I’ve been looking forward to picking up a copy of ‘The Settlers’ and decided to cruise over to Men at Arms Hobbies (Middle Island, NY) with Emily in order to do so. Those of you who knew me ‘way back when’ know that we used to spend a lot of time at Jim’s picking up figures or rule books for the various games we used to play. It was great to hang out with Jim again and talk about some new games.

[ed note: added contact info for Men at Arms:

(631) 924-0583
134 Middle Country Rd
Middle Island NY 11953-2519]

Jim’s looking good - he always asks about my ‘no-good’ brother (in jest, or course) - funny that he still remembers us from what is now over 20 years ago. He’s been there 27 years. The shop is packed with all kinds of hobby and gaming stuff, old as well as new. The painted figure case is filled with awesome figures, some old favorites but many new ones as well. He’s always specialized in military modeling, so there is a large contingent of Russian subs and such, but the rulebook shelf is huge! I haven’t seen so many different gaming books in one place before, frankly - though I don’t go to hobby shops when I’m in the city so I’m sure it’s only a modest collection. Still, impressive. Games Workshop stuff is well represented with figures galore.

I picked up ‘Settlers’ and an older copy of
White Dwarf, the Games Workshop magazine from August (half price) and Jim and I talked about all and sundry for a good long while. I’ve been popping in at least once every year or two just to touch base, pick up some dice - check the game shelves and such. Every once in a while he’s got something cool to turn me on to. This time it seems that Racer Knights might be the winner.

Racer Knights is a cool twist on a collectible card game. Each pack contains a set of plastic cards with ‘racer’ parts that punch out and assemble into a 3 dimensional race car which you then race in an arena using Warhammer Fantasy Battle style rules. You move ‘one card length’ for a certain amount of points which equal your d6 dice roll + a stat on your ’stat chart’. The cards are designed to be traded, with ‘commons’ and ‘rares’ and such, you can mix and match the parts to build a better racer with better stats. You can get a good idea of what it’s like by watching some of the
online training movies on their site.

As we were leaving and saying goodbye (we had been there quite a while), Emily got very shy and hung her head. I figured she was unhappy about something, I was thinking she was upset because I had asked her to say goodbye and she wouldn’t say anything and maybe she was feeling guilty or something, but she wouldn’t talk as we walked into the parking lot. As we got into the car she finally started crying. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “I wasn’t done looking around in there, dad.” That was cool! Girl geek! She cheered right up though as she started checking out the Racer Knights packs, so it was OK. I’m sure we’ll be making more trips to see Jim in the future.