morning TV

Until I saw this video I had never heard of the group TV on the Radio. But I totally dig their sound on this track and the video is pretty fun.

I also caught some Star Trek this morning, the episode where the Kelvins hijack the Enterprise to Andromeda. Scotty gets himself and an alien drunk by clearing out his liquor collection. "What's that?" "It's green." And Kirk gets his mojo on with that old "Tell me more about this thing called kissing, Earthman" chestnut. Classic stuff.

newsflash

Comics guy Kevin Church is reporting that Stephen Colbert's Tek Jansen is going to be made into a comic book! You got that right, the Nobel Peace Prize winning epic sci-fi/fantasy/adventure/espionage/romance novel series that doesn't really exist is finally making the translation to graphic novel format. Hi-yah!

This is either going to be one of the best or worst comics ever made. And it will be *awesome*!

weird dream

I was in this Big Brother style gameshow where a group of strangers lived together for weeks at a time. During the course of the week you scored points by playing stupid reality gameshow challenges. Then at the end of each week you spent those points buying yourself necessities and luxuries for the following week. Your points purchase things like use of the shower, better food, etc.

The catch was that you spent your points during a lightning round where you had to juggle a bunch of numbers fast. I froze up during the lightning round and failed to spend all my points. Over the previous week I had earned enough points for a comfy week, but I failed to purchase laundry priviledges or changes of clothes. Nor did I get any food. The result was I doomed to wearing the same set of filthy clothes all week. And for sustenance I would receive a glass of milk three times a day.

The idea of the show was to put people in situations like that to drive them to quit the game. No one was voted off, the game simply continued until only one person could stand to live under these annoying conditions.

Winter War Preview: Saturday Evening

Winter War is the oldest annual gaming convention in Illinois. This year is the 34th installment in the series. Come join us in Champaign from February 9th to 11th for a weekend devoted to gaming.

In today's Winter War preview I'll be looking at the events in the Saturday night section of the pre-registration schedule. If you haven't checked them out already, here are links to the Friday afternoon, Friday evening, Saturday morning, and Saturday afternoon events. And don't miss the update to those earlier installments.

Saturday, February 10th, 8pm

Several events continue into Saturday night from earlier in the convention, such as the all-con Advanced Squad Leader tournament, the awesome Blind Sniper throwdown, and action in the dedicated Living Greyhawk room. The Warmachine and BattleTech Total Warfare events from Saturday afternoon will continue into the night as well.

The boardgames area is bursting with cool stuff to play on Saturday night. Don Botkin has reserved room for two full tables of Puerto Rico, one of my alltime favorite German games. El Nyberg offers a 16 player Settlers of Catan tournament. He notes "Using resource start plus Soldiers' Perogative rule." I've played Settlers more times than I can remember and I have no idea what that means. Super-nice guy Al Conrad offers a particularly intense session of Roborally specifically designed for veterans of that game. Racing game afficionados Leland Black and Charlie Priest present Daytona 500. And Glenn Overby offers even more Memoir '44 and BattleLore. That last one, BattleLore, is generating a lot of internet buzz. I plan on checking out that table to see what the big deal is. That's a lot of good stuff in the boardgame section, but I'll give my top recommendation to Al Conrad's Roborally event, with the notation that you need to have played that game at least once before showing up.

Over in the miniatures area you get your choice between beating up Nazis, zombies, or ninjas. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what I call a win-win-win scenario. Travis McLin supplies the anti-Nazi action with his 15mm Flames of War game. Steve Massey and Bob Legro offer All Things Zombie, the 28mm game of post-zombie apocalypse skirmishification. And Ken Vreeman, subject of much gushing in earlier installments, once again will be running 'Shogun-Maker' his big Kingmaker/Shogun/house rules hybrid freak-out. Making a recommendation here is a tough call. I want to once again tell you to sign up for Ken Vreeman's game, but if you want something historical the real pick is Flames of War. And don't forget those zombies.

Besides all the Living Greyhawk events, the Saturday night schedule includes 3 role-playing games. 'Terror From the High Seas' promises to be a historical Call of Cthulhu event by GM John Harting. Important Tip: Evening Call of Cthulhu events almost always fill in pre-reg! If you want to play this game, go sign up for it ASAP. I think this particular event is a repeat or sequel to a similar game last year. Players from that previous game had a glowing report. If horror is your bag but the CoC game fills you might want to consider Brad Trumpinski's GURPS Space/Horror adventure. The event is called "In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream." Man that sounds familiar. Where have I heard it before? Finally, Dave Hoover is on the schedule to run Iron Gauntlets. Based upon recent events I don't expect that item to remain on the list. Look for Mr. Hoover to run another system in this slot. And look for that game to be awesome. Seriously, you could do a lot worse than filling out your pre-reg sheet with "Whatever game Dave runs".

Tomorrow I'll look at the game running in the Sunday morning slot of the con. Like many cons that's usually the hangover session, but I see a lot of cool stuff on the schedule. Also, this will give me a chance to talk more about my favorite subject: me! ;)

the more things change...

A Mad cover from 1971:

Winter War Preview: New Events Added

So far my previews for the events of Winter War 34 were based on the first version of the pre-registration packet. Since then new a updated schedule has dropped with new stuff to play. The following material supplements my previews for Friday afternoon, Friday evening, Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon.

Friday, February 9th, 2pm

Two very promising miniatures events have been added for the Friday afternoon slot. Phil Hall will be running "The Spear of Destiny" a pulp action skirmishy thing using .45 Adventure, "a tabletop miniatures game of two-fisted action set during the era of the pulp magazines." The event description promises Nazi-fighting. Hot damn, but that sounds fun! Phill Hall is a cool guy, too. Speaking of cool guys, Tom Reed will once again be running Desperado, a Wild West shoot-out game. I've played a couple minis games with Tom over the years. He's a fun-loving easy-going minis guy. And every time I've ever walked past one of his Desperado games everyone was having a helluva good time.

Also added is a 15mm American Civil War game, run by Russ Hartley and using Fire and Fury rules. I don't really know enough about this game to offer anything useful, other than to note that the American Civil War is a perennial favorite of the local tin soldier set.

Friday, February 9th, 7pm

Holy crap, go sign up for this next game right now! If you like cut-throat political boardgaming run by a good-natured moderator, the latest addition to the Friday night schedule is the best thing going. John Satterfield returns with his "Kingmaker on the Big Board". The rightly-called Big Board is a ginormous custom jobbie with 25mm miniatures replacing the normal Kingmaker chits. Even the cards you use are super-sized. But here's the most important part: John Satterfield is the nicest and most fun guy I've ever gamed with. Period. This game is his baby and he makes playing it a hoot. If you like people that don't suck and games that are fun, do not pass this one up.

Saturday, February 10th, 9am

Two more events have been added in the Saturday morning miniatures section. Phil Hall will be running a second pulp-tastic session of .45 Adventure. Mr. Hall promises a totally different scenario than the Friday afternoon event, so you can play both if you'd like. Russ Hartley will run some more 15mm Civil War.

Saturday February 10th, 3pm

Hey! Three new boardgames, all of which look awesome! My kid sister is running Tumblin' Dice. I blogged about this game a while back, but the short version is that you will learn this game in two minutes and be having a great time immediately. I'd tell you all about my sister, but she's supposed to be babysitting for me next weekend and I don't want to screw that up. I will share one small item: she blames me for Don Botkin's Railroad Tycoon game being scheduled at the same time as her Tumblin' Dice event. Not because I had anything to do with the scheduling, but because I was the one that encouraged her to run an event. Railroad Tycoon is her favorite game that no one in her game group likes to play. Sorry, Jenn! Bring your copy to the Blind Sniper room Saturday night and I'll conscript some players.

So anyway, I don't know Dan Botkins. But I do know that, of all the train games I've played in the last couple of years, the boardgame version of Railroad Tycoon is one of my favorites. And it doesn't use a crayon. I know those crayon train games have a cult following, but I find them personally unappealing. Even though I love crayons.

Also on tap for Saturday afternoon is Dave Dubin running an event he calls "80's Retro Attack Settlers". Man, am I jealous. I wish I was the guy who first strung the words "80's", "retro", and "attack" together. The actual name of the game being played is Borderlands, which Mr. Dubin is pitching as one of the inspirations for Settlers of Catan. Something about that game rings a bell. Was it reviewed in Dragon once upon a time? Is the setting licensed from a novel or something? I can't quite put my finger on it.

In the next installement in the Winter War preview series I'll be taking a look at the games running the Saturday night of the con.

My wife bought me this.

She is awesome.


If you had asked me I would have told you that putting both a zombie and the world's most infamous cadaver-made man in a single set was a terrible idea. But even with the similar fashion sense the scupltor did an excellent job differentiating the two figures.

FYI, the "comic book" is really a poster book featuring old comic covers. That was kinda a weird fakeout, but I guess putting one comic book in the box would require them to select a single issue for four monsters that each headlined their own book.

Once I had them out of the box my daughter decided we would play with them. She declared that Dracula was a robot. The zombie and Frankenstien then built a rocketship to take them to the Zombie Planet. The duo then hosted a dance party for all the monsters. Awesome-cute-tastic!