Chinese take second! Elves finish next to last...

He-who-must-not-be-named and I fought a battle a few days ago. He brought his Night Elves up against Jack Burton's friends. The mighty Imperial Army features cannons, rocket batteries, imperial guards on giant pandas, and then the ubiquitous rabble.... Those aberrations of humanity, those purple skinned demons had trained lizards, dragonlings, and sorcerers galore. They are truly evil to align themselves with dragons. Had the Emperor's advisors told him of these accursed lizard lovers, then he'd have invited his allies from the land of the Rising Sun and their grav board riding Samurai to deal with all those pesky fliers. I mean to get rid of the traitorous eunuchs at court and provide more learned scholars to assist His Imperial Majesty in the future. Then we can regain our lost lands...

Once again, we used the Fantasy Cards system. It works. It's quick. It keeps my anxiety level high. We're still figuring out certain card combinations and unit abilities in situations... but it seems that fliers might be underpriced and overpowered. One Chinese Wind Spirit was no match for the multiple Elven Dragonriders... they attacked at will and kept my artillery continually shaken. Yes, that's a part of the game, but next time I'll take three fliers, then he'll take four, then I'll take five... and we'll have an escalating fantasy Cold War all over again. In fact, if I take over half of my force in fliers, then it'll be almost impossible for he-who-may-never-be-named to win! I'm sure we can break this system if we work hard enough, but so far it's been fun.

One small gripe... I downloaded the game system for free and I bought the cards separately and downloaded them. Now to protect their cards from being stoeln in the free download of the rules, the cards are not mentioned nor are their terms defined anywhere in the basic rules... nor is there a list of definitions that comes with the cards. I've found all the answers that I need, but sometimes I've had to read through the rules, read the faq, the reference sheet, and then read through the cards themselves to resolve an issue... and that's slightly tedious. For example, units that are shaken or out of action cannot have actions nor situations played upon them, but what about confused units? During our game, we had to stop and read the rules, the faq, the reference sheet, and finally the card with the confusion situation on it in order to figure out that an action can be played upon a confused unit... but a situation can not.

Hot Pockets... HotDAMN!!!

Well, I suppose I should continue with my thoughts on Tatcical Assault: Fantasy Cards since I don't have to work today.

Soooo, He-who-can-not-be-named and I have played one game, Azeal and I have played one game, and Azeal and He-who-can-not-be-named have played four games. They should really be the ones giving their opinions at this point.

First, FC keeps each player constantly involved. Some games have one side move everything, do all magic, shoot, and do all combat which leaves virtually nothing for the other player to do for fifteen minutes or more. (I think this is why Mountain Dew and Hot Pockets were invented... Jim Gaffigan? Anyone?) By incorporating situations on every card, FC allows the nonactive player to have the ability to play as much as, or even more than, the active player. If you zone out during the other player's turn, you'll miss opportunities to thwart the enemy, i.e. you'll lose.

Second, FC seems to allow me to play any minis on any scale that I desire. I don't have to observe all the basing and table configurations that every system demands. If the basing is relatively uniform, then you can play. I can play my 15mm Demonworld, 15mm Xyston, 28mm Reaper familiars, and 10mm Warmaster trolls on the same table. And the movement and ranged attack distances are bound to whatever the table size being used... that's brilliant.

Third, I'm hungry and sleepy... a bad combination. I'll resist the urge to get a hot pocket... and resist the urge to continue to blog while tired.

Pilgrim's Progress

First, the pics are not coming out like I want. I need to figure out how to set the size parameters to fit into the blog. Hopefully, even a Luddite can figure out the workings of photo editing on a DIY blog. I'll have more time this week... I think.

Now to the real progress...

Azeal,the third friend (I wish for him to allow him to name himself)' and I have played three games of a new system. The game is called Tactical Assault: Fantasy Cards by Tactical Assault Games. I stumbled upon this system, on the Jan. 14th post, over at Tiny Solitary Soldiers. The blogger (and phenomenal painter of 15mm minis), Spacejacker, mentioned TAG's modern and near future system, Tactical Assault: Combat Cards.

The first thing that must be said about Fantasy Cards is that is fun.

The second thing that must be said is that the name is not exactly inspiring. For sure, the words "Tactical Assault" are great for contemporary or future combat, but I'd like to think of combat between Orcs, Undead, Barbarians, Wolves, and Dwarves as something less precise than "tactical". "Mayhem and Muck" would be more along the lines of what I think of regarding fantasy combat.

You know what? I need to leave to go watch the Super Bowl.... Oops, can I say that? Am I allowed to use such a copyrighted (is that a word?) name or will the No Fun League prosecute me to the fullest extent of the law? Anyway... Go Broncos! Go Tebow!