…you find a print out at the top of a stack of papers next to the printer at work of your 1000 point beastman army. It LOOKS like a normal spreadsheet except that it has words like Chaos Hounds, Gorbull and Bray Shaman on it. Obviously someone found it and put it right on top. I don’t even remember printing it is what’s worse.
Once again I’d like to bring you low energy commentary from my home
Bayonetta developer diary part 2. Interesting to see what sort of madness was going on with these guys during development.
Oh and Anarchy Reigns will not be out until 2012 making this fall slightly less sociallydevastating (Elder Scrolls, Diablo 3 beta, Guardian Heroes redux, Dark Souls and gods know what other must-have titles…).
Game of Thrones board game after a long, long long time
My board game version of A Game of Thrones has been languishing in my basement for almost 5 years without being played, until last night. Granted, I used to bring it almost every time to board game nerd night– it just never got selected for play over the euro of the week or The Great Khan Game. In fact, it was played so long ago it was before I really started tracking my (too infrequent) board game plays on boardgamegeek.com. With the show out and everyone pretty happy about it, this finally got a chance to hit the table. Probably would have a week or so ago, but one of the essential order counters was replaced by Fantasy Flight after going through the wash (man they are a great company for supporting their games) and I had to wait for the pieces to come in the mail (shockingly in it was only a week!).
The infrequent play is sad really because last night was a cracking game even with all newbs but me–I still had a run for my money FTW as the Lannisters. Greyjoy was totally wiped off the map after attacking both Stark and Lannister. Being in the middle, they had little hope to survive without help from Tyrell who stayed out of the game until the end. Bearathon started to beast with power early in the game, but couldn’t get up the supply track to really get an offense going. In the end it was Stark, Lannister and Bearatheon with 5 cities each and the tie breaker was the Supply track. Lannister is tough to play, even though you can get to a boatload of supplies early and get some big armies, you are the ‘in the middle’ house who more likely will get steamrolled off the board, a lot like Austria-Hungary in Diplomacy.
All in all, it was like looking at the game with fresh eyes and it is SOLID fun. Plays fast, lots of very difficult choices. Getting a wargame this scale done in an evening (it took about 3.5 hours) and have people not be bored is quite a feat of design.
Singularity 10$ on steam
Wisconsin’s own Raven Software put this bad boy out and it’s on sale for 10 bones. Here’s a Let’s Play (in German):
HESCHER (the film) out today
A film that just was begging to be made I guess. Love the 80’s cars and “costumes” you can see from the trailer. It seems odd that this would be in California as I would choose a place like Flint, MI or (of course) Waukesha, WI as a better place. Actually in Waukesha’s case there are still plenty of heschers walking around resplendent in high top black Reeboks, stone washed jeans and painters caps.
Rough reviews on Brink
Brink, a new TF2/Monday Night Combat style FPS from the creators of Quake Wars and Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, has hit the shelves today with much hype and happenstance– and then some brutal ass reviews! The synopsis from reviews so far (some posted at 12:01 AM): single player sucks ass, it’s got some broken maps due to choke points in multiplayer and some weirdness with unlocks and team roles. Ok, not to defend a game that just came out and could be shitty, but how long did these guys actually play it? How many times have we heard this in games like TF2 or BF2142 with new maps, new weapons, patches that X tactic doesn’t work any more or ‘because they made X change to this class, this map is impossible to win on for the Attackers!” Then a month later people trying to defend the same map will say–“oh this is impossible to defend now because the attacker just does X to win.” I seem to remember some similar criticisms leveled at TF2 early on, though no one now can say anything but it’s a ‘living’ classic of a game even with all of it’s fucking HATS. Again, I’m not saying Brink is on the same level, but I think that some reviewers may look back and rue the early reviews they did: oh except it made their site some ad revenue right?
Despite all the negative press, I’m really looking forward to getting into this one due to the core gameplay, i.e.: jumping around like a jack ass all over an urban environment while shooting guns.
Guardian Heroes coming to XBLA!
Remember, if you ever go to sell back a video game at one of the various intake centers and it’s worth more than 20$– don’t sell it back. I learned this the hard way specifically due to this game. Note the sound isn’t too good. It is the Saturn, 1995, so that’s to be expected (Though the PSX sounded great).
New Cosmic Encounter box cover
The Mraaking Blood Bowl League
After much ado ado, we finally got an even number of players for the Mraaktagon Blood Bowl league (not with miniatures this time but via the Legendary Edition online). Here are the teams.
Steveformer – Amazons
Sensless – Skaven
Littlemute – Chaos
Nodamage – Undead
Turftoe – “High” Elves
Ultrasmurf – Norse (!?)
My guess for the winners? We have two heavy hitting teams and four agility/passy teams (yes the Skaven are a bit of both).
High Elves and Skaven in the final. High Elves 3, Skaven 2.
Anathema with Lunars and Abyssals (and Sidereals) oh my!
Ok well my job as a GM just got a shitload easier. Exalted antagonists are troublesome to create at best and extremely time consuming at worst. While appreciate some of the other efforts to digitize the creation process, Anathema has by far the best usability and resulting character sheets, but has been stuck with Solars and Dragon Bloods for years now– many years actually, due to the original development team backing away from the project. Well, as hinted in an over-exuberant post last summer, Anathema 2.0 has been released and includes Abyssals and Lunars AND Sidereals. I’m just grabbing it now to give it a go.
In addition to having the new splats integrated, ANATHEMA is the place that best collates all the extra charms for Solars and DB’s into one handy dandy program. So if you are just a player (and I envy you if you are because you get the easy part) this is still worth a download. You will need to procure or enter your equipment data in the system still, and the charms have no text (just page numbers in whatever tome contains them), but still it’s quite an asset for players as well as GMs.