Birthday Gaming Extravaganza 2014

As I did last year, I threw another gaming weekend in celebration of my birthday. I don't have anything too special to say about it, but  I have a few pictures of the fun.

Saturday night was a few games of Epic Spell Wars, then a long roleplaying session with our home-brewed Marvel Superheroes rules. Pizza was interspersed throughout. I would have taken pictures but it was all theater of the mind and I'M NOT LETTING YOU SEE MY IMAGINATION. So there.

The lazy bastards slept in so I got a game of Marvel Dice Masters in against myself. I need to play more of this. No one else agreed that morning so they missed out on a great game. I shouldn't have made them breakfast but I did.

Then we played more Epic Spell Wars. We really love this game. Like LOVE it, love it.

And then I forced everyone to play HeroQuest. I don't know why everyone puts up a fight when I break this out. A fantastic time is always had by all, especially since we have no problem interjecting roleplaying into the mix. This adventure was actually a continuation of last year's quest, with the heroes hired by Prince Magnus to hunt down the true leader of the sinister cult encountered last time.

Madness inducing fishmen are encountered. Heroes in the room had a chance to lose their turn, based on Mind points.

Some culty cultists, who were having a nice meal until the heroes showed up.

The Elf and Wizard find an evil idol...

While the Dwarf and Barbarian clear out the rest of the monsters.

The cult leader and his Chaos Warrior bodyguards, one of which was murdered by a Genie, courtesy of the Elf.

The Barbarian joins the fray while the Dwarf struggles to even get in the camera shot with his stumpy legs.

After slaying the Barbarian, the cult leader is shanked by the Wizard while the elf distracts him.

All in all a fun quest. My favorite moment was when the Elf tried to search for the dead Barbarian's loot:

Elf- "I grab the Barbarian's coin purse."

Zargon- "As you lean down to grab it, a rat runs by and snatches it, scampering down the hall and disappearing."

Elf- "Shit. Well, I'll take the Barbarian's broadsword then."

Zargon- "As you turn to reach for the sword, you find a much, MUCH larger rat with its paws wrapped around it, growling at you."

Elf- "You know what? Fuck it. He can keep it."

After that it was burgers and everyone went home. It was a fantastic time and I can't wait until next year's BGE! Happy gaming!

Birthday Gaming Extravaganza 2013

So, a week ago I celebrated my 32nd birthday, and this year I decided to do something a little different. Instead of a big family get together or a trip to Maine, I sent some invites to my closest gaming friends for a weekend of laughs, gaming and ice cream cake.

It's frozen, frosted deliciousness knows no equal.

I enlisted the aid of my beautiful wife, Brigid,  to help decorate and chronicle the day. Little did I know that she had a plan, and while I was at work the day before, she set about decorating our porch with an Avengers theme. I was elated, because I am essentially 8 years old when it comes to superheroes.

 These are still up a week later. They may never come down.

Since the next day was going to be jam packed with games, my dear wife gave me my present early. I now have my very own copy of Arkham Horror! Being a big Lovecraft fan, it was a game I'd always intended to own but never got around to. Now it was all mine to devour my life with hours and hours of gameplay.

Fun fact: I have been playing the same game session for a week now.

The night before the big event, my friend Marc arrived to stay. We spent that night getting some extra gaming in, so I introduced him to X-Wing, Quarriors and DungeonQuest.

The next morning after breakfast we were joined by my friend Jay. Unfortunately my cousin and his wife ended up not being able to make it, so our group was a bit smaller than expected. However, I still had two games on the agenda that I wanted to make sure got played, and I wasn't going to let dwindling numbers stop me.

The first was Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre. I had recently acquired this game and it ended up being a blast. It is insanely random and ridiculous and worth every penny. I don't think we've laughed so hard around a gaming table in a long while.

My character for the game. Also pictured: Me losing.

Mid game madness.

Note the non-essential cardboard cut-out of Mt. Skullzfyre in the background.

The second and most major thing I wanted to accomplish was a game of HeroQuest. As my all-time favorite game, and the gateway drug that got me into gaming in the first place, it was essential. I whipped up a quick custom scenario and handed out some characters. Since we were short players, Brigid took both the Barbarian and the Wizard. She named them Jethro and McGee. She likes NCIS. A lot.

Seeing the perfect excuse, I set up my 3D dungeon terrain for us to crawl through and made sure there would only be painted miniatures so we could enjoy a beautiful game. Mentor was sending our heroes to fight an evil Chaos cult as a test of their abilities. Would they make it out alive?

Into the dungeon

The dwarf makes short work (heh) of the Cultist in the first room...

And the Barbarian crushes the Orc soon after. The Goblin stood no chance after that.

Another Cultist is surrounded and chopped to pieces.

The Dwarf finds a healing well, while the Elf finds a Mummy.

The Elf fights the Mummy alone...uh, a little help?

The Wizard wanders off alone and finds some new friends.

The cult revealed, and the Slaaneshi Chaos warrior behind it!

Slowed by the Elf's spell, the Chaos Warrior is defeated by the Barbarian.

The cult was swiftly destroyed and much loot was had. All in all, a great game. I saved the characters so when we do this again we can continue from where we left off. I have a whole year to design something fun and more challenging.

We wound down the day with a game of the DC Comics Deck-Building Game. It's not the deepest deck-builder out there, but it was great for coming down off the gaming high. It was also the only game I won all weekend, with Jay coming in second by sheer amount of cards in his deck. Apparently his strategy was "buy everything". And it almost worked.

And that was Birthday Gaming Extravaganza 2013. I had initially named it that as a joke, but honestly I like it. I intend to do this again next year and possibly for years to come. I will certainly plan it a bit better, possibly with further advance notice, and a better system for taking pictures. There are certainly a slew of games coming out in the next year I'd love to showcase!

See you all again at BGE 14!

Minor Dungeon Update

My materials (namely some small chain) finally arrived and I was able to complete the other half of the room I was working on. The part I needed the chain for was for a simple set of chains that once held a prisoner:

And with some extra room around it:

I can say I'm not 100% happy with it It definitely looks better with other things around it than on its own. I would appreciate any ideas to make it less bland. Or maybe it is better in its simplicity? I don't know.

On the other hand, I am happy to say I now have 2 full rooms in my dungeon!

Next I think I will be working on some more hallways to let the dungeon branch out some more. I'm not sure what I will be adding to those pieces but I will try to come up with something interesting.

More Dungeon: Twisting Halls

I managed to add a few more painted pieces to my dungeon. I decided I needed some halls to go with my room, so I chose a set and got painting. Here's what I ended up with:

We have the stairs leading down into the dungeon:

A short hall section:

A plain ol' corner section:

I also did a corner with some pools of slime:

To be honest, it didn't come out as wet or visible as i would like, but that's what I get for using tinted clear school glue instead of some kind of water effects. A close up:

I also added some slime to a four-way intersection:

The slime here is even less visible because it runs through the crack. Its subtle, I guess:

My favorite piece is the moldy T-section. I used the same tinted glue to stick down patches of green flock and I really like how the finished result came out:

And it looks even grosser from and adventurer's eye view:

Of course I have to show a couple of "assembled" shots:

And lastly, the reason I chose this particular set is because it can double as a room set-up:

I hope you all enjoyed my pictures. I'm hoping to bang out another set in a week or so, as long as life doesn't interfere too much. Happy gaming!

Review: Dungeonstone Dungeon Terrain

Ever since I first opened HeroQuest back when I was 11, I have been hooked on dungeon crawling. And ever since I started setting up little model monsters and furniture on its colorful board, I have wanted to have a dungeon as 3D as its inhabitants.

I had heard of Hirst Arts, and then later Dwarven Forge, but my problem was always the same: I was a kid with no money and I couldn't afford the stuff. Even as an adult, the perception that I couldn't afford it continued, despite having good jobs and buying stuff even more expensive over the years. The concept remained my holy grail.

However, recently my wonderful, beautiful fiancee encouraged me to purchase some, with a portion of the cost covered by her as my Valentine's gift. I searched again, finding Hirst Arts (too much work) and Dwarven Forge (very pretty but very expensive) again. Then, amongst my wanderings I found Dungeonstone. It had a similar look to Dwarven Forge, but came unpainted and much cheaper. When I saw the price I ordered the Advanced Set right away. I wanted at least a fair sized dungeon and for $100 (plus $20 in shipping, heavy stuff!) I got about twice what I would get for a similar cost through DF. Granted, I have to paint it, but I see that as a good thing. I want to be able to put my own spin on the dungeon!

It took about a week to arrive and I'm very impressed.  Now for the unboxing!

Here is the box as it arrived! Notice the FRAGILE sticker on the side. This is true, but it isn't so fragile as to expect a box of dust to arrive. Fear not, it arrived well packed!

There is a LOT of paper packed inside. The box for the product is packed inside the original with paper to cushion. Do yourself a favor and open the packing box on the floor. The box inside very much weighs the 25 pounds you pay for in shipping and its hard to get leverage from a table top.

The product box itself is full to the brim with pieces and small sets of individual pieces are wrapped with a couple layers of paper and some foam. All in all this is a great system. The pieces were well protected, though it is time consuming to unwrap. I only had two pieces arrive broken, which were the curved hallway corners. Each piece has a small column that snapped off, but since the material is a sort of resin, a little superglue fixed it instantly!

As you can see, you get a LOT of product. That half of the table is a 3'x4' area and it is mostly covered. And if you think that isn't enough to build a good dungeon...

I got a decent 5 regular rooms and squeezed a 6th with creative use of intersection pieces.

 The material is rough and porous, so it should take paint well. Honestly, I would be ok with playing with it straight from the box, but I want to embellish it a little. I like the idea of taking a few pieces and adding some things like moss, broken weapons, bones, etc. to give it a little more life. It is heavy, and the roughness worries me a little, so I will probably find a black cloth to put underneath it as a play mat to protect my table. It is very durable and you won't have to worry about breaking it just from play. You don't want to drop it on the floor or any other hard surface, though, since it would most likely shatter.

Of course I plan on mainly using it for D&D so here are a few valiant adventurers entering the dungeon. The squares are one inch, typical of most RPG systems. These guys are mounted on 25mm bases so they barely squeeze in. You may find the hallways very narrow for miniatures with very open poses or protruding weapons, so it may take some fiddling to make them comfortable.

And of course, an homage to the game that started it all. I plan on running at least a couple custom adventures of HeroQuest in these tiny halls!

Overall, I am very pleased with the product. My only real complaint is the crypt tile it comes with. Everything else is so nice, but the crypt is very bland and lacks a lot of detail. I honestly don't see myself using it after I get some more dungeon decor added. I also think it could have two of the four stairway tiles replaced with some straight hallway pieces, but its a minor niggle, since they look great if placed back to back to make a mid-hall staircase.

Those things aside, I am excited to start painting it and play. The quality is good for the price and you get a good amount of pieces to make basic dungeons with. The prices being so good, I am already planning to order a couple of additions, which is testament enough to the product, I think.

So if you need a dungeon to mess around with, give this stuff a shot. You won't be let down and you'll save yourself a bundle if you don't mind painting it yourself. Check it out at http://www.dungeonstone.com/zen/ .