After my initial success with my first homebrewing kit, I immediately ordered two more. Though I eventually wanted to brew beer from scratch using recipes and maybe someday even design my own, but in the meantime, I would focus on improving my basic brewing skills. For my next beer, I decided to dive right into the hop-filled deep end with a single-hop IPA. A few weeks after submitting my order, my kit arrived and I was ready to brew again.
Read MoreMonth: March 2021
Is Memoir 44 Too Simple?
The first time I played Memoir 44, the light wargame based on Richard Borg’s Commands and Colors system, I completely dismissed it as oversimplistic, unrealistic, and just plain boring to play. That was ten years ago, when I was still in college and just beginning my tabletop gaming journey. Now — as the cliche goes — I have a full-time job, a wife, and three beautiful children. My perspective has changed quite a bit. Does that change the fact that Memoir 44 is an overly simple, not very realistic wargame? Not really, but I realize now why that might actually work in its favor. In fact, it might even elevate the game above other Commands and Colors games.
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Why I Have Never Finished a Game of Sharp Practice
About a year ago, one of my gaming buddies and I decided to get into Napoleonic wargaming. We split a Black Powder Waterloo starter set and got to work painting the minis. While we enjoy the Black Powder rules, we found them to not be well suited for our 4′ x 6′ wargaming table (at least not with our 28mm minis). Transporting the large amounts of minis to the gaming shop we play at was also a hassle (especially when I need to take them on a crowded bus). Additionally, I feel that Black Powder benefits greatly from pre-game scenario preparation and is not well suited for casual pick-up games. When I heard about Sharp Practice, a large skirmish-scale gunpowder era wargame that doesn’t require large armies or a large table, I got very excited.
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Unboxing: Warlord Epic Battles ACW Starter Set (Deluxe Preorder)
Today I finally got my deluxe pre-order edition of Warlord Games’s new hot game — Epic Battle American Civil War (ACW). Its not actually a new game, though, just mini miniatures for an existing game in a smaller scale than Warlord usually sells. If you’re new to wargaming, this may sound ridiculous, but actually its a really big deal. While many gamers already play large-scale battles with small-scale miniatures, they almost always have to play with metal models that are fragile, heavy, and often expensive. These new models from Warlord are the first small-scale (around 13mm) ACW miniatures I have seen in hard plastic, and boy are they nice. So lets take a look at this box set and see what I got.
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Tsingtao: My Guilty Pleasure Beer
Tsingtao (Qingdao) beer is not good beer. It has about as much flavor as an old rag and has even less aroma. It is filled with so much rice and sugar that its malt is only barely noticeable. When poured, its thin white head disappears almost instantly — a cruel magic trick. It is not good beer by any stretch.
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My Homebrew Journey Begins
A little more than two months ago, I decided to start brewing beer. Truth be told, I am not a huge drinker, though there is something special about beer that deeply attracts me. About two years ago, I wrote a short-lived beer blog for a local website (you can check it out if you want, though its in Chinese). During this time, I got the opportunity to try out many different types of beers and learned much about their characteristics. However, as I started reading up about homebrewing, I realized that my blog had only begun to scratch the surface. Despite beer being made up of four simple ingredients (malt, hops, yeast, and water), to a brewer it is an infinite canvas filled with countless possibilities.
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