Kickstart: Rayguns, Space Frontiersmen, and White Russia in Space

Kickstart Your Weekend: A series in which I occasionally spotlight Kickstarter projects that are ending soon and deserve a little nerd love. Also, I'll highlight some past projects as well, as you never know when these enterprises are going to turn up again.

Today we're getting back into regular articles, with a laser-zap back into Kickstart Your Weekend. And these three are a particularly fun selection of games for fans of very different science fiction sub-genres. We've got a miniatures wargame-powered reboot of a classic pulp sci-fi series, a PC management game with a crude frontiersman angle, and finally a space epic computer RPG with a galactic empire inspired by pre-commie Russia.

Yeah, you heard me.

Before we dig into it, though, there were several awesome Kickstarter projects that wrapped in the past few months. And while you can't pledge, I thought I'd name-drop a few of them just in case you wanted to follow their development and release.

There were several interesting movies successfully funded this summer: Bound, a Lego brickfilm with a spiritual theme and made by a brother and sister team; the brickfilm Melting Point also funded successfully, and I can't wait to see this feature's take on the wry humor the creator, Jonathan Vaughan established in his other short films; Man vs. Snake, a quirky documentary based on a man trying to reclaim a video game record from the early days of arcade games, helmed by two editors from Battlestar Galactica; MMPR funded quite well, and so they'll get a shot at making a couple of episodes to snare all the grown-up fans of the original three seasons of Power Rangers. The Devil Walks in Salem looks kind of cheesy, but its remarkable distinction is that it's adapted from an RPG--not from the rules or setting--but from an actual play session between some honest-to-goodness role-players. Even if the end result turns out clumsy, I think it'll be worth a watch for anyone who ever looked around their gaming table during a really gripping session and thought "Why can't they make movies like this?"

(And if you don't know the feeling I'm talking about, watch this episode of Wil Wheaton's Tabletop. You're welcome.)

On the sad-to-see-it fail side of things, Stephan Frost, the creator of the intriguing and beautiful Mortifera graphic novel, failed to get funding to create the animated pitch for Hell Mary--a Weird War One-type setting about a redheaded femme fatale offing Black Hand goons and Kaiser Wilhelm cronies. It could've been great, but conventional animation still proves to be a big hurdle for Kickstarter projects--you have to raise a lot of money for relatively small rewards. Plus, Frost's offered incentive for success and stretch goals were probably too quirky and off-the-wall to serve their purpose--enough funds would have seen him get a second middle name of "Bonertown" and get a tramp stamp of two unicorns in...conjunction. I know I wouldn't want to inflict that on any man or beast, unless it was part of a really weird court sentencing.

And finally, probably the coolest film project I didn't report on this summer was definitely Fire City: Interpreter of Signs. A horror-fantasy story with a noir mystery flavor and really grotesquely interesting practical effects, Fire City feels to me like the sort of film I wanted the director of Pan's Labyrinth to make--rather than a thought-lite smash 'em up full of forgettable robots and monsters and with the only interesting characters thrown into the background while cardboard cut-outs subjugated them with their plot protection. (Oh snap: that dangerously run-on sentence really tore Pacific Rim a new one, huh?) Anyways, Fire City had the advantage of already having a really creepy short that shows off the subtly disturbing characters, and let them raise twenty grand over their one hundred grand campaign goal. That, and the sentimental daughter-focused thematic behind the production really gets to me as a father, and I'm really curious to see how this world of starving demons and dealers turns out. Just make sure the kids are fast asleep before watching it--even the sounds can make your skin crawl. Check out their webpage for more tastes of their unnerving aesthetic and eerie style.

Games, glorious games. Kickstarter is always good for game-nerding-out. The Long Dark, a first-person post-apocalyptic game with an emphasis on Grylls-esque survival, just recently finished a successful campaign. I love gritty survival games that aren't afraid to punish players with hunger, disease, and sleep dynamics, and the promised tension of making meaningful survive-or-social choices is too cool. Golem Arcana, a miniatures wargame powered by a tablet app and specialized stylus for rules and stat reference, squeaked by with full funding after a personal plug from Chris Roberts. Personally I'm not too keen on a wargame with forces composed of nothing but golems, but...Chris Roberts. (Blogger, how the frak do you not have golem in your spell-check dictionary?!) Alien Uprising, a cooperative sci-fi board game where players try to hold off savage alien natives while repairing their wrecked spaceship. I didn't pledge for it, but I'll be keeping an eye out to play it at conventions. Belle of the Ball, a card game with fantastic art and a princess-party-conniving-set-collection-gimmick, almost snared me into its grip, but I was much too masculine for such sissy stuff. That, and the game mechanics didn't seem as entertaining as the card art. Then I turned around and pledged for Marrying Mr. Darcy, a Pride and Prejudice card game produced by a Wisconsin local that has players trying to court the bachelors of the Austen book. My wife didn't even talk me into it.



Whatever. I don't mind your small-mindedness. I was excited for Marrying Mr. Darcy even before they hit the stretch goal that adds undead elements to the game.

Predictably, the music-powered fantasy MMORPG Anythmn failed to meet its funding goal. Which means that for the time being if I want to combine role-playing games and trumpet-playing, I'll have to find a very tolerant LARP group in the midwest. Fairytale Games: The Battle Royale funded with more than $100,000 over their original goal. I pledged for the project and want to play the game but my enthusiasm has been severely muted since they censored Esmerelda (of Hunchback of Notre Dame) to be an alchemical assassin instead of a gypsy assassin for some vague political correctness concerns. I mean, the game is Hunger Games murder fantasy with fairly cheesecake interpretations of many of their characters--and they're afraid of using the word gypsy to describe a character for whom being a gypsy is a plot point?! Gugh, I say. Plus by the end of the campaign the list of miniatures coming my way has gotten so confusing that I'm just trying to forget the project until I actually have everything in front of me. Massive Chalice did well by pulling in a cool half million more than their initial goal, but the controversy over Double Fine's previous game has me grateful that I passed on this campaign. I'll wait and see if they can actually deliver what was promised.

Projects I backed during the past three months

The summer also had a few neat print projects funded through Kickstarter. Men vs Cosplay was a 2014 cosplay calendar that eschewed boobs for biceps. I would've pledged, but I'm a jealous nerd. Also, you may recall I'm a big mammalian fan. Kids, Eh?, a web-comic annual print book, funded with triple it's $2,000CAD goal. The author is a stay-at-home Canuck dad with a one year-old and three year-old always providing comedic fodder for his weekly strip. Check it out. And FUBAR, the zombie alternate history comic series, funded it's most successful installment yet: Mother Russia. It's about a Soviet lady sniper in Stalingrad saving a toddler from uncounted Nazi zombies. I pledged on this one hard, as even my wife wanted to see more of the viscerally violent cutie-pie story.

On the mint-y side of things, there were two projects for nerdy numismatists. First, the Futuristic Metal Coins project from Minion Games brought us a great selection of uniquely sci-fi tokens for use in board games and RPGs. Between having these shiny creds to serve as cashy money and the upcoming Firefly RPG, I think I'll be doing some gaming in the 'verse in the next year. For more fantastic gaming, Conquistador Games funded The Best Damn Metal Gaming Coins Ever! Seriously detailed, high-quality coins, many of these pieces are inspired by historical examples. They're also non-denominational, meaning that they don't have a prescribed value printed on them, so if you want to throw odd pence-shilling-crowns around in your gaming, you can.

And probably one of my favorite projects of the past three months has to be the Hollow Earth Expedition: Revelations of Mars. Hollow Earth Expedition (HEX) is an RPG by Exile Games that I've followed for a while but never got into. Built on a cinematic system based on dice pools, HEX is founded upon Jules Verne and E.R. Burroughs imagery as they populate the center of the 1930s earth with a land full of weird science, dinosaurs, and savages. If you ever watched the Aussie show Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, you're on the right track. Revelations of Mars expands that setting to the red planet, with beautifully bejeweled alien princesses and big bug aliens needing stomping in grand E.R. Burroughs fashion. Since my wife and I enjoyed John Carter (of Mars!) so much, she actually mandated that I pledge on this particular RPG campaign. Well, who am I to look an RPG mount in the mouth? I pledged to receive Revelations of Mars when it releases next year and the preceding HEX books digitally right away. Wow. I'll do an in-depth article on HEX at some point, because I don't think I've had so much fun just reading an RPG sourcebook since the Serenity RPG came out.

So that's it for catch-up, but what's out now and worthy of a nerd's radar?

Mars Attacks

What it is: Mars Attacks began life in 1962 as a trading card series. A somewhat linear series of cards featuring alien invasion, slaughter, and torture before the eventual human counter, Mars Attacks was a violent, gory romp in pulp sci-fi, with rayguns, flying saucers, and swooning women at their mercy on a lot of the cards. Now, hot on the heels of their Kickstarter successes with Kings of War, Dreadball, Loka chess, and Deadzone, Mantic Games is producing a licensed miniatures wargame adaptation of Mars Attacks. The game is a lighter treatment to wargaming than their previous projects, evoking quick violent skirmishes between Martians and human resistance without a ten pound rulebook to slow things down. Even movement and ranges are based on a coarse 3-inch grid to eschew the all-but-ubiquitous measuring tape of other games.

Why it's exciting: This game, based on a well-known classic license by a seasoned producer of wargames products, stands poised to be Mantic Games' greatest hit yet. With three weeks to go, the game is already at $438,000 pledged out of their original goal of $50,000 so there's already dozens of stretch goals, updates, and add-ons unlocked. Being an old-salt and game snob myself, I tend to turn up my nose at rules that don't let me pull out my tape measure and have fewer than five stats per model, but I can't deny that the quality miniatures in this set--and the insanely good deals attached to the campaign's success--are extremely enticing. If nothing else, I might be seduced by the promise of their plastic US soldiers and flatbed truck-turned sci-fi transport/technical.



Rimworld

What it is: Rimworld is a sci-fi colony sim game for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Players must coordinate the survivors of a crashed colony ship on a procedurally-created world rife with natural disaster and other hazards. Colonists can be directed to mine, farm, build free-form buildings and facilities, and defend the colony from raiders. The game has developed a number of dynamic, interesting features that are coordinated by an AI director that can be selected to suit your play-style--whether looking for an exploration-focused game, a life or death struggle, or a relaxing buildup experience. Right now this is a one-man project with a lot of promise, but the campaign seeks to let the creator, Tynan Sylvester, hire a dedicated artist to add nice graphics to his ambitious game.

Why it's exciting: With over $140,000CAD raised of an original goal of twenty grand and two weeks to go, Rimworld is definitely going to be a success. Creator Tynan hasn't set any stretch goals for the game, wanting to work on it organically without imposing artificial goals leading to development bloat. That's a promising, healthy attitude for a small indie game, especially since so many games that succeed on Kickstarter fall victim to development bloat (Double Fine being the flagship example of this pitfall).



Mandate

What it is: Mandate is a sci-fi PC RPG with an epic scope. Set in a galactic empire inspired by 19th century Russia, Mandate is going to place the player in command of a Mandate ship at the outbreak of a civil war, giving the captain tactical control over their crew and boarding parties and maneuvering their ship in battle as well. Apparently, the game's campaign will grow from commanding a single ship to controlling outposts and stations and building up to having a subordinate fleet of their own. It's being developed on Unity engine, which means that not only is the game going to support Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems, but they're already releasing preview modules of the game on their website for fans to sample--right now they have a build-a-ship module that allows players to customize and then destroy a flagship of their very own.

Why it's exciting: I have a few different buttons that can easily cinch my support for a Kickstarter. Sci-fi role-playing game with tactile elements? You got me. Cross-platform support planned? Nice. Preview modules of the game? Cool. Dynamic choice-based gameplay? Yes yes. Russian space empress voice-over for the intro video? Easy buddy, you've already made your sale. I'm in for this game, and I haven't been this anxious to see a Kickstarter succeed since Interstellar Marines (mentioned in a previous post here),  which was another cross-platform Unity-based sci-fi game. At $135,000 right now, Mandate has a long ways to go to reach their half million goal, but they also went for a longer campaign and so have well over a month to get there.

Holy moly. Not only did I just touch base on more than twenty Kickstarter projects in one post, but this is also the third article this week, which means that it's knocking off a point from my 31 post deficit.

Kickstart Your Weekend: Mighty Morphin' Weekend!

Kickstart Your Weekend: A series in which I occasionally spotlight Kickstarter projects that are ending soon and deserve a little nerd love. Also, I'll highlight some past projects as well, as you never know when these enterprises are going to turn up again.

Another busy week for Kickstarter nerds. While I said from the start that Kickstart Your Weekend wouldn't be a weekly feature, it sure is shaping up that way. This week we've got updates on past projects and a new set of highlights. Next week I anticipate doing a highlights selection of past projects, and after that it looks like there may be a lull in truly exciting Kickstarter projects, though you never know when a new campaign might pop up. Kind of like pseudo-nazi societies in science-fiction, they turn up whenever things get stale. And, if you're lucky, they're worth the effort to vanquish them rather than becoming just another clumsy cash-in for some bland action scenes and ham-fisted morality tale (I'm looking at you, Stargate SG-1's Eurondans).

Sorry about that, back to Kickstarter stuff...

Jagged Alliance: Flashback--which I was most worried about over the past week--finished its campaign well, just squeaking by to collect its first stretch goal. I'd waited on this one until the last minute, but in the end the promise of Mac support plus the fun skin packs they were previewing helped secure my moneys. They also have a slacker backer program in the works at their main site, which will give users the chance to belatedly pre-order now that the Kickstarter campaign is finished.The steampunk air skirmisher Guns of Icarus: Adventure Mode funded at just over two hundred grand with outside supporters included, punting their MMO dreams a little further down the development gridiron. You can keep following their puffs of white steam and black smoke over at the Guns of Icarus site. Robotech RPG Tactics blew through stretch goal after stretch goal to claim a massive 1.442 million dollars, making it one of the most successful projects in the board game category on Kickstarter. Anime mecha fans should pop on over to Palladium Books to check out their RPG products and watch for the release of Robotech RPG Tactics in early 2014.

Bear: A First Time Parent's Continuing Journey is doing solidly well and is on track to get funded in twelve days.  Browncoats: Independence War just achieved full funding with 3 days to go, so I'd say they'll hit a stretch goal or two. And keep in mind that unless you back and get a download or DVD of the movie, it probably won't be available to see outside of con and special event screenings. So something to ponder, that. Finally, Deadzone is over $500,000 pledged with 9 days left, meaning it is almost guaranteed to be Mantic Games' most successful KS campaign yet. Seriously, don't forget about them and their enkindled Chovar model.

So with the past campaigns' roundups out of the way, I've got another set of three projects for you, this time featuring a second edition for a successful RPG, a superhero board/miniatures game mash-up, and a dark revival of a Saturday morning dynasty as a web series. Woot woot.

OVA: The Anime Role-playing Game

The art looks beautiful and perfectly evokes classic anime tropes.

What it is: OVA is an RPG tailored and streamlined to put players in anime-style adventures quickly and with a minimum of effort. Written by Clay Gardner, OVA (Open Versatile Anime) was originally published in 2005 and though it was a very small release, the unique and straightforward approach to the genre was fairly well-received. Eight years later, a wiser and more seasoned Clay Gardner is returning to his first effort with an eye to refine and deepen the rules and throw a hefty amount of artist glamour over the whole effort. The most interesting aspect of the game is the elegantly simple character creation process, which is supposed to take only a matter of minutes if you want. You design only the remarkable aspects of your character--there are no specified stats, no core abilities you need to define whether or not they're important to the character concept. If they're very good or very bad at something, that is what defines them, and that is what shows up on the character sheet. It's a novel approach and perfectly fits the anime genre, where mundane activities and attributes are hand-waved as a matter of course.

Why it's exciting: I'm a fan of GURPS, a point I've belabored on this blog several times already. But I have also said just as often that I'm a sucker for great art and for eccentric game mechanics. And OVA has both in spades. Mr. Gardner has also put up a couple of character books on his campaign's main page. I love character books--they're a combination of character background, detailed character sheet and illustration, and a summary of the core rules that apply to playing that character. It's a great play aid for learning the system, looks terribly attractive, and is useful for convention purposes for getting players into the game quickly. They're already fully funded and past a long list of stretch goals that include a mobile app to support the game. So OVA has definitely secured my pledge. And, as I said in my GM Tips post last week, a well-constructed system with a narrow focus trumps the best generic system in its realm of specialization, and OVA has me really excited to play some bright frenetic anime action. And, due to come out by the end of the year, I hopefully won't have to wait long.



Guardians Chronicles

What it is: Guardians Chronicles is an ambitious board game coming from Iello Games. In it, players take up dice, cards, miniatures, and play heroes assaulting the lair of the mastermind Professor Skarov. One player takes control of the villain and his base full of henchmen, trying to hold off the heroes while they vie to foil each other and score the most headlines by the game's end. The characters are all original heroes inspired by classic heroic paragons and villainous archetypes. And by that I mean they're totally defensible and creative designs that are obviously inspired by Dr. Strange, Captain America, Iron Man, and so forth. The play mechanics involve each hero wielding a small hand of cards to upgrade their hero with abilities and stat boosts on a turn-by-turn basis, battling robots, ninjas, and supervillains on their way.

Why it's exciting: Iello Games has already produced some very well-received, albeit more shallow, board games in the past. King of Tokyo in particular got a lot of great reviews over the past year. Guardians Chronicles looks like a colorful super-powered riff on the asymmetrical gameplay of Descent, with up to four players ganging up on a powerful mastermind controlling multiple characters of lesser ability. I love the artwork, and now that the game is fully funded with 24 days to go, I bet we'll see all or most of the stretch goals they've laid out funded before the end, which will unlock a dozen heroes and villains and bonus henchman for the larger pledges. I haven't pledged to them yet myself, but the colorful characters and action-packed game mechanics have me tempted.



MMPR

What it is: When you consider all the iterations as one, the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers has been one of the longest running shows for kids. And that goes back to my generation, with the show premiering on Fox Kids in 1993. Twenty years later, the Power Rangers are still doing their thing. Still appealing to the same age demographic with the same pratfalls, bad comedy, and cheesy but kinetic action sequences. We all grew up, but the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers didn't. That's where MMPR comes in. A fan tribute web series, MMPR aims to bring our Saturday morning fondest memories into a contemporary light with a post-apocalyptic, more serious tone. Their campaign aims to fund the fan-series pilot episode to the series, plus any further episodes they might get via stretch goals.

Why it's exciting: Honestly, I want to see some of the action for this show before I get too excited, but that little teaser and the synopsis has got me perked up. A post-heroic, blasted setting that is somehow the result of evil being defeated in the past also strikes me as an interesting and unexpected angle to take. And I was always a dork for the Green Ranger, which means I'm fairly hooked by the plot conceit of a new generation of Rangers looking for Tommy, who's now in hiding. If MMPR can just give me a little bit of that old spark I used to feel when I'd watch the Green Dragon Zord rise up out of the water without making me feel like a dork? I'd get on board. Heck, who am I kidding--I've watched old episodes of Fraggle Rock on my own in the past few years--I'm not afraid of feeling like a dork.

A Day in the Nerdery: Power-Armor-Shattering Pelvic Thrusts

A Day in the Nerdery: Being a nerd is fun. There's a peculiar level of joy that can only be enjoyed by someone who knows how to properly visualize 'power-armor-shattering pelvic thrusts', 'brace-for-impact bathroom breaks', or 'thing-foot'. I'm here to share that joy, whether you like it or not.

This is a childish bit of whimsy from years ago. Pardon my nostalgia.

I used to be a big Games Workshop fan. I may be a jaded iconoclast of the company now, but when I first heard as a seventh grader about their store's grand opening near my home, I was immediately struck. My friend, Chris, had wandered into their outlet in the local mall, and his reports were intoxicatingly imaginative and strange sounding:

"They have this game, it's called like Sword 5,000 or something, where you have armies of models fight each other. There are these guys in big suits of armor--but not like knights' armor. It's like high-tech armor."

"Like Starship Troopers?"

"I dunno, I haven't read that yet. But it's like Aliens, except the armor doesn't have gaps."

"Like Exo-squad?"

"Maybe. But they're fighting these space pirate elves in purple, spiky armor, and they're in these buildings that have been destroyed somehow. You move your guys 6 inches, and then you roll dice to shoot at the enemy."

"Sounds awesome."

"It is awesome, but you don't even know. When you get close, your guys can charge into melee..."

And so it went, until I harangued my mom into driving me there the next day. I played a demo game of Warhammer 40,000 and didn't leave the store until I'd plunked $80 down on a boxed starter set, paint kit, and hobby supplies. Within hours, I was thick into laying a foundation in a hobby of poring over rules and charting the perfect force composition, nicking my fingers with craft knives, and eyes watering at the near-sighted strain of late night painting sessions. Two years later, I had three armies of miniatures, each numbering at least 50 models about the size of a fat thumb. And kind of a fourth army, too.

See, within a couple of weeks of that first purchase in the hobby, I became an insufferable proselyte for my nerdy addiction. I went to school with my rulebook, and spent passing periods, lunch time, and study hall either outlining my future unit purchases or showing off the fantastic illustrations to my friends. In a middle school of maybe sixty kids, it's accurate to say that I was known as "Ben the Wargame Kid" by the second Friday.

Surprisingly and despite my best exertions, Chris never got bit by the bug he gave me. He never picked up any models or books or got any deeper into 40K than a couple of shallow games we played with that starter boxed set. But oh, did we play those starting forces to death. No 30 models in all the hobby were as thoroughly used and abused as those 10 Space Marines and 20 Dark Eldar (space elves) with which my hobby began. And I did manage to recruit one of my friends. My buddy Tyler latched onto the game in much the same way I did, marveling and pondering over the huge swathes of arcane fiction in the rulebook, enjoying the endless plotting involved in devising a potential army's makeup, and the painting.

No, not the painting. Tyler hated the painting. Assembling his models was good fun for him--a much more utilitarian and rewarding hobby than the four or five unfinished military models he had at the time. But painting was a gross requirement to expect from Tyler. His first army was the Space Marines' Blood Angels chapter, and his preferred method of detailing them was upending the Emperor's Finest one at a time and dunking them into a paint pot of blood red paint. It looked awful--as anyone familiar with paint, models, or even nail polish could guess. I begged him to let me paint his army, and being the good, lazy friend that he was, Tyler let me. Making his force my kinda-fourth-army.

"...it's accurate to say that I was known as 'Ben the Wargame Kid' by the second Friday."

Those first years were great for us and our hobby. We made monthly purchasing trips to the local Games Workshop, and once our armies were ready we went to the mall every Thursday after school to play 40K against other kids. Of course, this is when GW's fanbase and target demographic was a lot older than it is today, so by other kids I mean 3 high schoolers and a dozen overweight bearded guys. I loved it.

But we ended up playing a lot more at Tyler's house, confiscating his family's large dining room table for games once or twice a week. At that point, Tyler had a plus-sized Blood Angels force with a passable paintjob commissioned from me, and I was fielding an army of fancy-pants Eldar against him. Tyler's army revolved around two tanks, some heavy support, and a cheesy overpowered guy in gold plate named Lord Dante. Now, Dante isn't a specific model--he's the El Guapo* of Warhammer 40,000 3rd Edition. Dante is that guy or effect or level in every hobby that makes nerds gush with ire and overused jargon. When you walk in on a bunch of kids arguing over Pokemon, getting way too worked up over the ultimate evolution of the best undefeatable Pokemon, they're arguing over Lord Dante. When D&D nerds talk about that old school dungeon from the 80s that was insanely cheap and impossible to beat--they played Dante. Dante is the unfair cheap-ass bogeyman of nerd hobbies. My Dante just so happened to be the actual Lord Dante.

A single miniature only slightly bigger than any other infantry model, Lord Dante would lead Tyler's forces into the thick of my superbly painted sissies and have his way with them wielding a master-crafted power axe (sci-fi turkey cutter) and a inferno pistol that makes every raygun in everything else look like a hair dryer by comparison. And he had a jetpack. Now, Tyler didn't always win. In fact, I'd say I won more often than not, but Lord Dante always defied me. Either I'd have to redirect my entire army of proudly garish Eldar to focus their puny might against him to bring him down, or even in the face of my victory he'd survive--an immortal atom left in the wake of his force's slaughter. My answer to Lord Dante was Baharroth--a brightly painted Eldar with a peacock helmet, Swooping Hawk wings, and basically half as good at everything as Lord Dante. Baharroth got it rough from Lord Dante almost every time Tyler and I played. And I got trash-talked a lot because of it.

"Dante is that guy or effect or level in every hobby that makes nerds gush with ire and overused jargon."

Oh, the trash-talk. As a pair of nerdy junior high boys with no aspirations for girlfriends at the time, we took trash-talk to a new degree of obscurity. Sometimes the trash-talk was just stage-whispered proto-swears and crude gestures, but for most of it we really elevated our banter to match our nerdy pursuits. At school we'd randomly throw insults at each other about how the other one would doubtless fall beneath our mighty tank treads and cry for mercy (Tyler's trash talk), or how the other guy would get turtled over onto his armored back and drowned in the blood of his own fellows (my trash talk). Or it'd be as simple as saying that the other kid couldn't know the right answer in history class because he couldn't roll a 3+ on four dice to save his command squad. In the middle of class.

Yes yes, it is good we weren't angling for girlfriends at that phase of our lives.

But one particular night, when Tyler and I were bargaining over territorial rights over his dining room table, there was a moment of absolute epiphany. Lord Dante and a couple of over-powered minions had cleft their way deep into my Eldar formation's glass flank. Desperate to humiliate the shining compensator, I dropped Baharroth and ten of his Swooping Hawk meat-shields bodyguards subordinates directly on top of the assaulting marines. It was a bloody mistake. Dante and his wingmen turned and let into my fiery-painted turkeys like they'd just gotten back from a day-long hike. A turn later, and the fracas had dissolved down to Dante and Baharroth. It was a familiar scenario that always ended with the Phoenix Lord of the Swooping Hawks spread-eagled and whimpering at Dante's feet. Only this time, Baharroth's rolls were teasing me:

6. Roll again to keep striking until I miss. 6. 6. 6!

I did a pissy-giddy dance, pat-pat-pat in place, clapping like an idiot as I racked up a respectable final blow against Dante before he'd inevitably counter-attack and blood eagle me. All Tyler had to do was make a couple of armor saves.

1. I giggle. 1. A gasp and with my hands primed and held in upraised fists. 1!

"Bam! Lord Dante goes down to the queen of the sugar-plum Eldar!" I shout and throw down an epically-scaled series of table-shaking pelvic thrusts. "Do you feel that?! Those are the power-armor-shattering pelvic thrusts of Baharroth ruling Lord Dante's dead body!" I crowed as I pronounced the ultimate trash-talk of our gaming lives.

Funny enough, Tyler's dining room table was like a six-foot-long four-inch-thick oak monstrosity, and I bruised the heck out of my hip mimicking Baharroth's victory corpse-hump. So the power-armor-shattering pelvic thrusts also happened to be pelvis-shattering pelvic thrusts.

Now, the Eldar and Blood Angels are sold--eBayed off to pay bills and free up shelf space long left untended. But those memories will never fade. The nostalgia is eternal, and only highlighted by the contrasting ire I now feel for Games Workshop and what has become of Warhammer 40,000. And always, always there is the eternal joke of the power-armor-shattering pelvic thrusts.

I hope you've enjoyed this unannounced detour down my memory lane. If not, mental bleach is available for a small secondhand premium. You can have it as soon as I wash away the rest of Disney's Star Wars dance-off from my mind...

Ha. Now you need a double dose of mental bleach. That'll be two premium fees.

"Bam! Lord Dante goes down to the queen of the sugar-plum Eldar!"

*Three Amigos reference, folks.

Fire and Ice Roundup: 2012 and 2013

Today I put to rest another post that's been lingering for far too long. Last year, just after going to Fire and Ice 2012, I pledged to give a more detailed discussion of the convention... later that week.

Well, frak. That sure as heck didn't happen.

So now, having been haunted by that particular failure for over a year, I've added another victim to my unfinished business: Fire and Ice 2013. This actually works out pretty well, as in 2013 much of my time at the con revolved around the games that I'd volunteered to host. Since I didn't do this the first year, it makes for a good comprehensive perspective of the small gaming convention.

This review I'll break up into the types of games I've played at Fire and Ice, and a brief run-down of my specific experiences.

Role-Playing Games

I've mentioned in the past that I love being able to play several RPGs in one weekend. It's a great way to try out different game systems and with players of diverse role-playing styles. This second part is really fun and unique. You can always play a new game with your same old gaming group, but forming a whole new group of role-players is slow at best and at worst it's more agonizing than the first season of Star Trek Next Generation. Of course, playing with new people presents its own difficulties, too. You need to spend a lot of game time feeling out the others' play styles and expectations of the game, and it's easy to fall back more on humor than you would otherwise do in a typical session.

"Well, frak. That sure as heck didn't happen."

What first brought me to Fire and Ice 2012 was a conversation with Kurt Wilken on the GURPS forums at Steve Jackson Games' website about running a one-shot GURPS Thundercats game for a local convention. My enthusiasm for both GURPS and the Thundercats led me to bring my wife and son to the small Wisconsin convention in search of games, and Kurt's GURPS Thundercats happened to be in the first slot for that Friday, too, making for an easy integration into the event. His game was GURPS lite, which is pretty essential for a con (remember my intro to GURPS), and he had a lot of fun with the cartoon characters that made it enjoyable. So much so that the next day I had to join his GURPS Justice League game as well, which was probably even more fun despite my distaste for the DC Universe--and it was probably helped by the fact that the Justice League game had five players who were a bit more into the game than the two others who sat in on the Thundercats game. The one minor note of disappointment, however, is that I was looking forward to seeing how another GM tackles the complexity of GURPS, since I've never played the system as PC before. Much to my chagrin, Kurt's style was largely the same as mine--thanks a lot! That teaches me sooo much.

The past two Fire and Ice cons also gave me a chance to try a number of new RPGs, too. Last year I'd also played a game of Deadlands, which felt to me like a compromise between the Serenity Cortex system and D&D. The setting is fantasy-steampunk-western, where Jules Vernian devices can be used by divinely-blessed gunslingers to fight off Apache werewolves. Yeah, it's that crazy. And I don't think a stranger has ever made me laugh harder in my life. The Deadlands game was played during the last slot of the night, and as such we got pretty crazy flogging our characters through the climax of our zombie-infested vampire ghost town. Literally, in the case of one of our players, who played an older preacher who could literally call down brimstone from on high. In order to bring his six-barrelled shotgun to the enemy, he had to whip his mule-spirited horse into a frenzy that was punctuated by hoarse-drawled homiles screeched in a perfectly evocative and ridiculous pitch. The game itself wasn't  interesting enough for me to seek it out, and the setting felt like a cliche pot-pouri, but it was magic hour with our improbable crew that night.

"You can always play a new game with your same old gaming group, but forming a whole new group of role-players is slow at best and at worst it's more agonizing than the first season of Star Trek Next Generation."

One of my favorite games from last year was a session of Mistrunner, which remains the most capably run RPG I've played in anywhere. Mistrunner is actually a small independent RPG system and unique setting that was released this past year, and at Fire and Ice 2012 we were being led by the game's designer, Glenn Buettner. Set in a future, devastated version of Earth where magical races suddenly entered the world and destroyed everything familiar, this game avoided the traps of a typical fantasy RPG. There were no humans, and the limited amounts of steam and old tech meant that it had a little more refinement than a medieval RPG without the unrestrained insanity of the Deadlands game. The game system itself was interesting and easy enough to get a handle on, but the pre-made PCs were so well done it's hard to tell how much control players have over character creation. Pretty much all of the game's characters were magic users and/or casters, which is not something I like, but that worked in this system. Magic in the game basically revolved around tapping into pools of magical influence over your specific element--fire or water, etc. You watched Captain Planet, right? Except in here Mr. Buettner really rewarded creativity, and our magical improvisation was key to resolving the different fights. I opted to play a troll mistrunner--the Ma-Ti of these Planeteers. I know--I got stuck with heart? When I don't even like being a magic user? Well, this particular troll was awesome. As a mistrunner, I was the guide for our group through the magical fog that dominates the setting, and I had physical control over it as well as an astral ability to tap into the mist realms connected. Or something. I just loved that Mr. Buettner gave us a chance to buy gear in the beginning of the session and let my troll pick up a perfume  bottle with an atomizer, which I used to materialize steps in the air, projected like shotgun blasts, and used to detonate a giant spider's head from the inside out. It's just too bad that we weren't supposed to kill that spider--but that's the kind of crap that goes down when a troll is calling the shots, dog.

This past year, at Fire and Ice 2013, the only RPG I played was a game called Microscope, which is a super quirky anti-RPG. You don't assume the roles of characters, there's no dice-rolling or stats, and there's no one GM. Instead, armed with note cards, pencils, and in an exercise that reminded me of my fondest memories of theater at school, you take turns fleshing out a timeline. It's very much a high concept game that is designed to help brainstorm settings and chain of events for proper RPGs, but if you're like me and too anal to consider giving up your GM reins to let the players collectively create your setting, it might just be a fun novelty instead.

Board Games

The board game scene at Fire and Ice is great. There are tons of tables devoted to games of all types, and if not there's a big library of games that they loan out to people looking to try out something specific that isn't part of a scheduled event. They even have little "looking for players" signs that you can set up on a table beside your game to let people know that you don't have any friends want to beat some new people have available seats. At Fire and Ice 2013, I dropped in on a pickup game of Axis & Allies (where I led the Soviet forces to resounding victory and much mocking of the high schooler commanders of the Axis powers), and I used a sign to get a five player game of Marvel Legendary started--which was frakkin' sweet.

"...that's the kind of crap that goes down when a troll is calling the shots, dog."

And the con is a great place to play new board games. There's no better way to learn a board game than to simply sit down and play it under the direction of a player who loves the game. At Fire and Ice 2012 I played the massively popular game Eclipse when it was sold out in most of America, and that was a fun stretch for me. A Euro-style board game with its sights set on Twilight Imperium's throne, Eclipse put us in command of sci-fi human empires looking for a reason to sponge out our fellow players from amongst the stars. I liked the fleet customization aspect which let us change our ship's abilities as the game progressed, but I wasn't a fan of getting rolled over by a girl's dreadnought fleet of nuke-dom. I'll stick with my good old Twilight Imperium, but it was a might fun game to play.

Similarly, I'd never gotten to play a game of Memoir '44 Overlord before Fire and Ice 2012. I have Memoir '44, and recommended it in my Memorial Day post, but the Overlord variation of the game is epically prohibitive to set up spontaneously. You need two sets of the game, a lot of space, and exactly four people on both sides of the table--three players each commanding the left, right, and center sections of their side's forces, and one honcho calling the shots for all three. I got to play as the grand marshal of the German forces in our epic game, and I'm proud to say I got my Jerry subordinates butchered terribly. All in terrible fun.

Miniatures Games

For 2012, I played only two short miniatures games, even though a full third of the game floor was devoted to Heroclix, Warhammer, and Warhammer 40,000 tournaments. Not wanting to miss out on the clix action, but not yet into it myself, I played a fun small intro scenario of the out-of-print Mechwarrior Heroclix game, which was an intuitive but difficult-to-master variation on the core clix system that added a second clicker. For those of you who don't know, the clix system is basically a model on top of a decoder-ring type setup the size of a bottlecap with character stats on it. As your characters take damage, you click the decoder towards their death, and the stats change to reflect diminished abilities or building desperation. The Mechwarrior game was fun, and the appeal of getting into a fully fleshed out game appealed, but I just wasn't that into the figures and scale that I felt conflicted a bit with the system. But, by the time The Avengers came out three months later, I was totally primed to start collecting Marvel Heroclix. So boo-yah for guerrilla marketing.

"I wasn't a fan of getting rolled over by a girl's dreadnought fleet of nuke-dom."

For Fire and Ice 2013, I actually led three games of space fleet battles in the miniatures gaming section. Playing a personal variation on Colonial Battlefleet, I let players command the ships of the show Battlestar Galactica against each other in scenarios modeling the Battle of the Tylium Asteroid, the Attack on the Resurrection Ship, and the Rescue on New Caprica. I love Colonial Battlefleet and hope to talk more about it, but for me the highlight was busting out my painted models and impressing people with a really good looking game, even if the rules are virtually unknown.

Well, that's it for a very late addition to my blog. One more plodding step towards being up-to-date and ever-timely.

Psssh. Like that's ever going to happen.

Kickstart Your Weekend: Aliens, Cuddles, and Dino-hunters

Kickstart Your Weekend: A series in which I occasionally spotlight Kickstarter projects that are ending soon and deserve a little nerd love. Also, I'll highlight some past projects as well, as you never know when these enterprises are going to turn up again.

It's another Kickstart Your Weekend! Yes yes. Note that this won't necessarily be a weekly installment on the blog, but there are a number of interesting projects I'll touch on this week and next week. After that, I plan on trying to get a weekly shout-out only to brand new and nerd-interesting projects so you'll have a good amount of time to follow and possibly pledge your support.

So it's been an interesting week for the projects I highlighted last weekend. Bifrost's campaign continues to stagnate as there's a complete lack of feedback and support from Bill Willingham, the project creator and author. Recently he is supposed to have said that Bifrost will happen regardless of the Kickstarter's success, which--while it was probably meant as a reassurance to fans of the project idea--couldn't have done the campaign any favors. The KS campaign is all but certain to fail, and I'm not that broken up about it. If there's one thing I hate as a KS backer it's feeling emasculated by the indifference of a professional creator who doesn't really need the campaign to be successful but wanted to try it anyways. It's like asking your wife to make dinner for when you get home, only to forget and pick up Chicago dogs on the way--only less endearingly eccentric, right? Sure, both funding options might be valid for you, but once you announced one intention the other should be off the table.

Robotech RPG Tactics has been doing solidly well over the past week, and it looks like with 3 days remaining they're going to get awfully close to (pinky to mouth) one million dollars. Guns of Icarus: Adventure Mode has pretty much plateaued, it would seem, and I doubt they will be able to get enough steam to reach two hundred grand, let alone the $500,000 stretch goal they would need to fund all of the MMO elements they have in mind. Still, they've definitely kicked the ball down-field, and I bet the next expansion they fund will put a broadside into their steampunk MMO aspirations. (Is that enough mixed metaphors for you? Because I could bolt another one or two on there.) Jagged Alliance: Flashback has rallied a little bit over the past week, thanks to a mention from the hugely successful Kickstarter for Project Eternity. The merc tactics game still has more than one hundred grand to raise in 3 days, though, so it's still far from a cinch. If you're on the fence about pledging, do it--do it nao.

So that's the followup to last week's stuff, now on to three new project highlights.

Deadzone

Deadzone Enforcers fighting off huge Plague forms.

What it is: Deadzone is the latest game on Kickstarter from Mantic Games. Set in their science fiction setting known as Warpath, Deadzone is a skirmish-level miniatures wargame with a specific setting and focus that edges it towards being a board game. Players assume a squad-sized team of soldiers and pit them against each other in claustrophobic urban environments, making it somewhat similar in appeal to the anime-style miniature wargame Infinity. Now Mantic Games is a fairly new UK company led by several ex-Games Workshop employees, so I identify them as the anti-GW. It's a distinction I really like, as I've become somewhat zealous in my criticism of GW over the years, and it also means that their miniatures tend to shoot for "like Games Workshop, but better." Whether they're successful or not is a matter of taste, but their miniatures are undeniably less expensive with more realistic proportions (slightly smaller) and tend not to have stupid skulls hanging off every accessory (seriously, I have an old GW model with 30 skulls decorating his clothes and equipment). There are now six factions available as part of the Deadzone campaign: the elite human Enforcers, the disenfranchised human-alien conglomerate Rebels, the necroform-like Plague,  the totally-not-Space-Ork faction known as the Marauders, the warrior-Vulcan faction the Asterians, and the space-dwarf Forge Fathers. For a sci-fi wargame that just began in earnest two years ago, Deadzone promises to bring Warpath into triple-a variety and large-scale support for players of lots of different persuasions.

This one will not attempt diplomacy... enkindle this!

Why it's exciting: First of all, Deadzone is well past its base funding goal, so all funds that they'll be making in the next two weeks of their campaign will go towards stretch goals, unlocks, and free add-ons. Secondly, since this is Mantic's fourth Kickstarter project, they've proven themselves reliable in delivering their supporters great models in a reasonable turn-around. I myself pledged for their sci-fi sports wargame Dreadball, and I gotta say the components are fun and the goodies keep coming--in fact I literally got some of their second-phase models in the mail today. The setting also supports a lot more diversity for play styles and aesthetics than their main competitor, in my opinion. Plus, a recent stretch goal unlocked an alien miniature that bears a striking resemblance to a famous Spectre known for having a lover in every port and a pistol in every tentacle. Pledge for this already!



Bear - A First Time Parent's Continuing Journey

What it is: Alright, so this one isn't so much nerdy as sappy, but the first Bear book was one of the first Kickstarter projects to draw me into the site and really get me excited about some of the unique projects getting funded this way. Created by Ryan Sohmer, Bear - A First Time Parent's Continuing Journey features full-page painted illustrations in a large-format book. Every page has a few proverbs or observations on the surprises and lessons of becoming a parent, and the illustrations themselves depict adorable animal parents and kids in various typical family moments--throwing a hissy on the floor, rocking a baby to sleep, trying to teach your boy to hop a tree branch. You know, the usual.

Why it's exciting: Like Deadzone's Mantic Games, Bear's creator Ryan Sohmer is a proven entity. I pledged for the first volume of Bear, and I have to say that every page just oozes genuine parental affection. Cute paintings, and with narrations that vary from humorously wry to tear-jerking sincere, there's a lot to love in this project. With over two weeks to go and already 75% of the way to their base funding goal, this campaign is certain to be successful. And for those of you who missed out on the first volume, the rewards for this campaign can be used to get a copy of that book as well as the sequel. I recommend the book very highly, it's one of those kids' books that is full of illustrations kids will love and insights parents cherish. That also means it's the kind of book you keep on the top shelf at home or otherwise out of reach so your son doesn't pull it down on the floor and trample it in his enthusiasm.

Stomping Land

Smell that? Are we downwind of those brachiasauruses?

What it is: This ambitious little PC game is trying to tell a story that is totally different from anything else I know, and it is trying to do so in a completely novel gameplay style, too. Created by Alex Fundora, Stomping Land is a primitive hunting/survival/crafting game. You play a prehistoric bow-armed hunter in a land populated by diverse herds of dinosaurs. Hunting smaller dinosaurs for meat, the second your bow drops a prey animal you're racing against larger predators--like Tyrannosaurs--who will happily come in and enjoy your hard-earned kill. But you can also lay traps, snares, and lures to try to foil these mega-opportunists and get away with your dead, flaccid handiwork cleanly. If only it were so easy to protect one's childhood heroes from being ravaged by opportunistic reboots. Sigh. There's also going to be some sort of tribal coop element to Stomping Land as well, but the details on that haven't been spilled yet.

Why it's exciting: This game looks to incorporate two or three genres with a consistent, visceral gameplay experience. But, despite the ambitiousness of that statement, the tribal dynamics and prehistoric setting mean that the game itself should still be small enough for an indie developer to manage. The idea of stalking small prey dinosaurs, killing them, and then skulking away as scavengers swoop in just sounds like a lot of fun, and certainly not the sort of over-powered player experience the big game makers are interested in producing. And like Deadzone, this one has already met its modest base goal. As a PC game, however, the next two stretch goals are very important--Alex Fundora will hire dedicated full-time talent to help flesh out the world. Considering how nice the pre-alpha looks, it's amazing to think what a full-time developer could do with this unique setting. Let's throw some money at them and find out.

Kickstart Your Weekend #1

Kickstart Your Weekend: A series in which I occasionally spotlight Kickstarter projects that are ending soon and deserve a little nerd love. Also, I'll highlight some past projects as well, as you never know when these enterprises are going to turn up again.

Continuing with my blogging sprint, once more I'm keeping up a daily pace of updates for this blog. Rest assured that I will be slowing down, but I'm going to keep this up for at least a few more days, at which point the pace of updates will no longer be in my hands (more on that later). But as it is, right now I am once more sacrificing a Saturday afternoon on the altar of blogspot. That's right, I'm home alone with my wife at work and my son at the old folks' home, and what do I do first? I play a few compulsory rounds of Halo 4, followed by reading like six comic books--Marvel, of course. After that, though, I give myself a big helping of blog homework. That's because there ain't no Saturdays for the wicked.*

Today I'm introducing a new article series: Kickstart Your Weekend. Now, I've missed a lot of opportunities to drum up support for past projects, and I already flogged for one Kickstarter project earlier this week. But there are several other nerd-worthy projects ending quite soon and countless more to come in the future, so I think I'll do an occasional post to summarize my interest in these projects and why they might appeal to you. I'll also resurrect some prior projects, successful and unsuccessful, highlighting the course of their campaigns and what form they might take in the future. There have been some really exciting potential products that have surfaced only because of Kickstarter, and for a lot of these I'd like to keep an eye out to see if they make a return in some form. And you might, too.

What's Kickstarter?

First of all, you're my mother-in-law. Because I'm pretty sure she's the only person left in the internet-literate world that doesn't know what Kickstarter is by now. It's okay to admit it, there's nothing wrong with being my mother-in-law. Alright, fine. I'll humor you with my take on Kickstarter (and similar sites, like Indiegogo).

Kickstarter is the most well-known crowdfunding website out there. Crowdfunding is basically a way to blur the line between investment and pre-ordering products. People make a campaign page on Kickstarter, which explains a project they want to fund with a set goal for funds raised within the project's finite run time. Most campaigns run for one month. During this time, people can donate money freely to the campaign to help push them towards their goal, and they can apply their pledges to specific reward tiers the campaign manager sets up ahead of time--sort of like a PBS pledge drive, though with a heck of a lot more naiveté from the pledgers, which is saying a lot.

Now, if a Kickstarter campaign fails to reach its original goal, none of the pledges are charged and everyone goes home sad but with their money in their pockets. Except the people who ran the campaign, they just go home sad. The base goal is meant to be the minimum funds to start a project, paying the bare essentials to get the products or services initiated. Most campaigns include stretch goals--additional perks or upgrades to their product if the campaign hits additional goals. In any case, the bottom line for most Kickstarter pledgers is getting the rewards associated with the campaign, and for those running the campaign it's about securing the funding minus the costs of the reward and building a following for the first run of their product.

There are a lot of different projects on Kickstarter, but the ones of interest to the Nerdery are games, movies, and books. Games in particular are exciting for Kickstarter projects, as the stretch goal format is usually geared to give extras and freebies to well-invested pledgers as the campaign blasts through its base goal. If it blasts through its base goal, that is.

Bifrost

Bifrost's Mary Fimbul

What it is: Bifrost is going to be an illustrated novel featuring modern day fantastic heroes that draw on the Norse myth of Ragnarok. It will be written by Bill Willingham, a long-time writer for DC, and the illustrations done by Frank Cho, a fantastic artist who's written his own strip, Liberty Meadows, and is a frequent bulwark to Marvel comics. The story itself is going to be a highly fantastic one, with talking chimps (everyone knows Frank Cho is comics' monkey-boy, he's always trying to work them in if they aren't there already), werewolves, and more monsters probably pulled from the nine realms of Norse mythology. The main protagonist, Mary Fimbul, is the inheritor of access to the Bifrost and the nine realms it connects. The story sounds promising with a lot of character that makes me think of Mignola's Hellboy stories--full of noir sensibilities and fabled savvy. The artwork itself is going to be black and white woodcut style, which is a more obscure method amongst modern illustrators, but if you've seen Cho's inks before you know his stark monochrome compositions can be fantastic.

Why it's exciting: It's Frank Cho, man! Seriously, if the name, the story, and the art sample doesn't sell you to at least put down a little money on this project...well, I just don't know you. Sure, the minimum pledge for receiving a copy of the book is a little high at $60, but you're talking about a deluxe hardcover novel with 20+ Frank Cho illustrations, and a quirky story that is being created by two comic book veterans who have never before bridged the Marvel-DC gap to work together. This project isn't in the best position to finish, needing to raise over $10,000 in the next 7 days, but if it does make it, I really want to follow the story. Myself, I'm still on the fence as to whether or not to pledge--but I've starred it and will follow its development in any case.



Robotech RPG Tactics

Already funded, with lots of bonus add-ons coming in.

What it is: Robotech is a long-standing anime classic. Starting way back in 1985, it's been a part of a massive saga of shows and movies since then. And when cable networks like Cartoon Network have perennially showed reruns of the original series, it inevitably pulls in a new generation of fans. Robotech is a sci-fi show full of melodrama and social commentary on world wars, told amidst a backdrop of massive spaceships and hotshot pilots manning space fighters that transform into robots. I'm not the most savvy fan, but I loved the first season when I was a kid. Now, a part of Robotech's success there's been a fairly popular RPG by Palladium Books, and this Kickstarter project is about expanding the popular RPG into a sort of miniatures game/RPG bridge. While RPGs typically involve each player other than the GM controlling only one character directly, Robotech RPG Tactics is going to put players in command of squads of units to help simulate the skirmishes that elevated the show so much. The units are multi-part plastic models ranging from 40mm-70mm tall that look like a ton of fun to paint, and the $80 base boxed set is going to have 30+ miniatures in it in addition to the rules, dice, and cards included to play the game.

Why it's exciting: This game is already funded many times over (having raised more than $660,000 out of their startup goal of $70,000), and they've still got 9 days to go. As a miniatures game, this is exactly what indecisive backers want to see--as they continue to exceed their original goal, Palladium is adding extra miniatures to the boxed set and expanding the initial line of models available. I myself haven't pledged for them because I have hundreds of minis still waiting to be painted. (Seriously, there's a reason why miniatures hobbyists are called plastic addicts.) But if you're a fan of big robots, crisp game mechanics--they have a gameplay video up on their campaign page--check it out while you can and help build on those Kickstarter extras.


Guns of Icarus Online - Adventure Mode

Building on the basic multiplayer formula

What it is: Guns of Icarus Online is an interesting game. Set in a world of steampunk airships (if you don't know the genre, just think Jules Verne plus a lot of high schoolers' doodles), the focus is on crew cooperation as you navigate slow, clumsy dirigibles through smoke and clouds to blast away at enemy crews and airships. This game was originally part of a campaign last year that funded the bare bones skirmish version of the game that people are playing and loving right now. Now, this new Kickstarter project--Adventure Mode--is about expanding that core gameplay into something that they can eventually grow into a full-fledged MMO. The creators, Muse Games, want to make an ambitious, persistent world where players guide the fortunes of six factions and their balance of power. Where customizing your character and walking your character around ports and towns you help support are just as much of a game factor as manning a gun turret or applying a spanner to a busted engine. That takes a lot more than the $165,000 they've raised between their two Kickstarter campaigns so far, so they're building up the tools to reach that point with staged content. Adventure Mode will add an AI Director, which will be in charge of adding non-player combatants to the game to help flesh out that key aspect of the game that forms the backbone of an MMO.

Why it's exciting: This is another project that has already hit its primary goal, but it's also clearly stated that the ultimate funding goal--what's needed to fund Guns of Icarus from a limited skirmish game into a full-fledged MMO, is going to take $500,000 in pledges. Now, they aren't going to get there with this campaign, but at the rate they're going Muse Games will be able to fund enough tools to start cracking on the economic and political elements of the game that will be their next big hurdle. And from what I've heard, the beta that is available to play right now is tons of fun already, so you have a good idea of what you're getting. Again, not one that I'm personally pledging, as I've already sold my soul to Chris Roberts, but when the full MMO of Guns of Icarus is released, I may need to check it out.


Jagged Alliance Flashback

Kickin' it Soviet-style

What it is: Jagged Alliance is a classic tactical strategy game for the PC from 1994. In the same vein of squad micro-managing and base building as X-Com, Jagged Alliance pits players in command of a group of mercenaries fighting over an island against blah blah blah. The plot is all very Schwarzenegger meets Captain Planet, in a 1990s-let's-pit-nuclear-power-against-trees-kind of way. The point is, the game had several successful sequels, was well-reviewed, and now the Danes at Full Control are trying to bring back the game. The biggest problem? The tactical genre is dead (hmmm...where have I heard that before?), and that's kind of borne out by the fact the recent X-Com remake boiled down the gameplay into a shallow arcade experience that infuriated a lot of old-school fans. But that isn't stopping Full Control--they're forging ahead with a prequel to the original Jagged Alliance game, giving it the same depth and difficulty of the original plus with overhauled graphics and more sophisticated mechanics.

Why it's exciting: First and foremost, I love challenging tactical games. I'm following two X-Com remake projects right now, in fact. So to say that I'm eager to see Jagged Alliance: Flashback is an understatement. I've also heard that the original games were kick-yourself-in-the-teeth hard, and that sort of talk gives me the nerdlies. Unfortunately, Flashback has 11 days to go and is not quite halfway to its goal of $350,000. Kickstarter campaigns typically surge in the final week, and I hope that happens for this project, as the cross-nostalgia of playing a throwback to classic tactical computer games, plus an old-school Soviet cold war plot, plus deep gameplay that only holds your hand so it can suicide jump you off a cliff--it could be something special. Check it out.




*And money don't grow on trees. I got bills to pay, got mouths to feed, and there ain't nothin' in this world for free....

Guess what I'm listening to?