Oh Lord... And My Group Has THREE Of Them...

So Just What Have I Been Doing Anyway?

As some of you might have noticed the updates have been a little erratic lately.  I said last week that I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off but now I figure its time for the show part of show and tell.

In addition to prepping my minis for Desert Wars, I also found out that I'd be running a Dungeons and Dragons 4e game which I wasn't quite ready for.  Sure, I was just going to run the adventure out of the Red Box edition of the game but it didn't feel quite right.  The whole minotaur temple buried underground with a giant chess board as part of it... nope, just not gonna work.

With that in mind, I did the only sensible thing; I re-wrote the entire adventure.  Quite literally in fact as I started typing the whole thing up in Word and drawing out the maps old school onto graph paper in addition to painting up miniatures for all of the creatures in the adventure, including the adventurers themselves.

Sometimes being a completest sucks.

Then again, sometimes it can be really rewarding as well.

So far, I have most of the miniatures painted for the game and most of the adventure re-written.  I still have some more work to do but I really am happy with how its turning out overall, especially since its also my daughter's introduction to gaming.

Some of you might be saying "You introduced her with 4e?  Really?" and the answer is quite simply yes.  The Essentials line greatly simplifies character creation and so far the mechanics have been pretty straightforward as well.  Add in her background as a board gamer and the mini driven slant of the game becomes a really good fit.

So far we've only had one session which mostly involved a very difficult combat that the party did a really good job handling but there was some role playing in there as well that everybody dove right into, the Munchkin included.  Unfortunately its going to be a couple of weeks until we can get it back to the table but in the meantime I've got an old copy of Toon waiting in the wings that I'm going to spring on her next week.  Nothing quite like going from one extreme to the other, but more on that later.  Until next time...

It's Time For More Boney Goodness!

Some of you might remember my review back in April of the Bones line of miniatures from Reaper Miniatures.  If not, you can check it out right here.  Go ahead, I can wait.

Remember it now?  Well, at the end of that review I mentioned that the range was pretty limited but Reaper is now taking some pretty serious steps to remedy that.  How serious?  Kickstarter serious!

This Kickstarter was just posted yesterday and its already funded and passed its first stretch goal.  As it currently stands, you can get one of each of the 30 new minis for a pledge of $60 (the Mummy level), or you can kick it up to $100 (the Vampire level) and get a whooping 71 minis... at least for now.  They have already announced the next two goals, one of which adds another 10 minis to the Vampire level while the other lets you buy not one but two fire giant minis for $10 total, minis which would cost you $58 if you bought their metal versions right now.

This is a great opportunity to not only get your hands on some of the best fantasy minis out there, but also help Reaper take this to the next level.  Now go check them out, give them a pledge, and tell your friends!  Until next time...

Project Ninja Panda Taco Is Coming!

Yep, you read right.  Ninja Panda Taco.

For those of you who don't know, this is a new collaborative story telling game designed by Jenn Steen, host of the Jennisodes podcast.  In PNPT, the players all take the part of mastermind plotting to take over the world, as well as a nemesis who tries to stop the other master minds and minions who just want to help.  But why just listen to me blather on about it?  Here is Jenn herself doing a Q & A a few days before the Kickstarter ended.

And here is a demo that she did with a Google hangout with Lyndsay Peters from Dragon Chow Dice Bags, Liz Bauman from the Illuminerdy blog, and Daniel Solis, designer of the games Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple and Happy Birthday, Robot! so you can see just how the game plays out.



Unfotunately the Kickstarter just ended for this game but it was fully funded so it is on the way!  Of course the question is just why exactly am I sharing this now when you can't pledge anymore?  Simple.  Part of the funding was a fully print run of the book, meaning 1000 hardcover, full color books.  As there were about 400 backers, that means that there will still be a good number of this books floating around so you should still be able to get in on the mastermind goodness!

Based on the info on the Kickstarter page, these should be coming out around the end of the year so once there is more information available I'll be sure to pass it along.  Until then, I'd like to wrap this up with a big CONGRATULATIONS!!! to Jenn for publishing her first game!  It sounds like it will be a whole bunch of crazy goodness so I can't wait to get ahold of it and give it a try!

Until next time...

And The Fearsome Fracas In The Desert Is Finished

Yes, that's right... Desert Wars is now over here in Sin City.

Some of you might remember me mentioning this event before but for those of you who don't or have just forgotten, Desert Wars is held each summer by one of the local gaming groups, the Las Vegas Wargamers.  The last one that I went to was years ago so I decided it was time to head back down and check it out.

Starship Troopers Miniature Game in progress

Honestly, I hate to say it but I was kind of disappointed.  I guess I was expecting a larger turn out and perhaps more variety then there actually was.  Admittedly I already knew which games I wanted to play and I knew that they'd be there so the limited selection didn't really have any bearing on me... but that was about all that really happened.  In fact over the course of the seven hour event, there were a whooping five games played.

Babylon 5: A Call To Arms game in progress

Now don't get me wrong; I'm not complaining about the games that I took part it.  I had a ton of fun even if they were absolutely ridiculous scenarios but like I said, I was just expecting more.  Ah well... I got to meet up with some friends I haven't seen in ages and dust off a couple of games that I really enjoyed playing.  In the end, that just sounds good to me.  Until next time...

Ah Yes, The True Spirit Of D&D!

Bees Ain't Got Nuthin' On Me!

Wow, talk about craziness.  No posts for this week so far because in addition to Desert Wars on the 21st, I am also starting a new Dungeons and Dragons Essentials campaign on the 20th!  Insanity I tell you!  This is a campaign that I've had brewing in the back of my head for a while but it was only recently that I actually started to try to hash out the details.

Between painting like crazy to have the minis ready (ya gotta do it right, ya know?) plus actually writing up the campaign (just basically because I'm crazy and I don't want to have to flip through books to try to find info in the middle of the game) I've had little time for anything else.

There is more on the way though so don't go too far.  In fact I'm aiming to be back to my regular posting schedule by next week so be sure to check back soon.  Until next time...

True, But That Doesn't Make Them Any Less Awesome!

We're Fighting Giant Bugs On Freaking Pluto, Man! We're All Insane!

With the Mobile Infantry ready to go its time to look at their opponents, the Bugs.  So just who are these critters that Humanity is bent on wiping off the face of the galaxy?  To quote Lieutenant Razak of the Roughnecks...

"Bugs can smell human blood a kilometer away, through skin, through suits, through steel. They feel no pain and have no emotions.  Their only desire is to kill you.  They are not life as we know it."

Now don't they just sound like charming neighbors?  Come on everyone, let's give it up for our buddies the Bugs!

To give you some idea just how big these guys are, the board that these bugs are set on is 2' by 3'.  The even more ridiculous thing is that these only represent slightly less than half of the bugs that I can field given some time.  As you can imagine, placement of units can start to be a problem with forces this massive but the bugs can also burrow underground so in a typical battle it might look a little more like this at the beginning.

In this picture, the tanker bug from the center and twenty of the warrior bugs are underground which is represented by leaving them off the board and moving special markers on the board.  I'll be honest, when I first heard about the SST game the underground movement aspect was one of the things that I really questioned whether they would be able to recreate easily but the game really handles it well.  The bugs also have special rules that let their units swarm together as they move across the battlefield which lets you really capture that cinematic wave of bugs charging towards their opponents.

In addition to these two races, Mongoose had already released a third known as the Skinnies and they had two or three more in the wings that they were developing.  Unfortunately none of these except for the Skinnies ever saw the light of day which is too bad as some of them sounded really interesting.  Ah well, at least I have my bugs.

And I think that is that as far as Desert Wars prep goes.  Now I have to finish getting ready for the long awaited 4e campaign that I've been wanting to run for my daughter but more on that later.  Until next time...

Look! It's The Meandering Simian!

So I had planned on doing a short Starship Troopers battle report.  I broke out the terrain boards, had the minis picked out and some scenery...  It was all going perfectly.  Then there were two July 4th dinners, fireworks, some late night drinking, and finally a very serious leash burn on my right hand so I decided to go with something else instead.

Some of you might remember me mentioning Tobias Jenkins, the PC that I created for the upcoming Traveller game that I'm going to be playing in.  After emailing with the GM, I decided to stick with Tobias instead of going with my other more militant option which was all well and good but left me with the problem of his ship.  More specifically, just what the heck was I going to call it and where in the world would I find a mini for it?

As for the latter, I don't even know that I will need a mini but as a completest... well, I just gotta have one.  But where to find one!  It turns out there are actually Traveller space ship minis out there to be had though they are a little pricey and I wasn't sure it would show up in time so I decided to start digging through my own mini collection.

Years ago I had picked up a good number of minis for the space fighter combat game Silent Death.  Heck, good number is an understatement since I have a few dozen of them lying around unpainted and unbased.  One of the rare finds that I made was fighter class called the Revenge which is a torpedo carrier that supposedly started it life as a stealth fighter and bears a passing resemblance to the Scout ship from Traveller.  One basing, priming, and paint job later and voila!

I'm really excited about this figure as I think its one of the best that I've done so far this year.  The level of detail and subtlety of the highlights that I managed to do on it really made me happy so I can't wait to bring it to the game, even if I never wind up using it!  It's also rekindled my desire to start painting up more of those Silent Death minis so there's another project added to the queue!

Now the only thing that was left was the name.  I thought about hitting the first random name generator that I could Google and seeing what it would come up with but I wanted to see what I could come up with first before I went the whole random route.  Let's see...  It's piloted by a human...  It's a scout ship so he would travel around space exploring a lot...  No two ways about it, the best name was one that I'd already used.  That's right.  Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the Imperial scout ship the Roaming Monkey!  Only seems fitting if you ask me.  Now my Traveller character is complete so all I have left is to dig up the rest of my SST minis... but more on that later.  Until next time...

Bringing New Meaning To The Phrase "Chocolate Death"