Tag: Fantasy Flight Games

Fantasy Flight Games at Gen Con 2014: Star Wars Armada and new X-Wing faction ships

After all that I have said this week about leadership it should be considered why I am so excited then for the 2014 Gen Con in Indianapolis, Indiana.  The event is so massive that at the Indianapolis airport where people come to that event from all over the world there is a giant welcome mat at the bottom of the escalator welcoming people to the best 4 days in gaming anywhere.  All the videos on this article should be watched so that context can be given to this text.  Nowhere else is table-top gaming so magnificently on display and the ironic thing to note is that the entire movement started underground and has now emerged as one of the largest industries the world over.  I have touted the benefits of table top strategy games at great length over the past year.  If more people played them—especially my age—and drank less—they’d find they would manage stress a whole lot better, gain greater insight into solving very complex problems, and improve their lives immensely with a balance of mythology—which every human brain craves more than food, intellectual stimulation—the exercise of thought—and bring into their adulthoods the ability to play.  It is that last thing which holds the key to success in the future of education.  Education is directly linked to play and when we are kids we learn a lot through playing.  When we stop playing as adolescents—we stop learning and a very slow decline begins.  Death for many people begins at age 14-15.  Life may technically end at age 70 to 80, but it begins the moment humans stop playing to keep their minds active.  It is that simple.  My love and hope during events like Gen Con is that there is a tremendous underground movement which has been completely perpetrated through online media that hinges strictly on the rebellion of “playing.”  The people who attend Gen Con and buy the products sold there have brought to their adult lives the ability to play—and thus the continued ability to learn and function.

This movement has been around for a number of years—Gen Con started in 1968—the year I was born.  It has remained relatively underground that entire time and out of the eyes of the mainstream.  You don’t see advertisements for the Fantasy Flight Games products on Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel.  At least not until now—as much as I’ve spoke about Fantasy Flight Games other products, like Arkham Horror and all the spinoffs which came from that line of H.P. Lovecraft games.  It is the very recent foray into mainstream myth like Game of Thrones and on an epic scale—Star Wars that has taken the innovative little company from Roseville, Minnesota and launched it into being one of the most influential cultural phenomena’s of the 21st century.

For me, because I love Star Wars and tactical strategy from war gaming—the best thing that has happened to me in years is the Fantasy Flight Games product X-Wing Miniatures.  I would say playing that game over the last year has vastly improved my life and taken the edge off.  I have always been an adult who still likes to play so I don’t do the normal mid-life activities like hang out on golf courses, gamble at casinos, or drink heavily—because I still enjoy playing as I did when I was a kid.  I still love learning and playing and Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures gives me that ability.  One of the best conversations I had with my brother in years was at a Long John Silver’s restaurant after church where I was able to introduce him to the game.  I brought my ships into the restaurant and showed him how the game worked on a table in the middle of lunch rush.  The game can be simple and fun—or deeply complex and ever-changing.

Outside of the Indianapolis Convention Center millions of people are setting up their Fantasy Football picks and watching news from the various NFL camps about their favorite teams.  MLB is wrapping up yet another season ahead of the World Series and busy minds mired down with social obligations root themselves passively to the distractions of those games.  But inside that same building where Fantasy Flight Games is poised to explode culturally and change those social standards they released a few things that will contribute directly to the Star Wars mythology and the way Disney handles the ownership of their franchise.  Fantasy Flight provided a demo of their X-Wing Miniatures sequel Armada. 

One of the drawbacks to the X-Wing Miniatures game is that it has so far been impossible to have the kind of large fleet battles that are so prevalent in the novels.  In the movies Revenge of the Sith and Return of the Jedi featured what these types of epic battles might look like, but only touched on the surface.  On the Hollywood Studios and Disneyland ride Star Tours the scale of the fleet ships is more adequately pronounced and riders get a real feel for what it looks like to be a small ship flying among them.  On the X-Wing Miniatures game Fantasy Flight has given some big ships to the game in a grand scale which I will talk more about in a minute.  But the need to pull back and make space for them to fit on a tabletop was needed to pull off the task of full-fledged battle and Fantasy Flight has addressed this problem with their Armada release—which hits stores during the first quarter of 2015—about the same time that Disney’s new animated series Rebels will end its first season.  FFG had the game at Gen Con and it just looks fantastic and plays very well.  For World War II enthusiast who always wanted to take the reins of General MacArthur this type of game in Armada is as close that one can ever get without actually commanding such large fleets of ships.  The core set comes with a CR90, Nebulon-B and a Victory-class Star Destroyer which is one of the smallest of the Empire’s fleet ships.  Without question Armada will allow for the construction of the really large ships in proportion to scale which will end up encompassing a foot or more of the 3’ X 6’ play area.  As the game matures there will be fleets of Victory-class Star Destroyers taking to the table and fighting it out with hoards of Rebel squadrons.  Armada was the only good answer to the many problems that were coming up from X-Wing as they extended their play to a large table-top that is only getting bigger as the game itself was pushing the boundaries to extend to a large room just to play.  Star Destroyers are a part of the Star Wars universe to such an extent that they needed to be used properly, and Armada is the only real answer.  When that game hits shelves I may never again leave my house.  I have had loads of fun playing X-Wing which involves only a few ships.  What Armada brings to the table is unfathomably interesting.

But my first love is X-Wing and the creative minds at Fantasy Flight did not disappoint.  Like last year when they released the first Huge Ships of the X-Wing Miniatures game—a CR90 and a Rebel Transport this year on the second day they announced their further additions to the Epic play format of their hot selling masterpiece.  More ships were introduced after their noon annual meeting with the public and what they revealed took the air out of Indianapolis.  Ripples of positive energy engulfed the North American continent as those not at Gen Con watched the video feed of the new bounty hunter class ships being put into the glass case at the Fantasy Flight booth.    I’ve been to many football and baseball games and I’ve never seen the kind of excitement that accompanied those announcements.

Now that Wave 6 has been announced and that it will feature a bounty hunter faction the Epic Play format for X-Wing is about to explode.  I personally find the Huge Ships extremely challenging to play with.  After juggling with the energy distribution that makes the Huge Ships work, it is difficult to put the mind back on the smaller ships flying around them.  But it takes the game of X-Wing Miniatures about as large as it can go.  From there the ships just get too big to carry around to tournaments and play on a table-top, which is why Fantasy Flight came up with the Armada game.  There is really nothing more beautiful than a 3’ X 6’ table top filled with these magnificently detailed ships that are in combat with other large ships across the table from a team of real life opponents.  The ships and games themselves are just wonderful fun to play—but it is the experiences that they give you which go unmatched.

I’ve been on plenty of adventures—even some recently this past summer.  I know what it feels like to get shot at, to be hunted—to hunt.  I know what adrenaline pumping through your body knowing the wrong move could end your life and the ramifications of that are.  And I can say that some of the best moments I have had regarding those emotions came from games of X-Wing over the last year—particularly in Epic Battles using my Rebel Transport to cross a mine field being patrolled by a never-ending stream of Imperial Tie Fighters.  That is the beauty of the game—through play those types of decisions and simulation of reality get explored.  When hard decisions are needed in real life—you don’t panic or struggle for the answer—you have it—because you had to exercise those skills just to play a game like X-Wing Miniatures.

For fathers wanting to reach their sons and daughters—I can’t think of any better bonding exercise than in playing one of these Fantasy Flight creations.  The people I have met in the gaming community tend to be married, and are happiest when their wives play with them.  And what better thing for a couple to do together—but activity—the mind enjoys the exercise and people tend to bond when they do things together.  If more people did things like play these games together, there would be a lot less divorce in the world, and a lot more happy lives not relying on drink to carry them to the next moment.  For grandparents wanting to bridge the gap between young and old, the experiences that can be gained through X-Wing Miniatures and Armada are infinitely better than sitting around in a basement running a model train around in a circle.  These games require thought and complete input from the players unlike a video game where one interacts with the environment created in a program—in these Fantasy Flight Games the miniatures only represent reality just enough to pull the mind into the plot of the game.  And it is there that mythology happens and mankind works out complicated problems.  Capitol Hill would become much more effective, since they don’t play Chess anymore over cigar smoke—if they spent an afternoon playing X-Wing Miniatures.  They might not then debate endlessly over partisan policies framed from K-Street lobbyists.  With the new Star Wars television shows and movies coming and the positioning of Star Wars Miniatures poised to meet that interest with a superior product bigger things are happening in Indianapolis than just a bunch of geeks exploding for joy over some cool new models and crafty cards.  A cultural revolution is taking place and emerging from underground which is metaphorical to the type of future that Ray Kurzweil has illustrated.  CLICK HERE TO SEE MY ARTICLE ON RAY AND WHAT HE HAS PREDICTED FOR THE FUTURE.

The emotional gap that will fill the void left by politics, economic failure, and poor philosophy and leadership throughout the 20th century is being answered at Gen Con.  So far there are only a few million who flock to the products of Fantasy Flight Games.  Even though attendance at Gen Con was epic keeping the entire building filled for the entire four days—the overall attendance is equal to that of a Superbowl game for the NFL.  This type of gaming has not yet entered the mainstream—but it is really, really close and will be fed by the Disney marketing machine through wonderful companies like Fantasy Flight Games who are already way, way, WAY out in front of the curve.  The types of philosophy and brain games being created by FFG and the way they have massaged capitalism for such positive endeavors is truly inspiring and is painting a picture of what tomorrow will look like.

The entire progressive movement was started by fewer minds at the start of the 20th century.  Those old thoughts are outdated now for really as long as there have been Gen Cons which have steadily supplied the answer to those who asked the question—isn’t there more to life than what has been offered.  Now technology and thought are at a crossroads and standing in the center is Fantasy Flight Games.  Their products offer what’s best about the human race and have the power to restore to the world a sense of purpose and fill the voids left by all the many failed social experiments.  In the game worlds of Gen Con life can begin again every time new cards are added to a deck or ships purchased to add to the X-Wing Miniatures game experience.  And with that premise is always a hope that just around the corner problems can be solved and overcome and not simply yielded to.

The reason I make so much out of the geeks who attend Gen Con is that I see in them the hope for tomorrow.  They possess in their playful curiosity about life the answers that everyone seeks the world over.  Because it is in play—not compliance–that the world advances.  And nobody makes play for adults more fun than Fantasy Flight Games.  Small things lead to big things, and FFG as shown at the 2014 Gen Con is all about the big things.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Arkham Horror: Thought invoked through mythmaking genius at Fantasy Flight Games

Taking a break from the usual heavy subjects explored at this site I have to say more about a company I have highlighted often in America who I think is having a major impact on world culture.  This is not a movie company, a video game developer or even a traditional television broadcaster—it is Fantasy Flight Games who again appear to be at the absolute top of their field.  I was at my favorite game store—Nostalgic Ink, in Mason, Ohio buying my son-in-law some expansion ships for our X-Wing Miniatures game which is a Fantasy Flight creation which I have raved about often.  I had my grandson with me so he wanted to walk around the store looking at all the other products, which I of course allowed him to do.  While looking elsewhere in the store I ran across the Fantasy Flight Game Arkham Horror which looked fabulous and further impressed me with what Fantasy Flight has been doing in the realm of gaming.

These types of games are a participatory mythology—meaning they allow players to jump into a scenario and live the values of a mythology.  These games unlike everything else in society are all about recognizing value instead of evading it—so there isn’t any escape from the process of assessment.  I wasn’t a fan of these kinds of things until my nephews and son-in-law brought them back into my life last summer while on vacation.  While I don’t enjoy traditional board games like Monopoly and most of the games on the Target gaming shelf dealing with contemporary matters, I do love these mythology based games in that they are like novels lived in the field of time and space which have uncertain outcomes.

The Arkham Horror game attracted my attention because it deals with the Roaring Twenties and involves horror, monsters, and ancient secrets.  Of course it is this time period I love which featured near perfect capitalism and a wonderful President in Calvin Coolidge, so the time period itself is interesting as a backdrop for such a story.  At Nostalgic Ink we were in a time crunch so I didn’t buy the game as of yet, but I will at the next available moment.  It plays up to eight people in a cooperative play which would do well in my family.  We had a birthday party for that same son-in-law who is very skilled with these games.  It’s impressive to watch him.  At the party several groups broke off and played games, some in the house, some outside set up around the pool, some out under a shade tree.  One of the games was Magic the Gathering which I’ve seen quite a lot, the other was my son-in-law’s new Game of Thrones card game again by Fantasy Flight Games.  I watched a bit of that game and again it was another amazing creation by Fantasy Flight with the usual quality in game pieces and such detailed manuals, card design, and even box artwork.

I had been wondering if Fantasy Flight was just freakishly good at game design with their X-Wing series—because it’s Star Wars and thus sells well.   But after seeing what they did with the Game of Thrones card game I’m convinced that it is just the nature of the company.  Any doubts I had about buying The Arkham Horror game evaporated in that instant.  The gaming that night at our house went well into the night well past the time my wife and I went to bed—so my family would love Arkham Horror.

During a typical day when things sometimes seem overwhelmingly difficult—and impossible—I take a minute and visit the Fantasy Flight Games website to see what’s going on new—which every day appears to be something.  I enjoy reading the game forums for X-Wing and it actually relaxes my mind.  This is distinctively different from the typical escapism, evasion tactics of something like a baseball game, or Fantasy Football—which does similar things for a more mainstream audience.  For me, and my love of mythology, these games are just marvelous.

Walking the aisles at Nostalgic Ink the owner does a great job of displaying all his vast collection of games—most of them are like these Arkham Horror, and Game of Throne games.  These are different from traditional board games like Life, Candyland, or card games like Uno.  They have the added element of plot and story to accentuate the randomness of a dice role—and are quite intriguing.  If I had time, I’d like to play one of each kind of game in Nostalgic Ink.  My grandson not yet two years of age already understands that there is something special about the place, he enjoys the colors on the boxes displaying all the bizarre artwork and wanted to look at everything.  It’s a very stimulating atmosphere much like how book stores used to feel minus the references to popular culture—which is often distracting when you need a break from it.

It cannot be ignored that people who play these types of Fantasy Flight Games enjoy thinking.  My son-in-law certainly embodies that trait—he loves to think and in the realm of those games—is a maestro.  But what’s better is the plot and advancement of intrigue that makes the experience like a shared novel.  In a high-tech age such as what we live in now, it is just wonderful to see such a low tech—creative—and traditional format of storytelling that has emerged as powerfully as Fantasy Flight Games has done over these last few years.  I was already a fan because of their X-Wing Miniatures work, but their efforts don’t end there.  It is unlikely that I would have ever stepped into Nostalgic Ink if not to purchase my first B-Wing fighter in the September of 2013.  Since then, I have been there often and now find myself going there to primarily buy gifts for other people.  But for me X-Wing Miniatures has been a gateway to the rest of the Fantasy Flight Games product line.  It is what they are doing now that will still have meaning many years from now when I want to play the same games with my future grandchildren and other family members who will grow up to love those games.  I remember the kind of things I loved growing up and to a large extent, I still love those things.  Video games and tech related entertainment has a dated feel that cheapens those experiences over time as improvements come out in future years.   But these Fantasy Flight Games products will still have the magic of their appeal hundreds of years from now because the root of their effort is in the great presentation of their material– the invocation of thought as their mechanism into story telling.  And it is in the stories of our society that the truths we all seek reside—whether realistic, or fantasy based, it is the process of thought which the human race most seeks.  And Fantasy Flight Games has their pulse on the importance of thought—and that makes them for my money one of the best companies on earth creating one of the most important needs humans have aside from food and clothing—mythology.


Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Fantasy Flight Games Does It Again: Wave 5 release to include a YT-2400!

In the context of my lifelong interest in global mythology and comparative religion, I see all the news coming out about Star Wars as infinitely good in so many ways.  When Harrison Ford was injured recently filming the new Star Wars Episode 7 movie, the world stopped as he was airlifted to the hospital in England.  With all the news going on globally, terrorists taking over Iraq, Obama’s parade of scandals, election impact of new blood in the Republican Party, it was Harrison Ford’s injury which captured the headlines of virtually every news source.  Some of that is deliberate misdirection, but a lot of it is genuine interest, and concern for a mythology which touches the heart of so many people. On the same day as this terrible news about Harrison Ford, who will bounce back from such things as he always does—came the latest news from Fantasy Flight Games popular X-Wing Miniatures game.  For Father’s Day my wife hosted a big party for our family, which was wonderful.  But much of the best parts of it were the weekend of playing X-Wing Miniatures with the people who came.

Every time I turn around starting about a year ago, Fantasy Flight Games has been improving their product line.  What they are doing with X-Wing Miniatures is cutting edge stuff that is launching tabletop gaming into a whole new dimension.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  There have been for years great games like Warhammer, Dungeons and Dragons, and Magic the Gathering, but this effort with X-Wing Miniatures is game changing.  As the new films hit the marketplace and return to the mind of society in general as part of their daily dialogue—which is already happening, this Fantasy Flight Games production of X-Wing Miniatures is about to explode.  Mythologically speaking, I think FFG’s relatively new game is the best vehicle to express and maintain new mythological trends that exist.  It is more powerful than novels, more relevant than the films themselves, and more participatory than video games.  Playing the game does essentially what some of the highest minds in the world do at Esalan at the Mythological Roundtable sponsored by the Joseph Campbell Foundation.  X-Wing Miniatures recreates myth and allows players to directly participate actively, as opposed to passively.  They take control of their own mythology, which is what I think is the key to the success of the Fantasy Flight Games venture.

http://www.jcf.org/new/index.php

During Father’s Day my family played the game extensively, and as we played we talked heavily about the new ships coming out in Wave 4, in just a few weeks, and we discussed the very exciting news about Wave 5 set to hit the marketplace later this year—2014.  The most exciting news of that announcement is the YT-2400 from the old video game Shadows of the Empire from Nintendo 64.   That particular ship will go well with my Millennium Falcon to cause all kinds of trouble in a game that has become a mild obsession.  Here is the press release from Fantasy Flight Games published as news poured out to the world the Harrison Ford would quickly recover from his injury.

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of two new starships for X-Wing™!

In this, the game’s fifth wave, two large starships arrive ready for the heat of battle: the Rebellion’s YT-2400 and the Imperial’s VT-49 Decimator.

In addition to their starships, each of which is sculpted faithfully at the game’s standard 1/270 scale, the YT-2400 Freighter Expansion Pack and VT-49 Decimator Expansion Pack introduce a host of new upgrades and terrain pieces that allow you to explore a wide range of new tactics in your space battles.

You’ll also find a large cast of characters drawn from the expanded Star Wars universe, the first Imperial turret weapon, and upgrade cards designed by the game’s first two World Champions.

YT-2400 Freighter Expansion Pack

A fast and resilient light freighter, the YT-2400 features no fewer than thirteen weapon emplacement points, making it an attractive vessel for smugglers, mercenaries, and other individuals looking for a heavily armed “transport.” Although a stock YT-2400 light freighter has plenty of space for cargo, much of that space is often annexed to support modified weapon systems and oversized engines.

The YT-2400 Freighter Expansion Pack brings this formidable light freighter to your table as a Rebel starship with two attack, two agility, five hull, and five shields.

The highlight of the YT-2400 Freighter Expansion Pack is its detailed miniature starship, which is enhanced by one new mission, three debris cloud tokens, a maneuver dial, all requisite tokens, and four ship cards, including one for the famed smuggler Dash Rendar.

VT-49 Decimator Expansion Pack

To be granted command of a VT-49 Decimator is seen as a significant promotion for a middling officer of the Imperial Navy. A heavily armed transport, the VT-49 Decimator is one of the Empire’s most feared warships, often used to provide long-range reconnaissance or to deploy raiding parties past enemy forces.

The VT-49 Decimator Expansion Pack brings this intimidating Imperial gunboat to X-Wing as the game’s largest ship yet designed for Standard Play. Even at the game’s signature 1/270 scale, the expansion pack’s detailed miniature towers over its base and smaller starfighters.

In addition to its imposing, pre-painted miniature, the VT-49 Decimator Expansion Pack introduces four ship cards, three debris cloud tokens, a new mission, a maneuver dial, and all the tokens you need to fly your Decimator into the thick of combat. Finally, you’ll find thirteen upgrade cards, which introduce a variety of crew members like Mara Jade and Fleet Officer designed to help you fill out the Decimator’s three crew member slots.

 

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4869

X-Wing Miniatures as it stands today is one of the coolest games on the market.  I have never seen something like it which has united my family the way it has—from young to old and all economic groups.  Everyone who plays the game loves the game—even if they aren’t very good at it.  I would say that is because of the strength of the mythological nature of it—it pulls players into a story which they control, and that is what separates it away from novels, movies, and video games.  In those forums, participants simply unlock what someone else created, but with X-Wing Miniatures, Fantasy Flight Games simply provides the tool box–the players use the tools for their own stories.

In my personal story arc, I’m a YT guy in every way possible—and to get my hands on a YT-2400 that barrel rolls and has a turret that can equip a secondary weapon is extremely powerful.  This will be the build that replaces the twin Falcons and with the meta game moving away from TIE swarms and toward the devastating aspects of Whisper who flies the upcoming Phantom Wave 4 ship shooting with 4 dice.  The game is getting faster and more maneuverable.  Rebel ships can’t just sit around with no agility waiting to get picked off.  They will also have to be able to shoot every turn just to survive the weapons the Imperial players are throwing at them—and that is where the fun begins.  Figuring out those types of problems and letting the mythology play out based on the thought of the players.

I think this game X-Wing Miniatures will replace Monopoly as the newest, hottest selling game that brings families to the kitchen table to play—because as the new films hit the market over the next 6 years, and the new Rebels television show on Disney XD gains in popularity, the innovation created by Fantasy Flight Games will have hit critical mass and the general population will find themselves every bit as addicted to the sheer joy that the game brings—only for them the learning curve will be steep.  What started as a simple game with just a few ships has turned into a very complex web of tactical entertainment with a seemingly infinite combination of strategic options which can keep a mind occupied for years.  But beyond that—there is a story to this game which has more power than Chess, all the ambition of a novel, and more edge of the seat excitement than a year’s worth of video games—and the new additions never stop coming—the most exciting for me yet is the YT-2400.

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Why Pay For A Public Education System That Doesn’t Work: The evidence of a ‘Water’s World’ segment

I blame public education and modern colleges for many of our contemporary problems because they deserve it. They have not earned such high wages for teachers and college professors as they are currently receiving because they are failing at their jobs.  I hear all the time from teachers who think I am being unfair to them, and should show respect for their professions.  They also continue to state that they are overworked and underpaid which is completely ridiculous at this point—as I have labeled most teachers in public education as very expensive baby sitters.  Kids are not learning anything in public schools and colleges.  They are only learning how to take directions, they are not learning to think, and that is a massive failure in any education system.  For proof, this segment of Water’s World done during the Bill O’Reilly show shot during Memorial Day Weekend provides all anyone needs to confirm my statements.  Those poor children featured are the future of America.  They are future voters and decision makers—and they will as shown—fail at life.  They aren’t able in their present form to even raise a child let alone run a nation with the massive wave of problems coming at them.   Watch the segment for yourself.

That is just disgraceful, and most of those kids are proud of their stupidity.  It’s cool to them to be so dumb.  Hey—I remember what it was like.  Even when I was in school the way to pick up girls was to act like you didn’t know anything.  It was like putting on a muzzle and within a few weeks of dating, they learned quickly that I knew a lot and it scared the crap out of them.  No matter how good-looking you might be, if you were smart, they were not interested.  I remember specifically, even though I was married there was a very pretty girl who wanted desperately to date me.  She practically threw herself at my feet every day I saw her.  Being loyal to my wife, I kept her at arms bay which was sometimes difficult—until one day she told me that Jurassic Park was the dumbest movie she had ever seen.  She said to me, “who wants to watch a bunch of dinosaurs running around?”  Then she laughed as though I would follow her lead in the conversation.  I told her I would.  We never spoke again.   Those are common experiences with people and I have seen it all my life, and it starts in public school at the kindergarten level.  I don’t think any teacher believes they are contributing to such stupidity—but the system they teach mandated by the state creates such a lack of curiosity in young people as shown in young women like the attractive seductress mentioned.

People wonder why I married so young when so many pretty girls were available and there was so much fun to be had.  When my wife and I married I was 19 and she was 18.  Parents on both sides thought we were suffering from a mother/father complex where we found in each other extensions of our home life as we were moving out into the world on our own.  Well, that was an inaccurate assessment if there ever was one.  What my wife and I shared was a love of thinking.  She loved to think, and so did I and neither one of us wanted to waste our time on stupid people, and playing stupid just so we could date members of the opposite sex.

Public schools breed a lack of curiosity about life.  This behavior extended into college which we both detested—obviously in the case of the Water’s World segment it was the University of Maryland that was failing.  Any child who arrives at age 18 to 19 as those kids are and is still that stupid about the world—it is not their fault—it is the fault of their parents and teachers who failed to inspire in them a love of learning and curiosity about life.    I have never forgotten the Jurassic Park comment from the attractive girl.  She went on to have a series of bad relationships and ended up being a stripper at New York New York in Franklin, Ohio.  What I knew of her was that her father left her mother when she was very little for another woman and she barely knew anything of him.  As a result of that unhealthy relationship, she had a father complex.  She was filling her life with people who filled the father role in her life—but she was ultimately attracted to abuse.  She was not able to even consider a healthy relationship due to her unfortunate past leaving all her contact with other males to be superficial.  At the time Jurassic Park came out and I mentioned it favorably she didn’t understand.  I have heard the same kind of comments from people about Star Wars, Star Trek, and most films and books that inspire thinking.  Because I didn’t look “geeky” girls would seek me out as potential company, but after just a little inquiry, they learned that I’m not like them and they’d move on to someone else.  My wife and I got married not just because we fell in love, but because neither of us wanted to play that stupid game.  We are both the kind of people who would expect to be five for five if interviewed by Jesse Waters and would expect nothing less.  It would ruin our day to miss one of those questions—because we care about knowing things.

Without a curiosity about life, there cannot be any success and the kids interviewed during the Water’s World segment have no chance at success in life.  The girl in that thong who giggled at all her missed questions—she will not raise good kids and have a good life.  She may manage to snag some rich slob who will leave his old wife for a new younger one, and the thronged girl may live in a big house, drive a big new car and have diamond jewelry—but she will look like a dirty rug by the time she’s 35, and she’ll be alone and bitter—no longer giggling her way through life—because the elements to her future failure are already in motion provided to her by her education up to that point.  It is a serious problem.

Women are taught as young girls in their public schools to seduce young boys.  Because teachers are teaching everyone to be the same, the only way to lure boys to girls once puberty kicks in is to give them bits of sex—which is taught in sex education as early as the fourth grade these days.  Once that happens the neat little children who had been building cars and airplanes out of Lego blocks and watching lots of educational television on Nickelodeon and Disney Channel begin learning to shut down their creativity and channel their energy into dumbing themselves down for potential sexual partners.  By the time children turn 10 to 11 years old, most of them find their minds destroyed by public education methods that have only taught them the basic low-level ambitions such as food acquisition, sexual release, and general social skills—which are already instinctual.

Movies like Jurassic Park are not one of the most beloved blockbusters of all time because people didn’t like it.   That girl who spoke despairingly about it to me likely would have enjoyed it as a little girl—before her puberty years when there was still a curiosity about the world.  She probably did like it when she saw it with her eventual children.  But during the mating game, which her life was so much about—she couldn’t let herself enjoy such things because the guys she had been talking to up until that time, and after also played stupid with her—and got so good at it after 10 years that they just stopped thinking.  They do such a thing to themselves because sex with young girls like the girls in the Water’s World segment is impossible if they show too much ambition of thought.

Finally, I raved yesterday about my positive experiences at Yottaquest where I played in an X-Wing Tournament.  One thing that was missing in those places was women.  There were no pretty girls coming in and playing X-Wing.  But the guys who were playing had already decided in their lives that they didn’t care for such things.  Most of them were married for much the same reason my wife and I married.   They don’t want to play the game of being stupid to have sexual partners.  Once you are married, you can share your intelligence with your partner and be free of the foolishness of single life stupidity which is staged during the public education experience.  I have two daughters and they are very attractive—but they enjoy places like Yottaquest because as a father I always taught them how not to be like that poor girl who hated Jurassic Park.  Such girls will never land a good guy in her life which she can share her real thoughts.  It’s not a mystery, I taught my children to be curious and full of lifelong learning—and Jurassic Park is one of their favorite movies—and their husbands are grateful for it.  Stupidity is shackles for the mind—and is just as limiting as literal shackles on arms and legs.

The seeds for thought are planted in children very young by their parents.  If the parents are not very good, the children will suffer.  But even parents who do plant the seeds of lifelong curiosity find their children have those seeds extracted by the public education process and destroyed.  By the time kids reach 12 to 15 years old their minds are gone—mentally and destined to be like the kids from Maryland College.  There are a few kids who escape and I find them in places like Yottaquest on a Saturday afternoon, or at an X-Wing Miniatures event—or playing Magic the Gathering in a booth at Trader’s World.  But for most people, they are destined to be like that poor girl who didn’t like Jurassic Park—who had lost the adventure of learning too early in her life to save her from future tragedy.  Not that liking Jurassic Park would have helped her with me, my wife already had me, but she could have met another good-hearted person who could have enriched her life.  Instead, she is old and bitter, and all used up as just another former has been for a series of dimwitted males crippled in their minds from an insufficient public education that destroys most of the people it processes.

So why are we paying for such a stupid thing to happen with tax dollars?

Rich Hoffman

  www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Assault at Imdaar Alpha: The TIE Phantom is clearly the new dominate ship

I had the fortunate opportunity recently to spend the day with one of my son-in-laws who has brought to our family something very unique.  He is a tabletop gamer and a rather good one, and the more I have come to know him, and watch him over the years I  have learned of an important social trend that along with many other things is changing our social fabric.  One year ago while on vacation in Florida, he and two of my nephews convinced me to play a Dungeon and Dragons type game called HeroScape which had been out of print for some time but my nephews actually had it. I enjoyed the experience as the ocean beat at the beach outside our condo balcony but saw something else sparkling in their minds while playing that I thought was very positive.  Just a few weeks later while looking for a copy of the game on eBay I saw that Fantasy Flight Games had just created a Star Wars game called X-Wing Miniatures.  So I picked it up as it was a brand new game at that time and started playing it with my table-top gifted son-in-law.

After so many years of shouting to the wind regarding politics, business, and other enterprises that always point to the same human failures and finding the temptation to become bitter about it very overwhelming—I have immersed myself into this new X-Wing Miniatures game at a level that made me want to participate in my first ever tournament for X-Wing which took place all over the world during the last weekend of May 2014.  Before the tournament, just to get a feel for how things would be I was watching footage from a German group of players as the time zones were that far ahead of my location in the Eastern United States.  It was truly a global event which centered around another mythic relic from my past experienced with those same aforementioned nephews.  These tournaments were played in gaming stores—in Cincinnati it was Yottaquest in Mt. Healthy which held the regional.  My son-in-law and I played in it and it was a wonderful experience.  The main thing that attracted me to this one was that it was named Assault on Imdaar Alpha and provided an opportunity to see the new ships coming out for Wave 4 specifically featuring the TIE Phantom.

I ran across the term Imdaar Alpha during the 90s playing a game with my nephews when they were little boys called Rebel Assault II.  The nephew who had the HeroScape game in Florida last summer used to stay up with me playing Star Wars: X-Wing and its sequel—Tie Fighter all night on the weekends—which was a computer flight simulator, and of course we played Rebel Assault nearly burning a hole in the CD disk that played over and over in the newly formed home PCs at the time.  So these names were familiar to me.

imageImdaar Alpha was a moon of Imdaar. Grand Admiral Martio Batch had a massive research station there which was fastened on the most part of one of the moon’s hemispheres. It developed an advanced cloaking device and the first of the TIE Phantoms. However the moon appeared empty since the station itself made use of the cloaking technology, being thus invisible.

The moon lost a significant part of its mass when the Imperial facility exploded.

The TIE Phantom, also referred to as a Phantom V38, was a prototype TIE series starfighter developed by the Galactic Empire during the Galactic Civil War. A modified V38 assault fighter, the TIE Phantom was the result of a development project led by Grand Admiral Martio Batch and was equipped with both deflector shieldsand a hyperdrive, along with a technology not seen for decades—a stygium cloaking device.

The development process began in response to the Rebel victory at the Battle of Yavin. After some initial troubles, Batch was able to secure a supply of the stygium crystals required by the cloaking device, and the fighters entered production on Imdaar Alpha. When the testing process was completed following the Battle of Hoth, Darth Vader intended to use the new starfighter in a devastating assault on the Rebel Alliance Fleet. However, over a series of encounters, the Rebels learned of the new threat. Recognizing the danger, the Alliance dispatched pilots Rookie One and Ru Murleen to capture one of the fighters for study.

The Rebels successfully infiltrated the Super Star Destroyer Terror as it prepared to launch the fighters against the Alliance and escaped with one of them, which they used to destroy both the Terror and the facility where the fighters were produced. However, the Rebels’ acquisition of the fighter was short-lived—when the stolen TIE Phantom’s self-destruct mechanism activated before the Rebels could examine the fighter, the technology was lost.

 http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Imdaar_Alpha

Fast forward to the Fantasy Flight event nearly 15 years later taking place all over the world at the same time and it was obvious that the makers of the new tabletop game loved the old video games as much as I did and have carried over the mythology explored there into this new—and better X-Wing Miniatures game.  So with all those events culminating together, I attended my first tournament and found layers of hope in the back room of Yottaquest in the players I met during the event.  I learned a lot of cool little tricks that I had not even considered until competition brought the issues to the surface.  But most pleasurable to me was in seeing how much reading comprehension goes on at these events from the players.  I had been to gaming stores like Yottaquest because I have went to them with my kids a few times, but while playing in that tournament I was impressed by the level of reading comprehension that the players who averaged from their late 20s to mid-30s displayed and it was obvious that the recent explosion in tabletop gaming which Yottaquest represents is satisfying the deep human yearning for participatory mythology that cannot be experienced by just passively watching a movie—or even reading a book. X-Wing like the other games at Yottaquest is a recent rendition of pure mythology which is my primary interest due to my own background in comparative mythology through the Joseph Campbell Foundation.  The players all shared a love for mythology as the game experience pulled them into that world to resolve a story driven by human need—not fulfilled by any other social mechanism.image

After watching the final match between the store’s best two players that day, it was clear that out of the four new ships coming out during the upcoming Wave 4 release from Fantasy Flight Games that the TIE Phantom was the dominate ship.  It is firing five dice at Range 1 with a gunner and a cloaking device.  In the game I watched, it easily tore through the other ships flown by a very good player.  It was obvious that once again, Fantasy Flight Games has managed to up the bar with their tabletop gaming experience and the new latest trend will be those TIE Phantoms.  Three of those flying in formation will be terribly hard to beat—but that is the fun of the game after all—seeing what your opponent puts on the table and figuring out ways to beat it with all the variables available.

For me, it was wonderful to step away from the world of problems which is a daily burden and live in a functioning mythology with my son-in-law and those other X-Wing game players in that back room of Yottaquest.  We had a uniquely bottled Coke imported from Mexico and enjoyed watching that final match learning more in just that one day than I had managed to learn over the whole previous year about some of the nuances of the game itself—that can only be realized through competition.  If I were in my mid-twenties and did not have nearly the amount of responsibility that I do now, I would be inclined to travel the world playing in those types of tournaments every weekend—I enjoyed it that much.  There wasn’t anything like that around when I was that age, not at this level.  Places like Yottaquest and games like X-Wing are a fairly new invention driven purely by human desire for a mythic experience and I love it enough to spend as much of my time as possible experiencing them.

imageBut the early scouting report is that the TIE Phantom will be dominate—very much so.  If I were an Imperial player—which I’m not, I’d get four of them.  Likely, I will get that many anyway just to practice against—because they will be hard to beat with their clocking device which grants two extra evasion dice when used.  But their sheer firepower is so far the best in the game—which is saying a lot.  They will have to be countered with pilots of a high rating shooting decent firepower at close range—and that will be a challenge.  But that is what is wonderful about events like Assault at Imdaar Alpha and the world of X-Wing Miniatures in general.  This game is far more enjoyable than the old video games and the interaction with other players also on similar mythic journeys is unique and indicates a major change in human value that is very positive.  It gives me hope where it is difficult to find elsewhere.

Rich Hoffman   www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com

 

Assault on Imdaar Alpha: Hope for mankind’s future in tabetop gaming

My regular readers usually don’t give articles like this one much notice—but often I gain new ones who aren’t specifically interested in philosophy or politics.  However, I would recommend for everybody to consider this topic because of the vast reach and scope of it which will conclude with an article tomorrow about gambling.  There is a changing paradigm of social behavior which is unmistakable and positive and deserves some attention.  We spend a lot of time complaining about the effects of long-established social causes, but seldom identify new causes before they take hold and the effects they bring with them.

I have written as reference more than once my intense love of the new tabletop game Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures.  To my view Fantasy Flight Games who produces that game is simply one of the best companies of its kind anywhere in the world.  Over this past week the new rules for their Epic Play formats was released and a good indication of the direction of the game was provided.  The much talked about Rebel Transport expansion shipped early from Barnes and Noble and within a week people like me who have had pre-orders out there for a while will receive their ships.  I can genuinely say that I am very excited about it.

Also a Wave 4 set of expansion ships is hitting at the start of June and Fantasy Flight Games is sponsoring a tournament as a chance to win first dibs on the lucrative new ships.  So I signed up to participate and realized quickly how vast this new game is across the world as I looked up the list of participating stores near my home.  It was actually quite astonishing to me because it allowed me to see just how popular this game is not just in The United States, but throughout the world.  You can see for yourself at the link below and preview some of the ships from Wave 4.  The participating countries are Belgium, Canada, France, Ireland, Romania, Slovakia, The United Kingdom, and The United States.  And we’re not talking about just a few stores; each country has dozens if not hundreds of participating stores.  Just in Cincinnati for instance, there are two not counting additional stores in Dayton and Columbus.  So getting into the tournament called Assault on Imdaar Alpha is not difficult.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_npm_sec.asp?eidm=219&esem=2&epmi=s

I had a particularly rough series of days this past week and to calm down I found myself shuffling through the game cards that I have for X-Wing Miniatures thinking about the squad that I wanted to enter into the upcoming tournament.  I found in the cards a soothing quality which made sense to me.  The pilot rating cards clearly establish the value of that particular character and the overall mythology of Star Wars plays largely in the context of how each ship is used under different circumstances.  But the operative word was value—it was refreshing to look at a card from Fantasy Flight Games and establish the value of a game character with the stats presented.

I pretty much picked my squad for the tournament, but the experience of doing it was actually relieving because of the exercise of value associated with the task.  Others across the world are doing the same thing for the same reasons.  The reason this is important is because of the modern trend pushed in public schools throughout the world has attempted to present this ideal that all people are equal no matter what their effort is, their skill, and all associated characteristics.  We know now in hindsight that this desire for equality is a task perpetuated by communists for years and this is how such a thing came to our public schools.  Yet society is rejecting such notions through their art—their movies, their reading material, and especially in the games they play.

The X-Wing Miniatures game is not just an American game, although it is an American invention.  It is growing in popularity enormously since I first started writing about it, and is about to explode.  For years I have watched with a level of suspicion how gamers played Magic the Gathering and other types of games with great intensity.  I knew that the reason they did such a thing was because the fantasy of the game was something that was more appealing than the options presented in real life.  I never enjoyed card games and board games much—especially games like Poker because of their association with gambling—which I personally despise.  But I do love stories and mythology and I see these new games which were just being invented when I was a kid with Dungeons and Dragons, quickly taking over the old games—which is good.

I have often listened for hours the broadcasts of the Cincinnati Reds and wondered how many grown adults found the stats of the baseball players so endlessly fascinating yet turned around and supported socialism in their workplaces, their education institutions, and even their families.  Each game in baseball is pretty meaningless in the context of plot—yet broadcasters have found ways to make every game sound compelling.  I have also watched for years gamblers obsessed with horse racing, dog racing, NASCAR racing and willing to spend their entire paychecks on a gamble as to who will win and how.  I now see that changing among the new generations—starting with my age group on down.

This new form of gaming is centered on mythology.  Each game of X-Wing Miniatures forces players to embark in a kind of story during their play.  The value of the cards drive the dialogue—for instance a typical squad build for me is one called within the gaming community as a “Han Shoots First.”  It is because Han Solo has such a high pilot rating and typically gets to shoot first during the combat phase of game play.  This build involves the Millennium Falcon and one or two ships of lesser pilot value to provide wingman support. Just the construction of that build creates a storyline which must be played out, whereas in Poker or Blackjack there is only the value on the card which a player then uses to their advantage or not depending on circumstances.  In these new games the same thing is happening, but there is much more to it—mythology is a part of the experience and that driver of the drama in these stories is brought about because of values that must be attributed.

It is for this reason that I am absolutely salivating over the arrival of my huge Rebel Transport.  Just this past week Fantasy Flight Games published the new rules for using the “Huge Ships” in game play and after reading them I was immensely impressed.  X-Wing Miniatures is very interesting to play and it is ever evolving.  It literally changes every three months and this seems to be the appeal of these new games over the old ones.  Check out some of those rules for yourself at the following link:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4775

The reason that Baseball is declining in America is because the new generations cannot relate to it.  The game is too slow and the plots of the game do not provide an entertainment value that can compete with games like Magic the Gathering and now X-Wing Miniatures.  While baseball a few years ago looked the other way to allow Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa to fight it out with a season long steroid driven home run derby, the passion for the game really didn’t exceed beyond the borders of The United States.  Japan took to the drama, but really, nobody else could relate.   However in just a year, Fantasy Flight Games has published a game that has people lining up for weekend long tournaments all over the world—and it isn’t just because a movie which is three decades old is so popular, but because players can immerse themselves in a storyline that reflects their values.  The very act of playing such a game is an exercise of identifying value—and this translates directly to the real world.

Most of the people who play X-Wing Miniatures are smart.  They love to think.  The whole premise of such a game is to think.  It’s not based on random luck, or the hope that a passive third-party will be successful and garner victory for the bet placer, X-Wing Miniatures is all about participating in a mythology that is very similar to reading—but exists in a kind of in-between world where the storyline is the responsibility of the players.  Players are responsible for making their own drama, their own stories—and the stories are value driven.  In order to be successful, players must learn to ascertain values.  This is a tremendous new element to recreational gaming.  The participants aren’t passive, but are in fact very active in that process which is why these games are so vastly popular.

It is why I sought those cards after a rough week; it is why people all over the world are looking forward to tournament play for the Wave 4 ships, and why people like me everywhere are watching their mailboxes for the new Rebel Transport.  Many of our modern problems are due to the fact that the games the previous generations played often put the burden of decision-making on randomness and passive participation—such as guessing the outcome of a gambling scenario be it horse racing or a roulette wheel.  Players of those types of games have also voted in their republics in the same manner—they have passively participated then grumbled when the results did not go in their favor. These new gamers, the X-Wing players are “active.”  By watching how this new Fantasy Flight Games invention has taken off—literally, the people who play that game will have a much different role in their future decision-making endeavors—such as how they vote, and who they vote for in democratic elections.  And it gives me assurance to know that the mistakes of the past will not proceed into the future which makes X-Wing players some of my favorite people anywhere.  Their numbers are likely already greater than those in any Tea Party activity and is expanding by the day.  They represent a new demographic that will approach the future with a new sophistication that simply wasn’t present at any point in the past prior to the 1970s.

In 1974 Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson first published Dungeons and Dragons and have since grown into over a billion dollars in sales.  It was the first tabletop strategic game of its kind.  Star Wars: X-Wing is the natural evolution of this gaming type and evidence that human beings in all their vast capacity to think and imagine—can actually create recreation to heal themselves—as a species.  Because that is what these games represent to me—healing—they bring to the human mind what it most desires, to think, to assess value, and to create their own storylines.  And I can’t think of anything more valuable than that—and I love to see that America is exporting to the rest of the world something that does such things in a positive and creative way.  I am really looking forward to the Assault on Imdaar Alpha.

Rich Hoffman   www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com