Two weeks!
Pat and I are on Atkins. I've been avoiding sugar for two weeks now. Oh, and also rice, bread, potatoes, and other carbs. But really, I don't miss those starches as much as I miss delicious pastries and fruit shakes.
First, the downsides. It's significantly more expensive. I'm eating more meat, but also more greens, and both are expensive compared to rice. It's also seriously depressing to go cold turkey on sweets, since normally I'm sugared up to the gills.
On the plus side, in those two weeks I've lost ten pounds! Maybe more! Ironically, I've also been getting better nutrients, because of all the fish and greens that I've been having. So hey, things are looking good.
In the long run, I think it's unhealthy to keep a strict ketosis diet, so I'll probably return to a broader diet... but I'll still skip out on white rice, white flour, and white sugar.
Apart from the scenery, though, is the game any good? Short answer, yes. Heroscape doesn't try for anything too fancy, and scores with its intuitive, straightforward rules that barely need to be taught. Unit stats and abilities are printed on cards. This is so much better than being on the figs (less worry about wear and tear) or in the rulebook (no need to look things up in an expensive, overwhelming codex). Having special cards allows each unit to have unique, explicit special abilities, spicing up the game experience while keeping the core rules simple. 
The funny thing about Heroscape is that it's made by Hasbro and is supposed to be a mass market toy, meaning it's found in Toys R' Us, not in Neutral Grounds. Unfortunately, this wasn't really marketed in the Philippines, so most pepople here haven't even heard of it. And since it was released in 2004, this makes it pretty scarce. The Master Set (read: starter) is incredibly good value. The booster packs have roughly the same MSRP cost per fig compared to Clix and Dreamblade, but they're not random. If you just want orcs, go ahead and buy the box with orcs in it. 
Warmachine (as far as I can tell), plays great. The gameplay is pretty similar to Mageknight, but with more stats, more abilities, and more variety - Mageknight designed by serious gamers. Oh, there are some issues about how mechs drain resources too much compared to infantry, but that's something that has a lot of countermeasures. 
The funny thing is, I casually suggested to a couple of Warmachine players that it would be nice if the game went prepainted, and they started ranting at me like I was a goat-horned heretic. I guess from their point of view, playing with pre-painted minis is like playing with a pre-constructed Magic deck - yeah you can do that, but then what's the point? 
I printed out some chits to try the game out, and the truth is I really like it. But having to take up painting and modelling as one more hobby on top of gaming is a really big barrier to entry - a line I'm not willing to cross. 
Unfortunately for Dreamblade, it was packaged as a collectible game with a horrible theme (nightmare monsters, wtf). They're well designed, well sculpted, and well painted, but at the end of the day who's going to make an effort to collect an army of two-headed gorillas? It would really have helped if it were packaged as a boardgame with all the bits in one box. Yes, I know I say that about everything but in this case it's exceptionally true. Unappealing figures and a high barrier to entry killed this game. 
So how do you get into a dead collectible game? In this case, I got a few starters when they were on sale, shopped for some singles on local forums. Last month I finally finished my goal of getting two of each common and one of each uncommon in the base set. Fortunately, the way the numbers work out it's easy to put together straight up preconstructed faction armies (ie. One of each blue and red common VS two of each green common). Treating it as an out-of-print boardgame instead of a dead CMG makes it much more appealing to play. 
On the downside, the figs are mostly mediocre - bland sculpts and thick painting. I'm sick of playing on flimsy paper maps. Also, the idea of having clix bases is interesting, but ultimately I think it's better to just have stat cards and statless figures. 
Overall, I'm happy with what I got. Hey it was cheap! I wouldn't really bother to get more though, and I definitely wouldn't even try to get into it competitively. So... is anyone interested in picking up my duplicates?
Dominion counts as a boardgame, but it's really just 500 cards in a nice box. Unlike a CCG, people don't bring their own decks; instead, everyone plays from one common pool of cards. Building your deck *is* the game. The person who can build a deck with the most victory points in it wins, but to do this first you need Gold (for buying things) and various actions (to speed up your deck in various ways). 
Dominion is good stuff! The basic rules are easy to learn and the game is easy to play, but there is a great depth of strategy in evaluating cards and choosing what combination to put in your deck. There's a constant impetuous to make you build just a leetle bit better game after game -- the very same thing which kept me interested in CCGs for years (Although without the corresponding need to burn cash). 
I was well primed, then, when Mage Knight: Destiny's Soldier caught my eye. I'd passed over it before, due to it getting tepid ratings. To be fair, the biggest complaint seemed to be that the poor tutorial made for a steep learning curve - but I already know how to play. So, I gave it a go. 
It's pretty good! The action and fatigue system is relatively unique to Mageknight, and is a good change of pace from the usual j-S-RPG. The old complaints about melee have been heard - apparently MK2.0 introduced a couple of univeral melee abilities that give more balance. Time limits and special scenarios keep the game fast and fresh. On the other hand, the graphics are a little old, and there's no multiplayer. The stylus controls are intuitve, but spottily programmed. My biggest problem though, is that these little plastic men are, in the end, just virtual - it doesn't count as a toy. 
After a while, we did end up playing competitively. I'd spend a lot of my online time on the old MKRealms forums, buying cheap singles. We bought Dragons and Giants. Played 2000 point armies. Pat actually paid for and managed her own collection, playing in tournaments with more cutthroat armies than I did. 
Unfortunately, the problem with Mageknight were obvious even then. Ranged units were priced only slightly higher than melee units, even if in practice, the melee units would get shredded before they ever got close. Turtling was superior strategy; it was not uncommon in tournament games for time to be called without a single attack. Internal playtesting was a joke. It seems that Wizkid's solution to the dominance of long range was to make even longer ranges. Bigger, and bigger, and bigger. 
It all came to a head when they released a new base set, named simply Mage Knight, known colloquially as 2.0. We were given a choice: Play a better game, but know that all of your old figures are obsolete, dead plastic. Or, quit, take your figures home, and never buy new product again. 
Over the holidays, I made decks for the eight races of Lorwyn block. The goal was not to make finely tuned winning machines, but to make decks that were fun and balanced to play against each other - good fillers for boardgame night. 
Last week, I got to try them out with Cels, Jem and Pat. I'm happy that everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, even if the decks needed more tuning - although part of that is because two headed giant plays pretty differently from 1v1. (As an aside: Pat loves 2HG) 
Let's Magic!