Beyond The Board

It's no secret that boardgames have experienced a bit of a Renaissance in the past few years - my city now has a dedicated board game parlor, as well as a boardgaming club that is attended by hundred of players every other weekend.  This has resulted in a few new shops opening around town, too - for my birthday a couple of awesome friends gave me a gift certificate to one of the newer shops, Beyond The Board, so I decided to check it out:

Yay! Money that must be spent on games!

 The shop is tucked into the corner of a shopping center off of W. Bridge St. in Dublin, OH:

Unfortunately, there was no good way to get a decent picture of the store - either it was blocked by the trees, or I was under the overhang

Walking in, the shop seems nice, if a bit... unfilled, I guess?

It just feels like a much bigger space than necessary.  (Although I've never been there during a CCG tournament or event - the extra space might be nice to have on those nights).

I was mildly surprised to see that they had a corner of the store dedicated to Games Workshop & Privateer Press minis & products, but make no mistake - their main focus was definitely board games.

They also have a nice selection of games in their "library" for customers to try out:

At this point, I decided to pick out a game - while there is lots of stuff on my wishlist, in particular I was looking for something that 1.) would play well with just my wife & I, as well as with friends, 2.) was fairly "light", 3.) didn't have a theme that would instantly turn my wife off (just about all sci-fi themes & many fantasy ones are right out), and 4.) wasn't too expensive (say goodbye, Fantasy Flight coffin-box games).

This is were Beyond The Board stood out - I told the lone employee working that day, Chris, what I was looking for, and he proceeded to walk the aisles with me, point out any possibilities, and give me a brief overview of the play style & mechanics of each game.  After me telling him my personal pros & cons of some of his picks, we were able to narrow it down to four or five solid possibilities.  In the end I narrowed it down to King of Tokyo, Qwirkle, and Planes - I decided to go with Planes (although I'll probably go back and pick up Qwirkle sometime):

I also picked up a copy of Star Wars: Empire vs. Rebellion for a friends' birthday (this was a 2-player card game that Chris highly recommended - I kinda wanted a copy for myself, but the theme is a hard sell for the missus):

After making my selections, I went to pay, and found out they have a pretty cool rewards program:

I could potentially fill a scary number of these cards in record time

After paying, I chatted with Chris a bit longer before taking off.  Overall I was really impressed with the sotre and the staff - if you are in the area, check them out!

Exemplar Errant Officer & Standard

...finishing out my recent Protectorate of Menoth purchases, I picked up a Exemplar Errant Officer & Standard:

(If there's one beef I have with the Army Box deal, it's that they give you the Exemplar Errants but not the Unit Attachment, which I've literally never seen anyone NOT use for their infantry-type units).  This would have been the absolute first set of models I'd have bought to expand my collection, but no one had it in stock locally, so a trip to eBay was necessary.  This should be the last of my Protectorate purchases for a bit...

Monolith Bearer & Initiate Tristan Durant

I picked up a couple more models for my Protectorate of Menoth force today:

That's a Monolith Bearer & Initiate Tristan Durant.  These two models kept coming up in my search for "must have" units, and I think the Monolith Bearer is an awesome sculpt and look forward to painting it...  

More Protectorate of Menoth

Shortly after acquiring my Protectorate army, lars4life & I wandered into our FLGS, where he presented me with some models for my birthday:

Sweet!  A Vassal of Menoth and a Paladin of theOrder of the Wall!  (I bought the Devout myself).  The menoth force is coming together quick!

How To Get A New Warmachine Army (Without Really Trying)

Admitedly, I've been pretty out-of-the-loop regarding wargaming for the past year or so.  Talking with lars4life on the way to Adpeticon, he was telling me about the new All-In-One Army Boxes from Privateer Press, and they sounded like a pretty amazing deal.  I resolved to see if the PP booth had any when we got to the con.

The Privateer booth only had Khador (have it already) and Skorne (not interested).  My main interest would be Protectorate of Menoth or Cryx, neither of which was out yet.

When we got our swag bags, there was a Warmachine battlegroup included, and mine was Protectorate of Menoth:

(Fun fact: the first Adepticon I ever went to, I received a Menoth battlegroup - I gave it to lars4life so he could have a second force to run Pressganger demos.  The next year, I got a Protectorate battlegroup again, and traded it for Khador.  Okay, so it's really not that fun of a fact.  Deal with it).

I really like the fluff for Protectorate, and actually left Adepticon with a little bit of my spending money still in my pocket, so I resolved to hang on to it and keep an eye out for the Army Box.  Lo and behold, the next time I visited my FLGS, what was sitting on the "new arrivals" shelf:

The Army box is a tremendous deal at full MSRP, and my local shop sells Warmachine for 20% off everyday, so I got all this for a little over a hundred bucks:

...which is a steal.  I started doing some research about what to get next, and one of the models that kept coming up in the forums was Gorman di Wulfe, Rogue Alchemist - well, lars4life & I took a painting class at Adepticon taught by PP's Matt DiPietro, and he gave us a model to practice on - that model?  None other than Gorman di Wulfe:

So, thanks to a free Battlegroup, a free Merc model, and a great FLGS, I wound up with a brand-spankin'-new 48 point Warmachine army for just over $100:

That's an insane deal - I've bought crusty, covered-with-three-layers-of-paint models from Craigslist that weren't much cheaper.  Next is to get it painted and on the table...