Post Vegas Haze

My wife and I made a trip to Las Vegas last week to visit her brother and enjoy a little R&R time. We had a great time.

Between visiting Freemont Street, several casinos (including the Bellagio whose inside gardens were decked out for Chinese New Year, including animatronic dragons), and playing Bingo with the locals at South Point Casino which is my wife’s favorite gambling thing to do in Vegas, we did some off-the-beaten-path stuff too.

We visited the Mob Museum, Pinball Hall of Fame, attended a psychedelic Cirque de Soleil show (The Beatles: Love), and drove out to breathtaking Red Rock Canyon. It was a jam-packed few days in the desert.

Coming back to Pennsylvania to go to work this week was a bit of “aww, do I really have to?” feeling. But that’s life for the vast majority of us.

Returning to Normalcy

Since January was a bit of a blur, I’m hoping that life can return to a more normal state, and that includes getting back to some gaming and hobby time. Aside from a mid-January dungeon skirmish, 2024 has truly been a black void on the gaming/hobby front.

I want to start-up our bi-monthly board gaming sessions, and get back to battling it out on the wargames table with games of Sword of Severnia, Lion Rampant, SAGA, Gnome Wars, Warlords of Hexenstein, and more. While fantasy and dark-ages/medieval wargaming are our favorites, I’d love to get some multi-player tank battles to the table with my 1/72 scale diecasts, and I’m hoping that 2024 is the year I finally play a Pulp game or two. You know what they say about the “best laid plans”, but here’s hoping!

Acquisitions Incorporated

It’s not much, but I did acquire a few new games & toys to start the year. Starting on the board game front, I picked up something old and something very new:

<> Iliad game. This multi-player card-battler was created by the same man who designed the excellent Condottiere (Dominique Ehrhard). The theme is Greek heroes & warriors duking it out at Troy. It was released in 2006, so it’s a somewhat old game that’s out-of-print, but it has been on my radar for years and I was lucky to find a good copy on eBay for a good price.

<> Mindbug: Beyond Eternity and Mindbug: Beyond Evolution games. Back in October 2022, I received my Kickstarter pledge of Mindbug, a terrific little 2-player card battler that captivated me after our 1st play session. It has a “Magic the Gathering Lite” feel to it, all built into a single deck of cards and with beautiful whimsical artwork. So when a subsequent Kickstarter was announced for two stand-alone expansions of Mindbug, I jumped right in with both feet. I just received these 2 games earlier this week.

<> On the miniatures front, I purchased an 8-figure unit of Russian Cossack Bear Cavalry (for Gnome Wars), an assortment of Cthulhu Deep Ones, and an assortment of adversaries for pulp gaming (at least in my mind) that included Trotsky’s Red Guard, Germans in greatcoats & picklehaubs, and Tangrenbu swordsmen. All these metal minis are from Brigade Games which is managed by Lon Weiss, a great guy and fellow Penn State alum who I’ve come to know over the years by attending HMGS East conventions.

I hope that my friends and I get back to playing some games soon. And hopefully I will start slapping some paint soon. Until next time, stay safe, sane, and keep on hobbying.