The Call of Cthulhu Kickstarter Games

I am on the look out for at least one Kickstarter project to fund this year and have been keeping my eyes and ears open for would be games. Having just completed some reading of H.P. Lofecraft, including his The Call of Cthulhu, the following posts on these two crowd funded games caught my eye.

Unspeakable Words Call of Cthulhu Delux Edition!

Unspeakable Words is a card game for 2 to 8 players. It is a game were players earn points based on the number of angles in the letters in their words. There are Cthulhu pawns, cards, a 20DS, rules, and a bag to carry your madness around with you, just in case the mood strikes for another game.

This project still has 24 more days to reach its goal,(as of 1/27/15) but has already reached its goal of $12000. That means more stretch goals will be coming your way if you fund this project with a minimum of a $35 pledge

Rise of Cthulhu

“Rise of Cthulhu is a strategic card game of influence and horror for 2 players”. Rise of Cthulhu includes 74 cards with some very neat art, 1 token, rule-book, and it all comes in a nice looking box. This project will be open for another 21 more days, but has already met its goal of $7000, that means more stretch goals for someone with a pledge of $50 or more.

Monsters Mentioned in The Shadow Over Innsmouth, by H.P. Lovecraft

"The patterns all hinted of remote secrets and unimaginable abysses in time and space, and the monotonously aquatic nature of the reliefs became almost sinister. Among these reliefs were fabulous monsters of abhorrent grotesqueness and malignity-half ichthyic and half bacchanalian in suggestion."

3 Photo-Etched HO Scale Details

These goodies were recently found in an unopened box of model railroad miscellanea. All are waiting to be assembled, detailed and set out on my model train layout. I find working with brass quite rewarding.

They say that a scene is in its details. Here are three photo etched details that I acquired for my HO gauge model train layout:

Builders in Scale

These lobster traps are etched in brass and will take a few minutes to bend into shape. There are eight in a package and include eight lobsters.

Detail Associates

Detail Associates manufactures dozens of HO gauge detail parts, mostly for detailing HO train engines, but I did find this set of tools to be used in some scenes,

Gold Medal Models

The last image is of four shopping carts. These are from Gold Medal Models and are etched in aluminum. These will be great left in front of a grocery store or how about an old woman pushing one down the street with all her worldly belongings.

The Works of William Hope Hodgson

I am off on another tangent and so much for my original winters reading list. Most of what I had selected to read during this period was not to my liking. I recently downloaded several of H.P. Lovercraft’s short stories and novelettes on to my Android device and have already read through the list. Not being finished with this genre (horror) I started to look for works from other authors and recently came across the work of William H. Hodgson.

I have downloaded the following titles:

1. The Boats of the Glen-Carrig
2. The House on the Borderland
3. The Ghost Pirates
4. The Night Land

The first three are part of trilogy in which I am just starting the first part of this series, The Boats of the Glen-Carrig.

Hodgson’s body of work is quite impressive. He has written across multiple genres, including horror, science fiction, and stories of the sea and adventure.

So far the first of Hodgson’s trilogy has been good reading and have confronted some type of monstrous creature that visits during the night and an island where the soles of men are encompassed into trees. More to following on this nautical adventured horror story.

Low Cost or No Cost Print and Play Board Games that Look Interesting and Fun to Play

                         

Type	Title and URL	Price	Description
Fantasy
	Battle of Ayrene's Woods	free	A little fantasy game from TCS games
Historical	3 Famous Battles Set	2.00	“A set of 3 introductory war-games of famous battles. “Separate PDF’s with maps, rules, and counters for the battles of Waterloo 1815, Senlac: the Battle of Hastings 1066, and Lee at Gettysburg.
	ACW Solitaire	5.00	“In ACW Solitaire, the player plays the Union forces in the American Civil War of 1861-65. The aim is to defeat a simulated confederate opponent using a combination of strategies. Units include named Generals, Armies, Forts, River Gunboats, Naval Fleets and different Indian Tribes.”
	American War of Independence: Battle Pack 4	5.00	Each of the nine battles included separate maps, rules and counters. Each battle is designed to be played in about an hour.
	Barbarossa Solitaire	3.00	“A solitaire game simulating the struggle between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front 1941-45. The player takes control of the Nazi forces against a simulated Soviet opponent. Over time, the players forces gradually weaken and Soviet attacks increase - can you do better than history?”
	Edgehill	free	Introductory game on the first battle of the English Civil War. Easy to understand rules and can be played in an hour or less. There are 113 counters to cut out.
	French and Indian War Battle Collection	5.00	The 12 battles of the French and Indian War includes 12 maps sized from 8.5 by 11 inches and smaller, 17 pages of rules, and 54 counters. These games are for 2 players.
	Gazala	2.00	Gazala is a simplified 2 person simulation of the 1942 battle in the deserts of Libya and includes 3 Page Rules, 50 counters, and 1 8.5 x 11" Map.
	Struggle for Wake Island	2.00	A two player game. “Struggle for Wake Island incorporates both the air and sea components of the battle while remaining a low complexity game.”
	Terror War Solitaire	free	Can you beat the terrorists and terrorist states?
	The Vietnam War	3.00	Is a two player game. “The Vietnam War board game lets players assume control of the North Vietnamese Army and the US led South Vietnam faction. Both players must compete for military domination of Vietnam.”
	Vinegar Hill: Castle Hill district, New South Wales Colony (Australia),March 5, 1804	2.00	Two player game. “While there was trouble with convicts on several occasions in Australia’s early history, Vinegar Hill was the only one serious enough to class as a rebellion. Fortune did not favor the Irish rebels, with communication failures stopping the spread of news or the end result could have been very bloody indeed.”

Quotes from The Call of Cthulhu by Howard Philips Lovecraft

"Loathsome waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of man.”

Quotes from The Call of Cthulhu by Howard Philips Lovecraft

"Cthulhu had a cuttlefish head, dragon body, scaly wings." (Description of the actual Cthulhu creature as described by a horrified antagonist of the story.)

Quotes from The Call of Cthulhu by Howard Philips Lovecraft

Description of a statue that the cult of Cthulhu worshipped and sacrificed.

“The statue represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of fillers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long narrow wings behind.”

Quotes from The Call of Cthulhu by Howard Philips Lovecraft

The quote is from Howard Philips Lovecraft’s, short story, The Call of Cthulhu. The Call of Cthulhu has a modern cult following, not like the cult described within this short story, but at lass, a cult just the same.

“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”

More quotes and links on this topic will follow.

Prison Escapes Mentioned in the Count of Monte Cristo

“Since my imprisonment,” said Abbe Faria, “I have thought over all the most celebrated cases of escape on record. They rarely have been successful. Those that have been crowned with full success have been long meditated upon, and carefully arranged.”

These are two of the three persons and escapes the good Abbe mentioned. I couldn’t find any reference to the third:

1. François deVendôme, Duke of Beaufort
2. Jean HenriLatude
3. Abbe Dubuquoi, For I'Eveque

Blog Maintenance-Backstage

Some of you might have noticed that I have changed the name of Links page; it sits to the right of Home, it was changed from Links to Backstage. I haven’t got around to it yet, but this page is going to be repurposed.

I haven’t seen any activity on a few of the blogs under my Blog List for a while. I don’t want to remove them completely from my blog and have decided to add them to what I am calling the Backstage.

There are so many blogs that start out wonderfully and run for a few months or even a few years and then are neglected. The information they provide is often outstanding and at the least interesting, so I want to keep them alive on this site by offering links to this bygone content, just not on my home page.

Here is a list of those that will get the first cut:

RPG Free List

Sofie's Paint Blog

Steampunk Miniatures Review

Steel on Sand Blog

MeepleSpeak

Extraordinary Gentlemen’s Journal

The Works of H.P. Lovecraft I Recently Downloaded

I recently ran across the work of H. P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft is an author of numerous science fiction and horror stories. However this genre (horror) is new to me, I am enjoying it.

I just recently completed “The Shunned House”, a short story, which tells of a house that suffers from acute paranormal activity. An Uncle and his nephew camp out in house to ascertain where the activity originates and try to rid the house of the paranormal activity.

 Bolstered by my first reading from Lovecraft I added the following titles to my reading list:

• The Shunned House
• The Call of Cthulhu
• The Curse of Yig
• The Outsider
• The Shadow over Innsmouth
• The Shadow Out of Time

How to Create Great Fantasy Maps (Even if you cannot draw)

How to Create Great Fantasy Maps (Even if you cannot draw), by Mark Wightman is a beautiful little booklet that takes the reader step by step through the process of creating  fantasy maps. The author uses simple cartographic symbols and techniques to draw mountains, hills, rivers, forests, and marshes.

The author explains and illustrates the process for each element and then displays the results. It really is quite simple, really! Your first attempt at map making may not be of the quality you prefer; however using these techniques and giving yourself a little practice, you will be creating realistic fantasy maps for yourself.

What’s New for 2015-Resolution #6

1. Back at least one KickStarter project. I will be looking to sponsor one new game this year.

2. Go through my labels to find topics I might want to expound on, delete labels and or posts that have become stagnate.

 a. Some topics I would like to give more "air-time" to:

  i. Dungeon crawl

  ii. Monsters

  iii. Reaper familiars

  iv. Evil toys

3. Games, game rules, and miniatures

4. Scenery and Scenic Pieces

5. Spend more time on forums

6. Learn more about the art of painting miniatures

This is my last resolution to comment on.  As a fellow blogger has commented-on how to learn how to paint, “the best way to become a better painter is to paint ! "or " the more you paint, the better you become" . His comment is so true, and although my painting is still not as good as I like and although I have seen some improvement, I believe that watching and learning techniques from others will help me improve my technique. I will make posts on sites that include some good tutorial, and provide some good pointers and techniques.