[From the Mailbag] Mail Call

I have to admit: I was a little depressed when I left home this morning. Even more so as I sat at my desk staring through space.

And then the mailman came. The UPS man was right behind him. In truth, as they came in I felt a little bit like Winthrop from The Music Man.* The Wells Fargo wagon had come down the street and the Wells Fargo man was was lookin' straight at me. OK, well, NOT Wells Fargo, but the United States Postal Service and the United Parcel Service. But that doesn't have the same ring to it as "the Wells Fargo Wagon." Blame Meredith Wilson, not me.

[Of course, I also don't have red hair, or quite as much hair, and I'm a tad bit older than Winthrop. Otherwise, it was exactly like that song, but completely different.]

What happened next was what you might call the Gamer's Perfect Storm.

This is what I found once I opened all the envelopes and boxes:

Three different 'zines from three separate individuals. Three orders of miniatures from three different companies. All ordered on different days, all arriving on the very same day, from (I believe) six different states. What we have here:

• Issue #1 of Dungeon Crawl
  
• Zogorion, Lord of the Hippogriffs
  
• Issue #8 of Loviatar
  
• Half-Ogre Barbarian, #18 Underdark DDM (1)
  
• Centaur Hero, #15 Deathknell DDM (2)
  
• Centaur War Hulk, #15 Blood War DDM (1)
  
• Wererat Rogue, #39 War of Dragon Queen DDM (1)
  
• Wererat, #40 Dragoneye DDM (2)
  
• Ankheg, #30 Underdark DDM (3)
  
• Kintan Strider, #32 Masters of the Force, SWM (3)

I took a close-up of the ankheg and the Kintan Strider, mostly because no-one I talk to has ever actually seen either of these miniatures. Odd, because the ankheg is an uncommon and the Strider is a common. Regardless, no-one in my circle, or that I've talked to at my FLGS, had ever come across either.

I found the Strider one day when I was doing an image search on the internet and it popped up in a completely unrelated picture. Specifically in a game report on Paizo.com by none other than Sean K. Reynolds. I figured they'd work for troll-kin, giant-kin, elementals...the list goes on and on.

So...now I have something to read and review over the weekend, some adventures to run, and some critters to stat up. Plus, a game session tomorrow night with the guys. Things are starting to look up!

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*That's right. A Music Man reference. Wanna make something of it?