Cerebus - finally halfway

I met Dave Sim back in the early 90s at a comic book trade show in St Louis. Arlene Sorkin was there as the voice of Harley Quinn (debuted 1992) and The Crow movie wasn’t out yet (1994).

Two people at a time could go in his booth and ask questions and get a sketch by him. At the time I was always carrying my sketchbook so he did a nice sketch of Cerebus in it for me. At the time I had only read the first phone book and part of High Society. Luckily the other person I was with was a solid reader of the series and was able to talk about the newest issues.

I have the first four ‘phone books’ – Cerebus, High Society, Church & State volumes 1 and 2. These are called phone books because they collect about 25 issues each. I’ve had Jaka’s Story on my wish list for several years but finally just bought it and Melmoth and read both of those.

This brings me up to issue 150, or about halfway through the 300 issue series. That’s quite the accomplishment for a single writer or artist to have that kind of a run on a book, but to have one person write, draw, and publish a 300 issue series is a feat we will not soon see duplicated. A small note on this run was that the fantastic backgrounds were being drawn by Gerhard since 1984.

Now I have a bit of a decision to make. Do I stop here or do I press on to the end?

Some people have listed Jaka’s Story as the high point of the series and others list the Church & State arc as the best, but I really prefer the original sword and sorcery of the original Cerebus going into High Society. The next arc – Flight-Women-Reed-Minds has a reputation as being more misogynistic than the rest. The series up to Melmoth has also been described as the first half of the series being written in a female voice, with the back half repeating the themes but being written a male voice, and then the final two books being the coda.

If I push on, I almost have to commit to reading the next arc. I’m pretty certain I will, as I would like to see how it ends up, and do want to support Dave Sim, both as a Canadian comic book artist, and as an independent publisher. Unfortunately, he is not in the best of health, and as an independent publisher, if he goes, I’m not if sure if anyone else would print them. You can keep up with his progress on this blog about him.

New games - show and save coupons

The Show & Save books usually have a coupon for 20% purchases for a local game store - GameKnight. The last book expires today so it’s a good excuse to pop in and pick up some games. I was looking for Scoville, the Squid expansion for Survive! and the wife wanted me to pick up the 10th Anniversary edition of Ticket to Ride. I wasn’t able to get any of these. They didn’t have the first two and the box on the only copy of Ticket to Ride 10Ed was dished on the bottom – am if I’m going to be paying over $100 for a game it had either be super rare or in great condition.

I looked at getting the regular edition of Ticket to Ride with the 1910 expansion but didn’t as there would be no point in buying it and then upgrading to the anniversary edition. I almost got the Ticket to Ride Europe and the 1912 expansion but decide against it for now. It took some time to make this decision while I walked around looking at the other games as I knew she wanted the trains in the special edition but also wanted the game.

Instead I picked up the second edition of Cash ‘n’ Guns, and Axis & Allies:D-Day. The Cash ‘n’ Guns had always looked neat and the second edition can play up to 8 players. It also has black foam guns with orange tips instead of orange guns. It may not be for everyone but it seems like it would be a good fit for our group.
I was never a huge fan of Axis & Allies but I like the looks of the smaller sets – D-Day, Battle of the Bulge, and Guadal Canal. They can also play well with less people.

New 40K set and codices

I hadn’t even managed to get up to speed on the 6th edition of Warhammer 40K when they release an even newer edition last May. I received a 7th edition set for Christmas and, with the current lower gas prices leaving me a bit of extra money, I picked up a few of the new codices.

With the change to 6th edition, they changed the format of the codex to be a hardcover book. Those of us who were with the game since Rogue Trooper recall the problems that Games Workshop used to have with the binding on their hardcovers, but they have long since solved their issues.

I already had a 6th edition Chaos Space Marine codex that I picked up when I got the (now old) boxed set - Dark Vengeance, but have been watching the old codices get replaced by the 6th and now the 7th editions without picking up any as they churned through the updates. The main reason I got the Chaos Space Marine was because it was the first 6th edition codex and the boxed set included both Chaos and Dark Angels figures.

The four codices I picked up were Tyranid and Imperial Knights from the 6th edition and Orks and Space Wolves from 7th edition. That’s two of the last three sixth editions and the first two seventh editions. I’m working (or at least planning to work) on my Tyranid army, and the boy and I both like the Space Wolves so we’ll work on that as well. I also picked up even more Orks a few years ago with the fifth edition – including gargants.

The Imperial Knights seem so cool but the codex only has 6 pages of actual rules – describing the 2 variants of Imperial knights. The models are also crazy expensive but there are a few sites that have papercraft models that you can use, plus you can make an army with three models. It’s only a matter of finding the time to make them and the space to store them.

Top Ten New Games for 2014

Inspired by The Dice Tower and their top 10 lists, I put together my top 10 games for 2014 as well. Note that these are games that I have played for the first time in 2014 not necessarily games that were released in 2014. With all the games that I already have, I got another 69 games plus expansions last year. Some were gifts, some were purchased at the thrift stores and conventions, some were from Kickstarter, and some were new.

The new games were Bang – the Dice Game, Batman Gotham City Strategy Game, Battleship Galaxies, Bejeweled, Bejeweled Frenzy, Blue Max World War I Air Combat, Cardline – Animals, Coin Age, Firefly, In Her Majesty’s Name, Let’s Kill, Lords of Vegas, Lords of Waterdeep, Love Letter – Tempest, Marvel Dice Masters, Nuts!, Pairs, Qwirkle, Risk Legacy, Roll For It!, Spot It!, Takenoko, Telestrations, Templar Intrigue, Timeline – Diversity, Timeline – Music & Cinema, Tsuro of the Seas, Unusual Suspects, Warhammer 40,000 – seventh edition, Wits and Wagers Family, and Yetisburg. Coin Age, Pairs, and Templar Intrigue were from Kickstarter.

The ones I picked up not new were 13 Dead End Drive, Battleship Express, Bionicle: Mask of Light, Boggle, Boggle Jr, Captain Parks Imaginary Polar Expedition, Charlie Brown All Stars, Clue: Discover the Secrets, Clue: Secrets & Spies, Dear World, Edison & Co, Finance and Fortune, Harry Potter: Diagon Alley, Inside Moves, Isolation, King’s Court, Lego Ninjago, Life – Pirates of the Caribbean – Dead Man’s Chest, Monopoly Clone Wars, Neopets: Adventures in Neopia, Nexus Ops, Pirates of the Caribbean DVD Treasure Hunt, Pit, Power Lunch, Quiddler, Rail Baron, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Shakin’ Sorry, Sharp Shooters, Sky Galleons of Mars, Sorry Sliders – Cars 2, Star Trek Starship Tactical Combat Simulator, Stop Thief, Storage Wars:The Game, Supremacy, Tannhauser, Ten Commandments Bible Game, Yahtzee:Texas Hold ‘Em, and Zaxxon.

A lot of these did not hit the table this year. Some games from previous years were finally played.

Games that I played for the first time that did not make my list were Bejeweled, Bejeweled Frenzy, Boggle, Cards Against Humanity, Isolation, Love Letter – Tempest, Nuts!, Pairs, Shakin’ Sorry, Unusual Suspects, XLR8, and Yahtzee Jr.

Roll For It! and Spot it! just missed my top ‘10’. They are both fun enough to play and easy enough to teach new people, but seem to be lacking in replayability with the same group. My daughter destroys all others in Spot It! through all the variations. Depending on your group, it may have more of a range. I played Roll For it! with both 2 and 5 players. I believe 3-4 may be more of a sweet spot. With 2 players you can get bogged down going for the big sets, and with 5 it takes just a bit too long to come around again and the small sets go too fast.

14 – Battle Cry – 150 Anniversary – It’s card driven – similar to Battle Masters or Assault on Hoth except by section of the battlefield instead of by troop. We’re not super into the Civil War but thought we would try the system as it is the basis for the Memoir ’44 system. It seems fun enough and we look forward to playing through more of the scenarios. Plus the figures are pretty detailed.

13 – Revolution – It has a very euro-type feel to it. You have to try to control territory by bidding with blackmail, force, or gold. It plays well enough. We now have the first expansion and are looking forward to trying it again.

12 – Monsters Menace America – A grail find of mine. I was only able to play it once this year but that was fun. It had a light Fortress America vibe to it with each player controlling both a monster and a branch of the military during the main play, and then a bit of a monster battle at the end.

11 – Yetisburg – When I saw this on sale for $2 at Paizo I had to get it for the name alone. Again, we’re not super fans of the American Civil War but the card play makes this interesting. You have to manage your attrition to avoid losing and to be able to mount a proper offensive.

10 – Castellan – We have both sets so we can play a four player game. You each have a set of towers and walls to add to a castle depending on your cards. Your goal is to complete courtyards containing the most towers. Each player has the same set of cards and pieces so the management is what makes the difference. It plays well and is easy to teach.

9 – Timeline – Music & Cinema – Each player is given a set of tiny cards that they have to take turns playing into the correct place in a timeline. It is a bit harder on the younger kids who are guessing more often but played well with the rest of us.

8 – Hive – I was finally able to get the kids to play this. We picked up a set of the Carbon version (in black and white) last year. I love the solid feel of the bakelite pieces. The play takes a little bit to get used to but does seem like it will have a lot of replay in it.

7 – Cardline – Animals – This is similar to the Timeline series but with standard sized cards. You have the option of sorting the animals by size, weight, or life expectancy. It plays slightly better than Timeline due to the three game choices but mostly gets the big ranking nod due to the larger cards.

6 – Battleship Galaxies – Contains a lot of cool plastic starships with a fairly solid game behind it. It comes with several scenarios and cards and points to make your own battles. This has a lot of life in it and I am pretty sad that it did not do well enough to warrant an expansion with more ships. Even so, it seems like it will have enough to keep us involved for a while.

5 – Qwirkle – You places tiles to match rows by color or by shape. It has a good Scrabble feel to it without having to deal with all the words – in case you have that one player who is leagues ahead of the rest of you.

4 – Rocketville – A robot-political game where you are trying to win enough planetary elections in an area to score more points. There seems to be enough strategy in knowing when to draw more cards and which planets you can let slip for an area and for which ones to fight heavily.

3 – Takenoko – A lovely looking game with a lot of good gameplay. You have to get the most points in one of three ways – by playing tile combinations, by growing certain types of bamboo, or by having the panda eat certain types of bamboo. The wooden pegs for the bamboo are a good weight and the pastel colors make the game look pretty during play.

2 – Bang: The Dice Game – We didn’t play the regular card version of Bang – even though the large bullet case looked tempting. Due to the guys at the Dice Tower going on about this game, we tried it out. It is a pretty easy hidden-goal game to introduce new players. It is quite streamlined in play and plays pretty quick and fun.

1 – Walk the Plank – This has a Family Business-kind of feel to it. You have to program moves for pirates to try and get the other players’ pirates into the water while trying to save yours. It is very quick, and one game leads to a few more as you try to get revenge for the last game. It replaced Get Bit! with us and is a good filler for new players or when we don’t have time for Family Business.

Books read September to December 2014

Sept
Time-Life Books: The Old West – The Miners by Robert Wallace
The Book of Caddyshack by Scott Martin

Oct
Warhammer Armies: Lizardmen (6th edition) by Anthony Reynolds
The Art & Craft of Wooden Toys by Ron Fuller and Cathy Meens
Warships in Miniature by Michael Ainsworth
Lightstrike: The Art of John Zeleznik by Cartouche Press
Modelling Sailing Men-of-War by Philip Reed
The Future of Fantasy Art edited by Aly Fell and Duddlebug

Nov
HALO – The Essential Visual Guide by Jeremy Patenaude
The World’s Worst Weapons by Martin J. Dougherty
50 years of James Bond by Life Books
Houdini: A magician among the spirits by Harry Houdini
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial from Concept to Classic: The Illustrated Story of the Film and the Filmmakers by Steven Spielberg and Melissa Mathison
Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Portfolio: The Explorers Edition by Sports Illustrated

Dec
Make It Right: Inside Home Renovations with Canada’s most trusted Contractor by Mike Holmes
Heaven by Walter Iooss
24 – The Ultimate Guide by Michael Goldman
Time-Life Books: The Old West – The Frontiersmen by Paul O’Neil
Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Portfolio: Paradise Found by Sports Illustrated
Queen – The Illustrated Biography by Tim Hill
Michael Jackson – A Life in the Spotlight by Philip Todd
The Rolling Stones – 50 Years of Rock ‘n’ Roll by Life Books
With the Beatles by Life Books
Crazy Stuff by Nicolas Marcais & Philippe Marchand

Tannhauser - complete

Having had time to go through the Tannhauser deal, it was very complete. It looks like it is missing a few basic tokens from the basic set, like smoke, and fire tokens from the Daedalus but nothing major. I ordered another Daedalus, a Frankenstahl, and an extra Itami (to paint red) to complete my set. I also ordered the last novel – Enigma, and picked up a Sky Full of Stars for Babylon 5 Call to Arms, and a Za! 30 Minutes or Free.

This means that I now have all of the Tannhauser set unless I want to continue into Dust Tactics, and I have crossed another minor item off my Grail List.

We did get a chance to set up Tannhauser at Jimcon and started to play it but, since I always forget that Jimcon only goes to 4pm on Sundays not 6pm, we had to stop before we got into combat. We only had time to pick our load outs and had a few turns of moving before we realized our error. Still it was interesting enough to warrant picking up the remainder. I look forward to playing a full game of this while on holidays after Christmas.

Streamlining games

I’ve been packing away some of the extra games to go to the storage locker. I had a bunch of games on the shelves that we don’t really play often anymore – like Wabbit Wampage and People. Also those that we have a few extra copies of games – like Heroquest and Star Wars Duels as well as multiple versions of the same game – like Monopoly and Clue. By putting these into storage, it streamlines the shelves down to make the games we do play more accessible. Plus it eliminates the stacks of games that are piled around the room.

It doesn’t look nearly as impressive but it also looks less overwhelming. Hopefully, this should make it easier to actually play some of the new games we keep buying as well as try some of the old games I keep getting at the thrift stores. This will help us to see which ones we should keep handy and which ones can also get packed away.