I Ain't Dead Quite Yet

Despite my statement yesterday of not expecting a lot of activity for this month, October has already been rather productive.

While my wife took a all-day bus trip on Saturday to the Meadowlands for the Notre Dame-Syracuse game, my friend Brian came up and we had a mini game-a-palooza. 

We finally got Episode #9 of the Savage Saga of Maja Millie in, while teaching Brian the basics of Savage Worlds/Showdown.  Maja enjoyed an extra player in our game, even if the bad guys apparently won. Write-up and pics forthcoming. 

Beyond our pulp game and a lot of catching up, we got THREE other games in.

We cracked open Brian's copy of D&D Assault Wing and we had a quick Blue Dragon vs Red Dragon throw down. Hate to say it, but I much prefer the naval tactics of the Star Trek version over the fantasy. 

I also broke out some Arcane Legions figs and two Reaper Avatars of Sokar to finally try out Of Gods and Mortals. Somehow I've missed the failure/reaction mechanic in all my readings, and while that makes for a much better two player game, it puts a dead knell into my idea for Cold Wars.  The most recent delays from the Reaper Bones 3 had already put a lot  of doubts into my ability to paint everything up in time, but I've still got a ton of mice to paint up for Mepacon. 

Finally, we whipped through a quick game of Santa's Bag with Maja.  It wasn't an epic Call of Cthulhu game, but I'm quite sure that Brian's had his fill of that indefinitely.

Today begins my hell-season at work, so I have considerable doubts I'm going to get much blogging in, much less games. Everything points to Things evening out in November and back to back convention weekends with Fall-In! and Mepacon. 

My to-do list for October

1.  Finish my Hackmaster conversion of the first Burning Trogs Redux adventure.

2.  Savage Showdown Episode #9 write-up.

3.  Call of Cthulhu Episode #38 write-up

4.  Mousling Scenarios for Mepacon

5.  Toon characters for Mepacon

6.  Two new Toon "episodes" for Mepacon. 

7.  Sci-Fi Martian Quest #3 game and write-up 

Only three big posts that I can say with some certainty that they'll get written, but there is one big thing that trumps them all:

Paint a million freakin' Mouslings for Mepacon!!!!

Blogging Vacation

We're back to the busy season at work.  Tons of overtime, non-stop chaos, and worse yet, little time for games.   October is historically a horrible month for blog, second only to short little February, so be patient as I disappear for awhile.

 

While I'm gone....

Gaming Plans for 2017

The 1st of October is the first day of my odd gaming calendar, but it's also one of my busiest workdays of my year.   Since it lands on a Saturday this year, all my worries are pushed off two days.   Better yet, my wife and her friend are taking a bus trip to the Notre Dame game at the Meadowlands, leaving me with the kids... and the will to game.

So with a few moments this morning, let's try to compose some reasonable goals for all facets of gaming for 2017 (Oct 2016 - Sept 2017)

My Girls:  I think I could have done better playing games with them last year, but they're happy, and that's all that matters.   Activities with the girls:

• Savage Showdown Worlds:  Winding down the second story arc with some urban games.  We'll start my Codename: Savage2 story arc once I acquire some Arab Revolt figures from Brigade Games OR I can launch a different arc with my  "Jungle Witch Doctor" game. 
• Role-Playing: I managed to keep true to my last year's demand for "Plastic Tanks and Princesses."  This year should be more "Village on a Hill" games and some Heroclix fights.
• Kid's Game, avec Mom:  The game collection slowly grows larger, and the kids are patient enough that we may need to involve dear old Mom (aka, my wife) into the games.  She's always avoids participating, and even during our "Family Game Decathlon" she came down with a cold that rivaled anything she got in the winter.  I'm don't want her to play hardcore Fantasy boardgames or Arkham Horror, just something a step above Fluxx. I also want to avoid

Call of Cthulhu:  Masks is over, and we're taking a break for awhile, although, with our normal schedules, a hiatus might not be noticed.    Might do some unrelated one shots, just for a change of pace.

Savage Rifts:  One of the stronger candidates for game to replace Cthulhu looks to be Savage Rifts.  A gamer's mid-life crisis should strongly resemble a teenage boy's power trip, although years of experience allows me to assemble this thing called a plot.

Hackmaster:  The Burning Trogs Redux has picked up steam.  Scheduling might be its downfall more than anything else. If we managed to meet, this will not fail.

Of Mortals and Men/Song of Blades & Heroes:  If I can assemble the figures for my "Mousageddon/Ratnarock" game, I'll need a few sessions to familiarize myself with the rules.  Of course we have three half finished Egyptian avatars and a slew or Arcane Legions Egyptian hordes we can practice with... hmmm...

Samoa:  I'm sticking with the first half of my Samoa goal from last year: The great thing about painting up all the Samoans is that I can pop them of the shelf and have a skirmish any time I want to. Village raids were commonplace, so a few huts and that's all I need.   I might add a few more figures and some paper huts and BOOM, there's my game for Cold Wars... without borrowing stuff from other gamers.

Conventions:  Fall-In! (Daddy-Daughter Weekend - Paying Attendee), Mepacon Fall (Post-Apoc) Cold Wars (Guys Weekend - Mousageddon), Mepacon Spring 2016 (Gnomes?)  Birthday Weekend - To Be Determined).   The Weekend (per the request of my wife).

Gnome Wars: It's the original inspiration for the blog.  It shall never go away, even if I'm just doing the joust for Fall-In!  Perhaps I'll try to assemble enough material to run the Battle of Yellowstone for Fall-In! 2016, without borrowing stuff from other players.  I'd like the girls to be re-interested in them so I we can play another game or two of the Astro-Surfian War.    And after I recharge and get motivated by the Gnomes at Fall-In! I'll go back to writing.

Painting:  Nothing grandiose again... or perhaps... just a bit:

• Mousageddon!  Mouslings and Giants, oh my! 
• Gnomes:  Last year was a decent year for gnomes, and I barely touched them.  Working towards Germans.
• Samoa:  Whatever I buy must go the front of the queue  (but behind Mouslings/Giants)
• Martians:  the bin o' GW/Heartbreaker goblins I've snagged on the cheap is calling my name, and the paint schemes I have for them are fairly unique and inspiring. 
• Battletech:  I've got 18 more to go.   When the system was hitting all cylinders over the summer, it was fun to paint them up.

Purchases: 

• Battlemats: The Next Generation.  A trip over to Jo-Ann Fabrics might be in order for new mats (2 each to combine on a 6'x10' board)  Green, Mid-Brown, White,  Stone Grey, and  Sea Blue).   Perhaps a Large Wrapping Paper Storage Tote to store them. 
• Minis:  Brigade Arabs, Pulp Figures, and Tin-Soldier Mexicans.  If I can stick to what I'll need for future games, plus the occasional Reaper Bones impulse buy at the FLGS, I might be able to keep the lead (and plastic) pile low.
• Kickstarter:  Who knows what craziness is coming out next year, but I'll probably settle on three or four projects.  Talislanta: The Savage Land should be one of them, and that I might go overboard on, even though there's no guarantee that I'll ever play it.
• RPGs: Looking over the last year's worth of Apathy columns, the only thing I might pick up is Bubblegumshoe.  I may need to get some Nancy Drew books as well, for myself and my daughters.

2016 Gaming Year in Review

Like a weird government agency, I track my gaming progress from October of one year to September of the next.  Don't ask why, it's just the way I've done things since I started.  Too late to change now.

The Blog
If we don't take the crazed Italian, Russian, and Ukranian search bot explosions, it's still a good year.  Overall, we're looking at another 10-15% growth in page hits per post with a marginal increase in posts.

The Top Ten Blog Posts of the Last Twelve Months 
#1  Mandatory Holiday Swag Post 2015                    (Misc)
#2  Brigade Games 28mm Post Apoc                         (Kickstarter)
#3  Lost Temple of Kajagoogoo                                 (Pulp)
#4  Fall-In! 2015 AAR                                               (Conventions)
#5  Rescue from Kisi Rushwa                                    (Pulp)
#6  Teddy Bears in the Land of Gnomes                   (Gnome Wars)
#7  The Cthulhu Wars                                                (Review)
#8  Evolution Games, Wilkes-Barre                          (Review)
#8  Treasure of the Maja Millie                                 (Pulp)
#10  A Simple Trade                                                  (Pulp)


The Family Pulp Games and Reviews dominate the pageviews, although that one Gnome Wars article in the middle of the top ten makes me happy.  I'll try to get a few more out of the pipeline.

The Best Laid Plans that Didn't Pan Out
The Return of Hoyce:  Alas Hoyce and his beloved wife moved back to Boston as quickly as they had arrived in Pennsylvania.  I missed out on two of his AD&D sessions for Emeron, and despite putting in the effort to catch up with actual plays and updating character, the Return of the Burning Trogs for Hackmaster never panned out either.  I did get to have him jump into one session of Masks for CoC, however, his Egytian thug was no match for the Black Pharaoh.

Samoa:  My Americans got some use as Pulp figures, but nothing else.  My planned expenses to Pulp Figures for more figs never panned out either. 

The FLGS
We are in a new Golden Age for game stores in Wilkes-Barre.  Evolution Games, Tactical Advantage, and The Gaming Chateau all have their own niches.   It's nice to be able to go to a game store and actually find something  that interests me with pocket money.   Stores far too long considered CCGs to be their "candy aisle" purchase, only to complain when their non-CCG customers didn't buy a thing (then bought everything via Amazon).

Fall-In 2015!  -  Maja got to go to her first sleepover con with dear old Dad.  I'm five or six years away from being able to split up and do our own things, but for now I know I can get 15 or 20 minutes of going through the flea market while Maja plays in the HAWKS room.  G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T with Santa, Lego pirates, a gnome joust, and the discovery of Helluva Good French Onion flavored chips made it a great weekend.

Mepacon Spring 2016  -  My first full weekend (Friday-Sunday) RPG convention since... Origins in 96?  Picked up a pile of pulp/Cthulhu minis, some Rifts books that was quite fortuitous with the Savage Worlds Kickstarter.  Ran great games of Spirit of '77 and Kobolds Ate My Baby.  As an added benefit, Maja only tagged along for Saturday and had a blast at the kid's LARP, plus she won the kid's painting contest!

"The Weekend"  - Got to spend some time in Lancaster in July at the Continental Inn with my family, and a game convention broke out!  For a minis-based con, I sure played a lot of History of the World and Divine Right, but I had a great time, picked up a slew of items (some free!) and found a solid burger joint off the main drag. Upon a return trip, the burger joint delivered again.

Kickstarters- There were 18 different campaigns that I pledged to.  Some were a measly dollar, some didn't successfully fund, while others I cancelled due to finances or a drop in enthusiasm.   Of those, I pledged for actual physical product for a whopping 4 of them. 
Tales of the Caribbean  -  First significant delay from Golden Goblin Press, but it's at the printers.
No Mercy   -   Fun little game from Travis Hanson with phenomenal turnaround time.  Three months early!
Post-Apocalyptic Dwarf Bikers - models are awesome and I got extra stuff for my paltry pledge.
Rifts for Savage Worlds - With the delays for Tales of the Caribbean, and the downturn for our Cthulhu campaign, the pdf of the Savage Rifts Player's Book has been the greatest reward I received over the past year. 

The Kid's Painting!  It's slow, it's painful, and they're at the point where their need for higher quality brushes conflicts with their maturity to take care of them.   I'm hoping when the Reaper Bones III Kickstarter finally arrives, a few snowflakes will allow us to dedicate some more time in the basement and the painting bench.  On top of all that, I did get the girls to a painting clinic sponsored by Evolution Games, and my triple paid entry won me a $50 gift certificate to a local painter.  He's methodical, but does solid work, so the infamous Legions of Steel/Planetstorm minis shall be done by him. 

My Own Painting
With a few flights of fancy distracting me my own 159 figures (plus the six the kids did) was  a solid effort.  Compared to a more focused assembly-line 166 back in the Samoa project days, I did a wider variety of figures, at the sacrifice of more brushes.   This year was dominated by finishing up every palm tree in my backlog, plus numerous other terrain pieces (58 in total).  I stayed true to the blog's name and actually finished another Swiss unit, plus a random assortment of two-man teams for the Mepacon Treasure Hunt game that didn't go off.   

The biggest surprise?  More than two dozen fantasy figures (non-mouse) out of the queue!

Games
Masks of Nyarlathotep:  With the same relieved enthusiasm I had when I started this campaign three years ago, the granddaddy of CoC campaigns is done!  Fifteen marathon sessions, with two additional forays in play-by-email to keep it on the rails. Things are certainly not settled yet, and there's still a lot of tread on the tires when we return with three surviving investigators.

Spirit of '77:  I enjoyed running this Powered by the Apocalypse game, and should be picking up the other pdf downloads shortly.

Savage Showdown into Savage Worlds:   Starting with a fun little treasure hunt, the pulp Savage Saga of Maja Millie has been a rousing success at home.  The archeologist noted for her "no guns, but cannons don't count" rule has survived back-stabbers from every direction, saved some friends, and is moving to a more urban direction to close out the storyline before the end of 2016

Family Games:   If Dad can keep kids off of iPads and Netflix, I've got a good chance to play a slew of games.  C'mon, Maja got to learn Burning Plastic and Legions of Steel. That's my entire 90's of minis gaming!   We also accomplished athe Decathlon of Games, ten separate games from Connect Four to Car Wars the Card Game with track meet style points for placing.  Far better than the Game-A-Day concept I attempted last year... during the first month of school.  I may have gotten a tiny bit wiser since then.

2016 Gaming with the Gnomies Awards!
Best Kickstarter:  Post-Apoc Space Dwarf Bikers from Ramshackle Games.  No Mercy from Travis Hanson was way early and  had great artwork, but we probably won't get full use our of it until the Viking Penguin/Teddy Bear Pirate expansion comes out.  Savage Rifts is a boat load of information, but the downloads have been hit or miss from working, and the it's more the impatient other pledges bugging the hell out of me.  Not only were the Space Dwarf Bikers super early, but they sent extra stuff to me!!!  I'm not much for ordering outside the US, but Ramshackle's website is saved to my Favorites.

Worst Kickstarter:  While the RAFM CoC Minis Kickstarter would win the category "Worst Kickstarter Stuck in Canada, The Pyramid of the Lost King wins hands down.  Sixteen months late.  Sixth Edition might be available by the time this arrives at my door.

Best Game:  Savage Showdown brought a new level of excitement to Daddy-Daughter playdays.  The two-part adventure A Simple Trade and A Complicated Arrangement elicited the most fun from all involved.

Best RPG: Savage World Deluxe Explorers Edition.  It could have been Spirit of '77 or Savage Ritfts, but this actually appeared at the FLGS when they first started to the RPG selection.  Impulse buy, haven't looked back since.

Best Minis: For a blog the loves to focus on miniatures, this one is quite tough.  Nothing quite reached the "awesome" level of previous years: (ex:  Mousling boxed set, Battletech Intro Sets, Pulp Figures "Samoans."  My giant clearance sale order from Miniatures Market has sat fallow on the workbench, although I might get some use from it over the next few weeks.  The Windsword Accessories have been nice, but not great.   Even all the rulebooks I got for Christmas have largely been read but left unused.  After reviewing all my purchases and all my painting for the year, I'll give this to all three "Movember" figures offerered by Pulp Figures.  Not only are they awesome individual figures by Bob Murch, but the proceeds went to a good cause (Bob himself is good cause, but a charity he likes is better by default).

Best "Other" Purchase:   Cthulhu Mythos:  The United States' Battle Against the Mythos by Kenneth Hite is an Osprey Alternate History book that provides just enough info for me to grab the bull by the horns and flesh out a few historical scenarios.  If I only had the time to do so...

No Mercy Expansion Coming Soon!

I had supported Travis Hanson's "No Mercy" this year.  It's a nice twist on War, and the Kickstarter arrived three months early, but it really needed two additional factions to make it fun. 


That wait is getting shorter by the second, as Travis recently teased about the upcoming Kickstarter for the expansion/standalone version for No Mercy:  Pirate Bears vs Penguin Vikings.



Expansion/Standalone?   Don't like Aliens and Cats with Guns!  Great!  Just buy this one and you're set. 


If it's $25 again, just take my money now. 

Events for Mepacon Fall 2016!

Although they haven't appeared on Warhorn yet, my events for Mepacon Fall 2016 have been submitted.


Friday 8pm - 12am
Toon - "Cthulhu Comes to Springfield 2"
Everyone's favorite minions of the Cthulhu Mythos descend upon the Simpsons in 3 or 4 unrelated "episodes."  To celebrate the post-apocalyptic theme of the convention, this session is the world premiere of "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Kodos"


Saturday 10am-12pm
Savage Worlds (for Kids) - Mousling Fantasy Adventures, Part I
The royal court is all aflutter: Duels, intrigue, dance-offs, and the arrival of a princess from a neighboring kingdom.  But is she looking for a prince to marry or a party to adventure with?  Kids Game.  Adults  welcome with accompanying child.



Saturday 4pm-6pm
Savage Worlds (for Kids) - Mousling Fantasy Adventures, Part II
As is custom, the visiting princess must be escorted back to her kingdom's border.  However, there are a few people the don't want that to happen.   Kids Game.  Adult welcome with accompanying child.


Sunday 9am-1pm
Toon - "Cthulhu Comes to Springfield 2"
Everyone's favorite minions of the Cthulhu Mythos descend upon the Simpsons in 3 or 4 unrelated "episodes."

(Kickstarter) Castle II Kickstarter from Miniature Building Authority

With all its pieces from the first one shipped, Miniature Building Authority has launched it's Castle II Kickstarter.

There is a nice discount for the individual parts, although the S&H charge does get it back near the MSRP.  Order $250 and shipping is included, so if you want some castle pieces and a number of existing stock available as add-ons, it's the perfect opportunity to order them.