jesselowe

Update: If you've preordered it on Steam, you can now play the beta - three tutorial campaign scenarios and the skirmish engine. It's... pretty entertaining, actually. Still a bit buggy, but it is a beta.

Interested. Depends on how much I can get painted in time and if there are any scheduling conflicts.

I did not get a chance. Too busy adulting. :-/

There's going to be a guy doing learning games at GG tonight.

I got into it when it first came out, but eventually dropped it when the local scene didn't take off. But now I find myself craving a sci fi mass battle game and the options seem to boil down to Dropzone, Firestorm Planetfall, or NetEpic in 6mm. I really need to get a couple demo games in with each to decide.

I'll play in this if it doesn't conflict with the Warmachine tournament (or maybe if it does) and if I can get all my Undead painted by then...

Try the Warstore and look at Perry miniatures for starters. You can also use Reaper for a lot of the Frost grave and Dragon Rampant stuff. Not to mention Mantic... oh, and Old Glory has a huge amount of historical figures available.

Oh, I like the look of that.

That's a mistake. I'll have to get it cleared up.

Would the warmachine Cephalyx models work? They have a bit of that Cenobite vibe.

Thanks to everyone who showed up. Here's my blog post on the day, with pictures.

Great, I hope to see you there!

My vote as a kibbitzer is to do a couple test games. I have copies of Cold War Commander and Spearhead Modern available if you want to test them out. For a con game you'll have different priorities for a rules set than you would for a tournament or the usual pickup game. If I were doing this, I'd be trying to decide between promoting a system or setting up a scenario/historical refight. Am I trying to promote a particular system? In that case, said system is a given, so I'll tune the scenario to show off the system's best aspects, and provide plenty of play aids to cover any hiccups in the system. (I'll also try to ensure that the rules are easily available from online retailers and, preferably, a vendor at the show.) Do I want to refight a particular battle - or in the case of Team Yankee, a hypothetical scenario? In that case, I'll look for the rules that best fit the scenario in question. Regardless, I'd look for the following: Ease of play with people who are likely to be somewhat tired, having difficulty hearing (Enfilade can get a bit loud), and are probably new to the rules. Things I've been thinking about are flip charts for turn phases - to keep everyone on the same page - and written orders, though I'm having trouble figuring out how to do the latter without it being cumbersome. Quickness of play: the more time people spend fiddling around with dice, unit stats, or poking at their phones while someone else resolves a combat or the referee explains something, the less time they're playing the game. Balance in scenario: Nobody likes a one-sided game, especially the guys on the losing side. There are (at least) two ways to do this: Going for balanced forces and terrain, or tweaking the win conditions so that they're not the usual "break the enemy/hold ground" deal. Fighting Withdrawal in FoW is one of my favorite scenarios for this kind of thing. You can also have fun with assigning individual objectives for the various commands, so an individual player can be "winning" even if his side is losing (and, of course, vice versa.)

Do it! This year's theme is Against All Odds and they're still looking for games, so set one up and see what you get.

Does anyone know if the unit cats will be available separately? I'm vaguely interested, but only in 6mm.

I've done this... a couple times... First, organization. You need the physical organization (i.e. storage) and the mental organization (i.e., inventory or knowing what you have). For the first, I use plastic Sterilite boxes - the shoe boxes and the ones sized for letter-size paper. These are clear, so I don't have to open them to see what's inside. I also label them if I feel it's necessary - usually for unpainted or still-in-the-box stuff where the original labeling is unclear. And they stack well. For inventory I simply use Google Keep, and start a fresh note for each collection - in my case, Warmachine Skorne, Warmachine Circle Orboros, 15mm WW2, etc. I usually have each "unit" as a single line item, and, if it's not finished, what it's status is, so it'd be something like: Warmachine Skorne Archdomina Makeda Nihilators A Nihilators B (partially painted) Titan Gladiator A Titan Gladiator B (assembled) Molik Karn etc. So here's what you do: 1. Collect your lead pile and put it on a table in your basement. All of it. Have another table or a set of shelves next to the first table. 2. Collect a supply of containers, preferably clear so you can see what's inside them, and sturdy enough to protect what's inside. 3. Grab a notebook (or digital version thereof) and a stack of labels (I just use Post-Its) 4. Start wading through the pile. I suggest doing this by unit - if you've got a squad of Space Marines or a regiment of High Elves, that's one unit. Record it in your notebook, stick a label on it, and then... 5. Decide what category it goes in and put it in the right place. These are the categories: A. Keep & Play. You like this unit and the game enough to play it, and you have a pretty good chance of playing that game in the future. B. Keep & Display. You like this model, even if you don't like the game or you're unlikely to get a chance to play it any time soon. C. Sell. You don't like this game or this model enough to put it on display, and you're not going to get a game in within the next few years, but you can eBay it or barter it. D. Junk. As sell, but nobody's going to buy this off you. Straight to the garbage/recycling. After you've gone through the table and put everything into categories A, B, C, and D, it's time to take care of them. First, toss all the junk ASAP. Once it's out of the house, you've got a load off your mind and more space to work with. Second, take the Keep & Display stuff and put it on a shelf. You're not using it any time soon, and it'll keep just fine. Third, you need to attack either the Sell stuff or the Keep & Play stuff. For the Keep & Play, I divide mine up by playsets: opposing forces for a theatre and their appropriate terrain. (E.g., I have all my 15mm WW2 stuff bundled together next to the box that has the terrain). The only exception is Skorne (which doesn't need terrain as I play at the FLGS), which lives in the Warmachine bag as it leaves the house every week. Painted stuff goes on the shelf; unpainted stuff goes on the shelf in the workshop. Selling is a bit more work. The hardest part is usually setting prices. Last time I did a big sell off was at Enfilade 2015, where I liquidated my Flames of War stuff and some other junk. These are the questions I ask myself when I'm divvying stuff up and setting the price: How quickly do I want to get rid of this? The quicker I do, the lower the price. How many people are likely to want this? The more potential customers, the higher the price. What was the list price? I usually start at around 30% to 50% of list price. I rarely go over 100% unless I can present it as a luxury good instead of a rummage sale. (It's the difference between "I'm getting rid of [big bad swear word]" and "Here's a ready-to-play Panzergrenadiers army, painted to tabletop quality and nicely based, in a durable plastic case.") It's usually the rummage sale, though - I want cash, not lead that's getting dusty.

It's a Panzer V Panther.

Heck if I know. I'm trying to avoid new games, even the siren call of Infinity, until I get a few projects completed.

A fair number of Warmachine players in Portland are picking it up. There's been a game at Guardian on Mondays for the last two or three weeks.

Maybe you can convince her to carry Plastic Soldier Company or Blue Moon/Old Glory.

I'm thinking about starting Infinity, 'cause I don't have enough toy soldier games to spend money on. So here are some questions: How steep is the learning curve? (For comparison, assume Warmachine is "steep" thanks to model-specific rules and, say, Kings of War is "shallow" thanks to a very straightforward rules set and not a lot of model-specific rules.) How do the following factions play on the table, what's the best starting point for each one, and how much could I expect to spend in $$ to get a basic full-size force? Aleph Combined Army PanOceania Last and most important, how healthy is the player base in Portland? I'm mostly looking at Infinity because I live close to Red Castle games, and being able to sneak in a weekly game there will be a deciding factor on whether I pick this game up.

This might be the best option, from my POV, except it'll still have typical GW prices. I'll probably still be building my Epic armies from Onslaught Miniatures.

Let's just do 1000, then. That's easiest for me.

Jesse Portland Red Castle by preference, GG, WOW Undead

Would Sunday around 1 work?