Chatter Of The Squirrel

Game: The Two Towers

Blogging about those VAX/VMS terminals reminded me again of The Two Towers.

Harken back to 1996, when the web was new, and Netscape 1.0 was the cool new thing.

I was enrolled in NUS to do pharmacy. Endured a month of orientation. And was really eager to start using this Internet thingie, which at the time was still somewhat exclusive to academic institutions. I managed to find a terminal at the crowded medical faculty library and logged onto the Leonis server.

Wasn’t anything on Pine. I only had a dozen friends with email then. Wasn’t anything to surf on Lynx either.

Next to me, two medical first years were talking about the previous night’s faculty dance, and Pauline’s hot body. That’s my NJC class rep you’re talking about you lecherous fungi!

Eventually, I started surfing the newsgroups. Can’t remember what reader I used then. That was the one and only time I’ve used that Unix based newsreader.

The first thing I learnt, was pyramid scams and Nigerians who desperately wanted to give me money. But somewhere along the line, I searched for a Tolkien newsgroup.

And there was a post about a Lord of the Rings game. I emailed the guy, remembered the server address, and promptly thought nothing more of it.

Mogwai

Months later, I was in the UM med library. With the three new computers. And there was still nothing to do on the internet. No one will have heard of Hotmail.com for another few weeks. I couldn’t access the Leonis server from an IP outside the NUS campus. Alvin was watching what I was doing… I guess I was a curiousity at the time. Some people were watching me with the same fascination as anyone who saw Mogwai for the first time.

On a lark, I telnet-ed into towers.angband.com:9999 to show him The Two Towers MUD. (MUD means Multi User Dungeon). That’s the grand-daddy of MMORPG for you damn fool kids of today. In our days we didn’t have your fancy 3D G-Force graphics. Or any kind of graphics for that matter. But we had an acronym that you can PRONOUNCE you snotty little MOe-PERG-Gers…

That was how Ganong the Silvan Wizard was born. Followed by Takezo the Dunedain Ranger/Assassin. And Gaster the Warlord. Kidd the Sheriff. Then Haomahru.

It was absurd how a whole bunch of quasi-adults spend weeks on this game, typing “Kill orc” and “Get all from corpse” repeatedly. And when I said weeks, I meant multiples of 7 x 24hrs… Everyone of us was at least 2 weeks off before the craze tapered off.

Irregardless, some of us still maintained their characters. My Takezo is already deleted after such a long period of non-activity.

I just checked.

But I hear that Gaster is still alive. Hibernating the last 255d 18h 24m. His age is 21d 17h 9m.

That still doesn’t beat Ganong at 35d 13h 27m old.

Confrontation by Rackham

Wolf brought in Rackham products to Malaysia several years ago. They had an incredible line of fantasy miniatures, all beautifully detailed, and their studio painters did an incredible job with the minis, making them all instantly recogniseable whenever you see them. (Note: The use of the past tense was deliberate.)

People still call it the Rackham style, and buying a Rackham miniature puts you under tremendous pressure to at least aim higher than your skills otherwise permits. Ends up, many players leave their minis primed, but unpainted, cos they’re always waiting until their painting skill is worthy enough.

But at the time the game started in Malaysia, I was already commited to WARMACHINE, and didn’t feel like supporting another game, however fine the minis are. Then finally the english rules came out, (Rackham is a French company), and I flipped through the rule book and see if anything might pique my interest. A large hard-cover book, and it was BORING AS HECK!! From cover to cover, it was just rules, and nothing else. Did they have to make the gameplay so complex that it takes a whole book to explain it?

Eclipsante

Where’s the fluff?? Where are the stories that flesh out the miniatures! So many different races, two human factions with incredibly beautiful armoured knights, two elven races, dwarves on steam-powered pigs, un-dead dwarves, goblins, an undead horde, barbarians with minotaurs and centaurs, Amazonian warriors with gravity defying mammaries, orcs, Wolfens (the race that identified Rackham), and S&M Wolfens (seriously, with black leather bondage gear and all). So many characters and heroes from each faction, there should be tons of background on many if not all of them.

The minis are brilliant. But the stories aren’t accessible, they’re only published in their rather expensive magazine, Cry Havoc. After being spoilt by Privateer Press, I expect good fantasy fiction with every metal soldier I purchase.

Despite my gripe, Rackham WAS an amazing company. They MADE consistently good looking sculpts. I’m not very familiar with their entire line, and have only scrutinized the Orcs of Bran-o-Kor. A single unit type, the Jackal Warriors, can be armed with your choice of swords, clubs or axes. And Rackham manufactured two sculpts for each weapon profile. It was a testament to the company’s commitment to quality.

But then they started going the Games Workshop way.

Changed the game from being skirmish encounters, to regiment battles. What this means, is that you’ll need to buy TONS more metal soldiers to play a game. Business logic : force the customers to buy more, then company makes more money. They even started going plastic to reduce cost of manufacture and shipping.

Consequence : Players quit.

Rackham players wanted to play with beautifully painted, heroic characters. Not hordes of shoddily painted nameless soldiers. Also, the expense of owning so many figures was prohibitive. And many of their molds were coming to the end of their life-cycles and the transition to plastic took too long, production & distribution problems. New players couldn’t get hold of stuff they wanted. Even the promotional paint-jobs went from Golden Demon standard, to Mage Knight level.

A friend recently went manic and started hunting for Rackham minis everywhere. Especially for the OOP (out of production) pieces and limited run clan boxes. He was placing huge orders from online stores all over, buying as if the game was going out of style. Which it is… The minis are heavily discounted all over.

Brandon kept bugging me to join in, but I resisted. Still, I guess I could see myself grabbing a nice cheap mini just to paint. Especially since I’ve bought the Painting Tutorial DVD from Miniature Mentor, I’ll just grab a Wolfen Prowler, and try to follow along with the DVD.

Wolfen Prowler

The Prowler is a masterful piece of work.

Even the sword will be challenging to paint. Using many shades of grey to simulate the shine and reflection on a metal blade. A technique called Non Metallic Metals.

So I had my heart set on painting this piece, the defining representative of Rackham in my collection. Then suddenly came news that the store didn’t stock the Prowler. Rackham products were getting scarce all over.

So I asked Brandon if there’s another nice mini to do. And he pointed me to this:

Animistic Shaman on Brontops

The Animistic Shaman on Brontops.

How can you say no to a big green orc, riding an armour-clad dinosaur, and waving an axe fashioned from a large femur? It’s sooo majestic!

And since I’m getting this orc already, what’s a few more to round out a small force so that I can also use to play with my friends?

I’m unimpressed by Confrontation’s gameplay. Their rules went through several revisions, and some of the earlier rules were just odd, like the random unit activation… And they’ve made so many different armies, so one force isn’t balanced against another. There are a few obviously powerful armies, some are mere annoyances, and the newer armies have too few unit types and lack tactical options. And Orcs fall on the latter category, it appears. But what the hey, that only means that they’re the most common stock that’s still left on the shelves of online merchants, and can be bought at steep discounts up to 75% off. Quite a bargain.

So I ended up buying a moderately sized force of the Orcs of Bran-O-Kor. Got all the different Orc Warrior Mages. Some random fighters. And whatever hero that was on discount. (One of the heros arrived without the head).

And since I’m already making a sizeable order, I also got a few beautiful pieces of Wolfen just to paint. Just when I though I can stop, my friend placed yet another order and tempted me with an OOP box of Goblin Pirates.

Goblin Clan - The Skimmers of the Oceans

I have a lot of work cut out for me…

Friends are Good

Got a little too excited about Agricola…

I’ve never bought a boardgame since Mad The Boardgame almost two decades ago. But I’ve played many different boardgames since the big Eurogames boom of recent years started by Settlers of Catan.

I don’t play too often. But I’ve played many. A lot of games, I learnt how to play it once, and never played it a second time. Cos with Settler’s Cafe, which then became Mage Cafe, and the many boardgame geeks that I have come to know, there are just too many games on rotation. Everyone’s trying to play the latest games, and most of their collections get very little mileage.

But Agricola, has an unusual appeal. It’s easy to learn, yet difficult to power game. The accessibility to new players mean a much bigger pool of gamers. And it also doesn’t get old quickly for the veteran players. Thus I figured it’ll be something worth owning.

I could wait weeks and weeks for Wolf to bring it in… Or, I could source something from an online merchant, and then pay USD$30 for shipping. I was keen. But not THAT keen.

Eventually, I found a box in Singapore. Probably just a random guy importing games and running a small operation. My desire for the game finally compelled me to ask a friend to do the meetup at Bugis MRT to buy the game for me. A primary school classmate from 1984-1988. And she was so sweet to do this for me.

But shipping from Singapore to KL will also cost a fair bit. So I started advertising on Facebook to see if any friends are heading down to Singapore, and could help me bring the game back. After a week, I got a message from Jimmy, my ex-housemate from 2005. Who took the time to meet up with my primary school friend. Brought my game to KL, where he’s meeting up other friends to hand out wedding invites.

So, that’s how I finally got my Agricola.

Friends are good.

Now, I’m getting random calls from boardgaming sharks with invitations to have a game. I probably have like the 3rd set of Agricola in Malaysia at this moment.

Game: Fallout 3

The long awaited sequel to Fallout has gone Gold. Release will be a few more weeks, end of the month. Around the same time that Zack And Miri Makes A Porno comes out too.

Nice things happening end of the month.

And… this is all the energy that I can muster this week.

Still lots of shit to move from the old office and lots of things to fix up at the new one.

Lord British in Space ?

Richard Garriott, or more familiarly, Lord British, is going into space.

And this just begs the question, WHY ??

Then again, he probably didn’t have to loot the national treasury to do this, so, why not?

The geeks amongst you will know Lord British from the Ultima series of PC games.

Ultima VI was one of THE most memorable games in my childhood. Those days I spent on my 12MHz 80286 PC with 1MB RAM, 20MB harddisk and the FIRST color graphics for the PC that could display FOUR COLORS. (Technically, the monitor could display more than 16 colors, but only 4 colors at once in game mode).

Ultima VI was that unattainable game that I kept seeing at the one single computer shop in Brunei that stocked games at the time. It was unattainable cos it is sold in SIX floppy disks! Imagine the amount of CONTENT! SIX WHOLE DISKETTES!! That’s more than 7 MB!

I also didn’t know what the game was about. There were no forums to review. No peers to discuss with. No magazines to buy. No way of knowing. I can’t remember how I eventually got ahold of the game, but I was blown away.

My first RPG.

Playing the Avatar, walking all over Britannia with my posse, killing dastardly villians and dire beasts. Talking to the populace, literally asking questions, sometimes typing in random phrases to see if they have an answer to the quest I’m on. Finding and purchasing new weapons and armor for Dupre, and keeping Shimono out of easy combats so he won’t waste all those expensive crossbow bolts. Digging around for mandrake roots and reagents to cast spells, on TOP of purchasing the spells itself.

Those were good times.

I think I actually remembered hauling all the powder kegs I could get hold of, and stacking them around Lord British, then igniting it with an explosion spell. That killed him. So did the 1-use Glass Sword, that could kill virtually anything in the game, once.

Good times indeed.