July purchases...

[Steel_Wind]

My monthly trip to Mind Games in Melbourne netted me a few new products...

Some good stuff there Merric.

My two trips over the past month have yielded the following purchases:

D&D

The Price of Courage – Margaret Weis Productions : Cam Banks’ massive final instalment in the Age of Mortals campaign path for the DragonLance “current timeline” setting. I think WLD, Ptolus and Shackled City were larger – and that’s about it. I’m not sure when I will reach this volume in a campaign – but it’s certain that when I do get there, there will not be any lack of things to do or places to go. Recommended

The Complete Champion – Wizards of the Coast: I’m so-so on this latest volume, but one of my players immediately leaped upon Imbued Healing as his 12th level feat, and my players are exploring it with restrained enthusiasm/ It will take a PC death to get people to really delve into it – as always.

Other RPG

Star Wars: SAGA edition Ruleset – Wizards of the Coast : The more I browse through this book, the more I think I want to acquire all of the older D20 revised ruleset books to use and just ignore this one. The square pages throw me off. That is an entirely shallow and an admittedly unreasonable reason to not like this book – but it is very true all the same. Trying to read it? It feels soooo wrong.

Boardgames

I’ve been busy here:

Power Grid: – Rio Grande Games : Like you I picked this one up recently. I got it on sale though, already having had the shrink taken off of it but otherwise entirely intact and with the rest of the pieces unopened. I got it on the strength of BGG recommendations and the fact that even Michael Barnes liked it a lot. We’ll see.

Tide of Iron- Fantasy Flight Games : FFG’s WWII tactical war game for the ages. The massive box defies a place on my shelf and has me thinking about where I am going to move my board game collection to. Only one cursory play so far. I hope to get more in next week.

Memoir ’44 – Days of Wonder: I ordinarily would not have got this game, but I had promised to play Tide of Iron with my 8 yr old son and the more I read the week before I got TOI, the more I feared he would not be able to play it. So Memoir 44 was a peace offering to my son. As it turned out – he loved Memoir 44 and was very happy about it – and still wants to play TOI.

BattleLore: - Days of Wonder : A variant of Memoir ’44 and like Mem ’44, based upon Richard Borg’s Command and Colors System. A couple hundred medieval/Fantasy themed minis, cool spells and a thoroughly fun game. My 8 yr old son loves it and is well able to play it too. He almost beat me in our first game using lore (i.e. magic).

Fighting Sail- Sea Combat in the Age of Canvas and Shot 1775-1815 - SPI (Strategy & Tactics) 1981 My quest for the perfect naval rules Age of Sail wargame to abuse and steal ideas from continues in this fairly simple but quite innovative counter and square game from SPI. The innovative machanic in this one is that the game uses squares, not hexes, and allows for 8 directions and not the usual six in hexes. I ebayed this one.

Card Games

Family Business - Mayfair Games : A fun “take that” card game for 4-6 players, themed around gang land battles with the mob. I look forward to playing this one next weekend – and plan to see that it gets a bit of exercise at the Ram waiting for food to be served next month at Gencon.

 

[Cam Banks]

D&D
The Price of Courage – Margaret Weis Productions : Cam Banks’ massive final instalment in the Age of Mortals campaign path for the DragonLance “current timeline” setting. I think WLD, Ptolus and Shackled City were larger – and that’s about it. I’m not sure when I will reach this volume in a campaign – but it’s certain that when I do get there, there will not be any lack of things to do or places to go. Recommended

Thanks for the mention and kind words, Robert! Stop by the MWP booth this year at GenCon and say hi.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[ShadowDenizen]

My July purchases thus far?
(RPG and Game Related)

Complete Champion: Not normally a fan of newer WotC stuff, to be honest, but bought this without even reading a review, based on the theme, the cover art, and a quick flip-through in my LGS.

Eberron: Forge of War. (I keep swearing off buying new Eberron books, but they keep sucking me back in!!)

OotS: Start of Darkness

Arkham Horror "The King in Yellow" epansion: Board game.

PDF's:
From Paizo:
A1-4: Scourge of the Slavelords. I own a copy, but for $4, it's worth it to get, print and make notes inside.

Hellbound:The Blood War (For Planescape): Ditto.

B1-9 (In Search of Adventure): Ditto. (I may even buy copies of the individual modules.)

Tales of the Outer Planes; Somehow missed this first time around.

Egg of the Phoenix: (RPGA Module)

 

[MerricB]

Tide of Iron- Fantasy Flight Games : FFG’s WWII tactical war game for the ages. The massive box defies a place on my shelf and has me thinking about where I am going to move my board game collection to. Only one cursory play so far. I hope to get more in next week.

ToI sits in an uncomfortable place on Randy's shelf... we both really enjoy Memoir '44, but when we've been looking at more complex WW2 games, we've been moving towards Combat Commander: Europe. The games we've played of ToI have definitely been enjoyable, though.

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

Fun to read, but a bit long. You really have to work as a DM to instill the sense that something isn't quite right with these critters. We spent about seven 4 hour sessions on it, and if I ran it again I'd cut out some rooms. Otherwise it has some fun encounters!

That's interesting. My count is 35 encounters for the adventure - so you went at the rate of 5 encounters per session.

I'd expect (based on previous experiences) to hit 6-8 encounters per session with my group, but that's still 4-6 sessions!

If you're enjoying it, it's all good... and 4-7 sessions from a US$11 32-page adventure is quite incredible.

Cheers!

 

[Nightfall]

Cam,

Can I help it if I liked Races more than the slightly weird way you ended the series for Age of Mortals Dragonlance? That or Knightly Orders too?

 

[w_earle_wheeler]

1/4" grid design 4" x 6" index cards. These are great for drawing small maps. I can keep them organized by encounter, and they fit easily behind my GM screen or on the magnetic board.

3" x 2 1/2" lined index cards. I bought these on a whim, and I'm glad I did. I was able to write short encounter ideas on each one and keep them floating on the magnetic board. I'll probably use them later to hand out as "loot" props for my next D&D game (picture on one side, a note about the loot on the other).

8 1/2" x 11" magnetic dry erase board (mounted on an old copy stand). I'll be using this to keep track of initiative in my D&D games. I'll have the character names on small magnetic strips so I can move them around to adjust the order. I'll probably make a few small magnetic stickers to note held actions and condition modifiers. The board I bought was on sale at OfficeMax.

Corrugated cardboard magazine holders. My old plastic mesh ones kept snagging the edges of my modules and magazines. These are cheaper and don't have holes in the sides.

Portable folding speakers. I connected these to my cell phone to play .mp3 files during a game. It was a big hit when I played Disturbed's "Down With The Sickness" while putting out zombie miniatures for All Flesh Must Be Eaten I picked these up with a $10 off $25 coupon for Office Depot.

USGI Action Set. 6 28mm (or close enough) pre-painted plastic soldiers for $1. Not the greatest, but at 18 cents per mini it's a great way to cheaply represent soldiers without having to resort to metal figs or ones that are way out of scale with most RPG miniatures.

FUDGE dice. Not my wisest investment. $15 for 20 dice I could have easily made myself from cheap 6-siders with pips. I decided to pay the premium to avoid the ghetto dice factor.

 

[bento]

FUDGE dice. Not my wisest investment. $15 for 20 dice I could have easily made myself from cheap 6-siders with pips. I decided to pay the premium to avoid the ghetto dice factor.

Oh man - fear my sharpie-colored dice!

Nothing screams "I'm making this all up, rules and everything" than jacked-up d6s!

If you're going to play FUDGE/FATE with a straight face, the + - dice are the way to go.

 

[heirodule]

All bought at Origins, so far

Gamemastery Campaign Journal: This turns out mostly to be lots of light blue graph paper with lines on the other side, plus some formatted stat sheets. Not bad though.

Current Dungeon Issue. meh.

Random boxes of Night Below: Got 2 dire wraiths, 2 frost giants, Raistilin, 2 scorrows, dracotaur, shadow dragon, skeletal courser. All stuff I really want, or I figure are easily salable!

Reaper Pro Paints. I'm painting more lately, and the pro-paints are nice.

Vallejo Kolinsky Sable brushes. After a painting workshop with Matt Verzani, I decided to give kolinsky sable brushes a try. Wow! they snap to a point! very nice. I need to clean them better though.


Crocodile Games Spartan Phalanx. Yes, I saw 300.

Ninja Magic starship miniatures. Sweet looking ships.

Elk Fest, dexterity boardgame. The kids liked it!

Carcassone: Inns and Cathedrals. The kids and dad like it!

A House Divided ( Civil War game ). Old GDW game, done nicely by Phalanx games.

 

[MerricB]

Current Dungeon Issue. meh.

Heh. That's generally my reaction to the current Dragon issue!

Carcassone: Inns and Cathedrals. The kids and dad like it!

I really like Carcassonne; but I don't play it that often now. Too many other games!

Cheers!