Meeples & Miniatures – Episode 175 – Halo Ground Command & Historicon 2016

Posted on July 31, 2016 by Neil Shuck in Meeples & Miniatures // 6 Comments

Download Episode 175

Welcome to Episode 175 of the Meeples & Miniatures Podcast

In this episode, hosts Neil Shuck Mike Hobbs & Mike Whitaker discuss Mike W’s recent trip to the USA, including a day at Historicon.

Our main feature in this show is an interview with Neil Fawcett, owner of Spartan Games, as we discuss their new release: Halo Ground Command.

All this, plus the usual discussion of what they’ve been doing Hobby-wise for the past couple of weeks and some of the latest hobby news.

We hope you enjoy the show

Show details:

00:00 – Intro
06:37 – What we’ve been up to
30:30 – Hobby News
1:04:20 – Historicon 2016
- 1:09:30 – Intro
- 1:10:15 – Joe Piddington
- 1:12:00 – Phalanx Consortium
- 1:20:00 – Byron Collins
- 1:23:35 – Bradden’s World
- 1:31:10 – Footsore Miniatures
- 1:36:45 – Warlord Games
- 1:39:50 – Historicon wrap-up
1:48:45 – Review – Altar of Freedom
2:09:20 – Neil Fawcett interview
3:40:20 – Outtro

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Hobby News

fusilier55 // July 31, 2016 at 22:19 // Reply

Thanks for the shout out Mike and thanks for visiting us in Williamsburg!!

Dave Blood // August 1, 2016 at 00:39 // Reply

RE: Dreadball 2 rant

I completely agree.

I was, for a few years, a huge Mantic fanboy. I played Dreadball, Deadzone, and Kings of War a lot. I was the biggest Dreadball booster in Southern California. People would criticize Mantic, and I would always defend them.

No more.

They took Deadzone, a great, unique game with lots of character, and made it into a boring, generic shooter. They’ll do the same to Dreadball, just wait. This “rules committee” crap is for the birds. Let a great game designer have his head, and leave the committee out of it.

Serious, name one thing a committee has made better. Wikipedia’s Design By Committee page says:

“Design by committee is a disparaging term for a project that has many designers involved but no unifying plan or vision.”

and

“The term is used to refer to suboptimal traits that such a process may produce as a result of having to compromise between the requirements and viewpoints of the participants, particularly in the presence of poor leadership or poor technical knowledge, such as needless complexity, internal inconsistency, logical flaws, banality, and the lack of a unifying vision. ”

Banality is what you get with a rules committee. Banality is the perfect word for what happened to Deadzone, and it will happen to Dreadball, as well.

Dave Blood // August 3, 2016 at 01:12 // Reply

Loved the Historicon discussion. As I’ve said before, I’m fascinated by the differences in US and UK gaming culture.