The Regulars

I guess I finally cracked 100....
(posting on my lunch break, in case bossman is reading)

I'm 31, Minnesota 'gamer chick' (or old lady with cats). I started out 15 years ago with RPGs, moved on to boardgames when all my friends started getting old and kidletted and we could not keep a line up 2 weeks running. I accidentally got a 'temporary' job doing work for a project at a boardgame company, which lead me to get a job there. GenCon this summer marks my third year here. I'm in a bit of a weird position, in that I honestly should not comment on alot of the threads here, due to conflicts, and cross interests. I do read them, though!

I'm also a horrible MMO addict. I gave up a while ago pretending I was not. An evening for me these days involves playing internet spaceships, making faces at friends on a group webcam site and text chat, voice-over-IP chat, and a ridiculously silly involvement in a made up corporation, in a made up universe. I still try to get out a couple times a week, though. I count as friends people I have never met in person. I am luring as many of them as possible to tabletop games, and have sent F:AT to more than a couple of them.

Naturally I am not very competitive, but I really enjoy 'pissing in people's cheerios', and will often play games to monkeywrench with people who get bent out shape by losing. I am a trash talker, a troll, and will play dumb if it suits me. I have to bite my tongue alot, due to professional image. I could make Skeletor seem like an angel some days - Ironically I spend most of my day, being nice to people, apologizing at the drop of a hat, and my natural resting face is a smile. Kids and animals love me. I strongly dislike auction games, mathy crap, and multi-player solitaire. Long downtimes between turns brings out the ADD toddler in me.

Also, I call dibs on green in any game.

My name is Steve. I'm 27 and I'm a PHD student about to get a PHD in comparative politics.

I love wargames, but never really found a place to talk about wargames where people had an attitude about them that I could relate to. And where they weren't fucking pricks. Then I found the old blog, and finally came here. I suppose I've started to think of this site as my boardgame home once they expanded the site with a forum. I've started getting more and more into AT; there must be some sort of osmosis factor with this site. It would be awfully nice to have non-uptight non-prick ftf players around my area. I haven't found them, so I end up playing my insanely complex wargames with other lunatics online. Maybe one day I'll head to one of the cons and have some fun with other F:ATties. I don't have too much attitude but I do enjoy a rant and I definitely enjoy swearing and boob jokes.

28. Visual journalist interested in making a career change to get off this sinking ship none as newspapers. Live in Utah with wife and dog.

Love AT games and some Euros. Mainly into adventure games right now as it's easier to find 1-2 more players than filling out a 5-player conquest game.

Also interested in video games, comics, books, movies and general geekery. I don't really say anything outrageous or offensive, just one of the Ameritrash foot soldiers quietly doing my thing.

Citadel
28
Developmental biologist
Manchester, UK
I tend to like best the types of games I am getting to play least at any given time. At the moment, I am wanting to play CCGs.
Otherwise, I like science fiction, loud guitars and films with incomprehensible plots
Tend to make bloated generalizations
I am fairly similar online to how I am in real life except that I have a sweet, innocent face and a soothing voice so people take offence less in real life

Dogmatix/Justin: 37 yr-old, twice- (and currently still-)married, spawn-less former PhD candidate (American political history/specialized in the rise of the political right during the Cold War; Georgetown U.) who passed his comprehensive exams but just couldn't take the unbelievable bullshit that makes up 80% of an academic's life and never finished the dissertation. Got suckered into taking a job with a big gov't services/Defense contractor (that, sadly, REALLY wishes it was an enormous fucking aerospace company) that, without noticing, turned into a decade-long career.

My parents are DeadHeads going back to the earliest of early days and were teens when they got themselves "into trouble" as they used to say, which I believe makes me a real live "hippy love child." During my undergrad and early grad school days, I used to be a freelance concert critic for the Milwaukee Sentinel (back when a medium-sized city could actually support a morning and evening newspaper). Those were *grand* times.

All of the above means that a certain amount of irritating pedantry is omnipresent in my posts, for which I should probably apologize in advance. A few regulars here have met me--Ken, KingPut, IguanaDitty--and can attest that I'm pretty much the same guy here as you'd meet on the street. Except I'm taller and in better cardiovascular shape here than in real life. Yea...definitely taller...

Started as an RPGer in the mid-80s, progressed to wargames and then took a "hiatus" from 1995-2006 (my last new game purchase prior to '06 had been a fresh off the presses copy of TAHGC's Hannibal: RvC). Urging from my then GF, now wife, who was never a gamer but was always intrigued by my "back in the day" stories as well as the weird old boxes with Stern White Men on their covers that dot my bookshelves, pushed me into buying a few games for us to try--Arkham Horror, Carcasonne: H&G, Gloom--and I've returned to the hobby with a bit of a scattershot "buy 'em/try 'em all and then figure out what I like" approach...

Horrified by the price of games upon my return [particularly, my first true love, wargames], I subsequently turned to picking up games at thrift stores, auctions, and the like (places I tended to frequent anyway) and trading/flipping them on ebay or at BGG [much like the classic Fight Club scene, I sell "gamers' fat asses back to them" ] to pay for my return to the hobby [bought and sold about 350 games '08 in this fashion; as well as finding more than 100 keepers that I'm still trying to wade through like AH's Kremlin; Heroquest; Dark Tower; Samurai Swords/Shogun; an *enormous* ASL collection, and others].

Euros can be fun, but so many feel like logic puzzles to me that I could solve. That sucks the life out 'em. The chaos of cards and dice, though...it makes every game new. That's why I'm here--and I'm not yet crotchety enough to be confined solely to consimworld.com.

I believe I currently hold the record for longest review ever written for F:AT (Espana 1936).

This blurb may turn out to hold the record in this thread--dunno that I'm particularly eloquent, but I do know I'm fucking wordy.

I joined F:AT a year ago this week. I was a regular poster on TOS for a few years under a different name, but for various reasons I started lurking and eventually left. I read the old blog a few times but never posted anything there. When this site opened I decided I'd try and help get the forum active so began posting here regularly and later started the Weekly Trash threads. After posting in an unmoderated forum for years before this I have a very low tolerance for forum moderation now (it'll happen to you too, just wait), which is why this place appealed to me initially.
I've had bad experiences with people taking comments online too personally so I make it a point to hide my identity now. That being said, in real life I'm actually a nice guy and use a lot less profanity. I'm in my early 30's, single, and work in the financial industry. I'm not fat, bearded, or socially retarded. I also don't live with my parents and I shower daily. I will play pretty much anything placed on the table in front of me, but I dislike efficiency games and find myself more and more disenchanted with the 20-minutes-or-less games everyone else seems to love. I'm pretty sure nobody who knows me offline reads F:AT so if you think you know me you're probably mistaken.

Death and Taxis

Hi, my name is Michael, [crowd]Hello Michael![/crowd] I’m 38 and married with two young children. I’m also a Kiwi, but unlike Southernman I haven’t been exiled yet (I’m not grumpy or old either). I work in I.T. but I am completely bored by the industry and gaming is my escape. I also have a fair amount of interest in Genealogy and Philosophy.

As a nipper I played a lot of standard board and card games with my immediate family before a close friend of mine introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons in ’84. RPG’s of various flavours became an obsession and money pit for the next 10 years. I amassed a large collection of Grenadier miniatures to supplement the D&D and painting these became a hobby in and of itself. We also played a lot of Battletech, Talisman and Diplomacy during that time and dabbled in wargaming.

In 1994, I left my small hometown to go to College and left all forms of gaming behind as well. I became a “sleeper” until 2004 when a family member bought me a couple of really boring mainstream games for Christmas. I decided to have a look in the local department store to see whether there was anything better and I spied Heroscape: Rise of the Valkyrie. Having previously been a miniatures enthusiast, I bought it purely for the miniatures alone.

WOW, what an awakening. I quickly became obsessed with the game and started buying expansions. Heroscape is extremely hard to find in NZ and the search led me to the internet which led me to Heroscapers which - through a Heroscapers podcast – led me to the Fort.

If it wasn’t for the internet, I would have been completely oblivious to the abundance of great boardgames that are out there. I have a lot of catching up to do but I am enjoying every minute of it and have the advantage of being able to draw on the experience of those who have gone before on what games are worth spending my hard-earned money on.

I really enjoy the relaxed environment of the Fort. I try not to take much of anything too seriously and I hope others don’t take any of my wisecracks too seriously either. Ultimately, what keeps me here is the fantastic writing from the likes of Michael Barnes and Matt Thrower and the insightful comments from many of the other regular posters.

I'm Van. I think the Euro/Ameri thing is more about personality than anything. As such I've declared myself Euro-trash. Pretty much have played games my whole life. My mom says she had my sister and I playing games as soon as we could hold cards in our hands. So I went from Candyland - which I'd rate a solid 7 - to Spades and Scrabble. The next big leap was a big red box with a dragon on the cover... Next came Axis and Allies, and Shogun. After being away from gaming for a bit during grad school I got back into it with new to me CCGs. That lead to discovering various and sundry web sites which led me to discovering various and sundry new games. I enjoy Euros, 18xx (and other train games), abstracts, and my beloved HeroClix.

That's about it.

Bullwinkle

I'm a Canadian, in my mid-late 30s, currently living in Toronto. I studied physics and mathematics in school and am currently teaching, although I've held many different jobs since completing my degrees. I hold much the same philosophy and lifestyle as House from House, M.D., and am aware enough to be a little alarmed by this.

I grew up with games of all kinds. I was part of the first generation that had access to video games at home (I loved my Commodore 64). My father was heavily into Avalon Hill-style board- and wargaming, and we had dozens of titles around the house to play, a few of which I've managed to hang onto. And I had a great group of friends who also played RPGs and titles like Talisman and, later, Magic.

When I moved away from home to go to university, I left my gaming friends (and gaming days) behind, except for video games, which, to this day, remain my favourite form of entertainment. I basically abandoned boardgames, and only returned to the hobby over the past year or so. But now I only play solo, because, and I'll just steal Barnes' assessment: "most board gamers are fat, lazy, bearded, middled-aged, hygenically/fashion incompetent fanny-pack and white reebok wearing aspergers/asthma sufferers with little or no chance of developing relationships outside of the hobby".

I do like board games. But I don't really care about them that much. Honestly, I'm only here for the jokes.

I live in Michigan and I'm currently in my late 30's. I studied Engineering Physics in college and currently work as a quality engineer for a company that makes emissions testing equipment (and support equipment) for the auto industry.

My gaming journey probably started in the same way that many people have with Monopoly. Countless summers spent playing Monopoly, Risk and later poker (penny ante stuff, nothing serious). Eventually I discovered D&D and played that for a number of years but my favorite RPG is the d6 Star Wars game. Then we started to play games like Talisman, Supremacy, Siege of the Citadel, Cosmic Encounter and a few others. Played Magic for a few years along with some of the better Eurogames.

Probably my favorite type of game is wargames but unfortunately can't get together with someone long enough to play them out. To get my war urge, I'll play on my PC. Recently got a PS3 and enjoy it.

I'm also working on my photography.