Plastic Legions- The state of things

Just a general rundown of where my heads at, hopefully some of you can relate so this isn't only for my own benefit.

Warhammer Fantasy Battles- The state of WFB here in my neck of the woods is strong. Between my local shop (Oak Park) and the Chicago Battle Bunker I now know two pretty large groups of organized players that are playing all the time and I also hear there is decent scene at the new Niles shop. Club nights everywhere are thriving, and personally I am making the effort to get out play some people from other stores on a more regular basis. Despite the complaints about power creep in the new books I feel WFB can be a balanced game..while subject to same failures as any game by those who want to power game, our last campaign was a really great example where I felt games overall were very balanced. The playing field has evened in terms of our local player skill in the last year and we seen alot more Draws and alot less Massacres for the most part and that's a good thing....I'm looking to illustrate this point a bit further by hosting the 1st Plastic Legions tournament here at my place in November. That is "IF" I can get 8 people to all commit to the same day (which is proving problematic) so this may get pushed to the post holiday season. Regardless- the idea is a "General's Tourney" with balanced armies held in check with rigid comp requirement playing a variety of tough scenarios. Personally I love the idea..we'll see if it becomes reality. Overall the there is lot of excitement over new Chaos mortals book and the upcoming Lizards book..the new plastic models I am seeing are amazing and I look forward the upcoming releases for Empire in 2009. WFB seems to be stronger than ever from where I sit.

Warhammer 40K- You can't mention one without the other so lets start with a gimme I am sure I am not alone in the opinion the Apocalypse was an absolute failure in terms of "game" viability...the people I know that played in various Apocalypse events were only disappointed despite the explosion of model sales at the time of its release I just think the mass appeal of people wanting play games of that size is extremely limited. 5th edition seems to only breathed half a life back into a player base that seemed to be slowly slipping away. Despite the initial rush that the new rules have brought to the game. I still know several people- that after giving it chance -have since abandoned the game completely. While 40K's popularity overall remains undiminished I sense a lacking in our local environment, that I can't quite put my finger on.

I had a conversation the other day with a friend and we were talking about the rules as in they don't fit the "size" of game..I feel that as a skirmish game- the focus should be on "smaller" not "bigger" games. GW always wants to make the game bigger, even more epic with bigger and badder models (to sell of course) and for me the rules just get lost there. Again I have to mention the "true line of sight" fiasco as part of my own lack of forward progress on the game, Initially it really sounded cool, but in reality it wasn't. Perhaps moving to more squad based mechanic for the bigger games is the answer I really don't know..I read the new rules they sounded cool..but not enough to set up a game and go out and still get blown off the table if I lose 1st turn? I feel there isn't a game out there that could benefit more by dropping the "I go" , "You go" model more than Warhammer 40K. That being said...the 40K scene is absolutely thriving on the internet..there seem to be 20- 40K blogs to every Fantasy Blog so there is no loss in popularity across the void...one thing everyone agrees on..we all love the models -but will that continue to carry the game as older players move on and new players have way too many options and distractions? I guess we will see, 40K is not going anywhere anytime soon. That is for sure.
I'm looking forward to checking out the Imperial Guard releases this year.

Lord of Rings- I wish there was more interest in this, the skirmish style rule system is awesome and easily modable to variety of other games ( see Legends of the High Seas.) I've read about a guy translating 40K to the LotR games model for smaller squad level games, which sounds interesting. Anyway there is strong local following for LotR in Chicago, that I personally am not involved in but they are organized and motivated. Some of the guys from our shop got me into the game and I like it quite a bit and look forward to playing it more..it seems to be the game most of our local crew is interested in when we are not playing WFB.

Historicals- I'll lump these all into one, As a former History teacher my interest in Historical Wargaming is huge. Warhammer Historicals fall into this catagory but unfortunately both my attempts to play have been less than successful. Legends of the High Seas seems to have more people creeping out of the woodwork that want to play..its just matter of getting together for a game and with my schedule that's tough. As far as Ancients go...I wanted to get it together with Rich from Chicago Terrain Factory for the WAB doubles tourney at Adepticon 09- but Wargames factory has really dropped the ball on helping me make that happen...They STILL haven't shipped the Celts I ordered back in April! I tried to get around this by getting the Warlord games models but after building two boxes of those- there just isn't enough variety in the Warlord games models and poses (which aren't that conducive to easy ranking either, double whammy) . This made it very difficult to stay motivated to keep building and keep the project on track. I was content to wait for the Wargames Factory models to ship so they could breath some life into my army so I would not be bored to tears when faced with painting the 100+ models . When they didn't ship as promised- again in October I eventually had to renege on Rich for Adepticon and ask him to find another partner. I needed to be well into painting by now..not still waiting on my freaking models. I feel like total shit about this, but better I saying it now than waiting until February when I'd have to go..."umm sorry I don't have time to finish my army". I should have just ordered my whole Army from Renegade last spring..I really like the models that I do have..and they where AVAILABLE...the whole Ancients thing right now is kind of a let down.

On the postive side...I have come into some gaming cash lately between selling a bunch of old collectibles on ebay and dumping off some other stuff to online retailer. I came up with enough to pay for the GW table everyone is griping about and I took a 25% bump in value buy agreeing to trade from the retailer.. I'm seriously looking at Flames of War..as A) I love WW2 gaming, and B) I know some guys that are starting to play. 15mm kind of throws me...but its good way to spend my trade dollars, I'm not 100% committed so we'll have to see but if I could get out once a month to play some FoW....I'd be very happy as I hear plenty of good things about it. That also brings up the point how cool would 28mm WW2 gaming be using the LotR system as base for platoon vs platoon skirmishes??...hot damn that'd be cool..there are a ton of great models out there..Anyway don't be shocked to see some Flames of War here at Plastic Legions should I get into it.

This is getting a bit long so save the future rambling for another post...at least this is where my gaming head it at.