Once you get your table built, you gottah have something to put in it right!? Well this article goes over how to build 2 table tops, a playing area and a record keeping area - these will most likely be the tops you use most.

What you need:

- 6 2×2″x8′ boards (8 to be safe)

- 2 sheets of lauan underlayment. Have the guy at the lumber yard cut it to 2 2×4′ pieces and 2 6×4′ pieces.

- a bunch of small flat head wood nails.

- 24 1″ 90* metal corner brackets

- 48 1″ wood screws up to 96 can be used, the more the better

After you get the lumber home, cut the 2×2s with a miter or circular saw into the following:

- 4 4′ boards

- 3 1′9″ boards

- 3 3′9″ boards

- 2 5′9″ boards

After cutting, you should have something like this sitting on your work-area floor:

 Set the 3′9″ pieces to the side and assemble two frames using 2 4′ pieces with 2 1′9″ pieces, and 2 4′ pieces the 5′9″ pieces. To connect the boards, use the corner brackets and 1″ wood screws. You should get something like this:

 Next, insert the three 3′9″ pieces evenly into the larger frame, attaching them with the corner brackets on each side of the supports. Insert the last 1′9″ piece into the middle of the smaller frame in the opposite direction the same way. You should get something like this:

Lastly, using the smaller wood nails, tack on the pieces of lauan underlayment to the respective frames. This will give you a solid surface on both sides of the table top, allowing you if you wish to put a different surface on each side. ie : grass on one side, space-scape on the other.

Once completed, and surfaced, these table tops will slip right into the table you just built. Whats so cool about this system is that you can have mounds of table tops and modular terrain, but you’ll only ever have to build the one table.

Our main toppers are a 6×4 playing area with a classic green gamescape and a record keeping area topped with easy-stick floor tiles. You can get them at home depot, they come in a wide variety of colors and styles in 1×1′ sheets. And they only cost about a buck each. They make a great writing surface and the area is great for keeping books, lists, and casualties off the battlefield.

-

DEACON

Filed under: Game Table Tops, Games - Game Craft by DEACON
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I make no bones about it - I’m not a reader.  In fact I’ve only read a handful of books cover to cover that I wasn’t forced to because of some teacher’s demands, and most of those I fudged and skimmed through, relying on Cliffsnotes to hopefully get me a passing grade on the tests covering the material.

Every now and then, the urge to get away from glaring screens and just read through a book grabs me - and this usually results in a general disinterest 50 or so pages in - my eyes scanning the lines, but my mind thinking about anything but the story at hand.  A few days later and I’m back to the video games and shitty TV shows.  A old friend of mine had recommended the Eisenhorn series to me about a year ago - he himself being an old school and long retired 40k player much like myself.  So when I happened to spy the book in the sci-fi section of the book store, I bought it - and man am I glad I did.

First off, if you have only played the war game, or maybe you’ve only played Dawn of War, one thing becomes instantly clear when you begin reading this book - you don’t know shit about the vast and colorful world of Warhammer 40,000.  The guys that you’re used to seeing - space marines, eldar, chaos marines, imperial guard, etc. aren’t the everyday commonplace denizens you may take them to be given their exposure in the games.  Eisenhorn follows the adventures of an inquisitor as he travels to multiple planets around the Imperium, each as different in environment and  custom as can be.  You get a real sense for how life is like for the average Imperial citizen, most of which have never even heard of a “tyranid”.

The central character, Inquisitor Eisenhorn, is always busy investigating some dark scheme, inevitably leading to tense battles, new riddles, and visits to new exotic locals as he tracks his query.  I won’t give away an ounce of the story, but trust me - it’s awesome.  The author has a way of writing that simply refuses to let you stop reading, and introduces you to a cast of characters that quickly become like old friends - you’re genuinely sad when one is suddenly killed, and happy when another reenters the stage after a long absence. 

The book I am ready is actually a compilation of all three Eisenhorn books - Xenos, Malleus, and Hereticus, as well as two short stories.  I got it for 13 bucks, and so far it’s worth every penny.  After two weeks I’m 400 pages in (halfway through “Hereticus”) and loving every sentence, and that’s really saying something coming from a non-reader like myself.  While it may not be for those unexposed to the Warhammer 40,000 universe - there’s lots of vocabulary in there that may confuse those not familiar with the subject, (Lasguns, Power swords, Vox casters, etc.) those with even a basic knowledge will find this book irresistible.

-

DEACON

Filed under: Books, Eisenhorn by DEACON
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Since the New Year, I’ve made it my goal to cull the game collection. Far too many games just sit on shelves doing nothing but mock me. They just sit there taking up thousands of times more space than the handful of sawbucks I spent on it. Unpunched counters full of promise and unrealized potential. For the past five years I was bit by the bug known as “Cult of the New”. Symptoms include massive stockpiling of boardgames, reading rules and feeling like you know enough about the game to “review” it and nightime reading material being Avalon Hill rulebooks for games that I’ll realistically never play. The main symptom though is buying more games than you actually play (at like a two new games for every one game played ratio). Being afflicted for the past five years has really done a number on both my wallet and storage space.

One of the early round of purges found Betrayal at House on the Hill (Betrayal) in a box (realize that for me, I’m slow at moving stuff out the door so purging involves placing items in boxes and sitting on them until the “time is right”). One of the hardest things for a person like me, whose worth is fully defined by the number of games on the shelves, is parting with the cardboard and ink thinking: “But what happens if I find myself abducted by aliens (five to be exact) and I find myself needing a six person game with no language dependency and rules that can be explained in body jesters? This would be the perfect game for this situation.” And every so often you do find yourself in that perfect situation pining for the game that left you some time back and last night was one of those cases. Lucky for me though, the host last night had a copy of the game and mine was still in the “processing” stage.

Betrayal is a game where a group of people somehow find themselves inside of a haunted mansion without any clue and to quote Dylan they “had no idea what kinda shit was about to go down”. What unfolds in front of the players feels right at home as a Twilight Zone or B-Movie script. Blobs, witches, aliens and poltergeists are about. What makes Betrayal unique though, is that players do not have any idea what exact story is about to happen. When players first start off, they are placed in the main entryway to the mansion and are left to explore. Players have the option of selecting a handful of pre-set characters with each character having two different stat lines to choose from. A player’s stats represent physical attributes, Might and Speed, and mental attributes, Knowledge and Sanity. During the course of the game encounters and items will raise or lower stats depending reactions from your character to events like seeing your dead grandma crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth.

During a players turn they are able to move as many rooms as their movement stat allows and explore. To explore a room a player moves to a doorway and flips over the next tile that is allowed on the particular floor they are on. On the backs of room tiles the words Upper, Middle and Basement are printed on there and if the floor is highlighted then that room is valid for that floor. Once a room is revealed often there will be special text which has to be resolved which could cause a portion of the building to become inaccessible for a time or cause damage to you as you fall thru floors. Also many rooms have a symbol printed onto them which corresponds to three different types of cards: Events, Omens and Items. If a room is revealed for the first time, at the end of a player’s turn they read and perform the actions printed on the card.

Items represent helpful things that will often aid a player in the game and you usually want as many of those as possible. Events are a mixture of things often requiring a skill check and success or failure will determine if your character receives or loses stats. Omens are usually mystical type items which aid you in your quest to make it out of the mansion alive and also act as the trigger mechanic to get the haunt going. Each time an Omen card is drawn, that player rolls six special dice and if the roll is less than the number of Omen cards than the haunt is triggered.

Here is where the game’s narrative really comes into play. Depending on what the Omen card was that triggered the haunt as well as the room that it was discovered in determines what the haunt is for this game. What happens during the haunt is one of the players becomes a traitor. Evil possesses them and they become hell-bent on making sure the rest of the group doesn’t make it out of the mansion. The traitor is often helped by the aforementioned aliens, monsters, plants, witches and whatever horrors you can think of. The rest of the players attempt to stop whatever is happening or get out of the house.

The atmosphere to this game is ever present. Character text on the cards and the stories and details involved with the haunts creates an exciting and thematic experience.

All can’t be sugar and spice and everything nice though and Betrayal does have its flaws. First off, the game was published by the mega-corp Hasbro/Avalon Hill. Working on such a larger scale, compared to hobby game publishers, combined with the 40 some odd haunts that may happen, play testing fell a little short. Proof of this can be found on the Avalon Hill website where you can download the pages upon pages of revisions and updates detailing how to resolve interactions within a game that has so many variables. Now the follow I’ll admit aren’t statements of facts, just observations that I’ve made. Part of the fun with a narrative game like this is going into an unknown situation and somehow rising up against the odds and the image of a worn, battered and bruised group of protagonists fall out of the building at the end of the movie exhausted, but alive. My personal experience is nine times out of ten, you’ll get your arse handed to you by the haunt. So many stars have to align to be successful the first time around that for me it just feels futile…And when playing a game it is not a good feeling to have when you think the only time you’ll win is if you’re the traitor.

This next thing I’m not going to classify as a negative or a positive, it just is what it is. This game requires a lot of tokens. And I mean a lot. The catch is you’ll use less than a score during a particular game. So when an event card appears creating a passage between rooms, you need efficient organization (or a good memory) to quickly find tokens to get you back to gaming. Again though, these do wonders to create a feel and setting for the game, but sometimes the massive number become nothing more than speed bumps disrupting the flow of the game.

Now here we are, less than twelve hours after completing another game of Betrayal…And yet somehow I feel different than before. This game was put into a box shortly after New Years. My copy is still relatively unpunched and new. Prices are still double what I paid for the game and everything says that I should stick with my gut and keep it boxed and use it as trade bait or sell for beer money. Last night though, Betrayal tied a string to me and it wants me to keep it around. The game feels like a drinking buddy I had back in college. On a day to day basis this guy I could take or leave. In social settings he was a “one-upper”…The type of person that had to have attention drawn to him when people are talking so he’ll take whatever topic at hand, develop some fucked up mental connection between the conversation at hand (the social and economic impact Steve Bartman had on the city of Chicago by costing the Cubs a sure fire NL Pennant and World Series trophy) and what he wants to talk about (his lone testicle)…I guess they use one ball in baseball at a time and he can only use one ball at a time so I guess I see the connection.

So in spite of his social faux pas he is entertaining when getting drunk and yeah at times you’re uncomfortable and don’t want to be seen by him and other times he’s got you rolling on the ground and always towards the end of the night he’s bought you three or four shots. And looking back on what I remember of some of those drunken nights (the bits I remember) are great and memorable moments – every single one because it was a group of people getting together and having fun (even if some people’s fun differs from yours). Betrayal is much like this. It has problems and it isn’t great but it has charm. At times there is frustration as rule contradictions pop up and disputes arise, but that’s part of the negative of having character.

Many times I pine for the days of my youth where a game was a game and a way to socialize: A way for people to gather together and share in a memory with the connecting thread for all the interaction being the game. Betrayal is an interesting beast. In terms of gameplay Betrayal feels lacking at times where the basic mechanics are easy but the parts that make it a “game” sometimes fall short. For the thematic elements and a story that everyone can get into, this game delivers in spades. Let me close with this:

To my lovely Betrayal at House on the Hill,
I have turned my back and sworn you off prematurely. You have many things to offer which until recently I was blind to. For all the fun we had, I was too superficial and judged too harshly on minor physical appearances and ignored the heart and soul that you offered. Hopefully once I pull you out of The Box I wrongly stuffed you in, you’ll take me back.

Rating: 3 out of 5

‘Till Next Time - Happy Gaming
LvT

Filed under: Betrayal at House on Hill, Games - Board Games by LordVonTush
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A few years ago I noticed a term in gaming which for some reason just rubs me the wrong way. It makes my skin crawl and bile rise up in my throat. Well, perhaps that is a little dramatic, but the term “Gateway Game” is the largest load of shit that I’ve seen dropped since a traumatic day in High School when I thought it would be a good idea to eat Taco Bell for four meals during the day.

The concept behind a gateway game is they are a select group of games that will magically transform your average Joe into a full out gamer dork. I can imagine the religious experience one must feel when they realize that all the games that they thought they’ve played and enjoyed are not really games but ways to pass the time and that there is a promise land just beyond this magical wall whose gate can only be unlocked by Ticket to Ride, Settlers and other trite like that.

But before I go too far off the handle, lets actually take a look at the phrase itself. The second word is easy and not really much to question or critique there, but “Gateway” on the other hand drives me nuts. A gateway is something used to separate two areas that are supposed to remain separate and independent with only minor interaction. Now with the way the phrase is used, on one side of the gate is mass produced popular games like Axis and Allies, Clue, Monopoly, The Game of Life; Scene It and so on. The other side of the gate is “hobby games”; these are the games that are published by Fantasy Flight, Games Workshop, Rio Grande, Z-Man, Mayfair…etc. They are the ones that are found in specialty shops and sometimes on little carts in the mall during the holiday season. Since the mythical gateway game is a tool to be used to bring people from one side to the other the assumption is that one group is superior to the other.

So now that I’ve set up how I see the term Gateway Game, I’ll go into a little bit as to why I really hate that term and how I feel it does harm the hobby in general.

I touched upon the notion that one group is superior to the other. This is my first problem with the term. No group or genre of game is superior…People may disagree and offer personal experience or elaborate explanations as to why one genre is better than another, but the bottom line is people will play what they like to play and invest time into something that they are satisfied with the return on. A few months back I was talking with a co-worker about music and he told me a quote from a famous musician (whose name escapes me, but I want to say it was a Blues or Jazz guy). The quote went along the lines of “Good music is whatever music you like”. Which if you think about it no greater truth has been spoken. People may take a highbrow approach to Classical, or think that Rap is degrading the urban youth, or that Country is for simpletons who just like to sit on the front porch, can of PBR in hand and watch the sunset over the rusted out small block pick-up immobilized on blocks. There are parallel opinions in boardgames regarding various genres and bottom line is they are wrong. Whatever you like is your own opinion and as “can’t we all just be friends” this may sound, people are entitled to their own opinions. Just like life shaped you to like what you like, life has shaped them to like what they like. So that is the first problem I see with the term gateway game, it stratifies and artificially places one genre above another. If someone considers themselves a “gamer” and all they play is Monopoly and Stratego then good for them, just because they don’t play the games you want to play does not disqualify them as a gamer or place one person above the other.

That is the other thing, what qualifies someone as a “gamer”. This gateway is to bridge someone who isn’t a gamer and morph them into a gamer, one has to ask “What is a gamer?” To me, this is a grey term (which by the way is also used as a way to stratify people and place one above the other). If a person is serious into Stratego, plays it 20 hrs a week, 52 weeks a year some might not consider them a true gamer because Stratego is a “lesser” game, or some would have you believe that. Say someone hosts a boardgame night and has a group of ten people over on a weekly basis to play Pictonary and Baulderdash would any of those people be a gamer? Well of course they’re not gamers because those are mass produced games. My contention is that everyone is a gamer of some level. I know a group of guys that gets together weekly for a Poker game and this group ranges from 12-18 people. They obtain all the social benefits of gaming, they play a game on a weekly basis…So why aren’t they a “gamer” (not to say that they want the title and the negative stigma associated with the term, but I’d still contend they are gamers). If a person plays a game of Axis and Allies once a year with a group of High School buddies years after graduation, they still us games as a mode of social activity and ultimately that is what I feel games are about. Continuing my above commentary, people like what they like, they’ll invest the time that they want to learn and play and just about everyone at some point in their life plays games, likes games, and sees games as a mode for socialization.

So I’ve stated my opinions and you may not agree with me, but looking back at my life, I can’t identify any one or two games that made me decide that games are the hobby I’d like to pursue. There was no point in my life where I said “I’m just your average guy” to “I’m just your average gamer”. When I started gaming the staples of Monopoly and Clue and Stratego were often played, as well as Axis and Allies, Fortress America, Shogun and Mighty Empires. Now some may say “well due to the second grouping of games, you became a gamer then”. If that is the case though, why did I take close to three years off where those games started to lose favor in my group for other activities (not games) and once I moved away from that group I didn’t get into gaming for some years before I met someone locally? Could you say A&A was my gateway game because it was the first game that I played that had rules that were more than a page long? Could you say that Space Marine was my gateway game because after a few years hiatus that is what got me into miniature gaming? Could you say it was Carc because that was the first game that had the Euro flare to it? Could it be Zombies because that was the first game that brought me from miniature games over to board games?

To me, there are no gateway games. People will put for the effort to learn a game, no matter the difficulty, if the entire package is something that is interesting to them. I have a buddy who doesn’t play games at all…I’ve introduced him to a few “gateway games” to no avail. But one day when hanging out in my room he saw a copy of StarCraft: The Boardgame and he was interested because he played StarCraft on the computer and greatly enjoyed it. A few days later we were in his basement playing a game, he was absorbing the rules and eager to play. Currently we’re in the process of scheduling another game with another friend of his who was his StarCraft buddy during High School (and this would be his introduction to these deeper games of ours). By the definition that some gamers have applied to gateway games, StarCraft was his gateway game, and hopefully his friend as well, where games like Family Business and Pandemic fell flat (both are common recommendations for “Recommend me a Gateway Game” forum threads).

All the term gateway game does is imply a superiority over others and allow people to look down their nose at people, huffing saying “you think you’re a gamer becasuse you play Axis and Allies…Hmrph…” It stratifies the hobby both internally and externally. Within the hobby isn’t as damning but once it stratifies gamers as a unique social group stereotypes will get tied to the group and often those stereotypes are damaging to the hobby. D&D players got stratified by society in the 80’s. People thought they were spawn of Satan himself whereas the group, who actually knew what the game actually was became ostracized and because of this seperation in society we gamers decades later are still dealing with fallout. This false seperation between gamers and non-gamers allows these stereotypes to continue and keeps us seperated in society. By seperating the games mass culture is aware of from the games that we like, we in turn seperate ourselves from society and retreat into a world of our own making trying to bait people over “to our side” ofen using decpetion.

If at any point in life, you feel you need a recommendation for a good gateway game just do this: Think about the person or group you’re bringing a game to (quite and introverted; loud and outgoing); Think about the types of people (same as before but on the individual basis and not the group basis); Think about the people’s likes and dislikes (or any material that a person may find objectionable); Think about what they’ve been exposed to in the past (or in other words think about the games that they’ve been exposed to in the past, even if not playing just seeing a D&D group can be scaring). You know better than anyone what should have a chance at success. No specific game or genre of games will every time cause a person to be bathed in holy light as a choir of cherubs circle around their head dropping rose peddles at their feet. There is no game that will make a person see the light and what they’ve been missing. All that will happen is, with luck, you may find a game that has acceptable levels of learning, concentration and forethought for a person.

‘Till Next Time - Happy Gaming

LvT

Filed under: Games - Editorials, Gateway Games by LordVonTush
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