Happy New Year Everyone!

Well, Hogmany has arrived, so it's only appropriate that I wish you all a Happy New Year and wish you all the best for 2013.

Sadly, we've had a pretty shitty end to the year, so we've ended up cancelling our plans and opted for a big night in: a big dinner with a few drinks.  Neither the Mrs or I feel like socialising at the moment, so with the mandatory visits from and to relatives tomorrow, this sounds like the best option.

Still, always looking forward instead of back, I've lots of ideas for gaming in the next year and have set some goals and targets that will appear here tomorrow.

Again, have a Happy New Year and I wish my readers all the best for the coming year!

Scott

You have got to be FRAKING Kidding me!

So my first proper day off today in about two weeks i.e. no work, shopping, in-laws or hangovers, just a day to do what I want.  Thought I could spend a bit of time with the Mrs, do a few chores and then spend the majority of the day in the Man Corner, getting in my first entry for the painting challenge.

Nope.  In fact, I didn't even get to breakfast before it hit the fan.

Turns out our boiler went on the fritz.  No big deal right?  Things happen, it's winter, won't be a huge deal to fix.  Not according to the engineer who came round, spent an hour poking around in there with some fancy bits of kit, then gave us two choices; expensive 1 or expensive 2.

Well, that's just fantastic.  We even got the bloody thing serviced about six weeks ago and it got a clear bill of health from the friendly (but obviously incompetent) engineer.  That's put a dampener on the day anyway. We've gone with expensive 2, which, at this time of year means no heating or hot water for at least a week.  At least the Mrs got a scarf for Christmas.

Actually, I can feel a long rant and moan coming on, so I'd better call this post done.  Hope everyone's day went better than ours.  S.

2012 - A Hobby Retrospective

This time last year, I put up some plans for what I'd do in 2012.  As the year's almost done, time to have a quick look at how I got on.

Great Italian Wars

Ah, yes, my big project for 2012.  Well this started off well, as I painted up all the figures I'd bought and started on a couple pieces of terrain.  Sadly, this project didn't survive the decision of Venexia Miniatures to shut up shop, depriving me of the main range of figures I'd planned to use.  Now I could have gone onto another range of figures, but as I'd taken the time and effort to select the ranges and check their compatibility etc, I simply didn't feel like making the compromise on this.  Officially on hold, as Venexia's range have been sold onto an American company, but they've yet to see the light of day.

In the future, I think I'll follow my usual practice and load up on figures early on, precisely to avoid this happening again (although, I've mentioned a few time on here that our hobby has proven to be remarkably resilient considering how far up shit creek we collectively are.)

Improve my painting & Infinity, Hordes and Warmachine

Hmmm, bit of a fail here.  I painted about fifteen different miniatures, but haven't really managed to finish up any of the starter lists I'd written.  Fairly sure it's an ego thing holding me back here, the figures I paint aren't as good as I imagine they will be.  Things are definitely improving, but it's slow going.  Recently I've been enjoying the Iron Kingdoms RPG and I've seen some upcoming figures for Infinity.  I think this looks like a decent quarter two project next year.

Dystopian Wars

My aim was to finish up all the fleets I had without going crazy and buying more.  Mission accomplished as I finished up my Empire of the Blazing Sun fleet (and took it to a tournament) as well as a Covenant of Antartica and Prussian Empire fleet (both sent off to eBay.)  I've not had DW on the table in a while, but it's nice to have a fleet ready to go if needed.

Flames of War

Another success in that I've painted up the target 600 points of Fallshirmjager.  Again, I've not yet had a game with these yet, but I have all the figures I'll ever need so I'll keep plugging away at them.

So I missed a few of my, admittedly vague, goals this year, but in other ways, it's been an excellent years gaming.  In 2011 I played many more games in any year since my school days, while 2012 has been even more prolific.  I've branched out and gotten over a dozen RPG sessions in and picked up a few games that, in the past, I wouldn't have thought were really "me."  Definitely going to put up another set of resolutions/targets for next year, but this time, I think I'll schedule updates throughout the year to track my progress.  I also want to put up one of those painting checklists on the blog.

Only War 40K Rpg

Well I trust everyone's recovered from whatever trials you put your bodies through yesterday. Everyone one got what they wanted from under the tree?  The Mrs and I decided to go halves on one of these tablet computers (sharing hasn't caused any arguments, yet) so I thought I'd put it through it's paces on the 'ol blog.

 

My copy of Only War turned up on Christmas Eve and I've had a couple hours to flick through. The latest in the line of 40K role playing games, Only War sees you inducted into the ranks of the Imperial Guard, fighting in one of the Imperium's countless wars.

Are these guys from the Gaunts Ghosts series?

Setting aside initial concerns about how much fun playing a nameless grunt would be, FFG seem to have made a number of interesting additions to the 40K RPG system, most notably the squad mechanic and a dedicated set of vehicle rules (about time!)

The book itself is mostly up to the standards expected from FFG, the only criticism I have is that there is less artwork than in previous books and a lot of what is there is recycled from GW's back catalogue.

Proper vehicle rules.  Finally.

Only War is by far the best 40K RPG to be played with miniatures, but I still need to be convinced just how much role playing there is on offer here.  Still the book was a nice distraction over the last couple days and is a goldmine of background material for Imperial Guard fans.

Merry Christmas Everyone

Whether you're full of festive cheer or, like Nibbler above, rather non-plussed by the whole thing, I hope everyone has a great day!

We've been summoned to the In-laws again this year, so I'll have to be at least a little sociable!  They usually keep me fairly well fed and my glass is never usually empty, so I'll just have to struggle through!

Off to watch a classic Christmas film. . . Die Hard.

Hello insomnia, my old friend.

Ah, it's been a few months since we've last met, but there you were at three this morning, barging in like some drunken idiot determined to get me up!

Seriously though, I only get very mild insomnia from time to time  and long ago learned not to struggle, but instead to get up and do something (semi) productive.  So here I am Blogging away at ten to five in the morning, having spent the last hour doing some painting for the Analogue Painting Challenge.

Participation in the challenge so far has been minimal (just a few comments posted,) but this is my work's busiest time of the year and it was always vastly optimistic to think I'd get anything finished in week one.  Still, paint has been applied, hopefully with more to come.

P.S.  Might not have actually been full on insomnia, as I dozed off whilst writing this.  So now I'm shattered again and have to head off to work in 30 mins.

Quarriors

Nothing planned at the club this week, but I still popped along for a blether and whatnot.  On the off chance, I stuck Quarriors in the bag, just in case anyone else felt like a game.  I usually take a game along every time I go after one notorious evening this year, when there were only two games on, but twenty four people had turned up!

Adam fancied a game, so we found a table and set up.  Quarriors is a dice-pool-building game.  The aim is to summon creatures (represented on some dice) who then attack the other player's creatures, before scoring points for their owner.  It's one of those deceptively simple/complex games;  I explained the game mechanics and turn order in about five minutes, we had a couple trial turns and then we were off playing.

Players start off with a fixed bag full of dice and take turns to draw six out randomly and roll them.  Players can then use symbols on these dice to buy more powerful dice from a central pool; creatures or spells for instance.  Most creatures have different abilities along with their own stats for attacking and defending and there are plenty of creatures to choose from.

What makes Quarriors such an enjoyable game is that the dice probability/luck balance is almost perfect.  What do I mean by that?  Well, I might have rolled well enough to buy two really powerful creatures, but the creature itself is only on three sides of it's particular dice. So you have to create a dice pool that gives you the best probability of rolling enough creatures and the cost required to use them.

The game certainly passed the "just one more game" test as we managed to squeeze in three games, despite only planning the one!

I wasn't really in the mood to write up a full review, particularly as there are the couple excellent links available, but just wanted to recommend Quarriors to you all!