Tuesday, August 26, 2014

A Taste Of The 3D Printed Future...

by SandWyrm


I've talked before of how an old college chum of mine was playing around with 3D printing. Well, he's perfected his technique now, and is using his filament printer to create custom toys based on his own artwork. I'd figured on him resin-casting from printed masters, but he's printing all the parts up on the printer in batches instead.

Monday, August 25, 2014

Mind Blown: POV Shuttle Launch Video

by SandWyrm


Skywalker Sound did the audio mix. You DO NOT want to miss this!

I'll Just Leave This Here...

by SandWyrm


Now if only I liked Star Trek: Attack Wing... Oh well.

Gav Thorpe Is Making A What?

by SandWyrm

There's an Inception joke hiding in there somewhere, I just know it!
While forcing myself to finally learn the full wonders of Twitter, I stumbled upon what GW Alum Gav Thorpe is up to these days. It seems that Gav is creating a fantasy wargame... on a computer... that looks like a tabletop fantasy wargame. There's an Inception joke hiding in there somewhere, I just know it.

Friday, August 22, 2014

Brighthouse Responds (Sort Of)

by SandWyrm


I'll say this, Brighthouse Networks (BHN) cares about its reputation (unlike some game companies we all know). Within 12 hours of my last post on only being able to access Netflix through a VPN the other night, I received an email from Gary Doda, a BHN forums manager. Gary is anxious to communicate his company's side of the story, up to a point. But while I'll admit that the issue is more complex than I initially thought, my own stance is largely unchanged.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Screw You Brighthouse!!!

by SandWyrm


So I try to connect to Netflix tonight, and either nothing comes up, or I get an error message saying that Netflix is having a problem. This persists for over an hour.

Suspicious, I then I connect to a VPN service, which encrypts my connection so that my ISP (Brighthouse) can't tell who I'm connecting to. Wanna guess what happens?

Netflix comes right up.

X-Wing: How It Plays

by SandWyrm


After reading Oakenhawk's comments for my post on Star Trek Armada, I realized that I never got around to doing a similar introductory post on how X-Wing plays. Shame on me! Here it is!

Monday, August 18, 2014

Star Wars: Armada - How It Plays

by SandWyrm


How does Star Wars: Armada play? I got to try a 3-turn demo game at Gencon, so I'll tell you what I can about it. But be aware that the game is still in beta, and we didn't do anything but scratch the surface of the rules. Even the turn structure isn't quite final, so don't place too much weight on any one detail. Instead, try and appreciate the direction the game is going in as a whole, which is pretty positive.

Sunday, August 17, 2014

More Ships For Star Wars: Armada (and more)

by SandWyrm


FFG was cagey on Friday whenever anyone asked about expansion ships for Armada, saying then that only the base set was planned. But coming back to the display case today revealed that they DO have plans for additional ships that you can buy once the game launches.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Gencon: WizKids

by SandWyrm


The other game (besides Star Wars Armada) that I was hoping to see was D&D Attack Wing from Wizkids. Is it any good?

Gencon: Games Workshop

by SandWyrm

Some line...
Two years ago, GW had a booth that was nothing but blank cardboard boxes. With only the backs of their crew's t-shirts to tell you who they were. Last year, they did much better, with a nice booth, a large Apoc diorama, and a case of new products. This year though, they've fallen about half-way back to the cardboard box level. Gotta cut those costs I guess.

Gencon: Palladium

by SandWyrm


Palladium was all over the map. Average booth, nice models to show off, and the crappiest presentation of those models that I've ever seen.

Gencon: Privateer Press

by SandWyrm


Third up is Privateer Press. While they didn't have as large a vendor presence as FFG or Battlefront, the quality of their presentation was up to their usual high standard. They even had a new video game to show off. In the gaming halls they also had a good number of miniature and board game events. Not nearly as large as FFG, but larger than anyone else (not counting Magic, of course).

Gencon: Battlefront

by SandWyrm


Next up in terms of an impressive Gencon showing is Battlefront. Two years ago, the Battlefront booth was nothing but Flames of War products. Last year the Flames merchandise was limited to one shelf section and an order form. But today there wasn't a single box of historical minis to be seen anywhere. All of their floor space was given over to either Dust, or to their various boardgames. Like Firefly, Sparticus, and the new Sons of Anarchy. I guess these must be selling well!

Gencon: Fantasy Flight Games

by SandWyrm


Here's a pictorial rundown of what there was to see from Fantasy Flight at Gencon today.

Saturday, August 9, 2014

FFG announces Star Wars Armada

by CaulynDarr


SQUEEEEEEEEEEE!
Read more here.  Much better direction than trying to fit more huge ships into X-Wing.  I'll take seven please.  Oh, wait.  Retails for $99.  OK, maybe not seven, but definitely getting this.

I think I may be done with games I have to build and paint.    I like the hobby aspects, but FFG is bringing twice the fun with less of a time commitment.  It took a decade, but someone finally figured out how to make pre-paints work.   Quality + Fun + Star Wars == Profit!

Still waiting for that Star Wars ground combat game Fantasy Flight.

Thursday, August 7, 2014

Robotech Tactics Gets Held Up by US Customs

By CaulynDarr

Sorry to push your positive news piece off the top of the stack, Farmpunk, but...


That is the most real, authentic, hysterical laugh of my entire life.

Called it.  All that bridge burning with the backers to sell at Gencon, and they won't even have it ready in time.  Really serves them right.  Schadenfreude feels much better than it really should

One week!

by: farmpunk

Gencon is one week away! I'm getting excited. Gencon is North America's largest game convention.

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Great War

by: farmpunk


So roughly 100 years ago, Most of Europe was coming apart. After Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in a comedy of errors, and a little over a month of Nervous jockeying and posturing, the Allies and the Central Powers got around to all declaring war on one another.

Monday, August 4, 2014

Amazon Says: "Lower Your Prices To Make More!"

by SandWyrm

Yeeeesssth my preeeshuuus... Looower da priiiices!
You may or may not have heard, but Amazon is in full hissy-fit war mode with a book publisher called Hachette. The issue? Amazon wants a better deal than their current contract allows, and it thinks that Hachette is pricing themselves too high. Amazon collects all sorts of metrics on what people buy, and it says that if Hachette lowers its ebook prices, everyone involved will make more money. While making eBooks cheaper overall.

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