A lot of crazy stuff has happened since I last posted anything here. Going forward Iāll use this blog to keep chatting up game design ideas when they strike me, but today I wanna give a bit of an update to all 5 folks who maybe follow this still.Ā
Iām in Texas now. Itās pretty alright. Iām in the alright part of Texas. Specifically Iām in the alright part of Texas where theyāll be hosting the X-wing regionals at my friendly neighborhood game/comic shop. Iām at maximum excitement. Hopefully Iāll have more info on that in the near future.Ā
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
ā Live Streamingā Interactive Chatā Private Showsā HD Quality
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Triple-Qās channel got fucked due to multiple copywright strikes from IFPI for Kanye Westās material. If you are an artist or a youtuber, donāt use Kanyeās shit right now, even if it falls under fair use. They are relentless atm.Ā
Hereās a link to 3Qās new youtube channel:Ā https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClsBfd2-A0ftqEc11lYQptw
Send him some words of encouragement on his tumblr, too. @triple-q
āI said my sword was a tool of justice⦠Not used in anger. Not used for vengeance. But now⦠now Iām not so sure. And besides⦠This isnāt my sword.ā
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
ā Live Streamingā Interactive Chatā Private Showsā HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
ā Live Streamingā Interactive Chatā Private Showsā HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
ā Live Streamingā Interactive Chatā Private Showsā HD Quality
Anya is LIVE right now
FREE
Free to watch ⢠No registration required ⢠HD streaming
Iāve been wanting to make a board game or RPG lately but Iāve been so caught up in theĀ āThis is too derivative of thatā that I really havenāt made any progress with it.Ā
And you know what? Screw that. Letās just make a fun game. Balancing? Weāll figure that out later.
My life with Tabletop Wargames: Why Iām hooked on X-wing
So Iām returning to Tumblr to talk up games I like, I figured itās only fair to talk about my current addiction, just so everything is in context. Fair warning, this is a bit of a long post, Iāll try and cut length down in the future.
Letās have a moment of honesty though: Tabletop War Games are terrible. Theyāre designed to drain your wallet. New models are always coming out, power creep is beyond real, and youāre often paying an arm and a leg for a model thatās not assembled and will likely never have as nice a paintjob as whatās on the box. Ā Tabletop miniatures games are also wonderful, and thatās what weāre going talk about here... eventually.
I got into miniatures in high school. My friends and I played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons and the local hobby shop had a sale on a Lord of the Rings Moria Goblins box. I figured Iād give it a shot. I think there may have been a Space Marines or Imperial guardsmen box that I glued together before that for some Rogue Trader games, but I blame the Moria Elves for getting me into miniatures proper.
Painting is a rough experience. First you have to look at the model youāre going to put together, then you decide if itāll be better to paint the pieces first and then glue (something I never did but have heard stories from on high about) or to just hope you can sneak a fine tip brush into the cracks where elbows and chainmail blur. Then you prime the models, for these gobbos I used the Citadel pot of primer, which is pretty decent for small batches of models but I too would learn the trials of spray primer in time.
I just spent a paragraph talking about how to get a model ready before you even paint. That speaks to my awful ability to write these sort of things (hey this is a learning process) but also, I hope, to some of how rough assembling and painting minis can be.
And good gods, PAINTING. Imagine my younger high school self, with no real artistic talents to speak of, suddenly being mildly happy with how painting a bunch of goblins in shades of green and red with bits of metal. Imagine how clever I thought myself for adding bits of red on the weapons because clearly these goblins had just gotten into a fight with something. Thatās how it all started.
Years later and about four different Warmachine armies later Iām pretty tired of miniatures hobby work. You spend hours painting up these models when you could just as easily be spending the time playing with them or doing literally anything else of value. I figured out fairly quickly that time you didnāt spend playing the game was time that other people were getting more experience at the game; getting better than you.Ā
Thatās a thing here, thereās two bits to hobby games like this: The hobby part, and the game part. You can be pretty good at both, but you will rarely ever be the best at both.Ā
Iām rambling here so letās move on: Warmachine/Hordes. What a delightful game. Fun lore, good mechanics and a focus on smaller model count. Clearly a game for me as opposed to the Games Workshop offerings. It was, is, was. Iām not sure where I stand on Warmahordes at present. I have a handful problems facing me with that game:
1) I play Blindwater Congregation. A faction within the smallest and least developed faction of the sister game to Warmachine, Hordes. Voodoo gators made for a really fun and flavorful faction for small point skirmishes but...
2) No one really plays small point skirmishes at a competitive level. Thereās a lot of good reasons for this, balancing being a major one. The problem is that scenario play favors more developed factions with more options available to them and playing a faction that was more aboutĀ āRushMurderKillStompā wasnāt always going to cut it against list with more shenanigans and ranged tricks. I know Gatormen have developed as a faction since Iāve played but that still means more $50+ models Iād have to purchase, paint, and then get stomped on until I figured out how things worked. Also, larger scenario play is a huge time investment compared to the quick and decisive games I enjoy.
3) My new local game shop puts Warmahordes on the same open play night as my current love: X-wing.
So here we go. Iām going to try and not just turn this into aĀ āWhy you should play X-wingā so instead Iām going to turn it into aĀ āWhy *I* play X-wingā list.
In no particular order:
1) The models are pre-assembled, pre-painted, and can be repainted very easily if you want to customize. In spite of this fact they are also about half-2/3rds what youād expect to pay for a miniature for another game.
2) No messing with rulers for movement. Everything is done on templates, and which ships can perform movements on which templates actually becomes a key of the strategy.
3) STAR WARS.
4) Each ship has different pilots, upgrades and options available to them. Any one ship has a staggering amount of in game customization, several of the options work out in surprisingly effective ways.
5) The largest amount of ships available to any one tableside is 7, and games average an hour tops.Ā
In short, for cheaper, Iām playing a game with a wonderfully expansive amount of options. Iāll have another post about the problems I have with X-wing at a later time but this write up is already huge.
Hereās the thing I need to stress about tabletop miniature games though, and why I stuck it out with Warmahordes for so long and why I will probably play it again in the future. The communities for these games are wonderful. Thereāll be bad eggs in any hobby, obviously, but any wargamer knows how much effort everyone puts into the hobby and is usually open to new players of all sorts coming in.Ā
Everyone puts in time, money and effort into bringing an army to the table, regardless of what game you play. Itās easy to shame someone for playing a different game becauseĀ āThe rules are badā orĀ āThereās no community for that game.ā Thatās rough, donāt do that. What youāre doing is just giving yourself confirmation bias that youāre playing the better game so you can justify having spent an untold amount of dollars in playing it. Just donāt, be a cool dude and appreciate what we all do when we bring stuff to the table and play.
If you stuck around for this full article, thanks, I hope I can be less rambling in the future and more focused but I havenāt done this sort of thing in ages and Iād love some input.Ā