Birthday Fallout

The irony is not lost on me: how I almost immediately stopped posting regularly right after writing the blog post giving myself an ‘A’ for maintaining a routine of weekly posts all summer. Excuses? Oh I have them. (Are they valid excuses? Well, that might be another matter entirely…)

First off, my birthday hit me…hard. As hard as, say, thirteen bottles of single-malt Scotch. Yes, the picture below is of my scotch collection as it stands, post-birthday celebrations.

I could do after-action reports with accompanying scotch reviews!

After the workout I gave my liver that weekend, the fact that my daughter’s fourth birthday came mere days later (along with plenty of visitors from out of town) did nothing to help me re-establish my once-per-week posting routine.

Sigh.

And now…

Today’s post comes a week late in more ways than one: I meant to post a link to Jaded Gamercast’s most recent show on September 24, both because the first half of the podcast was recorded in my ~~basement~~ painting studio during my birthday barbeque and secondly because they invited to their show Uncle Mike, the owner and writer for Strange Aeons.

With Strange Aeons, I originally wanted to do a review of the game, but I’ve been a bit too pressed for time to do any kind of real write up that I’d feel was doing the game any justice (plus, there are already some reviews kicking around the internet these days). Being that I’ve played a few games over the last few weeks and thought it was high time that I actually mention it on the blog and show off the stuff I’ve been painting up for the game.

But I’m hesitant to present it as a game review: it’s far easier for me to point people interested in a detailed review that leaves no stone unturned towards Anatoli’s Game Room blog. Anatoli did a first-look review of the game, as well as a more in-depth review. He also chronicled a short series of games to demonstrate Strange Aeon’s campaign system. Those three articles alone should be more than able to answer any nuts’n’bolts questions about Strange Aeons one might have far better than what I could write today in a few paragraphs today.

My starting Threhold team: Dirk Jackson, with dynamite at the ready, leads Wanda MacFlooze and Professor Pfizer through a graveyard.

Anatoli is pretty extensive in his coverage. But if you’re really not so sure about whether or not a horror-based miniatures game would be your cup of tea and would prefer a review more resembling a speedboat hitting the tops of the waves, Jaded Gamercast’s review of the game they gave this summer would probably give you a little more mileage.

Strange Aeons in a (four-paragraph) Nutshell

For those who’ve never heard of Strange Aeons, just imagine a skirmish miniatures game with a background heavily influenced by (but not limited exclusively to) H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos that also, at times, feels very much like the X-Files or Supernatural t.v. shows.

Dirk Jackson, my Threshold "Character" and leader (as team leader, if he dies I have to start a new Threshold team).

The game is similar to other narrative skirmish games like Mordheim or Gangs of Mega-City 1 in that players control a force and track the force’s members’ experience (injuries etc), BUT it’s of note that player-owned teams will never go toe to toe against each other as they would in, say, Mordheim. This is what sets the game apart from all the other skirmish campaign games I’ve played: Strange Aeons totally sidesteps the issues that arise when one player’s force ends up becoming more experienced than other players’ forces.

Instead, each game has one player bring his Threshold team (the “good-guys” …the force he’s keeping track of) to the table, facing off against a Lurker force (Lurkers are the bad guys and range from cultists to monsters to demons and all points in between). The Lurker force is tailor-built for the mission rolled for that game and is always the same points value as the Threshold team that game. And because experience is only tracked for Threshold teams, the player controlling the Lurkers will be more likely to take risks and do whatever it takes to defeat the Threshold team, thus treating the Lurkers like they are minions.

A Lurker force of cultists.

But… if I write much more, this will quickly spiral into a full-on review (which I have no time for doing today). If what I’ve said so far sounds interesting enough to you, definitely click on the links included and look into the game; it’s well worth it.

With all that out of the way….

I was going to post pictures of all the models I have painted but settled for posting what I already have pictures of, rather than waiting to take photos of my more recently-finished models (…just so I can get a post out the door today–I have a nagging suspicion that if I put off today’s post at all, I likely won’t have the time to post again until some time next week). With that caveat out of the way, the following pictures are the Lurkers and Threshold operatives I had finished sometime before the start of summer for Strange Aeons.