Hi, wanted to make a few comments on your last couple of shows. To start off with, great shows. I listen to just about all the wargaming podcasts out there, but yours seems to be the only one that consistantly "discusses" different aspects of the hobby. The rest of the podcasts do great reviews, or talk about their projects, but none of them actually go in depth like you do. So keep it up, great stuff that I look forward to.
Episode #7
I'm sure you've already gotten emails about this, but in Warhammer Fantasy, melee combat does compare the attackers skill vs the defenders skill to determine the hit roll. You had taken the
WHFB missile combat rules that only use the attacker's skill to determine the hit roll & extended it to the melee combat.
Great Shadows over Camelot review. I got that for christmas & have been a bit daunted in playing it since it seems pretty complexed. Your review encouraged me to pull the game out again.
Episode #8
I totally agree about the failed campaign syndrome. We've had it happen many times in our game group. Unfortunately, my gaming group is now really spread out with a 1-2 hour drive between most people. We did almost finish the
GW Denizens of the Deep underground campaign, but never played the last turn (out of 20) because the winner was so far in the lead, there was no way for anyone to beat him. It did take us about 4 years to complete since we were usually only able to meet at conventions.
I'd definately be interested in hear about your mods for the Mighty Empire game (& your X-Cam system). I remember playing Mighty Empires in it's original form, with the paper tile hex map, & the plastic banners, castles & cities. A friend picked up the new set & painted the hex tiles up, & it does look beautiful.
GW's Specialist Games site has a copy of the original Might Empires rules for use with Warmaster, but because of the
GW site reorg, you can't get to the
SG site if you have the
GW US site as your default. You need to delete your internet cookies & then select the
UK as your default site, & that will allow you to access the
SG site.
In your discussion of D&D 4.0, you mention the online battlemat feature. It sounds exactly like Fantasy Grounds (
http://www.fantasygrounds.com/), a computer program that allows players to do traditional pen & paper
RPGs remotely. I looked at it a while ago, & it was very well done. I was hoping my gaming group would be able to use it since we were so spread out & could never organize time for all of us to get together. But, I found that this kind of online tool is actually a lot more work to set up, & therefore not a real time saver for the
GM. There are a couple of other packages that do the same thing, but aren't quite so slick (
http://www.kloogeinc.com/).
I think you'd said one of your Achievements in Gaming was playing (& loosing) the Lord of the Rings Co-
op board game? Don't feel bad. From what I understand, it's REALLY hard to win. A friend has the game & has played it a number of times & never won. He bought his copy off someone else & that person actually got to play it with Knizia. Apparently, that game with Knizia was the only time the original owner had won the game. So, while it's lots of fun, if you can only win by playing it with the game's designer, it must be really tough.
On a technical note, it seemed that some of your transitions between segments overlapped the ending of the previous one, making the final comments hard to hear (like the intro music for the Bollywood Minute in #8). It's happened 2-3 times in #7 & 8.
I'd like to make a more general comment about the shows overall. I know you can only speak about what you know, but the way you present your discussions, a non-gamer would think there's only
GW,
PP &
FoW (with a bit of
B5 & Wings of War). In your discussion of deployment, there were many other methods that weren't covered (deployment on blinds, hidden deployment, etc). Obviously, if you haven't come across them, you can't discuss them, but it was kind of presented as "these are THE methods of deployment" as opposed to "these are SOME of the methods of deployment". So, you might want to either bring other gaming systems into your discussions so they don't seem so restricted, or let your listeners know there's lots of other options out there beyond the big 3.
& finally, I got Tannhauser recently & am quite eager to play it. It looks very pretty. I did have some of pretty bad paint jobs on some of the figures (big red sploch caked on Eva Kramer's arm), & am in discussion with
FFG to see if the figures could be replaced. So thanks for the recommendation & the mention in the mail bag.
Thanks again,
Nils