Genestealer Cult Photos 1

Cult of the Four Armed Emperor

Magus and Iconward Acolyte done.

Sanctus completed

Purestrain Genestealers. I messed up on them a bit but they work. 

10 Brazilian Videogames To Start 2020 In An Epic Way

I don't like to make lists but this one is a special exception. I created a list with 10 Brazilian games that I loved a lot to play in last years. As a Brazilian guy, nothing fairer than talking a little bit about the games created in my country. You can find any of them easily in Steam or the mainstream consoles. I tried to put a small description of each one with a trailer. You can search on Google to know more about them.

1.Horizon Chase Turbo (Aquiris)

Horizon Chase Turbo is a modern take on the 90s old-school racers that we loved the most such as Out Run or Top Gear. It's the first game in analogic Blu-ray launched in Brazilian Territory. Platforms: PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, Xbox One



2.Chroma Squad (Behold Studios)

Chroma Squad is a tactical role-playing video game influenced by tokusatsu TV shows, particularly the Super Sentai and Power Rangers franchises. Platforms: PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Android, Microsoft Windows, Linux, Macintosh operating systems, macOS.



3.Celeste (MiniBoss)

Celeste is platform game in which players control a girl named Madeline in a beautiful, challenging and metaphorical struggle against anxiety and depression (I really love this one). Platforms: Linux, macOS, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One



4.Rainy Day (Thais Weiller & Amora B.)

A short and reflective experience about depression on a rainy day. A game to be played right in your browser. Click here. Platform: Internet browsers.



5.Shiny (Garage 227)

Awesome art, robots and puzzles. I'll not say anything more, but Shiny was one of the most immersive experiences I had with a game in the last years. Check the trailer below and try to play. Platforms: PC, Xbox One and PS4.



6.Blazing Chrome (JoyMasher)

Blazing Chrome is a classic co-op run 'n gun with an original arcade feel. Players can choose between Mavra, the badass human resistance, soldier or Doyle, the groovy rebel robot, to kick some metal ass. Are you a Contra lover? You'll love this game. Platforms: PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows



7.Aritana and the Twin Masks (DUAIK)

second adventure of a universe that explores even more the forest's mysteries, based in the brazilian mythology and culture. With a new weapon, a bow and arrow, the adventure extends gameplay possibilities, bringing 3D movement, big sceneries in open landscapes to explore and powers that helps the player solve several puzzles. Explore a huge lost temple and find artifacts that can be mixed in many special potions and prepare yourself to save the tree of life. Platforms: Xbox One.



8.Sky Racket (Double Dash Studios)

Sky Racket is a mixture of the casual fun from Block Breakers and the awesome action from Shoot 'Em Ups, which makes it the first Shmup Breaker. Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Linux, macOS, IBM PC compatible.



9.Tamashii (Vikintor)

Tamashii it's a platform game that generates a sense of strangeness for its gameplay and layout. I can't express in words why I liked this game so much. I think it was his strangeness that made me find an experience interesting. The dark ambience soundtrack with the lovecraftian/gigerian creatures/scenarios are the high points of the game for me. About the developer: Vikintor is a Brazilian independent artist and game creator; his work it's mostly about Metaphysical punk, Transgressive Gnosticism and Philosophically subversive themes. Making small and medium-size games with the proposal to conceive experimental interactive medium of expression (text from author's site). Platform: Microsoft Windows.



10.Lenin - The Lion (Lornyon)

Lenin is an albino lion, the only one of his kind, and because of that he feels insecure and constantly discouraged. In fact. Worse, his mother does not understand why his son was born this way, and the whole village despises him and treats him cruelly. At school, he suffers bullying and can't concentrate on class. Now, hopeless about life, certain situations seem to awaken in Lenin something that is not of everyone's reality, but only of his. Something he will discover to be the part of something else. Platform: Microsoft Windows.



Bonus Stage: Mind Alone (Sioux)

Time for self-promotion! MIND ALONE is an experimental mobile game that uses puzzle mechanics to create a dark narrative about somebody trapped in their own mind. Each puzzle is a memory and the player needs to solve them to find hints about how it happened. I created this game in a partnership with Sioux, a Brazilian gaming publisher. Platforms: iOS and Android.


Hope you enjoy and happy new year.

#GoGamers

Into The Tiny

Tiny Epic Galaxies delivers on its promise: it has the feel of an epic exploration game, but it comes in a small box and doesn't take all day to play. Now, don't get me wrong, it isn't Xia or Star Wars Rebellion, but it still creates a sense of mighty space empires growing stronger as they explore and conquer new territory.

It's a dice placement game, a growing sub-genre of worker placement where players roll dice to determine what actions they can do in a given round. The actions here are moving a space ship between planets, acquiring one of the game's two resources (energy or culture), using either diplomacy or economy to advance colonization efforts on a planet, or utilizing an established colony's special ability for a game effect.

Players start with 4 dice and two space ships, and compete to exploit the resources of a row of planet cards at the center of the table. Landing on a planet conveys a one-time use of that planet's special ability. Orbiting the planet and taking the time to colonize it takes longer but adds the planet to your pool of colonies, meaning only you may use its special ability. Additionally, each planet provides either energy or culture, so spreading out your ships to take the best advantage of the acquire resource action is critical to having the resources you need to upgrade your empire, which gets you more ships and dice to use on later turns.

As with all the games in the Tiny Epic series, this one doesn't really offer anything truly original, but that's not the point. The accomplishment is that it offers something similar to what you normally only get from much larger and more time-consuming games. The amount of game that designer Scott Almes is able to get out of a minimum of components is astonishing.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) There's a lot more going on in this game than can be expected from a 5" x 7" box, that's for sure.

• Tiny Epic Galaxies official website
• Tiny Epic Galaxies on BoardGameGeek

Cleaning Up The Books (Tradecraft)

I am not an accountant. I can barely keep up during my annual conversation with my accountant. I had a year of accounting in high school, probably to avoid some nastier math requirement. I know just enough to understand double entry and the difference between receivables and payables. From talking with my accountant and a business broker, there are a few areas I'm now a bit more cognizant about, things that show value or indicate problems that are often about something simple, like categorization of expenses in your accounting software. That's the exciting topic for today. Let's clean up your books.

Cost of Goods used to be my dump stat. If you have a high cost of goods, it shows your business is not very efficient. It indicates maybe you don't have a handle on shrink, or you haven't negotiated good terms with your suppliers. It might mean you're a bad buyer. A high cost of goods may indicate an industry problem, which is bad if you're trying to sell your hobby game store to someone uninitiated as a kind of toy store thingy with tables.

I actually track my cost of goods daily, so when I saw the difference between my real, spreadsheet cost of goods, and my fake, Quickbooks cost of goods, I had to figure this out (also Quickbooks is always realler). When I presented my income statement, my business broker gave me a disapproving look with my high COGS. What happened? What happened was I was dumping miscellaneous charges into cost of goods, which is a major no no. Be extra careful about what goes in this category, since it indicates so many possible problems with your business. If you have to dump something into a category, do it into a discretionary one like office supplies.

Office Supplies are pretty discretionary. Everyone thinks they could come in as a new owner and reduce waste of office supplies. My accountant encourages me to put anything consumable, anything not clearly durable, into office supplies. Office supplies also gets depreciated immediately, unlike durable goods, which are depreciated over years. so if it's in a gray area, it's office supplies. Not sure what it is? Office supply. Never use miscellaneous. Miscellaneous is a question mark. You don't want questions in your books. Answer the question!

Payroll should be broken into multiple categories. Payroll expense, taxes, payroll processing and insurance. Each of these have different tax consequences. Each expense can be attacked to drive them down in a different way. Speaking of payroll, have you given yourself a raise recently? Your pay is a discretionary expense so brokers don't care. It reduces your end of year tax burden and saves for your retirement with social security payments. It forces your business to compensate you first, unlike profit distributions which happen last, when it's convenient. You deserve a raise. You're welcome.

Rent is one category that should only ever include rent expenses. Your business value is backstopped or dragged down by your lease. No successful business can predict continued success if it has to make a costly and unpredictable move, and if your rent expense is dragging you down, there's likely nothing to be done about it. Personally, I can't imagine any business would sell with a month to month lease. I would insist on a lease as long as your earnings multiple from the valuation. If your business is valued at 3x your earnings, I would want to see at least three years left on the years. I wouldn't invest in a business until I saw a copy of the lease. Someone believed in you to be around for years. I want to see that. Heck, I want to at least see your name on that contract, especially if I have to approach the landlord to assume it.

The main take aways here are be meticulous with your books. Make sure fixed expenses and discretionary expenses are not mixed. It's easy to get sloppy. My credit card bill averages around $15,000 a month and it's painstaking to make sure every line item is categorized properly. I download reports, try to figure out each charge, and I'm especially careful with those cost of goods, since they can look like other things. It doesn't really matter if it's just you in the business, if you ever want to sell or bring on partners, you'll want to be meticulous and you'll wish you had done it years before.

Why Is K.I.S.S.ing So Hard?

 Keep It Simple Stupid!

I did get a chance to try my "improved", more 'accurate', less 'gamey' version of the rules and once again by the time the game was over, it was tedious, bordering on boring actually, and taking far too long for a quick solo game. (Please imagine a clever gif of me scrounching up a piece of paper and dunking it in a waste basket.) 

So I did what works best for me. I did other things for a while (including a 16thC game over Hangouts where I was rightfully trounced - sorry no pics but I expect the game will appear on the Sharp Brush blog.). 

Then, today, I came back with a fresh eye and an open mind.

Once more unto the Bridge! 
Turn 8ish of 15: the armies are all on board and well engaged.

The first step was to spend some time with my nose in books. Then, I let my subconscious mind guide me as I poked at the figures and started to think of other mechanisms, "the look of the thing", what needs to be shown and what doesn't and about the sorts of decisions I want to be making as a player.

Casualties mount. The Bodyguards charge into the battered grey infantry!

The next thing was to again regroup the figures into units of 8 infantry or 4 other figures which is how they are painted. I then dumped the existing command control and activation rules, the fiddlyier bits, the existing morale rules, the mutiphase charge resolution and the proposed reintroduction of pinned and rally rules.

...and they pursue, sweeping away the fleeing rebels. Then, once the refugees were clear..... the two Rebel batteries opened fire on them at close range! The Guards quickly retreated to lick their wounds.

I then scribbled some note outlining the new simple game, tweaked it once or twice for things that arose mid game, and played an engaging, very close, occasionally nail biting, rematch of the same OHW scenario in roughly an hour. 

The details are more abstracted but then so are the shiny toys and the things I had to think about as player seemed to me more like things a General should be thinking about.

Turn 13/15. The Hochelaga Fusiliers are the last fresh Dominion unit. "Fix Bayonets" "CHARGE!!" and the last remnants  of shaken rebel units flee over the bridge. Another incursion has been repulsed.

So, that's one happy test game. The rules have been amended to match and the link posted on my Rules blog page. 

I think its time to do some casting and painting and the like, and then try it again with a bigger scenario and more men!