Kickstarter: Harbour from Tasty Minstel Games

Just a few days ago Tasty Minstrel Games unleashed their latest endeavor onto Kickstarter and it has already exploded.  Blasting past its meager goal of $15,000 it has already flown past twelve stretch goals and doesn't look like its slowing down any time soon. The crazy thing is this is for a project with a single pledge level, a massive $20.  How is this possible?  Does it level up to the hype that must be driving this thing?  In my opinion, yes.

One of my friends happened to receive a play test copy of Harbour a couple of weeks ago and I was finally able to get in a couple of games.  The game is very straight forward to learn and play but there is definitely a depth to the strategy involved.

The basic concept is that you are trying to be the first player to purchases four buildings on the harbor and have the highest victory point total.  Getting the money for these purchases is done by interacting with the various buildings to acquire goods and then selling them off.  Two things make this simple sounding task much more challenging to accomplish.  The first is that only one player can interact with a building at a time so planning the timing of your strategy can be pretty tricky. And it that wasn't enough of a twist there is also the fact that the market prices are constantly in flux.  Just when you have everything lined up to make that big purchase someone else sells off their stock, flooding the market and driving the price right through the floor.

Personally I definitely recommend checking out this game.  It's a lot of fun to play and between the various characters you can play and the variety of buildings involved in the game there is a lot of replay value with this game as well.  Add on the fact that this one runs a mere $20 and I really don't think you can go wrong with it.  Until next time...

Workbench: Gathering The Troops

About a month and a half ago (that long? really?) I mentioned that I was going to make some proxy Trenchers to field with Magnus.  There was some unexpected training thrown into the middle of all of this so I haven't made a ton of progress but I have been able to get some work done on them.

Apologies for the somewhat washed out photo but I'm working with an iPhone camera with florescent lights.  It still gives you an idea how they are coming out though.  The main problem that I've encountered assembling them has been the left hand.  For some reason they sculpted it so that it rests on top of the rifle as you can see with the trooper on the left which looks pretty awkward.  The guns are quite heavy in the front so how exactly they are supposed to hold these things up to aim is a little bit of a mystery.  I could see some kind of a shoulder strap being used to help brace it but I don't really feel like trying to fashion twenty plus fiddly little straps.

Instead I've started cutting off the left hand at the wrist and flipping it over.  This lets me position the arm so that the hand it under the magazine as you can see on the right.  This puts the gun too high to have it in a firing position but does look a little more natural in my opinion.  Plus is also lets me throw in another pose which is always a good thing.

I'm also pretty happy with how their size compares to regular Warmachine minis.  Here is one of the Trenchers with a mechanithrall to give you an idea.

 

The proportions do seem to be a bit smaller but overall I think they are close enough to work as a good replacement.  Now I just need to finish converting the rest of the regular troops and figure out how I'm going to represent the grenade porters, sniper, and captain.  The last two should be the easiest ones just by using bits from the original Trencher minis but I'm still debating how to best represent the grenade porters.  I do have some ideas but I need to pick up some bits first to see how they work out but more on that later.  Until next time...

Random Updates: Heading Back To Altair

Back when I was in the third grade I remember reading a choose your own adventure book about exploring a planet around Altair.  I loved that book and I even made some games inspired by it as well (complete with homemade miniatures even!).  Time wore on and as the years passed if faded away to the back of my mind.

A couple of years ago my wife and I happened to talk about choose your adventures and I remembered this book again but the name kept eluding me.  I tried typing in different keywords in Google searches but they always turned up blank.  I had finally given it up as a lost cause... until this weekend.

For some reason the name just popped into my head.  I hopped onto Amazon and found it in their used book section for a penny (gotta love buying used book on Amazon) so I ordered it right away.  Even now it's winging its way toward me and I can't wait to crack it open.

Will it be as good as I remember? I'll find out soon enough but either way it'll be nice to relive that little piece of my childhood again.  Until next time...

Workbench: Expanding The Fleet!

Last week while I was at Greenhouse Games I happened to find the stat card for the Artful Dodger for Firefly the boardgame.  I asked Josh about it and he told me to take it and he would see if he could find the ship piece to go with it.

Long story short, I'll be picking up the ship on board game night at the Greenhouse!  Now I just have to decide how to paint it.  The regular color scheme is pretty basic so I might do something different just to mix it up.  A Jolly Roger scheme comes to mind (since I definitely see the Pirates and Bounty Hunters expansion in my future) but so does a Hello Kitty scheme. This is either the sure sign of brilliance or perhaps just a mild case of sleep deprivation; they are very similar after all.  We'll just have to see what happens in the end.  Until next time...