Have at thee!

So our final project is to fully design a game. The challenge part was to not have a roll-and-move mechanic.

My three main ideas to pursue were:
- a spaceship race game - giving energy each turn to speed/shields/weapons. This would involve a board or set of tiles to make various boards. Each player (2-6/8) would control a craft. They would have a control panel that they would have to adjust each turn that would affect how much they could move. They could also assign points to either front or back shields or weapons to try and damage the other crafts.

- a giant robot battle board game (having read a bit of MechWarrior and Battletech - plus being a RoboJox fan). The giant robot game (2 – 4 players) would be a very simple version with the robots having various weapon types and being able to damage each other. Enough damage would render the various weapons inoperable and finally destroy the robot.

- a gladiator-type board game. The Gladiator game (2 – 6 players) would allow you to equip with various weapons that could do different damage. Armor would be minimal. There would also be the capacity to be pitted against animals – lions, tigers, boars, bulls, wolves.

The giant robot and the gladiator are based around similar concepts. With a board for the arena and the players controlling 1 or 2 figures. I was thinking I could use the battle mechanics as a test bed for my Jugger game rules.

I had also toyed with a western gunfight card game (which seemed to play too fast) or a fencing/swordfighting game (but would have to make different from En Garde or Highlander).

After further thought, I decided to pursue the fencing game. It would involve a board for the piste, markers for the fencers, and cards for the target moves. Being forced off the end of the piste would score as would an attack to an area that the opponent couldn’t defend. The various weapons – epee, foil, saber would all have different target areas.
I have solidified the rules, and had a few test games to ensure it works. The game has the flow I was hoping to achieve as well as capturing some of the unique terms (balestra, riposte, etc).
I have focused solely on Foil fencing to start. After the course I will come back to it and finish sabre and epee.

I have arranged some blind testing - I just have to get the rules from my head to fully realized on paper before that can happen though.

New Space Hulk!

Games Workshop is releasing a new version of Space Hulk. Space Hulk is how they sucked me into Warhammer 40K (or as it was known back then - Rogue Trader) in the first place. A bunch of us each picked one of the boxed sets – Blood Bowl, Dark Future, and Space Hulk. I was the one who got Space Hulk. I eventually ended up picking up the others as well.
Space Hulk was reminiscent of the movie Aliens – Marines in power armor fighting Aliens in a shadowy Space Hulk. It was fast based and I still find it fun to play. The figures were fairly nice for the time – the terminators are a bit blocky now, but the genestealers still are great figures.

I got all the extra sets – Deathwing, Genestealer, and the Campaign book. I used to use all the extra tiles to make a huge map and run a game with up to eight players at conventions. When the second edition came out I didn’t get it. I didn’t like some of the rule changes but did love the new terminator models.

The new set is a limited edition. I wouldn’t mind getting it but I probably won’t be able to get it before it sells through. It’s on my list but so are my White Dwarf renewal, the new 40K boxed set, LOTR Battle of Five Armies set, the new Warhammer boxed set, and the Apocalypse rules.

Life move pretty fast - if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it

John Hughes died on Aug 6. He had been the writer for a bunch of formative movies from my youth. While I wasn’t a big fan of Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, or the Home Alone movies, the Vacation movies, Mr Mom, Uncle Buck, the Great Outdoors and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles all were great fun.

The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, and Career Opportunities were favorites and Some Kind of Wonderful and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off both are in my top films. I saw most of these in the theatre when they came out and have SKOW and FBDO as DVDs.

He had a way of writing realistic dialog that resonated with us at the time and still holds up well. He helped create the Brat Pack of actors that still hold a dear place in our hearts. We hadn’t really seen much from him lately (it seems that he had been working lately under an alias – Edmond Dantes) so we’ve been missing him for a while already. His passing just guarantees that we won’t see anything more from him – just from those that he helped inspire.

MechWarriors at Winners

I don’t often go to Winners and I probably should pop by more often. I think I’ve been 6 times in the last 5 years – and three of those were this week. The local ones have some of the Wizkids MechWarrior Action packs. I was finally able to get my first Solaris VII set – Light mechs. I’ve been wanting to get the sets from when they appeared 2 years ago but didn’t want to pay $30 a set. Winners had it for $10 – that’s much more in my range.

I also picked up the House Davion for $8, the Wolf’s Dragoons Gamma Regiment for $11. These were all at the Garden City store. The Regent store had the MechWarrior Champions Vol 2 for $10. The Empress and Ellice store only had the House Davion.