The spoils of last Nerd Day

Or, What We Do On Nerd Day.

After spending some time living and working in the US, I came back to Sydney accustomed to the resources available to Nerds even in a town like Atlanta. While I had spent many years in Sydney previously, I was still in for a bit of a surprise. The bottom had fallen out of the RPG market, and all my favourite stores had closed to be replaced by the Starbucks of gaming, Games Workshop. This meant that the only way I could get my Nerd on (wow… even I shuddered at that phrase…) was to visit the hub of Sydney, the ‘City’ as the locals call it.

This visit has become a bit of a school holiday tradition (I work as a teacher) and there are usually three to four of us who go. What follows is a guide to the day as we celebrate it, and I’m including some variations as well that we have enjoyed in the past.

Step 1: Breakfast

Incredibly important as you will be on your feet all day. We go to Jet Cafe in Town Hall  as it is very near the train station, has a wide selection for breakfast (ranging from $5-20 for meals) and is across the road to our first step on the journey. The coffee is usually excellent at Jet, budget to have a couple (but don’t be too surprised if the staff are a little gruff…).

Step 2: Galaxy Bookshop

This is a nerd’s paradise – a massive bookstore that has only three sections – Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Horror. That’s it. They import a lot of books as well, so if you MUST have the latest Terry Pratchett six months before it is released locally, this is your store. We allow for 30 minutes here…

Step 3: Napoleon’s Bookstore

Napoleon’s Bookstore used to be a separate trip on the tour, but has conveniently moved in with The Tin Soldier (see Step 4 below). This is purely a military and history bookstore. They have an excellent selection of resource materials for the historical tabletop battler’s out there, as well as an excellent range of documentary’s and other such things. This is also the only place I have seen where you can get WWII action figures (at least since Action Man started sucking…). They also sell a wide range of gaming systems for re-creationists and models for such. We usually stay about 15-20 minutes here…

Step 4: The Tin Soldier

This is pretty much the main event. Tin Soldier used to have lots of stores all around Sydney, but few of them have survived. The Sydney store however is excellent, and still has a thriving business. The front of the store is the traditional role-playing store. It has a wide selection of game systems, models, dice (I bought a HUGE d20 this year…) and the usual paints, brushes, paraphernalia.

Out the back of the store (almost as much room as the front) is the military section. Here you will find lots of painted armies for sale, military books, and resources and rule systems for military tabletop games and is now run by Napoleon’s Bookstore (see above).

The staff at The Tin Soldier are really friendly and helpful and seem genuinely interested in making sure that you leave the store with as much gaming gear as you can… We stay here as long as we like – usually about an hour.

Step 5: Vary the plot

In times past we have:

• gone to watch a nerdy movie at the George Street Cinemas (very close by)
• visited the Powerhouse Museum – a museum of technology currently hosting a Star Wars exhibit
• added Utopia Records to the list of stores to visit – specialist Metal, Black Metal, Death Metal, all things Metal store
• gone home and painted all the models we have bought…

Guide to Places Mentioned

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Jet Cafe

Queen Victoria Bldg
Level Ground, Shop 55, Druit St
Sydney NSW 2000
Phone: +61 2 9283 5004

Galaxy Bookshop

143 York Street
Sydney NSW 2000
Phone: +61 2 9267 7222

The Tin Soldier

40 York Street
Sydney NSW 2000
Phone: +61 2 9279 2668

Yesterday I wandered into a newsagent and bought a copy of this month’s White Dwarf magazine. Why? Because a previous White Dwarf told me to. Or, rather, it told be what came with it.

Pictured here is the sprue you get for free with this month’s White Dwarf. It’s a Space Marine Terminator, and an Ork Nob. Now, I’m a sucker for “free” stuff, and I like painting individual models, which are devoid of the fear of having to paint 31 more of the same things, so I leapt for joy. And they’re good. Really good.

There’s an article in the White Dwarf which discusses the new boxed set for Warhammer 40k, in particular the models they included. They’ve managed to pack an obscene amount of miniatures into the boxed set somehow, and it’s due to advances in their moulding.

Over the last few years, we’ve grown used to multi-part plastic model kits, with dozens of accessories and stuff. We’ve also grown used to the fact that for the really good models, you need metal. Well, no more. These new models, both in the White Dwarf and the boxed set, are metal quality. They are only a few parts, no accessories, but the detail is incredible. This forum thread has pictures of the White Dwarf models, assembled and painted, and as you can see, they’re really nice.

The White Dwarf article commented on the design of the new Space Marine commander for the boxed set: because it’s just a few parts, which can only really go one way, they could focus on making that one way really awesome, instead of needing to account for whatever weapon you want to put in his hand. Basically, it’s just like a metal model, but in plastic.

This is awesome. Seriously. The future looks bright. I can’t wait until they make me a plastic Treeman, and plastic Warhawks so I don’t have to spend several hours waiting for the superglue to dry. As an added plus, good plastic models have less mould lines and the like which often need to be removed from metal models. And plastic models tend not to break: I once faced an opponent who literally chucked his ork casualties into a pile; neither do they bend into funny shapes. They’re also easier to paint, the plastic naturally holding the paint better than metal.

Now, these models won’t replace the multi-part plastics: the multi-parts are better for regiments and the like.  I just hope they can change all the metal models to plastic like this. Besides: I’m sick of supergluing my fingers together.

D&D Minis is a collectable miniature game set in the D&Dverse. Taking obvious inspiration from Magic the Gathering, each box set (20 or 30 AUD) comes with 8 collectable plastic miniatures already painted for you. The miniatures are numbered and have a rarity (ie, some are more commonly found in the boxes than others). Each of the miniatures also comes with a card that explains its key stats and abilities.

All well and good. Except. What’s the real point of it?

Reading through the rules for the game, it seems a bit pointless to be honest. You build up ‘Warbands’ from the models you have collected and then duke it out with other people who have also spent a small fortune so that they can have enough miniatures to build a ‘Warband’. There doesn’t seem to be any real strategy to the game and it looks on paper like it will play like a very unlikely standard D&D encounter.

Can you use the models in a ‘real’ game I hear you ask. Well, sure you can. The models are actually surprisingly well painted and the detail is not bad for what they are. At what is essentially $2.50 a model, its not a bad price. Except of course, for one thing. You can’t pick which models you are going to get. Absolutely useless unless you plan on spending a fortune so that you can get enough of the same damn thing to make up an encounter. Yes, yes, I know – encounters in D&D4e somehow have to include a complete menagerie of monsters and buying random models might actually work out – but still, it would be much cheaper just to buy the superior pewter models in the end. Reaper miniatures will sell you 11 orcs for about the same price. You have to paint them AND look up their details in the book, but hey, its a hobby right?

In the end, I am probably going to buy more of these. Not because they are worth it (they are not not worth it), but just because I like surprises. That, and they will look good on my new dungeon tiles (more of which later…).

For those of you who are interested – I bought the $30 box set that comes with 1 Huge creature and 7 Medium creatures. In the box was the following:

• Death Titan (Huge)
• Feybound Halfling
• Dragonborn Defender
• Shifter Claw Adept
• Blazing Skeleton
• Orc Zombie
• Ochre Jelly
• Degenerate Cultist of Orcus

And for what it is worth – the models are surprisingly close to their Monster Manual illustrations, which is kind of cool in a way…

About 10 years ago, my brother and I started work on a game we called Cyborg. It was a great game until we tried to write down the rules. We have subsequently tried three times to codify the game and each time we have made it suck hard. I think its mostly my fault – I usually do a pretty good job of codifying rules, but I usually do my own games. This is, I think, probably something that the creator of the game concept should have done. If we are lucky, one day he will.

Essentially the game is played in the far future when corporations have taken over the running of the planet (“Will the member for Pepsi please be quiet, the member for Coke has the floor!”) but the terminology has remained largely the same. In other words, hostile take overs are take overs of companies, only now there tends to be a little more blood shed.

The model above was painted as part of a four man “Auditing Team”. There was Mr Blue, Mr Orange (pictured), Mr Scarface and Bob. I had visions of the auditing team coming from Miami and wearing ridiculous clothes – hence the orange suit. I think it worked out great – the photo was taken by a photographer friend of mine Kent Marcus.