Tag: Brant

06/17/13

Origins 2013 – Wargames!

Hey, look – we’re Grogs, right?  Which means we’re looking for wargames, right?  Despite the whining and moaning on Consimworld that someone’s favorite game company wasn’t there, Origins has plenty of wargaming – if you bother to look for it.  We’ve already shown you Collins Epic Wargames, but here are some of the other wargaming found at Origins in 2013.

Academy Games

They’re not exclusively wargaming, but their wargames are attracting a ton of positive attention from grogs and general boardgamers alike.

Conflict of Heroes is still attracting a ton of walk-up interest at the Academy Games table
Conflict of Heroes is still attracting a ton of walk-up interest at the Academy Games table

 

Academy also has a new AWI game built on the same system as A Few Acres of Snow
Academy also has a new AWI game built on the same system as A Few Acres of Snow

Continue reading →

06/16/13

Origins Announces Award Winners

Straight from the show, here are last night’s winners of the 2013 Origins Awards, with the press release from GAMA:

COLUMBUS, OH (June 15, 2013) The Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design is proud to announce the winners for the 39th Annual Origins Awards.
The Origins Awards are presented annually by the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design to recognize outstanding achievement in design and production of games and game-related products.
The winners were voted on by attendees at the Origins Game Fair in Columbus, OH on June 12th – June 16th from the nominees in each category chosen by retailers at the GAMA Trade Show. The winners were announced at the Origins Awards Ceremony on the evening of Saturday, June 15th.
Continue reading →

06/16/13

Origins 2013 – Some Highlights

By Brant Guillory, 15 June 2013

The Lighting-Fast Run Through Origins 2013

Seven hours.  Yep – seven.  That’s all I had to cram in as much of Origins as I possibly could.  I had one day, a press pass, a borrowed digital camera, and Bayonet Jr in tow, and it was a mad dash through a pretty freakin’ big game convention.  Plenty more pictures will follow, but I wanted to start with some highlights…

Collins Epic Wargames

We highlighted one of their upcoming expansions in a recent GARPA column, and the Frontline General game is the cornerstone of Byron’s line.  But he was also showing off a sci-fi minis game with a nifty little command mechanic.

Origins13008-collins
Byron Collins working hard

Origins13005-collins
Frontline General in the foreground, and sci-fin minis coolness (Polyversal) in the background

Continue reading →

06/14/13

Spring Recruits 13 Freeblades Tournament

A Hero Shall Rise!

A report from Jon – 14 June 2013

And look for DGS Games at Origins!

06-freeblades-56

Ed Note: don’t forget to check out DGS’s current Kickstarter campaign!

Our third official tournament was a great success. The format was 200 gold Freebands, with the twist that only the Leader and Caster heroes could be taken. The rest of the freebands had to be followers, with one surviving follower rising up to hero level after each round. The format brought about some interesting situations, seeing massive pile-ons, but also mass panic! And then there is the rise of the Thug follower to hero status, which due to his END of d8 made him a 3 LP hero, with Die Hard on a d10!
Continue reading →

06/5/13

Book Review: Doomsday Vault

Written by: Steven Harper

Publisher: Roc

Reviewing Author: Brant Guillory

The-Doomsday-Vault-book-cover-185“Steampunk” is one of those literary terms that’s being thrown out all over the alternative fiction world – hard to call it just ‘sci-fi’ when there are hefty fantasy and historical elements to it – and is rapidly becoming a widely-recognizable genre that’s crossing RPG, boardgaming, videogaming, comics, and long-form fiction lines.  Updating the worlds imagined by Verne and Wells, among others, Steampunk narratives have transcended RPGs like Space:1889 and Castle Falkenstein to bubble up into best-selling books, and TV shows like Warehouse 13.

As with any fiction genre exploding in popularity (pirates, zombies, vampires, the misadventures of overeducated and underathleticized wargamers) there is a variety of excellent material to entertain audiences, and quite a load of crap hoping to cash in on a fad and then chase off after the ‘next big thing’.  Sorting through bookstores’ newly-minted Steampunk sections can be a bit like trying to find something worthwhile in the alternative section of a record store (remember them?) back in 1993: when the selection ranges from Mudhoney to Hootie & The Blowfish to Rage Against the Machine to Throwing Muses to Inspiral Carpets, the label is pretty useless.  And when you find a worthy entry into the genre, there’s a point at which you jump on the nearest (non-rolling) chair and sing its praises and demand that passers-by pay some damn attention to this bright ray of literary light you’ve managed to stumble across.

Enter The Doomsday Vault – the first novel of the burgeoning Clockwork Empire series from Steven Harper.
Continue reading →