EndGame Oakland Commands the Largest Dropzone

Mike Montesa sent me an email about a month ago reminding me to sign up for the DropZone Commander tournament in March.  Of the 14 spots available, there were only 12 left!  Come on Mike, no need to sensationalize it.  I'll sign up, don't worry.

A few weeks later, I see another announcement on Facebook: just 8 slots left in the March tournament.  Uh huh, yeah, I'll do it.  You only have 6 people.  There are like 10 who play at Endgame.  Don't rush me.

A week later, I see the last fateful post: 2 spots left.  Wait, what?  How did you go from 6 to 12 in a week?  Okay, okay, I'll sign up, I just have to find the URL, and check my calendar, and oh shit its too late, they are grabbed.

DropZone Commander is a 10mm combined arms, dropship focused miniatures combat game by Hawk Wargames.  If you are thinking that you know that name from somewhere else, you are wrong, they have produced literally nothing else.  Each player alternates in activating groups of units to move, shoot, stab, or search for objectives.  The game is set in the year 2670, humans from Earth have expanded out to colonize the stars, found alien races and inevitably gone to war with them.  They fight mind controlling aliens, post scarcity war-loving aliens, cyborg human aliens, and rabid, savage (and yet somehow extremely effective and technologically advanced) humans.  There is a lot of history and story to the game, which can be compelling.  I play the human faction that generates a surprising number of jokes about Will Smith's character in Independence Day, mostly revolving around the oft misquoted line, "Welcome to Earf!"

The Best Everything of 2014

This is it, folks. The last day of 2014. A day when we sit back and reflect on all of the awesome things we saw and did this year. We hope it was as awesome for you as it was for us, and thanks for tuning in each and every day to the Ace of Geeks. We couldn't be doing this without you, and we appreciate every since one of you guys. Next year, look for brand new content, new shows, more articles, and more coverage of conventions around the world. But for now, let's look back and reflect on the best of this year. Here, by popular vote, are our staff's picks for the best of 2014:

SAWS Challenge Keeps the Indy GT Spirit Alive. by Seth Oakley

I’m never really sure how Google knows what is going on. I mean, they could have a lot of really smart people that research issues and make predictions. They could collect a lot of data and then use it to predict trends. That was the conclusion of classical mechanics as I understand them: If you knew the location and velocity of every particle, you could predict everything that was to come. Further research has shown that you can’t know both pieces of information, but still Google is able to predict, almost to the minute, how long it will take me to drive up to Sacramento to hang out with my friend Dan and cover the SAWS Challenge, a 5 round Warhammer Fantasy Grand Tournament. Google Maps put the drive at 2 hours, 10 minutes. I would be leaving San Francisco on a Friday evening, so traffic would be rough. Maybe the estimate went up. I ride a motorcycle and can cut through most of it, so maybe the estimate went down. I would be taking 80, and there was road construction, so the estimate goes up. It’s 80, so people are going like 75 mph, so the estimate goes down. I got lost and had to stop and look at a map, estimate goes up. Still, 2 hours and 10 minutes later, there I was, at the hotel, right at the time Google had told me I would be there. Can they manipulate traffic signals to control this flow of cars? Did they turn off the lights of the signs that would have guided me? All good questions for another time.