Mercs Review

Hello my friends. I thought I would pop in and write up a review for my new favorite Skirmish Game, MERCS.

I will start with the Rulebook. It is first class and very pretty. All color, heavy stock pages, with a hardcover. It contains a large amount of background. Basically the premise is a world economic crash leads to all government being privatized by MegaConglomerates (MegaCons). These megacons have their own military divisions, of which the MERCs squads are one part.

Which leads me to the miniatures. They are first rate. I really like them. The detail is excellent, and they are on a par (cost-wise) to other character models from other companies.

The game play is different, due mostly to the unique movement system. Movement is handled with a Card. No other measuring device is required. It takes some getting used to, especially if you play other miniature games.

Each Merc has a set of personal abilities, think skills, that they alone have access to. Each Faction has their own corporate abilities they have access to. Right now, there are four factions available with two more planned for the near future and several more to be developed and released in the next year or so.

Combat is pretty straight forward. Most weapons have a range of the tabletop on which you are playing. It uses a simple system of target numbers to meet or beat.

In order to know if you cause a wound, a simple comparison is required. Regardless of whether you cause a wound or not, it is possible for your opponent's armor to fail, making it easier to wound him/her.

The best part of this game is the community that has sprung up around the game. There are people all over the world currently playing and sharing ideas, pictures and battle reports on the games forums.

I have played a lot of games in my twenty plus years as a gamer and this is easily the game i play the most right now.

For more information please visit www.mercsminis.com.

The New Soldier

Keith Allen Raposa
Born: 4:53pm January 25, 2011
Weight: 3 lbs 8 oz.
Length: 16"

He's the cutest thing!

Once Again, Into The Breach

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the next long year of Deployment for me and the family. As some of you may know, my son Michael volunteered for a deployment with one of the units at his base to avoid a later deployment.

This past week has been full of official ceremonies and other events for the departure of the unit. It's been busy, with me dealing with the issue in the only way I know how, helping those around me come to grips with their sense of dread and loss.

My son Josh returned from Iraq a completely different person. Some of the changes were a direct result of the things he'd seen and done while over there. Some were a direct result of him not having his mother around to coddle him every time something went wrong.

I am concerned for the changes that this deployment will have on Michael. He has always been a quiet person, with no experience dealing with the traumatic things he may be witness to while in a faraway land. With luck, his training will have helped prepare him for the worst.

I am afraid, quite frankly, that I will never see my son again. This thought bothers me, but I can't vent to anyone in my immediate family, since the ones that are experienced in dealing with this issue are the ones that I help get through their emotions.

Being the parent of a deployed soldier is like being the parent of police officer. You never know if the next ring of the phone will bring the words that no parent wants to hear, "I'm sorry for your loss".

Hopefully that call will never come. It's difficult to think about, and I just hope that he manages to accomplish his mission with no loss of life for anyone in the unit...

For the second time in three years an Almeida marches to war, leaving behind his Mom and Dad, brothers and sisters, his girl. We will miss him and start counting the days until his safe return.

God bless and god's speed Michael. You make me proud...

The Christmas Haul

So, my wife decided to buy me some GW stuff for Christmas. I got home last Thursday and my wife was there waiting. She sat me down and asked some pretty pointed questions about how to order online. I asked which website and she informed me that it was Games Workshop...

After some answers and me signing into my account on the site, I walked away and went to change my clothes...

Fast forward to Christmas Eve. We all get together for the holiday on Christmas Eve and exchange gifts. As my kids were opening their gifts my wife walked up and handed me four gifts.

They were (in order of box size):
The Temple of Skulls
The Hellcannon of Chaos
2x Warriors of Chaos

I was thrilled! I play Fantasy a lot these days and these were things on my Wish List.

Sadly, my friends are already complaining...

I have been experimenting with different Marks of Chaos and have found that the Mark of Tzeentch is a real pain in the ass for most people to deal with. When your entire army has a ward save, it makes it difficult for your opponent to cause casualties.

The one thing my army lacked was some ranged attacks to make the enemy duck his head. Now, I have the Hellcannon and people aren't liking it...

I can't wait to use it on them!

Black Friday and Beyond

What's everyone going to do today? I know that Black Friday is usually a day of shopping and commercialism, but I don't usually participate in that very often.

Black Friday for me is usually a major gaming day. Me and three friends will be meeting at the store to play some Fantasy. I'll also be bringing Battleground to try to get some players for my Battleground Tournament at TempleCon.

Tomorrow is our usual gaming day, and aside from Fantasy I'll be pushing Blood Bowl.

Sunday, it's off to the Hospital to visit Dad, but after that I have a cool solo games I play. FFG's Death Angel, a card based version of Space Hulk, is a cooperative game for 1-6 players. It's pretty fast paced and has captured the tension from the original board game quite nicely.

Of course, I will continue to play video games. My Dark Elf Team, The Nauglir, are poised to win the championship for the current tournament they are playing in. I just downloaded an RPG called Faeries which is surprisingly good.

Well, that's what I'm up to this weekend. What about you?

Blood Bowl!

TempleCon is fast approaching and I need to start planning on running the Blood Bowl tournament. This year I will not use the BBCS rules because too many people have started requesting copies, and I fear they would just steal them...

Anyway, I need to make some pitches. Enough of them for eight games. I figure I'll buy some felt and mark it up to resemble pitches. As long as I find an easy way to place the markings on the felt it'll be a cheap and easy way to play up to eight games of Blood Bowl.

Now, how would you guys mark it up easily? I thought about Iron-on Transfers, or using a Sharpie. Iron ons would be a bit expensive, I think, and the sharpie might work, but it would be time consuming...

So, let me know.

Miniatures In Progress

So, the list at the right is pretty much still current. I have recently started playing almost regularly with that team and I wanted to try to paint some more of it. Unfortunately for me I am unable to pick out the detail on the models due to the onset of Diabetes (again...) and so I will have to wait until my blood sugar is more under control, and consequently my eyesight gets better. Hopefully that will be soon.

I have been assembling my Chaos army for Fantasy and have everything primed black. The paint nazis at the local store have been teasing me incessantly about the extreme lack of paint. I haven't said much about why I'm not painting, except that I am chronically lazy when it comes to these things...

Ahh well, back to work.