So, we tried out yet another new to us game, Death Angel. It is another cooperative game, we seem to play a lot of these, that pitted our group of eight space marines against hordes of Genestealers. Neither of us had played this before so we were playing with little knowledge of the game.
Another Venice adventure.
This time around we played a modified China Station scenario, no creeping fog but still some horrific Deep ones. Also made the plot points mobile just to keep the players on their toes. For one of the players they were their own worst enemy as they kept faling any random challenge that came their way. The other player, new to the game, ultimately decided to just stay out of the way and let his opponent self destruct. By the end of the game one league was down to one character, holding 1 plot point and his opponent had 3 minor plot points.
By the way, with this post I have now exceeded the post that I made all of last year, so an improvement.
So another board game night, another disappointing evening, well maybe just not that great... We played Sentinels of the Multiverse and Darkest Night. The Sentinels game worked out to be another slow slag as the villain git some lucky card draws that stymied our attempts to defeat her. However we are nutters and kept playing even though it was going nowhere very slowly. Ultimately we called it a day after 3 out of the four heroes were knocked out of the game.
For no good reason we selected Darkest Night (1st ed) for our second game. Never having played this before there was a learning curve involved not aided by the rule book. The rule book is a mess and much of the rules and the enemy counters are not really all that intuitive. The game is for 1 to 4 players. Regardless of the number of players you always use four characters. We each selected our two hero characters, selected our powers, placed our standees in the starting space (the monastery) and settled back for what worked out to be a painfully slow death.
The game has simple mechanics and apparently lots of optional powers for your characters (I only got one power boost for one of my characters but I did have two decks that promised more powers) So I went through the game pretty much as I started. There is a lot of dice rolling in this game, a lot, rarely for good reasons, usually to avoid death. These dice rolls have a target number which all too often is 4 or 5 (many 5+) Often you will find yourself rolling only 1 die which all too often will result in a failure. Each turn you will encounter a random event (which is usually bad) Then you get one & only one action. With this action you can move one space, search, attack, rest etc. Then your turn ends. This worked out not to be all that satisfying. Each turn the evil necromancer tries to track you down to attack you. He also places random nasty encounters like vampires and spies. The pressure is on the players and we never felt that we had a chance to defeat the evil.
In the end we failed. The necromancer placed four encounter tokens in the monastery and mercifully the game ground to an end.
I had heard good things about this game, but in further review it seems it is a good game if you have the add-ons. Well it is not a good thing that the base game is so bad that the only way it is fun to play is by spending more money.
Apparently there is a second edition that includes all the expansions and while it fixes a lot of problems I think I will give it a pass.
So, a couple of days ago we sat down to play our usual board game, Sentinels of the Multiverse but we also took out and played Space Cadets away missions!
 | |
| Deployment after mishap roles. Not much impact on either army, one Dwarf unit suffered -2 Resolve & one wolf rider unit rushed ahead 4BW. |
Yet another classic match up Dwarf vs Goblin, was played today. This was a game originally planned for last November, but had to be postponed. Thankfully Craig was able to attend this game despite the resurgence of winter!
So lots of fun stuff at Hotlead this year! Beyond some really excellent looking games the big thing for me, as always, is the bring and buy. It is often an expensive weekend as I often find plenty of must have items and this year was no exception.
So we went to Venice once again. It has been awhile since I last dug out these buildings, but I think they still work. Three players with me as the facilitator passed a few hours watching three leagues struggle against each other and some nefarious cultists. Everyone trying to locate the mysterious Device 1138!
Just the thing for a winter Pulp Alley game! This is a Matchbox Models of Yesterday. It is a 1922 Scandinavian postal truck but I feel it should be right at home in more arctic conditions.
In all my journeys in many many flea markets I have never seen this vehicle, so it was kind of a given that I would have to buy it. So far I have not attempted to paint or weather it, but I will soon.
So, this past Sunday the Ottawa Miniature Gamers (OMG) held a meeting at the Ottawa Public Library at the Centrepointe location. While it is a chance to play some games it is really a chance to expose the general public to the club and the type of games that we play.
Three games were on display, Space Hulk, ADLG and Pulp Alley. Pulp Alley was my contribution to the game day. The game started up with two players, one a rookie the other had played a few games. By the second or third turn we were joined by a couple of young people who we paired off with the two existing players.
My hats off to the two older players who rose to the occasion and coached the two new players and let them take control of the leagues. We also had a few other people drop by to look at all of the games. Much interest in our activities and many conversations were had. Who knows maybe some of these people will become OMG members or at very least get bit by the miniature gaming bug!
I look forward to the next library meeting at the end of March.
So this is the type of thing I like to find when wandering the aisles of Dollarama. It is a toy that shoots some sort of rubber like disks, but to me it looks like some thing else.
To me it looks like a shuttle craft or will after a little work. It seems to match up well with my 15mm figures. So it will take a little patching here and there and I may add some round bases to represent lifters on the feet, but in the end it looks like a pretty easy fix.
So, I found these fine Buzz Lightyear space craft at the local Dollarama. I think they are a good size for 15mm figures and should repaint up nicely. I figure I can use them as troop carriers or shuttle craft ar just have them sit there as big damn space craft.
 |
| The painting table😒 |
My shame...
So, to be clear I am not stopping the painting challenge, but if I am to continue I really need to take care of a few things. Normally I try to clean up and organize my room prior to the AHPC but this year I just did not have any energy or drive and well I just sort of fell into the challenge. Well now that lack of preparedness has come back to haunt me. It is slowing down my painting production.
So, this is how my organization of the Legion, using the Dirtside II rules, is going so far. I am, more or less setting it up as per what I can glean from the book shown above. I hope to have the vehicles painted up this week and I have already painted up their opponents vehicles. I also have 150 proxy enemy figures on the painting table and I will soon place an order for the Legions troops.
Well, last year was the worst year so far as posting goes, a meager 15 posts for the entire year, and nothing since August, simply unforgivable!
Please forgive me, oh wait...
Last year I hit a major down turn in interest and motivation in gaming and in blogging. The only gaming that I really did was board gaming and that only because a friend regularly visited me and 'made' me play games. Oh, I enjoyed the games, but left to my own devices I most likely would have played nothing.
I did start up a miniature campaign, Pulp Alley China Station, and that went well for a while but an illness throughout October and that same low level of motivation saw that campaign grind to a halt. Perhaps it will resume, but experience does say that when you have a long interruption it just is not that likely that it will start again. We shall see.
On the plus side my new drugs seem to be working better and my malaise seems to be dissipating! Happiness has returned (drug induced but so what) and I have finally started to produce things for the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. The challenge started on December 21st 2023 and it took me until January 13th 2024 to put up my first post 24 days into the challenge. Hell it took me until today to update this blog, archiving last years data and updating titles to indicate 2024.
All this being said I note that this is the 4th post that I have made this year vs 15 for all of last year. Some may not realize it but I have 5 other blogs plus the Itinerant Gamers blog. For the most part those blogs have limited activity being meant to focus on specific aspects of my hobby life. The League site has some activity, but really only myself and one other person ever posts on it. The painting & building blog site has at times had a lot of activity, nothing much lately, but soon to see more posts. The other sites will only ever have sporadic posting (though I really need to up date the cat & dog companion blog)
This has been a rather long winded rambling, the gist of it is that I plan to post more often and more regularly than in any previous year (fingers crossed)
