Tuesday, July 31, 2007
For some incredible pulp inspiration, watch the Zeppelin v Pterodactyls short. It’s a montage of clips from old, unrelated movie serials.
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Monday, July 30, 2007
The Who Sucks page has a collection of 23 fearsome Defense department logos from various countries around the world.
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Wednesday, July 25, 2007
One of my favorite sources of checkout line amusement—the Weekly World News—is going out of business. The last issue will be Aug. 3.
I’m going to miss the Bat Boy.
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Saturday, July 21, 2007
Wargamers as a whole are cheap: Witness the people playing games with “figures” made from bits of hair brushes and the howls of complaint when a manufacturer raises his prices a few pennies for the first time in five years.
Deal A Day sites offer great bargains and are a lot of fun to follow. For most of them, the format is the same: a single item in limited supply is offered for sale each day. When the site runs out of the item, the sale is over and you have to wait to see what shows up the next day.
Woot: the first deal a day site I found, and one I visit every day. They focus mainly on electronics, but even when you don’t like the offering, the item descriptions are brilliant writing. Fun occasional features of the site are the “Woot Off” and the “Random Crap”. During a Woot Off, the site offers a series of items in rapid succession. As soon as one item is out, another appears—no waiting until the next day. “Random Crap” is a mystery bag; you pay $5 and get a bag of random stuff. Some people have made out like bandits on this one.
Thing Fling: The second site I discovered. It features household and soft goods as well as electronics. It’s not quite a deal a day site, though, because items are offered consecutively. As soon as one runs out, another deal is posted.
Bits de Jour offers a new windows software deal each day.
MacZot offers new Macintosh software each day.
Yugster offers electronics.
Giveaway of the Day offers a different FREE licensed software title each day. Some of it is quite good.
Game Giveaway of the Day offers a different FREE licensed game title each day.
Shirt A Day offers a new t shirt each day. The more of each shirt they sell, the lower your final price is.
Daily Swag offers a variety of hard and soft goods.
3000Toys offers some good “while supplies last” deals on toys. I’ve seen some nice die cast stuff here.
Cigar Monster offers daily cigar deals.
Midnight Box is another deal a day for electronics.
Hat Daddy for daily hat deals. No. Seriously.
Use the comments section below to add your own favorites!
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Monday, July 09, 2007
On Saturday, I drove to Columbus, Ohio to take a look at the 2007 Origins international game expo. The annual event is one of the largest—if not the largest gathering of its kind. It features role playing, board gaming, card gaming, miniatures, seminars, game demos and related activities. .You can see photos here
The convention is truly huge. Hall C, where the miniatures gaming was held has 98,000 square feet of space. The dealer room has 118,00 square feet. There also was 118,000 square feet dedicated to board/card and other tabletop games. And that was just in the main halls. There were also many dozens of smaller rooms throughout the hall, and in the adjacent hotels. (By way of comparison, and in no way meaning to be disparaging, the Lancaster Host for Historicon reports having 21,000 square feet for dealers and 18,000 square feet for gaming.
While Origins has a reputation as a fantasy and science fiction convention, historical gaming has had an increasing presence there over the past several years, thanks to the efforts of HMGS - Great Lakes. Their HOT program lets you buy one ribbon and play as many miniatures games as you wish during your stay. (Typically, for other games—RPGS and the like—each event requires you to purchase a separate ticket costing $1 to $5 in addition to the general admission.)
In the convention listings, I counted more than 150 historical games, including Piquet, Red Actions, Small War At Sea, Flames of War, DBA, Fear God and Dreadnought, Featherstone Skirmish, Desperado, Sword and The Flame, Medieval Siege, Tank Battles, Final Combat, Midway, Trench Wars, Fighting Wings, Seekkrieg, Red Storm on the Horizon, Volley and Bayonet, Clear for Action, Northwest Frontier, Soviets In Afghanistan, Sailpower, Aerodrome, Armor Heavy Team Baghdad, Homegrown WWI, Warhammer Ancients, BattleGround WWII, Sons of the Desert, Space 1889, DBA, Birds of Prey Vietnam air, Mustangs and Messerschmidts, Hordes of the Things Tournament, Command At Sea, and Smoke on the Water.
The featured periods this year were World War II, the American Civil War and “Great Raids In History.”
There also were probably three times as many fantasy and science fiction games.
In the dealer room, historical miniatures were not as well represented, with only The Last Square actually carrying historical miniatures and books.
There were, however, a large number of companies carrying miniatures and related accessories, including Aberrant Games, Alpha Forge Games, Battlefront Miniatures, Blue Moon, Chessex Manufacturing (dice), Clash of Arms, Dark Age, Dragonfire Lasercrafts, Four Color Figures, Gale Force 9, Gamescience, Ginfritters, GMT, Iron Wind, Jolly Roger, Kenzer and Company, Key20, Lance and Laser, Magnificent Egos, MicroPanzer Wargame Studio, Miniature Building Authority, Mongoose Publishing, Old Glory (very small presence), Privateer Press, Rackham, Reaper, Red Shirt Games, Titan Games, and War Torn Worlds.
Tabletop wargames also had a strong presence, with GMT, Clash of Arms, Columbia Games, Decision Games, and Multi Man games in attendance.
Like many gamers that I know, my interests flow freely between miniatures, board games, card games and role playing, so there was something at every booth for me to look at. I was sorely tempted by a number of new role playing products, especially in the Indie Press Revolution booth. I marked Spirit of the Century, a pulp action game for a future purchase.
The number of new board games was truly staggering. There were so many I don’t even know where to begin. Vikings seems to be a popular theme this year, with games like Midgard and Vikings. There also seemed to be a resurgence of stock and business games.
Z-Man games has a new game called Duel In The Dark, which features British Bombers hitting German cities. The Brits plan their line of attack using cards, and then the Germans set up defense. The bombers are directed through their paths following the cards while the Germans try to take them down. The demo was fun.
Fantasy Flight games continues to produce big box games with lots of miniatures. Days of Wonder had a couple of expansions for their fine BattleLore game, including a 100 Years War expansion, which seems to be taking the game in a more historical direction. The company also apparently is going to release a games called Tannhauser, which is a board/miniatures game in which the Great War continues until 1939, and involves gothic horror elements.
I came away from the convention with a Card Football (NFL) board game, Savage Worlds Modern Ops, the Skallywagg Card game, and a board game called Dragon Parade.
On Saturday night I attended the Smithee awards, a mock awards program for bad movies. Awards were given for categories such as “Cutting Butter with a Chainsaw” (overkill), Worst Premise, Oblivions (characters who don’t see the obvious doom coming their way), Stupidest Looking Monster, Best One liners, and so on. The relevant clips from the movies in the category were shown, and then the audience would record their votes. Votes were tallied and the awards given on the spot. The whole event was a real hoot.
I also enjoyed the art gallery, which was mostly fantasy art, and mostly well done. I did not get a chance to attend any of the seminars, but there was a nice lineup of topics and speakers.
As a teacher, I got into the convention for free as a part of the game industry’s efforts to reach out to younger people. The theory is that if teachers start using games in the classroom, then kids will start playing on their own. It’s a nice effort by the industry to expand the base. The miniatures hobby should take a page from their playbook.
The convention facilities are very nice and clean; good food is readily available both at the onsite food court and in dozens of neighboring restaurants; there’s plenty of parking and hotel space. It’s a great convention and a great venue.
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Sunday, July 01, 2007
There’s an interesting article on The Middle East Forum titled “Why Arabs Lose Wars.” Although with such a title, it could easily slide into a jingoistic rant, the article is instead a thoughtful piece on how a culture has struggled to keep pace with the western way of war.
Author Norvell De Atkine, a U.S. Army retired colonel with eight years residence in Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt, and a graduate degree in Arab studies from the American University of Beirut, examines several key components of modern warfare, including information, officers v soldiers, decision making, combined arms operations and security. It is also very interesting in light of the United States efforts to build a new Iraqi security force.
The conclusion is pretty sobering:
It would be difficult to exaggerate the cultural gulf separating American and Arab military cultures. In every significant area, American military advisors find students who enthusiastically take in their lessons and then resolutely fail to apply them. The culture they return to—the culture of their own armies in their own countries—defeats the intentions with which they took leave of their American instructors.
When they had an influence on certain Arab military establishments, the Soviets reinforced their clients’ cultural traits far more than, in more recent years, Americans were able to. Like the Arabs’, the Soviets’ military culture was driven by political fears bordering on paranoia. The steps taken to control the sources (real or imagined) of these fears, such as a rigidly centralized command structure, were readily understood by Arab political and military elites. The Arabs, too, felt an affinity for the Soviet officer class’s contempt for ordinary soldiers and the Soviet military hierarchy’s distrust of a well-developed, well-appreciated, well-rewarded NCO corps.
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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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