Throwdown: Thraka vs. Calgar 2000 points.

After a long week of work, I was able to head down to Dragon's Den Games on Sunset Boulevard and play a 2000 point game against my usual opponent Ron. I fielded my usual Ultramarines (who are looking more and more complete all the time) with a few twists. I used two Land Raiders (Normal LR and a Redeemer), a Predator Annihilator, and Marneus Calgar. I was glad I finally used the model, I bought him two years ago at Warhammer World in Nottingham, and he's been sitting in storage since. Ron fielded a mechanized Ork force consisting of about 68 Boyz, 2 mobs of Nobz, 3 Battlewagons, 3 Trukks and of course Ghazkull. There were five downed marines on the battlefield who acted as objective markers and we deployed by table halves. I knew that with Calgar and Thraka on the table, the battle was going to be bloody, and it did not disappoint.

Some quick terrain, objective markers and LotR...

I'm shaking off a Lord of the Rings hangover this morning. Yesterday I attended a screening of all three director's cuts of Lord of the Rings. The event was held at the Egyptian theater on Hollywood Blvd in LA. It was really cool to see all three of the movies on the big screen again, and it made me remember what I love most about those films. The energy in the room was great too, because the 650 seat theater was completely sold out all day. The screening made the movies feel new, which was suprising because I have probably seen all three films over 2 dozen times. I don't think I will try to do another marathon like this for some time though, I was in intense physical pain by Return of the King, it turns out that movie theater seats aren't designed for you to be in them for more than four hours. So, if you ever attempt a marathon like this, make sure you bring your stadium cushions!

Not much else for today, but here are some quick pics of some simple terrain pieces, as well as two objective markers that I made for an event some years ago. I am thinking about making more, because I am finding that I most often play objective games in 40k.

Way Back When: Final Liberation

I'm just about to dive into painting up my Razorback and Vindicator but before I do that I wanted to start a new series project. Way Back When will focus primarily on 40k stuff that happened years ago. My goal is to make it not so much focused on the game itself, but on the stuff made that was based on the game like early 40k publications, the old Black Library movies, and of course the video games. I have started to kick off my series with my favorite 40k related video game "Final Liberation".

Even the box art screams badass...

Final Liberation came out in 1997 and was published by the now defunct Strategic Simulations Inc (SSI) and developed by Holistic Games.  I actually got this game as a birthday gift from my brother, it came in a box set with three other Games Workshop titles Dark Omen, Shadow of the Horned Rat, and Chaos Gate. Being an Ultramarines player, I immediately ripped open the package and loaded up Chaos Gate, because as a budding fan boy anything Ultramarine related rocked my world. After Chaos Gate I picked up the other Final Liberation, and once I loaded it up into my parents archaic PC I was smitten. Chaos Gate had an great soundtrack (which I still hear played at tournaments today), but where Final Liberation shined was its game play and its awesome full motion video cut scenes.

You're gonna need a bigger titan...

The game play was really simple considering how many units there were on the screen at any one time. Final Liberation stayed true to Epic 40k and promised mass scale battles that smaller skirmish games like Chaos Gate couldn't match. The best part was building massive titan armies in skirmish mode blasting away at pre-generated lists that the PC would devise. The single player campaign was pretty limited and the AI was never good enough to really challenge you in a fair fight, and there was nothing really to write home about concerning the graphics, especially considering that Star Craft came out around the same time as Final Liberation. But what I remember most, and what keeps me coming back to the game are the cut scenes.

Don't make Commissar Holt use his crazy eyes on you!

It's hard to really sum up how I feel about the cut scenes in Final Liberation, but as an eleven year old kid seeing Space Marines and Orks and Imperial Guard come to life was huge. The movies themselves are all really rather well done considering that this game was obviously made on a pretty small budget. I really think that these movies capture the essence of what Warhammer 40k is all about, and all it takes is one look at them to see why. Final Liberation was made back at a time when GW still had a sense of humor about it's intellectual property, and the sense of fun in the game is what makes me come back again and again.

At one time there were plans to make a sequel to Final Liberation, and tragically that never came to pass as SSI bailed on the idea. There also used to be a very active base of fans committed to making the other races for the game (Final Lib only included Orks and the Imperium, but it was obvious there were plans to add Chaos, Tyranids, and Eldar) however I never managed to find out whether or not they had ever developed a finished product.

Final Liberation to this day remains not only my favorite 40k game, but it also ranks in my top five games period. Every so often I like to boot it up and have another go at the single player campaign, it's a great game that I think has aged very well. I still have my fingers crossed that THQ will make a sequel! :D

I've Been Painting Again!

Some new pictures of some of the painting projects I did over the holidays. 

The Chaplain isn't new, but he hasn't been seen before with his bodyguard.

Raves and Rants: True Grit, Star Trek, and Carcassonne

I saw the Coen Bros' True Grit last night and i'm glad I did. Rarely do you see westerns nowadays, much less westerns that bring such critical acclaim to the table. Even rarer is the when you see a remake done so well that it brings you to tears, despite knowing what happens. True Grit did almost everything right when doing a remake, rather than trying to redo the old film shot by shot, and punching it up with CGI and modern film techniques, the Coen Brothers instead dug deeper into the 1968 novel by Charles Portis. What they dug up was a suspenseful tale of revenge and redemption and they wove it into a compelling film that is my current front runner for Best Picture (granted I have not seen Black Swan, 127 Hours, or The Social Network yet.) What interests me is whether or not Jeff Bridges wins best actor two years in a row (he would be among the elite company of Tom Hanks and Spencer Tracy if he would) I think that he gives a performance worthy of the accolade, and I think it would be the only time in history that two different actors would win the award for playing the same role. Also, if Hailee Steinfeld doesn't win Best Supporting Actress, I think it will be a crime. Speaking of Hailee Steinfeld, how would you like a film like this to be the first one of your career, some people get all the breaks! Speaking of lucky breaks!

After True Grit, my wife and I came home and played a game of Carcassonne, a great tile based game that saw a lot of play over the holiday break. Kathleen usually beats me at this game I admit, but last night I was absolutely clobbered. I forget the final score, but I know that she beat me by over one hundred points! After taking the customary time for a husband to mope over his defeat, I got to thinking. I am recognizing a definite pattern in the Carcassone final score. I realized that one rarely sees a game end decided by only a couple of points, and that they are mostly one sided blowouts. I think that this is in large part due to the new expansion that I received for Christmas, Abbeys and Mayors. Since receiving this expansion the games are being decided by wider and wider gaps. Either this is a flaw in the expansion design, or new strategies need to be conceived, time will tell. The biggest wrench in the expansion is the barns in my opinion. The barns remove other players farmers and can end up dominating huge tracts of land which can lead to massive point swings to whoever can place their barn first. I guess it adds an element of strategy, but it feels really un-carcassony. Speaking of beatings!

Finally, we watched the J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, mostly because we love the musical score for the film and thought it was time to give it another shot. All I will say is that they never should have had a scene between Zachary Quinto and Leonard Nimoy, because it's really obvious that Quinto can't hold a candle to Nimoy's Spock. There's a number of other issues I have with the film, but when it comes down to it they are all resolved by realizing that this is a cheap thrill cash in of a film that capitalizes on a once great series that defined science fiction. Star Trek isn't meant to be sexy, nor does it need to be sexy, it just needs to be Star Trek.

Seriously?

Oh, nevermind...there have been weirder pairings...

Thats all for now, I'll probably be off for the next few days as I am doing a short film this weekend. Lets see if I can remember how to act!

Lunacy!

Nothing is better than a Terminator, with Lightning Claws for knuckles, and chainsaws for palms who belongs to a chapter called the Space Sharks. :)

Expanding the Circle: Events and Meetups...

One of the biggest challenges of hobbyist gaming is finding other like minded people who share your passions. Nerd-core is especially perilous because of the caliber of people that you might find on the other end of a forum post or a meet-up page. This is why it’s always tough to find good quality people who enjoy games and gaming in general. Here are some qualities that I look for in a gaming buddy.

1) Personable- This is by far the most important thing to me to find out about someone before meeting them face to face. This person needs to be able to put two sentences together that demonstrates he/she is able to communicate with the rest of humanity. Too often are nerds the types who can only speak in l33t and can’t talk about anything if they aren’t talking about something related to their character on World of Warcraft.

2) Has a life- The thing I hate most about some meet-ups is running into a whiny teenager who is pretending to be all grown up (when the whole point of the hobby is to be as un-grown up as possible). Unfortunately, it has happened more times than I care to recall. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I loathe meeting the beast from the basement; the thirty something de-sensitized male who lives in his parent’s house, reeks, and has an avid passion for anime. It’s always important to know the person have something resembling a life. A lot of nerds these days are growing up, they have jobs and families and are using the gaming hobby as a means to relax and have fun. It’s a progressive change in the winds and I hope it continues long into the future.

3) A sense of humor- The best people to play with are gaming for the joy of gaming. If someone can laugh at themselves when the game goes embarrassingly against them, you know you’ve found a winner. On the other end of the spectrum, if someone is declaring that they “will crush your soul and feed it to the hounds of the blood god Khorne…” you know you have a problem.

The challenge of finding a good gaming group is one I’m now facing. After living a year in the Los Angeles area, I have finally started to assemble a stable core of friends to start rolling some die with. I've just joined a group on meetup.com and they have some gaming events that I am attending in the very near future and I will be putting full reviews of my experiences and adventures here, hopefully I will meet some more people with this criteria, because Camelot is in need of some good questing!

Coming up later this week: I’ve been painting like mad!

Musings: My Year in Gaming

2010 saw a number of milestones in my life. For the first time ever, I held a permanentresidenceat a location that wasn’t located in South Dakota, and then a few months later moved into my first apartment. I appeared in my first feature length film and a pilot and was a featured extra on an episode of CSI. I found jobs with illustrious companies such as Universal Studios and Activision. Discovered a new batch of friends, and learned exactly what it meant to be a starving artist. Finally, I rounded out the year by marrying my lovely Kathleen. It was a year with a lot of very high highs and a few low lows. But where does that leave me in the realm of hobbies? My games and hobbies became something more than just a diversion; they became a form of escape, and in some cases therapy. So while 2010 wasn’t the most hobby filled year ever, it did have some definite highlights:

Board Games

I added three new flagship board games to my collection this year:

Horus Heresy (Fantasy Flight Games): Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a sucker for bits. The more pieces that a game has, equals the amount of fun that a game will be. This is why I cringe a little every time that Fantasy Flight games announces another “big box” release. I cringe because I can feel my money leaving my wallet as it yearns to join me with the magic plastic that few but Fantasy Flight can provide. Horus Heresy is one such “big box" game. The game is based on the key plot point of the Warhammer 40,000 universe and depicts the final battle for Terra between the Emperor and the Arch-Traitor Horus. The game is epic in scale, and is as bloody and faced paced as the literature that surrounds the game. I squealed for joy when I heard about the games development and patiently waited the year between the announcement and when the game finally reached my hands. I purchased the game to celebrate my hiring at Universal Studios to be a Studio Tour Guide, and it was every bit the celebration of the hobby that I was hoping it would be. Everything from the board, to the bits, to the cards, to the instructions is done to an incredibly high standard. Even the box is a little bit daunting as every conceivable inch ofthe packaging is covered in artwork that Games Workshop is known for, in fact when you open the box and take the board out you are met with a sweeping mural (and for this big of a box, it counts as a mural) of the battle for Terra. Horus Heresy is the closest that a game can come to being a cathedral without being made of stone and mortar. The game play is tight and challenging, the ‘hugeness’ is both intimidating and immersive, and the rule manual clearly describes the order of play whereas in most big box games the rules manual often leaves you completely confused in the abyss of a complicated rules set i.e. Twilight Imperium. In a word, the game is fun, its fun to play, fun to look at, and the box looks ominous as it peers down at me from atop the bookshelf in our living room. However, with most cathedral type games, Horus Heresy is yet un-played by anyone I know but myself (yes, I admit, I’ve played it alone). Most people, rather than being drawn to the magnificence of the big box, run in terror back to their copies of Monopoly and Apples to Apples dismissing the game as something more like a punishment than a good time. This has made getting people to try the game a chore, and I’m hoping in 2011 to find a like minded individual who is up for deciding the fate of mankind.

Settlers of Catan (Mayfair games): This game is an oldie but a goodie. 2010 marked the year where I finally picked up my own copy of Catan. I played this game a lot in college and it quickly became a favorite that overshadowed other favorite nerd party games like Munchkin and Heroscape. The design of the game is as simple and elegant as it ever was. It’s sheer fun that forces you to use your best haggling and bartering skills in order to build up your civilization by asking questions like “Got wood for sheep?” Unlike Horus Heresy, Catan is accessible to everyone, and I have yet to meet anyone who walked away from the table hating the game. Catan is incredibly versatile as well. It is as much of a party game as it is a hardcore strategy game. All players are constant engaged through the constant bartering, bargaining and bickering taking place. In short it’s a great gateway game for anyone looking to go a bit deeper than their Monopolies, Apples to Apples and Risks. This game is so accessible in fact, it is now getting sold by mainstream stores like Target and Wal-Mart, which is the first time that I can think of that a nerd shop exclusive game has actually broken into the mainstream. I’m slightly disappointed by the edition that I purchased however. I bought the edition that you can currently buy in Target (that’s where I bought mine). The components are flimsy, the cardstock that the landscape tiles are made from are vastly inferior to those of the previous non-commercialized edition. Also for some inexplicable reason the game comes with the most horrendously colored dice I have ever seen. My recommendation is that if you are looking for a good copy of Settlers of Catan, look for an older edition, it will be the same game, but the components are far better and will hold up a lot more than the current “commercialized” version. This game is almost a guaranteed must play whenever I am holding a game night. Catan is a great icebreaker and a great time.

Shadows Over Camelot (Days of Wonder): Rarely do you find a game that will so ruthlessly beat you down, crush your spirit, and make you question your faith in your common man that makes you come crawling back for more. Shadows Over Camelot is one such game. “Camelot” is unique because rather than one player seeking victory over everyone else, everyone competes against the game itself to achieve victory. This sounds like a rather simple concept, and at first sounds ridiculously easy. However, to take “Camelot” lightly would be a very grave mistake. The game is as devious as it is clever in the way that it plays against its players, forcing them into making panic decisions and more often than not leading to the human players defeat. In the multiple play throughs that I have done with Camelot, I have more than once thought that the game itself is alive. It sounds crazy, but all it takes is one session with the game to know what I mean. The game is set in the legends of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table where each player takes the role of one of Arthur’s Knights. Your objective is to save Camelot from destruction at the hands of Lancelot, Morgana, and the Picts and Saxons. This seems simple enough, but there’s a catch, a HUGE catch, because one of the knights at the table could turn out to be a traitor to the rest of the group, who is secretly working with the game to undermine the other players. The way that the traitor does this is ingenious, he/she can play cards that make certain quests difficult or impossible to achieve, wipe out all progression in the game, aid the Picts and Saxons in besieging Camelot, or even kill loyal knights, and once you’re dead in this game, you’re out and trust me, every dead loyal knight means that Camelot is even harder to win. I really wanted this game for some time ever since I heard the review for it on the D6 generation podcast and finally got it as a Christmas present from my wife and her sister. The long wait did not disappoint as Camelot has quickly become one of my favorite all time games. It’s so fun in fact that I went out almost immediately and picked up it’s sequel Merlin’s Company, which adds more knights, more challenges, and the potential of a second traitor to the mix. The games that I played were all with the bare minimum of four players, the main game can play up to seven, with Merlin’s Company the total goes up to eight. I can’t wait to play with more players and two traitors. Camelot is a little slower and more ponderous game than Catan and Heresy, but this is only because the players involved almost need to hold a conference on a turn by turn basis to ensure that they can keep the game winnable. I can see where this game wouldn’t be for everyone, but I am curious as to how some of my casual gaming friends would react to it. I believe that it definitely has the potential for mass appeal, and will definitely be on the table my next gaming night.

Well that does it for my year in Board Gaming, next time we touch on games of the video variety! Stay Tuned!