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...
Matrix Lames
The topic of matrix games has been popping up on my radar a lot lately. For those of you who are uncertain about the term, allow me a brief introduction. A matrix game is a talky talky exercise adjudicated by a referee and structured in such a way as...
GIVE MY FRIENDS MONEY!
For your own sake. Conan the Librarian, one of the deepest thinkers and smoothest writers around, has a new project over on the KickStarter. Here is how I described this collection back in 2016: The stories in this [book] are an eclectic bunch, written by a man who seems...
Hitchhiking to Elite Level Satire
The 2005 adaptation of Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” is an underappreciated gem. Sam Rockwell’s performance as the president of the galaxy presents a perfect blend of Clintonian and Bushian “aw shucks arrogance and charm” that is refreshingly non-partisan from a Hollywood production. He even manages to...
Chainmail and Dragon Rampant: Two Great Tastes
A commenter over at The Joy of Wargaming asked which ruleset is better, Chainmail or Dragon Rampant. There is no easy answer to that question, but there is a great blog post of an answer. The two titles are both fantasy mass-battle games, but they do very different things and serve...
Solace: A Film Review/Warning
In the last two minutes of this film we learn that Anthony Hopkins’ character, ostensibly the good guy, murdered his young daughter. Now you don’t have to watch it. You’re welcome. The plot of this film revolves around a cat-and-mouse game between a psychic FBI investigator and an even...
On Chainmail: The Play Is the Thing
Chainmail: Rules for Medieval Warfare really isn’t that hard. It has an undeserved reputation for being byzantine and difficult to parse and put into practice. A reputation that, now that I have a dozen games under my belt, makes a lot more sense. Chainmail is a game written to be...