Over the next few days, we'll be posting our coverage of Anime Central 2012. In the meantime, some quick thoughts:

PROS

Great guests and bands. Much better (Read: more recent) stuff on the buying floor. Nice lineup of DJs. Good organization of the Cosplay shoots. Nice array of viewing titles. Guidebook was incredibly helpful.

CONS

Fire alarm! Masquerade got massacred. IRT was more difficult to deal with than usual. No AMV contest! And most of all, the timing was terrible on all the main events... stuff running 2+ hours behind. Kind of hard to organize your day with the schedule being that messed up.

So, stay tuned for our full coverage. First up, enjoy this lovely recap video by our own Rewby-

Ares Games' Wings of Glory (nee Wings of War) has dropped with a lovely looking Starter Set, featuring 4 exquisitely detailed minis, and all the cards and rules needed to get you shooting friends and loved ones out of the sky in no time.

For those of you that never got a chance to play Wings of War, it is essentially a card-based dogfighting simulation, in which you slide cards around to represent planes and the maneuvers they choose. Now, the game can be played with just the cards, but the minis make it that much more fun. The new set, now rebranded 'Wings of Glory', integrates seamlessly with the old WoW cards and minis, as will the upcoming 'Wings of Glory' WWI planes and cards.

To help get you up in the air, Ares Games has launched a contest over on everyone's favorite game site, BoardGameGeek, with the prize being a free copy of the WW2 starter set.

You can check out all the details here.

Ahhh, March. The month of melting snows, decimated livers, and brackets, brackets, brackets.

For those not in the know, the merry month of March is the home of the NCAA basketball tournament, known affectionately as March Madness. As it is a single-elimination tournament set up in brackets by division, gamblers from serious to casual get in on the action by filling out their own brackets, using their basketball acumen to garner loads of cash and accolades. Or, if you're like me, you just erroneously pick teams, and hope people end up thinking you are some kind of idiot savant. To date, I have only been accused of being the former.

This year, Funimation has created an anime bracket, with individual titles being linked to actual teams. No idea who Creighton is, but you think Sgt. Frog has a decent chance? Go for it. Could this be Black Butler's year? Who knows.

Click to read more ...

IDW Publishing and Wizards of the Coast have launched a Forgotten Realms Character Creation Contest to coincide with the upcoming comic book series penned by Forgotten Realms creator Ed Greenwood.

The winner will see his or her character appear in a future issue of the series, as well as receive a nice chunk of swag. Runners up will all receive D&D prize packs.

Perhaps I can finally find a creative avenue for my one-armed dragon-raised undead Minotaur pimp.

(fingers crossed)

Entries must be received by Wizards no later than 12:01 a.m. PST on February 10, 2012. All the info on this and the other nifty contests going on can be seen here.

2011 was an exciting year for Dungeons and Dragons. 4th edition was going strong, the D&D Encounters gaming sessions were successful, and the Adventure System board games were a hit. They started a big push with the Neverwinter brand, up to and including a Facebook game. So what will 2012 bring us?

A new D&D. While they're not quite calling it 5th Edition yet, that seems to be the common inference. They have already begun playtesting with 'friends and family', with public playtesting opening shortly. D&D Essentials was met with mixed reaction, so it'll be interesting to see which way they take the new system as far as complexity goes. WotC is selling hard the idea that this next system will be shaped by the players, taking into account as much input from the games as they can, which may prove to be a daunting task. Enigmatically, they also say the system will be 'flexible', and  "rich with options for players and DMs to embrace or reject as they see fit, a game that brings D&D fans together rather than serves as one more category to splinter us apart."

Whatever that means.

The full press release, as well as how to sign up for the playtest can be found here.