Still thinking over which games to put on my list. Here's what I've got so far:

- Shadows of Brimstone: The big Warhammer Quest-meets-Deadlands game I got from Kickstarter. I've only played it a couple of times, but it looks like the fun is about the campaign and building up your character. Gotta do it!
- Saga: I would extract to extract maximum juice out of this fun Viking wargame. 5 meetups, 2 games each time. We can do this, elzar!
- Role-playing Games: I would like to role playing game 10 times this year.
- Warmachine/Hordes: Still the best, and I don't think we played 10 times last year. (Note: enr0n and I probably started playing almost exactly 10 years ago. Numerology!)
- Agricola: Wife likes it (and has played it hundreds of times on the iPad), but we haven't had that much time for gaming in the last year. Let's change it!
- Galaxy Trucker: See above. I think the wife actually likes this one more than I do, so it shouldn't be too hard to get this one done!
- Deadzone: So fun, almost all of us have it and we've barely scratched the surface of it.
- Mage Knight: This one's going to be tricky. It is long and requires focus, has a bunch of rules that I'd need to remember, and absolutely can't be played around the young'uns because the mana tokens look exactly like candy and are super sharp. But it's very satisfying, I have a cool expansion I've never used, and I didn't play it once last year, so it's on the list!

Not sure what else. Doomtown? That's a fun one, and plays quick, so it seemingly should be easy to crank out that many games. Better put something simpler on the list.

You and "Ken" should go halfsies on the new XCom board game from FF that integrates with an iPad for... stuff. (I've never played an Xcom game, so I don't have much attachment any which way.)

| 100 Games in 2015 - Yikes!

I think my plan will be to start logging whatever I actually do get to play and then seeing about midway where they are stacking up and where I have a chance to push through and meet some goals.  I don't have a captive player in the house (Les has had enough of games with pieces, but still plays TTR on her phone all the time), and Wy will play with me, but would rather play with the streetkids, which I get.

 I'm looking into a game group locally, but they often play over the hill at Game Kastle, which is a drag, but imma keep workin it, and I'm gonna start rolling some bones with the contractor that did the deck!  He's pretty nerdy (played through xCom like 10 times and loves the Shadowrun video game) and picked up Level 7: Omega Protocol having never really played a boardgame in his life.  His name is Ken and we'll see what happens.

 "Hey Ken, wanna come over and play Thunder Alley again?"
"We've played it like 8 times already"
"Yeah I know, but it's for this thing I gotta do.  Trust me!"
*click*

Love it! In! I'm starting to get my spreadsheet and list together. I'll post a link and talk about my choices later on.

| The cure

Got in our first game of Pandemic: The Cure tonight and it was pretty cool. It's the dice version of Pandemic, and it captures the feel of the original pretty well, while streamlining the whole experience into a tighter and quicker game. We did some stuff wrong but still ended up losing in a nail biter ending. It'll be fun once we get a few more plays in under our belts.

| 10x10 2015 Board Game Challenge

I saw this on Board Game Geek and wanted to try it myself. Let's all give it a go!

By the end of 2015, you will try to play 10 games 10 times. Make a list now, and then just check off your plays as the year goes on. It doesn't sound like a ton of games, but that's ONE HUNDRED games! That's kind of a lot. You're not tied into the list you make today and can switch games off or on the list. Just have your 10 plays of 10 different games by the end of the year.

Maybe someone with better excel skills can whip up a google-spreadsheet that we can link from here to track everyone's progress. Between Mancon, Kubla, and Gen Con, there's plenty of time to get a bunch of plays in.

The Welsh! You should go for it. Based on my ~2 minute reading of their faction rules, they're a lightly armored skirmishing force that likes to hit and run with javelins. They can also ride ponies!

I got interested in Saga from one of my forums as well. Sounded interesting so I picked up the rules and a couple boxes of plastic Viking-era dudes. Reasonably cheap minis (as far as these things go). Aeryk and I are trying to fit in another game day before ManCon, hopefully we'll have something to report.

FYI, there is a pretty baller sale on RPGs at drivethrurpg (pdfs) ending today. The star of the show is probably The One Ring bundle, which has the corebook plus two other books for $15. That's a good deal for the core alone and it's a rad game! Of course, the pdfs might also be available at the library... I'm also tempted by the Firefly bundle. Linky 1 (bundles), Linky 2 (moar bundles), Linky 3 (individual books).

Saga you say?  I been reading about it for a while on some of the forums I stalk.  Didn't think anyone would interested.  Hmm Welsh elves...

Ahh yeahhh...  Kill La Kill.  I did indeed consume that fizzy pop.  Crazy, absurd actiony show.  I give it a 7.  You should see some of the cosplayers.

| Random Stuff!

Been meaning to post about a bunch of random stuff. Here we go:

- Saga: Dark Ages: This is a Viking-era minis game that I tricked elzar into picking up. We've only played once so far (in Santa Clara in the middle of an insane rainstorm), but it was fun! Essentially, you field a bunch of Vikings and shit. At the start of your turn, you roll a bunch of fancy dice with weird symbols (different runes and shit) on them. You use the symbols you rolled to pay for the things you want to do on your turn. A lot of the time you'll be using them to activate units of dudes (for example, you can activate an elite unit by paying a die with any symbol, warrior units activate with slightly harder symbols, and your crappy units who lack motivation can only be activated with a rarer set of symbols). But in addition, you can spend dice to activate special abilities from your faction's special list; for example, the Anglo-Danes (my faction) have numerous defensive abilities that you can pay combinations of dice for, the Vikings (elzar's) have more offensively oriented abilities. Fun mechanic overlaying a pretty simple movement/combat system, definitely seemed like a keeper. Hopefully elzar and I will get in another game at ManCon.

- Primer: I've been getting back into painting/building minis after a long dry spell. One of my issues has always been that I really have no backyard (just a TINY shed, on a 6'x6' patio, on an interior courtyard). I can spray prime by clearing out my shed and setting up a booth (which I will probably do tomorrow in fact), but it's a real hassle. So I've been looking into brush-on primers which I believe is brave new territory for this crew. Citadel makes some stuff that I have determined to basically be garbage -- it worked OK on the plastic Saga mini I applied it to, but three coats into a metal Warmachine mini and it's STILL patchy, with very little "tooth" like you get with a standard primer. Since metal Warmachine minis are like 65% of my minis collection, that doesn't work. I poked around on forums to learn what the big kids use and it seems that Liquitex gesso is one of the popular options, so I bought a big bottle of it off Amazon. It should arrive, and I'll keep you all posted on developments as they occur!

- iOS apps: I picked up Monument Valley, which is a very short adventure/puzzle game. It was really pretty and weird and I strongly recommend it.

- Weird anime: I have always liked the anime art style but I've never liked any of the actual shows I've tried watching. Recently for a variety of reasons I watched this show Kill La Kill on Netflix. (Don't Google it at work, it's kinda NSFW.) Anyway I ended up... well, I don't know if I exactly liked the show, but it was fast-paced, bewildering and bizarre things in a way I generally found pleasantly numbing, and it was pretty inventive and entertaining, so I guess I sort of did, although it was occasionally incredibly creepy? The premise is a familiar one: the student council at a Japanese high school is in the process of a fascist takeover of the rest of Japan, empowered by transforming school uniforms. Into this comes a transfer student armed with half of a giant scissor who is looking for answers about the murder of her scientist father. After getting her ass kicked, she returns to the ruins of her father's mansion where she finds a sentient school uniform which forces her to wear it against her will. When the uniform is fueled by drinking her blood, it turns into possibly the most ludicrously skimpy thing ever animated ever but gives her kick ass combat powers. Oh! This perverted looking uniform was made by her father specifically for her and also kind of looks like him. She uses her powers to start kicking ass and taking names at her high school. This is in the first episode and things start getting a lot weirder after that. Quasi-recommended? (Definitely not recommended to elzar.)

| Another Shitty Start to Another Shitty Year

Last year pretty much ate a dick. Here's hoping this one is better!

| Happy New Year!

| Merry X-man

Have a great holiday, gang!

Finally got around to playing the copy of Mr Jack: Pocket that I got from Elrick at the last man-con. It was fun! It's SUPER light, but the rulebook was always kind of daunting (not a great English translation) and I just never bothered trying to learn it. Anyways, it's actually a pretty fun, super fast, filler. One player is Mr Jack and the other player is Sherlock and his gang, hunting him down. I will bring it back to Mancon to get some plays in! It's actually pretty easy, but you know how sometimes rules be looking crazy when you have no idea what's going on.

| Unrelated: Awesome shows n stuffs

Just got done binge-watching True Detective season one. Wow. That was amazing. 100% recommend.

| ...and on that note

Arena Commander 1.0 alpha just got released. Whooooo boy, lotsa goodies to read up on!

Sweet Linkage

| Epic KS Shame Post

To date, I have only ever done one Kickstarter:

Star Citizen – DELIVERED (partially) : It's the game made for sim/gamers by sim/gamers, with no studio interests to satisfy. The stretch goals are crazy ambitious, but I'll be damned if it doesn't look like they're pulling off the bigger stuff already. The Arena Commander (dogfighting module) has already been released as an alpha and I'll say that I'm pretty impressed. The graphics are solid, the interaction with Voice Attack is amazing. I think the original kickstarter was only asking for 1.5M to make "the game", and had some minor stretch goals for the next couple million above that... and when it went live it blew all existing KS fundraisers away. I think when their KS campaign ended, they had pulled in 10-15M from KS directly and another 10-15 from the website. With ongoing fundraising still happening, they are now 100% crowd funded and I think approaching $60M, which is nuts.