hello - gamer

"It all comes back to gaming for you, doesn't it?"

Yes. Yes, it does.


One of my friends is over in Belgium right now. She had sent back some photos of the canals. I had commented on how much they reminded me of terrain which is why she sent back the quote.



It does look beautiful but it reminds me that I need to build some terrain for Mordheim. Sometime after the addition, when I’ll have the space to keep it. After I finish putting together and painting my warbands. Of course, I’ll have to reread the rules again at that time.

Axis & Allies

I’ve never been a big fan of Axis & Allies. I’ve played it a few times – usually as Japan but don’t really like the game. I had to pick one up – to complete the GameMaster Games series. I already had Broadsides and Buccaneers, Shogun, Conquest of the Empire, and Fortress America. I’ve always preferred Risk, Diplomacy, or even Fortress America to it. I’ve had the game for close to a decade now and just sat down last night to finally de-sprue it.

The people that I know who do play it usually have a copy of it themselves so the one time someone pulled mine out to play, they were quite dismayed that I hadn’t taken the couple of hours it takes to remove the pieces from the sprues. Having just read the Usborne Introduction to the Second World War, I wanted to track the progress of the war on the world map. The game set up seems quite accurate. I was rather impressed and will probably need to actually try it again sometime.

The kids also thought the game looked pretty neat. D3 thought the ships looked real on the water and G thought the Rising Sun markers looked like candies.

Survivor Micronesia picks

I’m torn. From the Fans, I like Joel, Tracy, and Mikey B. From the Favorites, I liked Pavrati, James, and Yau-Man. I couldn’t recall who Amanda was at first (from last season) but she’s definitely on my team again.

Ozzy will probably score a bunch of points, but I’m not picking him. With Yau-Man joining an alliance of evil with Alan Alda (Jonathan), Ami, and crazy Eliza, he’s out of the running as well.

I’m going to go with the current lowest combination of 2 Airai and 3 Malakal – excluding both Kathy and Yau-Man. My picks are Joel and Tracy from Airai, James and Pavrati from Malakal, and Amanda as my Wild Card. This gives me a current score of 29 out of a maximum score of 37 for Kathy, Yau-Man, a Malakal, and 2 more Airais.

BSG Razor

We watched the original series when it was first on in the late 70s and enjoyed it then. We watched and enjoyed the war series Black Sheep Squadron, and, thanks to the heads up from JP, really enjoyed Space Above and Beyond (even thought it started slow – like Pags, we thought they should have gotten their planes sooner). We have watched the new series since the mini series and finally watched Razor last week.

We keep hoping to like it. The military stuff looks nice. We like most of the cast. The radio broadcast bugs us – but only minimally. We just don’t like the series. The pacing was super slow. We realized that when they had finally reached Kobol at the end of season one that the miniseries and first season had only covered material that had all been covered in the pilot of the original series.

They had also gutted out most of the humor of the original series. We were okay with them changing the genders of Boomer and Starbuck. But they made Starbuck grim when he used to be the one that helped keep the balance by being lighter than Apollo.
The updated Cylon raiders and Vipers looked fine and we liked how the Vipers moved in space. The new mechanical Cylons looked fabulous – they were just woefully underused.

Any of the characters that we ended liking turned out to be cylons. Or else they quickly died. The only two exceptions are Adama and President Roslin who remained human. Maybe this was what they meant to do, portray the robots as more human and likeable that the actual humans.
Razor had more of the same. Being compressed, it didn’t drag as much but did have enough cases to remind us of the lack of humor in the series. We did like the central character who, of course, dies. The one bright spot was seeing the old Cylons again done up in the new CG. Go toasters!

Projects 2008

We’re two months into this year and I haven’t set any projects yet. I’m still torn on what to start. Shan’s birthday is Keycon weekend so I’m not sure what we’re doing or if we’ll be able to go.

Without a Keycon deadline, costuming will be a bit delayed until the crunch in the fall. Right now, both of my kids want to go as zombies, so that should be fairly simple to achieve. With Jeremy Bulloch scheduled to come for the Comiccon, I’ll probably do some more work on D3’s Boba Fett. If I can get some of the guns, I’ll do a Jango Fett as well. I want to fix my Ghostbuster backpack and make some traps and meters. I’m still toying with making some space marine armor. Depending on who I can rope in to a new color project, there are always Arc Troopers / Rebel Commandos / Snowtroopers on the to-do list as well.

Upsizing-wise, I can still do more planes for Canvas Eagles. I can finish the ships for Man o’ War. I can upsize the RoboRally figures. I can do a Titan and tanks for 40K. I can start upsizing Star Wars Miniature Battles, or even make some Mechwarriors for Solaris VII. I also have a bunch of cars for Car Wars in 3” scale or even 1:32 or 1:25. I can also do 3D maps for Horrorclix or Crimson Skies. I still haven’t locked down what we’re planning for Wincon 2008.

I’m probably going to try to finish the Aliens egg I’ve had on my worktable since before we moved to clear up the space. I’ll also probably do a K-9 (shell anyways) and start a static R5-D4 or even a R2-D2. I might even try the Pulse rifle, Space 1999 communicator, Jack Sparrow compass, or Terminator memory chips – I have papercraft files for all of these and might try making them in styrene or wood.

For now, I’m working through reading some more books from the library and finishing getting caught up on the taped shows. We're almost there.

Cthulhu mine!

I finally got my first big convention figure. I picked up the Heroclix Cthulhu from Max on Friday. It had been opened and the map has been laminated, but it looks very nice. They say that once you connect the wings you can’t take them off but I was able to without much trouble. This way he fits back in the box a bit better. I have to go back and get the rest of the cultist pogs that come with the set (24 seemed like so many).

They had a Wizkids convention weekend deal, where those of us who can’t get to the conventions can pick up some of the cool promo figures. I missed the Fooms for $100, but was able to get convention Thor, and Batman, as well as another convention map and another Vlad. He even threw in a few of the Pirates packs.

I also picked up a two of the Horrorclix Lab pack that he had on sale for $5 each. Out of the 8 figures, I got a Veteran Candy Striper and a Unique Mi-Go that I needed. Since the Avatar of Cthulhu was the last Unique I got from the basic set, I was very happy to see the Mi-Go from this one. Especially since he consistently seems to be going for the upper teens to low twenties on ebay.

Survivor

We have watched Survivor since the first season. It’s always interesting to see how people think and scheme – it’s like watching a Diplomacy LARP. The only other “reality shows” (which we used to call “game shows”) that we regularly follow are the Amazing Race and the Last Comic Standing (stupid Dat Phan). We used to follow Celebrity The Mole because Corbin and Stephen were hilarious. The wife also follows Big Brother but I usually try to avoid getting sucked into it as it takes up three nights a week.

At work, for the last several seasons, I have run a fun pool as well. Basically, you pick 5 Survivors following a basic guideline and get points based on what they do and how long they last. We’ve modified it a bit from the original to include being exiled or captured and the extra hidden immunity idol. The other big change is that we don’t take picks until after the first show – so no-one gets the person who was first voted out. Plus this gives you a small chance to see if any of the Survivors make an impression on you.

The rules for picking your team vary depending on how they split up the Survivors in the first show. Usually they have two distinct teams so you would pick two Survivors from each team and then pick an extra Survivor who would be your “wild card”. The wild card would count as part of your team and would be used to break ties if the players otherwise had the same scores. When they have done three teams, you would pick one Survivor from each team, plus two extra players – one of which would be your wild card.

The points accrue each episode as follows:
- Survival = 5 points per episode / tribal council
- Being on a team that wins a Reward Challenge = 1 point
- Being on a team that wins an Immunity Challenge = 2 points
- Winning individual Reward Challenge = 2 points
- Winning individual Immunity Challenge = 3 points
- Being the Ultimate Survivor = 20 points
- Coming in second place = 10 points
- Being sent to Exile Island = 1 point
- Being kidnapped = 1 point
- Finding the Individual Immunity Idol = 3 points
- Using the Individual Immunity Idol = 2 points