Take a leap and a bound into Runebound

This is my oldest son's favorite game and has been for the last 3 years. He is going to be coming back from school next week for Spring Break and has specifically asked that this game be ready for some play time. If you are a fan of fantasy, then this is the game for you!

From the Fantasy Flight Games Website:

"The dark lords are gathering, ancient powers are awakening, and a chill has fallen across the land. It is a time of danger and rising evil. It is a time of fear for the weak and powerless. It is a time of heroes willing to face the darkness and bring the light of hope to a realm covered in shadow.

The world of Runebound is a magical, dangerous world of powerful wizards, noble knights, vicious monsters, and power-mad tyrants. It is a world of great quests and mighty deeds. Above all, it is a world of legendary heroes, and the time has come for you to join them"

Despite selling well, Runebound (First Edition) received criticism that forced Fantasy Flight Games to rework several basic concepts and adjust the game balance. First released in 2004, Runebound was quickly updated and re-released as Runebound Second Edition just over one year later. Customers who had purchased the original game were given a limited-time offer to upgrade at half the normal cost via the Fantasy Flight Games website.

Since it's updated release, the game has taken the industry by storm and become a popular favorite among fantasy gamers and has been consistently ranked in the top 200 games on Board Game Geek. It's ability to play with two or several people really allows this game to be played with a variety of groups, and it's solo play ability makes this a good game to play it you can't seen to find a group!

In addition, it is easily one of the most expanded games of all time, with 4 big box expansions and 25 (or more) deck expansions which change the games plots, add characters and items and much more!

Looking for a new fantasy game to play? Try Runebound! (Note: If you decide to purchase this on ebay, be sure you are purchasing the 2nd edition... if you are not sure, the second edition had plastic minis and the first edition just used cardboard tokens for the characters). 

Ebay Again

As I had mentioned a few times over the last several weeks, I've been slowly going through my game collection and 'trimming the fat'... this weekend I made a decision to get rid of some games that I really like (a lot) but doubt I will ever play again...

My Catan Series of games.

Catan is a great game... it is hard to sum up in only a few words, and with this not being a review, the best thing I can say is head over to BGG and read up on their Catan Series of articles which has a wealth of information.

All in all I have nearly all of the Catan games that have been released, and the only one I am keeping is the "Kids of Catan" which is a game for 3-5 year olds (with my now having 3 boys falling close to that age group, I thought I'd keep that one around).

Tonight I listed the following auctions:

1) The Settlers of Catan base game (plus 5 expansions for it including Seafarers, Cities & Knights and all 5-6 player expansions).

2) The Settlers of Zarahemla

3) The Settlers of Canaan

4) Candamir The First Settlers

5) Settlers of the Stone Age

It is going to be sad to see them go, but I can't see them getting any table time in the next several years. My wife isn't a fan, my oldest son isn't a fan and my parents only like to game things like Trivial Pursuit and Scrabble.

One thing I do want to do though, is locate the deluxe 3-d collector's edition of Settlers that came out a few years back, it is fetching over $300 on ebay right now, but it is sweet! Wooden box, 3-d tokens, etc., it would be nice to have one Settlers game on hand for when an opportunity arises to play the game, so I might as well do it in style and try to locate that one.

Flock you...

Two updates tonight...

First is my Battle of Five Armies terrain piece:

I spent some time tonight working on the terrain hills. I painted them with a nice dark brown which will be a good base. I can honestly say that games workshop large brushes suck the big one. The cheap-o Ace Hardware brush is much nicer, so don't waste your money on GW's brush. One other comment I wanted to make now, something I didn't notice while using the primer... the hills don't really lay flat. They are kind of warped. it is more noticable now that I have them sitting on a flat table while getting their base coat of paint.

This makes me wonder about that large (and extremely expensive) gaming table that GW has out, it is essentially made of the same material, hooks together the same way, etc., and I for one would be super pissed if I spent the money on that and it didn't lay flat.

I am going to have to read up on Flocking a bit because I am rapidly approaching that stage of this project. Actually, the correct term is "Static Grass" because I am not using the flock... the Citadel Scenery Pack I got awhile back had Static Grass in it... 

I haven't used it in years, so I think a little brushing up (no pun intended) would be a good idea before getting too deep into that part of the project.

The Second is my Warhammer Quest project. I've decided to completely redo the game from the ground up... new minis painted at a pro level, 3d terrain of each room (I haven't put too much effort into this yet, but probably through Hirst Arts), I'm going to redo all of the cards (like digitally remaster them, etc.)... and basically just create a "Deluxe" Warhammer Quest set.

I currently have scans of every book, every card, every expansion, every tile set, every white dwarf article, etc, etc. So I am set to go on this project! I am going to realistically estimate it will take me a good year to complete. So a year from now be on the looking for it. :)

Can't touch this - du du da du - Hobby Time!

Ok, so I have been thinking that a lot of time I blow in the evenings, I wind down from a long work day by either watching television, surfin' the web or playing World of Warcraft... so I decided yesterday that I'd put in a good 1/2 hour each night on my hobby... anything with games, miniatures, terrain, etc.

Well, last night I used the time to unpack and organize all of my hobby supplies in this killer tackle box my wife got me at Wal-Mart... and tonight? Well, tonight I have the speckles of paint on my arms from spray paint to prove it. :)

Not too long ago, I got two sets of the terrain from the Games Workshop game "The Battle of Five Armies"... the terrain is supposed to represent epic scale cliffs for the 10mm figures, but they actually look great as smaller rocky hills for games such as Warhammer, 40k, Hordes or WarMachine. In the image below you can see the unpainted hill sections. It comes with two sections which can be put together two different ways, forming a half hill or a long cliff face.

Now the cool thing about these hills, is that you can get two sets (total of 4 pieces) and make a complete mountain range (or in the larger scale figures a full size hill). So I took the four pieces that I got the other day, trimmed then down and primed the black!

Here are two more photos (I found these on the web, they are not mine)... They show the 4 pieces (two sets) assembled and with both 10mm and 25mm minis for comparison. I think these hils will make sweet additions to my terrain collection and only enhance my future games.

Now I also had ordered the 'terrain hobby kit' from Games Workshop awhile back as well...  For some reason I thought it had grey paints in it. I had thought I'd paint these to have grey rocks and grass, but when I opened up the kit from Games Workshop (image below), I realized it was all set in tones of brown. I prefer grey rocks, but brown will be just fine too.

...finally, here is a photo of a finished piece (one set of terrain). My plan will be to continue my progress on this tomorrow night by painting it all brown, the following night by dry brushing the tan on top, then the night after that flocking with static grass.  When my terrain pieces are done, they should look similar to this (in color) but have static grass and not just the green painted areas like shown here. I assume they didn't flock this piece because the flock would look way out of scale with the 10mm minis shown here.

Wish me luck! I will post photos of my progress as I continue and hopefully have finals by the weekend.

Warhammer Quest - The Quest for the Quest

I remember when this game came out years ago, it was 1995 and I had some gaming buddies, but at the time we were mostly into RPG's, not miniature games or board games, which this was a combination of the two... I remember thinking it was cool and thinking it would be neat to play, but I can't actually remember playing it.

Years later, as I got more into board games and miniature games and thought it might be neat to get into this or at least try it out... no go. The price was just through the roof, even today on ebay this game goes for several hundred dollars, and good luck if you can find it complete or not.

We ended up getting into Descent and it scratched the dungeon crawl itch we were all having. I have always kept this game in the back of my mind, thinking it might be neat to get one day, but again, the price is just too high to justify trying to hunt it down. I have seen some people list this as their "Holy Grail", I suppose it is more for nostalgic reasons than anything else, but still, the demand is high and getting a copy is not going to happen.

Well, tonight I had an idea... I managed to get high res scans of the entire game. Every tile, every card, every booklet, etc... everything! Basically I now 'own' Warhammer Quest, complete with everything except the miniatures. Luckily for me, Games Workshop still sells all of these minis as singles. They are newer molds and not the 'same' figures that were originally released with the game, but they will still be similar enough... I mean a "Goblin Archer" is a "Goblin Archer" who cares if it is exactly the same mold as it was 15 years ago... same for everything else, in fact, the newer sculpts actually look nicer on some of these.

So, now I have a plan... I can reprint all of the books form the original game and the expansion, I can print the actual game cards and other items as well as purchase and paint nice minis from Games Workshop... since there are not a lot of minis to 'complete' this game, it won't be expensive, and the lower amount of minis means I can put more time into painting them and making them each much nicer.

One other thing I found, on BGG, someone was making 3-D terrain for this game (see the image above to compare the original and the custom), now that is truly awesome! 

War of the Ring 'o Rosies, a Pocketful Full of Pre-Orders

WARNING: The below blog entry uses language and descriptive commentary that may not be suitable for children.

This is one of my favorite games, and with the expansion "Battles of the Third Age" it just can't be beat... In fact (little sneak peek here) this game is on my planned top 10 list of games in the very near future. It has won awards in 2004 and 2005 (Lucca Games Best of Show and Best Original Game as well as the International Gamers Award), it has been on the top 20 of Board Game Geek consistently since it first came out in 2004 (and at the time of this writing it is number 15).

Now here are some hard cold facts... On Board Game Geek there are 5,309 people listed as owning the game and 472 listed as wanting to purchase the game. Now we know for a fact that not everyone who owns it lists it as being owned, so the actual numbers are probably quite a bit higher, and with that being said, those nearly 6,000 people are only Board Game Geek users... The majority of ratings are an 8 or 9 out of 10, with over 650 people giving it a solid 10 out of 10... That is just unheard of folks!

Ok, so now that the facts are out of the way... when it comes to board games, we can honestly say "War of the Ring's shit don't stink"... So WHY in the name of all that is holy in Middle Earth, is Fantasy Flight/Phalanx Games limiting the production run of the upcomming deluxe edition to ONLY 250 PIECES with no way to pre-order... Like the Risk Black Ops special edition deal last year, this is a game that if you want to get a copy of it, you are going to be screwed... Even if only 1/3 of the people who voted it a 10 out of 10 on Board Game Geek want to buy a copy there won't be enough available for those people alone (and that is a very fair estimate, especially with the number of people who actively take part in the forum for this game there).

I guarantee... in fact, I'd be willing to be my left nut, that there will be plenty of game scalpers (I call them Game Ferengis - in reference to the ugly/greedy Star Trek aliens) on ebay that will be selling MULTIPLE copies of this game for 2-3 times retail price. It happened before with other games (can you say $400 for a copy of Risk Black Ops?) and it will happen again... Who in the hell is running things over at FFG to limit this game to 250 pieces??? WHY???  It makes no business sense in my mind. 

Ok, I see WHY they are doing it... they apparently want to give the 'true' fans a special bonus by making it a "limited" game, so the ones who get it can pat themselves on the back... well you know what? You have OVER 3,000 people alone on Board Game Geek who have rated this an 8 out of 10 OR HIGHER... Even if only 10% of those people want a copy, forgetting about the rest of the world, there WILL NOT BE NEARLY ENOUGH!!!

(Above is a prototype photo of the Deluxe edition on display at a convention... the game is rumored to have a full assortment of painted miniatures (from both the original game and the expansion - a handful are shown in this photo) as well as an all new (larger) illustrated map and a real wooden box painted to look like a large Middle-Earth book and more!)

It doesn't make sense to me for things be handled the way they are, the smart thing from a business point of view (in my opinion if it is worth anything) is for FFG to have a preorder on their website, they give people somewhere between 30 and 60 days to make their preorder, then they take THAT NUMBER (How many people have pre-ordered it) and they double it, then that is the production number they should shoot for. Everyone still gets their 'limited edition' hard-on and everone is happy they are not having to make some back alley crack-like deal to get a copy.

You know damn well that the games produced by Fantasy Flights games cost them less than half of what they sell them for to the end gamer... There is nothing wrong with that, it is smart business. I want FFG to make money so they make more cool games for me to buy, but the point of that statement is this...

If FFG puts up the preorder and they presell 1,000 of them (just a random number for this example). Then the money they generated from those 1,000 presales will actually PAY for 2,000+ copies of the game with no money out of pocket for FFG... the games arrive, they ship the 1,000 copies to the people who preorderd it, and they now have a warehouse with 1,000 copies of the game that are 100% paid for and pure profit for FFG as they sell... this is the stock that the dealers should have access too, gaming shops can order 2 or 3 for their stores, online dealers can grab a few to put in their online stores, and the Game Ferengis? Well fuck the Game Ferengis.... it is only moves like limiting this to 250 by Fantasy Flight that fuel their 'fuck-you-over-fire' anyways.

Ok, enough of my raving for now. I really hope Fantasy Flight reconsiders their plans for an extremely limited distribution on this game, it would be a disappointment if only a small handful of the loyal fans (both of LOTR and FFG fans, of which I am both) are able to get this while many are left with their hands held out asking "why?".

A refrehsing experience...

I feel like the lady (man? sorry!) in this photo... I look around at the hundreds (literally) of games that I have and think "why in the hell do I have this?"... ok, let's be fair. Some games (Britannia comes to mind) are excellent games, they have great game play, unique mechanics, excellent opportunity for strategy... but will I ever play it again? Now that I have moved, some games just don't make sense to keep. The nearest gaming groups are over 90 miles away, according to Board Game Geek I have only 1 person within 100 miles of my house. So aside from a monthly trip to the game shop 90 miles away, I am going to only be getting in game time with family members.

Now that isn't necessarily a bad thing... playing games with my wife and folks is great, but we seem to play more family type of games such as Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, etc., and that doesn't scratch my itch.

Now the main thing I got going on my side is my boys. I have four of them, and the two oldest art already getting into gaming. Brandon is almost driving now and I can get a hard core game of Axis and Allies, RuneBound, Warhammer or more in with him and it is at a point where I really need to think before moving, it isn't a guaranteed win like it might have been 5 years ago.  Parker on the other hand is almost 6, and he is picking up games like HeroScape pretty quickly, so I know I'm in for some good gaming with him in the near future.

As I sort through games, I'm finding games going into two categories "Gotta have it!" and "Doubt I'll play it!"... the second category of games are getting traded out to other geeks on BGG and if I can't find any trades I'm going to ebay... I have actually managed to secure a few good trades online and currently think I have a lead for Helden in der Unterwelt (Heroes in the Underworld) and Die Rückkehr der Helden: Die Gralssuche (Return of the Heroes: Quest for the Grail), two non US release games that are expansions to Return of the Heroes which is an amazing game. So I'm not only getting rid of a lot of 'crap' (crap also could mean a good game that I just don't see myself playing again), but I am also adding new games that for the most part are expansions to games I already have and know my kids already enjoy.

This deal isn't done yet, but it looks promising and could really get me going with some games I've been wanting for awhile.

I seem to have broken my collection down into three types of games... first are the Role Playing Games (D&D), then come the Miniature Games (such as Warhammer, WarMachine, WoW Minis, etc.) and finally the board games (everything from Risk to RuneBound)... it really is nice to be able to go in and just streamline. I thought I'd be sad or depressed, but for some reason it just seems like the right thing to do.

It's called Perudo you liar!

Looking back at my blog entries, we last played this game on March 31, 2008... so it has been almost exactly a year since it has seen that table! We had a gaming group meeting yesterday (Saturday evening), and this was the first game we took out.

It is actually quite fun, and a 4 player game took about 20 minutes or so... it makes for a nice filler game or starter game. It is based on an earl 1970's game by Richard Borg named "Liar's Dice", which he in turn based on a game originally from Spain in the 16th Century. It is believed the Spanish conqueror Francisco Pizarro brought the original game to Spain from South America, and that it might have originated with the Inca! So all in all, it is quite an interesting game with a nice bit of history.

To make this game even more interesting and have an even more unique back story, it was featured in the 2006 film, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. In the film it was called "Liar's Dice" and is essentially the same game with more simplified rules.

This is a great game of betting and bluffing and trying to convince other players you either have or don't have the call you have made. Once you get a game or two in under your belt you will quickly catch on and this game will become a lot of fun.

Lego my Lego

When I was a kid I was really into Lego... back then they pretty much just had block pieces and little men, no 'themes' like they have now. I do remember in the early 80's though, when the 'Space' them came out and I really loved building those and playing with them.

My 5 year old son Parker is really getting into Legos. It started with Star Wars and Indiana Jones Lego sets, and recently he has gotten into the 'Castle' theme and is looking at 'Pirates' as well... the Castle theme Lego's are pretty neat. I know a few adult collectors that get Legos as a hobby and are really into building the sets and displaying them, but this blog post is more about my five year old and his interest in them to play with.

He grew up watching me play miniature war games like Warhammer, and the Castle Legos kind of give him a feel of playing 'big boy' game, but with toys he can easily use. I noticed the other night he was rolling dice as he played and giving units of guys 'wounds' and stuff like that. It was quite neat. It is also nice from a financial point of view, because the Star Wars and Indiana Jones Lego sets are so dang expensive!!!  So it is refreshing to spend money on these Castle sets and feel like I'm not getting bent over and taking it in the arse for some crappy Lego set that doesn't feel like it is worth what you are spending.

Anyhow, I took some time the other night to really look at the Legos that Parker was playing with. There were carts, wagons, horses, knights, goblins, trolls, catapults, cannons, dragons, etc., it certainly is quite an exciting line for a kid his age to be getting into and really opens up his imagination for new ideas and role-playing.

If you have kids or know someone who does, it would probably open a whole new world for them to get into the Castle Legos, Pirate Legos, etc.

*** UPDATE *** A quick search of the internet located photos of my favorite Lego space toy. It looks quite basic by today's Lego standards, but this is by far a piece that brings back a lot of memories for me. Here are some pics for Memory Lane!

This Lego set was called "928" and was the Galaxy Explorer ship, which, at the time, was probably one of the most amazing Lego sets to ever be released. I must have gotten this in Christmas of '81 or possibly '82. (The photo below was a result of a google search, it is not me)

Here are some instruction scans I located online, man oh man this brings back some real memories...

And finally, here is a full spread of the ship and playset... a quick ebay search reveals this to now be going for around $200 - YIKES! I guess I'll have to be happy with photos, because purchasing a set is too expensive...

Warhammer 40,000: Assault On Black Reach

I've been getting the '40k bug' again lately, I think it had to do with teaching my 5-year-old how to play the other day and with the mini sample armies I am putting together for some demo games. I used to be heavily into 40k a few years back, and slowly fell out of it as players in my area got into other games. I am not trying to focus on WarMachine/Hordes, because I think it is actually a better system, but something about 40k keeps drawing me back. :)

I ordered a bunch of Orks and Marines off of ebay last week, most of them are leftover parts from various people who purchased the Assault on Black Reach and only wanted Marines and not Orks (or vice versa), essentially this got me about 1,500 points worth of Marines and Orks for under $100 shipped... I figured I couldn't beat that! Only got 1 dreadnought in there though, but all in all I think I have pretty balanced amounts of forces.

In any case, once I get these and build them, I'll have to 'flesh out' the armies by purchasing some kits from Games Workshop... but I think I'm on the right track as far as having 2 strong armies to do battle with.  I need to get into my storage and try to locate some of my full armies. After the move it is so hard to find some things... I am eager to locate my Kroot and Ultramarines.

Battle of the Blogs

This post is more of a joke than anything else, but my good friend Wil from over at Hey Man Games! (The web link is: www.heymangames.blogspot.com) made a comment on my last blog entry as follows: "Not very surprising that a six year old can learn 40k. I have said for a long time that 40k was the kids game and Fantasy was the adult."

This got me thinking... whereas I have had a lot of fun with Fantasy Warhammer as well as 40k, I think I'd have to say that my game of choice would be 40k if I had to choose... I have played it more and have more armies, and I like the style of play better and the vehicle choices... There is nothing wrong with Fantasy (absolutely love those Tomb Kings!), but I really think I enjoy 40k more... 

But this raises the question brought up by Wil... is 40k the kids version of Fantasy? If so, why?

(Note: The photo is Wil from Hey Man Games!)

Teaching my 5-year-old Warhammer 40k

This weekend I was working on some customer terrain pieces (seen in photos) and my 5-year-old son Parker asked if he could help (He will be turning 6 in a couple of months). The temperature here has been sitting at about 10 degrees during the day and below zero at night, so working out in the garage was too cold for him, and after a short amount of time, helping me with the terrain was no longer something he was holding interest in... then he asked if he was old enough to learn how to play 40k.

He has seen me and my old gaming group buddies play for years, since he can remember, and he loves watching his oldest brother Brandon (14 now) play as well, so I decided it was time to teach him the basics.

I unfortunately didn't have any 40k guys available to use though, most of my Warhammer stuff is still packed from our move. I was able to find some AT-43 guys though (squad of Therian Storm Golems and UNA Steel Troopers) and we used them as Necrons and Imperial Guardsmen (even though he is only 5, he has a good knowledge of the different 40k races and could easily associate these substitutes for who they were supposed to be).

In an effort to make it easy and basic, for a kid his age to understand and play without having to worry about massive amounts of rules, I really made this into quite a basic version of 40k... I decided it was more important for him to get a feel for the game rather than bog down with rules and trying to figure everything out... So we quickly developed an easy to follow rule system, based on Warhammer 40k.

Everyone could move 4" each turn, then shoot. To make it easy to remember, everyone needed a 4+ to hit and a 4+ to wound, and his Necrons had a 4+ save whereas my guys had no save (I wanted his Necrons to be more powerful, and this was the easiest way I could think of - plus, the only number he had to remember on his dice rolling was 4+).

It worked like a charm, he used his tape measure to move his guys, and quickly picked up on the moving, shooting, hitting, wounding, saving, etc. aspect of the game. Which is essentially the core of 40k rules in it's most simplest form. (I forgot to mention that all weapons in this game had a 12" range).

The photos below detail out game (he won) and as we play more games, I will slowly introduce more rules for him in stages, little by little, so he can slowly pickup the game without feeling overwhelmed.

In the photo above, Parker had his forces setup behind some cover and ready for the charge. The object of the scenario was to take out the radar dish that my troops had hidden behind the larger three-tier hill.

Here is a closeup view of my troops as they move in to protect the radar dish.

Parker got a good laugh as he moved his two small units forward toward their objective and my troops hid behind cover.

This is a good shot my wife took, Parker was pointing at a squad of his with a question about movement.

As he takes my position, I am just too overpowered by his troops and their 4+ save and can't hold out long enough to protect my radar dish.

This was the final shot of the game... Parker's troops took out the radar dish at the start of turn 5. My last two troops were both killed before they could do anything to stop it.

It was a fun time by both of us and I look forward to showing him more in the near future.

Warhammer 40k Ultramarines

These photos bring back memories. In the photo above, you can see my hobby table back in about 2004/2005... I was heavily into Warhammer 40k and had several armies (Ultramarines, Grey Knights, Kroot, Chaos and more...) I was working 9am - 5pm job, so I had the time to put into Warhammer...  Now I find myself in a position where the time IS a problem, I own my own business and have a family with four boys, I don't have the time to build and paint like I used to.

One of my favorite armies was an Ultramarine army. Here is a photo of some of the troops after I had hit them with a coat of black primer...

And here are the tanks... I was making some of these to be compatible with both the Ultramarines and Grey Knights, so you can see some Inquisition decorations.

Here are a few close up shots of troops mid build/paint.

Here is a shot of a finished Veteran Sgt.

and here is the Force Commander.

Not yet a complete army, this photo shows the Ultramarines going up against my Kroot Mercenaries.

Some day, when our house is done and work has stabilized some, I plan on getting back into painting... I'm sure at some point in the future my 4 boys will also be into 40k, so let's hope that when 7th edition rolls around (sarcastic joke) the minis are still legal to use!