Happy Halodays!

Howdy, everyone! I hope you're all having a wonderful holiday season. 

The boys got some fun gaming stuff for Christmas this year, including D&D miniatures, a copy of the new 5.5 Player's Handbook for each of them, and the cool new Halo miniatures game. We also played through one of the adventures from the Cypher System Starter Set, which required a lot of deep dives into the rulebook, but it turned out pretty well. We're still a long way from starting a new campaign using this system, but at least it's another step in the right direction!

Finished!

Technically it's the UNSC Infinity from the Halo series, but I left off the identifying signage so that this model can instead serve as the Arx, a capital ship of the Armada. At nearly 2500 pieces, it's one of the largest building toys I've ever assembled.

Still on Break

I've been going fast and furious with my nineteenth-century baseball league, but Strat-O-Matic has taken a backseat for the past few days because this beast arrived at our doorstep. I'll always love Legos, of course, but when they got the Star Wars license two decades ago, it was the death knell of their Space line. In days of yore, Tim W and I used to build elaborate Lego ships -- entire fleets, in fact -- from the sci-fi setting of the Front Porch multiverse. Now, with my kids, the medium for that building is Mega Construx (nee Bloks). I don't know anything about the Halo series (I defer to Matthew and Nathaniel on that score), but the Mega Construx line is pretty fab for space stuff. This Halo set is being re-imagined as a certain lost ship called the Arx, which Tim might recall...

Halo Honcho

Not to be outdone by his younger brother, Matthew completed the Halo game that he's been working on. It's funny to see them arguing over which franchise -- Halo or Call of Duty -- is better. I like to pipe up that the Baldur's Gate series is the best of all, but no one ever seconds that motion.

Hot Stove Season

Not saying that the Xbox was a bad idea, but there's definitely less interest in board games these days at the ol' Sutton homestead. (Halo is definitely the flavor of the month!) In particular, I'm really itching to get back to our Strat-O-Matic Hall of Fame League. Somebody needs to take down Nathaniel's as-yet-undefeated juggernaut of stars from the Live Ball Era. 

"Sticks to Snakes!"

I'm definitely not a Halo guy, so after the boys blew me up a dozen times in a multiplayer scenario, we decided to switch over to Chronicles of Mystara for some cooperative Xbox action. The first game in Chronicles is called Tower of Doom, and it involves heroes battling against a lich called Deimos. There's probably more to the story, but Matthew clicked through all the dialogue, so we were a bit fuzzy on what was going on. Nevertheless, our stalwart party -- with Matthew as the cleric, Nathaniel as the fighter, and me as the spell-slinging elf -- hacked and slashed our way through hordes of kobolds, skeletons, gnolls, and other classic D&D monsters. (Shout-out to the owlbears, yo!) It took us a couple of hours, but we defeated the lich and saved...whatever we were supposed to save!

The hands-down most entertaining aspect of this game, however, is the cleric spell Sticks to Snakes. When Matthew would cast that spell, his character would call out "sticks to snakes!" in a very authoritative voice as he tossed some brown rectangles onto the ground (remember that this arcade game first came out in '93, so the graphics aren't that great!). The sticks then animated into snakes that zipped around and attacked the party's enemies. Matthew would often burn through a full day's allotment of Sticks to Snakes spells in a single battle, giving us legions of slithering allies. I'm not sure how effective they were (especially against flying foes like the lich), but it was definitely hilarious to watch! 

What the Halo?

The boys received quite a few games to go along with their new Xbox, but about 95% of their game time thus far has focused on an anthology of games from the Halo series. The whole Halo thing seems kinda like a 40k ripoff to this uninformed non-video-gamer, but the boys are really digging the first-person shooter stuff, especially the player-versus-player options. I'll circle back with them when they're ready to explore other titles; among the games in their stash is Warhammer 40000: Inquisitor - Martyr, which even Nathaniel hasn't spent much time checking out yet.