Friday, December 12, 2008

Shamless Debasement


(At least I think that's the phrase). That's right, today to kick off JP's Birthday Weekend, I wore not one but two foam hats in order to get a free lunch. This, by the way also helps to prove TANSTAFL*.

If you're in the mood for some JP's birthday festivities, please feel free to wear a set of green foam antlers on Monday. After the 15th that other guy's season can start as normal.



*There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Which I know as tanstafl from "the Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by R.A. Heinlein, which the whole rest of the intertubes seems to have forgoten. For shame. You all get nothing for JP's birthday this year.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Giving the stink eye to the intertubes...

Sooooooooo.

At the risk of seriously jinxing it, did the intertubes turn off the spam machine? My daily spam rate has gone from several to, well, none.

Just saying is all.

Monday, December 08, 2008

Fallout 3 Completed

Hey it's done. And man, you should get some of that. I will play through again, but I don't think I'll do it right away. I'm still grinding my way past 50 on the treadmill, which is eating up a foolish amount of my game time. I am getting close to the Burning Crusade content. And the game is throwing its weight behind me. Yesterday it gave me 10000 xps for one quest turn in.

If you haven't seen the full Ozzy Osbourne WoW ads for Litch King, check it out.

Monday, December 01, 2008

Fast Rules for Miniature Gaming

I ran two quick games last Thursday, based on my own thoughts about rules. Here's the summary:


Set up: Each side gets an equal number of figures to start. Playing on a standard dining room table is about enough space if you are using 25mm figures. Allow each side about 20 to 30 figures. For ground combat, obstacles are a good idea.


Rule 1: Each player gets two actions per turn. An action is either activating a figure, which may then move and fight or spawning a new figure at one of your spawn points.


Rule 1a: The activated figure may move and then fight, or fight twice, or move twice. The figure may not fight and then move.


Rule 1b: Figures in base to base contact with enemy figures are pinned. They must fight the enemy figure if they are activated.


Rule 2: 1 is always the target number.


Rule 3: 2 inches of movement is slow. 6 Inches is normal. 12 is fast.


Rule 4: The weakest guys on your team are the most common. You have an infinite supply of them. They roll a d12 when attacking. They move 6.


Rule 5: The special guys on your team are not very common. You can have 1 of those in your pool of guys for every 5 regulars. The roll a better die against other troopers, in our case d6. Against vehicles they would roll d12, like regulars. In the case of the figs we were using, that meant 1 clone sniper (I used the SW mini's Kashyyk scouts to represent this) for every 5 regular clones in the pool. like wise for the droids, where the Super Battle Droids were the regulars and a security battle droid represented the sniper ( I have mostly SBDs). These figures may be respawned like regulars, but in more limited numbers. In our case each side had 2 specials.


Rule 6: Each side may choose to have heroes. To add a hero to your team you must pull a regular figure out. Heros should have at least 1 special ability. In our game the heros were (of course) Jedi. Jedi could only fight in hand to hand combat, which meant they needed to touch their targets to attack them, but are fast so they move 12. However, they always hit. Because I don't own any Sith figures, we decide to give the Separatists two Hailfire Droids. The jedi needed to roll a d12 to hit the "tanks". Heroes do not respawn. If a hero is hit, he is removed for the rest of the game. We then decided that that wouldn't be enough heroes for the Republic and I added 4 clone commandos. Commandos attack with a d6 against any target, but are heroes, so do not respawn.


Rule 7: Vehicles are more complicated than troops. Vehicles do not count towards your regular units or reserves. Vehicles have their own spawn point, which may be destroyed by the other team, but not captured. Vehicles need to be activated. This requires a figure to be in base to base contact twith the vehicle, and requires the figure to use an action. The figure used to activate the vehicle is removed from play. Vehicles should have more firepower than figures, in this case we represented that two ways. Hailfire droids roll d6 to attack. Hailfire droids may use indirect fire. This means that an activated hailfire droid may attack any figure that is in line of sight of any other figure on the droid's team.


Rule 8: Each player picks up to five figures to start the game with. The rest of your figures are your reserve. They may be brought into the game by using a spawn action. Each spawn action lets you place 1 figure in base to base contact with one of your spawn points.

Rule 10: When you choose to fight you roll the die indicated. A 1 hits and the targeted unit is removed either to the reserves or from the game depending on what type of figure it is.

Rule 11: The first team to capture all the spawn points wins. You own a spawn point until someone takes it from you. You capture a spawn point by being the only team with figures touching the spawn point at the end of the other teams turn.

I know, it's a bit sketchy but it worked.