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I just witnessed a great example over Twitter of how gamers can never be happy, as a population, when something new comes along. We (and I say we to be self-inclusive as I’ve definitely done this before) are more concerned about being more funny or pointing out a fault or defect that we are about embracing good news even if it’s not entirely perfect to our minds’ eyes. Today, I learned that there is a coffee bar opening in Toronto that is specifically trying to cater to the boardgame-playing crowd. The name of the establishment is “Snakes and Lattes.” A punny name, to be sure, but definitely cute and memorable. I tweeted out the news along with the name of the establishment and within minutes the first response I received was “Wouldn’t Chutes and Lattes have made more sense?” and then a Wikipedia-referencing pissing contest ensued as to the selection of “Snakes” versus “Chutes.” Not a single response was along the lines of, “Wow! What a great idea!” or “I wish there was one of these in my town.” Sometimes we are all curmudgeons addicted to being unsatisfied with our hobby. It needs to end.

This past weekend I took part in my second NAF-sanctioned Blood Bowl Tournament. This time it was the annual Lakeside Cup which is an “East vs. West” battle where a line gets drawn somewhere along the 401 and you are put on one of two teams based on whether or not you live east or west of that line. Apparently, last year the West got royally trounced to the point that it wasn’t even funny anymore and the East have enjoyed a several years long streak at being champions which was not broken this year but the field was definitely more competitive. The format of this tournament is a resurrection style (i.e. casualties do not carry over between matches) and you bring a 1,250K team. I went with a squad of Orcs and, since we were allowed to put Star Players on the roster, I took Ripper. Going in, I thought a Strength 6 troll without Always Hungry or Really Stupid would be a great addition to the team. Now that it’s all over, I’m not so sure putting all of that team value in one player was a wise decision since he was definitely a target and spent a lot of time in the KO box. You also nominate one player on your team to be the team captain. That player gets the Leader skill for free and can be assigned up to two additional skills. After each round, all the captains receive an upgrade as if they had just reached another rank of experience and all the captains receive the same upgrade (e.g. if the tournament organizer rolls an 11 for the upgrade then all the captains can either take a regular skill or +1 Agility, coaches’ choice).

I had a lot of fun at the tournament but, overall, I had a pretty unimpressive win/loss record. In the first round I faced an experienced Dwarf player that really handed it to me, winning 3-0. I faced a rookie Slann player in the second round and squeaked out a 1-0 victory with Ripper in the KO box for a good portion of the match. Then it was a 2-0 loss to a Norse team with an insanely good Runner captain. After that, I rounded out the day with another 2-0 loss to a well-played Necromantic team. On Sunday, my first game of the day was against Undead and I managed to narrowly escape defeat with a razzle-dazzle play on turn 8 of the second half. As much as I want to be “that guy” and give all the agonizing details of that play I’ll keep it to the bare bones: Blitzer dodged out of a tackle-zone onto the ball, picked up the ball, handed it off to a Thrower, the Thrower did his full move plus one Go-For-It to make the pass to a downfield Blizter “Quick” instead of “Short,” pass was accurate, Blitzer caught the ball and scored a touch-down… and all of that without any re-rolls at my disposal! That single play, however, represented my luck for the day. In my last game I faced who would be the overall winner of the tournament. He was playing Chaos Dwarves and, apart from him suffering two relatively meaningless casualties late in the game, he pretty much did what he wanted the whole game and won with ease.

This was only my second NAF-sanctioned tournament against some really seasoned players. I went in knowing I’d be facing steep challenges and, although it was frustrating to get trounced as badly as I did in the very last game I played, I do value the opportunity to play against people that really know the game. I think the area where I need to develop the most is roster building. The team I brought to this game and to The Challenge of Q’ermitt back in April were both very predictable Orc teams. I also really learned the value of Guard in this tournament. In the game I played against Chaos Dwarves I don’t think my opponent was ever in a position where he had to throw a one-die block against me when I had Strength 4 Black Orcs and he had Strength 3 Chaos Dwarves on the line simply because he could gang up on my greenies with Guard.

Lakeside 2010 was also the first ever resurrection style tournament that I’ve participated in to date. I think I often played far too conservatively thinking that I didn’t want, for example, to risk a player missing the next game or taking a stat hit on a casualty which, in resurrection, is obviously not an issue. Overall, I definitely think that I like league progression-style tournaments over resurrection-style. In general, my go-to strategy in miniatures games tends to be more defense-minded so playing in a tournament that values protecting your players caters more to my “default setting.”

I am amazed by the hospitality shown by Peter and Tammy Meers. They housed, fed, heard, smelled, and put up with the antics of twenty grown men in their house for 48 hours straight with a sincere smile on their face the whole time. That definitely requires an attitude of grace and service that is uncommonly found these days!

I think what I enjoyed most about Lakeside, though, was the camaraderie amongst the players. It’s really cool to see a group of people just enjoying what they do where nothing is out of bounds in terms of ribbing each other and, at the same time, nobody takes anything personally. I’m guessing that Blood Bowl tournaments are the only time a lot of these guys see each other and this crazy scene has been going on for years! I’m glad to be one of the new guys on the block and look forward to participating for as long as this band of miscreants can go on meeting like this. Thanks, Spazz, for introducing me to Blood Bowl’s beer-soaked, fart-smelling underbelly. Next stop: Warpstone in September!

I got into Blood Bowl in 2009 and, although I was way late to the party, it’s definitely one of my favourite games. It can be an absolutely agonizing game to play since so much of the game winds up being outside your control but, much like football in real life, it’s often the team that can rally from a bad situation that winds up with the victory. One aspect of the game that seems to generate the most amount of controversy is fouling.

I am consistently surprised at how emphatically opposed so many Blood Bowl players are to the liberal use of fouling. The opinion that I most often hear is that fouling is “unsportsmanlike” which I find to be complete and utter nonsense. The theme of Blood Bowl is not one of gentlemanly competition; it’s legalized murder on a football pitch. To say that there are circumstances where it’s “unsportsmanlike” to engage in a foul is completely antithetical to the theme of the game. I find it doubly ridiculous that certain Blood Bowl players get as irked as they do when their players leave the pitch due to being fouled yet if a player is shoved into the crowd or attacked with a skill like Chainsaw or Stab they don’t bat an eye.

In deconstructing this reaction I think it boils down to the name of the action itself: fouling. I honestly think that because practically everyone that plays Blood Bowl has the preconceived notion that a “foul” in real-world sports is something that is against the rules. This pre-conception causes them to be aversed to fouling in Blood Bowl even though the “foul” action is completely within the rules. If the action had been originally given the name “gang up” or “beat down” I’d be willing to bet that this cognitive dissonance would not occur and the topic would never come up.

In either case, if you’re ever upset by having your players fouled in Blood Bowl there’s one solution: put the miniatures back in the box and go buy a copy of Candyland because you’re clearly not mentally equipped for the harsh mayhem that is Blood Bowl.

Tonight was our second ever Malifaux Thursday Throwdown at Dueling Grounds. For the second time in 48 hours, Som’er Teeth Jones and his band of Bayou Gremlins took to the field. I was using the exact same Scrap force that I did at Meeplemart on Tuesday. This time I was facing Rob and his twin Viktorias. I drew Reconnoiter as my objective which meant that I needed to have models in three quadrants of the board to claim minor victory and in all four quadrants for major victory. Although this is only the first time I’ve played that scenario I have to say that I strongly dislike it. But, part of being a skilled player is adjusting to victory conditions so, like they say, suck it up, buttercup. Rob drew Treasure Hunt for his objective and named Bodyguard and Thwart as his schemes; I disclosed Hold Out and Thwart for mine.

Image © Wyrd Miniatures, LLC

This game actually went pretty fast despite my persistent analysis/paralysis. Rob sprinted Bishop to the treasure token and scooped it up on the first turn and cranked his defense up to 8 which I wasted one Gremlin’s activation trying to pierce. Much like the game I played against Ash on Tuesday, Rob clustered his models together around the treasure. I was able to score Severe damage with Som’er Teeth’s Boomer Strike and get around Bishop’s high defense by damaging him several times with blast tokens. My piglets came through on the right flank and chowed down on one of the Viktorias. I completely (and aptly) brain-farted again and sat back and shot at one of the Viktorias with his Boomer with a control hand that couldn’t cheat up to any great extent when I should have just ran up and used Pull My Finger to do 2 wounds on a successful casting flip. The piglets did a good job on their pig charges and wound up killing the other Viktoria. In the final analysis neither of us achieved our objective (so we both got 2 VP for Thwart) and I got 2 VP for Hold Out so it was a 4-2 win for the Gremlins.

What was odd about this game was that I barely used the Hog Whisperer at all but, at the end of the day, I didn’t really need to. I still need to study my models and remember what they do but the more I play this game the more I like it. I’ve only played a handful of games of Hordes which I’m told is largely analogous in many aspects. What I like about Malifaux is that the game isn’t over in a “caster kill” scenario when all your masters are dead. I also like that every game is a scenario-based game and that your scenario is random. This really forces you to make tough choices with your force. If you only plan for fighting you can really get left out in the cold in this game. I’m really going to try and get my Warpig and Mosquito Totem painted up for next time so I can try out some more options with the Bayou Gremlins.

At the first Malifaux Thursday at Dueling Grounds I heard some of the guys talking about Meeplemart. I checked out their website and, essentially, it’s a one-man operation that does business primarily over web but they do have an actual location on Carlaw Avenue in Toronto. Essentially, it’s a big industrial loft with shelves lined with a surprisingly vast and well-priced array of board and miniature games. It’s not really a store, per se, as it’s only open to the public on Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 5PM to 11PM. To buy games from Meeplemart you can pay via PayPal off of the website or you can specify pick-up and pay in cash in person on the nights he’s open.

When the store is open on those evenings there are games going on the whole time. On Tuesdays miniatures games are played and on Thursdays it’s board game night. Steve (the sole proprietor) has a pretty unique and somewhat off-beat vision for his business. Apparently he only took control of Meeplemart approximately a year ago from its former owner so I can’t comment on what it was like before versus now. Steve’s intent is to be a supplier of strictly specialty games for niche gamers; he has no present intent to tap into any of the mainstream market. He essentially wants Meeplemart to be a hobby that pays for itself, not a full-time business.

The gaming area at Meeplemart is great. He has more than enough table space to have four miniatures games going on at once on surfaces at least four feet by four feet. For board games, depending on the game, he could easily double or triple the amount of games going on at once with the space and tables he has. As of today, this is only the second week or so he’s had these gaming nights but even so early on in the format he has an impressive amount of table surfaces and terrain that are free for people to use.

Tonight was one of a series of nights for Malifaux. We had four games going on at once with spectators so the turnout really surprised me. I played a “Scrap” (25-point game) using Som’er Teeth Jones, a Hog Whisperer, 3 Bayou Gremlins, 4 Piglets, and two Soulstones. This is only my second full game of Malifaux so I’m still really learning the rules and getting to know how my faction works. My opponent (a nice guy named Ash) was playing Guild with Sonnia Criid, Samael Hopkins, an Executioner, and 2 Witchling Stalkers. We were playing each other with the Treasure Hunt scenario.

Image © Wyrd Miniatures, LLC

I took some losses early on in the game after some less than impressive attacks with stampeding Piglets. I came close to taking out one of his Witchling Stalkers with two Piglet attacks but it didn’t pan out. He then was able to summon another Witchling Stalker which made me nervous. I didn’t do a very good job of managing my control hand early on in the game and wound up having to take some pretty heavy damage and some unlucky flips by my Bayou Gremlins had them shooting each other more than their enemies. By making good use of Flame Wall, Ash was able to get his Executioner, Sonnia, and his summoned Witchling Stalker in a cluster around the treasure and it looked pretty grim for the Bayou Gremlins. That’s when we both witnessed The Awesome Power of a Fully Operational Som’er Teeth Jones! Near the end of turn four, Ash had killed everything of mine except Som’er Teeth and he had Samael Hopkins, Sonnia, and a Witchling Stalker all bunched together. I moved in Jones an, with Reckless Fast, got two back-to-back hits with his Boomer Strike at Severe damage. With the blast tokens that generates it wound up killing the Witchling Stalker and Hopkins and left Sonnia with only two wounds. I won the next initiative and capped Sonnia but had a complete and utter brain fart. I used Jones’ trigger that allows me to deal double damage while taking regular damage. I scored a Severe hit and, stupidly, assigned the double damage to myself, as well, and told Ash that I’d killed Jones. So the game ended up in a draw in terms of models left on the table but I won because I had announced the “Thwart” scheme which meant that I got 2 VPs if I kept my opponent from achieving their schemes which I did. In terms of scoring it would have made a difference because I could have used another action to move to the treasure token and cut myself for a third action to pick it up and would have achieved the lesser objective but, honestly, I like the mental image of Som’er Teeth loading up his Boomer with way more gunpowder than he should have and it blows him up as well as Sonnia.

The one aspect of the Bayou Gremlins that I really need to get my head around is making better use of their proximity-based abilities and using combos that allow me to summon. I didn’t summon or reap a great benefit from my models that were killed in either of the games I’ve played but I think I’ll need to in order to meet with success once people start figuring out their own factions, too. Overall, though, I had a great time at Meeplemart and I’ll definitely be going back in two weeks for their next Malifaux night.

Not much to report for today. Worked from home and had a pretty productive day, overall. I have to remind myself pretty much daily how fortunate I am to have a job that lets me work from home so often as well as work autonomously. After work Colin came over at around 6:30 and we ordered pizza from Toppers and played board games. It was a Privateer Press-filled evening with a game of Grind first and then Monsterpocalypse. It was the first time Colin had played either but, as usual, he figured them out pretty much immediately and did really well. For a game that began its life as a free download PDF and distraction for Warmachine it’s really well polished and a lot of fun. The snap-together steamjacks are fun to customize. I really hope they come out with different steamjacks or even just a different set of arms and weapons to use. The replay value of games like is directly proportional to the amount of customization that can take place. My only complaint about the game is the finish on the actual game board. I’ve only played it twice and there’s already visible scratching from moving the pieces around which is a shame because it’s a great looking board, artistically.

Image © Privateer Press Inc.

It was fun teaching Colin to play Monsterpocalypse. He used Gakura (Empire of the Apes) and I used Krakenoctus (Tritons). The learning curve on that game is pretty steep just in terms of the amount of rules you have to absorb but Colin picked it up pretty quickly. I think about the only way to learn that game is to have someone coach you through every move on your first game simply because knowing how your units, monsters, and buildings work together is essential not only to winning but to the game being fun. Hopefully we can play some games over Vassal.

Allfrost and I headed down to Dueling Grounds today for some Monsterpocalypse action. Five people showed up for the event so we did a round-robin that took all afternoon and it was a lot of fun. I tried out Quantum King Kondo for the first time. The Quantum property essentially meant that, when I had more than 5 power dice, the Quantum form’s movement increased from 7 to 9, the boost dice on power attacks increased from 2 to 4, and the hyper cost increased from 2 to 4. Additionally, Quantum King Kondo had a new ability called Temporal Displacement which reduces your power dice by 1 at the beginning of your hyper phase and makes your attacks to super damage for the turn.

First I played against Allfrost using Defender X. I don’t know if I was rusty, not paying attention, or both but I made way too many mistakes and won despite myself. I never was in a position where I could even take advantage of my quantum stats and I wound up starved for power dice most of the game and I don’t think I did a super damage attack more than once, if that. I wound up winning with one form knocked out and only one health left.

Next, I played against Brian using Ultra Zor-Macros. That game went incredibly quick and was unique insomuch as I never spent a single die to move my monster. On his first monster activation, Brian used Underground Network to get his morphers close to King Kondo. Two of them (including Zor-Fractus) got aligned with King Kondo and used Gang & Lightning Attack to do 2 damage and blasted me for one more. He forgot about the Live Wire ability so I was able to bodyslam one morpher into the Electrical Power Plant and do four damage to his alpha (one from the attack, one from the building collision, and then one to each morpher from Live Wire). He then knocked out my alpha and I knocked out his morphers and my quantum got thrown into some buildings & hazards that left me with 1 damage. His Ultra had two health left and it was my unit activation. My only chance was to do two combined brawl attacks with my units but that didn’t pan out and I lost. I then played Tully and Jason and lost and won, respectively, on damage done by the time limit.

By the end of the day, what I think I learned most was that the Quantum form plays dramatically different from the Ultra form (I haven’t tried the Mega form yet). With Ultra King Kondo I’m accustomed to rampaging around the board  and never relying on my units to secure buildings to gain power dice. For Quantum King Kondo to do big damage you need to do multiple monster activations with a consistent supply of power dice. Additionally, the lack of any movement-based ability is a big adjustment from King Kondo’s other forms.