Back in the day, FASA released the Star Trek: Starship Tactical Combat Simulator, a wargame depicting ship-to-ship combat in the Star Trek universe. Cataptromancer owned a copy, which I coveted purely for the cool counters. As it happens, it seems to have been a decent, if record-intensive game.
Fortunately, Jason Robinson has converted ST:STCS into a free, downloadable computer game. Now, all the calculations are done “under the hood,” leaving you to allocate power and then maneuver your ship and fire your weapons. It’s a sweet little game, even if I can’t manage to beat an L42B with a Chandley.
It should not shock anyone I know that a computer game that appeals to me is a port of a board game.
Monthly Archives: April 2006
The price of old things
As I wrote earlier, I was selling some old minis and other stuff off on ebay last week. Here are the final selling prices:
The Last Starfighter Tunnel Chase game came in the lowest, at $1.25. I guess that 1984 bad-SF-movie nostalgia isn’t strong enough.
Random Eldar came in at $3.50, and the Space Marine diorama at $4.28.
The Chaos Space Marine collection hit $42.75, while the now-rare Melniboneans came in at $52.00.
The Imperial Space Marine boxed set that I bought way back when for $20 sold for $88.78. What’s sad about this is that it would run a person about $110 to field an equivalent number of plastic Space Marines these days, so even though I made a massive profit, it’s still a great deal for the buyer.
Finally, my old Harlequins sold for $97.77, which surprised me until I realized I was offering a complete set — unlike the little groups of Harlequins I’d seen sold on ebay previously.
I hope everyone enjoys their new toys.
Selling nostalgia
Last year, I sold off some Magic: the Gathering “power cards” that were (1) worth a lot of money and (2) not so fun for friendly play, which is all I’m likely to ever do again with my Magic collection. Recently, I did a survey of some of my other game-related items to decide which ones are likely to never, ever be used. Decisions I made:
1) I’m keeping Space Hulk. It’s a great game that I will introduce to y’all who haven’t played it at some point in the future.
2) I’m keeping the Space Marines I’ve put together, pretty much for use with Space Hulk (there’s an issue of White Dwarf Magazine with rules for normal Marines in Space Hulk).
3) I’m keeping all my Epic stuff. I will put together the things I have not yet assembled, Krylon coat all the metal pieces to keep them from oxidizing away, and try playing with the new Epic Armageddon rules set.
4) I’m really not going to do anything with other unused or partially used miniatures, so a whole chunk of nostalgia is going on the ebay auction block. We have:
The old Space Marines boxed set, fit to produce three squads (30 marines). This is a second one that I never assembled.
A bunch of old Chaos Space marines.
32 Eldar Harlequins. These actually saw a reasonable amount of play time, back in the day.
Some other random Eldar.
Marneus Calgar, a Space Marine diorama. So far, this is the only one not selling.
36 Melniboneans, including one or maybe two Elrics. Bought when I thought I was going to participate in a fantasy wargame campaign — they were packaged as Elves, but they’re Melniboneans.
The Last Starfighter Tunnel Chase game. Seriously.