Discworld: Ankh-Morpork the Game (a review)

Death, my favorite character

Latin: Make my day, Punk

I have loved Terry Pratchett's books for years.  A long long ago I had a job at a bookstore.  One fateful day I found a copy of "Mort" on the shelf.  I bought it and have been hooked ever since.  So a few weeks before Christmas I found a copy of Discworld: Ankh-Morpork the Game on the shelf at X Plant, I had to pick it up.

The game is very simple but has a lot of tricks to master.  It is for 2-4 players.  Game length can very (we had one game last 1.5 hours and followed by one that lasted 20 minutes).  What was very interesting about the game is how to win it.  There are too ways.  The first is for the draw deck to run out.  At this point players count their money, minions and buildings.  Each is worth a set amount of points, who has the most points wins. 

The second way is what makes the game so much fun.  Each player has a character card that only they know about.  The card tells them of a secret mission that they are trying to do to win the game.  Objectives can be, controlling a certain number of areas, having minions in a set number of locations, or in the case of Commander Vimes (my favorite) you win if no one else wins.  So as you are trying to achieve your secret objective you have to be trying to figure out what each other player has and blocking them.
 
It is a fun game even for people who are not familiar with Discworld.  The first game we played, only one person had read any of the books.  If you are a discworld fan, then you will get a kick out of many of the cards.  I highly recommend it.  We played 4 games back to back and it just got better as we got the hang of it.  

This has been one of my favorite board games, i would give it a 9/10.  If you come across it, defiantly give it a try.

Kevin 

Back in Black...green...

Hello People

Sorry for the absence, I know you have all been really broken up about it.  I am back with a new Flames of War model.  I just finished painting it tonight as a gift for a friend of mine for Christmas.  He does not play any games but wanted a painted tank.  So I picked an interesting one and went at it.  I found a baseball display case that fit nicely.  Plus it gave me an excuse to try out the new camera I got for Christmas.

I also picked up the new Hobbit starter set, so I will be posting some pics over the next few weeks as I paint it up.  This is in addition to the Open Fire set I am working on for FoW.
Kevin

The Germans are comming

I got a few minutes today to do a little work on the Germans from the Open Fire box set.  The recessed bases are really nice to work with.  I used to glue all the infantry down, then spend hours putting a healthy coating of polyfilla down to smooth out the transition.  I still have to use a little filler on the new bases to cover the gaps but not nearly as much.

These Germans are going to be painted up with a winter camo scheme.  I am going to be basing it out of the "Nuts" book.  Hopefully I will get some paint to models this weekend. 

Kevin

Flower Tea and other things

Hello again.
I have not had a chance to get any work done on the "Open Fire" box.  I will try tonight to work on filling in the gaps on the bases of the infantry.  I started a new job (the first in my new career) and I have been doing a lot of training.  Beside the new job (which I am totally stoked for) this week started of terribly.  Fortunately I have some really good friends that have been keeping me busy in the evenings.  I owe these people alot and I am great full to have them.  To them, for now, I can only say thank you.

One of the a fore mention people is my friend Lin.  (It dawned on both of us that we have been friends for 10 years!)  She gave me this Chinese blooming flower tea to try.  I had seen them in the store before but never really looked into it.  It is this little tightly packed ball, about the size of a bottle cap.  You put it in a cup and pour hot water on it.  Air bubbles immediately start to escape and the blossom starts to open. Out of the bulb another bulb pops up on a string.  Then that bulb releases another bulb, so on and so on.  I know it is not that special, but I got to say, it has kept me amused!  and now I have more tea to drink.

 

I have also found 3 boxes of old photos and documents from my Grandparents on both sides.  I am going to be scanning them all to make a back up.  So i will have some more family history to report soon. 
Kevin

Locke VS Hobbes: A Zombie Explination

               So with everything going on, i have not gotten much work done on the FOW stuff.  But while scanning some old faimly photos I found an essay I wrote in the first year at college.  I was trying to explain the points of view of Thomas Hobbs and John Locke, and using zombies as the backdrop.  Please feel free to let me know what you think.

  

I have probably spent far too much of my free time (and not-so-free time) dedicated to the development of zombie survival strategies.  I drove my roommates crazy while looking for a new house, because I rated all available places on how defensible they were against a zombie horde.  I have two theories on how the world will react to the zombie outbreak.  Both theories are dependent on the extent of outbreak.  I feel that the survivors will take ether a John Locke or a Thomas Hobbs view toward their fellow man.

                In the first situation, we are looking at a very small zombie outbreak; a few dozen walking dead terrorizing a small remote town.  The humans far outnumber the zombies.  In this type of outbreak the world that these people know still exists; all-be-it in turmoil and chaos.  These people maintain hope that everything will go back to normal once they defeat the walking dead, or if they make it to the next town.  The societal structure that they are used to is still intact and the survivors will work together.  While there may be one person who everyone looks to, decisions will be made in a democratic style, with everyone receiving a vote.  They would have a John Locke approach to their group; that people are generally good and will look after each other.  They will also expect the military to arrive to protect them, and liberate their homes (protection of property).  Survival rate for this group is very high in a small outbreak; however their chances of survival decrease if the outbreak proceeds to the second stage.

                In the second scenario, society as we have known it has broken down.  The zombies now surpass the humans as the dominate being all over the world.  Because the survivors relies that there is no going back to the “way it was”, they will organize into very small groups and only look out for each other.  While in the smaller outbreak other survivors were seen as additional people to help liberate, on the apocalyptic scale, those same people are now seen as competition for limited recourses and conflicts between surviving groups will occur.    

Only a small, well organized group where every able-body adult assists and is lead by a strong individual has any really chance at prolonged survival.  Larger groups are too hard to control.  Food and shelter will be scarce and if there is not an adequate supply of each, the group will quickly devolve into anarchy.  At this point, survivors in a large group will have to be weary of others in the same group as well as the zombies.  I think that on the apocalyptic level survivors will abandon the democratic mentality and adopt autonomous leader figure to make the difficult choices that they don’t really want to make. 

A system where everyone has equal say does not work when survival is measured in minutes.  If a group is going to survive, there needs to be one person who will make decisions and give directions and the others will listen.  This person, Thomas Hobbes would call the “Leviathan”, would create law and order.   He will make the hard decisions that would rarely ever reach a decisive result in a democratic vote. For instance, what to do if one of their party was bitten by a zombie.  The Leviathan leader must be the one who makes this choice for everyone.  Every moment a decision is not made puts the whole group at risk. 

The main difference that separates both approaches to surviving the zombie apocalypse will be “society”.  I believe that as long as people feel that the zombie threat is only temporary they will be civil and assist each other.  This is not to say that there will not be some people that will take advantage of other, but these are the same people who would be doing that regardless of the zombie apocalypse.  Only when every remnant of society is gone, and life is a constant fight for survival will people turn away from each other.  They will do whatever it takes for them and the members of their small group to survive one more day, even at the expense of another group.  

Kevin

Open Fire Infantry

It has been a few days since my last post.  It has been a long week to say the least.  I did not get much chance to work on "Open Fire".  But I did get the infantry put together.  Very time consuming to clean so many little people.  I do have a little complaint as to the quality of the plastic itself.  I had both PaK40's gun shields and one part of the frame break into pieces while taking them off the sprue.  Low quality plastic perhaps?

 I used a little poly fill to fill in the empty spots on some of the bases.  The new sunken bases are really nice, i will add a little poly fill to cover some of the gaps left next. 

Kevin


 

Nutz and Open Fire....and more buildings

I finished up the 4th building.  At this point I have a good flow going.  All I am doing to adjusting some details to make building faster and more accurate.  I also used plastic windows and doors like on the church.  I am not thrilled with the window paint jobs but that just gives me something to work on next time.

 I also dropped by my local game shop today, X Planet, and picked up my "Nutz" (pun intended) and my copy of "Open Fire".  So many new models to work on.  First on the chopping block will be the Germans painted in a winter scheme.

 Kevin

Monster Island: A Review

I am in the middle of a new FOW buildings and Open Fire does not get released until Saturday, so i though I would write a review of a book i just read.  A friend of mine gave me a copy of the trilogy a few years back.  I will try to keep it vague so I don't spoil anything for anyone interested in reading it.   

"Monster Island" is a zombie novel written by David Wellington.  It was originally a web serial and was eventually published.  It is the first of a trilogy.  The novel takes place in Manhattan shortly after New York is over run by zombies.  It appears that the world is in the middle of the zombie apocalypses and there are very few pockets of humans left. 

The main character is a man named Dekalb.  He is a former UN inspector.  He is forced to accompany a group of teenage Somalian child soldiers to New York to find medication for a warlord (Somalia is one of the last strongholds of humans remaining).  As with every good zombie story, all plans go horribly wrong.

The basic plot is nothing special but the author takes a different approach with the zombies.  They act and appear very much like typical zombies.  However as the story progresses you find that the dead are all connected.  Thus leading to specific powerful zombies can control the other weaker ones.  It is like "The Walking Dead" meets "Army of Darkness".  The story also has a unique antagonist, Gary the Intelligent zombie.  (and for some reason I kept picturing Roger from "American Dad" as Gary).  

For me the characters of the book were not the highlight.    I found that the characters were very 1 dimensional.  The people were not complex and particularly interesting.  New "Useful" characters had a tendency to pop up out of no wear when they were needed for a plot turn.  There is never really any build up to this people.  I do like how the main character is not a highly trained super soldier, and that he relies on the teenage girl soldiers to stay alive.

There was also several times when characters (mainly Jack and Gary) would make a decision that felt unnatural to how they had be developing.  Gary (the thinking-mans zombie) denies he is a monster, then says he is evil and a monster, and denies being a monster again at the end.

I really dont want to give much away.  Over all I enjoyed the book.  It was not great literature but it was fun.  It was easy to read.  The book jumped back and forth between Dekalb's story and Gary's story.  The author does a great job keeping me invested by keeping chapters short (4-8 pages) and alternating between the two characters.  David Wellington does set up a very bleak vision that is more then a little unsettling.  He does a great job describing the city and the atmosphere.  This is what kept my eagerly turning the pages.  

I would defiantly recommend this book to a zombie fan.  It wont take you long to get through (I am a slow reader and I got through in a few days),  so give it a try.
Kevin 

The Finegan Faimly (1885)

My mom found this old book in the study today.  It is an odd book but really interesting.  It is called "Along the Mission Trail".  It was published in 1988, and give the history of the Mission Trail.  Mission Trail was one of the trails that went through Bonnie Doon and Lake Francis before Manitoba became a province.   The book talks about local industry, education, disasters and family history.  It even has old property maps showing who owned which acres of land  (we found both my Great grandfather and  his brothers land).

My Great Great Grandparents, George and Elizabeth Finegan, came to Bonnie Doon on June 29th, 1885.  They had two sons, William and Sam. 

William (my Great great uncle?  I am not sure what the exact term is) carried mail for the post office between 1905-1918.  After George and Elizabeth passed away, William ran their farm until he moved to Edrans, Manitoba.    
   
Sam married Martha nee Hill (Irish decent) and had two children; George and Rita. George is the man that served in the 100th Overseas battalion.  The Finegans ran the Bonnie Doon Post Office from June 1st, 1897 until April 16, 1918.

I have not found much information on Rita, other then she moved with her parents to the United States.    

L. to R.: George, Ray, Ellen Finegan

When George returned from WWI, he married Ellen Stewart in 1919.  Miss Stewart had grown up in Oakville, Manitoba.  She was a school teacher in a one room school house.  She taught the Bonnie Doon school from 1915-1917 until it closed due to small enrollment.  She also taught Ossowa and Glennie school districts.  Growing up we always called her Great Grandma F.  We would go and spend summers there. 

This past summer my girlfriend and I drove across Canada.  During this trip we tried to find her old house.  I was unable to recognize it from memory (it has been probable over 15 years since I was last there), but I did find the White Horse statue which was just down the road.  George and Ellen had one son, my Mothers father, Ray (Born 1922).

 Kevin

Churches, Windows and Doors...oh my

I made a new building this week for FOW.  I wanted to make something a little more complex and a bit bigger.  I went with a generic 4 level church, complete with steeple. 

 

 The first two floors are the size of 3 standard infantry bases.  I used model railway windows and doors.  I cut full holes into the walls to fit the hardware (so now you can see through and see whats inside the building).  The steeple levels can fit a standard infantry base or 2 small bases.  In the end I can fit my entire Canadian platoon of 9 stands into the church.  

 

 Here is my current table.  I still have a few extra pieces of road and train tracks.  

Barbed wire

 I am going to try and do a few more 2 level buildings next week, before the release of "Open Fire!"

Kevin

THE WINNIPEG GRENADIERS

Thank you to everyone that send me some links about my Great Grandfathers battalion.  I have learned a little bit more about it.

Apparently the "100ths Overseas Battalion" was part of "The Winnipeg Grenadiers".  This was their badge:

The 100ths Overseas Battalion was formed on December 22, 1915.  Within a few weeks of the original picture I posted was taken, the battalion disembarked for Great Britain (September 18th, 1916).  The battalion provided field reinforcements to the Canadian Corps until January 20, 1917.  At this point it was absorbed, along with 11th Reserve Infantry Battalion, into the newly designed "11th Reserve Battalion, CEF (Canadian Expeditionary Force)" 





Flames of War
I have been playing around with a different approach to doors and windows.  Here is a sneak peak.  I hope to be done around Friday. 

Kevin

Older Buildins

 Here is some of my older FOW terrain.
The apartment building was very simple.  It is a upside down tea can from Starbucks, with the lid glued to the bottom.  Gave it a coat of plaster for some texture.  I carved out the windows and brick work.  The building is very sturdy but the plaster can chip easy.  Also troops can not be placed inside physically. 

 

This building was quick, resilient and cheep.   It is a $2 pre-built bird house from a local craft store.  Down side as before is that it is solid and troops can be placed inside. 

  

The hedges are made out of Games Workshops old hedges.  I simply put them on a base and cut them in half (height wise).  (the left over hedges was used to make bushes around the new buildings.     

 

 I am working on a church right now, (it will have a 4 level steeple, good sniper nest!) should be done in the next few days.  Pics to follow

Kevin

Finished Product

The buildings are complete.  I am happy how they turned out.  The windows and doors a little rough, something to improve on the next round.  I have a few different ideas on how to do windows and doors (cutting them all out or using plastic model railway windows and doors).  

Hardwood floors and purple wall paper

 

I like to base all of my terrain, I think it helps keep it from getting as banged up.  I used smaller square bases so I can use the buildings as a country home (putting some hedge rows and trees around).  Or I can place them base to base and make more of a city setting.  

Kevin