Articles > Rants & Raves

 At one time, if you'd ask me to rattle off a list of the companies I considered "Friends of Ameritrash", Days of Wonder would have been right there on the list. These days, they seem to be taking criticism from quite a few AT fans.  The question is, what happened?

  Look around the cinemas lately? It's been a great year for movies, but what were the ones people were most actively looking forward to?  Indy 4, Hellboy 2, Batman 2, Hulk 2...last year, of course, it was Pirates 3, Spidey 3, Shrek 3....  

IMPORTANT UPDATE FROM MB- Sorry to edit your post Matt...just got "official" word from FFG that they're changing the format of the MC CMG to a fixed purchase thing like AT-43 or Confrontation.  Hats off to FFG for listening to early feedback and responding!  I think it's a good decision that will likely make the game a lot more appealing to folks..and it'll make upgrading SotC minis a hell of a lot easier! OK, carry on... When I write submissions for this site, I don't generally do reviews, because I can do all the reviews I want...

Lately, there’s been a lot of discussion at F:AT about game reviewing. Barnes has been all over the web, talking about how game reviewers don’t have opinions, and numerous game reviewers have been dragged around and then thrown under buses (especially the douche bag who sold his unopened copy of Black Ops on eBay – yeah, you gave that a comprehensive review). And since the topic has been on everyone’s minds, I thought it would be fun to poke at the open sore until we got just a little more pus out of it. I write a game...

  One of the many positives of this mini explosion (somewhere between a bathtub fart and an firecracker) of "hobby gaming" is that it's created a market for relatively obscure games that were out of print. If the BGG-Effect hadn't fetishized Die Macher or Hannibal or Blackbeard (with a tip of the tri-corn hat to Johnny Depp, of course), none of those games would be available now.  Before the Boardgamegeek "community" burned me with Caylus (overwhelming hype, complicated bullshit...

So...what does it take to get a great Indiana Jones boardgame, anyway?

  I write a game review site, like about every other fourth gamer nerd on the planet. So I feel qualified to make unreasonable assumptions about people I haven't met, because I must be an expert - I write a game review site. And one thing I feel compelled to note is that gamers take this gaming crap way too seriously - me included.    

  A few weeks ago I sat down with some non-board gaming friends and introduced them to Last Night on Earth. Thematically it was a natural fit – this was a group of metal-loving horror fans (three sets of couples in their thirties) and as soon as they saw the box they were excited.  None of these folks were new to gaming – we all play D&D on occasion, and two of the guys are still slavishly devoted to Games Workshop products. But this was a big deal to me as none of these people are ever...

  I love gaming in all its forms, but at the core of my being I am a miniatures gamer.  Sure I lovingly gaze at the shiny new boardgames in my local games store, push chits every now and then, squeeze in a game of Twilight Imperium or Last Night on Earth whenever I can, and yes, I still have a semi-regular D&D group that I belong to.  But man alive, there is nothing that gets me as excited as a small child quite like collecting miniatures.