Ground Hog, Woodchuck, What the Hell?

I was pleased to recently share with my family a small bit of trivia, Woodchucks and Ground Hogs are names for the same animal. More important to my current situation, after getting rid of 4 of them 2 years ago, a new one has returned to the burrow under my steps in preparation for winter 2013. This bugger has dug a new entrance into the old burrow, pushing through the mesh we had installed after removing the previous rodents, and is working on refurnishing a nice winter home. I have spent the last several weeks waging a semi-passive-aggressive war to encourage the varmint to relocate elsewhere. Ammonia seems to work really well but needs to be periodically reapplied. Clay based cat litter poured into the burrow (after he has been encouraged to leave), wet with more ammonia, and then covered with soil also seems to work well. The problem becomes this varmint is smart and found the one spot under the step I missed hitting with the litter-fill and dug a new entrance into the burrow. I'm trying to keep from poisoning the furry beast as I don't want a thawed corpse stinking up my front step come spring. I think we have dislodged him (again) but am in the several day waiting period to find out.

I realized recently why we have so many problems with this guy. Woodchucks / Groundhogs are related to squirrels. Everyone around my house knows that squirrels are just cleverly disguised demons from hell.


I realize this has nothing to do with gaming of any sort, but I figured it would be fun to share. So, with 3 weeks of quiet recently, whats been going on on my side of the interwebz? Lets jump in and take a look.

Role Playing Challenge

First to tackle is the recent RP challenge issued by friend Austin. It was nice to see him jump in and comment on my recent post. He and I think alike on many areas of running and playing in RP games, which means we had some of the same ideas of character generation. I plan to go into that a bit more in future posts as plans solidify.  It was also a nice reminder that I cannot post too many spoilers without either a spoiler tag or waiting until after the campaign to post the information. All of that said, I have had some more ideas but nothing concrete enough to dive into a full blog post on.

Malifaux

On the Malifaux front there has not been much happening. I am working on getting my aColette models painted up. Despite the severe falling out with Wyrd, I still like the models I have and plan to paint them up even if they just sit in my display case. I spoke with the owner of Huzzah about how M2E has been doing in the store and am happy to hear it's been doing ok overall. He has seen a resurgence in book and deck purchases, with a couple players reigniting interest. We also talked about the fact that most of the people seem to be "home players" which contributes to the decrease in attention and presence in our store of regular Malifaux games. There seems to be a small 2-4 player group on most Tuesday nights I am there, but they all leave very early and the overall community at Huzzah appears to have sharply dropped. I suspect this has as much to do with the difference between my henchman style and that of the new henchman as it does with the new version coming out. I still have a small group of players playing Malifaux Classic, and depending on how things go moving forward we may have enough to run a small event.

I have been keeping in touch with whats going on through a variety of podcasts. While several have dropped off my listening list, a couple have stuck around and are worth listening to. Currently subscriptions I have include the following:

• Malifools - Interesting talk overall, very M2E centric. 
• Through the Breach - The recent episode with Josh and Biggles discussing "Unitasking Masters" was really good
• Cheated Fates Radio - I love Joe and really look forward to hanging out with him at Adepticon again this year. I think Adam is a great addition, and really like him as well. I have ended up shutting off a couple recent episodes from losing interest, but it's still a quality Malifaux podcast for those interested in M2E.
• Gaming Done Right - all the arrogance you would expect from my previous co-hosts, and then some. Lots of gaming topics and some Malifaux here and there.
• Crit of Gamers - These guys hit Malifaux a bit less than general gaming and gaming community. I'm not completely sold but have not unsubscribed yet.

Then the last bit of Malifaux news for me is the upcoming Adepticon 2014. Word is there will be a Malifaux Classic event at Adepticon this year during the Story Encounters. If I understand correctly, it will be run in parallel with the M2E Story encounter and during the costume contest. I am looking forward to this and plan to take part.  I am looking forward to it!

Podcasting

Talking about podcasting it's probably a good place to jump into a quick update for those who are interested. I should probably copy this section over to the Gamers Lounge blog as well (if your reading it there then this was part of a recent DTP blog post).

First off, I recently joined Richi and Andre for a great discussion on a variety of subjects on the Hobby Sofa. I had a lot of fun and hope to return in a future episode for some additional discussion. In the recent episode we talked about basing for models, Hell Dorado, and Andre reviewed the new Seamus plastics. The conversation diverted to religion and a variety of other topics as well. The Hobby Sofa has a couple locations, search for it.

On Gamers Lounge news, we are not dead yet, it's just the quiet before the storm. At least I hope thats the case! The recent games I have been playing are not ones that make good podcast episodes (in my opinion) and I am looking forward to the return of some miniature war games. Netrunner is fun to play, but not really something I am passionate enough about to discuss for an hour or more. X-Wing with my daughter is fun, but again not enough to discuss. The upcoming Wild West Exodous is very exciting for me and I plan to record several episodes about my jump into that game. I have some high expectations (as mentioned elsewhere) and hope the game is as good as it appears to be. Regardless, learning the game and deciding if it's going to become my primary game should make for some great recording material!

Also on the horizon for GL is something I mentioned in one of the last episodes. I have been talking with the primary game designer of a new company (and helping playtest some of their games when work gives me the opportunity) and we have a segment planned for a number of future episodes. It's a "Game Designer Diary" type of segment where he and I will discuss some of the decisions designers need to make for their new games as they are building the games and their company. I think it will be interesting for people to hear, and for us to have the discussions. Life challenges have jumped in the way with both our schedules, so the plans to have several segments recorded already has been delayed by over a month.

Netrunner

Things are getting pretty long already, I thought this was going to be a shorter post that it has turned out to be. That said, I will try and wrap up the last couple things on my mind. Last night (Tuesday Oct 29) was the first of the Huzzah Hobbies monthly Netrunner tournaments. It was a lot of fun with 8 players showing up, 4 of which I had not played before. I ended up only playing 1 new opponent and did well overall. I won all 3 games I played with my corp deck (a fast score NBN deck) but did not win any of my runner games. My Kate/Atman deck just did not run fast enough to pull off the wins, losing 2 games to Scorched Earth and 1 to a race for the final agenda point (we were both at 6 agenda points). At the end of the 3 round event I came in 3rd place overall, so not a bad showing. I ended up with the LE art Scorched Earth card and the LE art Kate personality card (pictures above). I am looking forward to the next monthly tournament and will be overhauling my runner deck to work a bit faster.

Wild West Exodous

We are all still waiting on the WWX stuff to pry itself free from customs and then start shipping our way. I am thinking we will end up with the kickstarter stuff in our hands within the next 3 weeks, putting WWX in reach for the middle to end of November. This has me and a couple locals excited to get the models in hand, painted, and start learning the game. In the interim, there is a great new podcast to listen to regarding the game. Check out The Good, The Bad, The Enlightened on their iTunes feed or at their website.

X-Wing

My daughter and I have been playing a bit of Fantasy Flights X-Wing recently and its been a lot of fun. Enough that I am trading on Bartertown and shopping locally to expand our collection of ships. She is consistently beating me in the games but its nice to jump in to a quick game with her. So far we have only been learning the ships and blowing each other up, expanding to building our own ships with the upgrade cards (and pilots) and playing around 75 point games with asteroids on the board. Eventually we will get to missions and objectives, but for now its exciting to see her excited for the game. Add in how much quicker it is to play and now we have 2 games (X-Wing and Malifaux) for different gaming windows.