It’s terrifying and awesome. Basically you see a picture you like and you can click on it, then you can search for more images LIKE that one by zooming in on a part of the image. While this could be very useful for just about everything, the obvious use is obvious.
of course I’m just searching for a camel-toe style bathing suit for Spring…
Seriously though, it’s pretty great for other stuff as well– really it is.
Ah so long 2015, it was a good year for gaming. Not the best ever, but very good. This is going to be a long post. I think this blog is now 5 years old as well, wow.
Board Games and such
The first best is Blood Rage. I can’t get enough of the game and having it only a short time, I’ve already played it 11 times and will pretty much play any time. While the set up time is a bit long and the boxing back up time is ridiculous, Blood Rage has been worth playing every single time we’ve busted it out. I sleeved all the cards and now store it in a huge pelican case. While I won’t knee-jerk everything that CMON comes out with, Blood Rage was a design and artistic triumph of board games. I wish I had bought it at Gencon AND gotten my kickstarter stuff later because we lost a couple months there waiting for the boats to come in from China. It was a long wait.
I’m tired of worker placement games. I think during a game of Keyflower this year my eyes went blurry and it wasn’t from drink but from the ‘oh shit I’ve played this same thing before with different rules.’ While some of the new stuff looks and plays great, like Caverna, Tiny Epic Galaxies and Euphoria– I’m just real tired of that type of game. Sure, Caylus is one of my favorites, but I don’t remember when the last time was I brought that out to play. There’s just too many of these games and people keep buying them.
Dead of Winter was my second favorite game this year. Excellent psuedo co-op game that plays very smooth and is easy to teach, even to non-hardcore gamers. While the premise with these zombies has been done to death here in 2016 now, Plaid Hat did a fine job with this one. Co-op games are usually crap, but because everyone has their own goals to fulfill to win, it doesn’t fall into the pandemic trap where one player ACTUALLY plays the game while everyone else just sits there.
The new Epic Spell Wars was cool, but it hasn’t hit the table much. I got in one game of Moongha Invaders, and it was good, but Blood Rage pretty much hammered everything else to the side.
Arcadia Quest was played quite a bit, and while it’s not my favorite game, it has a certain appeal to it for the DOTA in all of us. I’m definitely interested in playing more (but not too much).
Talisman is still going strong, but we’re not. I’ve played only twice with the Woodlands and there are more expansions out than number of plays for our group. While Netherealm was awesome, Deep Realms was too difficult to figure out and I haven’t even purchased the Harbinger expansion yet. I am happy they are coming out with a new main board expansion though; that may be very cool and I’ve always hated a few bits of art on the 4th Edition main board (which Fantasy Flight did not produce originally). One of these days we are going to do a series on how to play Talisman, i.e.: which expansions to use and which to leave out. It’s a great game, but it’s over the top now to play with all expansions (not including dragons) that we keep buying.
Video Games
My favorite this year went along with my splurge purchase of a 3DS XL. Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate is completely amazing and hellaciously addicting. It’s a shame it’s only on handhelds. It has a message in the beginning to take breaks from playing it for a reason. I’ve played mostly single player, but I have gotten in on some 4 player monster hunting and it’s great fun.
I’m still playing Darkest Dungeon, even though I just haven’t gotten it yet in terms of how to ‘win.’ I’m getting used to losing a lot of guys and on top of that, running away a lot more. Other than that, I haven’t gotten very far at all sadly, but I keep playing– and playing. It’s great!
Fallout 4 is more Fallout. It’s not a ‘holy shit WOW’ type of game like Skyrim, but there’s a lot going on and it’s been pretty compelling so far. I meant to play it more during holiday, but I didn’t get too much time in. Being able to make gun modifications is a pretty addicting part of the game, though I’m not totally sold on the Minecraft stuff yet.
Other than Fallout and Darkest Dungeon, I played a shitload of Dungeon of the Endless in 2015, which is amazing and beautiful in all ways. Rebel Galaxy has gotten some solid play, which is also good Privateer style fun.
My biggest disappointment was probably the much hyped Endless Legend. Absolutely GORGEOUS art style and aesthetic, even the UI is great, but I hated the gameplay. I’m just not a CIV-style person. Others will love this game.
I guess if I was to pick a runner up game of 2015 it would be Far Cry 3. I know it did not come out last year, but 2015 is when I got around to it. Great shooter, one of the best I remember and a redemption of the franchise after Far Cry 2.
There are a lot of video games out worth playing. Far, far, far too many to even scratch the surface to discuss. I would be like talking about TV shows you’ve seen– there’s just that many out.
Miniatures
When AT-43 was tanking and everything was on sale everywhere, I had just had a kid, so there was no way I could take advantage of it. That said, this year I spent some cash on it and got a large UNA army and filled some gaps in my Red Blok and Therian armies. I got to play once, but this is one I want to expose people to more since I have all the shit and it really is a great game.
Age of Sigmar was a catastrophe. It killed my desire to play Warhammer 8th Edition (for now) which is sad since I was closing in on finishing painting my minotaurs as the capstone to my beastmen army. 8th did not get enough play this past year, and that’s got to change.
We did get some Necromunda in recently, but I think 2015 was not the best year for miniature games and especially sad to see the death of what I think is one of the best rulesets for big midieval style battles- 8th edition Warhammer
RPG’s
This was the year of Runequest 6. Despite some trainwreck sessions I’ve had with the game, I am pretty much convinced that Runequest 6 is the best fantasy RPG for the style of play I want in a serious campaign. While Lamentations and 13th Age are fantastic and will absolutely get played, Runequest 6 just has so much going for it and so many possibilities in a campaign setting. If you have the 6th Edition books, hang on to them as it’s going to pull a Marvel Heroic Roleplaying next Spring and will start to get rarer and rarer. Hopefully I’ll be able to get this together in 2016.
13th Age is my Roll20 game, and we have yet to scratch the surface. On Roll20 it’s a TON of prep though, so when there are weeks when people can’t get it together (myself included), it’s demoralizing.
Feng Shui 2, though I’ve only run 1 session so far, is excellent. Something to bust out for a couple session runs from time to time. I’m not happy the architects are out of the setting, but as a GM, that’s easily rectumfied…
And lastly I need to mention another game I really liked running this year: Into the Odd. Extremely rules light and heavy on the weird. The character generation alone is inspirational and takes 2 minutes. I’ve got this shitty print out of the rulebook that’s stapled and is coming apart from abuse so I need to get a real copy someday. I went so far as to support the author on Patreon so yeah, love it.
I got all the 5E books, liked the DM’s guide but the PBH is just too huge to use as a rules reference. I have not yet PLAYED 5E which I hope to change in 2016. It’s not my D20 of choice, but it’s good and with the OGL now out, it will be deluged with content.
2015, see you later.
I posted back in March about Darkest Dungeon and while still in ‘early access’ for a few more days, it’s ready to go I tell you, it’s ready to fucking go. After playing a bunch in Spring, I got a bit bored with it, I just couldn’t get very far. I beat one of the bosses and kept losing parties and having people go insane. The recent ‘patch’ apparently made the game much harder, so I had to go and try it again over the Xmas break and yeah, it’s a fantastic game and has really come together in the last 5 months.
BUT– it’s not a normal RPG, and it doesn’t say this to you on the box so you have to figure it out on your own (or by reading this more). While you do have a bunch of characters that have skills and weapons to upgrade and the like, these guys are not something to get attached to– in Darkest Dungeon, they are fucking tools. In Torchlight, I get attached to my toons, in games like Dragon Age or Pillars of Eternity you are bound to get attached to your party and really love some of them for kicking ass or being cool. Leave all that behind when you start Darkest Dungeon– all of it because every single character you get in the game is expendable, even your best guys with your best stuff– they will die or go totally insane soon and… you get new ones.
What’s the fun in that you say? Think of it as a sports team management game. You recruit players, they do well for a few seasons and some start to age or get injuries and you have to bench them and then cut them or play them in worthless games. Some just don’t work out in the positions that they have been assigned an they have to be moved or cut. Your goal is to win the games and have a successful season, and if you are playing a soccer club sim, to make a bunch of money too so you can get your bird’s feedbags to the size she wants.
This video is a lie.
You do this by constantly recruiting. You need to keep the poor murderhobos coming into your town as much as possible to get ground up in the dungeons. While your overall goal may be heroic or noble (who can tell?), your means to get there– duping saps to come and explore the ruins, is all but. As long as you have enough saps spilling in and you can keep your money above about 1500 gold, you are good to keep going!
Here are some tips:
So go get it so we can cry together about it.
The world is just a bit less awesome than it was.
This is an excellent interview with Rick Priestley on the inception of Warhammer and 40K and those two big beautiful books from the 80’s that I still pour over from time to time (3rd edition Warhammer and 1st edition 40K that is).
With the release of Gates of Antares, which does not have the amazing aesthetic that 40K does (what with Jes Goodwin and John Blanche), we have Priestley’s seminal rule set for sci-fi gaming.
Good Quotes:
“The fact that the Space Marines were lauded as heroes within Games Workshop always amused me, because they’re brutal, but they’re also completely self-deceiving. The whole idea of the Emperor is that you don’t know whether he’s alive or dead. The whole Imperium might be running on superstition. There’s no guarantee that the Emperor is anything other than a corpse with a residual mental ability to direct spacecraft.
“It’s got some parallels with religious beliefs and principles, and I think a lot of that got missed and overwritten.”
And this:
“When you’re doing something something as wacky as a huge toy soldier game with goblins, it can be a bit of a tough sell. But when people can see how glorious it is, see the beautifully painted armies and all these people hooting and hollering and rolling dice, it gives you an instant idea of how much fun it is.”
And finally:
“The studio, the creative part of Games Workshop, had always been kept apart from the sales part of it. One thing Bryan said was that if the sales people got to be in charge of the studio, it would destroy the studio, and that’s exactly what happened.”
I took the 2015 Community PDF’s for Necromunda, slapped them together, threw on a front and back cover and a few weeks later here’s the book. It took about 45 minutes to make and the rest was waiting for the mails.
It’s not perfect, the text starts too low on the page, but nothing cuts off and the print reads perfectly. I went for color because the community added rules and addendums are colored red throughout the text, and this is essential for plucking out the changes where you think you know the rules. This ran about 30$ plus shipping, so it wasn’t cheap, but now I can abuse this when we play rather than my actual books or shitty photocopies of the community edition with their goddamn staples falling out.
This site has some teaser images of an Ork and Human Thrower from GW. It’s about time. It looks like these are all going to be Forge World minis, so I’m already wincing at the price. I do need a second painted Human blood bowl team, so there’s that.
After 19 years, it hit the table again. Read that again– 19 years. I found a penny in one of the Necromunda boxes that was shiny new– from 1996. It’s amazing that:
Enough reminiscing. We played for about 10 hours yesterday, with breaks for lunch and dinner, but only got in about 3-4 games per player– so i’m not of the mind Necromunda is a short game any more– it can take a long time. I would really not recommend more than 2 games in a day as it’s just too much to process and plan between games in addition to the shootings themselves.
Since I had them painted, I played as the Cawdors again. The models are OK, but unfortunately the Cawdors are a bit of a close combat gang– and none of the ganger models have close combat weapons!
Here is my initial buy for the Transanal Eviceration gang.
This gives you 5 gangers to harvest your territories, a leader who can hammer in close combat and a second back up close combat guy, along with a lot of stuff to flush people out of cover (frag grenades, flamer, shotgun). While I do believe the heavy stubber sucks, it’s only 120 points, can shoot across the whole board, and you will get a lucky roll from time to time to make it worthwhile. No one has armor, so don’t bother with the heavy bolter until later. The flamer is amazing (but we forgot that it requires an ammo roll after every shot…).
Lasguns are the most boring weapon in the warhammer universe, but they are super reliable and shoot far. Autoguns are nearly as good with their +1 to hit at close range, but they go out of action far easier.
My territories were crap, but I did get Vents which lets you place guys around the board after set up– yet I NEVER remembered to use it.
In the four games, overall my leader had the most ‘kills’ with the flamer heavy second most. The leader was able to get into close combat with a bunch of enemies in two games and tore them up (except for a lucky juve) and that’s because of the chainsword. Swords are cheap and allow parrys, which cut down on some of the swingy rolls your enemy might have against you. Well worthwhile.
There were three other gangs getting on on the good shootings:
Hate Boat– a Delaque gang of unpainted (but primed) minis
Vaginal Force 1 – Eschers (obviously)
The Crustables – a Van Saar gang represented by the excellent and drool worthy miniatures from the new Dark Millenium 40K box set. If you have any interest in Necromunda, these are definitely worth picking up. They would do in a pinch for any gang, but would especially fit as Cawdors with their masks.
The first game was the Hate Boat vs the Crustables and I’ll admit that my grip on the rules was loose. Things were going against the Hate Boat after the Crustables got into good shooting position far above their cover and they got to explore the falling rules fully. Hate Boat had to make multiple bottle rolls, but in the end it was Crustables that bottled out on their first roll!
My first game was being ambushed by the Crustables, a fitting beginning for Transanal. Luckily, I was able to position a few groups of my gangers to ambush the Crustables. After a few turns it was obvious that the Crustables ambush was turning into a bloodbath, with 3-4 gang members on each side out of action, including the Crustable’s leader who had been burned by a flamer. After a turn or 2 more, the Crustable’s bottled out and ran for the vents.
My heavy about to get beaten down– cause he can’t hit with that stubber!
Couple things to remember about Necromunda that I had forgotten. First your gangers aren’t the bravest and will run away pretty quick when things go south nearby. Second, shooting into cover is pretty difficult. You can start to have to take bottle checks when a mere 2-3 of your guys are out of action.
A good time for sure and a game that should probably be played a bit more than once in 20 years.
Last week we got in on some Feng Shui 2 action and it was pretty good. Our heroes included a Killer, an Average Joe (aptly named John D.), a Private Eye, a Scrappy Kid (inadvertent Hit-Girl clone named XBat) and a Driver who had amnesia.
After everyone picked their archetype and wrote their melodramtic hook, it was off to the races. The characters were all on a drunk bus headed back to the JW Marriot in Hong Kong when the driver took a detour to a warehouse where other buses of people were being unloaded onto bigger buses by Triads with lots of guns. The Killer wasn’t having that, and the bloodbath ensued. The fight involved the Killer and Driver characters destroying dozens of mooks between them, while the other characters took down a gaggle of named bad guys, mostly hired guns by the Triad. Needless to say, the rest of the passengers didn’t fare too well, most being blown away in the crossfire. One of the bad guys cheesed it (who would reappear later). Most of the characters were unscathed, but the Killer took quite a few bullets and wasn’t in the best of shape coming out of it. Between sessions characters heal up 100%, but between fights, characters have the option to drop their Toughness by 1 to reduce their wound level by 10. Since our Killer had a death wish as his hook, he wasn’t having that either.
After the first fight, the characters found out where the large buses were going and faked their way in to a railway depot where the people on buses were loaded on to train cars! This did not make them happy. The Killer went into what looked like an office to talk to the head guys and faked his way pretty well until the bad guy that cheesed it before showed up and blew his cover. Luckily the Driver was able to bust into the depot with another Mook-destroying car.
This fight was a bit more serious, with mooks constantly showing up and another gaggle of named characters– plus one really pissed off sorcerer! The sorcerer blew the Killer away and he failed his first up check. Next the Everyday hero went down in a hail of bullets. The Private Eye, Scrappy Kid and Driver avenged them by downing the sorcerer before she could cheese it out of there as well as destroying the rest of the named characters. Without the Killer though, the swarms of mooks presented a problem.
As the Everyday Hero and Killer passed into the afterlife (both failing death checks) the remaining characters noticed that while they were destroying the sorcerer and her goons, the rail cars had gotten away! What will happen next?
System
Feng Shui 2 cleans up a lot of the dreck from Feng Shui 1, dreck players didn’t even notice when we last played in 1997, but yeah, it was there. Before we played, I found a folder with all the old characters and thought: “oh I’ll convert these!” but there was no need, the only thing you need is a name and a melodramatic hook and the archtype is good to go.
While there’s a lot less ticky tacky stuff to the characters, and this simplicity makes the game even more playable, they did add a new DEFENSE statistic that splits how good a character is at HITTING from how good they are at not BEING HIT. This was an issue in Feng Shui 1 where the AV was ALL THINGS and it got pretty boring when pretty much everything was one stat (we didn’t play long enough back in the day to figure this out though). Certain characters hit really hard sometimes, but can’t dodge attacks well and others, like the aforementioned Scrappy Kid, can’t dish a lot of damage but rarely get hit. While there aren’t a lot of stats to differentiate characters, FS2 has archtypes that all feel very different from each other. There are quite a few ‘GUNS’ characters and in this session we had three– the Driver, the Killer and the Private Eye, yet none of them felt samey. Each of them had different stuff they did in fights and felt different to the players I’m sure.
That said, characters in this version have nearly zero options when they select an archtype and I see this as a good thing, while your 4E and Pathfinder players may not. Get started quick, invest little and get some cool tricks if your character survives. There are a few archtype options though, and it’s also possible with some of the archtypes to rework them nearly completely if you are an experienced player, especially the martial artist and supernatural creature types. Fundamentally though you don’t want to waste time on that type of jiggering until after the characters have made it through a few sessions at least.
Lastly, and I’ll post more when we have another session, is how much I liked the Up-check /Mark of Death system. Basically characters have to test if you can keep going when you hit a certain number of wounds. If you pass the check you can voluntarily bow out with only one ‘mark of death’, or keep going, possibly having to take more checks. With each up-check you have to take, you have to take a death check at the end of the fight with a better chance of your character taking the dirt nap the more marks of death you got. We had two characters get smoked this session, which I think is a bit of a rarity, but since the villains they were facing were out to kill (and let’s face it, what Hong Kong style villain isn’t?) and both characters took tons of bullets into their bodies, it was likely inevitable at least one would go down. Having a boss-level villain in one of the fights was also a key contributor.
Obligatory posts on the WALLET RAPE that steam provides. My goal is to purchase only a single game per day that is under or around 5$. So if I go 6$ on one day, I have to go lower than 5$ the next. Since my wishlist is now over 80 items, I don’t even remember most of the stuff that’s on there, and in some cases WHY it’s on there. However, it’s much better to make drunk Steam wishlist additions than drunk Amazon or Steam PURCHASES.
Yesterday’s purchase, while sober, was CHROMA SQUAD which is a turn based power ranger spoof. I’ve had my eye on it for awhile and just had to do it at the price. I haven’t fired it up yet, but it looks pretty BOSS.
Today I’m mulling over a lot of possibilities, but pretty much have to go with LISA.
We’ll see what 5$ can get tomorrow!
