September 2024

September 2024 Retrospective

Hey everybody,
I know I say this at the top of each of these retrospective blog posts, but where on earth did September go to?! It seems like I blinked and missed most of the month! I suppose a lot of it is bound up with my two girls now being in school, so there has been a lot of stuff going on with that. As a consequence, I don’t feel like I’ve had the time to really think about much of anything else! After a few hairy days at the start, they both seem to have settled into things, and are making friends etc, so that’s all good. Long may it continue, anyway!

September is my wedding anniversary, and while it was low-key, we still had a nice day – child free this time! I was very pleased to get The Emperor’s Legion, the Lion clan pack for Legend of the Five Rings LCG delivered on the same day – happy anniversary to me, eh? Indeed, September does seem to have been quite the month for L5R, as it marked the twelve month point since I started collecting this game. It’s so good, though, even when I’ve been playing it by myself to get an idea of how the rules work. I have probably said this before, but it’s one thing to learn a game from the rulebook (or even a youtube video), and quite another to actually play and experience the game. I had wanted to play the game before trying to teach my wife (not for our anniversary, I’m not that cruel!) and have ended up enjoying the experience of just seeing which cards come up, and how it all comes together on the tabletop.

Despite coming to the game late as I have, I was still able to snag a copy of Under Fu-Leng’s Shadow, the white whale of a final expansion that introduced co-op play to the game, and have had a game with that mode this month, too. It definitely helps to know the general, Stronghold format of the game before attempting this method of playing, because otherwise I think the rules are extremely complex. I did have a look at this box when I had first picked it up last year, but I couldn’t quite work it out how it was supposed to work. Having played a handful of solo games now, I think things are much clearer.

L5R is such a good game, though. I know it’s been dead for more than 3 years now, and there seems to be no indication whatsoever that FFG or any other company intends to revive the card game, but I love it so much that I can’t help but keep covering it here on the blog. It’s a bit like Netrunner, which seems to be this year’s obsession, or Star Wars LCG, which will never go away either. I’ve started to use the tag “dead games appreciation” for these things, and have retrospectively applied it to some of my previous posts as well, in the hope of keeping things nice and orderly.

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September has traditionally been something of a hobby-heavy month for me, and in years gone by I have seen a massive surge of activity in my painted miniatures output in this month. Of course, in September 2023 I had that huge 40k game that seemed to kill my enthusiasm for the game moving forward, so now any dabbling in 40k has been sporadic, at best. However, I had begun to inch back into the world with my Genestealer Cult, and had started to repaint some Neophyte Hybrids to match the rest of my force. However, progress on these has been incredibly slow, so my initial target of getting the remainder of my Cult forces painted up by Christmas has now gone by the wayside, and instead I think I’ll be lucky to just get this squad of ten finished!

I still haven’t actually played 40k at all in 2024 – in fact, given that it was last September when I had that massive 3000-point game, this month also marks twelve months since I played 40k! That’s quite a stark realisation!

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Perhaps the other big thing to happen this month is that I have become something of a Lego fan, after getting my old bricks down from the attic for the kids to play with. I was a huge fan of Lego back when I was a kid, and for the longest time it was the toy of choice for me – I don’t think my parents realised just how much I loved it, to the exclusion of anything else, really! Being the younger child, though, I kinda missed out on some of the big sets because my brother would have things first, by which time “we’ve got enough Lego!” and I wouldn’t qualify for a big set of my own. Try not to be too saddened by this, though!

I will probably write up some more on this next month, because I think it might deserve its own post, but I think September has seen me become something of an AFOL…

Count Zero

Hey everybody,
Following on from reading Neuromancer earlier in the summer, last week I finished the second book in the loose “Sprawl trilogy”, Count Zero. Gibson’s second novel is not exactly a direct sequel, but retains the setting of Neuromancer, while giving some nods to the earlier work as being something that has already happened in this universe.

The book follows three distinct strands, which begin to collide somewhere after the middle, before tangling around each other as we head for the end. To begin with, we have Turner, a specialist in corporate espionage who is hired by a former partner Conroy to help with the defection of Christopher Mitchell, the man behind “biosoft”, a kind of USB drive you can plug into your brain. Mitchell’s creation has enabled Maas biolabs to corner the market, but Turner is brought in to allow for his defection to Hosaka. The defection goes awry, and Turner ends up rescuing his daughter Angie instead. When they travel to Turner’s brother Rudy in Tennessee to patch themselves up, Rudy discovers a device implanted in Angie’s brain that seems to allow her to access the matrix without a deck. Turner and Angie head for the Sprawl, the megalopolis on the Eastern Seaboard.

Strand Two follows Bobby Newmark, the self-titled Count Zero, who is given some black market software to try out, only he almost dies when running it. He is saved by a girl within the matrix, who is able to jack him out before he flatlines. Escaping from his house, he meets with Lucas, Beauvoir and Jackie, a group who appear to be dedicated to voodoo deities who have started appearing within the matrix. They head to Jammer’s nightclub where they are besieged by rival gangs sent there by Josef Virek.

Virek is the main antagonist of the whole book, although he is only directly referenced during the third strand for the most part. Virek is phenomenally wealthy and critically ill; he hires the art curator Marly Krushkova to track down for him the creator of a series of collage-boxes. Marly’s adventure takes her into orbit, as she follows the trail of the boxes to a burned-out facility once owned by Tessier-Ashpool. Virek catches up with her but is unable to force her hand when Bobby is unexpectedly able to destroy one of his cyberspace constructs in the matrix.

It turns out that these voodoo gods are actually the fractured consciousness of the formerly-merged AI of Wintermute and Neuromancer from the earlier book. Angie is able to access cyberspace via the implant in her brain, which was placed there by the Wintermute/Neuromancer consciousness communicating directly with her father. Indeed, the AI was the reason for the success of the biosoft, and has allowed for people to directly interface with the matrix without a deck.

Neuromancer was kinda weird, but that was definitely the style of the novel. The actual story was pretty good, I thought, and had a lot in common with spy/thriller books, regardless of the subject matter or the prose. For Count Zero, Gibson’s style is definitely still there, but the story feels too fractured, with a reliance on a lot of inferred knowledge, such as the identity of the gods etc. It all started to make sense towards the end, but I found it pretty hard-going up to that point. While I think I would read Neuromancer again to enjoy it for what it is, I do feel like I would need to read Count Zero again to properly understand just what on earth was going on. I don’t really think that’s the sign of a good book…

That said, I did enjoy the Turner storyline, for all that it was 1980s action-hero for the most part. Bobby’s storyline did make me smile at times, as Bobby tries to be someone he really isn’t, while everyone around him knows just how foolish he is being. Bobby’s storyline is the only part that includes anything similar to the cyberspace runs of the earlier book, as well, which are the parts that I enjoyed the most. The third strand ends up tying everything together, but I felt cheated somehow because initially these were the shortest chapters, and while it’s true that none of the storylines appeared to be related to begin with, Marly’s story was probably the furthest removed from the other two, being on a separate continent.

One of the more explicit references to Neuromancer came in Marly’s tale, as we learn that the Tessier-Ashpool corporation began its decline seven years previous, and the mention of 3Jane here, while a throwaway, does serve to “place” the novel. I said at the start that it’s not a direct sequel, and you definitely don’t need to have read the earlier book to understand this, but it was nice to have some kind of recognition there.

While most people seem to rate this one higher, I felt like it was a bit of a dip, for me. That’s not to say that it wasn’t without its merits, of course, but just that it wasn’t what I had expected. I have no doubt that I would read it again, but I should perhaps temper my expectations, as this is in the same world, with the same style, but is not in the same manner as Neuromancer, given that it takes place more in “meat space”.

At some point, I’ll also get round to Mona Lisa Overdrive, the third part of this loose trilogy, and see how that one compares, as well!

Legend of the Five Rings reflections

Hey everybody,
It’s no secret that I’ve been enjoying the Legend of the Five Rings LCG here on the blog, having been collecting up what I can for it over the last twelve months now. While I haven’t actually played the game properly yet – that is, with another person – I have run a couple of practice games where I control both sides of the game, just to try and learn the rules and so on. It’s one thing reading the rulebook, and another to watch learn to play videos on youtube, but I find it’s another thing entirely to actually experience the flow of the game as it happens, and despite knowing all the hidden information on each side, it can be an incredible time. I think, when you approach a game like this with the mindset of “who would win”, and seek to just see how the cards play out by making the optimum decisions for each side, it can be fun to see how each side plays with the resources at hand.

Doing this has made me realise just how much fun this game actually is. Getting to see a conflict in action, and how the various clans can have fairly explosive turns as they play numerous cards to affect the course of the battle, is an amazing thing. I think when I was first getting into it all, part of me was surprised by how many conflict cards are 0 cost, or at most, 1 cost. Maybe it’s just because the intention is that you use your fate to play characters during the dynasty phase, so the conflict events are free to let you do this? It’s only once you play the game some, and can have that feel for it all, that you realise you’re effectively paying honour to draw the cards in the first place, so they’re just costed differently. Therefore, the expensive conflict cards are usually balanced accordingly.

When the game first launched in 2017, life was very much in the way of things like games, but the vaguely-Japanese theme didn’t particularly grab me either. I think I’ve mentioned before that it was always Tony who was into that sort of thing. Anyway, I think I can see how I would have otherwise passed on the game anyway, as I don’t think it was the sort of thing I was all that interested in at the time. It’s taken me quite some time of hearing about the game, and actively wanting to investigate it some more, to even be interested in picking it up to begin with. Similarly, it has required me to want to play it, and want to understand the nuances of it, to really come to enjoy it for the incredible game that it is.

I’ll say this now, but Android Netrunner LCG is still what I consider to be the perfect head-to-head card game, and I don’t think L5R is quite in the same league. However, I do think that it still has so much more to commend it than people have given it credit for in the past. I think there were a lot of external factors at play back in 2017, such as trying to win over the old CCG crowd who had loved their game for 20 years. The LCG is not the CCG, and in the limited research that I have done into this subject, I can see that it really ought to have been marketed differently. I think this game has struggled quite a bit in the shadow of the CCG, and not many people were willing to give it a chance as a result.

It’s definitely a shame that it didn’t last for longer than it did. While the pandemic no doubt played its part, I understand that the game could never seem to find the same momentum that Netrunner had, though the more I think about this, the more I think it may have been a timing issue. When Netrunner launched in 2012, LCGs were at their absolute height, and the hype for that game in particular was through the roof. L5R came in at the very end, when we’d already seen how a co-op LCG could be much more successful, and with other competitive LCGs were dying off. The bubble had burst, and the perennial problem of the LCG model not generating quite as much excitement as the CCG model really seems to have worked against it here. The decision to kill off the game must have been made before lockdowns prevented any kind of organised play taking place, and in a way it’s remarkable that the very last product available for the game brought co-operative play to the system. It’s a shame that we couldn’t have had at least a couple of different expansions for that style of play, but at least we have it, all the same!

Of course, I don’t want to get too down in this post, I’m meant to be having a week-long celebration of L5R, after all! There is just so much to enjoy about this game, I suppose that’s why I can’t help but feel a little bit sad that it didn’t have longer in the sun. It’s definitely the kind of game that rewards you for diving deep, and I suppose that depth is maybe lower than some other games, which can turn many people off. It has worked out for me because I’ve wanted to do that homework, and have wanted to make that investment of time into it. Even after the handful of “practice games” (I can’t think of another way to say it!) I can see just how exciting the game can be, and the level of nuance that each decision point has. It is a complex game, there’s no getting away from that, but if you’re willing to put in the effort to play through it, I think you’ll be able to see just how strategic a game of L5R can be. I find it interesting how I tend to think of it as the sort of game that would form a centrepiece of a game night, rather than approaching it with the intention of jamming in a few games before hitting a bigger board game – it boggles my mind, therefore, at the thought of playing in a tournament, with 5 or 7 games in a day! Of course, I am a very casual gamer, regardless, and I kinda like the fact that the game no longer has that kind of competitive meta telling me what and how to play the game. The game as it now exists has an opportunity to breathe, and cards that have heretofore been shunned can perhaps see some play in a more casual setting.

So, while it is now a dead game, I am still very much enjoying it, and will no doubt be yammering away about it on here for a long while yet. I do like my dead games, it seems, after all! I’m still hopeful that I will be able to find that Crab Clan Pack, and maybe even Clan War in the fulness of time. Wouldn’t that be something? A complete collection. Definitely the stuff of dreams!

Legend of the Five Rings: Under Fu Leng’s Shadow

Hey everybody,
Let’s talk about Under Fu Leng’s Shadow, the final expansion for Legend of the Five Rings LCG. The box came out in June 2021, and capped off the game after almost four years of product, with a roughly 50-50 split between player cards and Shadowlands cards. These are a new set of cards that form the basis of the two new modes of play contained in the expansion – co-operative mode, and challenge mode. Co-Op pits you against the Shadowlands deck, which runs with an AI system that seems a bit fiddly at first, but I think that’s just because of the overall complexity of the game. Challenge mode pits one player (as the Shadowlands player) against a team of 2-4 other players, and again there are more rules specific to this method of playing the game.

Co-Op mode is huge for the game, of course, because this is the way you can play L5R solo, with the AI-controlled Shadowlands deck beating you down at every turn. In a normal, head to head game of L5R, players declare challenges to their opponent in an attempt to break the enemy provinces and, ultimately, their stronghold. Along the way, you secretly bid honour to draw cards, and can challenge your opponent to a duel to increase your own honour. During a challenge, you not only choose the type of fight you’re going to enter into, but also you choose one of the five elemental rings to trigger. In order to make a solo mode work well, there were a number of different things that needed to be addressed, therefore, such as the hidden information around the honor dial for both honor bids and duels, but also how does an AI opponent choose which province to attack, and which ring to select?

To start with, the Shadowlands AI has a dynasty and a conflict deck just like a regular player, though the way these decks are constructed is interesting. There are six encounter groups for each deck, and depending on which Shadowlands Warlord you’re playing, you pick four of these for each deck. It’s a bit like how the encounter deck is built for Lord of the Rings LCG. The Shadowlands AI has five provinces in play, all of which are tainted – a new card token for this box, which gives a province +2 strength and forces the attacking player to lose 1 honour when making an attack, or it can give a character +2/+2 but you lose 1 honour when attacking with that character.

The Shadowlands AI collects fate just like a regular player, and will attempt to play characters from its provinces going from left to right, always playing the character if it can afford to. Each of these characters has a reinforcement number next to its fate cost, which tells you how much extra fate to place upon it, though unlike a normal player, this additional fate comes from the general token pool! Sneaky. The Shadowlands Warlord itself can also come into play through a variety of effects, and will never really go away – meaning it’s a near-constant threat.

To allow for the hidden information such as honour bids, and to make decisions for the type and element of a conflict, the Shadowlands conflict deck cards all include ‘shadow elements’ and ‘shadow numbers’ at the bottom of them. So during the draw phase, you bid as normal, then reveal the top card of the deck to resolve the draw.

For conflicts, your provinces are numbered 1-4 from left to right, then the shadow number is used to determine where the Shadowlands is attacking, as well as the shadow element telling you which ring is being contested. The only good thing here is that the player(s) get to choose the conflict type, military or political, based on how they wish to defend against the Shadowlands. While you only get to declare one military and one political challenge as normal, the Shadowlands player will keep declaring conflicts until it runs out of characters or rings to contest, so you could be facing three attacks while only getting to declare two.

The actual attacking characters are determined by how much fate they have on them. A character with 2 fate is placed into wave one, then a character with 3 fate is in wave two. The lowest-fate characters attack first, with rules to deal with characters who are ineligible to participate etc. The process is a lot smoother than it sounds, once you get going! For conflict actions, the Shadowlands AI always goes first, and will draw a conflict card – if it can be played, because of eligible targets and having enough fate to play it, etc, then the card is played. If not, the card is discarded and the AI is considered to have passed. When you pass as a player, the Shadowlands AI also immediately passes and the conflict moves to resolution.

The players win if they break all five provinces, or if the Shadowlands dynasty deck runs out of cards. This isn’t too difficult to achieve, because when you break a Shadowlands province, you discard the top five cards of their dynasty deck as well.

All in all, I think the Shadowlands idea is as good an implementation of solo/co-op mode as you could get for this game. I think it was always going to be difficult, because this has been built as a head-to-head game system, so trying to make it into something else would always be tricky. There are a lot of minor rules corrections made to accommodate the AI, but once you’re in the flow of the game, I think it all seems to work pretty well.

For my first game with this mode, I used a Lion deck that I have been quite proud of, and I actually managed to win – but I think that was probably more likely down to the fact I may have mis-played earlier in the round. Regardless, it definitely felt like a very thematic experience, as you go up against the horde of ravening daemons and other nightmares. It’s interesting to see how the concepts of the game were played upon here, such as the idea of there being no honour to be found in battling these entities. It’s something that has been part of the Crab Clan since the start, how they care little for honour because of their role as defenders against the Shadowlands.

It’s definitely great to have this game mode available, and I think I could see myself playing a lot more games against the Shadowlands as time goes on. It’s definitely a difficult mode to play, and I think part of that comes from the fact that this is a complex game already, but also there seems to be a general idea that any kind of AI mode needs to be difficult to play against. We see this with Marvel Champions and Lord of the Rings, where the encounter deck or villain deck is often very punishing, sometimes mindlessly so.

Legend of the Five Rings: One Year On

Hey everybody,
It’s been a whole twelve months since I began my journey into Rokugan, with that fateful purchase of the dodgy core set for L5R. Since then, I’ve picked up as much of the game as I can, which includes all five cycles in their entirety, two of the three big box expansions, and six of the seven clan packs. It’s disappointing that not everything was available, but I guess over the last year I have made my peace with that fact, and really I’m just very happy that I’ve been able to get as much of it as I have!

The game is one of these somewhat hidden gems, in my mind, and there’s a large part of me that thinks dying was the best thing for this particular living card game. Cards being designed as silver-bullets to other cards is never good, and an ever-growing banned and restricted list to enjoy the game on a competitive/tournament level is always somewhat troubling. By moving away from that kind of meta, and allowing the game to exist in a more casual setting, I think it has allowed the game to breathe somewhat. Some of the stories out there for this one are quite wild, of course, but it seems like the game was neglected in a corner by Asmodee/FFG in its later years, which is quite sad when compared with the infinite promise that the game launched with.

While my experience with the game is otherwise quite limited up to this point, as I have been focused on collecting rather than anything else, I think the game feels at its best with the content from the first 18 months or so. This period, which incorporates both the Imperial and Elemental cycles, and the first premium expansion, Children of the Empire, feels like how the game was supposed to be. The first cycle of any LCG was most often designed without the game out there being played, of course, and so that core + cycle one experience can often be the best in any given game’s lifespan. For L5R, though, I think that definitely extends into these other products, as we can see the game grow and develop further.

This period was obviously one where the game was at its height, and it’s this content that has been still pretty widely available in the years since. I started to collect the game more than two years after it had ended, and I was able to pick up this stuff with relative ease. It was obviously printed in large amounts, when the game was actively being supported; later cycles and clan packs, to say nothing of the premium expansions, are not quite so easy to come by.

But collecting this stuff is all well and good, but how about when it comes to actually playing the game?

Over the past year, I have solo-played three times, controlling both sides of the table in a simple “who would win?” type of scenario. When you’re tasked with trying to make the most optimum play for each side each time, trying to not think about the hidden information that you actually know, it can lead to quite an interesting time. I mean, I’ve played a few games like this over the years, as it’s a great way to learn how the game works in practice before trying to teach someone else. I even beat myself at times, too! Before Netrunner exploded back on the scene for me this summer, I had been hoping that I could convince my wife to play this with me as well, but I do think that I need to draw the line at just one LCG at a time.

Of course, this is where Under Fu Leng’s Shadow comes in. But that’s a story for another day.

So currently, one year later, I’m at a point where I’ve managed to gather a lot of cards for the game, but haven’t been able to play a lot of games with them. Yet. I have been able to interact with the world in other ways though, enjoying the novels and short fiction, as well as more lore deep-dives that have really helped to illustrate what a fantastically rich world Rokugan really is. Hopefully I can get to play some head to head games soon, of course, but regardless I’m pleased to have these cards in my life, as it has been an incredible journey to discover what this game has to offer.

The Power is Building

Well folks, following on from my post last Friday, I’ve been delving back into my Lego collection to build up a few more kits. As I mentioned in that post, my nephew is coming over in a week or so, and he’s a big fan of cars and such, so I thought it might be good to have some built up ready for when he gets here.

I’m not sure if I went a bit overboard or not, but I now have a few more things that he may like to play with, anyway!

I’ve really become enamoured with Lego once again this last few weeks, and have been really enjoying getting to, well, play with my toys from yesteryear! I could be on a bit of a slippery slope with it all, though. See, I have a few of the instruction manuals, but not all, so have been going online to research things. There’s clearly a bit of an art to finding out what a piece is called, then looking on a database like BrickLink to find out which sets it appeared in, then trying to remember which of those sets I had, then finding a site with the instruction manual scanned in. Only to then find one of the pieces I need was chewed by a 6 year old me…

Well, I’ve actually joined BrickLink now, in an attempt to make this easier, and have been logging my collection as I finish building a set. I’m up to 14 sets already, which is really quite exciting, and I have quite a few random things that I want to try to build still. Some of those kits do have a piece or two missing, and of course the majority of this stuff isn’t in the best condition, but all that aside, I am just really happy at rediscovering this aspect of my childhood, and then getting to share it with my daughters.

To illustrate this point, those racing cars in the above photo are from 1988 and 1990, and once I built them yesterday, they were off playing with them, racing around the living room. With toys that are 30 years older than they are. It’s one of the most phenomenal things about Lego that I just love so much!

There’s quite a bit of space themed Lego still to build, and at least one other truck type thing. I have barely scratched the surface of my Castle or Pirates, though, so can’t wait to get that stuff built again to take stock! I guess these bricks may be making more of an appearance on the blog as time goes on…

Brick-tastic!

Hey everybody,
A couple of weeks ago, I decided to introduce my kids to Lego. I used to absolutely love the stuff when I was a kid, and would spend hours playing with it all. I’d build these things, then rebuild them, and rebuild them, to the point where I could construct most of my stuff from memory. I used odd off-cuts of carpet with books or other junk piled underneath to create landscapes for my sets, and at least once I managed to create a sizeable town around my bedroom, complete with obligatory race track.

Ah, the memories!

I was a big fan of the Castle and Pirates stuff, the Castle stuff being the bulk of what models I have now.

The Paradisa stuff always kinda interested me, though back in the 90s it wasn’t seen as ‘right’ for a boy to be playing with that stuff. There’s a whole can of worms here, of course, so let’s move on from that…

I can remember getting the surf shack for Christmas one year, and being so obsessed with Lego as I was, I pretty much ignored all my other presents and just played with this all day. I may have actually started building it before the wrapping had been cleared away…

The space stuff was always more my brother’s domain. I thought they were cool and all, but even as a child I was more interested in history, so Castle held more appeal. Now, however, I am really enjoying these spaceships!

I’m so happy that my eldest, at least, seems to be really into playing with this stuff. She’s not quite so keen on the fact we have to spend the time building things first, so it’s somewhat hit and miss while I try to find all the pieces for these things… but once a set it built, she seems interested, at least!

Unfortunately, I think I remember selling a couple of things off about 15 years or so ago. Two of my other favourite themes were the Western, and Adventurers, and not long after I started work (21 years ago, this week!) I bought myself some of the bigger kits that were always out of reach for kid-me. However, I guess I was worried what people might think of me, an alleged adult, buying Lego from the 90s to build and then look at. This was before the whole AFOL thing, and all the rest of it! I wish I’d kept that stuff though, because the Adventurers stuff was just awesome!

Anyway. I have a bunch of the Fright Knights sub theme of Castle to build, but my nephew is coming over in a couple of weeks, and he loves Lego and cars, so me and the girls are going to see how many of those I still have the parts for…

Isn’t it amazing how big the Lego community is online? Seems like the instructions for every set ever made are up online, with comprehensive parts inventories that show which sets used which parts. With a bit of jiggery-pokery, you can find a part, find a list of all the sets it was used in, and get the instructions for it! That’s how I rebuilt those M-Tron and Blacktron ships, and the surf shack, and how I’m hoping to rebuild a couple of monster trucks this weekend! Amazing stuff!

Taking stock of the Cult

Hey everybody,
I’ve had quite a few posts recently that have been devoted to the Genestealer Cults. This army is my choice for getting back into 10th edition, and so I have been focused quite a great deal on getting my existing force into shape. I do have a lot of models for this army, primarily because of the focus they had during the Kill Team 2018 era, but also they’re just great looking models! In terms of points, I have roughly half of the total number of models painted, which is quite nice to see really! I think the painted half contains the majority of miniatures that could reasonably form an actual army, as well – there are the classic leader units, some troops, plus some harder-hitting things as well as a troop transport. So that’s nice.

Looking at what I do have though, both painted and unpainted, it’s astonishing to think that there are actually still some holes that I should probably look to plug. The army does have a lot of shenanigans around reinforcements, but I would still like to get some more vehicles in the list to aid with mobility. That’s not for right now, though! I have the vague plan to have everything painted by the end of 2024, which might sound ridiculous, but I’m feeling kinda confident that I can do it. If I can keep breaking things down into smaller groups of models, I think I could actually achieve this goal.

I recently talked about this, of course, where I’m planning to get some Neophytes, some bikers, and a second squad of Metamorphs painted. I’ve already bulked this out a little, so that it forms a roughly 500-point chunk. To this end, I’ve added in the Abominant and a squad of Aberrants. I find that painting these units as a chunk really helps me to get motivated, and seeing the progression towards a small chunk of the force being completed, rather than thinking “I need to get everything done” is a big help.

I also like doing it this way because it feels like a true project. It’s always been something of a dream to get a big box like a combat patrol or something, build it up and paint it as a single project. I don’t think I’ve ever really managed to do that, though have tried plenty of times over the years! By breaking down the models that I have into these sorts of projects, though, it does seem to help as there is a certain level of excitement, for me, in seeing that through to completion.

Once I have got everything I own painted, what then? There are only a small handful of models in the codex that I don’t own, so I would like to pick those up as well to give me options – and to complete the collection! It has often felt weird to think of my 40k armies as “a collection”. They’re gaming pieces, albeit very expensive, very beautiful gaming pieces. Thinking of them as “a collection” has always implied that they exist for their own sake, which to me is a bit weird really. However, I’ve been in a similar position before with my Dark Eldar, for which I think I have every unit in the codex as well, regardless of whether I would ever play it. I think there’s something nice about having the options of course, and when the models are as incredible as those for the Cults, I find it hard to resist!

The stragglers are only the Beneficus and the Reductus Saboteur. I don’t have the Beneficus because he hasn’t been released outside of that big box yet, but I definitely want one of those because he sounds awesome. I think this trend of giving every faction a new unit with their codex has been a bit hit and miss, to be honest. For older factions that have range refreshes with their books, it’s great, but the 9th edition release of the Saboteur felt very much like it was just for the sake of it. The lore behind the model is also a bit daft, in my view – the cult breeds an explosives expert because it needs one? Hm. The Beneficus is a much better idea, I think, as a walking artillery piece that can focus the psychic might of the Broodmind into a devastating blast? I’ll have some of that, thank you very much!

My current project is the squad of ten Neophytes, which is coming along fairly slowly, but steadily all the same. I’m taking my time, because I feel like I need to practice my painting and whatnot, plus these guys are so detailed. They really are the best-looking troops in the game. At any rate, slowly but surely, progress is being made!!

Anyway, this is all getting a bit rambly, now! Suffice it to say, I am super into the Cults at the moment, and am really looking forward to moving this project along. After spending the best part of a week building up the Goliath Rockgrinder, I think I’m now in a fairly good position for making a start on getting these things painted up, as well, so once I figure out how I painted the last 1000 points of models, I can get moving on this front – stay tuned for more updates as they come!

Back to the Underhive

Hey everybody,
It’s been quite a while since I’ve talked properly about Necromunda here on the blog. It’s one of my all-time favourite games from Games Workshop, and while I may not exactly be chomping at the bit for 40k like I used to, I can still appreciate their boxed games like Necromunda and Warcry. Although, can Necromunda legitimately be called a boxed game, when it takes over the whole house?

At any rate, 2024 is the year of Hive Secundus in Necromunda, the genestealer-tainted hive that was grav-bombed from orbit when the infection was discovered. Of course, even that didn’t entirely eradicate the taint! Hive Secundus came out earlier in the summer and was actually quite reasonable for a box-set from GW, featuring new Malstrain Genestealers, a Genestealer Cults-like Scum gang, two Spyrers, and a new take on some Van Saar. Alongside this was a new rulebook, new dice, and the old bulkheads from the original Necromunda box that launched back in the mists of 2017. All of this for £105, though with discounts from the FLGS I actually got it for £75, so not bad at all.

Hive Secundus has really got me thinking about the game again, although I don’t think we’re going to be launching into that box quite yet. I really like how the Van Saar gang has been essentially re-imagined, and I wonder if they have plans to do this for the other gangs as well? So far, we’ve seen a lot of Genestealer-adjacent horrors previewed, but I wonder if the Tek-Hunters are the start of each gang getting a Secundus upgrade?

My original plan for getting back into Necromunda this year had been to use a Van Saar gang, as I have been wanting to get those miniatures finished off for ages now. However, James and I have been talking again, and he has returned to his Outcasts gang that use the new Kroot models, so in turn I have decided to return to an idea that I had about a year ago, and have got plans for some Orlocks!

The House of Iron has always been somewhat on the periphery for me. Back when James and I had originally gotten into Necromunda, they were the gang he chose, and he has returned to them a couple of times. When we had the four-player Dominion campaign last Christmas, Tom was playing Orlocks so they were once again taken. I think that now, though, will be my chance to shine! Well, it’ll be my chance to at least get mine to the table, I guess…

When Necromunda came back in 2017, the Orlocks were probably the first gang that really grabbed my attention. I built up my box excitedly, before really knowing much of the rules, and when it came to it, I found myself with a bunch of chaff. Lots of pistols and knives, nothing particularly exciting, you know? So I quietly retired them, and it wasn’t really until they came in the Ash Wastes, so I got my hands on ten more guys, that I began to seriously think about building a gang again.

So the next campaign will see Orlocks vs Outcasts, which is very exciting stuff! I don’t think we’ve chosen an actual campaign to play yet, though I suppose Dominion might be fun. I’m really looking forward to seeing what I can do with the Orlocks!

Star Wars: Showdown at Centerpoint

Hey everybody,
Well, the Corellian trilogy is now at an end, having finished the final book in the series at the weekend. It’s a trilogy that I’ve only read once, back in something like 2000, and have never made an effort to return to (though I have read several other Star Wars EU books multiple times over the years). I think in part, it was because the books just fell a bit flat for me, they didn’t seem to have the same level of adventure as some of the other books from the old EU. Having re-read them now, I think that initial assessment still stands, anyway!

After the Bakuran fleet was able to get into the Corellian system, despite the interdiction field, although nothing really happens. When the Solo kids discovered the planetary repulsor on Drall, Anakin is able to make it work through his innate understanding of technology granted to him through the Force, however he sends a massive blast into orbit almost like a flare. The Bakuran fleet bears down on Drall, but Thracken Sal-Solo makes it there first, and kidnaps the kids, Chewie and the two Drall with them. However, the kids are able to escape, and fly the Millennium Falcon to freedom. They are chased by Thracken and the Human League, but the Bakurans rescue both ships. They also rescued Han, Leia and Mara, so a reunion is had.

However, Luke and Lando make a landing on Centerpoint Station and, thanks to Lando’s knowledge of esoteric industrial practices, he is able to deduce that Centerpoint is the “starbuster” that was used by the Human League to effect Corellian independence in the first place. They are able to work out that firing one of the planetary repulsors at the station will allow them to shut it down, so head to Selonia as they know there is a working repulsor there. Of course, once it is discovered that Anakin has fired Drall’s repulsor, the New Republic forces split themselves between the Drall repulsor, and flying to oppose the fleet of ships that has arrived in-system from Sacorria.

Of course, Anakin is able to shoot the repulsor at Centerpoint, and stop the doomsday clock from targeting another world, while the Bakuran fleet gives itself up valiantly to protect the New Republic, with Gaeriel Captison giving her life in the end.

Urgh, this book just feels like a mess. I remember that I started to read the New Jedi Order series before I was able to read this trilogy, so I already knew what Centerpoint was, and how Anakin Solo was pivotal to the whole plot. As such, when I first read this trilogy, it held no great mystery for me, and re-reading it more than 20 years later has shown that it still remains as clear as anything. I still have issues with the way Anakin specifically is written – he’s 7 and a half, we’re told, and yet he talks like a 4 year old, maybe even younger, and he is constantly described as if he is a toddler. I don’t know if the author has no kids of his own to know how to write children effectively, but this aspect constantly irritated me throughout this re-read.

There generally wasn’t a great deal to enjoy about this book, if I’m honest. I’m writing this now, desperately trying to think of something else to say about it, but it felt a bit like all of the groundwork was painstakingly laid in the first two books, with this dreadfully glacial pacing as everything was plodding along, and then this book was a series of “they go here, they go here, they go here” and while that sounds like a lot of action going on, it somehow really wasn’t. For quite some time, Leia and co are held on Selonia as effective prisoners, while they try to negotiate with the Selonians for something (I forget what – maybe it was for their release? Maybe for control of the repulsor? Not sure). Then Luke swoops in and they’re just off, and it all just feels so muddy and weird.

So it turns out that Centerpoint Station was created to move the planets of the Corellian system into orbit around Corell, the star, and all five of them are in such a position as to support life. Wonderful. Why? Bah, we don’t need to know that. We don’t need to know anything about Centerpoint, other than the fact that it can do that, despite spending most of the last book talking and theorising that it could be possible. It definitely felt like a let-down that we never actually learn anything about the star system that isn’t directly linked to the plot of blowing stars up.

It also turns out that the Sacorrian Triad was behind this whole situation. Who are they? Bah, we don’t need to know about them, either. Suffice it to say, they are the despotic alliance of a human, a Selonian, and a Drall who rule in the Outlier Worlds, whose relevance up to this point amounted to the small portion of a chapter when Lando met Tendra in the first book. It feels like sloppy writing, because I don’t think this book makes the connection that Thracken was the human member of the Triad, either – that’s for West End Games, or something, to piece together after the fact.

Okay, so I seem to be on a rant here, I’ll stop. I don’t like to give books 1-star ratings, so ended up giving this one 2 stars also. But I think, as regards the trilogy overall, it feels very much like this was a waste of six weeks of reading. The only reason I wanted to get through them was due to the fact that they’re significant in the New Jedi Order, which I plan to re-read next year, so I wanted to have some kind of reference here on the blog to link back to when the time came. So, you’re welcome?