Games: One Era Ends. One Era Continues.

On Sunday I sold my complete collection of BattleTech miniatures and books to one person for the sum of $850. This was a great relief to me (and Aerin too). I had feared I would just end up having the lot picked through until all I had left was the hard to sell stuff, but now it's all taken care of. It's going to a good home, but I've been ready to move on for a while now.

Of course, I've already made plans to spend some of the proceeds to further expand my Flames of War collection. While there are still a ton of options for armies that I could buy, I've tried to keep myself focused on purchases that will actually see the tabletop at some point. For all that I want to actually see everything painted, I've decided to mainly work on just getting everything together. I know I keep changing the plan, but at least if it's not sitting in blister packs I can actually get something onto the table to play with.

There are a few things that still need reorganizing. I still have a bunch of Heavy Gear mins from Dream Pod 9. I really like these minis, and I definitely want to use them again at some point. However, it will probably be with another game system in all likelihood. I haven't even seen a set of the Blitz! rules, but I like the Flames of War game mechanics too much not to try a conversion.

So that's were things stand.

Life: Welcome 2009!

Didn't we just celebrate New Year's 2008?

I have to say, that from my end of things, the passing of 2008 was definitely NOT slow. I will always remember an episode of Daily Planet a few years back about how a person in 2004(ish) perceives time passing eight times faster than someone in 1904. That would mean we haven't even made it to my birthday before we're celebrating New Year's again. Talk about getting the short end of the stick!

I'm happy to be back on the road to running after few months of nothing much leading up to Christmas. Between injury (not running related) and illness (damned 6 week chest colds and my second this year) I got in little running between October and few days ago. Even a minimal amount of core work hasn't done much to keep me sane or maintain any level of fitness. The stress of moving and lack exercise was a horrible combination. So it's back to building, and I have some time to do that properly and with some enjoyment that was missing from this year's training.

Aerin and I are both pleased with our new place, and invites to the house warming party will be going out to friends in the near future. We'll probably never move into anything smaller than a two bedroom apartment now that we have all this space. Unfortunately I think we may be a little beyond future living area with the items we've purchased to make our place truly functional, but I don't foresee any great need to depart anytime in the near future unless under duress.

I've been doing some life inventory to spend time on the things I really enjoy doing. So there's time with Aerin, friends and family, being outdoors with running and backpacking, and building and playing my Flames of War armies. I'll be spending some time exploring industrial design related classes through Continuing Education, and Aerin and I will take the digital photography course to get the most out of my Christmas present, a Canon Powershot G10 (essentially a professional-grade point-and-shoot). That's all I have on my radar for the coming year. I still won't have as much free time to spend on these as I'd like short of winning the lotto, but I'll be happy to be able to do it.

Another Flames of War player and I are also collaborating on a writing project for a campaign book for our shared interest, but that's still in the development stage. Our plan is to have a proposal submitted by the end of January. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

I'm having a little trouble getting to sleep, but I'm getting closer to sleepy now. I hope everyone had a great 2008, and that you're looking forward to another great year in 2009. I know I am.

Happy New Year!

Life: The Holidays Beckon

It's been a couple of very busy weeks at work leading up to the Christmas to New Year's break here at the university. There are labs moving over the holiday, and they all want their 20+ year old chemicals removed from the old labs. And, of course, they all waited until this month to do it. We're still not done with them, and won't get to them until the new year now.

Waste shipments always make for extra icing on a busy week, and with our desire to clear out as much from our building as possible, it meant that we shipped out more than 70 drums worth of waste in two shipments on consecutive Fridays. Thus, last week was a blur as we hurried to process everything we picked up. I can fit a lot into my days, but some days it just doesn't go fast enough anwyay.

I have gotten some fun in too. I got in a couple of games of Flames of War last weekend. I have also had the chance to sort through some more of my stuff to figure out what else I can do in terms of getting things finished on the miniatures front. I hope to concentrate on assembling all that I can over the winter. I have been working to settle on some armies to try, and will fill in gaps as needed to get things painted and playable over the spring and summer.

So now that that insanity has slowed, it's time to gear up for the trip to Edmonton to visit the families. No doubt there will be way to much eating and sleeping, but both Aerin and I are looking forward to some slack time. Tonight we finish getting everything packed up and ready to load into the car tomorrow afternoon. We both have to work the morning, but that will be mercifully short and filled with things to kill time. I will get my pickup stats done between now and then, and do a corrective inventory for our beyond frustrating online waste system.

Christmas Eve dinner with Aerin's family followed by present opening with my family will lead to a late night, and we will both sleep long on Christmas Day. We're having an early dinner with my family, and my grandmother and uncle should be there too. The rest of the day will no doubt be spent eating yet more food and sweets interspersed with games and movies. Boxing Day is presents with Aerin's family and then yet more food, and hopefully some bargin shopping.

The rest of the time is pretty free form. I will be working on a proposal for a game project I am collaborating on with another Flames of War player. There is also some final proofing to do for a guy from Italy that has been patiently waiting for me to finish since August. I may actually get some Flames of War in too.

Happy Holidays! Happy New Year!

Games: Technical Support by the Illiterate

I don't play a lot of computer games - never have. But every now and again I like to have something on hand to kill some time. A favourite de-stressor and time waster has been Battlefield 2 from EA Games. It's first-person shooter on the military side of things in a fictional near-future world.

My trouble started when I decided to check out if there was a patch for the game since I had noticed a couple of glitches in the game play. I downloaded the appropriate patch and proceeded to apply it. Whether something went wrong, or I somehow got the wrong patch, I don't know what exactly happened, but suddenly I couldn't get into the game. It just wouldn't let me sign in no matter what I did, checked, double-checked. There should have been no problem.

So I figured something was screwed up and tried to re-install the game. BIG mistake apparently. The damned thing doesn't even accept my previously valid CD key, so it doesn't even start the install process. So I contact EA technical support online.

BIG mistake apparently.

It's really not that hard a problem to describe. "I'm trying to install the game, but it doesn't accept the CD key as valid. I've double-checked I'm entering it correctly." That's the short version, but do you really need anything more? Apparently, yes.

Long story short, the first moron sent me on a wild goose chase for a fix that doesn't even apply in this situation, and then I get some half-baked response about a bunch of other conflictst don't apply because I replied that it wasn't that.

So I try again. This person didn't even read the message or look at the screen caps or look up previous contacts with EA because I got yet another response that has nothing to do with getting an invalid CD key message while trying to install the game.

Is my use of English really that bad?? I doubt it.

I doubt I will be playing Battlefield 2 anytime soon.

Games: FallCon Game Convention

Last weekend was my weekend to play games at the FallCon game convention (the website is currently down) in Calgary. This annual September event was in it's 21st year, and I've had the pleasure of attending 13 of those years.

This year I ran a Flames of War tournament on Saturday morning and afternoon, raced to glory playing Formula De Saturday evening, and concluded with a very slow game of BattleTech on Sunday. Here's the synopsis of my weekend.

I have run a Flames of War tourney at FallCon for three years now, and I have yet to get a full event. This in itself was a little disappointing, but I did get to play as a result. This is a bit hard to do without tipping the balance, but at the same time with only three games to play I don't want people sitting out. I briefly considered just pushing the tables together for one big battle, but that has it's problems too. In the end everyone had a fun time. Players brought armies that included the First Special Services Force (American/Canadian infantry), South Alberta Regiment (Canadian armour), Governor General's Foot Guards (Canadian infantry), 21 Panzer Division (German armour and the winning army), 2 SS-Division (my German infantry), and another generic German infantry company.

I had setup three tables: a crossroad in bocage with a farm, Normandy "nearly" coastal town, and an Italian village in a pass. I spent a lot of time in the previous few weeks building my bocage, but the glue let me down as it slowly let go of it's green foliage over the day. Despite this disappointment it looked just great, and I look forward to going back with better glue to fix it up and add the extra foliage needed due to an insufficient supply for purchase at the store. I will also add some more long sections to the collection to ensure I have sufficient quantities for a larger table. It was an absolute blast to play on this battlefield.

Hopefully someone emails some pictures from the game because I completely forgot my camera. I want to post some pictures if I can since it really does do better with pictures.

After the boardgame and miniature auction (which I recouped $124 from the stuff too long sitting in boxes in our apartment) it was time for a game of Formula De. This is a great boardgame! It's a game of Formula One racing that has all kinds of tracks available for you to race on. It does an excellent job of simulating both the driving and excitement of racing using differently numbered dice to move your car around the track. This year I had all the luck with my rolls (as evidenced by my lack of luck with the dice in my other games) and quickly went from second at the pole to first and not looking back.

We played a three lap game with all the rules for car construction and weather on the Valencia track. It doesn't have any long straight aways for getting up to speed, so I setup my car for a lot of sudden downshifting and maneuvering. Luckily for me I started with soft tires that got me into the corners in fine form. I don't think I've ever had so much success in cornering while playing this game. And it really showed since I was pretty much dominating the race half way through the first lap.

When the weather changed to rain with two corners to go to the finish line, my car was in great condition to fend off a late hard charger with barely any rubber on his rims or fuel in his tank. He spun out coming out of the second last corner, and I was free to cruise across the finish line with the competition cringing at the sight of my rooster tail on the track two corners ahead of everyone else.

Sunday morning was my last game of BattleTech. I was a real fanboy of the game and the game universe back in the day, but I have since outgrown the slow and overwhelmed game mechanics and more of the same-repacked-as-new support that does little to interest me. The game proceeded entirely too slowly yet again, so I'm pretty sure that's it for me. I have considered simply holding onto my considerable BattleTech miniature collection and continuing to work on the fast play rules I started on years ago for large battles, but in the end I prefer Flames of War and other systems to having to come up with my own.

My game of BattleTech did accomplish one thing though - I made some contacts with people interested in acquiring some of my collection. So I will begin the process of slowly selling off chunks of my collection. I do have some real attachment to bits of it, but in the end it will likely all go. I've already started an inventory that I will send out.

This is one very fun gaming convention. I'm already looking forward to next year at FallCon. The return of the CalCon game convention in March 27-29, 2009 after a long absence will bring new opportunities for games. I'm currently considering running some games there too, but I have to finish moving first...

Games: Flames of War

I really don't know why I've waited so long to post something about one of my favourite hobbies...

I play a miniature game called Flames of War. It is a World War 2 game played with metal and resin 15mm miniatures. (For the uninitiated, 15mm refers to the scale size of a human figure, so a soldier stands 15mm tall.) I started collecting the miniatures (and trying to find someone to play) about four years ago.

I really like this game because it plays quickly while staying true to how combat was conducted during the war. Certainly it does not handle all of the details of World War 2 battles in depth, but it does well enough that I can't be bothered nitpicking any perceived shortcomings.

It is played at the platoon-level, which means a force is created from several platoons to create a company for the battle. Depending on what kind of force you chose (armoured, mechanized infantry, infantry or reconnaissance) a company will start with two to eight or more platoons. You can field a company from any nation involved in the war based on organizational lists for creating your company.

There is all kinds of equipment to choose from throughout the conflict, so battles are generally fought according to the era. The first era was the Mid-War period of 1942-1943 that concentrated on the Mediterranean and East Fronts. For the last couple of years the focus has been on the Late War period of 1944 onward with most of the new supplemental material concentrating on the summer of 1944.

Personally, I have miniatures (not all assembled and painted) for mid-war and late war Germans, Russians and Americans. I'm slowly trying to build up my completed armies, but it is slow going sometime with the other things I enjoy doing. Running and outdoor stuff takes up more time in the summer, so after the move this fall will be prime time for going hard with more miniatures to complete.

In September I am running a Flames of War tourney at the Fallcon game convention, so right now I'm busy with making terrain. I'm also trying to get some more finished minis for some demos at The Sentry Box.

I'll try to post some pictures of my games in the future.