Non-RPG Tabletop
For those of you who are gamers, you realize that there are some groups you prefer gaming with and some you don't. The same is true for MMORPG's (or any large, persistent world) - we find a group with similar goals to hang out with (or adventure with or whatever). And the same is also true of gaming groups whose focus is board games.
Enemy Chocolatier is a strategy-based board game from Cheap Ass Games, whilst Chocolatier is a computer "Coffee Break Game" primarily about time management, but with enough strategy thrown in to be interesting. Comparing a board game and a computer game might strike you as funny, but as I'm sharing what I'm interested in spending my game-playing time doing, it actually makes a kind of sense.
You want Analog Games? You've come to the right place! This week: Trains around America :>. There are so many games out there, I'll take 'em one bite at a time, and will start with a pair of train games set in the United States. TransAmerica is set in no particular time and expects the winner to able to make use of the other players' networks, as all the trains are communal. Ticket to Ride is set at the turn of the last century (1900) and expects that the winner will claim the best routes as there are no provisions for sharing networks. At least in the U.S. version.
Miniatures have long been a nice enhancement option for D&D campaigns. You head down to the local hobby shop, pick out the figures that catch your eye or that you need to fill up the monster slots for your weekly campaign and voila, you have instantly clarified combat, movement, and scale. Miniatures generally are made from pewter and part of the fun is to paint your miniature however you wish. So, you want a green fire elemental or a fuchsia troll? Anything you wanted to experiment with was fine. And you can always throw your miniatures into a bucket of Pine Sol overnight and in the morning ninety percent of the paint would be stripped off giving you the opportunity to repaint particularly poorly finished or hideously ugly figs.
Around a year ago, I did an article on Dominic Heutelbeck's Visions in Color show, or ViC, wherein participants all select the same miniature and convert and paint it as desired. The success of this show inspired Harry Colquhoun to start a similar show on the 1listsculpting Yahoo group.
Last summer I had a revelation. I suffer from a sort of lazy perfectionism I think I often see in gamers. I had plenty of ideas but often wouldn't act on them. If they couldn't be done right, they wouldn't be done at all - which usually boiled down to just the latter.
This is for the person who has everything, but loves games and always wants more. This person will try anything new, but all the expensive board games are really just the same game repackaged - expensively.
On to outfitting a tiny little crossbow, as promised last time. In this case, I was lucky enough to have a nicely-sculpted hand crossbow to work with. However, an empty bow doesn't look quite as menacing as a loaded one, so I decided to give the little guy some ammo.
I'm a fiend for miniatures conversions. Very little passes over my painting desk without having been tweaked or outright twisted. I'd like to share a little of that magic with you.
I've been planning (and promising Morbus) to review Cranium for weeks. I was excited about playing the award-winning board game, which came highly recommended by friends and has celebrity endorsements from the likes of Julia Roberts and Naomi Judd. So, then, why no review? To play Cranium, you need at least two 2-player teams. Despite my best efforts at luring friends over with promises of spirits and baked goods, it took several weeks to round up four willing participants.
