They don’t really say much that you (the reader) haven’t read before. On top of that, I really don’t recall what I did this year. 😛 I’ll catch you up in May, with the blog anniversary. However, the more I thought about it, the more I thought a little post to say something about “now” would be appropriate.
Warmachine
Just before Christmas, I started to think that maybe WMH was not a good game for me. I haven’t played a whole lot of it, which is partially why I’m struggling with it. But when I think about my experiences with Malifaux, I’m certain that isn’t the reason I’m struggling. I think it’s just a poor game. Not a bad game, mind you — that title is reserved for Age of Sigmar (which isn’t a game) and WHFB (which is a bad game). But WMH has a few things that make it not modern (no pre-measuring, no alternating activations, “tacked on” non-kill missions) and a few things that make it a poor choice for me (lots of game-critical text on individual model cards). (Malifaux has lots of text on cards, but for the most part it boils down to “shoot something”, “hit something”. Malifaux rewards you more for knowing your own models, than knowing your opponents models). Given this realization, I have a bunch of models that I’m just not excited to paint anymore.
Blood Bowl
At roughly the same time, my Blood Bowl league started season 2 (finally!). Blood Bowl is a good game. It isn’t a perfect game, but it’s damn good. Too much randomness, combined with too much “fail this and your game is over” bring it down a notch. However, a lot of BB is about mitigating that randomness and making choices about how best to move it around. It has a stunningly good positional game, and even though most games tend towards 3 hours long I have never thought “man, I’m bored” at any point in a BB game. You don’t have to study your opponent, just their archetype. And the RP system leaves me craving more every time I play. The last game I had, I lost pretty badly. But when the RP-phase was over, I noted that I had achieved exactly what I had set out to do — focus on the “bad players” on my team to level them up before I hired the good ones. This decision before the league started meant that I would not be as strong until I did hire those players, but that when I did hire them my existing team would be able to support them better. Long-term strategy like that is not something you find in a lot of games, let alone table-top ones.
Gates of Antares?
A friend won the rulebook for this at a local tournament, and I picked it up and started reading it a bit. It’s apparently a sci-fi version of Bolt Action. Bolt Action, as near as I can tell, has a lot of the best mechanics from Epic Armageddon, which makes me want to play it. EA had some amazing mechanics, that just needed a little bit more polish. I looked into BA a few months ago, but just couldn’t get behind the WW2 theme. Gates of Antares is like BA, but with D10s instead of D6s (more variance in randomness) and with a sci-fi theme instead of WW2. Sign me up! Unfortunately, my game-time has been limited for the last couple weeks and I wanted Warlord Games to put out a PDF version of their rulebook and BB is in my mind (and I have a sweet conversion for my human apothecary!) so this got pushed back.
Warhammer?
I think I’m going to sell my daemon army. I don’t think I’m going to play much WHFB ever again, and I have 3 armies for it. That’s kind of silly. I can’t sell my goblins, because memories (but I could sell the orc portion of them). I can’t sell my lizards because if I did ever play WHFB again it would be with them. But the daemons, while nicely painted and converted, are taking up space in the house I could use for other things. (like drone things).
40k is still a thing, barely. Duke tried to have a game with me on Christmas Eve but we wound up playing some board games instead.
Board games!!
Miranda got me a Bohanza expansion for Christmas! This game is interesting still. It reminds me of Blood Bowl…in that it’s mostly random, and your only game is trying to mitigate that randomness. But Miranda loves it, and I like playing games with her, so here we are.
Duke and I played 4 games of Trains: Rising Sun, and half a game of Archipelago on Christmas Eve. Trains is a fantastic game — taking the good parts of Dominion and tacking on a board that provides a different focus. Would play again. Archipelago was hard, as it’s complicated enough that we had to re-figure out how to play. Then it’s partial co-op, in that you can both lose, and I accidentally caused us both to lose and we found out we didn’t mind so much. Then we played Carcassonne with both our wives, and Miranda and I got trounced. This does not happen frequently — Miranda is traditionally near the top, with me and Jamie trying to catch her and Duke at the bottom. Instead, Miranda and I were fighting for “not last”, and she won. 😛
2016?
I tend to follow my heart when it comes to games. BB has me for sure. GoA could have me, if it put out a PDF rulebook that I could slaver over. But who knows what will happen!
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