Sunday, May 8, 2011

Hamilton's Dilemma : Fantasy Skirmish for under Ten Bucks

Brother, can you spare a dime?

     No matter who you are, or what game you play, there comes a time when you're running low on resources. Everyone has been short of time, opponents, interest, space, and as is the fashion today, cash.

     Being the fiscal protagonists of our modern age, chances are that Ten Dollars (or 7 Euros, or 9.33 AUS, or 807 Yen) could pay for lunch on any given weekday. Some might argue that $10 is a lot to pay for lunch, and that I'm paying too much. I will kindly agree with that person, and encourage them to take me to lunch sometime. Meanwhile, I propose this:

"For $10 or less, I can find you a game worth playing."

     Inexpensive gaming is much easier than it was 2 decades ago thanks to small press, free rulesets, abandoned games, and a much more connected community of wargamers, cardgamers, role players, board gamers and so forth. In fact, this entire article written by myself in 1991 would have consisted of taking graph paper from the classroom, the dice from Monopoly, and making up a cheap-as-free dungeon crawl. Seeing as we're one step away from having Jet-Cars in our floating garages, let's get underway.

     Taking a cue from prominent game manufacturers such as Fantasy Flight Games, Games Workshop, or Alderac Entertainment Group, I want to make sure the game I'm playing has toys in it. Punching out chits or assembling and painting figures can be greatly entertaining by itself. The rules may be horrible, but good toys can save a game from disgrace.

Saving on Dimensions Saves on Cost!

     I'll direct your attention to One Monk Miniatures which is an outstanding source of paper print/cut/fold miniatures. If you peruse the left hand column of their site, you'll find some pretty impressive Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Post-Apoc, and miscellaneous figures. These figures are free to print, and with minimal effort on your part, a legion of flat inch tall men and beasts can be yours to command. I'm going to choose some sets from the Warbands page. Some Goblins as well as the Bandits and Brigands sets.

     I can already hear the whistles blowing and klaxons howling.

"You said we'd be able to do this for under ten bucks! Color printers cost WAY more than a tenner!"


     You may well already have a color printer that you can use at little or no cost. Inkjet printers have become a fairly common household item. If you ask around your school, workplace, or friends and family members, you may already have access to a color laser printer. The actual cost of these options varies based on how badly you're being ripped off for supplies, so even those with a home printer can look elsewhere.

     Print shops offer convenience and higher quality results than what most folks can get on their own. Many will allow you to walk in with a link to a pdf online, download it, and print that pdf on their very expensive high-quality color printer. They may even offer a higher grade of paper or cardstock, so be sure to ask about your options.

The options for retail color printing near me are:
- Staples
- Office Depot
- Catskill Art and Office Supply

Single Color Copy
Store Plain Cardstock Gloss Stock
Staples  59¢  98¢  $1.09
Office Depot  59¢  66¢  74¢
Catskill A&O  $1.95  $2.05  $2.25

     It's pretty clear to me that the most "bang for the buck" will be to get Office Depot to print out a Goblin Warband, as well as one each of the Bandits and Brigands. I'll even recommend the heavier weight cardstock (67 lb). That's about $2.25 of our ten dollars gone after we account for tax.

~Support Your Local Whatever~
      I included a local print shop in the above chart because they deserve a chance to earn my custom. If the goal of this article was to promote good citizenship and support local business, you could bet your last Community Chest card that I'd tell you to spend 6 dollars at the non-corporate store. For the purposes of frugality, I have to opt for the lowest price. The prices shown above have most assuredly changed since I wrote this article, so do yourself a favor and call a few print shops, including at least one locally owned one.

Billy! Stop licking that paste!

     By your own hand, or that of a convenient printing service, you've managed to print up several sheets of paper pawns. It's time to cut them out.

"But! Scissors and knives aren't free! You can't expect us to have those!"


        I assume most people have scissors in the same way they have a table and chairs. I like to use a pair of really small scissors to cut out paper flats, but a quick online search reveals that they can cost from $6 to well over $10, and I can't do much if I blow the budget on diminutive cutlery. I recommend a hobby knife, commonly referred to as an "X-acto knife" (due to successful marketing of that brand). These are available for a fairly low cost. I found a Stanley brand one for about $3.00 online and in a local store. This is well worth the price, as you'll be able to use it many other craft projects later on.

     You may be tempted by some expertly packaged and rebranded hobby knives. Unless that packaging is useful to you in some way, rest assured that the handle you buy for $3 and the one you buy for $7 take the exact same replacement blades. It is easy to over pay for simple tools because they have a fancy name, so be vigilant and buy the tool that works, not the shiny one.

     Place your printed paper figures on a sheet of cardboard and carefully use the knife to cut around the edges of the figure. Use cardboard to protect the surface you're cutting on. If you don't have any scrap cardboard available, it is free for the asking from most stores.

Adhesion is nine tenths of the law.


Now it's time to get those figures stuck together. Glue sticks, PVA "White/Elmer's" Glue, rubber cement.... These are all fine options, but I like to make my figures waterproof, and that's why I use Mod Podge. Available at fine fabric and craft stores everywhere, Mod Podge dries to a glossy but flexible shine, and not only adheres paper miniatures, but can be used to coat them as well. I can get an 8 ounce bottle of this stuff for $3.50 . Spoil yourself a little and spend 75 cents on a cheap brush. When I say cheap, I mean one without a size number, with bristles made of black nylon that don't form a point. Go on, you deserve it.

Brush some paint on the unprinted side of your goblin/brigand/bandit, then fold it in half and leave it to dry while you move onto the next one. You have at least 38 figures to do, so by the time number 38 is done, the very first one should be ready for a gloss coat.

Just brush a little more mod podge over one face of the figure and set it aside. This will give the figure a bit of a sheen, and prevent it from being destroyed by someone's careless beverage spillage. Repeat for all 38 figures, then flip them over and gloss the backs in the same way.

When this is all done, Take your remaining 50 cents and have it changed into pennies. I always love it when an object costs more than the money it takes to buy it, and miniatures bases are a constant source of amusement in this way. Rather than spend money on 25mm round bases, just stick your little paper figures to the pennies directly with more mod podge. You can probably even scrounge a few pennies for free here or there by being alert in parking lots, on sidewalks, and in convenience stores. Some folks swear by steel washers from the hardware store as being fantastic bases, and I'll agree, but in this case you'll never find a more ready metal disk than old Abraham Lincoln.


So, you've managed to make a force of humans, and a force of goblins... and we have 12 cents left in the budget. There aren't too many rulesets to be had for that price, but there are a few available for free! In this particular case, my eyes have been set on Mordheim from Games Workshop.

"But the Mordheim boxed set cost $55 brand new!"


Yes, and if this were 10 years ago you'd have a valid point. Since those heady days of GW releasing a new Specialist game every year, times have changed. Now the very same game you'd have paid full price for is available as a series of PDF downloads free of charge for your use. I'll include a link, but you'll probably be asked to divulge your country of origin in an intervening screen. For the record, I told the site I was from the United States, and it let me right through to the files.

Download the Mordheim Rules Here!


     I won't spell out the rules for you here, but I will tell you this. If you use the Brigands and Bandits as any of the 4 human mercenary warbands, and the goblins as the proxies for a skaven warband, you can get several nights entertainment out of the game. Just grab some of that cardboard we talked about earlier, and use your craft knife to slice it into the shape of some buildings. Think of an old west movie set. Having the fronts of a few buildings, along with some balconies and the occasional stack of barrels for cover will give you enough terrain to play in.


If you find it all a bit confusing, take a gander at http://www.mordheimer.com which is a fantastic site for learning more about the game.


So, There you have it, a few dozen figures, a ruleset, and 12 cents left over.

What have we learned?
  • Paper Miniatures are generously on offer, and can be printed inexpensively.
  • A little bit of arts and crafts goes a long way toward making presentable game pieces
  • Abandoned rulesets are still fun
  • Proxying goblins for rat men is perfectly reasonable
That's it for this, the very first go-round of Hamilton's Dilemma.
Stay tuned for more in the days and weeks to come.

Pygmaelion

Friday, May 6, 2011

Trying out a different player

In an effort to keep with my own arbitrary standards of Schmexcellence, I've decided that I need to start using an embedded music player that shows multiple tracks.

Since I'm freeloading off Blogspot, I'd love to be able to embed here. I've shown in the first post that I can get ~some~ kind of player working, but I'd like to replace it because it doesn't show the track that you're on, much less the one you're going to hear next.

The one below is XSPF player, and it doesn't seem to enjoy being here. I've beaten it up 7 ways from sunday, and I can get it to say "loading playlist" all over the place, but it never plays anything. Anyone have a clue as to what I'm doing wrong? Turns out I was embedding waaaay too many parameters. Finally settled on xspf_player-0.2.3.

A view of the source code on this page will show that I'm calling the player directly from google sites, and the playlist must be called with a thrice-conjugated auth code which can be gotten by downloading the playlist.xspf file, then right clicking it in firefox downloads  and 'copy download link". This gets me a URL with all manner of auth info on it that the XSPF player can understand.







Why do I want these features anyway? because:

Episode X.1: Intro - 3 mins
Episode X.2: Opening Rant - 5 mins
Episode X.3: Tet recommends GURPS - 6 mins
Episode X.4: A loud discussion about Star Wars ensues - 10 mins
Episode X.5: Five minutes of heavy breathing -5mins

Is better than:

Episode X - 29 minutes that you'll shut off once we hit the starwars segment

I realize that for making playlists on media devices, that's a bit of a bitch, but with inline players on sites, you can skip a segment you particularly don't care about.

Also, not every segment needs to be completed at the same time
so an entire episode might be waiting for a week to be completed, but at least there's SOMETHING there in the meanwhile.

I like bite sized conversations that begin and end in a podcast, with the option to skip over topics that don't interest me. I suspect other folks do as well