17DEC09 Games Workshop Killing Fanboys off?! From SA to ST!

A shameless plug for my weekly webcomic... A fairly rare twice a week post this week, containing gaming commentary as opposed to political commentary!




Figured I'd do an editorial about entertainment this time for a Thursday Special! Luckily I don't watch TV so I'll rarely mention TV programing (unless its old and I watch it on DVD without commercials...). One of my favorite hobbies is wargaming, and in this case its table top wargaming in the Science Fiction genre with Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000. Sadly, the Games Workshop has sent out their legal department on a Witch Hunt (pun intended for WH fans...) on a grand scale! Nobody really expected that the Inquisition would come down this hard on the fanboys! Understandably, there is some violation of copyrights that do indeed need to be addressed by the Cease and Desist letters. However, they've gone overly obnoxious in enough cases to leave anyone making 'fan art' nervous. Where will Games Workshop draw the line between protecting IP legitimately (by ensure the rules and supplement information critical to the game and their bottom line are protected) and going overboard by shutting down fan created content (possibly someones eBay/online auction store as they liquidate their miniatures, or online galleries containing fan generated artwork)? Recently one of the biggest sites dedicated to good ol' fashioned board and table top games was hit by the GW Legal Inquisition's latest C&D letters, Boardgame Geek. Obviously many fans reacted rather rashly prior to the full scope of the letter being published. Luckily Seth Owen at the blog Pawnderings is a good logical gamer who chronicled these events the last few months (hence all the links to his blog posts...) and came out with the best Lessons Learned statement about the event addressing both sides of the issue.

I'm a fan of Games Workshop. From my perspective here in Fairbanks Alaska where you only see Warhammer 40,000 or War Machine games in any quantity, I feel they've done a lot to keep the table top miniature game world afloat. Too many companies are going to cheap vinyl pre-painted miniatures with little regard for scale while GW has diversified from mostly pewter to loads of injection molded figures with better sculpting and detail. However, they come at great cost (to my modest budget!), and now they act in a rather rash manner themselves protecting their IP?! I enjoy the simplicity of the rules and the system, and am absolutely impressed with their Lord of the Rings line of product (George Lucas, you'd better pay attention...), but with this aggressive legal action against the fans, the very foundation of games, in this economy?! I suspect its only a matter of time before they end up going the way of TSR which used similar tactics during the infancy of the Internet... Where is TSR? Wizards of the Coast did a great deed and put Dungeons and Dragons back on top, and not just by re-vamping it with the D20 system, but by having an Open Gaming License that allowed other publishers and fans to produce material. Hmm... Sounds solid. Fan support has also kept many abandoned games alive, some may even see revival in a better economy, check out Dwarfstar Games and Warp War. While not terribly impressive at first, its amazing what a little fan loyalty will do for some games... At least keep them alive. If a company treats the fans right, their product could live on forever on the Internet... But thats too high minded of an ideal sometimes... Even if it means losing even more money while trying to recover 'lost profits' for a miniature game by hammering down on images on the Internet!

Can't beat the Classics!

Yesterday's trip to the local game/comic shop, The Comic Shop (on the corner of 3rd Street and Steese in Fairbanks AK) resulted in some solid gold finds, both of which are either as old or based on material older than myself.

First off, I finally picked up Steve Jackson's classic card game of conspiracy, Illuminati, which was published about the time I was born in 1982. I can understand why its remained an off and on classic that has been through so many printings. Its good, silly, paranoid fun! My wife and I played a game last night, and I was surprised by how much she enjoyed the game!

As always, it started off slow with us both referencing and arguing about the rules (especially about how many money transfers you get within a turn...). We drew our cards, and she was playing "The Network" and I played the "Bavarian Illuminati". Her goal was to amass a total of 25 points of 'transferable' power (to include The Network's 7 points...) while my Bavarian Illuminati had only to collect a grand total of 35 points of power total (including my 10 points for my Illuminati). Game play is simple, each player starts out with just their Illuminati group, which attacks and takes over un-controlled groups drawn from the deck at the beginning of the players turn. Each group you take over has the ability to use its power to take over other groups (some have none and remain dead ends however...). Each group also has its own Power, Resistance (how well they resist take-over by other groups), and Income. Taking over groups with groups is a matter of using the Power of the attacker, subtracting the resistance, and then rolling equal to or under that number (say a Power 10 group attacks a Resistance 5 group, they must roll a 5 or less to do so...). Some groups, like the Illuminati you start with, can transfer a few points (or all) of their power to assist other groups; this along with spending Mega-Bucks will result in better die rolls. However, rolling a 11 or 12 results in an automatic failure, which is great as that leaves a chance of failure no matter how much money you spend and how hard you try...

Last nights game resulted in the Bavarian Illuminati taking over the world through conquest of "Multi-National Oil Companies", "TV-Preachers", "The Tri-Liberal Council", "Democratic Party", and a few others I've since forgotten. However, these combined with my Illuminati's power resulting in a "Special Goal" victory of 35 points of amassed power! The only other way to win is through knocking off the other player by ensuring they don't take any group over for three turns in a row (and just have their Illuminati card)...

Overall, it was fun, now we are going to play again tonight!!

Now, the best part was finding a Traveller RPG supplement for David Drake's 'Hammers Slammers' series! Folks who have glanced at my blog the last year or so will remember when I posted the Black Five interview with David Drake with great glee! While not a lot of games have been made officially, Drake's military SF has had a massive influence on the hobby of wargaming and SF roleplaying games. Mostly, I described the influence seen in 'Stargrunt II' and 'Dirtside II' along with some rules and models by Old Crow and Pireme Press. Now, Mongoose Press has released a "Hammer's Slammers" Traveller supplement for their edition of the classic Traveller RPG rules! While I don't have the current Traveller book by MGP, I have read an original 1977 1st ed. of the Traveller Book years ago from the Security Public Library in my home town, many, many, many times. Even if I'd lacked that familiarity, I'd have still enjoyed reading the detailed information in this book about David Drake's 'Hammers Slammers' universe! Now, I need to hit the library and find more in this series to read...

I do however take issue with some of the artwork; gratuitous use of photos and just using clone brushes in Photoshop hardly does this book justice. I enjoyed the technique when it involved the Old Crow models, however, they went way too far when they used DoD photos... Way to recognizable as today's equipment and men, with little real effort to paint a picture of the Drake equipment... In my opinion. However, the cover is one of the finest pieces of art (go figure!), and there are some fantastic portraits of the Hammer's personnel that were clearly done from just about scratch. I strongly suspect, time was running out and deadlines were close on this project, and some of the art seems to reflect that... MGP really needs to give that particular part of the book a good overhaul, other than that, fantastic!

07AUG09, Role Playing Game (RPG) myths...

One of the biggest is that Dungeons and Dragons leads to Satanism. Fascinating article I dug up on Wikipedia after reading about Gary Gygax. Ms Patricia Pulling was a troubled individual. Her son committed suicide by shooting himself, and she goes off on a crusade to sue TSR Inc. and the school principal due to some connection between her son's death and Dungeons and Dragons. She formed the organization Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons, and went along with her crusade against the occult.

My own mother was quite convinced. However, evidence shows otherwise, and the are much worse vices that cause far greater harm to youth than RPG's and 'the occult'. Her cases all lost in court. To include some where she was an 'expert advisor' on. Why did they lose? Because she had little working knowledge of the occult, and in her book "The Devil's Web: Who is Stalking Your Children for Satan", she actually encourages Law Enforcement to question suspected teen occultists to ask "Have you read the Necronomicon, or are you familiar with it?" For anyone who may not know (don't be embarrassed, I didn't know until I was 20 myself...) the Necronomicon only exists in the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft and other fantasy/horror authors (or movies like "Bruce Campbell Vs. Army of Darkness"!). In 1990, Michael A. Stackpole went through and de-bunked a lot of the myths in the "Pulling Report".

If anything, RPG's are as benign as any other media that an individual might get 'hooked' on. Just look around and you'll see what I mean. Sports bars are a fine example... Sit around a TV, get drunk, obsess about a sport, and then riot when the ticker tape parade happens (Los Angeles!).

15JUN09 Lower Hull of the TACP Stryker is assembled...

I've also given it its initial coat of paint, Vallejo #922 U.S.A Uniform from a WWII paint set. While its not precisely 'medium green' its as close as I've got and if memory serves me correct is about right for this Stryker! As a primer I'm using 1:1 scale Krylon Camouflage Olive Drab! I'm pretty impressed with how its working on the scale model!



Here are the PE parts I had in the earlier posting:


Not too shabby! Now I'm going to figure out where to go from here. I've got the loads of PE parts from Eduard for the Trumpeter kit, hopefully it will work on this version (needless to say, internet searches cannot come up with a separate product for the AFV Club kit...).

More to follow (I hope...).

09JUN09 AFV Club's M1130 CV TACP Stryker in 1:35th scale!

A recent trip to my local hobby shop, Models Enterprises in Fairbanks, surprised me immensely. I found a 1:35th scale M1130 CV Stryker by AFV Club. That in and of itself is no surprise. What did surprise me however was the fact that they included parts to turn the CV into the TACP Stryker! I was one of the first Airmen in the Air Force to work out of one of those variants, my squadron at the time, the 3rd ASOS, and our brigade the 172nd Stryker Brigade were the first to receive this particular variant! Here is the AF.mil article dated 05MAY2005!

USAF Photo

Personal Photo

Let me give you some of the details about the TACP variant rollout that the AF.mil article, and the Pentagon News Channel didn't go over. Or actually, the fallout from the rollout footage and article...


USAF Photo


Personal Photo

As you can see by the camera man on the left side of the photo in between Strykers, the Pentagon News Channel filmed the event also! However, that lead to CMSgt of the Air Force (at the time) Murray seeing his Airmen wearing 'a damn Army uniform'. This resulted in a phone call to the 354th Operations Group Commander bitching about "What the hell are my Airmen doing wearing a damned Army uniform" (rumor... call is true however) which resulted in our squadron being informed NOT to wear ACU's and get DCU uniforms ready for the deployment. Fun, my DCU's were from 2002 and still had my Airman First Class stripes on them along with my Ft. Riley 1st Armor Division (3rd BDE was there in 2002 until recently when the 1st Infantry Division returned to Ft. Riley). I remember running around on Eielson AFB in DCU's for a couple weeks until a call came down informing us that we could wear the ACU's that were issued to us for this deployment!


Personal Photo

Now, on to the kit!

The four shock absorber covers on the lower hull, parts P-10 and P-11. Somehow, I managed to fold them correctly...


I assembled the photo etched parts (P-10 and P-11 respectively) that go over the shock absorbers pretty easily. The highlighted part is P-7, the photo etched bolt and washer. As long as you cut them out carefully, on a piece of wood and use your finger nail to hold them in place, they don't go flying. I managed to use moisture on my finger tip to pick them up and place them roughly in the right spot, then used my hobby knife to get them right where I wanted them before the CA glue dried up.


Here are some styrene bolt/washers that came attached to the side of the parts sprue A. These were the worst to attempt to work with mainly because I had to carefully shave them off without losing them! After that, aligning them was the hardest part. However, as you can see here, the results were rather rewarding!


This is as far as I am right now, I do have a large portion of the lower hull completed as far as drive train and axles in place, that will be another article here shortly.

27APR09 German Weaponry of WWII

Here is a video of German weapons.

27APR09, WWII US Infantry Weapons Training clip

Kudos to The Sniper for digging up this old fossil!

Great film for wargamers of the WWII period. At the very least, its fascinating to see the amount of penetration from the .30 Cal rifle, (.30-06) round.

10APR09 Guns and Gaming

Yesterday I ran into Brian who runs the great gamer blog &games and had a good change of pace at work over at Frontier Outfitters. It was a good day for guns and gaming. Just a couple days ago I sold some .44 Mag dies (I own no .44 Mag revolvers... Long story, but I thought I might get one and so I bought reloading supplies for it, but then wound up getting a .45LC instead... For my wife... Years ago...) and used the cash to buy the board game Munchkin Quest to play with a buddy of mine who was getting ready to head back to Iraq. Not more than an hour after I get back to work from my lunch time shopping trip at Comic Shop, Brian walks up to the gun counter wearing a Boardgame Geek T-Shirt.

So, it was a good gun and gaming day yesterday. That its always great to meet the face behind a good blog!

27FEB09 First Map

I did it! I finally combined Inkscape (to do the hex grid) with GIMP (to turn the .png exported from Inkscape into a multi-layer Photoshop Document .psd file) so I could use Painter X to paint the background! So, you have a small village with the well and a battle field with several choke points to fight over. So far, no numbers yet...

Nuts and Bolts (short version):

1. Using Inkscape, I made a .65 inch high hexagon with .03 inch width stroke for line weight. I also made sure my document preferences were for US Letter size paper... Important! Inkscape defaults to A4, most of its development is done in Europe! When I was happy with where my hex grid was, and its alignment, I exported the entire page to .png format which allows RASTR editors like Photoshop or the GIMP to read it as a picture instead of a scalable vector graphics (.svg) file.

2. Using the GIMP (or Photoshop if you are rich enough, I know you aren't a pirate, if you are you need to try the GIMP... I've used the CS Demo and I'm not impressed with Photoshop...) I loaded the .png file. It starts out as black lines on a transparent sheet! Thats fantastic! Thats what makes it handy! I added another layer that was opaque white and moved it behind the hex grid. If I wanted to, I could start making my maps now by working on layers underneath the hex grid! After getting the background in place, I saved the file as a Photoshop Document (.psd).

3. Finally, I loaded the .psd file into Painter X. Painter X put up a background layer called 'canvas' behind my white background, so I deleted the white background and proceeded to add layers and build my map. Finally, I saved a copy in the .RIFF format for further editing using Painter X and exported a copy as a .jpg which we see here!

There you go, baby steps! Turning terrible twos!

15JAN2009

Playing with Pixen, I made a few good graphics for war games, be it computer or board type... I just don't know exactly how to apply it yet, but it'll happen someday I hope! I'm still learning Scribus and how to import my map grids from Inkscape. So far, nothing intelligible has been done that way yet...

Cavalry Scouts in Strykers


JTAC and ROMAD team (my old job!)