Rebels and Patriots: Mixed Emotions
It’s fine. I’ve only got a couple of fights under my belt, so it may be too early to tell, but it hasn’t really grabbed me. This is another sibling in the Rampant Family of Rules, and unlike its older brethren, a tabletop general get one attempt to activate...
Flight of the Eisenstein
They keep sucking me back in! I still have no interest in playing Warhammer 40k. Every time I dip my toes back in to the scene the corporate drones remind me of why I prefer the small-house hobby side of what passes for the wargame industry. From a distance...
Initial Thoughts on ‘Rangers of Shadowdeep’
Why did I wait so long? Joseph McCullough’s masterpiece, Rangers of Shadowdeep has everything a man could ask for in a solo skirmish fantasy wargame. Everything except hope, but maybe that comes later. The basic mechanics are simple. Skill checks consist of a basic d20+skill versus a toughness number. Combat...
Brainstorming Paranoia
There’s a new edition of the classic RPG coming and hoo boy are the schoolmarms out in force. For those that don’t know, the Paranoia RPG was a dystopian sci-fi game with pretty thin rules designed to provide just enough game framework for a dark comedy RPG that satirized...
More Rank and Flank Thoughts
Army building. We meet again, old frenemy. As a reminder, we are talking about the popular collection of rules known as One Page Rules. In my particular case, the fantasy regiment game called, appropriately enough, Regiments. Let’s take a look and what you need to get started, and I’m just talking about...
Coming Soon: Modern Rank and Flank
It’s been a while since I’ve thrown a game of rank-and-flank fantasy down on the table. Dragon Rampant is more of a large warband skirmish game, and it lacks the nuance and subtlety of proper blocks of troops maneuvering about the green fields of battle. Demonstrating the charms of Chainmail...
Ryan Dunfee of Sentient Robot Games just released Anthems of War, a fantasy skirmish miniature wargame with much to recommend it. He was kind enough to ask me to whip up a couple of videos on the game, and by way of thanks sent me both the PDF and...
Yas Slaver Kween!
Put yourself in the mind of a modern-day film critic. Maybe this movie deserves a negative review… …but you have to ask yourself, is it really worth losing your job over?...
Top Gun: Maverick
Watching Top Gun: Maverick in the theater was a typically irritating experience. Sitting between The Texter and the Family That Brings a Full Buffet into the theater always makes for a terrible experience. While it was nice to get out of the house, the fact that ‘out of the...
Wargame Campaigns by Henry Hyde
This is a beast of a book, weighing in at over 500 pages. It is as complete and thorough a treatment of the subject as we have seen since the days of Featherstone and Bath. And it includes gems like this: All in all, “Wargaming Campaigns” is a fun...