Vocabulary

I have just learned a new word-- Klockenbooty.

PKowboys!

I haven't got around to posting anything yet, but fortunately Mik has my back. We ran some PKowboys games last week and had a lot of fun. The buildings are from Whitewash City. I'd prefer something a little more substantial, but you really can't beat them for the price. Plus, once the lead starts flying, they feel just as good as anything else. Besides, my real (long term) goal is to do cowboys in 40mm, I think.

Shoutout!

I'm a little behind the curve, but I bought the Geekly McNerdigan shoutout on d6 Generation ep. 37 for Mik's birthday.

Getting ready for PKowboys

I've got the Whitewash City paper buildings broken out, decks printed and cut out, and have been soloing PKowboys to prepare for two games this week. I don't think moon craters are particularly Old West, but I say these badlands stand between the town and an old crater lake, because I just made them and want to see them on the table.

Variant Boards for Zombie Cinema

We started a 4e game last night, and after ran through another game of Zombie Cinema. Only this time, we set it in an Aliens setting. Two characters were Colonial Marines and the third was a colonist. It was fun, and worked very well with using the standard board as a rough guideline. The threat in Aliens gradually grows much like how the zombie threat in Night of the Living Dead develops. Zombie Cinema ought to work extremely well with little modification for anything like that. And, while I was poking around today, I ran across the Zombie Cinema Resources page, which includes variant resources, including a couple of newly designed boards.

Aquarium Decorations

Finding gameable stuff in the pet store is always hit and miss, but I found some neat items in the Wal-Mart pet aisle. The grass fronds are "hair grass" pods. What makes them especially nice is their base is an almost flat ring. A quick snip across the bottom to flatten it completely, then dunk them in some epoxy and prop them on a washer, and you're done. Of course, something that cool is almost impossible to find-- it seems like the product is exclusive to Wal-Mart, and I'm guessing they just send one to each store, because while I have been able to find other plants in similar packaging, this is the only hair grass pack I have been able to find. There are some other brands of products online that I'm hoping are the same thing, or at least fairly similar. I'll order some soon and see.

The giant triceratops skull was $10.00, but I think it will look nice in some jungle terrain. I've been thinking about doing some prehistoric animal or even dino hunting games, having bought Tooth and Claw at Historicon. It would fit right in with that...

Salted Steaks

I figure if Mik can talk about food on his blog, then so can I! Here are some ribeye steaks I cooked up for the family on Sunday. You may be thinking, "Dear god, what did he coat those steaks in?! Is that SALT?!?!" Why yes, yes that is a handful of kosher salt spread all over each of my delicious steaks, with a liberal portion of rosemary and freeze dried garlic. Why do I do this? I mean, especially me-- I hate the taste of salt, and never add any salt to my foods, even much of the time when I am cooking. I have absolutely no idea why I do it. I've read this page a couple of times and still don't really understand it. However, I did try it at one point and really enjoyed it. Whatever it does, you end up with a much better steak, for sure. The trick is to make sure you don't leave the salt on too long. For these, about a full inch thick, maybe more, I left the salt and spices on for thirty minutes. I then rinsed them clean, and dried them thoroughly before cooking.

Battle for Macragge box terrain

I've started on the Battle for Macragge crashed Aquila shuttle. This is actually some very nice terrain. It's injection molded, so it has really crisp detail and is very firm. I intended to do some decals on the shuttle, but rushed through it and forgot. Still, it looks pretty good. I went for an old crash, rather than the recent crash I gather was intended from the Macragge scenarie.

I'm working on finishing this set, the Moonscape set and the Blastscape set. It's fairly slow going-- after the first piece, I kind of guesstimated it was going to take me a full month to finish all fifteen or so pieces. I'm about 1/3^rd of the way through it, though, in just over a week, so I might get done a little early.

Trouble at Peterson's Mill

Land War in Asia has posted Trouble at Peterson's Mill, a game report for the very fun PKowboys from Piquet. I didn't realize that PKowboys had been out of print for as long as it has, but I met the author, Jeff Grossman, at Historicon, and it sounded like he had some ideas fermenting for a second edition-- you'll note he left a comment on the post stating the same thing. With any luck, I hope to be able to playtest these rules and contribute to getting a second edition out!