Kickin' it with Warmachine and Kickstarter...

by Bobby Warren

Warmachine game 4

First of all I got to play a game of Warmachine on Saturday against Alex.

Alex is very old school, playing with figures that are from the pre-plastic figure era. He played "the world's angriest torso", Karchev, leading a force of two Berserke, a Juggernaught, a unit of Widowmakers, some Winterguard, and a Manhunter against my Rhulic mercenaries. I played the same basic army I played against Mike way back in November, except I substituted Lord Rockbottom in place of Thor Steinhammer. For those who didn't look at that change and go, "oh no", it means I gave up some flexibility and ended up with a large group around my leader with less flexibility.

I almost pulled out a win but I made what I consider to be two big errors. The first was letting the Widowmakers draw in my Forgeguard unit, which is especially good at breaking heavy armor of machines, so they weren't around for the deciding melee. The second mistake I made was not using my warcaster's feat on my last turn. I would have lined Karchev up to take quite a bit of damage, if not killing him for the win. Instead, Gorten had to face a frenzed Juggernaught and even a tough ol' bastich like him can't take too many hits from that tin can.

For my fourth time playing the system I was happy with my results and the things I learned.

Kickstarter and more minis
I'm generally not a fan of using Kickstarter. I think it is a bad trend because now established companies are using it to finance their games while taking sales from the brick and mortar stores that made them. I did support the Flash Point expansion, Flash Point: Fire Rescue - 2nd Story2nd Story when it went up because I really wanted to see it and did not imagine how quickly it would fund.

Then I jumped in on the Airborne In Your Pocket because I was hyped up from the new and excellent game, D-Day Dice, and the line for life level was too good to pass up. In other words I had become a fanboy. (Not that there's anything wrong with that!)

So now I feel dirty because I've been bitten by the bug.

Mike mentioned a few weeks ago that the Relic Knights figures looked cool and the game looked fun. "Bah! It's anime," I said.

Then I looked at the game and figures. After some discussion, we're both now supporting it at the level that we'll have two armies each. They have some complicated rules for being able to trade in some of the things in the pledge levels to use as credit for the extra Purchases, so it's a little like homework figuring out what to pledge.

As part of the campaign they are making some special edition Super Dungeon Explore available to those that pledge. If you think you might want the figures you need to pledge by 6 p.m. PDT on Sunday (today).

Then the Evil One (which is what we will call the man formerly known as Mike) pointed me (now called the Weak-Willed One) at Dreadball, which is sports miniatures game like Blood Bowl, which is still a great game.

Right now, a $150 pledge will get you the game which will come with two eight-figure teams, which are boosted to 12 figures, plus the other two teams in the initial release (with two extra figures each) and seven (soon to be 9) star players. If they get up to $400,000 it looks like they might be including four teams from the expansion as well. They haven't officially committed to that last part, but mentioned it as a possibility in one of their latest updates.

Yes, I am likely going to pledge for that one as well.

Here's hoping it gets played. Besides Mike, I suspect I might be able to get Nico and Ben to play in a league, and it wouldn't be beyond Michael to play as well.

I need to buy some more games at the Game Depot to wipe the stain on my soul from the influence of the Evil One. :)

One last thing...

Are you ready for some football?!?!? It'd be great of the Vikings could finish around 8-8. It would be a step up from last year, but I don't think it will happen. They are still rebuilding.

At least they aren't as continually pathetic as the semi-pro team here in Arizona. They might win four games this year with their porous offensive line, below-average QB, and one of the worst GMs in the league.

I picked Chicago in the survival pool. Here's hoping those bloated relatives of pigs handle the Colts as they should.

And I'm done rambling and off to bed after a 20-hour day of computing, gaming, and gaming.