GAMING NEWS: Fun two weeks culminating in the 10 December 2005 MWS weekend meeting!

Hi Everyone,

I've been blessed the past two weeks or so...

Last Sunday I had a chance to play Assyrian Wars by Udo Grebe with my friend Vince Blackburn AKA Vynnie at another friend's house, Dave Hanifan. George and Jeff also showed up and we all had a good time. The components could have used better color differentiation, but all of us had a good time upon final consideration.

The Board Game Geek link to Assyrian Wars is here:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/8626

Last Tuesday, I found out that one of my favorite local gaming shops "Hobby Monkey" is taking a turn for the worse... less operating hours and several cancelled game tournaments including the immensely popular Formula De tournament, which really irks me because my racer had one of the top standings. The owner wants to close by 9:00pm on weeknights now (...sometimes 8:00pm) which really reduces the amount of time for gaming. Bummer...

I showed up on Tuesday at Hobby Monkey to find the poor Flames of Wars guys from Yuba City walking into an empty shop. We played a Formula De game, which they all liked. I was in first place until my car blew up in an unfortunate accident. Eric-Chern of Epic-Armageddon and Babylon-5 fame came in last place, but he finished unlike THREE of the rest of us! There were seven racers... pretty lethal race.

Yesterday, MWSS (Miniature Wargamers Society of Sacramento), had our monthly games day. Three games were hosted:

- 10mm (N-scale) WWII Eastern Front game with adapted ASL rules...
- 6mm/15mm HOTT Fantasy campaign...
- 15mm War of 1812 with Guns of Liberty rules...

I played in the 6mm/15mm HOTT Fantasy campaign and had a great time. I played two smaller HOTT battles (1 decisive win, 1 moderate loss) and played on the winning side of a Big-Battles-HOTT game which featured six armies (three a side) battling it out. General HOTT Dick Mitchell's "good consortium" (Elf army, human army and my magician's army) carried the day against Ork despot General Carper's hordes (Orc behemoth/archer band, Orc blades band and Orc shaman band).

I tried out an interesting HOTT army of eight spearmen supported by two magicians in the last game. It was fun although my sides didn't do much more than have my magicians toss spells at the enemy (which scared a key enemy behemoth which was forced to flee) and have my spearmen hold part of the line looking tough.

While the games were technically part of the HOTT campaign, we won't officially kick off the campaign until the January meeting so the games were really "practice" ones. I'm already afraid of the really tough Orc armies. Marc Carper really knows his game. And what a beautiful miniatures painter he is!

Photos of his minis and all three of the games can be found in a folder labelled "12-10-2005" at the MWSS E-group here:
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/M_W_S/

After yesterday's game, Diana and I were invited to a wine-tasting by our friends Roger and Grace. Roger's my idea of a good guy to taste wine with, a former 82nd Airborne paratrooper with an attitude! He's also one of the world's premier miniatures painters and his work is regularly featured in gaming magazines in the UK and USA. We had a good time even though we weren't behaving according to "wine-tasting decorum!" We both got in trouble with his wife at one point so we mellowed out. She takes "wine tasting" much more seriously than we did... at the time! Although I still insist that a few of the wines we "sampled" wouldn't have been good for lubricating even a Peugot. More like pee-eeuhhh!

We tried three French wines and three Napa Valley wines. I much prefer the Napa Valley wines from California. The French wines almost all had a bad aftertaste and I was happy to toss the rest of them in the "slops" bucket.

After the "wine tasting" there was a "white elephant" gift exchange. It's Murphy's Law that if you're Jewish, you will always end up with a Christmas ornament at a "holiday" (really Christmas) gift exchange. We (Diana and I) ended up with a set of diet books (The South Beach Diet Book and The South Beach Diet Cook Book) along with a... yeah, guess again... a Christmas ornament. I might just make a vow someday to make a version of Frosty with a Yarmulke! Dagnabit!

We gave the Christmas ornament to Grace and were able to swap our "books" for some kind of a "fancy shmancy" lemon liqueur from Italy. It's called "Limoncello" (spelling?). I haven't broken it open yet.

I've decided, all in all, that wine-tasting may not be my thing. The husband host was good and has started his own wine label, but the wife host, was bit shmarmy and her red thong underwear were hanging out in the wind. I wasn't going to say anything though... However at the first glance of her red thong, I vowed to not imbibe generously of the wine... get my drift!

Besides enjoying the company of Roger and Grace, I met someone who was an appreciator of Russian literature so I had a good time. Diana talked Baltimore football with the host and a few other folks.

All in all, the past two weeks or so have been good to me.

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.