Alf's Revenge

My Strat-O-Matic hockey season continues apace. The Thistles have languished in the basement from the beginning, mainly due to bad luck in goalie Paddy Moran's rolls on high-risk shots and a general inability to put the puck in the net. The former would be addressed simply by waiting for regression to the mean, while the latter required a trade. I scoured the rosters for a swap that would benefit both teams.

I quickly zeroed in on Alf Smith, a second-line winger on the Bulldogs who had put up one measly assist in four games along with a league-worst -6 rating. Yikes! But looking at the game stats, though, Smith reminded me of Gord Roberts. They're very different players in many respects, but they both have an Offense of 4 and a Penetration of 4, meaning that they're at the top of the heap in terms of generating good scoring opportunities despite their middling shooting percentages. I sent Smith from the Bulldogs to the Thistles in exchange for Ernie Russell, another under-performing winger. It was a classic "challenge" trade.

With Smith now on the Thistles, I inserted him on the Tommy Gun line with Tommy Dunderdale and Tommy Phillips. Their next game, as luck would have it, was against the Bulldogs. Facing his former team, Alf Smith promptly tallied his first goal of the season and racked up two assists, not to mention an eye-popping +4 rating. The Tommy Gun line ran roughshod over Gord Roberts and the Bulldogs, giving Smith a bit of vindication. The Thistles picked up their first win of the year, but they're still in the cellar and have a long way to go. A resurgent Alf Smith, however, would definitely speed things up.

Painted Planes

I haven't forgotten about Aeronautica Imperialis. One of these days, Nathaniel and I are going to have dive back into the rules and learn how to play. In the meantime, I finally got around to taking photos of the planes that I painted a few weeks ago. They turned out...okay. The Imperial planes look way better than the Ork planes, but maybe that's in part because I chose some, well, loud colors for the Ork fleet.

First up, the Dakkajets...

And now the Fighta Bommers...

Now we have the planes for the Imperial Navy, starting with the Marauder bombers...

My favorites are the Thunderbolt fighters, built as Fury variants...

The Ballad of Gord Roberts

I'm no balladeer, but if I were, I'd compose a ballad to tell the tale of the also-ran who became an all-star: Gord Roberts -- no, not this Gord Roberts, but rather this Gord Roberts. In my Strat-O-Matic league of pre-NHL Hall of Famers, Roberts is by far the most interesting narrative here in the early part of our first season.

In my initial assessment of the players, Roberts rated highly as a forward with a well-rounded game. When I looked deeper into the numbers, however, I was surprised by his rather pedestrian shooting percentages. He got bumped back to the pack and ended up as a second-line winger with the Thistles. He played pretty well in the pre-season mini-tournament, scoring a goal in the Thistles' 7-3 thumping of the Comets in the championship game.

Despite their win, however, the hard-hitting, hard-shooting Thistles had a problem: their lineup was full of guys who were very likely to take penalties. Given that the Bulldogs seemed to need offensive support, I thought a trade was in order. I sent Jack Ruttan from the Bulldogs to the Thistles in exchange for Roberts. Ruttan and Roberts have very similar shooting percentages, and while Ruttan is less likely to take penalties, Roberts has a higher raw score in the Offense category, which is something akin to hockey sense -- guys with higher scores in this stat tend to find the puck on their stick more often. The trade seemed like a good deal for both sides, and it turned out to be the only player transaction that I made between the pre-season and the regular season.

Fast-forward three games. Jack Ruttan is, well, I don't remember if he has even a single assist yet. Gord Roberts, meanwhile, is now leading the league in scoring with seven points (3 G, 4 A) after three games played. Last night, he even scored a breakaway shorthanded goal against the Thistles, the very team that traded him away. This is starting to look like the most lopsided hockey trade since the Oilers swapped Gretzky for a bag of pucks.

So how did the Thistles -- okay, how did John -- miss the boat so badly on Roberts? I leaned too hard on the shooting percentages. That Offense stat comes into play quite often, and various game situations result in the puck ending up with the guy who has his team's highest Offense score. Roberts has a 4 in that category (among just a handful of players, including Cyclone Taylor, to have that score) and plays on a line with teammates who both have a score of 3. That means Roberts is going to get the puck a lot, and that possession translates into tons of scoring opportunities. So although his shooting percentages are nothing to write home about, the sheer volume of chances is going to result in a lot of goals -- goals for the Bulldogs, that is. The Thistles are dead last in the league and could really use his help right about now!

Two Games In

The season is underway, and each team has now played two games. The Victorias are 2-0 with a +3 goal differential on the strength of Cyclone Taylor's league-leading five points (3 G, 2 A). The Comets and Bulldogs are each 1-1 with a +1 differential, while the Thistles -- the champs of the pre-season mini-tournament -- are languishing at 0-2 with a -5 differential. Goaltender Paddy Moran has been nothing short of dreadful. Their next game will be against the first-place Vics, so that will be a major test for the Thistles here in the early part of the season.

Game On!

It's finally here -- the start of my pre-NHL Hall of Fame League! The first official game featured the Bulldogs hosting the Victorias. On a power play early in the first period, Cyclone Taylor of the Vics scored the first goal in league history. He tacked on another goal and an assist for a three-point night as the Vics cruised to a 3-1 win. Bowse Hutton was incredible in goal, stopping 32 of 33 shots, while Riley Hern stopped 36 of 39 in the losing effort. There was a bit of a scary moment late in the third when Taylor went down with an injury and didn't return, but he'll be back in the lineup for the Vics' next contest. Tomorrow night, however, it will be the Comets hosting the Thistles in a rematch of the pre-season tournament finale.

Pre-Season Tourney

With my four pre-NHL Hall of Fame teams -- the Bulldogs, Comets, Thistles, and Victorias -- set with their initial rosters, I wanted to get a few games under my belt before I started keeping track of stats. As such, I ran a mini tournament, and the Thistles came out as the winners. Top-line center Tommy Dunderdale tied the Vics' Marty Walsh with a tournament-leading three goals and earned MVP honors. In all, the Thistles scored 11 and surrendered only 5; despite having just the third-ranked goalie (Paddy Moran), they seemed a lot more powerful than the other teams. Granted, it's a very small sample size (each team played only two games), but I'll probably dig into the numbers a bit and see if it makes sense to transfer a good player from the Thistles to the lowly Bulldogs, who scored 3 and gave up 8 in losing both of their games. 

My Brain Hurts

Now I've re-balanced the teams to account for the differences in goaltending. Here's a look at the final table, minus the goalies and the free agents.

Am I close? Did I nerf Bowse Hutton's team enough to compensate for his superior skillset? I won't know until I actually play some sample games. But if Hutton turns into Patrick Roy and the other three guys are clones of Peter Sidorkiewicz, I'm really going to have to rethink how I'm approaching this mini-league.

Goalie Woes

So...I balanced the teams. I balanced them really well. The parity among these four teams of pre-NHL Hockey Hall of Famers was remarkable.

But then I added in the goalies.

I absolutely cannot believe I failed to take the goaltenders into account when I was balancing the teams. Of the four pre-NHL goalies, there's a clear statistical hierarchy -- Bowse Hutton is far and away the best, followed by Riley Hern, Paddy Moran, and Percy LeSueur in that order. Now I need to go back and redistribute the players so that Hutton gets the worst group, Hern gets the second-worst, and so forth, in order to cancel out the goalies' lopsided influence on the outcome of games.

Argh.

Numbers Game

With old-timey baseball behind me, I'm now moving on to old-timey hockey. I've spent the last couple of nights analyzing the pre-NHL Hall of Famers in my Strat-O-Matic set to gain a better understanding of their relative strengths and weaknesses. My first look at the game stats on the cards was flawed because the box I received didn't include the rulebook (they have since mailed me a copy). Now that I understand the rules, I'm taking a fresh look at the players and realizing that some of my initial thoughts were inaccurate. With a spreadsheet that now has twice as many columns as the first iteration, I'm well on my way to assessing and ranking the players. Although it may sound tedious -- Amy certainly thinks it is -- I actually find this part to be rather enjoyable. I love crunching the numbers and really digging in to the underlying math of the game system. Still, it will be even more fun when I get to play the game!

Stats

When I started my Strat-O-Matic mini-league, I intentionally chose not to record much in the way of data. More tracking -- every at-bat, every defensive play -- equals more time spent. Instead, I opted for fast and fun games that I can get through in a half-hour or less. I'm recording only the data that takes absolutely no effort to record, so that amounts of things like home runs (relatively rare for players of this era) and a few junk stats (errors, wins, saves, etc.).

With two seasons now in the books, I can take a look at the career leaders in these meager categories.  (For context, Season 1 was 16 games per team, and Season 2 was 20 games per team.) Below, I've listed all-time (again, it's only two seasons so far!) records for a few stats...

Home Runs

1. King Kelly - 5
2. Jesse Burkett, George Davis, Ed Delahanty, Hugh Duffy, Honus Wagner - 3
3. (Many tied) - 2

Wins

1. John Clarkson, Cy Young - 8
2. Tim Keefe - 7
3. Pud Galvin - 5

Saves

1. Amos Rusie - 5
2. Joe McGinnity, Vic Willis - 4
3. Rube Waddell - 2

The numbers above reflect only regular-season totals, as we don't really have enough playoff data yet to share anything meaningful. I could also list the career leaders for fielding errors, losses, etc., but we'll stick with the positive stuff!

Haymakers Win It All

The second season of my nineteenth-century Strat-O-Matic baseball league came to a thrilling end last night with the championship game between the Canaries and the Haymakers. Pud Galvin and Cy Young started for their respective teams. The host Haymakers wasted little time in getting on the board when Jesse Burkett hit a two-run shot off of Galvin in the bottom of the first. Galvin surrendered another run in the third on a sacrifice fly. All throughout, the Canaries managed to get men on base, but Young induced enough weak contact to keep the ball in the infield. In the fourth, with two on and two out, Wee Willie Keeler smacked a two-run single to extend the Haymakers' lead to 5-0. Al Spalding took over for the Canaries in the fifth, and he ended up pitching four innings of scoreless relief. Young, meanwhile, was cruising until the seventh, when Monte Ward -- the light-hitting middle infielder and Canaries' captain -- crushed a two-run homer to cut into the Haymakers' lead. The score remained 5-2 into the top of the ninth, when Rube Waddell relieved Young. The hard-throwing lefty tossed a scoreless inning to seal the deal, giving the Haymakers their first championship! The Playoff MVP award went to Jesse Burkett, who went 2-4 with the big first-inning homer; the iron-gloved corner outfielder also made a spectacular catch in the ninth to help preserve the win.

Canaries Take Flight

After the Haymakers earned home field advantage in the championship game, the Canaries and Blue Legs squared off for the right to face them. In a battle of aces, Tim Keefe of the Canaries and the Blue Legs' John Clarkson --this year's pitching MVP -- were evenly matched through six innings, having surrendered two runs apiece. When Clarkson's spot came up with two on and two out in the top of the seventh, I elected to pinch hit, but the Legs failed to score. Now the ball passed to Kid Nichols, who promptly gave up a run in the bottom of the frame. Nichols surrendered three more in the eighth, and the Legs headed into the top of the ninth trailing 6-2. On the other side, Keefe had pitched eight strong innings before giving way to Canary closer Vic Willis. Willis worked in and out of trouble in the ninth and gave up a run before it was all over, but the Birds held on for a 6-3 triumph and a date with the Haymakers for the league championship!

Playoffs Set

We've reached the end of the regular season for my baseball old-timers. The Haymakers locked up first place with a 12-8 record and +4 run differential. The Blue Legs and Canaries tied at 9-11. Since the second-place team hosts the play-in game to determine who faces the first-place team for the championship, we needed a tiebreaker game. When the Blue Legs and Canaries faced off for one final regular-season game, the Canaries came out on top 3-1 behind a complete-game effort from Pud Galvin. As such, the Canaries locked up second place with a 10-11 record, but a lousy -3 run differential. The Blue Legs had a better differential at -1, but finished 9-12 and in last place. Next up, the Canaries will host the Blue Legs in the play-in game, while the Haymakers await the winner!

As far as individual awards go, this season we didn't have a clear-cut MVP among the position players. Numerous players distinguished themselves, but I ended up giving the nod to Honus Wagner of the Canaries; he played great defense at short and provided tremendous offense all season in the middle of the order. For the pitchers, John Clarkson of the Blue Legs was the obvious choice, as he went 6-2 and led a Legs staff that allowed the fewest runs in the league. The final award, for playoff MVP, will be determined after the championship game. I can't wait to see how it all turns out!

The fight against frozen beef!

Okaaaaaay...

A New Chapter

The boys are at a crossroads with both of their Shattered Realm campaigns. Last spring, in the main storyline, they wrapped up the Emerald Tablet saga. Just this past weekend, in the futuristic version (where they're playing descendants of their original characters), they reached the end of a major chapter.

Next up, we'll return to their original characters. I've been trying to scope out a story arc that will be even more epic than the Emerald Tablet, but aside from some cool character development ideas for their heroes, I hadn't really made much progress. Inspiration struck when I returned to a work of literature that has always spurred my imagination: John Milton's Paradise Lost. The new foe who will drive the plot in the next Shattered Realm phase is based heavily on Milton's most dynamic and charismatic character, Satan.

I'm also hoping to use this storyline as a way to ease Matthew and Nathaniel into the vast Druid Cycle campaign world, with its hundreds of NPCs and over a quarter-century of past adventures. As such, I've selected a powerful but minor Druid Cycle character -- an angel -- who will rebel against his god and therefore be exiled across the multiverse to the Shattered Realm, where he'll cause all sorts of mayhem. No doubt I'll find a spot to work in one of Satan's most famous lines from Paradise Lost: "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."

Logjam

In the latest news from my nineteenth-century baseball league, each team has completed 18 games -- leaving only two more apiece until the playoffs. The Haymakers have spent much of the season in first place, and currently sit at 10-8. The Canaries are in second at 9-9, and the Blue Legs bring up the rear at 8-10 (despite being the only team with a positive run differential, though it's only +1). A three-way tie for first place is technically possible...

Team Tom

Still waiting for the Strat-O-Matic hockey rulebook to arrive, but I've been busy ranking the players based on my current understanding of the game stats. I hadn't been paying too much attention to the players' names up to this point, as the effort has been to achieve some sort of skill parity among the teams.  Now that I have a first cut of the rosters, however, I'm curious to see how the teams are taking shape and developing a bit of personality. I thought it was a little amusing when two players named Billy ended up on the same team -- both as forwards on the same line, in fact -- but then I have to admit that I cringed upon realizing that all three players named Thomas -- Tommy Dunderdale, Tommy Phillips, and Tom Hooper -- are all one team. That's 30% of the roster with the same name! 

Team Names

Strat-O-Matic is sending me the rulebook that was missing from my hockey game, so I should be able to get started with the planning for my first historical season. As I did with my nineteenth-century baseball league, I'll use the names of actual pre-modern teams. Here are the options on the table: Victorias, Shamrocks, Wanderers, Thistles, Bulldogs, Blueshirts, Millionnaires, Metropolitans, Cougars, Silver Kings, and Comets. (There was also a team called the Creamery Kings, but, well, that one just doesn't sound quite right.) I'll choose four from this list -- at the moment, I'm leaning toward Victorias, Wanderers, Thistles, and Bulldogs -- and then divvy up all the pre-NHL Hall of Famers among these four teams.

Strat Falls Flat

I was excited to receive my Strat-O-Matic hockey game, but disappointed to discover that it was...well...incomplete. Inside the box in which it was shipped, the game box itself was unsealed. Various components were stuffed inside, but without a parts list -- and, crucially, without any sort of instructions booklet -- I'm left wondering how much of the game I actually received.

However, I did get the player cards and confirmed that all my pre-NHL Hall of Famers were included, so I was able to get started with prep for my historical hockey league. Without the game rules, I don't really know how to interpret the stats on each card, but some of the more obvious bits are helping me understand who's better than whom. The four pre-NHL goalies, at least, were mercifully easy to rank from best to worst. That's the one position I absolutely need to get right, because the goaltender has such a huge impact on his team's success. Next up, I need to take the remaining players and split them up into defined positions (players tended to play a lot of different positions in those days) and then rank the players at each position so that I can draft four roughly equal teams.

Of course, ultimately I'll need the instructions too...

Aeronautica Models

I've finished building the models in the starter set for Aeronautica Imperialis, the new 40k game that simulates aerial dogfight combat. The set includes two Thunderbolt fighters and two Marauders bombers for the Imperial Navy, along with three Dakkajets and two Fighta Bommerz for the Orks. Tomorrow I'll prime them, and then chip away at the basecoating throughout the week. I picked up some great new paints at the GW store this afternoon, so I think these little guys should come out looking pretty spiffy.

Here's one of the Thunderbolts, built as a "Fury" variant with some heavier guns up front.

And now here's the same model alongside a Stormhawk Interceptor, which is at the standard 40k vehicle scale. These Aeronautica models are tiny indeed!

Hockey Hypocrisy

So, after railing against the Strat-O-Matic Hockey game a few months ago, I decided to order the game after all. The lure of creating a historical (pre-NHL) league -- akin to my nineteenth-century baseball league -- was just too strong. I don't even have the game in hand, and I've already set up a spreadsheet for tracking individual and league stats...

Halfway Point

We've hit the halfway point of my second season of nineteenth-century Strat-O-Matic baseball action. The Haymakers are way out in front with a record of 7-3 and a +8 run differential. The Blue Legs and Canaries are tied at 4-6, but while the Birds have a solid +3 differential, the Legs are sporting a woeful -11. The MVP race, meanwhile, is wide open. Last year, King Kelly dominated the league from start to finish, but this time around there are several in the running -- Dan Brouthers and Sam Crawford of the Blue Legs, Hugh Duffy and Ed Delahanty of the Canaries, and Jesse Burkett of the Haymakers. There's still a lot of baseball to played, however, so we'll see what happens in the second half!

Rube vs. Rube

It happened! In the latter stages of a wild, sloppy, 10-inning game, Rube Foster and Rube Waddell found themselves as opposing pitchers. Each faced the other once as a hitter, as well, and in both cases Rube grounded out weakly against Rube. In the end, Waddell's Haymakers hung on for the win to remain in first place as we near the halway point of the regular season.

Santorini

Nathaniel and I were killing time before Matthew's swim meet and found Santorini on sale at Walmart for only 17 bucks. We opened it up after the meet and played through the basic version of the game (without the Greek gods who have powers that impact workers' movement or building). Here's a snapshot of the city we ended up with...

Nathaniel was the winner of our first game, as should be clear from this photo.

The coolest moment was when Nathaniel trapped one of Matthew's workers in the corner and effectively removed that worker from the game!

Is This League Big Enough for Two Rubes?

Rube Waddell, meet Rube Foster.

With only 14 nineteenth-century pitchers in my (well, technically, Nathaniel's) Strat-O-Matic Hall of Fame set, one of the three teams in my old-timey league (the Haymakers) has had no choice but to get by with only four pitchers. Yesterday I was scouring some Negro Leagues data to see if any of those pitchers might have been active during the timeframe that I use as my eligibility requirement. After doing a bit of digging into who played in what league and when, I feel confident that Rube Foster fits the bill. Now this league has two players -- both pitchers, no less -- nicknamed "Rube".

The last-place Canaries got the first opportunity to sign this new player, but to do so they had to release a pitcher to get back down to five. Struggling starter Mickey Welch drew the short straw. Welch promptly re-signed with his old team, the Haymakers, who then traded spare starter Old Hoss Radbourn to the Blue Legs for hard-throwing but erratic reliever Amos Rusie. Now all three teams have five pitchers apiece, and I look forward to first time the two Rubes face each other!

Haymakers Making Hay

After a crushing loss in their first game of the season, the Haymakers have won three in a row and sit atop the standings of my little three-team league. The defending champion Blue Legs are treading water at 2-2, having scored the most runs in the league but having allowed the most as well. The Canaries are 1-3, with good pitching and mediocre hitting -- the same story as last season.

Play Ball!

Yesterday I started the second season of my nineteenth-century Strat-O-Matic baseball league. Opening Day featured a rematch of last season's finals, with the champion Blue Legs hosting the Haymakers. The Haymakers put men on base throughout the game, but Legs starter John Clarkson wriggled out of every jam, giving up a single unearned run in a complete-game effort. The Legs roughed up Haymaker hurlers Cy Young and Old Hoss Radbourn, with Sam Crawford's three-run homer the decisive blow in a 6-1 victory. Next up, the Blue Legs face Honus Wagner and the Canaries tonight!

Watch the Skies!

There's a new website for Aeronautica Imperialis. Between this game and the upcoming release of the Adepta Sororitas army, it seems that Games Workshop is going to be getting a lot of my money this fall!

More News on Aeronautica Imperialis

Click here for the latest details on Aeronautica Imperialis, the upcoming aerial combat miniatures game set in the Warhammer 40k universe.

And the winner is...Tennis?!

Of the 20 Atari games that came preloaded on our mini-console, I'm suprised to report that RealSports Tennis holds up the best. Even 35 years after it first came out, it's simple, elegant, and fun!

Feuding Dragons

So the XFL is coming back (let's go, Guardians!) and D&D is playfully going after the newly-minted Seattle Dragons. Given the XFL's track record, however, I'm betting on D&D to be the last dragon standing in Seattle...

Free RPG Day News

It feels like kind of a slow time for RPG news (I haven't mentioned an upcoming D&D sourcebook featuring a setting I don't like, but I'll definitely end up buying the book for the official artificer class), so I'm scraping around for any interesting tidbits. Here's an interview with the new owner of Free RPG Day. The fact that Free RPG Day has an owner was news to me, but the really cool part is that the new ownership group includes Millennium Games -- hands-down the best game store in the entire world!

Retro Fun

With the new Atari VCS coming in early 2020, I thought it might be fun to introduce the boys to the wonderful world of Atari gaming, so I picked up one of those cheapo mini-consoles that comes pre-loaded with Atari 2600 games. Nathaniel really digs the retro vibe, but I don't think Matthew can get past the forty-year-old graphics and sound. For my part, I've enjoyed revisiting old favorites like Adventure and Asteroids, hidden gems like Crystal Castles and Gravitar, and a few I'd never even heard of, like Secret Quest and Double Dunk. We'll definitely need to poke around online for the manuals, however, as it's not really obvious how to play some of these games; I mean, the original 2600 controllers had only one button, but the controller that came with our mini-console has nine!

Atari Art

I'm back in good old WNY for some time off, and it's been a bit of an artsy-fartsy visit thus far. I enjoyed seeing the Rembrandt, the two Monet pieces, and many other great works at Rochester's Memorial Art Gallery, and now I'm working my way through Art of Atari, a fascinating visual history of the pioneering video game company. I'd highly recommend it for any fellow Gen-Xers who grew up on the 2600!

Aeronautica Imperialis

So, yeah, Games Workshop just found another way to get my money. Check this out -- it's like X-Wing, but set in the 40k universe!

Eagles Take Flight

The upstart Elmira Eagles have won the Stanley Cup -- well, in our Xbox game, anyway! After dropping the first game of the Cup Finals to the Vegas Golden Knights in an overtime heartbreaker, we reeled off four straight wins. The last game featured an amazing comeback in which we found ourselves in a two-goal hole just moments into the game, only to rally for the victory. In one frantic sequence midway through the game, the Nathaniel character (our goalie) made three spectacular point-blank saves on Vegas's top scorer to preserve our narrow lead. When the game ended, Matthew's character took the Conn Smythe trophy for playoff MVP after leading the league in scoring and penalty minutes!

Warhammer on TV!

Emperor be praised! Looks like there's going to be a 40k TV series (separate from the Angels of Death animated series). Click here for all the details!

Revisiting Historical Hockey

I have to admit that the Strat-O-Matic hockey game system left me cold -- and not in a good, hockey rink sort of way. I didn't think I'd have another opportunity to explore historical hockey gaming, but now that the boys and I are chugging through a playoff series on our Xbox with a fake team populated by current family members and long-dead Sutton ancestors, I'm wondering if I might be able to scratch my historical itch using the Xbox instead. Creating an entire league of old-timey teams seems like more effort than I want to expend, but I could certainly create one team of pre-NHL stars (Cyclone Taylor, Hobey Baker, and the like) and pit them against the players of today. I'll have to think more about that -- but in the meantime, the boys and I have a Cup to win!

Halfway to the Cup!

Our Xbox NHL team from little ol' Elmira has breezed through the first two rounds of playoffs, sweeping Philadelphia and then Washington. Now we're up against the Tampa Bay Lighting for the right to face either the Vegas Golden Knights (let's go, Knights!!!) or the Calgary Flames for the Stanley Cup. Matthew, our top center, leads the team and the league in goals and points, while I'm leading in plus/minus and hits, as befits my role as the team's bruising defenseman. Nathaniel is our goalie, but because the goalie controls are insanely difficult, we're leaving those duties to the CPU and Nathaniel is playing as other family members instead, primarily my brother-in-law. It's taken a bit of finagling, but all of our relatives have scored at least one goal except for family patriarch Richard Sutton -- in his defense, he's also 217 years old!

Family Hockey

I've taken a few days off of work, and between random day trips around the Sierras (among other things, we attended a rodeo and the boys panned for gold), we've been catching up on a seldom-seen corner of the Shattered Realm campaign world -- seventeenth-century historical fantasy. This swashbuckling adventure has put us behind yet again in our sci-fi setting, but I think it's a fun change of pace. Even that, however, has been put on the back burner as we've jumped headlong into a massive Xbox endeavor in NHL 19. We've created an entirely new NHL franchise for my hometown of Elmira, New York -- complete with team name, logos, color scheme, mascot, and all that good stuff. I've tried to honor Elmira's long sporting heritage with everything we're doing, but the players on the team are fictional; or, rather, they're real people but folks who will never play in the NHL -- namely, the boys, myself, and other relatives, including my new four-day-old nephew and an ancestor who's been dead for over a century! Matthew and Nathaniel are having a blast playing as themselves against NHL stars, and as soon as we master the game controls, we're sending our Elmira Eagles into the Stanley Cup playoffs!

D&D at Target

The new Fifth Edition starter set, Dungeons & Dragons Essentials Kit, is now available exclusively at Target for the next couple of months and then will be distributed to game stores everywhere. According to the helpful Target website, it's in stock at my local store in Carson City, so I'll head up there today over my lunch hour and pick up a copy. Reviews are extremely positive, and in addition to a new adventure authored by the incomparable Chris Perkins, the set includes rules for one-on-one play with a DM and just a single player, as well as rules for sidekick characters to help with those solo adventures as well as smaller-party play. Can't wait to take a look!

Johnny...Gameseed?

I've been on the road this week, and my reputation seems to have followed me. Yesterday, one of the folks at the plant I'm visiting heard through the grapevine that I'm into strategy games, which led to a conversation about different games on the market these days. I provided a quick overview of some of today's heavy hitters -- the Catan series, the Pandemic series, etc. -- but to give them a taste of something easy and fun, I went out to a local Target last night and picked up a copy of Exploding Kittens. This afternoon, I got a bunch of colleagues together in a conference room and we played through a single game of Kittens, which they all enjoyed immensely. The laughter could be heard through the walls of the conference room, and although we might have disturbed some nearby meetings, it was well worth it. I left the game for them to enjoy and share with others. I have no doubt they'll play it again, and I hope it encourages them to look into some of the other games I mentioned. I think I ought to leave a game at every plant I visit, spreading gaming goodness across America!

BattleTech Beginnings

I may be on a business trip this week, but that doesn't stop me from poking my head into game stores! I discovered that the new BattleTech Beginner Box is only twenty bucks!

I've never played any of the BattleTech family of games, but at this price, why not give it a shot? I look forward to painting these 'Mechs when I get home!

Today!

Don't forget: Free RPG Day 2019 is today!

Free RPG Day 2019

Be sure to visit your local game store this Saturday because Free RPG Day 2019 looks like it's going to be a good one! There's a crazy amount of cool stuff, including a nifty Starfinder adventure.

Big Finish

The second phase of our transcontinental Shattered Realm campaign came to an epic yet zany conclusion today. I won't attempt to summarize the convoluted plot that got us to this point, but in today's session the heroes needed to jury-rig a mind-control device to fit a purple worm so that it could safely dig out a spaceship that's been trapped underground for eons -- all while being attacked by the angry ogres that worshiped and fed the purple worm. Thanks to great teamwork and some clever thinking by the PCs, the worm was distracted by rancidly delicious troglo-treats (patent pending!) long enough for the heroes to defeat the ogres, rework the mind-control device, and enact their plan to harness the worm's expert excavating prowess. Once the spaceship was free, most of the PCs and NPCs elected to remain on terra firma, while two gnomes (including Matt's PC), the last kobold in the underdark, a quasit disguised as a cat, and the aforementioned purple worm all piled into the ship for a journey into the vastness of space. I'm sure we'll see all these delightful characters again in the future, but next up we'll  have new characters ready to check out a sleepy little town in Greyhawk called Saltmarsh...

History Lesson

Nathaniel wanted to play the wargame Tanks this evening, but since today was the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the boys got an impromptu history lesson first. When we got into the game, Nathaniel's American forces hunkered down in the woods while my German armored units pulled up and formed a semicircle around them. Despite taking withering fire from the German tanks, the Yanks withstood the storm and came out victorious, with Nathaniel's beloved Super Pershing obliterating a hefty Tiger to win the game.

BG3!

TAKE MY MONEY!!!!!

MTG TV

So...a Magic: The Gathering television series is coming to Netflix. What do we think about that? Good sign: The Russo brothers are developing!

Detour to Catan

Our oft-delayed futuristic Shattered Realm campaign took a back seat this weekend to Matthew's swim meet. While his brother was swimming, Nathaniel perused the Starfinder Beginner Box. He created an android mechanic -- going straight to the online Starfinder SRD when the Beginner Box
character creation rules weren't comprehensive enough for him! -- and then proceeded to badger us incessantly about playing. Matthew drafted a (an?) ysoki soldier and, because I had the day off today, we had planned on running through the adventure that's included in the Beginner Box. I woke up with a splitting headache and upset stomach, however, which kept me in bed for most of the day. Amy came to the rescue by joining the boys for a rousing game of Settlers of Catan, which lasted for much of the afternoon while I rested. Still looking forward to giving Starfinder a whirl, once I finally succeed on that Fortitude save...

So they finally got home after all...

...but they speak Portuguese now.

And Venger coming through the portal disguised as a mounted police officer? That was damn cool. We need to see more of this!

KOTOR the Movie!

I've become a bit disillusioned with Star Wars films in recent years. Although I loved the mad dash to get the Death Star plans to Leia -- with a no-holds-barred Vader in hot pursuit! -- at the end of Rogue One, that film and (especially) The Last Jedi left me cold. "Silly fanboy, you're stuck in the un-woke past! We're making grown-up Star Wars films now!" Got the message.

I was genuinely excited, though, to hear that the Knights of the Old Republic video game will be adapted as a movie. It's one of my top five favorite video game RPGs of all time, and likewise one of my favorite Star Wars narratives in any medium. I can't wait to see this story unfold on the big screen. And I may just have to play through the game one more time beforehand!

Essential Images

Click here for some images of the upcoming D&D Essentials Kit. It sure does look nice...

Character Building

I've had some fun building characters using the slimmed-down rules in the Starfinder Beginner Box. I'm sure the full game has a lot more options for feats and whatnot, but the intro set seems to give a pretty good overview of the core classes and how they play. Thus far, I've built a vesk (kind of like the lizardfolk in D&D) soldier (i.e., fighter) patterned after Solomon Kane, as well as a nefarious android technomancer (i.e., wizard). I'll play through the adventure included in the box to get a better feel for the rules and then I'll give the boys an opportunity to play as well. They're already poring over the long list of weapon stats!

Essentials

Click here for some info on upcoming D&D products. One of them is the D&D Essentials Kit. I have to admit, the name brings back some unpleasant memories of Fourth Edition. Late in the run of that ill-fated edition, the D&D design team released a series of books and game aids that constituted the "Essentials" product line. The centerpiece was a pair of digest-sized Player's Handbook-style rulebooks with new builds for core character classes. Fourth Edition had already become so broken that new characters built using only the PHB were woefully underpowered compared to characters built using all of the available materials -- conveniently collated within the D&D Insider app. The Essentials builds were jacked-up so that new or casual players could bring simple but powerful characters to the table. My memory of this line is, essentially (pun intended), the last gasp of a failed experiment. I sincerely hope the new D&D Essentials Kit is a great new introductory set (akin to Paizo's Pathfinder Beginner Box and the super-cool new Starfinder Beginner Box) and not an attempt to monkey around with the beautiful Fifth Edition ruleset.

Artificer Unearthed

A new iteration of the artificer class for Fifth Edition is available for playtesting. I really can't wait to see the final version appear in an official product!

Wonky Hockey

I watched some YouTube clips of Strat-O-Matic's hockey game to get a feel for the rules. Specifically, I was trying to ascertain if the game would function properly with the smaller-than-normal teams that would be necessitated by the limited number of pre-NHL guys in the Hall of Fame. It turns out that the team size is probably not an issue, but I was underwhelmed by the game mechanics. It would be awesome to see legends like Cyclone Taylor and Hobey Baker in action, but the game just doesn't seem as fun, streamlined, and intuitive as Strat-O-Matic's baseball products.

Fantasy Hockey?

Strat-O-Matic is having a sale on their hockey game. As you know, I'm a huge fan of the original (baseball) Strat-O-Matic, so I got to thinking about the prospect of creating an old timers' league using pre-NHL players -- along the lines of my nineteenth-century baseball league. The Strat-O-Matic Hockey All-Time Greats Game includes players I could draw from, but I was curious about whether the Hockey Hall of Fame has enough early players to put at least three full(ish) teams on the ice. I figured that goaltenders would be the limiting factor, but my initial assessment is that the game would include four pre-NHL goalies, as well as perhaps a couple more who spent the majority of their careers in the pre-NHL era. I counted thirty forwards but only nine defensemen. Again, I might get a few more if I elected to include some players who were not exclusively pre-NHL, but I'm not sure exactly how many players I would need for a full team. Today's NHL teams have eighteen skaters and two goaltenders, but teams in much earlier times would have had fewer players. Do the game mechanics, however, require a larger number of players to sequence the line changes and such? That, I don't know...

Starfinder Beginner Box

The Pathfinder Beginner Box is one of the best RPG products I've ever seen, and even though it failed to lure me away from D&D -- Fifth Edition put paid to that prospect -- I have very fond memories of poring over all the gorgeous components of that epic boxed set. Today the Starfinder Beginner Box is available for purchase and I've already placed my order. The boys will probably enjoy trying out a new game system and setting, and at the very least I'll end up with a Flip-Mat and other components that will fit nicely with our sci-fi Shattered Realm campaign.

Tablet Terminated

In May of 2017, the boys and I started up a new Shattered Realm campaign, the first chapter of which was titled "The Lay of the Lost Horn." After that relatively brief introduction to this campaign world, we shifted into the primary storyline, "The Lay of the Emerald Tablet." That narrative wrapped up in August of last year when the heroes managed to reassemble a fabled artifact known as the Emerald Tablet, only to learn that it was a terribe blight upon the world. Destroying the tablet turned out to be no easy task, and was the subject of our most recent storyline, "The Lay of the Five Penitents," which wrapped up this afternoon. It was a conclusion two years in the making! Now we'll shift back (forward?) to our sci-fi Shattered Realm heroes, who have been waiting patiently for the next chapter of their own tale to be told.

Red Stockings

One hundred and fifty years ago today -- on May 4, 1869 -- the Cincinatti Red Stockings played the first professional baseball game in which all the players on the team were paid. Not surprisingly, they wiped out a local semipro team by a score of 45-9. Organized baseball had been around for a quarter-century, but now a team had taken a step that would lead to the first major league in 1871. None of those Red Stockings players are included in my Strat-O-Matic league (brothers Harry and George Wright are Hall of Famers but the set doesn't include stat cards for them), but they're the trailblazers who led the way for Al Spalding, Deacon White, and the first wave of true major leaguers.

Calling All Comics Fans!

As a reminder, today is Free Comic Book Day!

The Dungeon

Well, they won't win any points for creative naming, but The Dungeon is a heckuva product that you can check out in its final week on Kickstarter. I'm a huge fan of Pathfinder and Starfinder Flip-Mats, and this set provides tons of encounter space for the price of just a couple of Flip-Mats. The design isn't as detailed as what you see with the Paizo products, of course, but the sheer variety of maps will be a major asset for our D&D-crazed household. 

Free Comic Book Day 2019

Tell your friends! This Saturday, May 4, is Free Comic Book Day at your friendly local comic book store!

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulu is a version of the critically acclaimed Pandemic but it's set in the universe of H. P. Lovecraft's horror fiction. Players take the role of investigators who travel to iconic Lovecraft locations -- Arkham, Innsmouth, etc. -- in search of clues to seal portals leading to the otherworldly realm of Cthulhu and his brethren. The object of the game is to seal the portal in each of the four towns before the entire region is overrun by evil or all the investigators go insane.

We picked up a copy of Reign last weekend but didn't get a chance to play until this afternoon. Nathaniel played as the Detective (who requires fewer clues to seal a gate) and I played as the Hunter (who excels at killing cultists and monsters). We found ourselves overwhelmed from the get-go and quickly split up so that Nathaniel could focus on closing gates while I set out to eliminate cultist threats wherever they arose. Despite my initial bleak assessment of our situation, Nathaniel managed to close two of the four gates quickly. Only the gates in Innsmouth and Dunwich remained, and after a bit of card-juggling, Nathaniel found himself ready to take care of the latter. I was at Innsmouth, meanwhile, with horrific monsters called shoggoths closing in on my hospital hideout from two different directions. Naturally, my Hunter went insane from the shoggoth incursion, but Nathaniel activated a relic that restored the Hunter's sanity in the nick of time. He closed the gate in Dunwich, and on the next turn I joined him there to hand over all my Innsmouth clues. He then hopped on a bus back to Innsmouth and closed the last gate, thus saving the world!

Grand (Slam) Finale

The first championship game certainly exceeded my expectations. Starters Mickey Welch of the Haymakers and Kid Nichols of the Blue Legs breezed through the first several innings and we were scoreless through four. Baserunners were few and far between, so I was aggressive in using pinch hitters to try to generate more offense. After I lifted Welch for a pinch hitter, Old Hoss Radbourn came into the game and promptly gave up a couple of runs in the fifth. The Haymakers battled back in the sixth, however, and tied the score at 2, only for Radbourn to give one back in the next frame. Now with the Legs leading 3-2 and a chance for more, I pinch hit for the Kid, but the Legs failed to extend their lead. Nichols left the game up 3-2 after seven, only to watch his solid effort get squandered by John Clarkson, who got roughed up for three in the top of the eighth. As a result, the Haymakers led 5-3 going into the bottom of the eighth. The Legs then loaded the bases for Sam Thompson, who promptly smacked the first-ever grand slam in the short history of this league. Radbourn escaped further damage, but now the Haymakers were down by two going into the ninth. Clarkson retired the side in order to seal the championship for the Blue Legs. The final score was 7-5, and a grand slam in the eighth to spark a come-from-behind victory was an amazingly cool turn of events. How many days until spring training for next season? Well, it could be tomorrow!

Haymakers Deliver Body Blow

In the league's first-ever playoff game, the third-place Haymakers -- reeling from three straight losses -- headed to face the Canaries. The Haymakers came ready to play and ripped Tim Keefe for three runs in the top of the first inning, highlighted by Joe Kelley's two-run triple. They would tack on two more runs against Keefe, including catcher Roger Bresnahan's solo homer. In the middle innings, the Canaries began to chip away against Cy Young and managed to get some great relief pitching from Jack Chesbro and Al Spalding. Young, however, gutted out all nine and held on for a 5-4 victory. The Canaries go home, and Haymakers move on to face the power-hitting Blue Legs in the championship game.

Playoff Time!

My old timers have completed the first regular season of their nineteenth-century league. They played only 16 games apiece (I'll probably increase the number of games in future seasons), and it ended up being quite a dogfight. The Blue Legs, led by runaway position player MVP King Kelly, got hot down the stretch and finished in first place at 9-7. Their run differential was dead even, but they led the league with nine homers and 77 runs scored. The Canaries finished second with an 8-8 record and although they scored the fewest runs in the league by far, they also allowed a league-low 62 runs and had a run differential of +4. The once-mighty Haymakers cratered over their last three games and finished 7-9 with a -4 run differential, and their 80 runs allowed were worst in the league -- pretty lousy for a team with Cy Young (this season's pitching MVP) on the staff!

Now the playoffs begin! For this inaugural season, I'm keeping it simple and holding only two games. The third-place team (Haymakers) visits the second-place team (Canaries), with the winner moving on to play the first-place team (Blue Legs) in the championship game. The play-in game forces both of the lower-ranked teams to burn one or more pitchers, while the team that earned first place awaits them with a fully-rested staff. Will the Blue Legs capture the championship, or will one of the underdogs upset them? We'll find out soon!

Playing the Long Game

Druid Cycle game action is nowhere near as fast and furious as it was in years past. (Moving thousands of miles away from the other players definitely didn't help matters!) These days, we keep the stories going with slow-paced email-based adventures featuring the long-running characters played by Tim W, Scott, and Kevin. Scott's and Tim's earliest characters in this world date back to 1993, and Kevin's to 1998, so we've seen these characters evolve over decades of real time and game time alike.

As a result, sometimes we'll have a narrative payoff that's years in the making. We had such a payoff today, when Tim learned that the wife of his character Lwcus had not perished (as Tim and his character have always believed), but had been transformed into an undead revenant -- one that has appeared as a minor character in numerous other Druid Cycle adventures. Now Tim has learned that 'Cerys' and 'Kheru' are one and the same, and a reveal that I'd been planning for at least ten years was finally able to take place!

Baseball Is Back!

The first season of my nineteenth-century Hall of Fame league continues! After ten games, all three teams are sitting at 5-5, though the Haymakers have a +7 run differential (the other teams are both in the red) and an expected win percentage of .573, so they might take off if their luck evens out. Mike "King" Kelly of the Blue Legs -- one of the most fascinating characters in baseball history -- is the early frontrunner for MVP, as he's hit more home runs (three) than all other players in the league combined (two). The Haymakers' Cy Young was cruising as the league's top pitcher, but he got roughed up last night, while Tim Keefe of the Canaries is on the rise. All three teams have had their share of heroes and goats, and with eight more games apiece in our (rather brief) regular season, it will be a fun race to the finish!

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.

Just say the word...

Shazam opens today. I can't wait to introduce the boys to the Big Red Cheese and his charmingly goofy corner of the DC universe!

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...

All-Star Break

What a difference a few more games can make! We're at the halfway point of my first season of nineteenth-century baseball -- with each team playing a 16-game regular season -- and the Canaries are no longer looking like a world-beating powerhouse. After eight games, the Haymakers have pulled out in front with a 5-3 record and a +12 run differential; they've scored the most runs in the league and also allowed the fewest. Ace pitcher Cy Young is looking like our league MVP, and his work includes a 13-inning complete-game victory. The red-hot Blue Legs have moved up to second place, with a 4-4 record but a -5 differential that reflects their early struggles. The Canaries have fallen into the basement, with a 3-5 record and an ugly -7 differential. I'm still not confident that the teams are balanced appropriately, but I think we're pretty close. The teams are starting to exhibit their own unique flavors and character, so it will be fun to see how things shake out in the second half of the season.

Small-Sample-Size Alert!

Each team in my nineteenth-century league has now played four games. In baseball, that's not a lot. Intellectually, I know that the sample size is so small that I can't draw meaningful conclusions about the relative strengths of my three teams...but I can't help it! It feels like the Canaries are significantly better than the others. They're sitting at 3-1 with a +5 run differential. The Haymakers are next at 2-2 with a -2 differential, and the snakebitten Blue Legs are 1-3 with a -3 differential. (For the boys in blue, the only highlight of the season has been King Kelly's home run -- the only one hit in the league thus far!) I've made a minor swap of pitchers between the Canaries and Blue Legs to try to even out the staffs a bit, but otherwise I'm just going to keep playing and see what happens. Are the Canaries really good, or just really lucky?

Game On!

In the first game of my nineteenth-century league, Cy Young of the Haymakers opened the first inning by giving up back-to-back extra-base hits to the Billy Hamilton and Nap Lajoie, but then settled down to toss eight straight shutout innings. Meanwhile, Blue Legs starter Kid Nichols had a few shaky frames and allowed the Haymakers to string some hits together. The end result was a 4-1 win for the Haymakers, with Wee Willie Keeler flashing a big bat despite his tiny stature. Next up, the Haymakers try their luck against a Canaries team that features the legendary Honus Wagner, one of the five original Hall of Famers.

Team Names

They had some pretty wacky baseball team names back in the day. I've decided to use the names of real-life Major League baseball teams for my league of nineteenth-century Hall of Famers, although with the stipulation that the teams can't currently exist in MLB under a different name (sorry, Brooklyn Bridegroom at St. Louis Perfectos!). So, without further ado, say hello to Cap Anson's Haymakers, Nap Lajoie's Blue Legs, and Monte Ward's Canaries.

Movie News

A bit of news on the still-in-development-hell D&D movie.

Pitchers Are Hard

My little three-team Strat-O-Matic Old Timers' League is now taking shape! I started with position players. After a bit of finagling around the diamond -- for example, Deacon White was primarily a catcher but I'm using him at third base, where he played far fewer innings -- I ended up with between three and five Hall of Famers at each position. Ranking the players at each position was fairly easy. Looking at their game stats, I weighed offensive prowess, defensive abilities, and base running skills (super-duper important for nineteenth-century ball).

As for the pitchers, well, they're another story. I've got 14 of them, and although poring over Strat-O-Matic game stats confirms that, say, Cy Young is better than Amos Rusie, it's been challenging to rank them with any confidence. For one thing, even within the narrow span of nineteenth-century baseball, the earliest stars -- Al Spalding and Candy Cummings -- don't correlate well to their peers in the latter part of this era. The biggest question mark, however, is Rube Waddell, whose real-life dominance as a strikeout artist doesn't (in my estimation) come across in the game stats. I've tentatively broken them all up into staffs of five, five, and four pitchers (the team with innings-eaters Cy Young and Old Hoss Radbourn will have to make do with four), but it still feels like a shot in the dark. I'll draft my ranked position players next and add them to these teams, and then we'll see what we get.

Old Timers' League

I've had a passion for nineteenth-century baseball since I was a kid. I have distinct memories of my twelve-year-old self trying to create a text-based baseball simulation game in BASIC, and then using it to replay the first recorded organized baseball game -- a dust-up between the New York Knickerbockers and the Nine York Nine from way back in 1845.

Fast-forward to today: The Strat-O-Matic Hall of Fame edition has given me the opportunity to explore the simulation of nineteenth-century baseball in a far more realistic fashion. You might have seen posts last fall about our Hall of Fame League, in which the boys and I divvied up the all-time greats into teams based on twenty-year time periods. We had some very memorable games, but Matthew and Nathaniel don't have quite the same zeal for baseball that I do, so it's been hard to get them back into Strat-O-Matic.

After reading another baseball history book while I was on a business trip in Seattle last week, I decided to create a new historical league that I can run all by myself. For this one, I'm using all Hall of Famers who debuted between 1871 (the beginning of Major League Baseball) and 1899. I have just enough players to create three full teams. I'll rank the players at each position and then conduct a draft with the hope of getting three relatively equal teams. Then we'll play ball!

Shadowspear

Shadowspear, the new 40k boxed set, was unveiled today -- and damn those models look cool! Not sure I want to buy yet another boxed set, but I really dig those Primaris scouts!

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.

Duty Done

I'm proud to announce that Nathaniel successfully completed his Call of Duty game on the Xbox, and with very little assistance from Matthew or myself!

The Adventures Begin!

Today we received our copies of the first two books in the Warhammer Adventures series. I'm excited to have a fun series to share with Nathaniel!

Ghosts of Saltmarsh

Matt, this one's for you! Keep those nautical-themed characters handy!

TV D&D

I don't quite "get" The Big Bang Theory. I've caught bits and pieces over the years and it seems amusing enough, but I'm not sure why people go gaga over it. At any rate, apparently they had a D&D-themed episode tonight. You can read about it here. 

This Is a Thing I Must Have

Sunday's Simpsons episode included a Stranger Things riff that the boys totally didn't get because, of course, they haven't seen the show. During a commercial break, I gave them a quick overview of the series and its connection to D&D. Turns out that was a timely discussion because there's going to be a new D&D starter set that ties directly into Stranger Things. Very cool indeed! And here's hoping that the upcoming season of Stranger Things features more D&D and less Dig Dug.

How Irons-ic

Nathaniel is playing one of the many Call of Duty games on our Xbox, and a major plot twist in this installment is that a character played by Kevin Spacey -- military contractor Jonathan Irons -- turns out to be the villain. "You're a monster!" one of the characters shouts at him. This game came out in 2014, so the twist is rather ironic today.

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. 

Bestiary Notebooks

I'm not sure who the intended audience is for this product, which means that it's probably me! I can see the boys (and even Amy?) enjoying these little D&D notebooks, each of which features a different iconic monster from D&D lore. But will they include my favorites, the hook horror and the owlbear?

"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! 

Russian Revenge

It was a lazy, rainy Sunday afternoon, so we decided to start World War III. In the alternate-'80s setting of Tanks: The Modern Age, Nathaniel took command of an American M1A1 Abrams, while I led a pair of Soviet T-64s. As we rumbled into a quiet village in West Germany, my attempt to flank the Abrams resulted in the quick, merciless obliteration of my first T-64. Figuring the game would soon be lost (the Abrams is far superior to the T-64), I just plowed ahead with my remaining tank and chased Nathaniel out of the village and into the forest. Along the way, I was lucky enough to score a critical hit that injured his crew, which helped to even the odds a bit. Our tanks traded devasting shots as I charged toward his position. Here's a photo of the final turn, when my resolute Russians destroyed the Abrams and avenged their comrades.

Nathaniel was none too pleased to lose after what had seemed like such a certain victory. I'm sure tomorrow will bring a rematch!

Chronicles of Mystara

Remember those awesome D&D arcade games from the '90s? Neither do I, because they never made it to Horseheads, New York. I learned about them years later, after coin-gobbling arcade games had gone the way of Blockbuster Video. At long last, I have the opportunity to scratch that itch, thanks to our Xbox. Last night I downloaded Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara, which contains both arcade games from that series -- Tower of Doom (1993) and Shadow Over Mystara (1996). As old-timey side-scrolling games go, they're not half bad! I think the boys will enjoy joining me for some multiplayer action.

Tank-You Gift

I got some very good news at work the other day, so to thank the boys for their patience these past several weeks as I've been busy and distracted, I let them each pick out a gift. Nathaniel opted for Tanks: The Modern Age. Can't wait to give it a try! 

Captain Cheapo

I was chatting with a Games Workshop store dude recently and talking about the randomized packs of Space Marine Heroes. I mentioned that we were lucky enough to get a captain in one of the boxes that I gave to the boys as stocking stuffers. I asked him about the rarity of that figure, and he said that captains make up only one out of 36 boxes. Moreover, given the roughly $8 price of each figure from the Space Marine Heroes line, that's the cheapest captain Games Workshop has ever released!

New Year, New Games!

We've had tons of fun over winter break trying out new games like Forbidden Sky and logging lots of time on the Xbox. One of the top experiences has been Betrayal at House on the Hill, which provides a memorable story with each and every game session. Betrayal has thematic elements that make it similar to Mansions of Madness, but it's far simpler and faster to set up and play. In our first game of Betrayal, Nathaniel played a plucky twelve-year-old boy who ended up alone in a house full of zombies. Unable to overcome them in physical combat, he had to rely on an eerie music box to lure the undead into rooms where he could trap them. After each play-through, I'm eager to try it again to see what new stories we'll discover -- that's the hallmark of a great game!

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.

At last...the tide has come in!

Super stoked to take the boys to see Aquaman tonight!

Merry Merry!

Hope you all have a great holiday season with your families! Here at our house, we'll have the most gaming-filled Christmas ever, as the boys are getting a long-overdue modern video game system (an Xbox One) along with a handful of games.

I'm still not a big-time video game fan, however, so I'm even more excited about some of the other gifts. They've got one of the Zombicide sequels coming, along with the highly acclaimed Betrayal at House on the Hill and an additional expansion box. Best of all, perhaps, is Forbidden Sky, the newest entry in the "Forbidden" series (following Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert, which may be the two most frequently played board games in the Sutton household). The boys will also find their stockings stuffed with the new Space Marine Heroes line of individual randomized models for Warhammer 40k. Perhaps we'll paint them up as Blood Angels in honor of the upcoming 40k animated series, Angels of Death.

Christmas can't come soon enough!

Angels of Death

Holy Terra! Games Workshop just announced that they're working on an animated series set in the 40k universe. Angels of Death, following the Blood Angels chapter of the Space Marines, will be coming our way in 2019. I know one eight-year-old boy who is totally going to flip out when he hears this news tonight!