Stargrave: Nickstarter For The USA

Just a quick update this week.  I've been looking at the Stargrave Nickstarter but when I've looked at oversea postage lately, it's been too high for me to justify.  That's when I heard about Badger Games.

Based out of Wisconsin, they carry a number of lines from overseas such as Copplestone Castings, Fireforge, and Artizan Designs.  I've only skimmed through these and while it doesn't look like they carry everything, it at least gives those of us State side another option with a much more reasonable shipping cost.

What's really nice is they are also honoring the Nickstarter stretch goals, and it looks like the Nickstarter is going to hit every goal available!  In this case, I'm on the fence for Stargrave because of some of the things that I've heard, but the mini bundle deal?  Heck yeah!

You can get all three of the plastic sets (that's the Crew, Mercenaries, and Troopers sets), plus all of the stretch goals (currently eight metal minis, plus a gnoll sprue, three loot markers, and a d20... just because) for $69 plus $10 shipping.

The thing that has me most excited about this is the plastic minis.  How often do you find plastic system agnostic sci-fi minis?  And given the number of bits included as well, I think this will be a fun bunch of minis to mess around with.

Ultimately, I might wind up picking up Stargrave as well, but for now I'm really happy to have these.  With the buzz that I've been hearing around Five Parsecs from Home, I feel like that one is a definite buy once the pdf only release becomes available.  Add in these guys with my Core Space minis (or vice versa as well), and there are just so many options that I can't wait to explore.  Until next time...

Random Update: I Finally Played Banker of Catan

I have a confession.  I'm 48 years old and up until this past weekend, I'd never played Settlers of Catan.  Yes, I'm a gamer who never played the game what is considered by some to be one of the gateway games for the hobby.  Instead I went the Ticket to Ride route for introducing people to the hobby (see what I did there?), so I've never even thought of buying Settlers.  The question is, how did it measure up?  Was it worth the wait?  Did it live up to its legendary expectations?

Well, as the title for the post says, I've finally played the Banker of Catan.

Our friends (who are both experienced Catan players) introduced us to the game and it was fun.  It's great to hang out with friends, and I think I can see the allure of Settlers.  Then again, by the end of the game I had a total of two settlements and either three or four roads.  And yes, that's including the two settlements and two roads that I started with.

What went so horribly wrong that I started and ended the game with the same two victory points?  The dice.

With a background in Warmachine, I'm very aware of the bell curve inherent to something involving two d6.  My starting locations weren't prime real estate, but they weren't horrible either.  Unfortunately the die were stuck on a total of 5 for what felt like most of the game, so most of my "gameplay" consisted of handing out and taking back resources that everyone else was getting and spending.

Compared to something like Ticket to Ride where there is almost always something happening on your turn, this might sound pretty dull.  Well, it actually was kind of dull from a gameplay point of view but I think that I just happened to get stuck in the perfect storm that is bad dice luck.  This is nature of that ephemeral mistress that we call Lady Luck and I don't begrudge the game for that and I really had a great time hanging out with my friends and family, which makes it all worth while.  Hopefully we can play it again in the future, and then maybe I too can break out of the financial business and become one of the settlers as well.  Until next time...

Dungeons & Dragons 5e: The New Town Of Saltmarsh

The map making continues!  After working on the maps for last weeks 5e session, I decided to step away from using a pdf program to build my maps.  Just a few too many objects on the screen at once was killing the rendering speed!  Instead, I bought a one year subscription to Inkarnate.com and so far I'm loving it!  Here is my new map of the town of Saltmarsh!

Very happy with how the site functions and the end result.  Next is battle maps which are a little more fiddly, but I think part of that is just my OCD kicking it.  I have some other stamps I'm going to pull into Inkarnate and I think the extra options are going to make things a little smoother for now.

And at some point I will be getting back to the minis.  I've dug up a bunch of critters that will work for beasties in Zona Alfa, plus I've got the start of a crew as well.  I still need some more minis to round them out, but I think they will work out nicely once I get the order placed for them.  Until next time...