Books read - January to April 2016

Jan
Craft Corps by Vickie Howell
40K Planetstrike by Phil Kelly
The World of Kong – A Natural History of Skull Island by Daniel Falconer
Constructing Green Lantern: From Page to Screen by Ozzy Inguanzo
The Samurai Warrior: The Golden Age of Japan’s Elite Warriors 1560 – 1615 by Ben Hubbard
40K Cities of Death by Andy Hoare
Superheroes! by Laurence Maslon and Michael Kantor
Fantasy Underground: How to Draw Vampires by Mike Butkus and Merrie Destedfano
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor by Newmarket Press

Feb
Byrne’s Complete Book of Pool Shots by Robert Byrne
A Fistful of Kung Fu by Andrea Sfiligoi
En Garde! – Swashbuckling Skirmish Wargames Rules by Craig Woodfield
Game Graphics – The Best New Video & Board Game Design by Charles Brunner
Wild Wild West: The Illustrated Story behind the Film by Barry Sonnenfeld and Jon Peters
Standard Book of Pool and Billiards by Robert Byrne
The Con Artist Handbook by Joel Levy
Model Soldiers by Henry Harris
Model Soldiers in Color by Roy Dilley
Fakes & Forgeries by Brian Innes

Mar
Lunatics by Dave Berry and Alan Zweibel
Creative Dollhouses from Kits by Robert Schleicher
Stage Costume – Step by Step by Mary T. Kidd
The Legend of Zorro by Bill Yenne
I Shouldn’t Even Be Doing This: And Other Things that Strike Me as Funny by Bob Newhart

Apr
The Encyclopedia of Dollhouse Decorating Techniques by William Dansi, Caroline List, and Nick Forder
40K Battle Missions by Jervis Johnson
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Catching Fire by Suzane Collins
Mockingjay by Suzane Collins
Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet by Stephen Segaller

Icebergs ahead

Back when I started getting into gaming, Dragon magazine used to include either a complete game or a module in every issue. One of the first issues I bought had Search for the Emperor’s Treasure in it by Tom Wham (Dragon 51). I remember redrawing all the counters so that I could keep my copy of the magazine in good shape.
This is where my deep love of Tom Wham games started.
File 13, Snits’ Revenge, Awful Green Things from Outer Space, The Great Khan War, Mertwig’s Maze, and others all had that quirky art and deceptively simple but elegant rules. My favorite of the TSR Mini-Games also happened to be made by Tom Wham – Icebergs.
While elegant, the small size does mean that a lot of people overlook this game. I’ve brought it to conventions, and we played it a lot in the day. It remains firmly in my top 10 games, but I always wanted to make a larger version of it.
With the extra games I have picked up, I can use one of the boards and recover it with the Icebergs map. I can either enlarge it or redraw it.

The game plays up to 6 players and doesn’t have too many components. I would like to do wooden ships, fuel and cargo markers, and then larger tiles for the ice floes and icebergs. Plus create a nice insert to hold everything together.