It is time for another update to my 2017 magic number.
(Note: apparently I never pressed the publish button on this post so many months ago)
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Net Change: -1
Current Number: 18
This is the second belated update about my Magic Number for board games.
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Net Change: zero
Current Magic Number: 19
As I recently posted I am trying to decrease my board game magic number this year. I started in February at 20 and since the initial post was over two months late this is the first of two belated monthly updates.
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Net Result: -1
Current Magic Number: 19
I found Ryan Graham’s post on BGG about the Magic Number (a term coined on his Out of Game podcast) quite motivating personally as I have been buying new games faster than I can get them to the table for the past couple of years. In a nutshell your Magic Number (MN) is the number of games that you own and have yet to play.
There are a few exclusions however:
I like the idea of starting each year with a list of the games that comprise your magic number followed by monthly updates of games played (reducing the number) and games added (increasing the number). While I am a major stats geek I don’t think I will go to the extreme of creating a graph of monthly progress, mostly because I anticipate changes of less than 2-3 games per month.
Below is my personal MN list for 2017 as of March 1st at 20 entries, here is the Geeklist on BGG. I will post live updates in the comments there and add/remove games from the list; I will only be posting monthly updates here.
I am hoping that by quantifying my “excess inventory” if you will that I can at least keep the number stable without having to go on a game buying freeze for the rest of the year. (I had intended to post this here in March but blew it.)
Rick’s Magic Number List February 2017
The Adventurers: the Pyramid of Horus
Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small
Alien Frontiers
Anachronism
Artifacts, Inc.
Bootleggers
Bring Out Yer Dead
Cthulhu Gloom
Dragon Master
Eaten By Zombies!: In Cahoots
Hawken: Real-Time Card Game – Sharpshooter vs. Bruiser
Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King
MegaCorps
Redshirts
The Rivals for Catan
Rivet Wars: Eastern Front
Star Trek Deck Building Game: The Next Generation – The Next Phase
The Swarm
Wings of War: Famous Aces
Ravished By Reagansaurus by Mandy De Sandra
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I was expecting more from this book based on the blurb and the cover art but it just didn’t live up to its potential. There were some silly plot choices that just didn’t make sense, even for a bizarro story. There were also too many typos and instances of bad grammar for me to turn a blind eye. I really like the far outside the mainstream story ideas but they don’t excuse poor writing and copy editing; I feel like the author either either decided to forgo the additional cost of a copy editor or she made a poor choice of editors since that many mistakes should not have made it into print.
Aliens are Real, and I am Pretty by Jeff O’Brien
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Boy was this a fun read! I really like Jeff’s style and this bite-sized morsel delivers. The color covers at the end were a nice surprise too. My favorites were the haiku (or is the plural haikus?), goddamn hilarious.
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I bought the chunky paperback version of this book several years ago but then proceeded to get caught up in reading a high number of lower page count books so it started gathering dust on my (literal) TBR shelf. This year I decided it was high time to finally dive into this beast and it was the best reading decision I have made in a long time.
I think the author could easily have broken this up into two or three volumes which would have the dual benefits of not scaring away people with a nearly 1000 page count and also presumably increasing revenue. I admire Stephenson for not going that way, plus I enjoyed the heft of this sucker in my hands every time I picked it up.
Based on the blurb I wasn’t sure if this was actually a fantasy book or not and it actually took me a bit to figure out that it was not. The end of the blurb foreshadowed a bit plot point that came late in the book but I had forgotten about it by the time I got there so no harm, no foul (at least for someone forgetful like me). Between the blurb and the fact that I loved Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon (another giant tome) I was confident that I would like this book, in fact it turns out that I love it!
The book did start off a bit slow but that was due to the immense amount of world-building that is necessary to set up the long game here. It was a bit confusing at first also but it wasn’t very difficult to push through as the story plot picked up fairly quickly. I really enjoyed how many concepts had a different name but were very similar (identical in some cases) to Earth concepts.
The characterization was very well done in my opinion. I had trouble keeping some of the names straight at first but that eventually passed. By the end of the book I felt very invested in not only the main characters that had first appeared at the beginning of the book but also other characters who were introduced later.
I realize that this review has been quite vague but I don’t want to risk spoiling a single thing for anyone. While it can take quite a while to push through over 900 pages it will be well worth the time investment by the time you reach the end. Even the three essays at the end were very enjoyable for me (although people who aren’t so into math and such may not appreciate them as much as I did as they are a bit dry).
Waters of Death by Irving A. Greenfield
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
My wife bought me this book while she was shopping for Make Room! Make Room! and the blurb was interesting enough that I started in on it right away (temporarily putting aside the 981 page monstrosity I was reading). I really like the dystopian setting where the only way to get enough food is to farm the sea and having a lower caste doing the farming puts an interesting sociological twist.
This was published in 1967 and it shows. What I noticed the most was the outdated way in which the female characters were portrayed, it kept reminding me the entire time that the book was as old as I am. At first I thought that the “romantic” sub-plot was irrelevant but I came around later when more of the story had unfolded. Even so I felt that this thread took an implausible turn which earned it ten demerits. (Are demerits even a thing in book reviews?)
The primary plot proceeded along nicely until we actually get out in the field. The scene where we finally get to see what is going on under the surface felt unsatisfying to me, it changed from a plausible set of circumstances where I was eager to find out what was causing the harvest problems to a really lame climactic scene that I felt didn’t tie up the storyline.
I didn’t care for the writing style very much either, the dialogue was often stilted. There was some world building that was delivered as dialog which felt out of place as the character listening to the exposition would have known that information in many cases.
I really wanted to like this since the seed for a great story is there but with the flaws pointed out above I can’t rate it any higher than three stars.
Neon Trash: Forgotten B-Movies of the ’80s by M.P. Johnson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I have to admit that the extent of my experience with B movies in the 80s was pretty much from Up All Night on USA (thanks Rhonda Shear). I think I only saw one Troma flick during that time, the first Toxie. Neon Trash made me feel like I missed out on some great stuff. We love to sit around watching really bad movies and most of the ones in this book would fit right in.
Even so many of the reviews were godamn hilarious and I don’t feel like I need to see them. This is a quick read, great for a lazy Sunday. The bonus bio story at the end was fun, too.
Bolt Action: World War II Wargames Rules: Second Edition by Warlord Games
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I am not sure whynitbtook me three months to finish this except that it was very slow goingbon the assembly of my Soviet infantry. It will be interesting to finally play Bolt Action as it will be my fist “buckets o’ dice” miniatures game. I am building a mid- to late war Soviet army but the fiddly plastic models have been a real challenge.
This core rule book provides some generic army composition rules for the major powers but you will definitely want at least your Armies Of book if not an additional source book to assemble an interesting histoeic force rather than just a generic force.
The Runner by W.J. Davies
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is another good story set in the Wool universe. I am impressed at how Hugh Howey has allowed other authors to extend his setting with new stories and characters. I very quickly became invested in Mick and Ace in this story and find myself wanting to continue the series. I have yet to read a story based on Wool that I didn’t like, each one seems to take a slightly different angle and they have all been interesting.
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Somehow I was unfamiliar with Louie Zamperini and his story until my wife gave me this book as a gift. I am very grateful for that as it has been both educational and emotional. Most of the reading I have done about WWII has been around the western front in Europe but I have been expanding my horizons and this started filling in the gap in the Pacific.
I have always had a place in my heart for POWs but only had a superficial understanding of the suffering endured by them in captivity. I was aware of the brutality that the Japanese disdain created for POWs but didn’t really comprehend on an emotional level exactly what that entailed. This book did a great job of not only relating what happened in the prison camps but also how it could affect a prisoner for a long time after their release. While I was intensely interested in what occurrred in the 1940s reading about the years immediately following Louie’s return to the States is what really drove home the enormity of his burden.
I have read various stories about the folly of upper management due to their disconnectedness from the daily realities of their people but it was very depressing to see that the same thing exists within the military (no doubt continuing to this day). Reading about Louie, Phil and the rest of the crew being assigned to a SAR mission in Green Hornet made me very nervous as well as angry at the despised lieutenant.
While we generally don’t see our currently serving military suffer extended imprisonment this story still affected how I view returning combat veterans with regards to the emotional and spiritual scars they may have suffered while away from home. I wish more people saw the value in learning about the past since it really does impact the present and how we interact with the world around us today.
The Boys, Volume 3: Good For The Soul by Garth Ennis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is one of the times where I read part of a book then put it down because I got distracted by something new and shiny. In this case I read the first third or so and didn’t pick it up again for well over six months. I finally got back to it and was pleasantly surprise at the halfway mark or so to see Wee Hughie visit The Legend and get a history lesson on The Seven and V.A.C./Vought American.
The second half of this book was mostly world building as it tells the reader the story of how supes (i.e. superheroes) came into the world and how much of their obnoxious behavior was hidden behind the smokescreen of their comic books. This collection was published in 2008 and weaves in some recent history in a very intriguing way. The writing was absolutely amazing, it was very emotionally engaging and a bit upsetting because I felt like if we had real supes in our world that some greedy scumbags would have made the same decisions that their counterparts in this book made. The way the back story was so tightly intertwined with real history was outstanding, I was completely drawn in and will definitely read the next volume right away.
In my previous article I explained why I drifted away from Warmachine and Malifaux, my pimary and secondary miniatures games respectively. Now I want to explain why I got hooked on Guild Ball and how I jumped in with both feet without even playing a demo game (a first for me). I had seen talk of Guild Ball on Facebook and sites like Beasts of War but not until long after the Kickstarter project had ended. I liked the idea of a sports game like Blood Bowl and liked the low model count so I read the GB forums and found a lot of things I liked.
I can’t be the only one who sees things this way as Guild Ball is spreading like wildfire in my area. There are quite a lot of former and current Warmachine/Hordes players among the converts as well.
It has been close to two years now since I have felt really engaged by Warmachine or Malifaux, it got to the point where I didn’t even bring models for either one to the Kingdom Con 2015 convention. Warmachine was my first miniature wargame and I still owe Paul a big debt for running my first demo game and getting me into the hobby during the summer of 2008. I started with the Protectorate of Menoth starter box (warcaster Kreoss, two light warjacks and a heavy warjack). I expanded my army over time with models that I liked for either fluff or abilities despite what the Privateer Press forums might say about them. While I had quite a few solos the units were quite a challenge, I started off with minimum units (six models) plus the unit attachment (two more models). I think that Holy Zealots and Idrian Skirmishers were my first two units, I quickly expanded to full ten man units though since the benefits were well worth the point cost differential.
From the start I liked the idea of the cavalry unit since they were fast and Exemplars but the price point put me off at something like $50 for three models IIRC. I never did get the Vengers, the closest I got was buying the Exemplar Gravus cavalry solo on sale. as my army expanded and I started playing bigger games (50 points instead of 35 pooints in Mk II terms) I kept adding units, first a full unit of Exemplar Errants then a full unit of Temple Flameguard. With the old packaging where you could buy a pair of models in a blister on the cheap I ended up going to 12 models in each of those units so I could run one full sized squad of each or split them into two minimum squads. I of course had the UA for both.
All of that added up to a shedload of painting. I never really grasped the concept of a tabletop standard for my painting, I think the extremely ornate armor of the Protectorate had something to do with that. I ended up with an army that was mostly blocked out (except the TFG which were more primer than paint) with some detail work but I never did any highlighting or shading to speak of and only a few solos even got washes. One thing that I really appreciated about the Protectorate models is that for fluff reasons they all wore metal masks so I didn’t have to paint any faces or eyes!
By early 2010 I was ready to expand my horizons into another miniatures game and discovered Malifaux at Kingdom Con in April. I remember driving back from the con on Saturday night with Paul and stopping at Game Empire to see what they had in the store (which wasn’t much since they had a booth at the show). I made my first purchase in June of the Arcanist (Ramos) and Resurrectionist (McMourning) box sets and the first edition book.
There were two things I liked about Malifaux from the get-go: it was skirmish based with a small model count and minimal units (which were usually only three models) and the strategies & schemes. The former was appealing since it kept the buy-in cost a bit lower and the latter because it afforded more complex game play than just march forward and bash in the face of your opponent when compared to Warmachine. I know that Warmachine had tournament scenarios but they weren’t used much if at all in casual play and even so they were really just a means to getting players to engage rather than turtle up. It wasn’t too often that I saw someone win on scenario points.
Being only my second minis game the alternating activations of Malifaux was probably the biggest change for me but one that I didn’t really appreciate much at the time. Now that I have picked up Guild Ball which also uses alternating activations (instead of “I move & attack with all my models, then you do the same”) I have found that it really adds a lot to the game. Not only does it keep both players constantly engaged (instead of partially tuning out during an opponent’s 20 minute turn in Warmachine) but it also forces the player to adapt on the fly since they don’t get to set and and execute a big strike all in one turn. In face there is no such thing as an alpha strike with alternating actvations (although there are factions in both Malifaux and Guild Ball that will allow you to activate more than on model in succession due to special abilities).
I enjoyed Malifaux when I was able to play it but there just wasn’t a big scene for it in my area. These were the first models where I tried out resin bases and they worked out rather well. I used Micro Arts studio for both factions, ruined factory for Arcanists and cobblestone for Ressers. Unfortunately I never did get fully motivated to get all my models painted and kept buying more before I finished painting what I already owned. I even crafted elevated bases out of wine corks for my Night Terrors but never got past priming and base coating them in brown.
Ultimately what killed Malifaux for me was M2e (i.e. second edition). I can’t say that there was anything inherently wrong with it, in fact it was nice that more emphasis was put on gaining victory points on the schemes each player selected and a bit less on points from the randomly selected strategy used by both players. No, it was the changes to the models and the art style that really turned me off. Instead of having Masters who had a huge number of rules and abilities on their cards (some of which I would need a magnifying glass to read today) they kept a few rules/abilities and then let the player choose additional ones by spending soulstones (points) on upgrades; those points came from the pool used to hire other models for the army. The art direction took a hard turn to what I thought was the silly. That might have worked for another game but it just didn’t work for Malifaux in my opinion.
At some point I turned to an alternate Warmachine faction to get some variety (since I just wasn’t getting in any games of Malifaux). Believe it or not I picked up some filthy Morrowans aka Cygnar aka the nemesis of the Protectorate. I think it was the electrical attacks that really drew me to the faction and after the battle box my first unit was the Stormblades. I painted them (somewhat, the ‘blades are still in an all olive drab base coat) and got in quite a few games with them. I even picked up the much maligned Ogrun Assault Corps mercenaries (with the required attachment to make them in-faction) since Cygnar didn’t have any medium based units.
I saw the writing on the wall for Warmachine as far as I was concerned when they released the first battle engines in 2011. These were huge models on 120mm bases which was more than twice the diameter of the largest bases we had before (50mm). Their points cost in-game coud easily be over half of the allotment for a smaller game and the monetary cost seemed excessive to me at $85 list price for just one model. Later the colossals were release which took this idea even further. They had the same 120m bases but were much more powerful, harder to take out and hit the wallet even harder at $130 and more per model. This just wasn’t the game I fell in love with any more.
All of that said I am still loathe to sell or trade off my armies (well maybe Cygnar). Part of me wants to at least get what I have painted up, especially since I bought some neat resin flagstone bases for my Stormblades and some shale bases for my Bastions. I am not sure how much of my collection I will get painted or if I will get in even casual games in the future; I am definitely not into the hyper-competetitive tournament scene. At least with Malifaux I know at least a couple of local gamers who share my dislike of M2e and might be up for some version 1.5 games in the future.
In my next article I will explain why Guild Ball was such a good choice for me.
