That was really fun! One thing I'd forgotten -- how intense driving on the 110 is! Man, that is a pretty grueling freeway right there.

Earlier this week I got my pledge for Shadows of Brimstone, and I've been slowly working my way through the rules/minis. This wave comes with two core sets (City of the Ancients, and Swamps of Death) and the next wave will come with a truly insane amount of extra stuff. So hopefully this game doesn't blow. :)

The plastic is hard plastic. I've been using the Citadel thin plastic glue to put the models together, and ugh -- that stuff smells awful. Glued a few models together tonight and I actually feel a little dizzy. I don't remember the same thing happening with their thicker glue when I built a few GW models years back, so that's either a different formulation, or I'm much more of a pussy nowadays. Probably the later.

Anyway, if you haven't seen this bizarre Adult Swim video, enjoy!

| Action Team, in the gameHAUS!

Got to meet up with Team J&J at a board game cafe called Gamehaus in Glendale this weekend! It was a really cool place. I got there a little bit before the gang and grabbed us a table. It was surprisingly busy which gave it a semi-open gaming vibe, but with a more mainstream crowd (ie, lots of ladies). They served pretty good food and had a pretty huge selection of games. $5 bucks per person for access to the games library. There needs to be more places like this!

| Transformographagizers

Auralnaughts did a "10 Guaranteed Improvements to Transformers AOE" video that has some really funny part. You motherfuckers who still haven't watched their part 2 and 3 of the Star Wars prequels are missing out.

Humble Comics Bundle

The Humble Comics bundle this time around is Star Wars comics. I paid the minimum because in the first tier of stuff you get is the first Star Wars Omnibus which collects the first 26 issues of the 70s Marvel comic. I don't know if you guys remember hearing this, but the first 6 issue arc is based on an early draft of A New Hope, so there's some rad differences in the story and a bunch of characters and scenes that never made it into the movie. The rest of the comics don't really interest me, but I'm sure I'll eventually check them out.

Random Expansion Review

Marvel Legendary Fantastic Four! More okay than fantastic.

Of all the expansions for Marvel Legendary, my least favorite so far is Fantastic Four. The main issue is with the heroes. They're predominantly "money" cards, so if you play with the 4 main peeps and Silver Surfer, you're mostly gaining money each turn. This is counter balanced with a few keyword ability called FOCUS, which is neat. It will be something like "FOCUS 9 to get 9 fight" or "FOCUS 2 to draw a card". They let you spend your money that turn on special effects instead of just recruiting heroes.

Thematically, I kinda get it, since the Fantastic Four are all about money (are they? I really don't know), but it was underwhelming. That said, when they show up in a random mix with different heroes, as will be the case most of the time, they'll probably be a lot of fun.

On the bright side, the bad guys were cool. Galactus, Mole Man, and their respective villain groups. The game needs to add some new henchman! Those are always fun.

Oh, wow. I thought he was living big off that RoboRally money.

A family friend of ours was one of the architects who helped build Richard Garfield's house.  Let me tell you...  Magic has done that dude well.  These types of card games are fun, but wow, I had no idea how rich it made him!

I watched the BGG TV interview they did with one of the designers of the Magic Boardgame and it looks interesting. I think I'm done buying those types of games because they're not gonna get much play in my house, but it looks like it'd be a lot of fun at a Con. Minis, cards, AND dice. I wonder why it took them so long to come out with this.

Magic's been around for twenty years! Holy shit. I'll never forget that first gaming convention post-Magic where there were just HUNDREDS of people paired off into Magic games, and it seemed like the end of an era. Things balanced out, but what a goddamn phenomenon.

Been quiet here for a while.

But what about THIS?

http://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/34937/game-preview-magic-gathering-strategy-board-game

Looks ridiculously awesome

That was the best kickstarter to read. How'd you hear about it?

| Late-breaking link!

Please seriously consider this RPG Kickstarter, it looks amazing!

| Link-rich content!

Doomtowners! There is a fancy new deckbuildin' site up (it's even official!).

Had a grim n' gritty night of sick-guy sleep, including the classic progression of: get into bed -> start shivering violently despite the warm ambient temperature -> cover up with the biggest blanket in the house -> wake up an hour later boiling in my own sweat and filth. I'm still feeling rundown, but I think I'm on the right side of it now.

I bailed work early, but did make a pit stop at the conveniently on-the-way-home-in-certain-respects game store. I picked up a couple things: the new Hordes book, which looks cool and is totally going to be the release that gets Elzar back into the game; and the new edition of The One Ring RPG. It's a Tolkien RPG set in the geographical area covered in the Hobbit, set in the time between the Hobbit and Fellowship of the Ring. enr0n and I played this at GenCon a couple years back and had fun -- interesting mechanics for common themes in the Tolkien books like fellowship, traveling, and whoring. The default game mode assumes the campaign covers many years of the characters' lives, with roughly one adventure per year or so of game time. There's a cool-looking campaign out that covers a thirty year period. I think that's rad!

I would've picked the book up online for better cheapz0rs, but the manufacturer participates in a cool program called bits & mortar wherein the LGS gives you the PDF for free when you purchase the book there. Lots of the smaller RPG companies participate (the guys that do 13th Age/Trail of Cthulhu, the Fate guys, bunches of other dudes; major exceptions: Privateer, FFG). Anyway, if you're thinking about picking up any RPGs, check the site to see if the manufacturer and your LGS participates.

While we're talking about Star Wars*, there was a preview for Imperial Assault that was interesting. Basically, if you're familiar with Descent 2nd ed the upshot of this article is "this is basically the same shit as that*", but the components are looking slick. I'm getting more excited! Plus, maybe my wife will be more interested in playing a Star Wars adventure game than a fantasy one? Nah, who am I kidding.

* This segue made sense in a previous draft of the post.
** Notable exception: the "miss" attack result apparently has moved from the attack dice over to the good defense die, which is interesting -- presumably you'll always be able to hit mook-types. That's probably a good thing, misses are frustrating to roll, and you should always be able to shoot some shitty Stormtrooper.

So sick! Sitting on the couch, taking some of the codeine-laced cough syrup I've got lying around, and lazily watching my hand drift through the air Jael-playing-D&D-style sounds pretty great right now. Instead I guess I'll go to target and babies r us, that sounds cool too!

So the trippy thing about the Extinction Point trilogy was how utterly bad the first book was, but it wasn't until I was midway through the last book (yesterday!) that I realized the second and third book were way better.  Totally weird!  When I finished them I read the acknowledgements.  Whaddya know?  He picked up an editor for book two!  It was like a light switch went on, and all the cockroaches of +5 bad writing disappeared.  It also happened to be Jeff Vandermeer, who wrote the excellent Southern Reach trilogy.  If you're looking for some good reads, pick those books up.  They were great.  Try not to learn anything about the trilogy, just start reading.  They're stra-a-ange.

The third-book pratfall is pretty common in trilogies. Anyone read the Golden Compass series by Phillip Pullman? (There was a not-great movie version of the first book several years back.) The first two books are really good, but the third falls down so hard it's painful. I still strongly recommend the series based on the strength of the first two books, though.

| Raiders

Since I'm suffering here at work, here's another strange nugget to chew on if you get some time:

Raiders of the Lost Ark in black & white with no sound and a weird techno soundtracks.

Director Steven Soderberg (Traffic, Out of Sight, Oceans 11, etc) has his website where he occasionally talks about movie making. I like his stuff. He's very off-the-cuff, but in an intelligent way that feels totally earned.

He recently posted the entire Raiders of the Lost Ark as a study in awesome "staging", taking away the sound and color and showing how masterfully staged Raiders is. It's so well layed out and shot and framed and everything, that you can literally follow along fine without hearing the dialog. The music he inserts is a little off-putting at first, but after awhile I got used to it.