I'm reading The Hobbit again, as I roleplay as a Tolkien scholar in an attempt to understand Middle Earth, its lore, and its effect on modern gaming. I'm reviewing each chapter of the book as I read, and this is my review of Chapter 14: Fire and water.
This review contains spoilers.
What h
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Back when I bought my first box of Warhammer 40,000 miniatures, I naïvely expected to open the box, follow the assembly instructions, and end up with a valid battle unit. What I found instead was that every soldier in the box could be assembled with any one of several weapons, heads (helmet and no...
Combat Heroes was a fun experiment in game design by Joe Dever and released in 1986. Each book was a pick-your-path story told mostly through illustrations. Each Combat Heroes book showed you a fantasy world, which you explored through a navigational system that guided you to a corresponding page...
Games Workshop re-released the first edition (titled Rogue Trader) of Warhammer 40,000 to celebrate the game's 30th anniversary, and I'm reviewing it chapter by chapter. This post covers the second half of Chapter 3: Age of the Imperium.
So far, Age of the Imperium has provided a little lo...
There aren't any simple armies in the Warhammer 40,000 game. Even if you field 4 units of the same one-trick soldiers, there are army rules and enhancements and detachments and stratagems to consider. Simply put, Warhammer 40,000 is a game designed to provide options to the player and force diff...
I've been thinking about the games I play, and what kinds of games I tend to enjoy playing the most. I've written about soundtracks, atmosphere and mechanics previously, and those apply equally to tabletop (yes, even music and video games. Another thing that often attracts me to a game is th...
Everybody knows that a wargame doesn't require a Games Master. You grab a friend, you each put an army on the table, and you play. Nothing could be simpler or, for a busy roleplayer tired of trying to find the convergence of an available date and time across 5 people's schedules, more liberating. An...
Imperium Maledictum is a skill-based d100 roleplaying game set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. I purchased the PDF from Drivethrurpg and enjoyed it so thoroughly that I special ordered the hardcover (I even had to import it from the UK). This is my review of the book and the game system.
Cu...
In an effort to keep better track of what movies I've seen, I'm taking notes on what I watch. This post contains some major spoilers about The Lost World (1925). The short version of the post is this: It's a great adventure film, with amazing shots, leaps and bounds in film technology, and a compe...
Games Workshop re-released the first edition (titled Rogue Trader) of Warhammer 40,000 to celebrate the game's 30th anniversary. I purchased it upon [re]release, and I'm reviewing it chapter by chapter. This post covers the first section of the very long Chapter 3: The Age of the Imperium.
C...
I build a lot of dungeons for the tabletop games I play. They're not always literal dungeons, but conceptually almost every map layout with enclosed spaces is a game dungeon. The game dungeon is a way to enforce passage through specific points on the map (usually a door), to conceal surprises hidden...
Games Workshop re-released the first edition (titled Rogue Trader) of Warhammer 40,000 to celebrate the game's 30th anniversary. I bought a copy to taste the nostalgia that, as someone who started out in 40k in the 2000s, I never got to experience. I'm reviewing it chapter by chapter, and this p...
Within any gaming tradition, there emerges a myth that a "perfect" example of a game exists. A perfect game doesn't exist, of course, because we all have a unique definition of perfect. That said, if a game is close to being perfect, it's Firefight by Mantic Games, and here's why.
I'm a fan of...
In 2018, Games Workshop released the Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress. A combination between a dungeon crawl, a roleplaying game, and a wargame, Blackstone Fortress is a campaign-based game with varied mechanics and an emerging storyline. I bought the game 4 years after its release, and it's...
Monkey Palace is a board game by Lego about building stairs to the monkey palace, and it combines the innate fun of building Lego with clever board game mechanics that include resource management and board strategy. It's not just a Lego set, it's a legitimately well-designed board game that exercis...
I recently saw the movie The Blackening (2022), and these are my notes about it. This isn't a review, it's just so I remember what the movie was about, because my memory is just terrible (or my brain is too busy, or both?) This post does contain spoilers. Cutting to the chase: The Blackening is...