Mutant Year Zero: Zone Wars

Yesterday, I met with Justin and a guy we met on the TTRPG in Korea Discord group to play Zone Wars, a tactical tabletop skirmish game based on the Mutant Year Zero RPG. Peter wanted to get some war gaming in over the long Chuseok holiday. Sandwiched between National Foundation Day on Friday the 3rd and Hangeul Day (Korean written characters get a holiday...yeah, a day to help prevent Koreans from overworking) on the 9th, we've got an entire week off, 10 days in a row for people who can take the 10th as a holiday. 

Free League link

Board Game Geek link 

The game plays pretty similarly to Stargrave, which my son and I played with Justin a while back. I thought I'd posted about that game here, but apparently I didn't. Both games have players managing a tactical team across the "board" to defeat the other teams or collect enough loot to win. 

When we played Stargrave, I quickly realized that the loot collection was the key to winning, so getting loot and getting my figures off the board was my strategy. And it worked. 

Zone Wars has a similar strategy. There are artifact tokens across the board (it's a post-apoc setting, after all) that score victory points. But you also get points for defeating other players' figures.  To cut to the chase, Peter used my strategy from the Stargrave game, while Justin and I were more into duking things out. Peter won. 

The initial set-up. I'm yellow, Peter is blue, Justin is green.

The game has four factions (two in the base game, two in the expansion): mutant humans and mutant animals (base), androids and psychers (expansion). There are five characters/figures for each faction, but you have to choose three of them for your team (at least for the first scenario that we played). 

Justin's dudes teamed up on my gatherer, and stole his loot.

Each comes with starting equipment and mutations set, but with a bonus random mutation. Justin took the mutant animal team, I took the mutant human team, and Peter played as the android team. And we all seemed to take one tough/melee figure, one ranged expert figure, and one balanced figure. I'm not sure about the other factions, but the two I left behind were another ranged expert and another balanced figure.

My melee guy takes out Peter's sniper just before 30-50 feral hogs rampage through me!

The game has a lot more randomness than Stargrave. Not only do you roll dice for actions, but the initiative is done by pulling chits from a bag. There's one chit per figure, and four Zone chits, which trigger events. And there's a ticking time bomb in the form of Trigger events that scale up the acid rain which will kill anyone still on the board once four have been drawn. 

Land Shark! (unfortunately, no one was eaten)

The random mutations and events, and the ability to not only switch factions but experiment with different teams within your faction should add to replayability, but will also make the game take a little longer to really sus out the best strategies for each faction/team composition. There's obviously an optimal strategy of grabbing loot and running over fighting (due to the built in time limit of acid rain), but where's the fun in that time after time? 

My runner recovered and knocked out Justin's dudes with his mutation...but my sniper was downed.

Anyway, we're planning to meet again in a few weeks, hopefully with a fourth player if we can find one, to play it again. Peter also seems interested in trying Stargrave or Frostgrave, so we may try one of those out as well in the near future.  

A robot named Bender grabbed a bunch of loot and made it off the board before the acid rain fell. Fitting.

 

Another year gone by!

 It's my blogiversary yet again. Seems like not that long ago that I was posting last year's blogiversary. 

Well, I guess I didn't get all that many posts up in the past year. I've been a bit more productive in the past few months, but most of this year I just didn't have that much to talk about, game related, other than occasional posts about Flying Swordsmen 2E. 

Speaking of that, I still don't have anything ready for play testing. Lots of other stuff going on. And the urge to work on other projects is strong. The Chainmail/Gauntlet table top skirmish dungeon crawl game idea of mine is chief among them. And part of me wants to scrap my current TS&R Jade campaign to run Gamma World instead. That's not gonna happen, but I may put the Jade game on hold to play test FS2E. It may be the only way to force myself to prepare content for it. 

We should be planning the Busan Tabletop Gaming Con soon, too. Scott needs a bit of time to recover from the Online SummerCon, and Justin said he's got some stuff to take care of that is keeping him busy for a few weeks. But we should get to that in the near future.  

Oh, and I should check DriveThru to see if my last post actually did lead to some sales, or if all the extra hits I'm getting the past couple of weeks are just bots.  

Movie Review: K-Pop Demon Hunters

I spent the past three weeks teaching the English camp I usually teach over summer and winter breaks. Yes, board games were played (Dungeon!, King of Tokyo, Werewolf Dead or Alive, Bang!). And this past week, my class watched K-Pop Demon Hunters for entertainment. 

 I head about the movie several weeks back when it came out on Netflix. Lots of people here in Korea were gushing about it. I'm not a fan of K-Pop, though, so I didn't rush to watch it. But my students wanted to see it (some of them for the Xth time), so we did. 

Parents wondering about Curse Words: None that I remember. There's some cartoon violence, but it's fairly kid friendly and wholesome. 

The movie follows a trio of K-pop singers who also happen to be the Chosen Ones to defeat demons and protect the magical weave of the world, the Honmoon. But Rumi, their leader, has a secret. And Gwi-Ma, the demon lord, has sent a group of demons to form a K-Pop boy band, Saja Boys, to compete with Huntr/x, the protagonists' girl group. 

The animation is for the most part really nicely done 3D animation mostly in a heightened reality style, but in anime fashion occasionally shots or scenes switch to more cartoony "chibi" or "kawaii" style. Yeah, it's Korean, but my language for discussing this stuff comes from Japan. Sue me. 

The story is fine for kids, but honestly, it's pretty cliche and predictable. But it does have compelling character arcs that pay off in the end (though you can see them coming if you've seen other Chosen One stories before), so it's competently scripted and the voice acting is good. And the music...well, if you like K-Pop, you'll like this film's soundtrack. It's not my style. 

I did appreciate the nods to Korean history, culture, myths, and legends. And as someone running an Asian fantasy D&D campaign, there's always something useful to snag from something like this. And some of the ideas in the film have given me ides for my campaign. 

In the end, yeah, it's not a bad movie. Just not my normal cup of tea. If you have kids and want to watch something together, there are worse choices could make. And even if you don't have kids, if you like Asian fantasy, K-Pop, Korean culture in general, and/or Chosen One/Magical Girl media, why not give it a watch? If you aren't into any of that stuff, you probably aren't missing much by skipping it. 

Final verdict: Not bad, but not something I'd likely watch again. 

Movie Review: Fantasic Four: First Steps

Yesterday, the new Fantastic Four opened in Korea, a day before in the U.S. So of course we went to see it! This was the movie I was looking forward to the most this year, and to get down to it, it did not disappoint. 

Parents wondering about cursing in the movie: A couple instances of "shit" but otherwise nothing too bad. 

First off, I like this cast. All of the four leads felt right for the characters they were playing. And while I've not read FF comics extensively, I've read a few here and there. And seem them in cartoons, crossover events, etc. They got the characters right. Well, mostly. I did like how in the early 00s FF movies, Johnny and Ben were always bickering...but it was overdone then. There could have been a little more of that in this movie without ruining the feeling, in my opinion. And a few times Reed didn't really seem that smart. I think they were trying to show just how tough of a problem Galactus is, but there were a few scenes that made Reed look impotent. Other than those two things, the characters felt right to me. 

I also really like how all four members have a chance to shine. They each get their moments of character development, vulnerability, and a chance to shine in solving the problem of Galactus. And Galactus really is a problem to be solved, not a villain to be defeated. But I won't say more on that to avoid spoilers. 

The special effects were well done. The music was great. The weird retro-futurist 60s of Earth 828 was cool to just look at and admire. And Pedro Pascal again gets to act alongside an armored, floating CGI baby carriage. 

Sorry if this is a little bit spoilery, but it's got nothing to do with the plot. There was absolutely nothing to tie into any other existing MCU properties, but the mid-credit scene does hint at what's to come. The post-credit scene was just fun.

Best MCU movie to date? No. But it was better than a lot of the stuff that's come out the past couple of years. With this film, Thunderbolts*, and Daredevil Born Again, I'm confident that Marvel is righting where they went wrong. 

But...Superman was better. It hurts to say that, as a Marvel kid, but DC wins this round! Don't let that dissuade you, though. Fantastic Four First Steps was not a fantastic bore. I want fantastic more! 

Movie Review: Superman (2025)

 This afternoon, the whole family went to see the new James Gunn Superman. 

Wondering if there are curse words in it? Quite a few characters say shit, but I don't remember any F-bombs in it. 

So how is the movie? It was excellent. It was fun, exciting, had me almost tearing up in a few places, and finally, we have a Lex Luthor whose genius evil plan is actually fairly intricate and complex. No spoilers, but of course you know it's all going to unravel in the end. But it's a worthy plan for a movie villain. 

The acting was good. My wife has been a fan of Christopher Reeve's Superman since she was a girl, and she really liked Corenswet as Clark/Superman, and Brosnahan as Lois Lane. I really loved Hoult's take on Lex Luthor, and a lot of the supporting cast were fun as well. 

I haven't read Superman comics extensively, but I liked that the film used characters from the All Star Superman run in the Daily Planet. I don't know how important they are in normal Superman comics (haven't read any in a long time) but it was fun to see that group in the film. Plus, they found room for Otis and Miss Tessmacher from the Donner films (who may also be in the comics?).  

Another thing I liked was that the plot didn't go as I was expecting it to from the trailers. That's all I'll say on it, but while there were a few things I predicted, lots of other things surprised me. 

The special effects were mostly good, but there was a scene where a choice was made to make a certain...element, let's say...look like it was made of Minecraft blocks. Not sure where that choice came from, and it looked odd. Was it intentional? Was it just rushed? No idea. But overall the super powers, the fantastic locations, the creatures, etc. looked good.  

Most of all, and no apologies to the Snyder-verse fans, we finally have a Superman who embodies HOPE again. For that, I'm really happy. 

Go see this movie. Seriously. It's good. 

Movie Review: Thunderbolts*

On Saturday, my younger son and I went to see the newest MCU movie, Thunderbolts*. I have to say, I wasn't eagerly anticipating this movie, but the trailers did make me hopeful that it would at least be entertaining. I went in with fairly low expectations, and it surpassed them by quite a bit. 

Note for anyone wondering how much "cursing" is in the movie, there's a fair amount of mild swearing. 

Yes, Google searches for movie titles plus "curse words" still lead people to my movie reviews. 

So, Thunderbolts. The team of the B-league antiheroes. Former villains/opponents, brought together and trying to do the right thing. It's got the Marvel action, humor, and heroics we expect. It's also a movie built around exploring depression, regret, and redemption. Yeah, the movie has heart. It's not a huge world-shattering plot. It feels fairly small and personal, despite the way things go south in the third act and do threaten the world...or at least NYC. 

And for a team that "just punches and shoots" as you may have heard in the trailer, our protagonists can't fall back on their military training to resolve the plot. 

I'll avoid spoilers, but this movie felt like a callback to the Phase I MCU movies. And yet, the resolution (and post-credits stinger) tie into the overarching plot of...what is this, Phase VI? After the slightly better than mediocre (fun and full of action, but failing to resonate) Captain America: Brave New World, this is an improvement. 

Watching Thunderbolts* after watching Daredevil Born Again (which was excellent!), I feel like Marvel may have finally figured out their new formula for success. And I was already looking forward to Fantastic 4 this summer, but I'm even more excited now! Of course, the MCU is also going up against the new James Gunn Superman, which I'm also really excited for. 

If you're missing the feel of the early MCU in the post-Disney+ glut era, check out this movie.

Happy Little Accidents

Back in early January, I posted about painting minis from my 1/72 collection. Over the course of January and February, I did end up painting quite a bit. I hadn't posted about them because I hadn't taken many pictures. But today, I did take some pictures for the TTRPG in Korea Discord group I'm in, and I figured I'd share these little rascals here as well.

I painted one set of Cyclopes and a set of Minotaurs, both from Red Box Dark Alliance. I didn't take a picture of them today, so that will have to wait. 

Then I finally painted the Caesar Goblins that I bought I'm not sure how many years ago. Maybe 10? These goblins look cool, but they're only wearing loin clouts, so I think I do need more goblins with armor on them. The easy way to distinguish these guys are the color coding on their loin clouts.

Then, I got some more of the Red Box historical Russian War Monk Artillery, and some figures from Strelets' Vikings and Scotish Army of Wallace sets that I bought way back around the time I got the Caesar goblins. The war monks make good magic-users/clerics, and the others became a mix of possible clerics (mace/club/war hammer in hand) and fighter-types. A few of the war monks were painted and shown in that post linked above from back in January. 

The Fighters

The Clerics

The Magic-Users

 

No, I don't have enough Thief types. I have an order pending with Michigan Toy Soldier Company, which includes the Red Box Dark Alliance "Southern Kingdom Rangers" (based on Faramir's Rangers of Ithillien) and some more goblins with armor.

Just at the end of the winter break, I but a base coat on my Red Box DA Half-Orcs (based on Saruman's uruk-hai from the movies), but I haven't had time to paint any more than that the past two months. 

For the Discord, I also posted a couple of reference pictures to show the scale of these guys. If you're using Reaper, WotC/Wizkids, or other similar scale minis, these guys can be halfings or gnomes. Here's the WotC Warduke mini next to a goblin and the Macho Man wizard (The resemblance was not intentional, it was the happy little accident of all this painting!).

 

 

Movie Review -- Captain America: Brave New World

Steven (my 10yo) and I went and saw the new Marvel movie yesterday. It's the fourth Captain America movie, but of course following the events of Avengers Endgame (where Steve Rogers retired) and the Disney+ show Falcon and the Winter Soldier, where Sam Wilson becomes the new Captain America, it's got Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson in the title role. So maybe the start of a new Cap trilogy? We'll see.

I'll try to avoid spoilers here, since the movie just released this week. 

Overall, it was a solid political/espionage thriller with superheroes involved. Much like Captain America: The Winter Soldier, while it had its superhero action scenes, it was really a story about solving a mystery and preventing political ramifications from damaging the status quo. In that sense, I really liked it. It didn't need to be a "big damn movie" to tell its story. It used the political and espionage angles to inform us about the characters, rather than setting up a mystical MacGuffin to prevent the end of the world/multiverse. 

Most of the characters had clear motives, and most of the principle characters had a satisfactory story arch within the movie. 

The action scenes were well shot and well edited, so I never felt confused, or that I was just watching a big CGI puke vomited all over the screen. 

The dialogue could have been snappier at times. There were a few funny bits, but not as much as in previous Cap films or in the FatWS series. 

There were a couple of well-placed cameos of characters from previous films/shows that made sense within the narrative, not just as "member-berries."

Was it great? I wouldn't say that. I enjoyed it, and I think people who don't really care about superheroes or science fiction but like espionage thrillers (Bourne movies, etc.) would enjoy it despite the supersoldiers and gamma-fied people and whatnot. And it's got just enough of that comic book goodness to keep the comics nerds in their seats. 

I think it could have been improved if they had not spoiled a few things in their own promotional materials. If they had kept people wondering "will he? won't he?" about Thunderbolt Ross turning into Red Hulk, for example, that might have been better. But that might have been an impossibility in today's social media spoiler age. 

So again, a solid movie. Worth the price of admission, but probably not one to set up among the best of the MCU. But in comparison to the MCU movies of the past two years, it's nice to see them putting out something small, contained, and decently crafted.

Designing a Card Game

My older son and I have been working on ideas for card games recently. Our first foray is now available for sale. We've played the game quite a bit here at home, and I've also tried it a few times with some local board gamer friends, who really enjoyed it. 

Castles: A Game of Medieval Rivalries 

That's a link to DriveThruCards. 

The game is designed to be quick to learn, easy to play, and fun. Each player is trying to build castles. Castle cards are played in front of you, and each has points, from 1 to 5. Action cards can help you or hinder your opponents. On your turn, draw a card and play a card. Simple. 

 

 

Once one player has five Castle cards in front of them, each other player takes one more turn. The player with the most points (not necessarily the most Castle cards) is the winner. 

A game takes around 15 minutes to play, and with 60 cards in the deck, it should suit games with 2 to 6 players. The most we've had is four players, so far, but that went well. Played/discarded cards get shuffled and made into a new deck when the draw deck is empty, so 6-person games (or more?) don't need to worry about running through all the cards. 

The proceeds will go to Flynn, to help him save up for university expenses. 

I'll post updates with other ideas when we get them worked out.

Some Board Gamin'

In the first two weeks of January, I taught my Speaking English with Boardgames class at the elementary English camp I usually do every summer and winter break. 

This time, I didn't change much, other than to bring in some of my miniatures to use as character markers for the Dungeon! games. And the kids loved it! 

Each class is only 50 minutes long, so in order to explain the game, set it up, and have enough time to give the kids a chance to have a winner, I have to simplify the game a bit. 

First, I cut all the treasure requirements in half, and don't require the group with that much gold to return to the entrance. 

Second, monsters don't fight back. If a group fails to kill a monster on the first die roll, they can try again next turn (or run away). Other players can come in and fight that monster, though, and possibly steal the treasure. 

Third, Wizards get a set of 3 fireballs, 3 lightning bolts, and two teleports, rather than rolling and selecting spells. 

Fourth, this time, I made a small change to the Thief (elf in the original). In addition to the increased chance to find a secret door, I decided that the Thief ignores traps and just gets the treasure. I also decided the original Hero/Superhero names were easier to explain than trying to explain what a cleric is.

Fifth, the Chambers only have one monster each, and also provide a treasure. The only thing different about them is that the Wizards can only teleport to/from Chambers. 

These rules make the game play quickly, and the kids really got into it. 

The first time I used Dungeon! at a camp, a kid mangled one of the treasure cards, so now I keep all information about each team on the white board. This includes what type of hero they are playing, how much gold they have/need to win, spells for the Wizards, and any magic items they pick up.

Painting Again

 This morning, I finally got around to painting a set of the Red Hat Russian War Monk Artillery figures that I picked up a year ago. 

I'm going to teach at the usual elementary school English Camp over the winter break (starting on Monday), and one of the board games I use is Dungeon!

This year, I plan to use some of my 1/72 scale minis (20-22mm) instead of the cheap cardboard standees in the new WotC edition of Dungeon! that I use for the camp. [I don't want to risk damage/loss to my old 80s edition.] 

These were quick paint jobs, with all five done in around 2 hours. I probably could have done it faster, or better quality, if they were a larger scale or my eyes weren't as bad as they are. But still, I think these look pretty good all told. 

Maybe I'll get around to painting some of the minotaur and cyclops minis after the camp. Winter seems to put me in the mood to paint the past few years.

They Lost Me

 For the past two years or so, I've been playing a mobile game called Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes. While it had its annoyances (heavily pushing in-app purchases, making the free-to-play [F2P] a long slog, requiring you to unlock characters after weeks or months of effort, then more weeks and months to level them up, etc.), it scratched an itch I've had since I was a kid. 

Growing up just barely on the good side of the poverty line, I never had many Star Wars action figures. The few that I did have were like gold to me. I loved Star Wars. Still do. And looking at the back of those figure cards, or through the Sears Holiday Catalogue (remember those?) made me wish that I had so many more. 

Well, this game definitely scratches the itch of the would-be figure collector I was as a kid. And yeah, I could be spending money on the actual figures now. But I'm too old to play with them (maybe?). And neither of my boys ever got into playing with action figures. They have a lot of my (and my brothers') old figures, but never played with them much. So I didn't have that excuse. And my wife wouldn't be too happy if I was filling up our apartment with unused toys, making it look like every cringe "nerd" channel on YouTube. 

So I found this game to be a pretty good substitute to that. I was happily going about part of my day grinding for characters, or gear, or completing challenges in the game. Building up my Mando squad. My Rebel squad. My Empire squad. Slowly, little by little, putting some effort into improving the Jedi squad. Pretty much ignoring the sequel trilogy characters as much as possible. 

But this week, the game went through a big update. Before, there was one game mode that had a F2P and P2P (pay-to-play) track. It wasn't the main part of the game. F2P was slow, but you could still make progress without handing over tons of money to EA every month. The new update makes the main game a distinction between F2P and P2P. And that looks like it will slow down that slow grind even more. It will be hard to gather the ridiculously varied types of resources and in-game currencies that are needed to unlock and improve characters. 

So, today I uninstalled the game. 

Am I going to miss it? Maybe for a while. I had quit the game last year after playing for a few months. Then I downloaded it again and was really enjoying having it back. But I think this time, I'm done for good. 

Subscription-based gaming is not something I think I'll ever be interested in.

What a Horrible 15 Years to Have a Curse...

 Hey, I've been doing this for 15 years! 

And yes, I'm way behind on posting. I've got actual play reports, movie reviews (Alien: Romulus and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice), and thoughts on Pendragon to write about. But it's the start of the semester so I've been kinda busy. 

I'll try to get some posts on gaming and gaming related media (or propane and propane accessories?) up soon. 

Thanks for putting up with my oddball posts for a decade and a half!

Break Time

I've taken a break from working on the Flying Swordsmen 2E the past couple of weeks. For one thing, I'm teaching English camps as I do most summer and winter breaks. They're fun, but exhausting. Pay really well, too. So no complaints, but gaming stuff (play or prep) has mostly been on hold. One more week to go. 

I also finally took Tallifer's advice and ordered the POD/PDF combo of King Arthur Pendragon from DriveThru. I'm still waiting on the print book, but during some breaks at camp I've been reading through the PDF. I really like it so far, but I was a big Arthur stan as a kid, so reading all the background information, the descriptions of the sources Stafford relied on and how he used them, and all that has been fun to read. But I haven't gotten into the nuts and bolts of the game aside from the character generation bits so far. I'll likely have more to say on it the more I read. 

And yes, it has already given me a few ideas for how to make FS2E more of a social relationship game, instead of just a kung fu game. 

Everyone is also pestering me to run Star Wars again, including Flynn, who would like me to run a game online so that he can play. I asked the guys about it the other day, and they seem willing to start early on a Sunday morning so that Flynn could join us. But that's for some time after camps. 

Oh, and when I asked the guys, it was a week ago, when Justin ran a game of Mothership. Man, that was a fun game! He's thinking of maybe running a longer campaign. We were all hooked, especially the way the session ended with three of four PCs dead, and the final PC given a cut-scene of the aliens creeping up behind, just like you'd expect at the end of a sci-fi horror film or short story.

Movie Review: Rebel Moon (Part 2)

Yeah, I said I probably wasn't going to watch this after watching Part 1, but I did. So how was it? 

First of all, there was a bit of swearing, but not much. PG-13 level. 1 f-bomb, a few other swears. Not a lot. So parents searching for "curse" words, you've been warned, but it's not bad. 

This was more of the same. 

There were some cool visuals and action sequences, but not as many as in Part 1. 

There were ham-fisted attempts at characterization. Sorry, this is a bit spoilery, but it's at the beginning so I'm not spoiling much. They literally go around the table with each "hero" telling their sad tragic backstory with flashback. And no, they don't actually make me feel more invested in each hero. Except Kora, the main character. She had an additional flashback during a love scene (didn't they do that in part 1 as well? I think so...). During the group therapy session, she clams up. 

King Kong had better character development in Godzilla x Kong (which I saw just before leaving for the USA, and enjoyed, I should write about it). 

The villains are cartoonishly bad. They should be menacing, but they're just kind of pathetic. Why isn't the Resistance mopping them up across the galaxy?

So many plot holes. 

So many predictable developments. I was literally thinking, "Oh, this should happen next" and it does, quite a few times. 

They took the basic framework of 7 Samurai, but other adaptations ranging from The Magnificent Seven to Battle Beyond the Stars have made you at least feel invested in the seven heroes. I don't need to know what it was that Robert Vaughn's character did to feel an attachment to a guy trying to redeem himself. I just need to know that he did some shit and now this is his last chance to make up for it. 

Part 1 at least had some interesting visuals and action scenes to just sit back and enjoy the eye candy. Part 2 felt pretty flat, although the conclusion was done in a way that makes you feel the triumph of their victory (yeah, spoiler, but you knew they were gonna win)...until something happens that seems like it should be a reversal...and then predictable deus ex machina saves the day after all. 

And of course, there's set-up for a sequel. 

I really wouldn't waste your time on this. I had two hours to kill Saturday morning, but even if you are in a similar position, find something else to watch. It's disappointing.

Low Motivation

For the past two weeks or so, I've been struggling to get motivated. I keep telling myself I should work on developing my TS&R campaign world, or get ready for the next Star Wars adventure, or keep plugging away at my TS&R GM Guidebook, or work on the idea for the Gauntlet arcade game inspired tabletop skirmish game idea, or playtest my modifications to the BECMI War Machine mass combat rules for TS&R a bit more, or something. 

I'm running my campaign. We had a good session on Sunday. But other than that, I'm not doing much gaming related stuff. 

It's just a lot easier to sit down, when I've got some free time, to watch some political bullshit commentary on YouTube, or continue my watch through of Star Trek Enterprise (finished that the other day), or some other way to just waste my time. 

The new semester has started, and I'm getting into the groove of the different classes and schedule this semester. Students are mostly people I've taught before, so that's always nice. 

I did pick up a copy of the 5E DMG, finally. My friend Lisa is leaving Busan for Belgium, and had to sell off a lot of her board games and RPG books because it would be too expensive to ship them. So I got her DMG. I'm not gonna run 5E, but I did want to have it for reference/comparison purposes. I haven't really looked through it yet, though. For that matter, I've barely looked at the 4E books that I got from Pat when he left Busan last year. And I promised Joe Block that I'd read through his Swords of Wuxia book and post my ideas here. Maybe that's what I should do to get back into the mood. Do a bit of RPG reading, and post my ideas and reactions here. 

Sorry for the mopey navel-gazing post, everyone. I'll try to get some new, interesting, gaming related content up here soon.

Movie Capsule Review: Dune Part 2 with bonus Lynch 84 Dune notes

Last Thursday, I showed the boys the 1984 David Lynch Dune movie. I hadn't seen it since I was pretty young (late teens or early 20s?). I'd forgotten or hadn't realized back then that it was acted and directed much like as if it were a stage production. Sparse sets, heavily enunciated, etc. And of course, watching it now, the personal shields make the characters look like Minecraft or Roblox characters. 

Still, I enjoyed it. It is suitably weird, and while many of the effects do look dated, I think the sandworms hold up after all these years. Plus, you've got to love Patrick Stewart as Gurney. But this film's version of Duncan Idaho really gets treated poorly. If you hadn't read the books you'd wonder why we should even care about his death. 

Oh, then on Saturday, Flynn and I went to see the new Villeneuve Dune Part 2. 

I liked it, and so did he. It has good production values, and it's pretty well acted. In particular, Christopher Walken is restrained as Emperor Shaddam IV, which is good. Maybe it's his age, maybe it's the directing, but wacko Walken of yesteryear would not have worked for this. 

The film follows the book more closely than the 84 film, but then being split into two parts allows for that. And it has been quite a while since I've read the book, so some of my memories of it could be off, but in this film, Paul is very reluctant to 'go south' and lead the Fremen for a good part of the movie, which I don't remember it being such a big character point in the book. Maybe it's time to read it again, though, I may be misremembering. Other than that, I enjoyed it. 

Is it my favorite sci-fi movie of all time? No, but it was definitely worth the wait from part 1. And having just recently (finally) read Dune Messiah, I'm looking forward to the Part 3 coming in a few years.

More Monsters and Wizards!

It's been a few years since I added to my 1/72 scale miniatures collection, despite getting many of them painted up. I actually need to re-paint quite a few of them, as the summer heat, and possibly the clear top coat I used, caused a lot of the paint to melt/blend, and the figures don't look anywhere near as good as they did when I finished painting them. Looking back through old blog posts, I don't think I posted pictures of the finished products, just a work in progress post and this one from two years ago when I finally painted the lizard men. 

Well, I had a set of Caesar Adventurers which covered a lot of LotR types, plus a few Conan style barbarian types. I had Caesar Elves, Dwarves, and Goblins as well. 

And I had Red Hat Dark Alliance Cimmerians, Amazons, Half-Orcs, regular Orcs...

One problem, and a reason why I still hesitate to switch to 1/72 scale minis instead of standard 28mm minis (not that I'm using minis at all for D&D these days...) is that there just aren't enough spell-caster types. 

I have a few from the Caesar Adventurers and Elves. I had a set of historical Vikings and one of Robin Hood characters (forget who made both of them) that had a few poses that could be a spell-caster. There's one Dark Alliance Cimmerian shaman. Definitely not enough cleric/druid/magic-user types. 

Well, I ordered some more Red Hat/Dark Alliance figures for my birthday. They arrived today. And I'm pleased to say that the Red Hat historical Russian War Monk Artillery make for good spell-caster types! They're all male, but at least I've now got a bunch of robed, bearded little dudes that could be PC or NPC spellcaster types. The tamping rods and fuse-sticks look like magic staves.

I also ordered the Dark Alliance Minotaur and Cyclops sets. I wanted to get their Southern Kingdoms Rangers set (based on Faramir's company in the LotR movies), which obviously are ranger/thief types, but my supplier was out (Michigan Toy Soldier Company -- I always get great customer service from these guys on my international orders!).

Here they are, with a few of the not so nice looking anymore Caesar Adventurers. The cyclopes are nice and big, and the minotaurs look fairly hefty next to them. 

Red Hat figures tend to come with a lot of flash that needs cleaning off, but the cyclops figures are really clean. The minotaurs and war monks not so much.

I compared these guys to a TSR (Dragonstrike board game) figure and a Reaper metal figure. The minotaurs look pretty wimpy next to them, but the cyclops set is still decently big by comparison.

With either scale, I think these will make good additions to the Gauntlet-inspired tactical board game rules I'm working on. 

Time to get these guys off their sprues!

Movie Review: Rebel Moon (part 1)

On Friday, my older son and I watched the new Zack Snyder film on Netflix, Rebel Moon (part 1). 

For those who don't know, this started out as a pitch for a Star Wars film that Lucasfilm rejected. 

And for those of you wondering if it has curse words, not really. Other than the violence and one attempted rape scene (no nudity), it's pretty kid friendly. 

Now I'm not a huge Snyder fan, but I've enjoyed some of his works in the past. So I was curious to see what he would have done with a Star Wars film. Obviously, this film has been changed. The serial numbers have been filed off, but I also assume some things have been changed story-wise as well since it was pitched to Disney/Lucasfilm. But the curiosity was there. 

While watching, at first, Flynn kept puzzling over what era of Star Wars this would have been set in, if LF had picked it up. Was it Palpatine's Empire? The Sith Empire? Some future era? The opening narration tells us that it happens after 100 kings had ruled (or was it 1000?) but that could easily have changed from the original SW version. Were the Bloodaxe siblings originally Luke and Leia? Probably not. We never could figure it out.

Anyway, about the film itself: we were both disappointed by it. 

I don't want to spoil things, so I'll just say this: the pacing was slow and plodding, which you'd expect from a more character driven piece. But there was little to no character development, and most characters were introduced in a way that didn't give us much emotional involvement with them. The ending wasn't a surprise, and didn't really leave me thrilled to have spent two hours watching this thing. 

Snyder is known for his cool visuals, and this film was lacking in that as well. The CGI and the settings looked OK, but they used camera settings that hyper-focused certain things and left the periphery looking like vaseline was smeared over the lens. At first, I thought it was my eyes or a smudge on my glasses, but no, it was the way the movie was shot. And when there were big action/adventure set pieces, they weren't that amazing. Fairly run of the mill, really. 

I'm not sure if I'll bother with Part 2 when it comes out in a few months. 

Would I recommend it? Not really, but if you're already paying for Netflix and you've got a few hours to spare, it's not the worst thing you could watch. There are a few things you might be able to pull from it as gaming inspiration, but don't expect to be taken away to a place long, long ago in a galaxy far away.  For all of George Lucas' faults as a writer/director, the worst of his Star Wars movies are still better than this.

Reviews: Loki Season 2, The Marvels

This week, we had both the season 2 finale (possibly series finale?) of Loki on Disney+, and the premier of the newest MCU film, The Marvels. This is a spoiler-free review of both. 

Obligatory "Curse" Word Notice for Parents: The Marvels has a few mild swears. Loki as well. Nothing much to worry about. 

Loki Season 2

I really like how this show played out in the second season. I really enjoyed the first season, as well. 

In season 2, we see Loki and companions finding out about what the TVA really is, and is not, and it had a few surprising twists along the way. There were great comedic performances from Tom Hiddleston, Sophia Di Martino, Owen Wilson, Key Huy Quan, and the rest of the cast, and some bits of good emotional/dramatic acting as well. 

I may have mentioned this in my Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania review, but I'm bummed that Jonathan Majors may be out as Kang, because he is (despite being an accused abuser) very talented and does a great job as Kang/He Who Remains/Victor Timely. But if Marvel/Disney need to replace him with another actor, or find a way to switch to another villain like Dr. Doom, I can handle it. 

Dealing with characters who are "outside" of time, where time is a constant flat circle to those outside its frame of reference, is difficult, and there were definitely times when I thought, wait a minute... But the show made sense in general, and the emotional through-line was satisfying. 

The Marvels

The family just saw this yesterday. My older son and I enjoyed it. It's not a top tier MCU film, but it's solid and entertaining, in our opinions. My younger son proclaimed it "mid" and my wife (who wasn't all that impressed by the Ms. Marvel show, but who did enjoy the first Captain Marvel movie) didn't like it that much. 

While overall, it's a fun movie, and the plot is interesting, there is a bit of unevenness in the acting. Iman Velani is hamming it up, and really makes the film, as Kamala Khan. Kamala's family, just like in the D+ show, are also really fun to watch. Brie Larson, who in general I find to be a good actress, seemed to be phoning it in, though. Every emotion was muted. In scenes where Carol Danvers had some emotional struggle, she wasn't overly upset, wasn't overly happy, wasn't overly embarrassed... She was a bit too Zen. 

And I think the editing of the movie, while it did cut the fat and make it speed by, rendered some other parts a bit off-putting. Sam Jackson's Nick Fury is a big part of the movie...except it feels like he's hardly in the movie. He does stuff. People do stuff around him. But it never really quite feels like he's fully part of the story for some reason. There was a big focus on developing the character in Captain Marvel, and maybe they thought with the release coming so soon after Secret Invasion that they didn't need to play up the Nick Fury side of things, but he could have been replaced with generic S.A.B.E.R. Agent and it wouldn't have changed anything. The nameless (Asgardian?) S.A.B.E.R. agent that Yusuf tries to talk into investing for retirement could have filled the role. 

On the plus side, Zawe Ashton's villain Dar-Ben had a plausible beef with Captain Marvel, and a sinister and crafty plan that made sense and would put her in the "hero" role for the Kree. And that role didn't need a ton of backstory to make it plausible and understandable, either. 

Oh, and of course there is a fun final scene, and a mid-credit scene that tease future projects and provide a LOT of fan service. 

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My recommendation? If you haven't seen Loki, watch it. It's fun, funny, and charming. It's the best MCU thing that has been on Disney+. 

The Marvels is good, but not amazing. If you're feeling super-hero fatigue, I won't blame you if you skip it. The stuff with Kamala Khan and her family may make it worth the price of admission if you enjoyed their show. Otherwise, it's a fairly by-the-numbers comic book hero movie.