Adler Hobby in New Hampshire

My home base for gaming here in western New Hampshire is Triple Play Games. Triple Play has a very strong board gaming and card gaming community, along with some Warhammer and Warmachine gaming. It doesn't host the most active historical miniatures group but you can't have everything and the gamers there are super friendly and fun.

A few weeks ago I was invited to a Black Powder game at Adler Hobby in Hollis, NH. It's roughly seventy miles from my home and thus a scant two hour drive. Thank you New Hampshire! I ended up having a lot of fun with the game but also left feeling pretty impressed with the site. Adler Hobby is located in a fellow's garage. When you walk in, however, you stumble onto a terribly well stocked miniatures store with a large and well thought out selection of miniatures and games. Adler doesn't try to carry everything but what it does carry is useful and good quality. It's really a historical miniatures store so don't expect Warhammer or Magic, The people there are friendly and fun and the owner is hospitable and pleasant. If I were closer or my state had more paved roads I would certainly be gaming there often. As it is I recommend it to anyone in the area.

Battle of Dennewitz Black Powder Game

As Huzzah! nears and my armies lurch towards completion it seems like a good time to start a totally new project. Rich at Boston Trained Bands is running a Black Powder game at Huzzah! based on the Battle of Dennewitz and wrote to see if I had any extra 28mm French troops. Although I only had a handful I did have a bottle of Army Painter blue primer left over from the 10mm project and that's almost the same thing really. I ordered a set of Victrix French infantry and set to work.

Plastic troops are certainly nice in that they're inexpensive and allow you to avoid that whole lead-shavings-in-the-kitchen dilemma that lead figures bring about. The downside to them is that they take some time to put together and of course they're a little fragile. My first set of Victrix figures was a pain to assemble but this one fell together pretty well so there's a tribute to having some learning curve. Then it was out to the front lawn and time to spray them deep blue. In the process I left a mysterious blue patch in the grass just in time for Easter so now the kids think that the Easter bunny leaves both eggs and occasionally blue crop circles.

Next step is block painting and then the dip.

Terrain for the 10mm Napoleonics

The game I'll be running for Huzzah! is set in Spain and needs some nice terrain. In the past I would set out to scratch-build all my gaming material which is of course the traditional and correct thing to do. Sadly, my skills as a craftsman are so poor that these projects were almost universally disasters. Granted I can now use insulation, foamcore, styrene and wood pretty well but only after the fact and that's not much consolation when your terrain at the moment looks like ice cream cake on a July afternoon. Plus, I left the house covered in wood shavings and aerosolized insulation.

This year I decided to bite the bullet and buy my terrain like some rank amateur. I wanted to set up a few villages and that meant using fairly small houses. I settled on 6mm scale, which is slightly smaller than "N" scale for model trains. My online shopping led me to Angel Barracks and Timecast Models, both in the UK. I placed my orders and as I clicked "purchase" my wife eyed the power sander and airbrush and said a prayer of thanks to whoever saved her from home crafted terrain and the household disaster that accompanies it.

In the end I was pretty happy with my purchases. The goods from Angel Barracks arrived like lightning and were well packed. I had a few emails back and forth from the fellow who runs it and he was super helpful and pleasant. The Timecast items took a bit longer but were nicely packed as well. In the end both sets were good- nice detailed resin buildings with good sculpting. The Timecast items were cast in a grey resin, the Angel Barracks in yellow. I feel like the details on the Angel Barracks buildings (which were distributed from Total Battle Miniatures originally) were a bit more clear and the resin seemed less brittle. There is more texture to the walls and the roofs are a little more realistic. It's the difference between A and A+ but there you go. Next step is painting.

My Next Project

Now that I'm about 75% done with my massive 10mm Napoleonic British and French armies my mind naturally turns towards, not using them, but launching on another scale and time period entirely! Of course if the local players show any interest in Napoleonics that plan could change but they seem largely trapped in the morass called Flames of War version 3.

Which, by the way, seems even more a-historic and cumbersome than version 2.

Of late I've stumbled across 40mm and 54mm toy soldier gaming. In these games you field larger sized soldiers which are painted in the traditional manner- bright gloss! The miniatures are far less detailed than those seen in modern games and thus the paint schemes are much simpler. Finally, you can play in your garden or on your patio, stopping every now and then for a chip or to chase away the curious cat.

I think it would be a bit of a lark to field some colorful toy soldiers and have them decide the fate of tiny central European duchies in the 19th century. After agonizing over the colors of the cuffs of French dragoons it might be different to just let loose and paint cheery colour schemes on zouaves and spahis and then face them off against camel corps and bicycle troops. To get a sense of this sort of gaming check out Megablitz and More!

The first step is probably to pick up Funny Little Wars from the Virtual Armchair General. Then I'll get a new PO box so the wife doesn't notice the influx of completely new hobby supplies!

Huzzah! 2012

Miniatures gaming season begins with the Huzzah! convention in Maine. This is Huzzah's third year and it looks to be a lot of fun. As it gets harder to take time off from work and family I get pretty picky about my gaming time. I have developed about zero tolerance for grumpy or super competitive players. They're no fun and if I'm suffering some cranky macho player I'd be better off reading Trumpet of the Swan to my son. I also like to see a pretty game table. It makes me want to dive in and play. If I see a table with unpainted terrain and some salt shakers I just wonder whether the salt shakers represent pillboxes, daleks, or are actual salt shakers left behind from the game master's lunch. Happily Huzzah! has some great players and the games are typically stunning.

Interested gamers should take a look. Portland is a pretty city and there's lots for the family to do while visiting. All the games look good but I would recommend taking a look at Aerodrome, which is a very fun and simple WW I air combat game. I'd also take a look at the Force on Force games and Have Fun Storming the Castle, which is just gorgeous. Finally, I'm growing fond of the Black Powder/Hail Caesar system and they'll be well represented.

Rex- More Twilight Imperium Awesomeness

After years of staring longingly at the mammoth and expensive Twilight Imperium boardgame I finally got a chance to play it. Happily it turned out to be one of the most awesome games I've played. It takes forever to finish, there are a zillion components, and requires a massive board and lots of players. Having said that, it is an epic space game with lots of ways to play and win and leaves you feeling like your time spent playing was worth every moment. Recently a sister game called Rex was released and we played it last week.

Rex is a rebadged edition of the old Dune game. Dune is stuck in license purgatory and the publishers of Twilight were able to obtain the rights to the game system and release it as Rex. The game depicts the final battle at the galactic imperial capital. Various races struggle to grab power or join a winning alliance and walk away the new rulers of the galaxy. Each race is different in how it plays and also in it's victory conditions. One race, for example, wins if no one else wins. Another can win just by guessing the winner before the game begins.

The principles of Rex are pretty straightforward. Players have troops which can move around the game board. They can generate income and use it to buy more troops or special weapons. When players fight they total up their number of troops committed plus any special weapons and the winner is the one with the higher total. Some regions of the board have special properties but the number of special or fiddly rules is remarkably small.

Two rules elements stand out. The first is that each race has significantly different special powers. The powers aren't complex but they do give each race a vastly different feel in play. One race has access to hidden information, one rakes in the income, one can swarm onto the boar from one location. They all seem balanced and they tie into the other exciting element.

Players can win the game in a number of ways. They can occupy key territories. They can formally ally with other players and win as a group. They can potentially ally with other players and then betray them at the last moment. "Betraying" is risky and can either win you solo glory or send you plummeting into defeat as a loser and a traitor. Much of the fun of the game is planning how you hope to win and then making that happen.

I enjoyed Rex. The components are fabulous. The board looks great. The rules are pretty simple. The only downsides are that the components are initially pretty intimidating and that the theme is tied into the Twilight Imperium universe. As a science fiction fan I don't mind that but I could imagine someone saying "who are these people, what's Mecatol Rex?" and if you have a player who needs to know every detail of the theme they may not enjoy Rex. Otherwise it's a great politics and strategy game and we have a blast with it.

Dungeon Petz- Dang

Years ago I heard about a new game called Dungeon Lords. The idea was that each player would develop a dungeon and stock it with monsters and then compete to see whose dungeon was most effective at defeating pesky adventurers. For me this was a no-brainer and my wife pre-ordered it for me for my birthday. Well it finally arrived and I unpacked it and read the rules. What a mess. I didn't understand the dynamics at all. It seemed random, fiddly, and the play strategy was completely unclear to me. Sadly, Dungeon Lords has sat on my shelf unplayed for years. Although not discarded, since it's obviously crazy to get rid of games, miniatures, or toys of any sort.

Last week game player Joy brought Dungeon Petz to board game night. Again, this seemed like a no-brainer. In Dungeon Petz you purchase and raise crazy dungeon animals and sell them to vampires, trolls, and witches as pets. The theme sounded great, the game was colorful and well illustrated, and the title made use of zany spelling tricks. Spelling things with a "z" instead of an "s" is only slightly less entertaining than using multiple "x's" to show how Exx-Treeeeme a product is.

Sadly, Dungeon Petz is almost as complex and fiddly as it's forbear Dungeon Lords. Each player has a troop of workers and in each turn you can assign each worker a particular task. There are a finite number of tasks available each turn and some are going to be wildly more desirable than others so much of the game revolves around getting your workers in the right place at the right time. Over time each player buys baby pets and then raises them until they can be sold to various dungeon dwellers. A vampire may want a very scary pet, while a troll queen may want a cute, small pet. The buyers appear in random order and if you're lucky enough to have raised the right kind of pet you'll score lots of points.

I suspect that serious board gamers manage Dungeon Petz well and have lots of fun. For me, I struggled to get any sense of strategy and somehow most of my pets died of illness before even being sold, which was remarkably depressing. I hated the limited worker placement options (which I know is a hallmark of this sort of game) and the few pets I managed to keep alive turned out to be the wrong types for the buyers who appeared randomly.

I found Dungeon Petz to be weirdly complex and overall kind of sad, at least for any player who can't keep their pets healthy and happy. It's a shame because the illustrations and theme are really appealing. I rarely play a game that just leaves me cold but this one did.