I plan to write a long-ish blog post in which I gush about Baldur's Gate 3. Before I start crafting an unnecessary essay about a current game that's been reviewed and praised elsewhere, I feel a desire to wrap up the remaining games in my series: reviews of games that have been released and reviewed so long…
A few days ago, I received another box from Awaken Realms: Of course, the important question is: How did the cats react? Awaken Realms' Vault Story Dice are fancy optional dice for use in various games. You can easily make out the boxes that contain the Tainted Grail and Etherfields dice. What's in the other three? Actually,…
I recently received Kings of Ruin, the latest game in the Tainted Grail saga. Awaken Realms specializes in these large-scale narrative games that come with elaborate miniatures, and Kings of Ruin is no exception. Let's see what the cats think of it. Let's look at the game from the less-relevant human perspective. Narratively, Kings of Ruin is…
We all know what it means to receive a new game: Cat pictures!
Let's start with a disclaimer: This blog post, like my last two, is based on personal reminiscences. I'm telling my little stories while my aging and cracking memories still have enough integrity that I can pretend there's an element of truth to them. Here I'm going to focus on my participation in the New-York-City-area table-top role-playing fan…
About a week ago, someone e-mailed me with a question related to my old writing in the pages of the APAs. I'll get into that query (and answer the question "What the heck is an APA?") in the follow-up post to this one. Let's first look at the chain of thought the query inspired. I have three…
For my gamer friends: While falling down an internet rabbit hole, I found this article on a history of wargaming. I recommend reading it, if only to learn about the rise-and-fall of an important segment of gaming. The article was written by Greg Costikyan in 1996. I knew Greg briefly in the late 70s or early 80s.…
This is a collection of photos from when I unboxed my copy of the Great Wall board game by Awaken Realms. This post is not a game review; I haven't played it yet and I don't usually review board games on this blog. I just wanted to share some pictures for those who might be interested in…
This is a description of a game topper from GameToppersLLC. It's not meant as a review per se, but a tale of my experience. TL;DR: The Watson Game Topper is a great product, but I wish I'd spent more time thinking about its physical properties: size, weight, etc. Tables and toppers I'll start by stating the obvious:…
I originally thought that I'd never had to write this post. At the time I wrote this post on shading Tainted Grail miniatures, I was growing a bit tired of the exercise of airbrushing minis. I knew that painting the second wave of Etherfields minis was ahead of me. That was about the same time that I…