Category: Miniatures

Battlefleet Gothic TEASE

My question when seeing this and the fact that Total War: Warhammer is coming out soon is when will the Games Workshop IP exceed in popularity the entirely derivative work by Blizzard Entertainment. Starcraft is played out, Diablo 3 was a complete mess from the story perspective and there hasn’t been anything original from them…ever really. Warcraft 3, for all it’s awesomeness, is just a derivative of Warhammer in the end.

GW has had some strange and capricious relationships with development houses and video gaming in the past, and who knows what the future will bring. Looking at this trailer though we are reminded that while Blizzard has the copy-cat Samwise, GW has both John Fucking Blanche AND Jes HOLY FUCK THAT’S AWESOME Goodwin.

 

 

Total War: Warhammer cinematic vid impression

Good, but unsurprising news, TW and WFB are slapping together! This had been rumored for a long while and then leaked in some magazine a few months back so not a shock .  GW tried back in the day with Blizzard (which later became Warcraft), then later with Shadow of the Horned Rat, to get Warhammer on the computer successfully.  Frankly one couldn’t ask for a better mash up of brands and companies. Unless, of course, you were waiting for Total War: Medieval 3 which following their M.O., should follow Attila closely.

There are no gameplay bits in the following video, but if you’ve played any recent Total War games, you know what to expect minus the MAGIC and big monsters.   I’m pretty pumped for it, but then again I get a fucking giant boner every time any Total War stuff is announced or released and then have to untuck my shirt for like a whole day or look like BUSDRIVER.

Animation wise, awesome.  Not so great with the voice acting.  The Greater Daemon of Tzeentch at the end is wicked looking.   We have to remember that GW is in the process of destroying the Old World we grew up with– so we have to see how this leaks into the computer game. It may be that the TW game will coincide with the story of the destruction of the Old World, which would be fun to see rather than buying all the crazy expensive END TIMES books.

This reminds me I have not put hours into Attila nor played a game of 8th Edition in a looong time…

Warhammer video games cumming

Well well… while I had heard rumors of a Warhammer Total War (now confirmed via a leak– but we all knew it was coming anyway) I had no idea there would be a Battlefleet Gothic as well! BFG is one of those great rulesets from GW that I have never gotten to play. It was a huge influence on Epic40k (which tanked commercially, but I really like the rules) and many other games. I have a set of BFG with no ships that I bought off a buddy and I will have to make some out of paper or legos and try the rules out before the video game hits. This looks really great, but frankly, Warhammer games have been very hit or miss for me. Dawn of War was ok, not a great RTS by any means, and most similarly good but not great.  Warhammer Quest on the ipad I thought would be amazing, but I just ZZZzzzz….

Here is a pic from the game.  One to watch for sure.

BFGarmada

Mordheim City of the Damned

Looks quite interesting, proceedurally generated maps, custom warbands and a spell system that has a chance of failing to cast. What I really liked is that it mimics the miniature game in that you don’t know if your guys are wounded, dead or OK until after the battle when they get taken out. It’s in pre-order at the moment for eventual early access on steam.

Oh, and this is by the blood bowl guys.

Bolt Action -getting started

Warlord Games posted an extremely slick  and content rich starting guide for Bolt Action.    While the content is cool and all, I was impressed from a web development standpoint at the responsive design.   Not that it would ever get up on theFWA or anything (since they don’t post the nerd stuff ever) but viewing this part of the site on a phone in the morning and a PC at night was impressive as both we aesthetic and functional.  Especially on the phone I was able to get at a ton of great info, extremely usable and readable.  A lot of other gaming sites should look at this bad boy.

 

Stuff (mostly Dark Souls)

So last night I continued the Dark Souls addiction and beat the GAPING DRAGON which is one of the scariest mofo’s in the game (so far)– an absolute fucking triumph of monster design by any measure. I had my bonfire Kindled (10 health potions), I’m in human form (not for long!) and I had upgraded my armor as much as I can possibly afford at the moment (all the shit around the first bell church drop titanite BTW), I bought 2 Uncurse stones in case I ran afoul of the cursing frog things on the way to the boss, AND to cover my ass, I spent my 10K souls I had lying around on leveling up (you do not need to level up much in the game from what I’ve read) so if I get killed my soul-pile will be small.  I also switched out my chain leggings for some leather pants so I can move quicker.  With some of the bosses you can’t block their attacks effectively so there’s no reason to go in there armoured up.  It took me three tries to beat him.  The first one I just got sloppy and got killed, the second one I was running away from his acid spill attack and fell off a cliff (embarrassing) and  for the last one I had help from another human player instead of one of the CPU phantoms you can grab (only available when human, not hollowed).

It’s taken me a long while to get this far and I think this is the point where you get into the meat of the game.

That said, there are other things going on!

First, there will be an ipad blood bowl game! Cyanide is continuing their BB license usage and coming out with an iPad version of blood bowl this year called Blood Bowl Star Coach. Looks more top down than the current PC version, but still has 3d Models. Should be a blast, though I don’t get ANY iPad time normally at home, I may have to steal it away from the crying children for this.

Dogs

Second, Mouth let me know that while Confrontation is DEAD (and AT-43 for that matter, sniff), the spirit survives  at Cyanide with their acquired license from now defunct Rackham.  While the Confrontation game wasn’t too good, Dogs of War looks like a game where you have a perpetual warband of monstrosities and they gain experience over time– much like Mordheim, Necromunda, Chaos Warbands from the old Realm of Chaos Books.  Looking like something to watch.  Ironically it was the Dogs of War expansion to Confrontation 3 that made me not want to play C3 any more…

Torchlight 2: I still haven’t finished ELITE mode with my Berserker which is sad (but it’s really, really hard on Act 3) but in the news recently is that Runic is still pursuing the MAC version of the game– but there is no timeline and no release date.  While I love the game and it is superior in every way to Diablo 3 (except the sound which in D3 is amazing) if I pre-purchased it on MAC I would be pretty fucking cheesed off by now (matt).

 

Gencon 2013 prep

Gencon, a whirlwind of a day and a half (usually) of everything gaming– you really feel like you are at the center of the gaming world for a weekend and in a lot of ways, you are.  We’re going to have D&D NEXT on display, lots of stuff from Fantasy Flight, Ascension tournaments, a Shadowfist expansion around (for kickstarter people and lord knows whatever else is there for exposition and purchase.

This year I’m heading down Friday to hit the “Classic” Shadowfist tournament and there will be a ton of Wisconsin folks in there (by ton, I mean 6 or 7) expats and current residents of the horrible Walker “please international business, rape my state” regime.

Fist aside, I’d like to get in some games of Seasons, try out some miniature gaming (likely hit the AWESOME Bolt Action tables they had last year) and with Mouth, Matt and Fryburger all being at the con, this should be fairly legendary.

One thing about Gencon is that it’s very much what you make it.  You could walk around and around the vendor hall the whole weekend and feel lonely and fat and just overwhelmed with all the shit there for sale and all the fucking people talking, but the real deal is getting in and playing games you’ve never tried before, playing with friends you see only once a year and talking shit about various nerds and their hobbies.  Oh and drinking and ripping on star wars and getting fat.

List of stuff I’m looking for and going to play:

Various Dark Elf warhammer bits

Another box or two of On the Edge core

Lamentations of the Flame Princes modules (Fuck for Satan, the God that Crawls and Better than Any Man especially)

Visit Bully Pulpit and tell them Carolina Death Crawl is an awesome game.

Exalted – pester them about 3rd edition and then stand around and talk to my players about the 2nd edition campaign we haven’t touched for years but all jones for (except the combat)

Play some Cortex or FATE (to make sure we are doing it right)

Play some Lamentations of the Flame Princess (i.e. OD&D)