Never being Boring

Hello people,

So, after the qualified triumph of Yavin / Expo as a bit of variety I've been dabbling elsewhere, which is allowed under my self imposed gaming restrictions as I haven't spent any money. Nor will I.....honest :)

Nigel recently picked up Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower and has played a couple of games down at the club. I jumped in for a game last week and it short was really impressed. There are plenty of reviews out there, here's Beasts of War two pence, so the main contribution that I have to make is that it FEELS right. Simple mechanics, depth to tactics plus a need for co-operative play versus the random event studded scenarios.

Production quality is as high as you would expect and the figures are gorgeous, the otherwise overpowered grim-dark fitting very nicely, though I still can't get on with the Celestians. As much as anything the game actually fits with, what I remember as, it's original ethos. It's not often that this gets said but WELL DONE GW. Ahem,....

All of this is just as well as GameZone's HeroQuest 25 version is apparently still under production as well as 18 months overdue. What seems to be lacking is any form of recognition of that issue. Gears will grind slowly I'm sure...... (grumble)

Speaking of slow grinding gears, it's almost like it's deliberate, Rich ran me through TANKS, Battlefront's new game commanding a tank platoon. It looks like a kind of Flames of War lite but it's actually a boardgame, just on a 3x3 tabletop.

Nothing wrong with that but maybe you should make that plain. Rich referred to it as WWII X-Wing which isn't too far off as you have a 100 point platoon of variously pointed tanks that you can equip with Ace abilities and various other crew, equipment and ammunition. Movement is template based, combat decided by attack an defense dice with critical damage causing extra effects. Topping everything off is a numerically rated initiative system.

So WWII X-Wing. It's good fun, once again simple mechanics allowing depth of tactics. As much as there's the room to be gamey genuine tank platoon tactics still have thier place.

Both good games in thier own rights, there's plenty of them out there. Meanwhile I'm slowly getting back to some casual flying,Dengar to the max! Elsewhere it's an entire weekend of Netrunner on the cards, ahem, with Dark Sphere's Regional Saturday and Gaurdians of Tyr Sunday. It's been a while since I've played regularly so I've got a bit of learning curve to re-climb.

Happy Days :)

From out of Nowhere

Hello people,

Just a quick one. I dropped in on some friends Sunday one of whom is similary geeky, though far more a console gamer than tabletop, and I had a quick flick through his recently purchased copy of SFX.

Much to my surprise the inside front cover was a double page GW advert for Age of Sigmar. Interesting as seemingly yet another major departure for Gee Dubya. I'm guessing that cost some serious shekels.

Flicking through the reviews there was a third page column review entitled "Not your daddy's Warhammer" with a 4 star, from 5, rating. Excuse the blurry shot but I was somewhat taken aback. Hardly an in-depth review and a continuation of the fast, fun, furious bandwagon but a big score none the less. Surely not SFX's normal content I'm guessing that cost some seriously serious shekels!

Sliding by the website there's minimal visibility on the front page for 40K, or anything that isn't Stormcast in honesty.

GW are really going for it at the short-term expense of anything else it would seem. That in itself causes me further confusion about the end-game, other than the 1000 copy limited edition Stormcast Battle-Tome that is. Are things that bad for GW or conversely so much better that they've finally taken the more corporate road.

Meanwhile Grimdark seems to have finally brought down the Old World. For me that's a shame but that's because that's what I grew up with it. I movbed on some years ago and it seem WHFB has finally done the same. If only GW had put so much effort in back then eh?