Paper or PDF?

Every now and then I’ll get an email like this one:

Hello Tim Coombes,

You can re-download SuperSystem 3 to get the latest version, the 3rd printing.

Please follow the links to download the file(s).
They will be active for you until Aug/01/2010
SuperSystem Third Edition: http://www.wargamedownloads.com/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Thank you
Greg Moore
http://www.wargamedownloads.com

This is one of the main reasons that I prefer the pdf rulebook over the paper versions.  Why bother with FAQ’s and addendums when you can just get a corrected copy of the book?

I still print out the pdf books for use at the game table as I like to highlight certain rules and passages to help when playing the games, not something I’d like to do to an actual rulebook.

I’m very keen to get my hands on an iPad or similar device so I can try that out at the game table.  Having all the rules at your fingertips in an electronic format allows you to search entire libraries for certain keywords.  Better still it allows you to look stuff up on the Internet when the rulebooks don’t seem to have the answer you’re after.  Hmmm… maybe I could buy my wife one for Christmas.

Eureka 15mm Naps Arrive

The Eureka 15mm Napoleonic miniatures arrived today.  These are great quality miniatures that require little to no cleanup.  There is detail everywhere, much more than I’m going to bother painting but the great thing is that all the usual weak points such as plumes and bayonets have been sculpted a little thicker to make them stronger.  Which will help since these are going to get a bit of handling being used for skirmish gaming.

I was going to use 20mm washers for the infantry and 30mm for the cavalry but decided to go down a slightly different path.

They’re maybe a millimetre or two smaller and they’re not magnetic like the washers would have been but they’re cheaper.  And cheap is always good.

All based up we have the Russians to the left and the British to the right.

All done in fifteen minutes and with $1.10 worth of “bases” left over.  I’ll leave then to dry tonight and I’ll start painting the Russians tomorrow night.

Sorting out the Super Heroes

Searching through the mass of HeroClix miniatures it quickly became apparent that it was going to take “a long time” to find the dozen or so figures I needed.  So I foolishly decided to kill two birds with one stone and sort the miniatures while I went along.

This is what it looked like about halfway done.

I had previously started to sort the miniatures into their appropriate release sets but this time I decided to group them by their teams affiliations.  WizKids have made this easy by putting team affiliation logos right there on the base.  This has left me with about a dozen plastic bags worth of teams and two huge loose piles of figures, the non team specific ones and a whopping pile of bits where the mini has come away from the base.  These are mainly the flying characters which come shipped separate from the their base.  Sorting them out is going to be a couple evenings worth of Googling and gluing.

Right now though I have found all the minis I need and have a small collection of other cool looking minis that I’ve verified against the S2 Character Sheet Builder.  So when I the mood gets me all I need to do is grab a bag of miniatures and start making some cards for that team.  Justice League is up next and then I’ll switch to the Marvel universe and have a look in at the Avengers.

All that will have to wait though because tomorrow night me and the boys are going to roll some dice.

Making the Hero Cards

With the final look and feel of the cards sorted (well for now anyway) I decided to get a couple printed out and laminated.

I started by cutting out the cards, using a cutter makes quick work of this.  Then fold the cards along the centre line.

 

My first thought was to put six cards per A4 sheet but I ended up sliding in the last two once the sheet had taken and was rolling though.  It’s very important to hold the sheet while it’s moving through the laminator as you don’t want the cards to move.

Once its though you’ll have something like this.

And when you’ve done them all you’ll have this.

Which after you’ve cut up will give you this.

I just use scissors when cutting these out, they don’t need to be stacked or shuffled so their size isn’t so important.  Just make sure to leave 3-4mm around the edges to keep the seal and your fingers will also appreciate it if you round off the corners.

I’m working my way though both the DC and Marvel universes and trying to match up miniatures I have with stats that have already been created for the Super System.  There’s a few annoying omissions such as no Harley Quinn but that’s something I really can’t complain about and it’s something I can remedy by sitting down and nutting it out myself.

Now to sort out the rest of the miniatures.  I started this ages ago and have got six boxes like these full of teeny little heroes.

Just got two more boxes to unpack and sort…

Almost 2,000 of the little buggers before I stopped counting.  What else can I say except I love those 99 cent deals on eBay.

I’m thinking about debasing some of these and putting them on the 30mm rolled shoulder display bases such as these from eM4.

A bit of work but they should look nice.

Holy Skirmish Rules, Batman

I recently picked up a copy of Super System 3rd Edition and wow what a great set of rules.  I won’t go into too much detail about them until I’ve played a few more games but I will say that if you’re looking for a deeper set of rules for your Hero Clix minis then you simply can’t go past these.

The core game mechanics are simple but still have a lot of flexibility.  Most dice rolls are opposed and you tend to roll a lot of dice with plenty of rerolls.  Characters don’t tend to die often either, they may get weakened or hurt but they’re be back next episode.

Best of all the character creation rules are deep enough to create any character you can think of, or in my case you can easily recreate your favourite comic book heroes.  Better still is that someone has already done a lot of that work for you here.  One nice touch is the section on adding non combat related skills to your characters to add an RPG element to the game.

I’ve created a few hero cards for the game, mainly because I like pretty cards but also to help my kids get a grip on the system with colour coded stats.

Here’s a link to a PDF version of the cards above.  Just print, fold and put them into a card sleeve or laminate them like I have.

I’m very keen to get a few games going with the kids so I’ll post some reports up when I can.