Saturday Short Takes
It’s another busy Saturday which means rather than presenting you with one huge blog course here are a bunch of bite sized nuggets of observation and sites to check out. Consider it a buffet of geeky goodness.
Khyber Pass’ B-29 Superfortress
My copy arrived on Thursday so I’ve had little time to do anything more than ooh and ahh over it. From what I can tell it looks, feels, and (will) plays a lot like B-17: Queen of the Skies (and no, I haven’t forgotten that I’m planning on doing an AAR series for that game, it’s coming…sometime ;)). Don’t like the slipcover presentation (good for publishers, bad for gamers) but since the money they saved on the box looks like it went to some really nice counters I guess it’s okay.
Flipping through the chart book (which is thicker than the manual) I was impressed by the level of detail. There’s definitely a lot more meat with B-29 than B-17. I also like the fact that throughout both the manual and chart book there are lots of design notes explaining the rationale behind a rule or table. Frankly I think there should be some sort of Gaming Law that stipulates there should always be designer notes in a game’s manual. I just like seeing the rationale behind some decisions, especially in historical games. Too many cranks (and cranky gamers is a topic I want to address in a full post in the near future) don’t seem to understand that when you design a game it’s a series of compromises to achieve a balance between playability and reality. Yet, there is always someone out there who will rant about the fact that the game doesn’t include rules for the problems King Tigers had when starting in cold weather, or some other mundane piece of trivia that has no real effect on gameplay.
On the subject of solo gaming I’ve put some time into Field Commander: Rommel, although not as much as I’d like. As usual for a Dan Verssen game some rules as presented in the manual are a lot more murkier than they should be. You can figure out what they’re trying to say, but that’s after playing once or twice.
From a decision making standpoint there are some nice choices to make during play. So far I haven’t felt that I’ve discovered the chink in the game system’s armor (the downfall of many solo games). I do question the fact that you make your tactical decisions after seeing what the game system chooses to do.
War Is Hell Issue 2
I’d like to say the second issue improves on the first. It doesn’t. Once again our fearless flyer yearns for action but then once he gets it, he doesn’t like it. At the end of the issue he has an encounter with a French prostitute, but doesn’t seem to hone in on the fact that she sleeps with him for money. How someone this clueless and idiotic could become a pilot at the dawn of the flight age, much less a pilot in a war, is beyond me.
At this point I’m thinking maybe the entire series is meant to be a joke. It’s bad. And not Zombie Strippers kind of bad, but brussel sprout kind of bad.
Gaming Food and Drink
I’ve been a fan of Jones Soda’s Strawberry Lime for a while but this week decided to try their Green Apple. Wow. Nice kick. It’s like a liquid Jolly Rancher. Both sodas are made with cane sugar. Yay for cane sugar!
I also tried out the new Snickers Charged candy bar, which infuses a Snickers bar with caffeine (is there anything caffeine can’t do?), vitamin B, and taurine. It even includes a warning label for pregnant women and children so you know it’s gotta be good, right? Alas, it won’t provide you with caffeinated bullet-time like perception (as seen in Futurama when Fry blows his Tricky Dick’s fun bucks on one hundred cups of coffee) but it does seem to give you a little boost.
Ogrecave’s GAMA Report
Ogrecave has a brief overview of some of the cool things as the show. Yetisburg and Warball sound cool. In the comments Mike Selinker mentions they’re working on Attack!, also. I had heard about this before but didn’t realize they were the ones doing it. As Attack! was probably the best game to come out of Eagle a new edition isn’t a bad thing.
Jay Adan also has some nice photos from GTS here. The Dust Tactics models are pretty sweet looking, and for you AT-43 fans it will use the same system. Myself, I’m thinking dusting off Gear Krieg and using them with that isn’t a bad idea.
Good Service
I recently purchased the expansion bag for Duel in the Dark at my FLC/GS only to discover the quad flak piece was not present. I dropped Z-Man an email about that and within two days had the replacement piece. Nice!
All righty folks, have a great weekend!