Flying Lead

Hopefully Mik will post some pictures soon, but we played a couple of games of Ganesha Games' Flying Lead last night. We used my 20mm OIF figures, with just over twenty Arab fighters trying to trap nine American soldiers. I thought the game played well. Fire was deadly, so you tried to stay in cover and use your leaders to improve your soldiers and concentrate your fire against opportunity targets. In the first game we were still getting used to the rules, and the higher quality Americans mopped up the Arabs. This was probably not unexpected as our familiarity with the rules was very low and the American quality was over important. In the second game, the Arabs stayed in cover and used their leaders more effectively, and it was a close game before it was called on account of bedtime. We played some Song of Blades and Heroes a while back and enjoyed it, too. Both games are fairly simple and quick playing. I imagine we'll be seeing more of both. In fact, Chrispy mentioned wanting to play Song of Drums and Shakos, and I mentioned I happened to have some 40mm Sharpe in Spain figures sitting in a box from last Historicon...

La Figoblogotheque

Whoa, just found la Figoblogotheque. Looks like it's basically one big centralized RSS reader for miniatures pages (in English as well as French). You've got to be able to find something interesting and new here.

Being Human

A ghost, a vampire and a werewolf walk into a bar... That's not a joke, but hopefully was the lead in to the elevator pitch for the BBC's science fiction show, Being Human. Hat tip to the THACO podcast's Best Geek Media of 2009 episode for turning me on to this. I've only watched the first two episodes of season one, but I have really enjoyed them so far. I'm a fan of Doctor Who and Torchwood, but this show completely lacks their camp and has high quality writing and acting. I'm really looking forward to continuing the series.

Alzheimers?

So, I had been waiting on an order for over a month. I finally went to the company's website, to find their e-mail address and fire off an impatient word about my order, when I see my full shopping cart sitting there. I had been waiting for an order I never actually placed.

I may have Alzheimer's, but at least I don't have Alzheimer's!

RPG Market Breakdown

According to this store's numbers, Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader, the FFG 40k role-playing games, already are third place in market share. Of course, they're still small fish in a small pond...although it appears that D&D has lost about 20% of it's market share since the introduction of 3.5.

This, this is Easy Company!

"This is not Dog Company. This is not Fox Company. This, this is Easy Company!" --Captain Sobel from episode one of Band of Brothers

Finally got my Flames of War US Airborne done! This is a full company box set plus an MG platoon. I went back and rebased the mortars properly and I think I have things mostly sorted out. I do need to put some identifying markings on the new platoons. Plus, I didn't paint the supply carts (which I guess are just objective markers). I didn't catch that they had matching infantry to haul them, so two of the six haulers got painted up in the regular stands (I thought they were giving tactical hand signals or something!) Maybe someday I'll pop them off and do it right. Maybe...

Now, I'm about to start on some FoW Gepanzerte Panzergrenadiers. I also got in the first bits of France 1940 figures. These are Old Glory and I really like them, they're comparable quality to the Battlefront ones, so I went ahead and ordered a larger batch. I'm planning on sending these off to Sri Lanka to be painted, and I've got the German riflemen samples done. I also got a few tanks, but I'll probably be painting those all up myself.

Doctor Who

Some very nice miniature Doctor Who items at Grekworld. I think they're awesome, but I'm not sure I'd enjoy playing a miniature game with the Doctor. I mean, you can't kill him...

Piquet move by move

Why I like Piquet and how it's played, over at Olicanalad's Games. If you were ever curious about the specifics of Piquet or what sets it apart from other rules, this is the post for you.

How to Host a Dungeon

I guess I never posted about it here, but Mik has my back, covering our very fun world building experience with Dawn of Worlds. When I stumbled across How to Host a Dungeon, I was reminded of that and went ahead and picked up the PDF copy for $5. It's less interactive than Dawn of Worlds, being more of a system which generates a random fantasy dungeon, but does so via the chronological history of the region. I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but it looks fun.

Calculating Dice Probabilities

I get into working through dice probabilities every now and then. Now there's a website to help me.

New Piquet Blogs

Nice to see that some new Piquet players have started blogs. Owner/author Brent Oman has started Wargames and Stuff, and author and great guy to drink with at Historicon Eric Burgess has started Din of Battle.

My Son's Book

My eight year old son and I have been talking about vikings and other medieval things lately, and he decided he was going to write a book about vikings. Great, son, you go do that. Well, he has written up a table of contents for his book...