The Nerdsletter Issue #109 – One Page

This week I get to share the single longest video I have ever made for my Youtube channel, and some other nonsense as usual. Even more miniature wargaming stuff! I bring you the CONTENT nerds!

GAMING

The big thing I accomplished this week was my giant Steam Nextfest video. 5 hours, 13 minutes, covering 9 demos! Here is the video:

Honestly, a few of the games failed to grab me or actively made me angry (I am looking at you Sworn) but on the whole every game was creative and interesting. Blue Prince, Bloomtown, Ironhive, and Super Fantasy Kingdom are the ones that have stuck with me. Freeride as well but not because it was good gameplay but because it was bizarre as hell. The others are just sort of there honestly. I like a few of them, but I am not sure I care to play them right when they release.

I also am getting back to my Captain in Lord of the Rings Online. I am debating if I want to just move forward with the Main Story Questline, or if I want to continue doing my “clear every zone I enter” method of play. I am honestly unsure. I know I own most of the content at this point, up to level 130 (cause I have a spreadsheet detailing all content that I keep up to date) so its not like I have a dearth of things to do. If I clear zones, I can get TP from deeds which will give me a chance to buy the expansions I am missing. But nothing says I cannot come back at high level and just blitz deeds later.

Decisions decisions!

I am still waiting for FF14 and Dawntrail as well, even if that comes out right before I need to buckle down to move. Granted, I cant spend all my free time packing / apartment hunting so I will have time for Dawntrail with my wife regardless. We did preorder so we get early access, which we both intend to use to level Pictomancer anyway.

MINIATURE WARGAMING / HOBBY

Ok so I have settled on my plans going forward with Wargaming, and hobby stuff in general. So to take inventory of what I have right now, I have 10 unbuilt Ogor Mournfang Calvary, 1 Ironblaster Cannon, and 15 total on foot Ogor mixed between melee, ranged, and one big boy. I also have several Battletech miniatures, I have Domitans Stormcoven for Underworlds which is 3 miniatures that are basically wizards, and then I have the Deadzone 3rd Ed 2 Player Starter that has the GCP and Vyr-meen miniatures and a bunch of sci fi terrain.

Now thats an odd collection of miniatures when you think about it, and since I have decided to not continue buying anything GW related, I need to determine what to do with at least the Ogor. Kings of War is the first thing that pops into my head, followed by general Skirmish / Indie wargaming!

Thing is, the Ogres in KoW don’t actually use Calvary, they got chariots. I can proxy my Mournfang if I want for that because, well, KoW allows that behavior. So the most likely thing I am going to do is look into finding a way to multibase the Ogors for KoW without removing them from their current bases, just in case I want to play AoS in the future with them.

In addition, now that I have a bit of experience with Battletech minis and how enjoyable it can be to just…have a finish mini, I am looking again into 3d Printed stuff and my original “Order of the Green Lady” force I wanted to do for Kings of War, the “Wardens of the Twilight Grove“. I found a few places to get 3d Printed stuff already made (specifically Etsy, and Only-Games) and that there have been quite a few advancements in printing in the last few years since I last checked.

The other thing I am looking into heavily is Solo Wargaming. There are a surprising number of rulesets out there, at the Skirmish Level, that have or focus on allowing a single person to wargame, usually against a rudimentary AI from a book. I have found a few games that interest me for this:

• https://modiphius.net/en-us/pages/five-parsecs
• https://www.josephamccullough.com/wargames/ (this dude has made a ton of games with solo play options)
• https://www.snarlingbadger.com/ (Reign in Hell does not have solo options, the rest of their games do apparently)
• https://modiphius.net/pages/five-leagues-from-the-borderlands

Five Parsecs and Five Leagues are functionally the same game, with different themes. Joseph A Mccullough has written so many damn games including Frostgrave, many of which have solo campaign rules so I am very interested in those. Snarling Badger has a ton of cheap options, and Space Station Zero has been suggested several times specifically.

These games, as well as being willing to look into 3D Printing stuff greatly expands my gaming options outside of GW. And on the whole, those options are way cheaper. Money is honey after all!

And now the fun part. See all that stuff I wrote up there? Ignore it. Just trash it into the bin. No, seriously. Cause shit is about to get wild. We need to talk about One Page Rules.

Years ago, around 4ish by my count, when I was just getting back into Wargaming with the space marines that I got rid of, I looked into One Page rules. And back then it was just a collection of, well, that. One page rules for wargaming to make things simple and easy for those who had miniatures or armies but didn’t want to play GW stuff. It did not catch my eye back then and while I saved the link to their page I never really went back. I briefly checked in when I was messing with Kings of War originally, but it was still just very basic.

Fast forward to now. I am doing all this research on different game systems when I realize that I haven’t actually checked to see what games the people at the two local stores play (specifically where I am moving). One of the stores is purely Games Workshop with a dash of Bolt Action so I knew they wouldn’t play basically any of these games. The other however is more of a general nerd shop. They have trading card games, miniature wargames of all types, even gunpla. So I start chatting with them and learn a few things. First, no one really plays Mantic games anymore anywhere in the central florida area, its dead. Second, that while their discord only has a Warhammer channel, they have a facebook group dedicated to all sorts of non-GW games. I joined up there, and noticed both in Discord and there that One Page Rules kept getting mentioned and talked about.

This made me go HM. Since no one really played Mantic’s stuff despite the official support from the company existing, I was curious what made people play OPR since in my mind it was still just a collection of rules and nothing else. So I went to the website, and my mind was blown.

First, there was actual lore and backstory now. Both for the worlds and the factions in them. There was a fully functional Army Builder called Army Forge. There was a wiki, with information on every faction as well as model suggestions to use for the factions. OPR now had 3d Printable armies and paper armies for many factions as well. Basically, OPR went from just a collection of rule sheets to a fully supported game system.

And that is not even getting into the concept of “Community Books” which are army lists / codex books that are custom made to bring new concepts and things into the worlds. Or the fact that the game systems are mostly identical letting you play Grim Dark Future against Age of Fantasy armies. And there are multiple rule sets within each universe. For example, Grim Dark Future has Grimdark Future (your standard 40k type game), Firefight (Killteam), and Warfleets (Battlefield Gothic). Age of Fantasy has Age of Fantasy (oh hi AOS), Skirmish (Warcry), Regiments (Old World), and has an upcoming Solo / Coop system that goes into open beta apparently next week at the time of writing this. And each “universe” has something like 20+ playable factions that you can also mix together apparently in an allies system. All of this, and its FREE! No, you read the right. Its free. There are purchasable advanced rules, and the World Books require a purchase, but the basic information to play the game with any faction is free.

This is amazing. I already have lists for Age of Fantasy Skirmish built for my Ogres, for instance, using the Army Forge. See?

It was super quick and easy to set that up. And I understand all the rules, there are hyperlinks to everything to make it easier. It’s just great work. And for those who love 3D Printing, if you pledge to the OPR Patreon you can get monthly STLs for printing up all sorts of shit.

So yea, I am going to be using OPR for my gaming needs. People play it, its actively supported, its miniatures agnostic, and it covers basically every style of game I might want to play. Hell, I can even use my Deadzone models for the Grimdark Firefight stuff.

FINAL WORD OF THE WEEK

Slowly but surely we get closer to the end of June, and the start of my real heavy duty apartment / home hunting. I should have the money ready to move by then I hope.

Ko Fi Donation Goal for my Move

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