Ethical Musings

So my gaming group has a problem. We have been confronted with an amazing deal and offer from someone  with a deal to get really cheap miniatures. The problem is that this deal is unethical. He is getting a good deal from a friend for another purpose, and is extending it to us. This deal is essentially better than you can find on the internet, even thewarstore.com.

I have two problems with this. The first is that this guy is abusing the system and possibly in a legal breach of contract, if he even has one. There is no gaming company that would want its stuff sold for that amount, as it hurts business.

 The internet re sellers are killing the industry, hands down. Without a store to play in, you lose a huge part of the hobby and the point. Video games deliver a better experience for in home geekery, especially if you have few local friends. A game store is essentially a social hub for gaming, not just a box store. A value added re-seller if you will.

This offer has been created out of an idea to give a great deal to friends and a gaming group. It is good in its nature, but bad in its delivery. It is one of greed. Players that are always looking for a better deal. How can a game store survive with deals like this in existence? They can't. Hell, internet re sellers can't match this, by design.

My second issue is with the gaming group in general. Why would you allow this type of deal to be advertised on your private, ish, forum? This is an endorsement, and can lead to issues. This is an ethics issue, and I believe my group has failed so fare with its handling. I do not blame the individuals who take up the offer, as they are acting greedy, but with a too good to pass up offer. The fault lies with the person extending the offer and the leadership for allowing the offer to show up on the forum.

Now you may be asking yourself, why are you laying this out in public? Mostly to get my thoughts down on the issue. I am using this as mostly a personal tool. Sure someone may be able to reach it, but it's doubtful. I have kept details sparse, as I have not decided exactly what I will do on the matter. I want to turn him in, even though I do not know the distributor. I am tempted to email every known distributor his name, email and the description of the situation as I see it. I do not like the solution, but I might pull the trigger if it comes to it.

Basically I have put out word to the leadership about how I feel. I will then move onto speaking with the individual myself if I have to. I don't think that will accomplish much, but I really do not feel this is a good thing to let happen.

PAX PRIME 2011

So back from PAX. I know its tuesday and in the internet world, PAX was so long ago. I had a great time. I spent most of my time in panels and with board games, but did get to see the footage from most of the video games. The star of the show was Star Wars the Old Republic. The gameplay was wow like, but I loved it. It also felt very Star Warsy. I liked it and have it pre-ordered, although that was done before the show.

For board games, I tried out Blood Bowl Team Manager from Fantasy Flight and Super Dungeon Explorer from Soda Pop minis. Both were great games. SDE is basically a suped up gauntlet with miniatures. I loved it an picked a preorder up.

Blood Bowl was a fantastic game. I think I would actually prefer it to the minis game, as it takes less prep. Plus you can play with up to four people. The game really hits the teams and the blood bowl game well. I really liked it. It will be out in October I think.

I also picked up Black Crusade, as I was at the FFG booth right off the bat. I was hoping to see the new Star Wars Tie Fighter game, but Lucas wouldnt let them bring it. Turns out the game was only allowed at Gencon due to special permission given by Lucas himself, by letting him play the game.

So great weekend, more to come for sure, as I am off to work now. I will leave you with a link to the photos from the weekend. I didn't get a lot, but there are some good ones.

https://plus.google.com/photos/112375072733826453100/albums/5646100404547946497

My state of gaming

I have figured out why my gaming has dwindled lately, motivation. I am used to a standard of gaming that is amazing. See this video from the Gamers Haven to see what I am talking about: Gamers Haven Mega Battle  This was an impressive game day with roughly 40,000 points. Oh and did I mention this was done on the new release of a Magic main set. Pretty freaking amazing.

So this is what I expect and demand from a game store. My current store can't even get an event scheduled, let a lone pull off something this amazing. I am seriously considering moving back home to be a part of something this awesome.

My other options are to keep throwing effort down a black hole, ie my current game store, or to open my own store. The current store has enough traction that opening a store would be even harder work than normal. I have gone down the road, but I just don't have access to the money required.

There is hope, as someone has stated their intention to open a store in November. If that happens, hopefully proper effort is put in and I can become re-interested in gaming. We shall see.

Events

I owe a lot of my ideas about how a game store should be run to the owner of Gamer's Haven, Bob. He showed me what it felt like to be a part of a store where the focus was events. Events that you had to nearly fight over to get to be a part of. Tournaments and events that often had a list of alternates half as long as the event itself, with the event having 30 people in it. These events are the reason I got back into wargaming and eventually took over the store for a while.

Fast forward three years and I find myself leaning away from the hobby. Is this a correlation to the crappy event selection in my town? Yes indeed, as my son Malachi would say, it is. Currently the only events that happen here are player run, with almost distaste from the owner. I have tried multiple times to get a standard tournament running, but the owner is very against standard tournaments. He had a bad run in a few years ago with a now infamous cheater and it turned him off. He saw one person come in and compete for prizes by being a douche. This has tainted his views ever since, and he will even hamper any thoughts of a standard tourny.

His answer was to run scavenger hunt style events where players were rewarded for participation in the games and certain random events. These events are fun but they become stale after a short amount of time. I need a reason to bring my levels up. I became a better painter and player in CDA because I was surrounded by great painters and players. I stepped up my game in a competitive environment. A fluffy everyone gets a participation environment does not work to make people want to be better. It sets the bar low and people just hit the bar.

This also affects sales. Why buy a new army when you can just show up with what you have? I am for a varied environment that is not all competitive, but is not all fluffy and hippy either. I guess effort is required for this, and the current store is not interested in exerting extra effort. Just keep going with the flow. Hell I am all for experience, but experience can create stagnation and jadedness.

There are hints of a new store, and this is a good thing. Either the new store will blow the current one out of the water, or it will force the current one to step up.

One note, this is about me venting on the subject and is not designed to go after the current store. I have tried to help and Im done helping. Now I am merely venting and waiting to see what happens.

First Post

This will be a blog about my wargaming activities and rants. 

Today I want to talk about Dystopian Wars, Warhammer 40k Ard Boyz and the deterioration of my current local game store. 

Let us start with the last topic from above, as it moves into the Ard Boyz as well. When I started going to the local shop ten years ago, it was amazing. It has a separate game room with 5 tables and tons of terrain. This would be my standard for gaming until I moved back home and saw the Gamer's Haven in CDA Idaho. That is a long story itself, but currently it's in its second incarnation in Post Falls Idaho and is running great.

My current store, however, is not going well. The owner would rather party and do his outside activities than actually run his store. He runs a good talk, but I'm not sure he has it in him anymore. He is not listed on the Ard Boyz list of stores, even though he thinks he is running the event. Oh speaking of events, only two events have been ran in 2011. One was a major Malifaux event completely created and ran by the Warhamsters club, specifically Jim. The second was a bitz trading event, again ran by a Warhamster. Pretty sad. Oh I guess he does get 8 people a week for magic....

So with that, I am completely disinterested in anything Games Workshop right now. So onto Dystopian Wars. Air, land and sea combat in a victorian, steam-punk setting. What is not to love? I chose the Japanese faction myself. I wanted to play the Brits, but they and the Prussians were sold out at the distributor, as I can't even think about picking them up locally. I am pretty set with them as a faction, although all three of my games have been against the FSA, ie the Americans. They are a good counter to the Japanese, with high initial damage and good secondary points. 

The last game I played was particularly disappointing because my dice failed miserably. I couldn't get a five to save my life, however I did get a lot of 4 hits...  The exploding dice mechanic is really cool, but I rarely get it to work for me. This has created a situation where I can't really get a good grip on what is working and what is not.

I do know that my cruisers, medium ship, are terrible and its all about the gyros. Flying medium ships. So I was hoping I could do well with my starter, an extra battleship, a carrier and a blister of gyros, but alas it is not to be. I will be working on selling some of my Warhammer 40k items in the coming weeks to get my fleet up to shape.

That is all for now.