The Weekly Top X - Better Late Than Never

All right everybody!  All the issues with what was supposed to be yesterdays Top X have been ironed out.  So now you get all the cool blog posts you can eat and on a Saturday even!  I've decided to call it a 'good deal'.  No time for jibber jabber today, Mr. T is watching and Brent just moseyed on over.

1) Rathstar's Ramblings - Battlefield in a Box Review
Brent: Soooo... two weeks in a row we have a review post hit Top X? AND they’re quality? I detect bias, sir, bias.
Lauby:  I.. I...  sir, you offend me.  Explain yourself or taste my blade!
Brent: Bias against crappy reviews out there. Of which there are many.
Lauby:  Phew.  I thought I was gonna have to stab you for a second there.  But your all to right - I would rather collect my own urine, freeze it into popsicles and then eat those popsicles than read another shitty nerd-rage dump with a 'review' sticker on it.  +1 internets for Rathstar for bringing this to our attention.
Brent: So we’re talking about the product now? I THINK WE SHOULD USE A PIC OF THE PRODUCT. I’m happy that companies like this and Pegasus Hobby are making affordable, ready-to-use wargames terrain. Good stuff.
Lauby:  Agreed. And with all the awful 6th edition rumor reviews that are starting to crop up, stuff like this is most welcome.

User Content Friday - Dungeons & Bolters: The Door To 40k

Due to technical* problems it looks like this weeks Top X has sadly been pushed back a day or two - maybe more. Because missing one of our scheduled posts is frowned upon 'round these parts, the User Content Friday is making a brief comback.  This time we have a neat little post from Roll With It about gateway drugs and the how kids are the future.  Special thanks to Porky's Expanse for pointing me to this post and for being a link aggregating machine!

*Not so much technological problems, but things that are, technically, problems.

With the dawn of the New Year comes the gloomy news that Games Workshop have issued a profits warning. Sales were down over the past 12 months and the expected Christmas rush didn’t happen leaving share prices dropping rapidly. The reasons for this can be found debated across the internet; poor economy, overseas distribution, miniature prices, neglected armies, rulesets and periodical updates etc. However, I do think a big factor is the first step prospective gamers need to take.

Gaming on a Budget: The Silent Hedges Part 1

Well, if you thought that I was about to stop titling these posts after dated music allusions, then you were damn wrong! 

We're coming close to the end of the tutorials related to my gaming table.  It's been done for weeks now- on target with my hopes, so be expecting the big reveal to come any time now.  For sort of a last hurrah, I've saved my favorite part of the table for last- my hedgerows. 

As soon as I picked up FoW I was instantly drawn to the Bocage rules and as such knew that I was going to need to build a shitload of terrain to support them.  Seriously though, having hedgerows not only makes a fun and different gaming experience, but also makes for some seriously bad ass looking tables.  Working from the sorely lacking semi-instructions from Das Book, I plowed into the project with gusto. When I say sorely lacking, I am dead serious.  Not only were there about 20 missing steps in what is provided, but the directions would have made some of the flimsiest shitty terrain ever.  Needless to say, I made a lot of improvements of my own on the plan and will be sharing some things that I would do differently if I were starting from scratch again.




It also goes without saying that I made these hedgerows (almost 9' worth) for pennies.  The materials used were all readily available and, with a few exceptions, dirt cheap.  Tools notwithstanding, making enough hedgerows to cover a table shouldn't cost much more than $20 all said and done.  Not bad bang for your buck, really.

User Content Wednesday - How to pimp your board games!

I was actually going to post this last week during our infotaining run at a unified theme.  Then I went and asked Lo to write a post, which she did,and thought that maybe I would be lazy.  Which I was.  So, running behind and lazy, there was no User Content Wednesday.  It wasn't until just now that I realized that finding an appropriate post would have been as easy as heading over to Fire Broadside!  and grabbing practically anything out of his back catalog.  And not just because of the subject matter, but also because Martin is a Swede who knows his way around the English language.

Recently I've started "pimping" my board games a lot more than in the past. I think it started with painting the playing pieces and then kind of grew from there. But there are many ways to enhance your board gaming experience, and many more that I'm probably not even aware of yet!

So, to get down to business. Here are the things I usually do to pimp my games:

When does 'Competitive' become 'WAAC'?

So pretty much by definition the point of a war-game is to win the war...

But how far do we go along with this viewpoint before we become a cheating fuckwit or 'WAAC' gamer as they're sometimes known?

First let's first look at a few circumstances which would put a person in the cheating fuckwit WAAC category as far as I'm concerned.

Over-moving.
My greatest fucking hate ever. There are subtle versions and blatant ones but however it's done it's still cheating. Each move has a set distance associated with it for a bloody good reason. Even an inch here or there can make a massive difference during a game when that inch could enable a charge that would never have otherwise happened or puts a melta-weapon into short range for that extra die roll of penetration.

New Member Monday - [Retroactive Title Addition]

Hello and welcome to a theme-less week at the House of Paincakes.  Back to bid'ness as usual for us - so it's back to the age old question:  what the hell is the difference between 28mm Heroic scale and 30mm scale?  It's a conundrum to be sure.

Maybe one of these guys can help:

New Member Monday

Eldar Acceptance Society
Keywords: Eldar, Accpetance, Societies, Being incredibly chill about the whole "we lost your app" thing.

Team Snake Eyes
Keywords: Warhammer 40k, Tournament stuff, Battle reports, the Heartbreak of psoriasis

The Big House
Keywords: Warhammer Fantasy, Fantasy Island, Ricardo Montalban, Fake plastic abs, KAAAAAHN!

Daan of War
Keywords: Chaos Space Marines, Dark Heresy, Skaven, Warmachine, Black Library, Tournaments, Painting & Hobby, MacDonalds and Guitars

3 for Int
Keywords: Gaming in general, 40k, Whale Tales, Team blog, other stuff

Sadly not a one of these guys wrote an essay.  Well... that may not be true.  I lost the Eldar Acceptance Society app and there may well have been a work of genius there.  In place of that, here's a MadLib style essay you can all play with:

I am god's gift to the internet because:        Funny Essay    

It's so easy!

[Musings of a Game Store Owner] Improving Terrain

Our little store was built on a very small but loyal group of people. In that group, a large amount of them are miniatures players. It became obvious that paying attention to the wants and needs of our miniatures group was going to be a vital part of our growth. We've always made it a point to keep the wants and needs of miniatures wargamers firmly in mind when making changes and improvements.

Table space to play and fun, compelling terrain are things that have always been on "the list" for that particular crowd. When the store first opened, there wasn't very much terrain- so the miniature wargamers got together and made some. Old pizza boxes, foam core, various and sundry model train scenery kits- they used it all to get something on the board.

A great example of one of our older pieces. Simple, not super pretty, but effective.