The Glade 4.0

September 19-21 in historic downtown springfield, oh. allegedly featuring some CY6 saturday moring game mastered by someone we know if he gets his act together and gets those aircobras and flight stands done.

All fancy info is at hmgsgl.org, which is also allegedly web mastered by someone we know.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Hey, is your CY6 game full up? I finally remembered what that thing I was going to do this weekend since I cancelled my plans to go out of town was. Lol.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

It's at 9 Saturday Morning if you can make it. We don't normally preregister. The Scenario can accommodate 17 players if everyone flies singles, but I think I registered it as 6-8, so just show up if the sign up sheet is full

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Things went well we had a good time. I had 5 players so I sat down to play also and we had a good game. I think the Japanese suffered from me trying to play them and run at the same time. Otherwise I think things went well.

We had a huge full dealer room this year. I don't know what else to do. I know that some people came just to visit the dealer room.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

The words you guys are typing mean something, I'm sure of it.

CY6 is Check Your Six, a hex-based World War II historical air combat miniatures game. So you have a big map laid out on the table covered with hexes overlaid on top of some usually generic terrain (unless you're a hardcore historical guy or playing a scenario on a particularly well known and often retread battle, in which case you might have a custom map representing that particular battle) and then you move miniature Spitfires, Zeroes, Lightnings, etc around trying to win the scenario.

Historical miniatures is basically the intersection of wargaming and history buffs, and can range from more mainstream wargaming systems (like, say, Flames of War) applied toward historically minded scenarios to very complicated/detailed niche systems designed to be incredibly simulationist and not really played outside the niche. CY6 is a neat game I discovered at Rori's group's event a few years ago, and while I've never seen it played elsewhere, is not too hard to pick up and provides a nice amount of complexity without being excessively granular and fiddly in its simulation.

If only aerial combat had a bigger appeal among the wargaming populace as a whole, I might play it more often.

Glad to hear the game ran well, Rori, I'm still bummed I wasn't feeling well over the weekend.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Huh. Out of the dim distant past comes a game I still have in my collection - Air Power. Can't find much on it online, but I remember enjoying it immensely. I still have the miniatures (some Zeroes and Warhawks ... Sheesh, I may have Lightnings, too, come to think of it), but haven't dug it out in years.

You're right, Kaffis, no one really enjoys (analog?!) aerial combat. Just never caught on, although I remember the early monrning Dawn Patrol games at early GenCons.

Thanks for helping me remember my youth.

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This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

My favorite game that FASA made was Crimson Skies, the hex-based miniatures game. It's way more game-y than most historical games, and the setting's really appealing to me. Most people know it from the original X-Box title based on its setting, but that was the second worst product to come out of the franchise (the WizKids Crimson Skies clix game was terrible and never caught on), but even that ended up being one of the more popular and lasting Live titles Microsoft had for the original X-Box.

The PC game was better by virtue of being less arcadey and more legitimately flight simmy, along with a better plot. But the paper and miniatures game was the gem in the franchise. I discovered it about 5 years too late to play it in its prime. I was lucky enough to be able to pick up even the rarer of the sourcebooks at a decent price.

I actually saw Jordan Weisman at GenCon, and he's a cool enough dude that he actually humored me for a few minutes as I begged him to pull Crimson Skies out of the mothballs for a tabletop (or at least turn-based) product.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I don't think Jordan has anything to do with the physical product of the FASA properties anymore. I think he's gone full digital, you'd probably be better served to try to hit up the Catalyst guys.

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Jordan seems to be interested in exploring that weird space where physical and digital product converges, if his Golem Arcana thing is any indication. I just wish he'd done it with a theme that I gave a **** about, as the bland fantasy with weird art that underpins Golem Arcana wasn't it.

And, honestly, I wouldn't be opposed to a digital product that wasn't trying to be an action game. I liked the strategy of trying to get inside your opponent's head while tailing them in Crimson Skies the most. I'd honestly be super-enthusiastic about a straight-up digital port of the old physical game. There used to be a group that would play Crimson Skies by email, which worked rather effectively but required an enormous amount of organizational work to maintain by the guy who ran it. A digital version of that would pretty trivially strip all that work out, facilitating faster turns (we used to run about a turn a week based on response times and the organizer's time to do all the number crunching and map updating) with a lot less manual bookkeeping.

Hell, the two biggest problems with the Crimson Skies system is that there's so much bookkeeping involved in tracking damage and some people's brains just lock up when trying to do the spatial manipulation to translate the hex-based maneuver template onto their plane's position on the game board. Both of these could be assisted by a companion app these days quite handily to streamline face to face play.

Still, point taken about Catalyst. It was still quite fun to talk to Weisman and Gitelman.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I see Golem Arcana as more an exploration of the space that Skylanders and Disney: Infinity are delving into. Now, I haven't really looked at it since the announcement during Shadowrun Returns development, so that has perhaps changed. However, it has no provenance in FASA, so there wouldn't be any licensing pitfalls he'd have to deal with on that score.

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No, I think that remains more or less accurate, from a business model standpoint. Sort of tangentially observing the explanation of Golem Arcana, though, it seemed like the models were actually being used as game pieces whose position on the board had an impact, rather than just as storage media for digital character data.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades