Saturday, March 17, 2007
Ride With The Devil
Ride with the Devil
was released in 1999, and I frankly don’t know how I missed it. But I just finished watching it on the Starz movie channel and thought it one of the best Civil war movies I’ve seen
Directed by the celebrated Ang Lee, the movie is adapted from the Daniel Woodrell novel Woe to Live on
. The story follows Daniel Rodell (Toby Maguire), a teen who joins a group of Kansas Irregulars in 1861. At its core, it’s a coming-of-age story, as Rodell fights his way through the war, losing family and friends until he finally ends the war on his own terms.
Sure, there’s a “love story” here, but it also offers a lot from a wargamers’ perspective. As it focuses on “irregular” cavalry operations, there are no set piece battles as in Glory or Gettysburg, but the skirmishes come across as quite authentic. And inspiring. I have this urge to go right out and buy some 28mm Civil war cavalry figures to do a skirmish game.
While I’m sure that the historical stickers among wargamers will (as usual) have a long laundry list of “errors” in the movie, there wasn’t anything that jumped out and ruined the movie for me (one critic I read pointed out that in that period, women didn’t’ have inseam pockets in their skirts—big deal). In particular, I loved the period language: formal and rather flowery by modern standards. While people may not have really spoken in that manner, it is right in keeping with the phrasing in period letters I have read.
If you haven’t seen it, I think you should seek this one out.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
LibriVox Free Audio Books
I’ve recently discovered the joys of MP3 players and audio books. I am, for example, currently listening to The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)
. Listening to audiobooks on the drive to work is a great way to maximize the increasingly scarce resource of time.
But audiobooks can get expensive. So that’s why I was delighted to find Libri Vox, a site with free audiobook downloads of classic works. There is an amazing variety of works, ranging from a biography of Jacques Cartier to Lady Chatterly’s Lover.
Of course, you don’t have to have an mp3 player to listen to the books. You can also use WinAmp or Windows Media player to listen from your computer.
Friday, February 09, 2007
Plustek OpticBook Flatbed Book Scanner
A couple of years ago I set out to reduce the size of he piles of books and magazines on my shelves by scanning them and converting them to pdf files. But I soon discovered that my flat scanner was not really up to the task. No matter how hard I pressed the pages against the scanner, the part of the page near the binding had a curvy distortion. What I really needed was one of those scanners designed for books. But those were far too expensive. So I gave up.
It looks like there’s a solution in the Plustek OpticBook scanner, though. For less than $300, it offers a scanning bed that extends to the very edge of the unit, allowing you to get a flat scan along the binding edge. Special softwre apparently also gets rid of the shadow effect. You can see the results from the Plustek website below. This is definitely on my short list of things to get and of projects to take on this summer.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Tekumel Miniatures
Professor M.A.R.Barker’s Tekumel has been lauded over the years as being the most original—and one of the most detailed—fantasy worlds ever conceived. It’s had a small, but rabid following extending back to the publicaiton of Empire of the Petal Throne by TSR in 1975. The main attraction of the world is that it is not based on the standard european fantasy archetypes.
I recall that there were some miniatures out for the game many years ago—and that they had a vaguely meso-american look—but I never picked any up.
Now, Eureka Miniatures of Australia is in the process of releasing a new line of Tekumel miniatures. They look fabulous—and unlike any fantasy figure you’ve yet seen. They would make a great army for HOTT or other generic fantasy system.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Ray Harryhausen Monster List
I have always been a big fan of Ray Harryhausen’s works. I saw a couple of the Sinbad movies in the theatres, and to this day can’t get enough of them. Even with all of the CGI effects, I don’t think there has ever been anything as amazing as his coreographed skeleton fights—whether in Jason and the Argonauts or in Sinbad.
In my recent web surfing, I stumbled across the Chinese Jet Pilot site, which has a page dedicated to Harryhausen’s monsters. They’re all listed, and each has a short video clip attached. It’s a neat site.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
SpartaCon 2007
On Saturday, I traveled to Lansing, Michgian to attend SpartaCon, one of four big conventions held every year in Michigan. I look forward to the convention every year, and have missed on one in the last decade.
One of the things that strikes me about SpartaCon is the high quality of the terrain and minaitures that Michigan gamers offer. All of the games looked as good as, if not better, than anything I’ve seen at Historicon, and a few were among the best I’ve ever seen—even in pictures. You can see photos of the event in the gallery.).
Attendance seemed to be a bit off from previous years—although I don’t have any idea what the official results were. Part of that could be just my impression, though, since the event was held in a larger room than last I was there.
There were ten to twelve games held in each of three sessions, and all of those games were full. In the first two sessions, there was plenty of World War II, plus two Samurai games, a Viking skirmish, Cog Wars, Plains War (mine), Crimean War, Wayne’s Legion, Medieval naval Cog Wars, Warhammer Ancients (Romans), Bob Beattie’s Back of Beyond Game, Tod Kershner’s (He of Pig Wars and Warfare in the Age of Reason fame) 100 Years War, American Revolution, French and Indian war, modern micro armor, a DBA Tournament and several that I apologize for forgetting. I didn’t stick around for the third session. Visually, the most outstanding games were a Samurai skirmish, an amazing Flames of War Stalingrad game and a French and Indian war game.
The convention had four dealers, and some large table space for flea market activities (that’s a bring-and-buy for our friends over the pond). I was able to unload a couple of boxes of books and magazines.
One of hot topics of conversation was the death of the hobby store in Michigan—at least as far as miniatures gamers are concerned. The recent closure of Hobby Hub in Lansing has left that city without even a general hobby store; since the Alcove in Royal Oak cloased ten years ago, there hasn’t been a good miniatures store in metro Detroit. A lot of reasons were bandied about: bad management (there were a couple of well-known cases of that), bad service that drove customers away (there are a couple of known cases there, too), bad business climate in Michigan, young people drawn to video games, the graying of the hobby, the well-known cheapness of historical gamers and the internet.
In the end, there were no real answers.
Still, it’s a sad situation. Conventions like SpartaCon, and Pro-or-Con in the Detroit area show what a vibrant hobby miniature wargaming is.
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About the Miniature Wargaming Hobby
Miniature Wargaming is part of the "adventure games" hobby, which includes r ole p laying and board games. Wargamers recreate battles on the tabletop with toy soldiers, like a more complicated game of chess. Models range in height from 6mm to 28mm tall, with 15mm and 25mm being the most popular. There also is a growing interest in toy soldiers and military models, such as the 1/32 and 1/35 scale plastic soldiers from Conte, and Marx.
The most popular miniature wargames are fantasy and science fiction based, such as Warhammer, Warhammer 40K, Warmachine and The Lord of the Rings. World War II games such as Flames of War and Axis and Allies are new favorites. Other favorite historical periods include Napoleonics, the American Civil War, and ancients, such as Romans or Greeks. Other gamers enjoy miniature naval wargames, recreating battles like Trafalgar, Jutland and the Coral Sea.
Hobbyists research historical periods and paint their tiny soldiers in accurate uniforms. Others develop "historically realistic" rules sets or build scale battlefield terrain using model railroad techniques.
For pictures, visit the gallery.
Some of the bigger hobby companies are Games Workshop, which produces Warhammer, Wargames Foundry and Old Glory Miniatures. Wizards of the Coast produces several lines of pre-painted miniatures games, such as the Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons miniatures games, and a historical game with pre-painted miniatures: The new Axis and Allies game. Wizkids produces a fantasy collectable miniatures game, such as the Mage Knight and Heroclick fantasy games, the science fiction games MechWarrior and Rocketmen, as well as the quasi-historical Pirates of the Spanish Main.
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