Here are all the fun things that came in it:

DM Screen (Super nice)
Sticker that says “Shadowrun”
Five Books (I’ll get into them later)
Six double-sided sheets that break down game mechanics (See the images below)
Four sheets with location layouts, double-sided. One side with a legend saying what everything is and the other side blank so the players won’t know what is what.

Now let’s talk about the books you get with this kit. On The Run is one of their more popular adventures that helps both new GM’s and new players enter the world of Shadowrun 4th Edition. I have actually used this adventure and I will agree, it is helpful for newbie GM’s, plus the players seemed to enjoy it (I had two guys that have never played the game before)

Anatomy Of A Shadowrun is a break down of an adventure, re-written to make it feel like reading a story. During certain events the book breaks down what happened in terms of game rules and mechanics. I haven’t had the opportunity to sit down and read this one but it’s on my to-do list.

I really like Compiled Tables as it provides a full, compiled list of tables from all the source books. Example, you can look at the light guns table and it will show you all the stats for each light gun found in the current Shadowrun books and list what page to find them in their respective books.

Contacts | Adventures | Sprawl Sites is exactly what the book’s title is. This book provides you with some pre-made contacts, sprawl sites and ideas for adventures that can be used in your campaigns.

Finally the P.A.C.K.S (Pre-Generated Auxiliary Character System) does its best to help you build characters on the fly through various steps in trying to allow custom, quick npcs to be built and hope to have some uniqueness. You might pick a troll, that is a blades man (skill set includes skills and bp total cost) with swords and climbing gear (two different gear sets with individual bp cost, plus a list of items the character receives.)

I would dare say that for the $24 I spent on Amazon, my money was well spent with the amount of tools I managed to get from this. If you’re a new GM to Shadowrun or just want to add some extra options to aid you, I don’t see how you could go wrong with this.

And to top it off, here are some pictures I took while opening the box.

Game Science dice are made in a plastic mold and then clipped off and pretty much sold from that point. Here is the one of the major flaws every one brings up when I talk about these dice, and I do agree with them, but I will say I have had better luck with these than Chessex over the years. Once they are clipped off, there is a little bit left from the mold, but this can easily be filed down and smoothed out to keep the sharp edges. Game Science states they produce “Precision” dice and are, “the closest things to Vegas dice you can buy without actually buying Vegas dice.” At least this is what I was told at GenCon when I talked to the guy working the booth. So I said, “Why not, I’ll give them a try,” and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Now on their website you can order inked dice or non-inked dice. Basically if you want your dice to look how they came out of the mold or someone has already gone through and filled in the numbers with ink. Since I paint miniatures and own various ink and small brushes, I decided to take a friends idea and just buy the non-inked and do it myself. I will admit, I had a few moments where I screwed up, but overall I felt I did a decent job with them. Plus the ones I think I messed up on, the ink may rub away after some playing with them since I had some ink on the surface of the dice and not in the grooves for the numbers.

I’ll say this part right now, to me, the movie was very entertaining. I thought the actor playing Thor, Chris Hemsworth did a great job portraying the God of Thunder. I’ve hit an issue over the last few years watching movies and TV shows where I feel some actors/actresses can’t act. (I’ll use this time to refer to such actors as Will Ferrell where in every movie I see him playing the exact same role, but alternate a few things about him) So it’s a little refreshing to see someone toss around, oh what are those things called? Emotions?

The addition of Natalie Portman was a great round of eye candy. Another person I thought player her role as Jane Foster very well. I remember it was just about a decade ago that I first saw her on the big screen back when she was Padmé and I thought, “She is cute, but not that great of an actress.” I feel that over the decade she is starting to be a good actress. I’ll be honest, I really haven’t seen much of her other work since Star Wars, so it’s not like I have watched her evolve from point A to B. I just have Star Wars, 1999 and Thor, 2011 to compare her skills. Hopefully she would have gotten better over that time, right? Shame I can’t say the same for Will Farrell.

Hopefully I don’t really need to get into much detail over Odin on the big screen. I mean, it’s Anthony Hopkins for crying out loud. That’s like casting Bruce Willis in a movie. You tell the guy to go stand there, ask if he knows his lines and no matter what his response is, you get a golden performance. I had a joke about how the man is a god, but figured now wasn’t the time.

Loki, played by Tom Hiddleston, was an interesting choice. I really haven’t seen him in other movies but felt he did an amazing job playing the God of Mischief (as some know him). We had a small disagreement after the movie with Loki and that was one of my friends felt he wouldn’t have tried to fight Thor head-on like he did in the end of the movie. (I would have said spoiler alert, but really, if you can’t guess that there would be confrontation between Thor and Loki, you shouldn’t watch movies). My argument was, since the movie itself was a coming-of-age story for Thor, showing his growth from immaturity to maturity. Then the same could be said in terms of Loki. So given all the circumstances that lead up to that scene, perhaps Loki felt he could actually defeat his brother. Now in Avengers, if we see Loki attempting to fight Thor in the same manner, then I’ll jump ships and agree with my friend, but for now, I feel it was both Hollywood wanting to create a more dramatic scene but also believable in the sense that Loki could have made a poor judgement call in the heat of the moment.

So with that being said, if you have any enjoyment for superhero movies, be it Marvel or DC. I would say go watch Thor. I found it very entertaining. It had some great fight scenes, fantastic special effects, Natalie Portman & Kat Dennings (She played Darcy Lewis, one of Jane Foster’s friends), just an all around fun movie to view with your other superhero loving friends. I don’t know if they have a non-3D option since my movie theater only had it in 3D. They didn’t have a great deal of “3D effects” the I felt required me wearing some glasses in addition to my glasses for a little over two hours. Really the only 3D effect they had were when they tried to emphasize things in the background or foreground a little more than standard movie screen can portray. Blasted, watching 3D movies on top of a 2D plane!

Also, like all the other Marvel movies, yes there is a scene after the credits. As we sat in our seats I pulled out my phone to check IMDB and see if Samual L. Jackson was in the movie or not. Once I saw he was on the actors list, I knew they had a scene at the end since during the movie Nick Fury never showed up.

Yauch revealed their forthcoming new album has taken the band’s sound in a “bizarre” new direction, saying “It’s a combination of playing and sampling stuff as we’re playing, and also sampling pretty obscure records.” -Wikipedia

They truly do have a new sound going with the amount of sampling they’ve done this time around. Not to say that it is a bad thing, it’s one of the things the Beastie Boys are famous for and what helped them to stand out amongst the other musicians back in the day. I remember when Mix Master Mike starting doing his own stuff and could hear the Beastie Boys influence in his own work. (Or should that be the other way around?) If you’re a fan of use to be a fan of the BBoys, you should pick up this album. If you’ve never listened to them before, then I have a treat for you. The Beastie Boys put their album online at SoundCloud.com and I’ve added it below. Enjoy the beats!

Hot Sauce Committee Part Two by Beastie Boys

The two part episode started off with something quite… well horrific. We actually see the Doctors death. Although now with all the weird rules that he has discovered that time can be re-written, I suppose this could always change in the future, but for now, we witness him actually die as he was shot, begins to regenerate and then is shot again. Although, as always, he knew what was going to happen so he sent letters out to four of his most trusted friends, Amy, Rory, River and a younger version of himself (Although I was curious as to why Martha Jones, Captain Jack or Micky wasn’t contacted) and they solve the riddle of the Silence. Toward the end of the first part, Amy reveals to the Doctor that she is pregnant, or thinks she is, being Amy she is never quite certain about anything.

We also get to see some nice scenes of Ol’ Tricky Dick himself. (He didn’t do anything important, I just wanted to type Tricky Dick. See? Did it again.)

So without ruining the second episode and how they go about solving the issue of the Silence. I’m pretty stoked for this new season. I really feel that mid-way through Season 5 Matt Smith started to fill out the role of the Doctor that David Tennant left behind. He’s no David Tennant, but few people are. Matt doesn’t have that wild, bouncing around energy that David was able to push on screen. But, David really started to hit his stride during his mid-season 2 and was phenomenal in his last season. So Matt has some time to still wow me. Amy, River and Rory help to balance things out.

If you’re one of those people that has never seen an episode of Doctor Who, I would really recommend watching a few episodes if you get a chance. SyFy usually has episodes every now and then plus last year they seemed to be about three weeks behind in airing the new episodes and NetFlix has the first 4 seasons up for streaming. I’m not real sure how this season will turn out, right now it’s a little odd, but hopefully they can pull it through and have a great story arc.

After downloading the file and running the setup, it will asked where you want it installed; after that it will then ask where your League of Legends client is. (At least it did for me) You will also have the options of having the program begin when you start windows or not. The great thing about this application, as long as you have it running in the system tray, it will auto-detect when you start a match and will begin recording once the load screen pops up. I just played two games with this application running and I can say I didn’t notice any degrade in performance with both fps and lag.

When you load up a replay to view it, it will load the replay in your actual League of Legends client so you will be able to freely scroll through the match and watch your team, or stay focus on yourself. With this as the way of viewing replays, you really don’t lose any quality in video and the files still remain some what small. The first game, my team won right at 20 minutes and the file size is 2.27 MB and the second game last a little longer and the file size is 3.8 MB.

So far the only downfall I can see is the ability to edit your replay matches. So you won’t be making any compilations of your sick murder-sprees for the greater YouTube public. If you’re just wanting to be able to record your matches, share them with people or go back to watch what you did wrong, then this can be a great tool for that.

And if you would like, here are two examples of the games I played while using this recorder. First Game | Second Game.

Sunday night at 9pm, HBO premiered their new series based on the novels, A Song of Ice and Fire, written by George R. R. Martin and the show started off much like the first book, A Game of Thrones did. With the Night’s Watchmen set out patrolling the North beyond the wall, when the group discovers, The Others, or as they are known so far in this show, The White Walkers. Within about the first five minutes of the series, it has already set the tone for how this show will be played out, as one of the Night’s Watchmen watches one of his brothers get decapitated right before his eyes. We see a few scenes later that the sole survivor managed to escape and was making his way South.

From there the show quickly changes pace as we are taken to Winterfell, where we first get to lay eyes on the Starks. Now when I read the first two books, I always imagined Winterfell, as, well, a place of winter with snow every where and constantly falling. Maybe not constantly, but that was how I visioned it. The television show however, crushed that vision I once had, as I was taken to a land not covered in snow, in fact it didn’t even seem that snow has fallen within the last couple of months. Besides that, our first scenes of the Starks are of Bran practicing archery with his brothers giving him guidance and Lord Eddard “Ned” Stark watching from above with his queen. The girls are off working on some crafts and switch-work, when Arya decides to show up Bran and fires an arrow directly in the center of the target.

For the most part, if you haven’t read any of the books, you won’t know who any of these characters I have mentioned are so far, because the show does a pretty bad job of really introducing the characters if you are unfamiliar with them. Once word reaches Ned about the deserter of the Nights Watchmen, he orders all of his sons to go with him as he hands out the mans sentence. Without sounding cruel, I have been looking forward to this scene ever since I first heard that Game of Thrones would be on television, for I was wanting to see the legendary sword, Ice. As Ned pulled Ice from its sheath I was both amazed and slightly disappointed. This was another one of those books to film I felt didn’t have their justice done correctly. I always read into as the sword itself, although forged of Valyrian steel, gave off the impression that it was made of ice. This sword, used by Lord Eddard Stark, played by Sean Bean, did not appear to be made of ice, however, it was huge, really huge!

As we continue to stroll through the book show, after Ned beheads the deserter of the Night’s Watchmen and beheads him in front of his sons, they begin their journey home when they discover the dead dire wolf mother with the puppies. Ned orders the pups to be slain when Jon Snow, Ned’s bastard son brings notice that there is one pup for each of Ned’s children. With the symbol to the House of Stark being a Dire Wolf, he felt that these pups were meant to be found by them, for them.

Ned soon receives word that the King is riding North to see him as he brings news of the previous Hand to the King, Jon Arryn has died and that King Robert Baratheon, played by Mark Addy or as our very own Corey made mention the first time he saw the episode, “HOLY CRAP THE KING IS ROLAND FROM A KNIGHT’S TALE,” comes to ask Ned if he will take Jon’s place as the Kings Hand. All of this of course is after the first entrance of the Lannisters. King Robert could have been a little fatter, but he still played the part well. For the first time in the show, we given some nudity as we find Tyrion Lannister, the midget (I wanted to use the correct term dwarf, but being a fantasy story, I didn’t want to confuse people, from this moment out I will refer to him as dwarf) visiting the local brothel and doing what he does best, staying out of sight of the other Lannisters.

I was a little shocked at how much ground was covered in the first episode as we are taken to, obviously different land as the environment just looks more lush than Winterfell and we see Viserys Targaryen and his younger sister Daenerys for the fist time. I was a little shocked when they decided to show Daenery’s nude as her brother looks her over before he presents her as trade to Khal Drago. In the first book, Daenery’s is around the age 13-14, but I think they may have bumped her age up a little for the show. She still looks pretty young, but if I were to guess I would put her around 16 in the show.

We are taken back to Winterfell when Lady Catelyn Stark receives a letter from her sister stating that Jon Arryn was murdered and it hints that King Robert may know that the Lannisters murdered Jon, which is why he needs Ned by his side. For those of you that haven’t read the books, let’s do a quick run down of the houses.

The Starks, ruled by Lord Eddard Stark and Warden of the North governs Winterfell.

House of Lannisters, Tywin Lannister is currently the head of this house and have secret ambitions to take hold of the throne although he has not been introduced yet to the show.

House Baratheon has King Robert as the head of the house and the man currently sitting on the throne. Robert is married to Queen Cersai Baratheon, who is a Lannister and twin sister to Jamie Lannister. You meet both Jammie and Cersai in the first episode.

House Targaryen who we have met Viserys Targaryen so far and he is obsessed with reclaiming the throne as he is the heir of his house. He and his sister were exiled from the land when the throne was taken through war and Robert Baratheon took the throne.

Hopefully that helps to clear up just a little. I want to leave those of you who haven’t read the books to be a little in the dark. I don’t want to ruin everything!

The final scenes of the first episode are of the wedding with Khal Drago and Daenery Targaryen. Daenery is given gifts to celebrate her wedding, the two most notable gifts are a chest with Dragon eggs in them. Said to ancient and turned to stone by now from the years, but rare and beautiful gift. Then her new husband, Drago gives her a white stallion, and even through they don’t speak the same language, he hints to her to follow him on their horses. They ride out to the coast where Drago prepares an area where he plans to consummate their marriage.

Finally, we see Bran doing what he loves to do, climb the walls of Winterfell. As he climbs atop a tower, he hears a noise. As any good 10-year old boy would do, he investigates the source of this noise. As he looks into the tower he discovers Jamie and Cersai Lannister having sex when Cersai notices Bran. After a short conversation, and knowing full well who the boy was, Jammie pushes Bran out of the window and we watch as Bran falls to the ground, leaving the audience wondering what happened to him.

Friday night was the season premier of Starz new series, Camelot. As anyone with any video game, history or a certain amount of movie knowledge, I’m sure you will know the basic synopsis of Camelot. For those of you that aren’t following, a quick run-down of what to expect. Medieval setting, sword play, magic and blood. Also, because it’s on Starz, you can add nudity to it as well.

Warning, I’m going to do my best not to ruin the episode, but I will make some references to the first two episodes. So if you don’t want to read, skip clicking on the link.

The season began with a double episode, featuring the fall of King Uther, Merlin tracks down Arthur and tells him his true destiny. Then Arthur, Kay and Merlin head off to Camelot in their plan to put Arthur in charge. Morgan attempts to make her own power play in her attempts to take over the throne that belonged to her father. Finally, much like the stories we were told as children, Merlin has Arthur seek out the sword of the gods that has been stuck in stone for centuries.

The first thing I thought of going into watching Camelot was, someone is attempting to compete with The Game of Thrones series that should begin on April 17th. Both have similar settings with the medieval, war, sex and magic going on. Since Camelot was able to begin first, it may pull some viewers away from Game of Thrones if they don’t want to watch two series that are in the same sort of genre. Now the true question. How many Game of Throne fans can I manage to stir up that will yell at me for comparing it to Camelot?

If you enjoy the King Arthur story, so far it seems that Camelot is doing a pretty decent job at telling it. After the first two episodes I know I’m looking forward to the next one airing Friday. If you have the free time and able to do it, check it out, see what you think. I feel it’s worth at least the first episode.

If you have a Netflix account, you will be able to watch Camelot on Fridays at 10pm with Starz Live. If you miss it during its live streaming, Netflix will not be airing the show for 90 days. So either watch it when you can or prepare to play the waiting game.

There are several different ways to ago about playing a game of TI. You play as the leader of one of the different races that exist in the universe in an attempt to lead your race to victory. The main objective is to be the first to player to 10 Victory Points, (Unless you’re playing one of the different alternate rules. Then the game could be played to 9* or 14) which can be done through several ways, such as, trade, resources, influence, technology, or just good old fashion galactic conquest.

TI can be played with three to six players and a game will take any where between three to five hours. Although for your first game, I would play to set aside at least six hours before your first game. We only had three players for our first game and it lasted around five and a half hours as we constantly referred back to the rulebook anytime something new came up.

I picked up TI to round out my collection of board games and to provide a nice strategy game. So far I have not been disappointed. I will however, make mention of a few issues we’ve come across with TI over the games we’ve played since I picked it up about a month ago. First off, there is an expansion and I highly recommend getting it as it adds four new races, two new playable colors, new technology cards, action cards, political cards and a brand new set of strategy cards. The first set of strategy cards are decent, although there is an issue with the eighth card, Imperial, as it pretty much makes it so if you don’t select Imperial, you will quickly fall behind. One of the hardest things we’ve tried to fix with our different games, is make it so you don’t always want to take one particular card every time. (I know it doesn’t make much sense at the moment but if you have played/ever play TI, everything will make sense.)

The rulebook, in addition to the basic rules, also offers several different alternate rules that I highly recommend playing around with. Example of a great custom rule is Sabotage Run. Basically, this rule allows you to commit a number of your fighters to attempt an attack run on the War Suns. Needless to say if you can pull it off, you and Mark Hamill will have something in common.

One of the other biggest issues we’ve come across, a few of the games there has just been very little combat. Another nice reason to pick up the expansion, some of the new victory cards attempt to help promote warfare. I personally feel that each of the new rules we have tried so far has slowly been helping us find a play-style that our group enjoys. Sadly, in our hearts, we are all very defensive players. So it’s been a challenge to find ways to promote warfare. I think the next game we’re going to attempt a combination of old and new strategy cards in addition to some of the final alternate rules we haven’t tried yet. Despite the lack of combat, I highly enjoy this game and recommend anyone that likes strategy games to give Twilight Imperium a chance if you can.

Twilight Imperium is a board game produced by Fantasy Flight Games and you can find the rule book, erratas and all the other material for the game here.

$15.99 – One game out at a time

$22.95 – Two games out at a time

$29.95 – Three games out at a time

One of the biggest differences I’ve encountered while using Gamefly and Netflix both is, with Gamefly, you’re not always guaranteed to get the game in your #1 queue slot of your game queue. In fact, the last game I received was forth on my list. You should be able to have a good idea of what game you should receive next when looking at your queue each game will have an availability listing. Higher the availability, the more likely you are to receive that game next. So if there is one game you really want, clear out your entire queue except for that one game and you will eventually get it. The longest period I’ve had to wait for Gamefly to ship a game to me was about a week after my e-mail notice that they had received my last game I shipped back.

If you’re a serious gamer or a casual gamer, Gamefly will have some way to benefit you. Let’s start off with the basics. If it’s any game that for a console that is currently on the market, you can find the game and rent it. I’ve rented games for my PSP and DS as well as for my PS3/Ps2. Sadly, there are no PC games, but that’s obviously due to easier pirating issues. The next benefit would be the option to keep a game. If you currently have a game rented out, you will have the option to keep the game at a reduced price than it would be to buy it brand new. I’ve done this for a few games I wanted but I didn’t care if I had it on release day. When Rock Band 3 came out, I was lucky enough to have it shipped to me just a few days after the official release and with the Keep It option, I was able to purchase the game for $45 instead of $60. If you choose to keep a game, they will ship you the box and manual for the game. Which is a really nice feature for those people out there that just have to have the box and manual when you buy a game.

Another perk is every three months (for the first year) your account will acquire “Levels.”

Level 1 Qualifications: 3 consecutive months as a Gamefly member
Rewards: 5 Gamefly Dollars and an additional 5 Gamefly Dollars every 3 months

Level 2 Qualifications: 6 consecutive months as a Gamefly member
Rewards: 5 Gamefly Dollars and an additional 5 Gamefly Dollars every 3 months, 5% off all used game purchases

Level 3 Qualifications: 12+ consecutive months as a Gamefly member
Rewards: 5 Gamefly Dollars and additional 5 Gamefly Dollars every 3 months, 10% off all used game purchases

Granted its not exactly the best reward, considering if you don’t spend your $5 within 3 months of getting it, it will expire a little after you receive your next $5. Sadly, you are unable to use the $5 toward your monthly bill, so you are forced to buy a game if you want to make use of it. However, Gamefly typically has a decent selection of games that are less than $20 or even less than $30. Plus if you can manage to get a game shortly after it’s release, you can manage to grab a new game for $40. So it has its perks, you just have to work the system a little. Now, like Netflix, you can keep these games as long as you like without any late-fees.

If you’re into playing console games, but hate spending the money on brand new games. I would suggest giving Gamefly a shot. Again, I would like to express that I, in no way work for Gamefly or am trying to encourage others to use their service. I enjoy providing information to others and try to help them make any decisions that they may have had. I’m just a gamer and I’m a fan of other gamers. I have my favorite system, but when it comes down to it, we’re all just playing video games and trying to have fun.

Have any services you’ve been curious about? Leave a comment and I’ll look into it.

This article was brought to my attention just a few days ago. I lost the link so I had to track it down again. If this is all true, things may look bad for Gamefly.