11/18/15

GrogHeads Reviews the Feldherr Travel Case

Feldherr MAXI Star Wars X-Wing Rebel Set 1 / Tantive, Falcon, YT-2400, 15 Ships ~

Michael Eckenfels, 18 November 2015

 

INTRODUCTION

A habit of epic proportions formed with me some years ago when the first Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Core Set hit stores. The Core set, I bought for myself, though I had nobody else to play the game with. I was immediately smitten by the mini-figures of the one X-Wing and the two TIE Fighters that come with that Core set, and was hooked.

That Core set because an extra ship here and another one there, and soon enough my collection of X-Wing Miniatures makes it look like I could film my own Abrams-worthy battle scenes for the next Star Wars movie. The problem is, while these things are beautiful to look at, they’re fragile. I feel like even lustful glances, let alone wonton groping, would cause them to break into pieces.

While the store I bought my Core set hosts an X-Wing Minis game night every Tuesday evening, I never went by, because I had nothing to really store my pieces in, much less transport them. I did some searching and found a few solutions online – some do-it-yourself, others more expensive off-the-shelf stuff – and finally fell on a line of cases by a company called Feldherr.

Feldherr is a company based in Berlin but has a worldwide reach, providing figure cases for not just Star Wars but a wide variety of miniatures. Their cases are on the pricey side, so it took me a few months before I finally pulled the trigger and bought one after much deliberation and research. I am now the owner of a Feldherr MAXI case, and have had it for a couple of months now. What’s the verdict?

 

IMPRESSIONS

Out of the box.
Out of the box.

The Feldherr case I purchased is, specifically, the Rebel Set 1, which holds the Tantive IV, the Millennium Falcon, and the YT-2400, as well as fifteen other ships (the latter category is the smaller ships, such as the X-Wing, A-Wing, TIE Fighters, and so on). At $70, this was something of a steep investment, but I really wanted a case to carry my components in so I could FINALLY visit the game store and play with the figures that I’ve spent two years collecting.

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11/4/15

Fortune & Glory – First Look!

Span the world in a boardgame!  We look at what’s inside the new box ~

Michael Eckenfels, 4 November 2015

 

I ordered Fortune and Glory: The Cliffhanger Game about a month ago and got it a few days before a business trip. That business trip kept me away for a week, and then once back I had a lot of catchup to do…so I’m finally having time to open this bad boy up to show it off.

This game is by Flying Frog, whom also made Shadows of Brimstone (another game of theirs that I own). I really liked the Indiana Jones feel to this game – a comparison that is inevitably made in just about any forum or article anywhere about it. It’s just as well, since it is a very apt description.

FandG-001

The box is huge and comes in at about 8 pounds or so (I’m working from memory on the weight from when it shipped to me). There’s a lot of stuff under the hood here, and I’ve seen plenty of videos on it to know what’s in store…but still, it’s nice to experience this for myself!

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10/8/15

Birth of the Federation, an AAR, Part 16

CHAPTER XVI: MAKING FRIENDS AND INFLUENCING ALIENS

BOTF-16-001

Well, I offered a Friendship Treaty to both the Edo and the Xindi. I didn’t expect the Xindi to offer me their own Friendship Treaty, which I accept heartily. I can now establish trade routes with them, and make even more money! Woo-hoo!

The Edo, unsurprisingly, rejected my Friendship Treaty. It’s going to take a little while before they’ll warm up. Usually, bribing a minor alien race is best done when you put about five turns between bribes, to ensure their effectiveness. So it’ll be about 20 turns or so before they warm up. Meanwhile, the bug-faces find themselves inundated by human trade ships, in something very akin to a California Gold Rush, or the Great Beanie Baby Scam of 1995.

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09/17/15

Birth of the Federation, an AAR, Part 15

CHAPTER XV: CONTACT!  (FINALLY!)

BOTF-15-001

A breakthrough in Construction! Phase Transition Bonding. Whatever that is. Oh wait, let’s read the description:

“Phase transition bonding merges two pieces of material by temporarily changing the phase of one item., When the phase distortion is reversed, the two pieces are inextricably merged, and the density of their intersecting volume is doubled.”

This allows for both Industrial Replicators and Type 4 Mass Replicators. Upgrading to newer versions of Mass Replicators can be a very expensive proposition. Well, expensive, in that it takes for-freakin’-ever to do it. This is why having a good, solid agricultural base is so important: you can drag people off of their farms, sometimes kicking and screaming, to working in a factory somewhere. Ah, the choices of an autocracy.

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09/5/15

First Impressions of Marvel Dice Masters: Avengers vs. X-Men

Slinging dice?  Awwww, yeaaaaaah!

Michael Eckenfels, 5 September 2015

The Dice Masters phenomenon has been going on for a while now, starting with Quarriors! and blowing up into several different themes, including Dungeons and Dragons, Yu-Gi-Oh, and too many others for me to even want to wrap my head around. It’s bad enough that I already have been collecting two of these damnable things, though I’ve slowed my purchases of them greatly in the last few months (mostly to spend it on X-Wing Miniatures stuff, but more articles on that later).

For those curious, the Avengers vs. X-Men Dice Masters game is one of the more popular iterations of this system (because hey, Marvel), but is relatively easy to find in hobby stores or online. And this isn’t necessarily a good thing. If you’re addicted to something bad, is having it readily available a good thing, necessarily?

Dice are the new crack.
Dice are the new crack.

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