What ever happened to Baby Jane?
After looking around my games - and in continuity with some virtual conversationI had with friends and strangers around the world, discussing Global Games, Inferno and LOS, I arrived to this questions:
Am I a sucker for dead games?
Am I getting older, thus unable to move to newer stuff?
Is there a Great Old One that makes his personal business to destroy good, inspired games?
Or is it that the world is just random, and some bad games endure, while other excellent games are thrown to the voids of oblivion?
My answers, as wrong as they might be, are, in order: yes, no, probably and yes.
One of my favorite games is
Inferno from Global games. I've played it with archfiends and minions, I've inserted Mechs into the fray, I've created new, lieutenants, Fiends and hordes. The original game had some very hard to understand rules, but with diligence one could understand it and play it for some great fun. It's gone now. It's a stiff - as John Cleese would say.
Another one is
Legions of Steel, also from Global Games (what ever happened to Global Games?).
Then we can go all the way to
Clan War, that I still collect in order to have a complete army of every clan. Am I crazy?
Another one is
Fantasy Warriors a game where you leadership is really, really in the field of battle. You can dowload the rules for free at
Mirliton, a lot of material that includes the FW Companion and a lot more. Mirliton sells the official minis for the game. Good minis, good prices. So the game is not dead, but flying very low, if you know what I mean. A pity that there aren't more players, since it is a very good game.
Silent Death will never be dead in my heart, although the news of its decease are now in effect for the second time. Rise! Rise again, my beloved! I've got more SD ships than many real countries have warplanes. I still miss one or two that I must find...
And I'm not going to bother you with the dead boardgames that I still play.
But three questions still remain to be answered:
Why is it that some good games die so easily?
Why is it that some games, with sad, lame mechanics, hang on to eternity?
And what ever happened to Baby Jane?
One of my favorite games is Clan War. I love rank and file games and Medieval Japan and Legends of 5 Rings. And sometimes I just want to play it in a skirmish game. So I'll create a Warlord (from Reaper) with a Samurai feeling for L5R minis. I will call it Warlord - Another Tale of Genji. Yesterday as I was painting Oni no Chizaro and thinking about its stats I envisioned a solo game between the Oni and some Samurai. Seven in fact... Mmmm... I'll make a post on that later.
I had this beast for years now. Undercoated in black and waiting. The creature sprouts Oni Podlings so I had to broom the house several times a day. He promised he would stop with it if I painted him. Who believes in the promises of a Oni? But I picked the beast and gave it a quick dry-brush of purple while I admonished it about sprouting things. He moaned...
Oni no Chizaro has some interesting stats in Clan war, specially the capacity to sprout Oni Podlings and it has also some good skills. I will translate it to the Warlord system. (my homemade rules for feudal japan) trying to remain faithful to the spirit of the Oni, if not to its concrete stats. A dry-brush in red and then I highlighted the body with orange.
At this point he tried to bite my finger. Its in his nature, I suppose.
I then painted the final details and I wrote down the sketch stats to try it out this weekend with a friend.
