Holy Coolness

It turns out that the judging board and the retailers thought Battue was good enough to make it as one of the nominees for this year's Origins Award.

As you can see here.

I'll reprint the board game section below:

BOARD GAME OR EXPANSION
Pillars of the Earth
Published by Mayfair Games
Created by Michael Rieneck and Stefan Stadler

Kingsburg
Published by Elfin Werks
Created by Andrea Chiarvesio and Luca Iennaco

StarCraft: The Board Game
Published by Fantasy Flight Games
Created by Corey Konieczka and Christian Petersen

Last Night on Earth, The Zombie Game
Published by Flying Frog Productions
Created by Jason Hill

Battue: Storm of the Horse Lords
Published by Red Juggernaut
Created by Jim Long

I hope I can rely on you for your vote.

How cool.

High Times

Julia and I are feeling the stress of selling one house, putting another on the market, buying another, and my current state of unemployment.

The good news is that one house is now sold. We went this morning and signed the paperwork, so that should close in the next couple of days. Then we'll be renting the house back from the new owners for a few months. That times out well because around that time our new house should be ready for us. I doubt it will work out that perfectly, but it could.

Today I'm spending time looking for jobs and contacting everyone I know who might have a good lead for me. So, if you're one of them, you might see an email headed your direction.

The job situation bums me out, but damn I'm excited to have the house sold.

Aaaand We're Back!

I was out of contact last week because I was in Vegas at the GAMA Trade Show.

I've talked to a few people about the show and I had a really hard time judging the show. Nothing seemed to be exciting to people -- although I'm sure the stores are pumped to get some money flowing from the release of D&D 4th Edition -- and nothing really seemed to be angering people, so it wasn't all that exciting.

Jim, Gil, and I had a good time meeting with people, demoing the games for people, and talking up Red Juggernaut. At the show we learned that our first game, Battue, made the list of semi-finalists for the Origins Awards. That was honestly pretty surprising and cool. Sure, we'd submitted the game, but considering the number of board games released (and I'm sure, nominated) every year, we were happy to see us on the list. The whole category is:

BOARD GAME OR EXPANSION
Pillars of the Earth, Mayfair Games, Michael Rieneck and Stefan Stadler
Kingsburg, Elfin Werks, Andrea Chiarvesio and Luca Iennaco
Qwirkle, Mindware, Susan McKiney Ross
StarCraft: The Board Game, Fantasy Flight Games, Corey Konieczka and Christian Petersen
Last Night on Earth, The Zombie Game, Flying Frog Productions, Jason Hill
Chang Cheng. Teknigames, Walter Obert
AmuseAmaze, HL Games USA Limited, Ethan Goffman
Battue: Storm of the Horse Lords, Red Juggernaut, Jim Long
HeroCard Orc Wars, TableStar Games, Nico Carroll
THUGS!, Tiny Mantis Entertainment, Nik Mikros and T. W. Cooney

We'll find out shortly if we've made the shortlist of actual nominees in the running. There are a number of large companies on there with a lot more fans than we currently have, so we'll see how that goes. I'll keep you updated.

A couple weeks before the show, we released out first expansion to Battue, called The Walls of Tarsos. I hadn't seen the final product before, so that was good to hold in my hands. I brought a copy home with me and have it nearby. It turned out very well and really adds some cool things to the game.

We also had a copy of our next game, Mansuba: Challenge of the Pharaohs, on display for people to check out and demo. It also looks really good. I wasn't able to grab a copy of that, but it should be out in the next (let's say) six weeks.

I'll post again soon. I have some business to take care of.

Got it!

I just noticed that my blog has now had over 40,000 visits. Whoo!

I've been busy wrapping up some projects. I'm hoping to get things done a little before their deadlines so I can get feedback before the final due date. It's been very interesting work.

One of our cats is quite the little huntress and every now and again we wake up to find a large dead spider on the floor of the kitchen. There was a bit of a different scenario today as I walked upstairs today and found a spider laying there. It was of average size compared to the others she's found and killed, but this one was found during the day apparently.

For the hell of it, I decided to take a picture and show all of you. How fun, eh? (I put the quarter there for comparison. The spider wasn't trying to steal it.) Its legs are actually folded in on itself because he was all deadlike, so in life he would have looked quite a bit bigger than he appears here. Yikes.

I gave him a burial at sea.

My Life

Things haven't been all stress and worry lately. Life has progressed apace and generally things are well. I'm especially reminded of how good things are when I get comments, emails, and phone calls from friends (from all over the world) telling me how cool, awesome, intelligent, and employable I am. (Thanks, all!)

I forgot to post a few Fridays ago that Julia and I and her parents went to see an exhibition of Roman art from the Louvre that's currently on display at the Seattle Art Museum. I don't know if you'll poke around that site, but you can listen to the audio tour and download a bunch of other information if you want. As for the exhibit, it was very impressive, informative, and interesting. I loved the HBO series on Rome so it was particularly exciting to see sculptures and read/hear actual historical accounts of those people.

We've been busy lately making a lot of choices for the new house. Specifically the paint for the wall, the color of the hardwood floors and carpeting, but the largest number of choices have revolved around the kitchen. We're still not quite done there, but it looks great so far and we should finalized things soon. We went last Friday afternoon to look at slabs of granite for the kitechen island and the countertop; we didn't make a final call, but we're down to a handful of choices.

The house next door is going up. The foundation is now laid, the drainage is in, and just today they dug up a portion of our front yard in order to get to the sewer. I'm a little upset that they had to dig out two small roses bushes, but we may be able to save them. We'll see.

My freelancing is going well. I've been filling time researching, but that work is dwindling. I'll be following that up with some editing, which shouldn't take long. Apart from that I'm busily applying for jobs and hoping something comes through soon.

This past Saturday I played D&D with Tyler and some of his friends for the first time. It was nice to get to play instead of run and I'm hoping the game continues. Considering we're only playing once a month I give it a 50/50 chance of continuing for more than a few months. We're playing the Savage Tides adventure path, which should be fun.

Contact me if you have a job for me or know someone who needs a condo.

Okay, done now.

Tense

My lack of a job, despite all the freelancing, is really weighing on me. I can't even describe the feeling other than to say it's like a stone in my stomach. I know it's because I'm stressed and tense. It sucks. And there's not a quick fix. I've been looking for a good job for a while now and nothing has come together. Ugh, stress.

I know I've said it before when talking about this subject, but I feel like a total failure at the moment.

Bad day.

Working

I've been busy with some freelance work lately -- in addition to all the stuff that's going on with selling the house, planning the new house, and getting the condo ready for listing. There have been a few issues that may complicate matters, but I'm not going to get into details here as it wouldn't be appropriate. Think good thoughts for us.

Oh, and if anyone is looking for a new condo or looking to buy a condo as an investment property, have I got a deal for you!

Last week Friday, Julia and I went to the gym, then decided to do some shopping over in Bellevue. It was pretty spur-of-the-moment, but we had a good time checking out the stores and walking around the mall for a couple of hours. We didn't actually do any buying, because money is still tight, but we had fun and we needed a break from our normal routine.

My freelance work is going well. I'm doing a bunch of research for the next set of the Xeko card game. There's quite a lot of time and energy that goes into selecting the critters that go into that game and I've learned a lot about turtles, snakes, skinks, lizards, spiders, and insects. I was really amazed to learn that some smallish spiders live as long as 8 years, and some spiders don't sexually mature until 3 years. I thought they were more seasonal, like flies and mosquitos. (Did I spell that correctly?) Anyway, that was cool to learn.

Sunday's D&D game was good, but I kind of felt like it's turning into one fight after another. I'm going to have to work on that because is I'm feeling that way, I'm sure the players are, too.

Also gaming related, I was excited to receive the Mutants & Masterminds Annual #2 in the mail yesterday. It looks like there are some interesting things in it and I've already started reading it. It really makes me want to run/play a superhero game.

I was asked to write something for an upcoming M&M product, but the deadline is later this month and I may not be able to make it work. We'll see what I decide.

I have more things on eBay now. Last week's batch didn't sell for as much as I'd hoped, but this week's seems to be going really well. Whoohoo!

Oh, happy April Fool's Day. No joke this year, sorry.