale, but this will allow players with failed units to quickly jump back in and players can even play "solo" if they're not in the thick of things.

I do need to buy more sheep.

After two hours, we decided to wrap up the playtest and move from the garage to the dining room table to relearn Legions of Steel. As I've mentioned before,the guy who sold me the boxed set on eBay threw in Space Marines and SW Robots to make up for the missing UNE and Machine minis. Today's game reaffirms my belief that anything space marine related sucks. Since I had experience with the leadership Nichols system, albeit 12 years removed, I took over the UNE forces and let Nichols get comfortable with the Machines. He opened up with an aggressive defense of their facility that bordered on suicidal, but poor deployment, mediocre tactics, lousy die rolls, and criminal misuse of leadership created a slaughter of my forces.

Deploying the figures wrong cause bottlenecks and misue of Forcewall grenades, throwing off my tactics. I did manage to destroy half of my objective, but I panicked when I should have secured the area, regrouped, and systematically worked my way up the board.

So, at least I can cross off one thing on my yearly bucket list. LOS has been played, huzzah!

My Gaming Master Plan for 2012

2011-10-02T06:24:00.000-04:00

My wacky schedule has decreed the end of my gaming year, I've done a nice little recap of a rather bare year of gaming for me, so now it's time to figure just what I want to/can accomplish for 2012.

Gnome Wars: If I have named the blog in conjuction with the game, I guess I need to play some games. I have to mention that evil word again: Tanga. Unless the space miraculously appears at someone else's house, the summer will be a mad rush to play the battles in and around the city... in my garage. I have my game for Fall-in! and I'm 90% certain to run Chicka Zulu at Cold Wars. I'm one of the weenies not going to Fredericksburg for Historicon, but I'm pretty certain a few conversations at Cold Wars will net us a replacement GM to help Jim or run an alternate to the GW mega-games.

Call of Cthulhu: It's crunch time for the campaign. I need to stoke the interest in it so we can get a few sessions in this year and prepare for the fallout of 1925. I have at least five different scenarios to lay future plot scenes, get characters further into the perdicament, and generally just have fun in the Big Apple and Boston. I also have my sights on a campaign with the tenative nickname, Plausible Deniability. More on that in the weeks to come.

Fantasy: Is basically dead. It requires to much prep work and constant playing that I just don't have to the time to give. "Home" and "City-State of Kathad" games aren't even on the back burner nowadays. It is a bit depressing that the new Hackmaster 5e books are coming out and I have zero desire or need to pick them up, and there's a part of me that should crave them like a drug.

Gladiator Arena: I have the figs, I just don't know if I can get things ready for SATLOF. And it's mundane friendly!

Advanced Candyland: My daughter, Maja, is getting Candyland for Christmas and I will be working feverishly to teach her how to play the game and to integrate different figures and stories using the board. This will be an experimental gateway drug, slowly moving into a game based on Mouse Guard using lots of dollar store props.

Savage Gnomes: This is a project I just thought up in the last week: Using Gnome Wars figs in a role-playing setting. I've seen what good Savage Worlds has done to a variety of settings, so I might as well give it a go. Plus, it's an excuse to use more terrain in more games.

Risus: Always a stand-by game. Might even break out Geezer for it. Hopefully 2012's Day of Sloth is better attended that this years and we get a game off.

Legions of Steel: I will get a couple games in, even if I don't have all the figs. I still scour eBay looking for bargains.

PURCHASES:
I have to admit another "urge to purge", this time for financial reasons. I love All the King's Men, I love the 54mm AWI, but they are so low on my list of priorities, it's wiser to sell it off and use it towards bills or other *coughFallincough* ventures. I'll have the listing up here by the beginning of the week. I'll also post a pile of other stuff I'm getting rid of.

Besides some gnomes and MBA buildings, I don't see any major purchases in the future. I have a bunch of CoC books on my list but I just don't need any of them, and the gaming store I could venture to wouldn't stock them anyway. Okay, maybe the Mouseling tavern set by Reaper, but not much else.

Cons: Definitely Fall-in! and Cold Wars, no to Historicon, but we might throw something together for the summer. This time I'll announce something if it's a bit more concrete.

And, of course, I'll just keep blogging....

Gaming Year in Review 2011

2011-10-01T07:53:00.001-04:00

It’s that time of year again. I track my gaming year closer to a government fiscal year than a traditional one. Don’t ask me why, it’s been done like that for twenty years.

This is the 23rd year of my gaming career, and this whole being an adult and parent thing has significantly cut into quality gaming.

Of course, the big event of this past year was the birth of my daughter, Amelia. As if a newborn at home with another under 2 wasn't tough enough, she also spend 17 days in the hospital suffering from RSV. What's RSV? In layman's terms, take the worst cold you ever had and just couldn't shake, and give it to a two-week old. Bad stuff, but she was a fighter and got through it.

During those late nights at the hospital, taking a break from sitting bedside with her, I would walk down to the 24-hour cafe and use the free internet . I didn't do much, but I did spend some time on eBay and rediscovered a former addiction: Legions of Steel. Between January and March I snagged up a few random LOS items on the cheap, including a black box set where the UNE and Machines were replaced by Space Marines and Star Wars robots. Funny thing is, despite these purchases, I still didn't play a single game of LOS!

One of the amusing things I discovered was that people actually read this blog! As I was setting up for my "Very Gnomish Civil War" game at Historicon, I lost count on the number of people who came up to the table and said hi, or just said "Hey, Gaming With the Gnomies, cool." That was even more impressive as I was at a different table than scheduled, so that meant they had to have read this silly thing!

Alright then, the games:
Gnome Wars: Gnomes, gnomes, and maybe some teddy bears! We finally got the Tanga Campaign moving along (If your a consistent reader of this blog, you may have heard it mentioned a time or two.) I also got some solid fun playing at Cold Wars and running a nice game on a Miniatures Building Authority board at Historicon.

Everything else was a passing interest.

Toon: Cthulhu Comes to Springfield Redux was not only run at a con, but playtested! A rousing success for both and kudos to my regulars for fleshing out a new final scenario "Duffman failed his SAN check."

Risus: Did manage to get some IOU magic in after the Toon playtest. Got some of the Freshthings jobs and an Intergalactic parcel company starship. Unfortunately, we did not get our annual game during the Day of Sloth picnic, due to lack of gaming attendees.

Hackmaster: At Fall Mepacon, I threw together a game based on the BD&D module, The Lost City. Everyone had fun and it lasted almost the entire 4 hour slot.

Call of Cthulhu: Trying to rejuvenate what had been a staple game. I finally got Phil and Jess involved, and even if Dr. Millheim never makes an appearance again, I think the group can move forward. If they can make it in New York, they might be able to make it in London, Kenya, Shanghai, and Innsmouth.

D&D 4e: I did get invited to my buddy Steve's 4th Edition game for a session. The game was fun, the system, nicht sehr gut. My Scottish Knight is welcome back if I ever have time.

Murder Mysteries: Although I don't normally count these types of games in my listings, my wife and I did host two different games this year with some close friends. They were suprisingly a hoot, even if my Chief Wiki-Wiki was nearly sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit.

Conventions - I had a blast at Mepacon Fall 2010, made one days for historicon and Cold Wars, that's it. The Society of Neffs Gamers (SONG) had a crazed notion of throwing together a con in Wilson Borough this year, but life's curve balls silenced that idea for now.

Projects: Holy crap, I got some painting done this year! Not the prodigious amounts I've seen on Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog/, my favorite blog, but I did get the Swiss Park Rangers finished, complete with bicycle tank, and a Scottish Golf Mortar. And "most" of the figures I'm playing with at least have base coats.

Of course the joy of painting has been picked up by my two-year old daughter Maja. There have been more than a few figs with a rainbow color scheme, but I'll never disuade her from doing anything creative. Anyway, who's going to paint figure for Daddy in a few years?

I also got the boards for Tanga put together. It was my first experiment with insulation and modeling in general for quite some time, but I consider them a success for how utilitarian they needed to be.

Purchases: Kids, the economy, and the price increases for metal and paper made it a year to search for deals.
For LOS, eBay was my friend, picking up the mish-mashed boxed set, a copay of Planetstorm, two Black Chariots, a Mk I Assault Fiend, and a slew of support troopers and I probably spent more on shipping than for the figs.
For Gnome Wars, only the Scottish Mortar and a copy of Gnome Wars 2nd Edition.
From Eureka, I snagged up two Teddy Bear Bearoplanes and a pack of their Mice Warriors. They will work well with:
From Reaper: the Mouselings boxed set and Frumitty, lemur cleric.

Other stuff: Complete Masks of Nylarhotep HC, CoC Keeper Screen, Isle of Death and Dead Gawd's Hand for Hackmaster, and a pile of books from the Historicon which included Arena and a slowly developing interest in gladiator battles. I also picked up an MBA Guard Tower.

Best Game: I should pick my Very Gnomish Civil War or the Battle of St. Abe Gnome Wars game, but the Toon Cthulhu Comes to Springfield gets a top nod because it got run twice and everything is sitting in a file, ready to go at a moment's notice. Plus, it's motivated me to work on a Simpsons Cthulhu game for Christmas.

Best RPG Purchase: Masks of Nylarhotep hardcover, hands down. The Keeper Screen is beautiful and will get more work, but a high quality book wins in my book.

Best Miniature Purchase: My Mk I Assault Fiend. Fifteen years after its initial release, its even more badass the I originally thought.

Best Miscellaneous Purchase: The Miniatures Building Authority guard tower has been worth every penny and I've only use it once. Can't wait to use it again for Fall-in!

Playtesting Yellowstone... Pic-a-nic basket thieves will be shot on sight

2011-09-30T14:47:00.002-04:00

This Sunday, I'll be playtesting my Battle of Yellowstone game for Fall-in! 2011. Anyone within the area can drop on in and I'll throw some units and optional rules at you. I just want to make sure the optional rules for the law-breakers keep the players interested.

And for those of you playing in the other Yellowstone-themed GW games, Jim's providing a special surprise. I won't spoil it, but let me tell you, I did a little dance in the middle of work when I opened the email.

Family Planning

2011-09-23T00:27:00.000-04:00

I knew living out in the middle of nowhere, having a family, and trying to be a good father/husband would limit whatever gaming I could do. Gone forever are the days of weekend Magic tournaments, weeknight campaigns, and Sunday pick-up games. They were sure fun, but completely unproductive in the real world.

I do have Maja hooked on the "No-Nos/Gnomes." Painting, playing, even a little make believe have been mixed in. So long as I give them a good seal cost, I don't mind her playing with any of them.

This Christmas, Operation: Turn the kids into gamers goes into full swing with the four magic words "Ages three and up." Maja will be over 2 1/2 by December, and she's made fantastic progress with her colors over the past couple. This means only one thing.

Mother Freakin' Candyland!

Candyland is the first true adventure game from kids. The little gingerbread men travel through the marvelous and potentially treacherous parts of Candyland. The Molasses (now Chocolate) Swamp, Gumdrop Mountains, and even the Ice Cream Floats are epic parts of our childhood. Building them in 25mm or even just using gnomes, teddy bears, or actual gingerbread men minis makes it more visual for Maja and, selfishly, more entertaining for Daddy.

And it just gets better: Chutes and Ladders with Space Marines? A Barrel of Monkey vs Cooties? Hungry Hungry Hippos vs Lucky Ducks. Mwhwhaahahaahaha!

It doesn't matter what variant I think of, my daughter (and soon both daughters) will beat me over and over again. And it's not because I'll let them. I just have horrible luck against kids. My tournament track record against little kids in Magic tournaments? Embarrassingly poor.

But that's where we'll start. Soon enough we'll be putting together an easy version of Mouse Guard and using all the mouselings I have. It's a perfect storytelling device. And, of course, once we go through all the books with the kids (and we will, just not in the next decade), Daddy gets to make up stories, and following the advice of my mom when she did told made up stories to me as a kid, I'm going to right down the gist of that night's story before I go to bed. Because kids always remember the details of the stories better than you, and if you don't bring your A-game, your wee ones will embarrass you.

And its great role-playing fodder.

And let's not forget the ulterior motive for the kids being at the Host for Fall-in! this year. Maja and I can walk the dealer's hall and let her pick out what she likes.

If she falls in love with Napoleonics I'm leaving her with an Amish family!

(Historicon) Fredericksburg! Wagons No!

2011-09-22T14:27:00.004-04:00

The official word has come down from the lawyers on high:

"HMGS is pleased to announce that Historicon 2012 will be held July 19 -22, in Fredericksburg, Virginia, at the Fredericksburg Expo and Conference Center.Fredericksburg Expo & Conference Center2371 Carl D. Silver ParkwayFredericksburg, Virginia 22401"

Which means I won't be going next year. Finances were tough enough this year and are getting that way for Fall-in! Throw in extra driving time, and a wife who's more negative about Fredericksburg for a vacation destination than I am, and it looks like my Colonial Era Chicka Zulu game will appear at Cold Wars.

I am indifferent. Worst case I can see if I can make the day trip to NJCon next summer. Drive time is just a little more than Lancaster and I might meet more people closer to my house. Not by much verus the crew I have now, but it couldn't hurt.

The Apathy of New Releases (September 2011)

2011-09-21T13:24:00.001-04:00

Wow, I know no one cares about my little dance with the Alliance monthly order book, but I almost forgot about it this month. So much so the The Apathy of New Releases for October (GTM #14) should be slated for the end of the week.

Welcome back to new release time for just before Christmas. Smart companies would solicit their Christmas items next month, but as we've with last year, that ain't happening.

Without further adieu:

Want List: Ooh, something not Gnome-related, well, it could be....

MOUSLING TAVERN RPR 10034 $29.99. I posted some GenCon pics of these (HERE). I was actually thinking of Mouse Guard last night, so this would be awesome.

Wish List: There are things that intrigue me, imagine that!
BATTLEFIELDS XP: MEADOW FLOWERS TAP BR4134 $5.99 - Basically a container of static grass with wild flower mixed in. Looks like a small package, but one pack used as accents could last a long time.

CHACO WAR 1932-35: SOUTH AMERICA’S GREAT WAR OSP MAA474 $17.95 - Having a simple reference book might motivate me to buy some Chaco Wars figs that I posted about long, long ago.

HAPPY DAYS! A HUMOROUS NARRATIVE IN DRAWINGS OF THE PROGRESS OF AMERICAN ARMS 1917-1919 - osp gm629 $14.95 - Cartoons chronicling one Captain's tour of duty, capturing life in the trenches. I may hunt this down at Fall-in, if it gets released early.

Some of the Reaper minis tempt me, especially the OXIDATION BEAST. Like we don't know what that is?

So, I actually have things to look forward to, if they ever get around my area.

Imaginary Store List: I complained earlier about Alliance solicting flashlights and other miscellaneous items. First thing on the game listing that caught my eye US ARMY COT (78”x29”x17”). Not 25mm, but a real cot! With the collapse of comics, distributors are gearing towards an adventure gaming/army surplus store model? And for our rotund and tall friends, the 85"x40"x20" cot is also available.

NINJA: LEGEND OFTHE SCORPION CLAN AEG 5401 $49.99 for L5R

FIASCO RPG (and FIASCO COMPANION) Ordinary people with powerful ambition and poor impulse control. Inspired by films like Blood Simple and Fargo, there will be big dreams and flawed execution. $25.00 each.

DICE! : Chessex has a huge restock on what I call "fancy dice" I remember when the biggest cubes of d6s were under $10. Now regular set of fancy polyhedrals cost half as much as a sourcebook. The one rule of sales will always stick: Dice sell.

HEAVY GEAR: DP9 continues to push out product (truth be told, I haven't seen any of this stuff release. Here's hoping someone has something at Fall-in. I'll continue my poo-pooing of this line. Lots of stuff, a huge start-up cost for both players and stores, and the one tank alone is $129.50! Crazy Viscount's Make-Believe Games would continue NOT stocking this line.

MASKS: 1,000 MEMORABLE NPCS FOR ANY ROLEPLAYING GAME s2p EGP42002 $39.95 I guess it's been five years since the last be-all-end-all NPC book flops like a fat guy falling off the high dive.

BLOOD BOWL: TEAM MANAGER - THE CARD GAME: Now THIS looks good. A limited card game where you customize your team based on the cards in the set. It's not real Blood Bowl, but short of GW feeling generous, it's all we've got. FFG GW03 $34.95

ROGUE TRADER: FALLEN SUNS - FFG RT08 $24.95

DUNGEON CRAWL CLASSICS RPG HC (GSL) IMP GMG5070 $34.99 The Goodman Games version of a certain classic role-playing game.

BattleTech Minis from Ironwind - I remember the days when tanks were six bucks a pack. Get off my level 2 lawn!
DI MORGAN ASSAULT TANK [1] (TRO 3075) IWM 20-5029..........................$14.25
ONAGER MECH (TRO 3085) IWM 20-5030..........................$14.95
SHADOWCAT II (TRO 3085) IWM 20-5031..........................$13.50
THUNDERBOLT MECH TDR-10M (TRO 3085) IWM 20-5032..........................$13.50

CTHULHU DICE TOWER LAO GMG085........................$19.99 When you want the world to see your failed san check.

Mongoose: TRAVELLER RPG: 2300AD

Paizo: Another giant pile of stuff. Plus there's yet another third party book.

GAMEMASTERY FLIP-MAT: WAREHOUSE $12.99
GAMEMASTERY PLOT TWIST CARDS: FLASHBACKS $10.99
PATHFINDER MODULE: THE RUBY PHOENIX TOURNAMENT $13.99
PATHFINDER ADVENTURE PATH: JADE REGENT-FOREST OF SPIRITS $19.99
PATHFINDER CAMPAIGN: DRAGON EMPIRES GAZETTEER $19.99
PATHFINDER RPG: BESTIARY 3 HC $39.99

Good God, it still lives:
POKÉMON TCG: LEGENDARY RESHIRAM / ZEKROM

Reaper: My only complaint from Reaper, despite higher fig costs they have little power in controlling is the fact that they not only separate their Dark Heaven, Savage Worlds, Pathfinder, P-65, Warlord 25mm and Chronoscope lines , but they solicit three months at a time and keep each line and each month separate.

Silly stuff?How about a remote control LED candle? How about a universal remote shape like a magic wand that each piece of electronic is set to a specific gesture. Yeah, some people truly have no lives. I guess it's better product than others you can get for your Comic/Gaming/Army Surplus store.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: FORTUNE CARDS - FURY OF THE FEYWILD
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: MORDENKAINEN’S MAGNIFICENT EMPORIUM - is this a resolicit?
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: PLAYER’S OPTION - HEROES OF THE FEYWILD $29.95

Magic: TG: Booster Battle Pack. For $9.99 you get two 20-card semi-randomized decks with land cards, two 15 card Magic 2012 Core booster. and a learn to play guide and appears to be sold store-wise in 12 pack displays.

(Cthulhu) Teddy Roosevelt Versus the Mythos = Bully!

2011-09-19T00:49:00.004-04:00

Before there were role-playing games, or even sci-fi or fantasy books making my imagination run wild, there was Theodore Roosevelt. The man is so dynamic in action, so diverse in his interests, so legendary in his deeds, that I dare any of you to name a more exciting POTUS in the 20th or 21st centuries.

When I discovered this today, while trolling around the CoC list on rpggeek.com, I was giddy.
http://www.lulu.com/product/file-download/cthulhu-and-the-river-of-doubt/1756432

The description covers most of it. An aging, post-presidential Roosevelt headed an expedition into the Amazon to be the first civilized people to traverse the uncharted River of Doubt. From logistics to luck, the expedition was a disaster and it could be said that TR escaped with his life, although the calamities of the trip did weaken the Bull Moose and contributed to his early death in 1919.

This book is basically a copy of Roosevelt's Through the Brazilian Wilderness, his quite biased first-hand account of the journey. It's a quick and enjoyable read, and I thoroughly recommend it.

The genius is in the footnotes and the appendix of this new printing. Through each portion of the book, footnotes appear giving suggestions how to properly adapt this into a role-playing campaign... with Lovecraftian undertones.

Given the number of locals lost, the encounters with odd tribesmen, and other strange encounters that occurred, it's quite probable the malaria didn't do Roosevelt in, failed sanity checks from Mythos encounters weakened him.

The appendix is supposed to have the primary participants statted up (with BRP, I'm assuming). I know, I admit it, I haven't actually purchased or read the product, but the concept of adapting historical books for role-playing is a phenomenal idea, and I may need to do a little research to see what other events have been done in such a fashion.

Even if the rpg stuff is absolute dreck (I'll find out tomorrow), the download from lulu is $1.01 and the print copy of the book is $9.12. Guaranteed, you will make worse decisions with your money this week.

New Roman Teddy Bears from Eureka

2011-09-18T06:51:00.001-04:00

Per their announcement on TMP, Eureka is releasing Roman Teddy Bears in full force!

Multiple shields, Romans on rocking horses, and best of all, a honeypot catapult!Between these, the Holy Gnoman Empire, and a link for the old Heritage Roman Frogs, we have quite a fantasy selection to play Ancients with. Thank God, Mike found a way to put the Roman Empire into the Bore Wars!

First reported on TMP.

Battlelords 23C is on... Facebook?

2011-09-17T14:39:00.004-04:00

I picture certain things for Battlelords of the 23rd Century. A game on Facebook and Twitter? Not so much. Yet that is what they're doing with it!

As of right now, they're going from Alpha to Beta versions of the game, so it is not active. My only question (in Battlelords-speak), is this a Mafia Wars-equivilant for your social media-equivilant. I would love a Zombie Lane version, where you can run around the board as a Ram Python, pick things up... kill them.

The Fall-in! 2011 PEL is up!

2011-09-16T14:27:00.000-04:00

The Fall-in! 2011 Preliminary Event Listing (PEL) was posted this week. First off, I love the fact that the file at www.fall-in.org is a Word document and not a pdf. It was much easier to navigate to look for things. Just my opinion.

At a solid glance, the US Cav theme is about as sparse as South American revolutions were for Cold Wars this year. Lots of WW2 games, be-it cav-centric or not.

I've made a listing of my choice games on the PEL, and yes, there are plenty of Gnome games.

F-151 - Monkey's Revenge
Fri. 12:00:00 PM, 3 hrs, 10 players
GM: Jon Lundberg
Sponsor: Eureka
Pulp 28mm, Rules: Home Rules based Wings of War
The Flying Monkey's main base was bombed at Historicon, but enough escaped that They are out for revenge and ready when the Germans come back for another attack. American Rocketeers Launch in support, but both sides have more weapons
A young kid game, it uses the Eureka flying monkeys and some Pax Limpopo figures, I suppose. I'll definitely run off to see this!

F-146 - Gnome Wars: The Station at The End of The Line - Theme Game
Fri. 12:00:00 PM, 4 hrs, 7 players
GM: Jim Stanton with Steven Stanton and Stout Gnomes
Sponsor: Brigade Games, Prize: Gnomes!!!
Other 28mm, Rules: Gnome Wars
The US Cavalry needs to protect a station just inside Yellowstone National Park. The Yellowstone Special, carrying visiting dignitaries, gold for the payroll, and various "beverages," is inbound and several interested parties are headed for the station. Who will be in control when the train pulls in?
Players bringing a painted unit of gnomes from Brigade Games do not have to preregister. No special or heavy weapons for this game. No one under 14 without a playing adult.
All GW games will have a Yellowstone theme, most involving a train. No specials or heavy for the chaos this will be makes me love Mr. Stanton a little more each day, in a gnome way, of course.

F-287 - Ordeal at Owikokorero (German South-West Africa, 1904)
Fri. 2:00:00 PM, 4 hrs, 6 players
GM: Roy Jones with Eric Alvarado
Sponsor: Falcon Miniatures, Prize: Gift Certificate
Colonial 25mm, Rules: Sword and the Flame (Modified)
Description: It was supposed to be a reconnaissance mission, but the Schutztruppen, machine gunners and Marines of the Recon Detachment were looking for a fight. So were Herero riflemen, expertly concealed in the bush. Can the Germans get in close, get their intel and get out alive, or will the Hereros annihilate the Recon Detachment? From the new scenario book "The Herero War". More at www.hererowars.com.
This is something I want to read and someday get a chance to play. It would flow in with the Gnomish Bore Wars perfectly.

F-197 - First Annual Road Warrior Thunder Dome Invitational
Fri. 2:00:00 PM, 3 hrs, 14 players
GM: Eric Schlegel and the HAWKs
Modern Matchbox, Rules: Future Race
A cross-country car race based on Jamie Davis' popular "Future Race" rules. Drivers will battle each other, the desert terrain and various other factors to be the first around the oasis and over the finish line. Bumping is encouraged (some might say required) and style points will be awarded for the most spectacular wreck.
Younger players welcome with a participating adult.
Vehicular weaponry would be awesome, but this just looks fun!

F-329 - HMS Dreadnaught in Battle
Fri. 6:00:00 PM, 4 hrs, 6 players
GM: Chad Zerbe and Reading Area Wargamers
Sponsor: RAW
WWI 1:2400, Rules: When Dreadnoughts Ruled the Seas
The British launched the HMS Dreadnaught in late 1906 and with it made every other Battleship in the world obsolete. With ten large guns she had about twice the firepower of the other major ships. She leant her name to a whole generation of Big Battleships. This hypothetical battle has the HMS Dreadnaught fighting a contemporary German fleet to see just how revolutionary she might have been in battle. However, Germans realize the Dreadnought with all big guns may be very vulnerable to Torpedo Boat attacks
My love for smaller than 1:600 turn of the century naval games shines through.

F-265 - Zeppelin Killers
Fri. 6:00:00 PM, 3 hrs, 12 players
GM: John Stoner
WWI 1:72nd, Rules: Canvas Eagles
Four Zeppelins are returning home from a night bombing raid on London. However, foul weather has caused them to go off course and now they have been caught in broad daylight over France. French scouts have their sights set on the easy targets. Can the Zeppelins outrun them? Will German planes come to the rescue? An easy game to learn and fun to play.
Children under 12 with the help of an adult
Zeppelins! I said zeppelins!

F-147 - Gnome Wars: The Train Pulls In! - Theme Game
Fri. 6:00:00 PM, 4 hrs, 7 players
GM: Jim Stanton with Steven Stanton and Stout Gnomes
The Yellowstone Special is pulling into the station and everyone wants a piece of the action. Who will be standing on the platform to greet it?
Players bringing a painted unit of gnomes from Brigade Games do not have to preregister. No special or heavy weapons for this game.
Part two of the Yellowstone Train theme.

F-174 - Russo-Japanese Naval
Fri. 8:00:00 PM, 3 hrs, 8 players
GM: Steve Robinson and Woodbridge (VA) Area GamerS
Sponsor: Merrimack the Old Glory Shipyard, Prize: Merrimack the Old Glory Shipyard
Early 20th Century 1:600, Rules: Grand Fleet (modified)
For all those period enthusiasts, this is a hypothetical naval engagement in the Yellow Sea to introduce fellow wargamers to the fun of gaming the period. A Russian Battleship squadron is on the hunt for revenge of the torpedo attack on the Port Arthur. However, the Japanese fleet is ready to give battle. Can this battle change the course of history? This game is featuring 1/600 scale Russo-Japanese ships produced by Old Glory Shipyards.
Just because I've like smaller than 1:600 naval games, doesn't mean I wouldn't want to try a 1:600 game.

F-240 - "Something Fishy This Way Comes..."
Fri. 8:00:00 PM, 3 hrs, 6 players
GM: Bob Giglio
Other 28mm, Rules: The Bootleggers by Steve Barber (modified)
Crime boss Dion O'Bannion's weekly shipments to Arkham were raided by Prohibition Agents, so he moved deliveries far out into the country to Dagon Point and the old Binkley House atop the cliff; it's perfect. Rum Runner arrives at midnight, docks, unloads bootleg, and the gang truck it back to the city - simple. But rival factions abound and weird things can happen in Lovecraft Country!
Age 15 or older; game based on horror writing of H.P. Lovecraft (you've been warned!)
Now I know who bought all the Deep One figures on eBay.

S-133 - The Battle of Yellowstone - Theme Game
Sat. 10:00:00 AM, 3 hrs, 10 players
GM: Eric Jacobsom
Early 20th Century 28mm, Rules: Gnome Wars
For over 30 years, the United States Cavalry were the sole protectors of one of our national treasures, Yellowstone National Park. Join the valiant men of Troop K, as they spend their days fighting against illegal poachers, loggers, miners, wayward campers, and worst of all, sheep. All of this will be done, of course, with gnomes.
My game. Might have to increase the chaos factor to make it look like a traditional GW game. However, I want this to also be historically accurate, with more than crazed charges and stalwart defenses. I mean, hey, I've got sheep!

S-288 - Ambush at Gross-Barmen (German South-West Africa, 1904)
Sat. 10:00:00 AM, 4 hrs, 5 players
GM: Roy Jones with Eric Alvarado
Sponsor: Falcon Miniatures, Prize: Gift Certificate
Colonial 25mm, Rules: Sword and the Flame (Modified)
Ambush at Gross-Barmen (German South-West Africa, 1904)
Description: German sailors from a Naval Landing Party march through a narrow defile. The Hereros wait in ambush, hidden in the boulder-strewn hills above. They realize that the Sanitation Carriage contains more than just medical supplies (maybe even cartridges)! The Herero plan: shoot the oxen, shoot the sailors, take the Carriage! From the new scenario book "The Herero War".
More Herero War stuff, obviously

S-276 - Bear-o-drome
Sat. 10:00:00 AM, 3 hrs, 8 players
GM: Jim Reynolds and WNPG
Sponsor: Eureka USA, Prize: DICE
WWI 28mm, Rules: Bear-o-Drome
The Red Bearon is the scourge of the skies, but the brave pilots of the Royal Bear Corps and their allies of the Lafayette Ourscadrille Will not give up that easy. Kids come and play with Eureka’s new Flying Bear Circus Miniatures. Kids Game
Sometime after I get my players up and running, I will hunt this game down!!!!

S-175 - Trench Wars: Treat Them Rough!
Sat. 10:00:00 AM, 3 hrs, 8 players
GM: Steve Robinson and Woodbridge (VA) Area GamerS
Sponsor: Acheson Creations
WWI 28mm, Rules: Trench Wars (modified)
Part 1- Tommy is facing the formable Hindenburg line. Can the shear bravery of Tommy and the steel behemoths punch their way through Jerry’s defenses? Or, will a sea of wire entanglements, bunkers and non-ceasing hail of machinegun fire defeat Tommy’s juggernaut? Come and pick a side and taste once again the rotting, acidic smell of the western front. I know for sure that lead figures do not bleed, but allot will have to wait until the afternoon to be played with again. Beginners welcomed!
One day, I shall get to play Trench Wars, from which Gnome Wars is loosely based on.

S-176 - Trench Wars: Treat Them Rough!
Sat. 2:00:00 PM, 3 hrs, 8 players
GM: Steve Robinson and Woodbridge (VA) Area GamerS
Sponsor: Acheson Creations
WWI 28mm, Rules: Trench Wars (modified)
Part 2-
And this slot might be my chance.

S-149 - The Trolls Raid Brick-a-lot
Sat. 10:00:00 AM, 2 hrs, 6 players
GM: Charles Kline
Fantasy 28mm, Rules: Home Rules
Brick-a-lot is the finest castle in all of Lego-nia, and that is why the Trolls have decided to launch a daring raid against it! Will you side with the Trolls and their "trusty" allies, or will you join the forces of Good and defend the realm against the merciless (yet not too smart) Trolls. Simple, fast rules using familiar mini-figs, suitable for young players.
Kid Friendly Game, Ages 8 - 12.
Trolls, Legos, and enthusiastic players. Gaming Paradise.

S-145 - Gnome Wars: Stop That Train! - Theme Game
Sat. 3:00:00 PM, 4 hrs, 6 players
GM: Jim Stanton with Steven Stanton and Stout Gnomes
Sponsor: Brigade Games, Prize: Gnomes!!!
Other 28mm, Rules: Gnome Wars
The US Cavalry needs to protect a train leaving a remote station just inside Yellowstone National Park. Will the Yellowstone Special, carrying visiting dignitaries, gold for the payroll, and animals headed to various zoos, make it out of the park? Or will various bands of raiders get their quarry off of the train?
Players bringing a painted unit of gnomes from Brigade Games do not have to preregister. No special or heavy weapons for this game. No one under 14 without a playing adult.
Part three. I might pass playing/helping this session to play Trench Wars and prepare for the final GW slot.

S-144 - Gnome Wars: The Joust
Sat. 8:00:00 PM, 3 hrs, 30 players
GM: Steven Stanton with Jim Stanton and Stout Gnomes
Sponsor: Brigade Games, Prize: Gnomes!!!
Other 28mm, Rules: Gnome Wars Come and try your luck in the Gnome Joust. Rules Taught, Quick, Easy. FUN!!! No one under 14 without a playing adult. Players are encouraged to bring their own mount, but it is not required.
This time, this event is mine! No drunken dads, rosary-praying moms, or stout smurfs will stop me!!!! It will probably be a seven-year old in a Spongebob shirt kicking my ass.

Z-193 - Field Mice vs. Zombie Pumpkins
Sun. 10:00:00 AM, 2 hrs, 6 players
GM: Todd Harland-White and the HAWKs
Modern 25mm, Rules: Milk and Cookies
A truck carrying mysterious laboratory chemicals has crashed and spilled its load onto the back forty of a farmer's pumpkin patch. There the local field mice are foraging for foodstuffs to put away for the long Winter. However, the moon is full and things are about to go terribly wrong. Kid friendly.
I will probably drag the family back Sunday just so I can see this (and possibly trade a family member or friend coming with us for some lead).