A Brief History of Time Part 2

Ok, I'll try to be a but more succinct with the second half of this. ^_^'.

Around the time I became seriously invested in playing high skill Magic was when our local store closed down. While I still feel a bit of remorse for losing that store, I can't say I can see it going down any other way. The store owner was incompetent and the physical space was ill suited to fit the events. However poor a facility it seems in retrospect though, it will always remain the starting point for long friendships, relevant marker in the time line of my life, and home to many great memories.
This didn't stop me from continuing with Magic though. Magic online came out shortly after, and I quickly became enthralled with it. It allowed an astounding amount of play and testing for someone who was lucky to get in a few games a week in a place like Ohio. Magic Online also lead me to my eventual passion of Limited. (For non Magic nerd out there, Limited is where instead of bringing a deck you built beforehand, you construct a deck out of sealed booster packs on the spot of the tourney.)
Over time I consumed more and more information about the metagame, and got a better and better understanding of what made great players and deck designers. More than once Joey and I tried to form an 8 man Team to test Magic with and have a go at breaking into Regional Level Magic. We came close a couple times, but the will was never there from a full group, and it never carried past a few haphazard meets and practices. Finally in mid 2007, I lost the will to play altogether. The developers of Magic were changing fundamental things about it, and never for the better. Skill was being increasingly devalued in the game, and I lost interest.
There had been another Trading Card Game I had loved called VS System. It was a game using Marvel and DC characters that I felt fixed many of the inherent design flaws of Magic. The problem was that it fixed them to well. It was a Gruelingly skill intensive game, which was great for my tastes. However it was significantly less desirable a trait when trying to create a tournament friendly game. Single turns could take several minutes because every decision you made could break you and put you out of the game on the spot. Single games took so long that best of three matches became impossible, and Upper Deck instituted a single game match policy. Other mistakes were made too, like the premature creation of New and Old formats, severely devaluing once highly expensive cards, and leading to banned lists ridiculously long for a young game.VS System didn't survive long after, and I found myself out of card games forever. (Even poker! Aneurysm Inducing Poker.)
There was an overlap though between the end of my TCG career and the beginning of my Minis interest. Shortly after the local store had closed I had been introduced to Mechwarrior. While I was intrigued by the general feel of having physical units that moved and fought, I was put off by the rules severely. I definitely like the idea of a Minis game, but MechWarrior would not be mine. A short time later I was drawn into a few games of WarMachine, Warhammer, Void, and Urban War. I began to realize how much I liked these games, and Urban War in particular stuck with me.I dove headlong into the world of Urban Mammoth, buying a couple of armies, making shitloads of terrain, and becoming just short of a rules and fluff expert in just a few short weeks. That summer our group went to Origins as a registered GameGroup and demo'd Urban War for 4 days straight.
Soon after however the gaming community in my area fell apart completely, or if they were coherent somewhere I was not aware of it, as I had moved to a nearby city for college. I wouldn't play a game that wasn't called Call of Duty 4 for nearly 2 years.
This puts us at the present. A couple of weeks ago while talking to a friend we were discussing the need for gaming and tactics in our lives. We toyed with different ideas, and finally we settled on a game to try out. (It's a sort of bastard hybrid of Halo Actioncix and Urban War. I'll explain in another post.) I jumped at the chance since we will be moving into a new apartment together soon, so should have time to game together. Urban War rules books have been ordered, and armies are to follow soon. A metric shit-ton of the now dead HaloClix was also picked up on the cheap.
A new gaming store has emerged in our area (which I moved back to and now commute to college as I have a spiffy newish car) and it is FAR more stable than the old one. In the next month or so I will be reaching out to that store, joining them in their favorite games, and hopefully introducing them to my favorites. (Urban War specifically, as it is just now trying to get a foothold in the US)
I'm also looking into a few other games as possible future interests once we have a solid playgroup established. Infinity seems to have a passable rules set, but more importantly has the most fan-fucking-tastic models I've ever seen. (You may notice I heavily favor sci-fi and skirmish games to other periods and levels. More on why in a future post.)
So that's where everything stands. If you choose to read our blog and follow along you'll be there at the start of our new beginning. I hope you will, and thanks for reading.

-Josh