If you really love your dudes on a map, you will paint them.  Well painted miniatures can vastly improve the look of a game and make it more immersive and impressive to look at on the table.  Despite this, you don't see that many board games with painted miniatures.  Why?  Well, mostly because people don't understand how easy (and enjoyable) painting stuff is.  People think it is physically difficult, expensive, and time consuming.  Painting can be all of those things, but it doesn't have to be any of those things.  This guide aims to show you how to paint miniatures cheap, fast and easy.  I have tried to add a lot of detail to this guide, so that you don't need to do much added research, but not every step will be needed for every miniature.  How much or how little you want to do is up to you.

Before I started, I viewed painting minis as a chore, but you know what?  After I did a few, I started to enjoy it.  You will see yourself getting better after just a few figures.  There are few things in my life that don't involve sex or alcohol that I find as relaxing as painting miniatures.  I love putting some music on and sitting down to paint.  It is a great way to escape the ever present laptop or TV screen and requires minimal thinking, so it is great when you aren't in the mood to game.  You will be surprised how good your results turn out, with a little pre-planning and some simple techniques. 

Upon reading Michael Barnes’s recent review of Exodus: Proxima Centauri, I felt a creeping weariness set into my mind. Not because of the review itself, since it was up to his usual high standard. Rather, I felt myself resigned to the fact that there could very well be a new 4X space game on the market, one that occupies a similar space to the very epic Twilight Imperium, and 2011?s more streamlined Eclipse. For the second time in less than 18 months, there’s a new epic space game that is apparently really good. And that can only mean that people will argue as to whether it’s better or worse than what’s come before.

Whenever a genre has a new hit, you can predict the arc. First comes the introduction, where the game lands and its scarcity and newness create a flurry of interest. Then threads are started, words are exchanged, the game shoots up the BGG rankings. Eventually, inevitably, the comparisons come flying. Is this game better or worse than the current champion? Will it prove more popular? If I don’t buy a copy NOW, will I be one of the countless less-cool gamers stuck playing an old game? In extreme cases, words could get ugly And then in a couple of years, there will be some new game that will start the cycle all over again.

There is zero problem with a new excellent game to play and discuss, even if it’s in a genre that is already crowded. For example, I truly enjoyed Clash of Cultures as a focused entry into the civilization genre. I spend an unusual amount of my time thinking of the relative merits of different games. But I do grow weary of the need to figure out if this game is conclusively “better” or “worse” than other similar games, because it’s almost never a question of quality. Rather, it’s just an indication of how that particular person feels and what they like in a game. Even more, it’s about what that game reflects about them as gamers.

I am bone-tired of the constant need to figure out what the “best” game is. Obviously it’s an understandable drive. Many of us are on a very limited budget, with little money to be spared for buying games that have a lot of overlap. Boardgamers also assume there will be a measure of obsolescence in their collection. We buy games that we love for a while, and then we move on, trading or selling games to make room for new ones. It’s a lot easier if we can figure out what we should buy before we spend our money. But there’s a fine line between being a savvy consumer, and finding an excuse to buy more and more worthless crap and maybe lord it over others.

The more I think about it, the more I feel like this incessant need to size up every game against all other games is pretty bad for our hobby. It’s not about making good purchases so much as it’s about finding a way to impress people. We don’t argue about whether Eclipse is better than Twilight Imperium to really help people make a choice. If we’re honest with ourselves, we argue to show how much better our own taste in games is. One of the central components of BoardGame Geek is the rankings, where the top games are ranked according to where users rate them. I’m not completely clear why these rankings exist, aside from being a way to root for individual games to do well, as if a high ranking was any indicator of relative quality? You can tell this comparing is important to people by reading threads whenever a game shoots up the rankings. There will always be people who ask why on earth a game like Twilight Struggle could possibly be ranked number one.

And it’s not just the cult of the new who drives this phenomenon. In this age of reprints, older gamers are beginning to take a ridiculous amount of pride in the obscure titles in their own collection. Whenever a new reprint comes out, you’ll see fans of the old version saying how ugly or ruined the new version is. I’m a little guilty of this myself, because I’m just the slightest bit proud of the original, better-looking copy of Nexus Ops that sits on my shelf. Everyone can see that it’s clearly superior to the uglier, mostly-the-same version from Fantasy Flight! And maybe someone takes a strange amount of pride in not own many games at all. I know I feel a little proud about being able to fit all of my games on a single shelf unit.

Basically, I fear that we aren’t comparing games so much as we are comparing gamers. One of the stranger effects of the internet on our hobby is that a large portion of our interaction with other hobbyists takes place in the strange vaccuum of cyberspace. Internet forums aren’t a great place for conversation, but they are a good place to drop a clever line or a witty rejoinder that makes us look awesome and makes our adversary look like an idiot. Quote large blocks of text if you can, to use their own words against them. Clearly you’re an idiot if for some reason you don’t appreciate Game X.

Maybe I’ve wandered far afield of what actually happens when we try to assess the relative merits of one game versus another. But in my gut, I feel like it’s symptomatic of a larger need to impress other people with all of the great games we own and with all of our vast knowledge of the hobby. No one wins when that’s what we’re trying to do. I love discussing games more than about 98% of people on earth, but it’s possible that we’d be better off not caring so much about what games are better than others, and really focusing on how we can be decent to each other. People will always be more important than the games they play.

In last week's discussion about AGE OF CONAN, I really got to thinking about how it could be possible that the reason that Nexus was so unsuccessful in translating a lot of the particulars about the license could very well be because the board games medium is simply not equipped to handle certain things. We've known this, and we've talked about this a lot- see our discussions that we've had about horror in games, or when we talk racing games and it's practically not possible to come up with one where a real sense of speed and velocity is created.

Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage provided one of the most memorable gaming sessions of my life. Since the mid game, my Carthaginian armies had dominated the board thanks to a blend of luck and skill. In the final turn, Rome's only hope was an instant victory by taking Carthage itself. He duly built a big invasion stack and in response, I drew forces back to protect Africa.

Last month's Cracked LCD Countdown was one of the most popular and beloved board game article to ever appear on the internet. I am positive that sales of all of the listed games surged over the past couple of weeks as poser board gamers everywhere scrambled to accede to my tastes and opinions. Did you buy your copy of RISK yet?

So this week it's time for an all-new Cracked LCD Countdown, and I think this list might do to the hobby gaming community what The Count is doing to poor old Edward in this picture- it's going to knock the sparkle right off its face.

This list is so volatile that I can't post its full title here. I started to, but Ubarose IMed me and said "No, Barnes, no. You can't do that. Not even here at F:AT. Won't you think of the fatbellies?" This list is so potentially devasting to the very idea of hobby gaming that I had to wait for Gameshark Editor Bill Abner to go on vacation so I could slip it by Jeff McAllister, his fill-in.

Perhaps you will think this is an April Fools Joke. But in the words of the late, great Robert Martin in response to some ass clown at BGG who was questioning his love for AT games, "I have never been more serious in my life".

So here it is then. Another Top Ten list, and another nail in the F:AT coffin. May god have mercy on us all.

With Special Guest Star Frank Branham
as
"Branham"

I rarely write fiction but when I do, I generally rip off H.P. Lovecraft as much as possible. Which means, of course that I am vicariously ripping off Edgar Allan Poe, Lord Dunsany and Arthur Machen, right? Steal from the best, I always says.Anyway, this week's edition of Cracked LCD is the Halloween special. And yes, it is a "very special" Cracked LCD. We, along with "Branham" learn a few very valuable lessons about "supercollecting" and obsessing over German board games.

This is a copy of an article originally published on the old F:AT blog. Read original comments .

Welcome to the Crank File. Whenever I don't have a game review to share I'll take a topic out of the Crank File and craft it into an article for your enjoyment. Sometimes these articles will actually serve a purpose and go hand in hand with an upcoming review. That will be the case with my inaugural edition.

Boardgames come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors. You've got fantasy games, stock market games, sci-fi games, Lovecraft games, games named after medieval city games, zombie chow mein, princess fra diavolo, superhero jambalaya, Star Wars a la mode, gangster stew, shrimp gumbo, shrimp scampi, and butter poached shrimp. There, that covers every theme in the entirety of the whole universe.

Actually, I lied it doesn't. I can't lie to your delightful, smiling, faces. Plus, I can sense that you knew I fibbed. You grow up so fast! The real reason we're here today is to talk about life. Not my life.  My life is boring and filled with many unscrupulous details of growing up hard on the mean streets of Beach Town, USA. No, I shall not bore you with the tale of how I once vanquished a gang member with only a toothpick, soda pop, and small length of red yarn. That's a story, my friends, for another day. Today we're going to look at LIFE as a theme in gaming.

Games do not typically ground themselves with something as boring and pedestrian as living a life. Why would they? You don't get to poke a vampire in the heart with a pencil in real life. You never get to cast a fireball spell at a Treant while sitting at your cubicle. Worst of all, you never trade silk in the Mediterranean on your average Tuesday. So it only makes sense that games would veer away from boring ol' real life and provide players with a level of escapism. That's great, but why? Plenty of exciting things happen to people all the time. For example, just this morning I peed while sitting down. You know, just to change it up. Exciting! Plus isn't it fun to pretend? To live out a life you would never choose for yourself in a thousand lifetimes? No? Yes?

Hell yeah! I think it's great! It's the curiosity of experiencing someone else's hopes and dreams.  This obviously stems back to my childhood where we played the mass market hit, The Game of Life. Oh, how we would twirl that clickity-clackity spinner, be up to our drool covered chins in debt, have minivans full of screaming kids and trying to have a better life than everyone else! Hold up. Rewind to that last sentence. That’s the key right there…the proverbial knot that ties it all together and makes a boardgame about living life worthy of your attention.

EVERYONE wants to succeed in life. We want a lovely home, a lovely little family, a lovely job… everyone wants it all. And it all needs to be quite lovely! We're all in a miserable little rat race that moves so slowly we almost never step back and appreciate it. Life is too busy. It's too chaotic.

So how is a pretend life in a game fun? It's the fact that you can distill all of the best, most exciting, life choices into a short manageable timeframe. While trimming out the boring chaff. It's like stretching another person's persona over my sexy body and living out their life like a T-800 hell-bent on retiring in Pismo Beach. Plus, unlike real life, it's perfectly OK to crow and point fingers. Yes! You can laugh at someone's misfortune and sleep with their sexy wife and make Scrooge McDuck levels of coin and be a deadbeat parent and, and…oh my heavens! I'm a monster! [Editor's note: Up Author's psychosis meds immediately].

A decision in a game about life tends to be relatable. If a card lets you get married that might earn you happiness, which leads to points. We all understand being human and trying to succeed at life. It makes internalizing mechanics and rules a breeze. Whereas firing a catapult at a cadre of skeletal archers is something we can only conjure up in our heads. Doing it in a game might require slightly more mental pyrotechnics to remember. 

Games about life are essentially mini, one shot RPGs. It's easy to piece together narrative or story from simply playing the game. No flavor text needed! Sometimes I'll be a lawful good, family man. Other times, I'll end up a drunkard who has no money and performs salacious acts for my next bottle. When you sit down to play, you can be anything you want. An entire life is yours for the living! Am I unhappy being me? Not by a long shot. However, I get a rush of dopamine from playing God and molding some hapless schlep out of card play and bad game choices.

I understand the argument that games should offer an escape. We already drudge through the doldrums of existence each day and any game that can capture that feeling should burn in a fire. It's important to remember these games are the highlight reels of a life. There are no boring bits to endure. It's all sex, all drugs, all money and all pina coladas all the time!

These games are not flooding the market. I can only think of a handful of notable games that even use this theme. Obviously you have the big mass market one we previously mentioned. You've got card games like Chez Geek and Gloom. Friedemann Friese tried his hand at the genre with Funny Friends. Last Will is another game that comes to mind. It's an underrepresented genre. Should there be more?Does anyone have a favorite?

Boardgames about life offer a unique experience. It's like role playing without the fantasy heroics. I'd love to see more designers tackle life as a theme in their games. My first couple of reviews will focus on games that utilize this theme. Will they be good games? Tune in next time folks. Thanks for reading.

Those of you who’ve been following my articles for a while will no doubt recall that I unconditionally hate all co-operative games as weak, lovey-dovey puzzle-based rubbish that no red-blooded Ameritrash fan should be seen dead playing. It is therefore to my considerable embarrassment that I find I’ve got no less than two co-operative games in my all-time top five. There are also another two I’ve discovered that just about merit a “worth playing” pass mark from me. So, obviously, I’m going to have to backtrack on the “unconditionally” part of my previous statement but I still have big problems with the majority of co-operative games. I thought it might be interesting to take a look at those four games (Arkham Horror and Wrath of Ashardalon in the top five, and the borderline games are Ghost Stories and Death Angel) and see what sets them apart from the rest of the pack.

I have an amazingly poor record when it comes to finding bargain copies of games in charity shops. But about this time last year I came close - I found copies of Civilization and Kingmaker in my local charity shop. I didn’t buy either, the former being one very long game too many and the latter being something I already own. But what was particularly interesting about this experience was that both games were ones that any gamer worth his or her salt would recognise as being classic titles which are heavyweights in terms of both complexity and strategy, whilst the staff in the charity shop had stacked them with the children’s’ books, and the adult books were being kept company by any number of god-awful cheap shot party games and TV quiz show spin-offs. This demonstrates, I think, the perception in which board gaming is held by the general public: something that kids do.

I have a shocking confession to make. I used to be a fun murderer. In my defence this is going back to when I was about twelve and used to play Warhammer with cardboard counters, proxy figures and a highly dubious understanding of the rules, but still, the tendency was there. Saturday afternoon skirmishes would often turn into bitter debates about the precise application of trivial rules (which was ironic since we weren't playing them properly anyway) and more often that not the instigator would be me. It's taken me twenty years to overcome my inherent desire to brutally strangle joy wherever I find it but in the end I made the journey with high degree of success - I hope and pray (or I would if I were at all religious) that Yehuda Berlinger gets to read this article so that he and others can gain inspiration from it and begin the long, long road to recovery.

I’ll wager that every long-term gamer has flashes of boredom with their hobby. Brief sargassos in the sea of gaming where your attention is diverted by some great new computer title, or a film or book. Perhaps a period of intense activity in your personal or working life has taken you away from games, or even just a self evaluation that made you yearn for something more. At the time it feels like you’ve gone off games for good. But a week, a month, even a year later, you’re back in your favourite shop, tracking down all the cool releases you’ve missed. I’ve been there. We all have.

The first hobby game that I learned to play was The Settlers of Catan, which I got into just prior to my senior year of college. Needless to say, it was a big hit with me and my friends, but we had a very real problem with the game: it only played four people. Imagine our delight when we discovered that there was a way to expand the number of players who could be accommodated by a small box with extra components to let two more people play. We played so much that it’s a miracle we graduated at all.

This article is for someone looking to get into block games - which is not like getting into a car, but more like getting into trouble with your spouse - and is leaning towards either of the two classic low-complexity "introductory" offerings from Columbia Games:  War of 1812 or Quebec 1759.

Every community, no matter how big or how small, has its founding myths, a filter through which it comes partly to define itself. For what is, after all, a relatively small community, The Fortress seems to have rather a lot of them. I’m not sure quite why this should be the case, but after having had a user suggest it might be of interest to some of our newer members to go over how this site came to be, and not being one to pass up an excuse to bang my own drum, I figured to might be a good time to clear the matter up.

The birth of this site is, curiously, related to the birth of my eldest daughter in early 2006. Neither of my girls have been good sleepers, and both managed to keep me largely housebound for the best part of three years (still ongoing with the youngest). So, as a result, I stopped playing games. This had the unexpected side effect of making me think about games a lot more, and that in turn meant I felt compelled to write about them a lot more. So I started increasing the volume of lists, reviews and sessions that I was posting on boardgamegeek.com. But I didn’t want to limit myself to reviews and lists: there seemed to be so many more interesting and worthwhile things you could say about games. Analysing mechanics, looking at historical trends, assessing wider social impact, talking about gamers themselves. Opinion/editorial material, in other words. The trouble was that BGG was a bad place to showcase this sort of material - it had to go in the site-wide forums where it was likely to be rapidly buried under avalanches of crap.

So I started to think about writing my own blog. The trouble was that I didn’t feel I had either the time or the inspiration to write enough to make a whole blog for myself worthwhile. So here comes the first of a number of lucky breaks that we got: these thoughts happened to coincide with the emergence of what you might call the “Ameritrash consciousness” in the BGG community. A group of vocal people who decide they didn’t really like a lot of the dominant Eurogame genre on that site, and who were tired of being told that the sorts of games they preferred, heavy on randomness, excitement and narrative, were old-fashioned and worthless and were starting, individually to buck against the trend.

There was no defining moment to this. The first time I became aware of it was in the response to something I’d written,a geeklist called Seven Reasons to hate Eurogames in May 2006 but that’s not trying to take credit for it, just natural I should have first spotted it relation to one of my own pieces. If you look at the comments on that list, you’ll see a number of people who would later become prominent in the development of this site. Another important milestone was another geeklist,Robert Martin’s A Tribute to Ameritrash not only because, again, you got the same rough group of people chiming in, but because that’s the very first time anyone used the term Ameritrash to define the genre. And as these sorts of posts went up, I started to get a sense of a group of talented people around who shared my tastes and opinions, and with that I got the idea that rather than starting a blog on my own, I could start a team blog and the subject could be these newly-resurgent Ameritrash games.

The first person I approached about this was naturally the man who was rapidly become something of a figurehead for Ameritrash, thanks to the high volume, eloquent construction and devil-may-care, rabble rousing attitude of his posts. That was, of course, Michael Barnes. Once we’d agreed this was a good idea, the next order of business was to find some more like-minded people to join us. Robert Martin was top of both our lists, but beyond that we had rather different ideas. I don’t now remember exactly who was on each of our lists but what I do remember is that pretty much everyone who went on to make substantial and ongoing contributions to this site were on Michael's list, not mine. That, if for no other reason, is why he’s rightly entitled to claim co-founder status here even though I made the first move: without his suggestions and contributions in those early pre-launch days, then my team blog would certainly have rapidly fizzled due to a death spiral of declining participation and declining interest, and come to nothing.

There was a small exception. One of my nominees was a guy called Brady Severns. He was on the team in the early days and had access to the blog engine but, as far as I recall, didn’t post a great deal. What he did do though was come up with the Fortress: Ameritrash moniker when we were discussing names, and it ended the discussion instantly, one of those perfect moments where it’s obvious someone’s stolen the show and no-one else is going to cap it. And for that his place in the mythology of this site is forever assured.

It was decided fairly early on in proceedings that in order to differentiate ourselves from other gaming blogs that, aside from the Ameritrash focus, there would be two principles. First is that we’d spend some time covering what we called “trash culture”: films, books, comics, music, video games and the like that were of general interest to gamers and geeks. Given the frequent tie-ins between those genres and games it seemed a bit crazy that no-one had done it before, and an obvious void to fill. Second was that although the people writing preferred Ameritrash we were going to try hard and make sure we gave coverage to all games that were worth the time, regardless of mechanics or theme. Good games are good games, and we didn’t want to repeat the Euro-exclusiveness found on other sites in reverse.

So we had a team, a name, a vision, a plan and a blogger account and were all ready to launch. And then came another one of those co-incidental strokes of fate that have helped define the site. Just prior to us getting ready to make the first post, Michael got banned from BGG. This is probably the biggest myth in circulation about F:AT so it bears repeating: all the bones of this site were in place a considerable time before he got that ban, and the fact we launched right afterwards is a complete coincidence. We didn’t initially build this to give Michael a new platform, or as a place for people appalled by the moderation politics over at BGG a refuge, but the fact we launched after that ban meant that we became both. It also meant we had a ready-made and eager audience as we launched at a time of maximum publicity around one of our members. That’s been a two-edged sword all along. On the plus side, it almost certainly meant we got a bigger audience than we would otherwise have had. On the negative side, it’s meant that disaffection with BGG became a central theme of this site's community which has haunted us since day one. It’s not good to be defined by what you’re against rather than by what you’re for.

The honour of thefirst post went to Michael Buccheri whom some of you may know better as Malloc. I wanted to get in there myself, but he beat me to it. So I sulked for a few days before makingmy own first contribution on the subject of the Euro-domination of “best games” charts. On re-reading it’s not a great piece and not a particularly important subject but what is interesting about all these early posts is how they accurately foreshadowed a lot of the things that eventually became running themes for the people who write here. In the early days those people were me, Michael Barnes, Robert Martin, Ken Bradford, Frank laTerra, Tom Hancock and Michael Buccheri. A few others made one or two contributions and then drifted out of sight. After we realised that we’d lost a number of contributors and could perhaps do with some new blood to fill the gaps and someone - I think it was either Michael or Ken - suggested we get Ubarose on board. At first we figured she’d just be another great writer to add to the stable. Little did we know she’d quickly become the primary motivating force, at first for moving the site from the blogger engine to its own address and platform, and later for pretty much everything we do, putting an enormous amount of unrecognised and unpaid effort into keeping the site and the community together. As I said recently to our newest recruit, the only rule we have here is that you do what Shellie tells you, and that’s only because she’s always right.

And the rest, as they say, is pretty much history. I imagine most of you will know most, if not all, of what followed. We’ve had our ups and downs, our trolls, our eruptions of disagreement over internal politics but we’re still here, still posting stuff about games and most importantly of all, still growing. I was reflecting recently that, biased as I am, I think I can claim hand on heart that Fortress: Ameritrash has the best quality written articles on board and card gaming anywhere on the internet (these guys are also pretty amazing, but they largely do video). Authors on other sites and blogs are sometimes interesting and sometimes entertaining, but only here are there people who regularly manage to be both. The other thing I think we do better than other board and card gaming sites is community. We veer from intense, serious debates about game mechanics to politics to family stuff to cock jokes and, amazingly it all seems to work. You make it work. All of you. Whether you contribute pieces or post in the forums or just come here to read, the continuing success of this site is down to you.

Thank you.

It’s rare that I hear about a game and decide that it’s a must-buy. Rather, I prefer to wait, see what the community consensus is, read some reviews of the game and the rules, then make a decision. Often, however, it’ll be one paragraph, even one sentence that makes me choose one way or the other. Often, I ask myself why I bother