jesselowe

Depending on how far west you are, you might look at Rune & Board in Hillsboro. It's a bit out there, but it's quite a nice little shop - and right on the MAX, too. Tuesdays appear to be 40k nights.

Welp, looking forward to this coming out!

We'll be starting up a Journeyman League this month in the Portland area. If you're interested in trying out Warmachine, it's a good way to dip your toe in. The details are here on the Cog Collective forum.

We'll be starting up a Journeyman League this month in the Portland area. If you're interested in trying out Warmachine, it's a good way to dip your toe in. The details are here on the Cog Collective forum.

Banished is more like a town builder than a civ builder; you start with a small group of settlers and see how many winters you can survive and how big you can get your town/colony. Have you tried the Tropico games? Might be worth a look. Not exactly realistic economic model (at all), but the music is good and the theme can be fun. I've been trying out a couple in the vein of Railroad Tycoon - Transport Fever and Railway Empire. Neither one has grabbed me the way RT did, but maybe my tastes have changed... Of course, if you really want to sink your teeth into something, there's always Dwarf Fortress.

I'm interested, but I have to wait till next month. Don't hold them for me, but hit me up if you don't get a buyer by then.

Not yet... pretty tempting though.

Coming at it from warmachine where chess clocks are essential to tournament play... try the old timed turn method. Warmachine games at the usual tournament scale should take two hours and about six turns; therefore, each player has 10 minutes per turn, with a 5-minute extension they can use once per game. How long, and how many turns, for a typical 40k tourney game? Speaking from experience, chess clocks and times turns really do kind of depend on one player doing most of the action on their turn. It's possible to flip the clock over to the acting player - for example, defending player rolling saves - but it can get pretty annoying. If players do a lot during the "active player's " turn, chess clocks are better than timed turns.

I believe Red Castle has a pretty regular player base. Not sure what the split is between X-Wing and Armada, though.

Coming from the Warmachine side, where we use practically nothing but 2D terrain... It wins on clean play, cost, and convenience. It fails pretty hard on looks, though, and I've had more than a few games where a piece of terrain was misplayed because it was 2D - e.g., someone (me) planned out their turn forgetting that a LOS- and movement-blocking house was blocking their assassination run... The best compromise, IMO, is to have 3D terrain with 2D templates underneath, so that when models move into the terrain or you need to make careful measurements, you can remove the 3D piece and still have the area template to play with.

The most recent one was Saturday, unfortunately. The next one is probably the weekend of September 22-23, but that is still up in the air.

What two stores are the ones with regular meetups? How long does a regular sized game take?

Europa's fun, but CK has a lot more personality.

I did with my French play through once. It led to a somewhat boring game as the French crushed all Europe pretty easily. They already had all of Iberia and England in 14--, so...

I have. It's quite good, though i don't know how well it has aged. Probably buying this.

That'll get it done!

And it's now available as a Savage Worlds adaptation that's quite a lot of fun. Worth a look. (Actually, pretty much anything Savage Worlds is worth at least a look. Good system.)

One of these days I'm going to run a GURPS Dark Heresy game.

It very much is! But that does mean making a lot of decisions ahead of time, especially about character creation and campaign assumptions. You can't really just pull a book off the shelf and get running in half an hour like you could with, say, WEG Star Wars. It's really become a toolkit for making your game rather than a game in and of itself. Which is why I love it, but I don't want someone picking it up expecting something plug and play and then being disappointed.

GURPS will certainly do it, but unless you go with a prebuilt setting like Transhuman Space, Traveller, or Psi Wars, the GM is going to have a fair bit of groundwork to do before play begins.

The Portland Warmachine community is still going strong, though you wouldn't know it from the Ordo forum. I'm not sure where people play in Vancouver, but Mondays at Guardian Games, Wednesdays at Rune and Board in Hillsboro, and Thursdays and Saturdays at Portland Game Store in North Portland are the regular Warmachine nights that I know of. There's also usually one tournament a month. The next one is the Ticket Takedown at Rune & Board on Saturday the 31st; first prize is a ticket to Lock & Load. Tournaments and other events are posted on http://forums.cogcollective.com/viewforum.php?f=7&sid=df2b54ecbdb4d92cd43acd9a2e5fb0ac The rest of the Cog Collective forum tends to be pretty dead, though. Most of the club chats on GroupMe; show up at a game night and someone will be able to add you to that if you like.

It'll be this Sunday the 25th from 1-5, at the back of Critical Sip in Guardian Games. We usually gather once a month, on one of the last two weekends of the month, but the exact day is on a month-by-month basis. I'm not sure I'll be able to make it this month, but Gabe and a couple other guys should be there.

Guardian Games, back in the bar. Usually from noon to 5 or so. Check the GG calendar for a reservation for Gabe's Saga or the like.

The usual group is about 4-6 guys, and we try to meet once a month (it's all older guys with jobs and families). The next one is probably going to be Sunday the 25th, though it might end up being the 24th.