Games, Games, and Wargames (and Books and Movies) Oh my!

 Some of the Heroclix that have been repurposed for my game.   For some figures, the player will have a choice between some options. Like which shield style for Captain America, or whether Hank Pym will be Ant Man or Giant Man. 

  Mayhem Convention: April 21 to 23, 2023   The game I am running for Mayhem is called The One Who Possesses The Cosmic Cube .  Nothing like a short title for a game.  It is based on the Tales of Suspense story, He Who Holds The Cosmic Cube , from way back in 1966.   Things have been busy getting ready for the game.  My original intent was to run a game based on the MCU move Avengers: Infinity War.  I was going to use the ending battle in Wakanda as the basis for the game.  Until I realized that would have probably been extremely boring.  I figured fighting on the side of Thanos, really would not be too exciting, so the thought was that everyone would be playing on the same side, and fighting against the hordes of enemies.  Anyway, I eliminated that idea, and went with this.   Since my idea changed, I ended up having to get a lot of figures and had to work getting them ready.  Basically they are Heroclix figures rewor...

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to participate in what may be the first ever virtual gaming convention. While there may be groups or conventions that play games online, they are not usually miniature games. From what I understand, this was originally the weekend for the Huzzah! Convention that would have been held in Portland Maine.  Due to the worldwide crisis, they canceled the convention but then changed directions and it became a virtual convention. I heard about the game late in the scheme of things, from a post that Dave Phipps of Pulp Alley had put on Facebook.  To participate in the convention you had to register (it was free), and once registered you could get tickets (also free) to play in the games.  The GMs had the ability to choose what format they wanted to use to run their game.  I saw various sessions using Roll20, Zoom, Cisco Webex, Microsoft Teams, and other video chat systems.  It was tough to know what to play, since all of t...

A few photos of the Wyndham Lancaster (formally the ever popular Lancaster Host).  Still some obvious work, but getting there. 

Recently I watched the Blu-ray of the movie, Biggles: Adventures in Time.  The movie does not resemble anything that Biggles of the books, written by W.E. Johns, experienced, at least in those I have read. Based on comments some people have made, the movie was nothing like any of the books. While the movie certainly takes liberties with the character of Biggles, and adds a science fiction element to it, I do find it a fun, enjoyable movie to watch. It reminded me of some of the old pulp stories. I am certainly no expert on the original pulp magazines.  I began reading some of them when Bantam was doing the Doc Savage reprints.  I frequented a lot of used book stores in those days (notice I say used, not rare) and was able to pick up a lot of Doc Savage books very cheaply.  More recently several companies have put out reprints of pulps in various forms. Some are facsimile editions, that look just like the originals, including advertisements, and others are rep...

Spent a few days; Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at the Historicon game convention in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  Historicon is one of the three conventions per year that the Historical Miniature Gaming Society, East holds.  The other two, Cold Wars and Fall-In, are held in March and November (usually) each year. This convention marked the first convention at the Lancaster County Convention Center in downtown Lancaster.  The previous year it was held at what was once the Lancaster Host and is now the Wyndham Lancaster Resort and Conference Center.  Prior to that, it was in Fredericksburg, Virginia for several years. My wife and I arrived on Thursday afternoon in a downpour.  We were able to get one of the last spots in the attached garage, on the open parking deck.  It wasn't a big deal for us though.  We were staying at The Country Inn and Suites near the Wyndham, due to not being guaranteed a parking spot at the attached garage, if staying at the M...