White and Nerdy

Figured I'd start these long overdue updates with some far out nerdiness reporting. Let's start out with plastic crack nerdiness:

Two weekends back, Bandito, Lash and I went down to Roseville in order to participate in two, count 'em two, HeroClix pre-release tournaments. At these, participants buy three boosters of the as-yet to be released HeroClix edition and form teams with them to face off against other folks' teams. Additionally, all participants get rare purple-ringed figures for showing up, and the top few get more prizes. But really, just do it for the fun of playing the latest set before the regular joe gets to.

By the way, I'm on a school computer and lots of the keys stick so if there are lots of typos, more than usual, it's all their fault.

At the first tournament, I was able to make an awesomely powerful team and I totally dominated the first two rounds of the tournament (there were 5 rounds at tourney #1). Rounds 3-5 my dice refused to roll higher than a five (on two dice) ever, so I lost often and lost badly (but was not a sore loser). Lash had lots of fun, but won none of his matches. At the 2nd tourney we fared just as poorly, but Lash did win one.

Last weekend was the Hero Clix marquee tournament for the new set (again, each participant buys three boosters to build teams from--winners get limited edition figures and all participants get limited edition pogs--this set was the o.g. Wonder Twins.). This time around I was all about the smack-down and took first place (and got a pretty little plastic Supergirl in her black "brainwashed by Darkseid" costume and Lash got second place (out of eight) and its prize of see-through Detective John Jones.

As for the new set, I got enough from my case to build two complete sets and am selling the second on eBay hoping to recoup some of the costs of the case to begin with.

Now on to role playing nerdiness:
Right now Denise GMs two separate D&D games (running them on alternating Sundays). One has a large group, the other a smaller group. Chrissy's oldest son and Lash get to play in the small group, which we keep much more kid friendly. We have this one long-time player, in both groups, who's been long known to ALWAYS get exceptionally good rolls whenever anyone isn't looking or when her character's life depends on it, or when she makes characters, or always. And she absolutely sucks at the role playing aspect of role playing games. Still, I generally feel that, if that's how she has to play in order for it to be fun for her, and it isn't hurting anyone else, just ignore it and simply reward the other players better. Lately Denise has been getting more and more openly irritated with her and I sense a bit of an explosion on the horizon. Le sigh.

Every other Saturday I GM a game at Casa Taylor. On nights where Bandito is able to make it, we play my Exiles themed superheroes game, and on nights when he doesn't make it (as of last week) I GM a Deadlands game. Both games are fun and have a good group. Terry (the gal above) is not a member of either. In superheroes they're currently in the DCU during Zero Hour (colliding through different comic companies due to a Galactus incident that sent them to Invincible's corner of the Image U.) and have no idea what they're supposed to do because their deus ex machina (aka the Tallus) is on the fritz due to the reality shifting nature of Zero Hour. They had a lot of fun dealing with multiple Batmen and Robins; next time they get Superman and his enemies in Metropolis. Anyhow, this weekend was the inaugural Deadlands-when-Paul-ain't-here session and it went very swimmingly. They don't realize it yet, but I'm adapting a lot of pot elements from Y the Last Man and one of my favorite tv shows and putting them in a tumbler with two parts horror and shaking.

Lastly, our pal Brian is popping his own GM cherry by starting his own Deadlands game on Sunday evenings with his roommie/cousin, cousin's girlfriend (very very nice breasts, and I'm not even a breast man), a couple of his other friends and me because I know the rules in-and-out and can help him when stuck on something. He has always been such a character in the games he plays with us. His GMing takes this to the Nth degree and it's a tad surreal. It's been great fun so far, but runs too late into the night. I'm playing a Chinese-Irish kung-fu boxer.

Last week one of those players wanted to get into some long discussument over whether Cyclops or Wolverine would win in a fight. Like I give a fuck (though I'd want Wolvie to gut that family-abandoning, wife-murdering, adulterer Cyclops all over Graymalkin Lane).

Speaking of comics not to give a fuck about:
Almost everything from Marvel Comics.

So they "killed" Captain America. Come on, people, they won't keep that one for long. It would be like killing Superman. Personally, I'm just tired of seeing panels of Captain America (Civil War #7), Ultimate Captain America (Ultimates 2 #9 or 10) and Iron Man (Civil War: Frontline #11) crying like little sissies.

Brian K Vaughn's finished his run on Runaways. Sigh. I'm really going to miss him; he's grown to be one of the most consistently good writers in comics over the past few years (of which there are so very very few--him, Kirkman, Willingham, Seagle and sometimes Whedon & Giffin, and if he could write on time, that Young Avengers writer.) Now Whedon's going to ake over Runaways. Given what I like about Astonishing X-Men (his other regular book) I have high hopes, though I already miss the kids being stationed in California (he's moving them to super-hero central: NYC) and Whedon's first issue isn't even in my hands yet. I also worry that Whedon's spreading himself too thin (something that plagues a lot of comic writers who also do films or tv--thankfully Vaughn's spreading himself too thin only makes his TV shows suck--Lost--and not his comics) with Astonishing, Runaways, Buffy season 8 and the Wonder Woman movie.

Speaking of Vaughn again, Y the Last Man, the best comic produced today (I challenge you to prove otherwise), ends in less than a year. That will leave me with one good book at DC: American Virgin. That and anything with Black Adam tearing people in half for the murder of his wife and brother in-law.

Last week I picked up my comics and only had 4 books, so I commented "wow, small week this week" and the shop owner snapped at me that it was actually a really big week, but now that I've dropped almost everything it just seems small. Wah. Comics are effing expensive; too effing expensive to waste money on when they start to suck. It took me a long time to ge to this point, and now I only get like 1`2 books a month.