Big game, Little Game

Okay, so hell has frozen over and GW has dropped a whole slew of their main line product prices. Some of the popular but 1-off purchase pieces have gone up a tad, but in the greater scheme of things, a GW buyer will spend a significant amount less than they used to. Best of all, the prices were dropped right when the Canadian dollar was at it's best and then shortly thereafter it dropped like a stone. why is this good for a store in Canada carrying GW? because it means that Canadian buyers will have to litterally spend close to $500 dollars at a time just to save money by buying at US Trash dealers who's prices have all gone up relative to Canadian buying power. Now this still sucks since every other company that Canadaina LGSes buy from in the states has effectively had a price increase put on them, so you'll see products from companies like Privateer Press, Fantasy Flight Games and even european games with US distributors go up in price.

So what's the Game of the future? Well I think we're being played here since we've all been keen of building huge armies with very expensive models. Now more is less my friends and that means skirmish. I thank the Great gods of Kobol for having bought my 3000pt of space wolves way back when since today I think spending that kind of money is a little foolish. Privateer Press now makes the biggest game I'm willing to invest in since a full army can cost as little as $200CDN. Aside from that I'm going to keep my eye on the likes of Anima Tactics, Infinity, Alkemy and Dark Age.

Anima Tactics is a great game that I got into simply because I thought one of it's models was a very good sculpt. It's a very fast, very intuitive game that uses action points and feel a lot like a game of warmachine with all warcasters (which would be awesome). Playing once character at a time means you don't wait long to be doing something and you can do counters, dodges and interrupts on your opponents turn so there really is no time you should be waiting around doing nothing. If you want to know more about the minis go here, and if you want to download the free starter rules it's in the download subsection of the minis section here. They've also got a very active forum up and running where you can find pictures and rules and mindless conversation about which chick models are the hottest here.

Infinity is a Sci-fi game that I once lamented would probably never exist outside of Europe (btw I'm moving there as soon as I can, just for the gaming communities) and I've been happily proven wrong. I've found a US distributor and I'm bringing in some starter packs and a few choice models. I've seen some of the models live and they really are as beatuifully done as they look on the website. I don't know the game mechanics since I havent played a game, and the Free to download FULL rules simply too complex to understand without playing the game. Still I'm very excited at the Black-Op feel of the game and the fluff and I think I'd buy the minis even if the game sucked. Luckily there seems to be some good battle reports out there and from what I've seen the game doesnt get bogged down in abstract rules situations where the battle is between special rules as opposed to bashin' each other's heads out (I'm looking at you Warhammer Fantasy). Everything you want to know about infinity can be found here.

Now I don't know the first thing about Alkemy other than that the models are Beatifully done and the story line is very origional. I've only started looking at these models and I can't wait to see what else they do. They have free to download Rules for each army and the game itself but I can't for the life of me understand it all without playing it so I'll leave that up to you. I think this game has a lot of potential and we should keep our eyes on it.

I have to be honest with you and say that I don't like the feel or look of Dark Age, since some of the models look poorly done and I can't for the life of me get excited about spikes on leather cat suits or the like. I will give credit where credit is due and say that some of their models go way beyond awesome too. The game seems to have been picking up steam for a long time and they must be doing something right because they're still around. I think you should check them out regardless since you may be into the look of these models even though I'm not (Hey nobody's perfect).

At the end of the day I think that the economic hard times that we will all undoubtedly feel while the world markets correct themselves will mean that we have less time to build paint and play. Since I for one still want to do all those things, it just means I'll want to build less models, paint less grunts, and play faster games.

I say that Skirmish is the Game of the future.