Hey everybody, I thought I’d check in here on the blog, as it’s the middle of January, and see where I’m up to with a few bits and pieces, as it feels like it has been a fairly productive month so far! I suppose it feels productive simply because it goes on forever, so there’s plenty of time to get stuff done.
The most exciting thing that I’ve done so far is build two MDF terrain pieces, with the intention of using them for Star Wars Legion. MDF terrain is something that I had always shied away from, but last year I came across a video on YouTube, which of course started the algorithm off suggesting more videos, and having looked a bit more critically at this stuff, I think it’s interesting to see how good it actually is. Of course, nothing will likely beat the quality plastic terrain that you can get, as some of that stuff is truly phenomenal, and really evokes a sense of place on the tabletop. However, having now built up two of these kits, I think it’s great to see how it compares, and I think it should look really good for Legion.
I’ve still got one more (pretty big) kit to build, after which I want to have a proper look at all three together and where I could perhaps go next with it all. I certainly have my eye on a few other kits, which should surprise nobody…
In terms of games, I’ve had some fantastic times on the tabletop this month. I talked about the first game of Marvel Crisis Protocol of the year in another post, but I’ve also had some great games with Elder Sign, and Lord of the Rings LCG! Both of these games don’t seem to hit the table too much these days, so it’s great to not only have them back on the radar, but also I’ve been planning to get more games with them in the coming weeks and months! I have a couple of posts coming out about Lord of the Rings LCG again soon, so this one is firmly back on the docket. Exciting times ahead, there!
While I am still firmly in love with Marvel Champions LCG, I suppose it has dipped slightly as I’ve been giving all of this attention to Lord of the Rings! However, somewhat related to Marvel Champions is the fact that I’ve finally picked up some more card sleeves for the ongoing DC Champions project that I’d started way back in September! So far, I’d been focused on printing out the cards, particularly those that re-skin the existing Marvel Champions villains. However, I had very few heroes to play as, and so have now started to remedy that. I’ve had to buy a new printer because this whole affair ran my old one into the ground, but yeah, I now have quite a lot of content for this re-branding of my current favourite card game!
Gaming has been excellent, so far, and that game with MCP has finally got me back into painting as well! For the last few months, I had been finding it very difficult to get the motivation to paint anything, so it’s great to have broken that cycle and gotten back into the swing of things! I want to try to regain some of my skills before tackling the Star Wars Legion miniatures, because I want those guys to be as good as I can get them to be, so it’s good to have made a start on some slightly larger-scale models for MCP and Shatterpoint. I’m still struggling a little at painting faces, but have decided to challenge myself to start painting the eyes on these models, and with the help of fellow blogger Kuribo, I’ve been trying to improve on this area in particular. Hopefully soon enough I’ll be getting my faces looking a lot more realistic!
All in all, it’s been quite an exciting start to 2026. I know there’s always a chance for things to take a nose-dive, but hopefully I can keep going on this path for as long as possible!
Hey everybody, July has been a funny old month, in many ways. The dental problems I had at the start of the year have returned, resulting in getting the tooth extracted yesterday. What a joy that was. Hopefully it’ll calm down shortly, anyway! I think the elephant in the virtual room has been the fact that Games Workshop has made a stealth-return to the blog, as I’ve been writing more about Warcry in the last few weeks, as well as a bit of a celebration post for Age of Sigmar turning 10 at the start of the month. After six years, I’ve also fully-painted the original starter set for Warcry, which is nothing short of amazing, I feel! I’ve never done this for any of the big boxes of models that we’ve had in the past, so I feel really good about it.
Of course, I have yet to play a game on it, but hopefully that’ll all change soon.
At the start of July, I’d made some vague plans where I wanted to play Marvel Champions more, and I wanted to get more painting done this month. Well, I have pretty much succeeded on both of those fronts, having got the Warcry set finished, as well as the Fomoroid Crusher for that game, and the Bloodsecrator for the Sigmar celebration. I’ve also been able to finally call an end to my efforts at painting the Wrecking Crew for Marvel Crisis Protocol – something I’d started way back at the start of the year. I’d decided I wouldn’t play them until I’d got them painted, so I’m pleased to say that these lads are now finished!
I think I’m getting back into the whole painting thing, which is good because I still have a tremendous backlog! I definitely want to try my best to keep going here, because it’s always better to get games with painted models, after all.
There’ll be more to say on this next week, though.
In terms of gaming, though, July has been pretty good. I’ve been predominantly playing Marvel Champions, which has become something of an all-star for me once again. I’ve had some fantastic games, and have launched a kind-of campaign against the Red Skull again where I’m using Winter Soldier with a rotating cast of other heroes. I’ve already played him and Cap against Zola and it was awesome, so I’ve played against Crossbones with Spider-Woman, and it was another amazing outing as both heroes are extremely powerful, but going up against Absorbing Man with Hawkeye wasn’t quite the same! I think I’ve said this before, but Absorbing Man is usually decried in the community, however with the wrong sort of heroes, he can very easily scheme his way to victory.
I’ve also been using Zola’s Algorithm, the obligation card from the campaign set that gets shuffled into the hero decks. It’s just an annoying stumbling block, which has an Acceleration icon on and you need to exhaust your alter-ego and spend a mental resource to discard, so I thought would be thematic. Well, I drew both Bucky’s and Clint’s copies during that game, and of course it happened when there were two copies of Avalanche in play, so I was adding 5 threat to the scheme at the start of the villain phase!
This is something that I really love about Marvel Champions, though, the way that you can adjust the difficulty with so many different levers to pull or push. I haven’t really been doing all that much with the campaign cards, aside from playing the Red Skull campaign in 2023 (I think). When I played the Guardians campaign last December, I forgot all about the campaign cards, so I think I’m going to try and give that another try using those, but in general I think it might be worth exploring more of those cards anyway. I know the X-Men boxes include a few interesting things, so I’d like to see whether there are ways of using these things outside of the campaign itself.
I had a game of Star Wars Legion, using the FFG rules from the game’s initial launch, and it was an absolute blast – definitely feels like a good move getting into that one, though I haven’t yet made a move to start painting those models. I haven’t yet managed to get in a second game, but I’ve also been devoting more to Star Wars Unlimited, as I am really enamoured with that game right now. I’ve made some initial forays into the unofficial solo mode for that game, getting the challenge decks printed off and so on, so hopefully it won’t be too long before I can put my collection to good use there!
Star Wars and Marvel are very much the cornerstones of my gaming right now, but during the height of the heatwave we had here, I stayed up until midnight playing games and included the classics Runebound and Elder Sign, that last being my 50th game! I am still to get back to the Arkham LCG, but I suspect it won’t be too long before I finally make the effort to get back to The Forgotten Age for a second run-through, as I’ve definitely been thinking about that more in the last week or so.
I really enjoyed the late night games, even if it was hotter than I’d like, so I might look at doing something like that again. It’s usually par for the course when playing miniature wargames of course, but it’s sometimes nice to just launch into something thematic and see where the night takes you!
So, July was pretty good, if I’m honest! Loss of the tooth aside, some great games were had, and I’ve managed to get quite a bit painted from the backlog! Let’s see what August brings…
Hey everybody, As many of you no doubt know, I do enjoy playing board games, but it constantly surprises me just how many times I’ve played some of these things. Elder Sign is an absolute classic, and I’ve had it since it was released back in the mists of time we now call 2011, but it was only during the recent heatwave here in the UK that I actually clocked my 50th game with it. It’s one of those games that feels like I’ve played it far more often than I have! I suppose I’m not playing games daily and thus at risk of getting bored with them, though.
Elder Sign is an absolute classic, like I said. It’s one of the Arkham Files games from Fantasy Flight, and while it is set in the same universe, and makes use of the same characters as Arkham Horror, the basic premise of the game when it first came out was that you’re stuck in a museum and you’re investigating the strange goings-on there. It’s a push-your-luck dice game, with oversized cards that represent the ever-changing challenges that you have to overcome, matching dice results to skill tests in order to complete them, and claim the card as a trophy.
However, the object of the game is to claim enough Elder Signs to seal away an Ancient One, and there is a timer mechanic that uses a literal clock face that forces you to keep going – each time the clock strikes midnight, a mythos card is revealed, which often gives awful, global effects for the “day” (round). There are also various “at midnight” effects, and indeed the price of failure for some adventures, that will add doom tokens to the Ancient One, and when enough of these have been placed, you need to battle them in order to attempt to seal them away for good.
After the initial expansion, Unseen Forces, added more of the same to this formula (with the addition of the bless/curse mechanic that is a staple of the main game), we had four more expansions that widened the scope significantly. Gates of Arkham took us out of the museum and into the streets, where we could visit the classic locations from the board game. Omens of Ice took us to Alaska, then we went to Egypt with Omens of the Pharoah, and finally beneath the waves with Omens of the Deep. Each of these expansions brings its own flavour, and slightly different twists to the mechanic of completing adventures, but it’s still very much Elder Sign.
All of these expansions were released during the 2010s but I suppose I had shifted gears a bit into miniature wargaming shortly before Gates of Arkham came out. As a result, while I still snapped them up as they released, I wasn’t really playing them, a situation that has only changed in the last couple of years. It’s been great to see how the game has evolved, and it does make me a bit sad they haven’t continued to produce expansions that further explore the mythos, but I suppose the major points of the Arctic tundra and the desert of Egypt are met, with the bonus of going under water with Cthulhu.
The 2010s were really amazing for Cthulhu / Lovecraft games, as we had this one, as well as Eldritch Horror going strong. The Arkham Horror LCG debuted and hit its high point with Path to Carcosa, and the third edition of the board game was launched towards the end of the decade. Nowadays, of course, we’re pretty much limited to just the LCG, which is going through a bit of a metamorphosis as they move into the new format of rotating out the old stuff, so it’s a bit of a sad state of affairs. But I like going back to these “older games”, and I think Elder Sign in particular has held up really well.
But still, only 50 games with this one, it really surprises me. I still haven’t played Omens of the Deep, and I had initially thought I might break that one out for the milestone. Instead, I opted to use Gates of Arkham with as many components from Unseen Forces as I could, to ensure the bless/curse mechanic came into play. I’d forgotten that I also wanted to use the Grave Consequences mini expansion pack as well, for a bit of an epic experience, but never mind! The game was fantastic, and as tense as it always is – I was playing as Trish Scarborough and Wilson Richards, but Wilson didn’t make it and was replaced with Diana Stanley before we were finally able to seal away the Gates version of Yog Sothoth. It’s always so much better when an investigator dies, definitely adds to the tension!
Aside from wanting to play with that final expansion, I will certainly keep playing this game for many years to come. There’s definitely something to be said about a “complete” game like this. There’s a fantastic suite of 54 investigators to choose from (55 if you count the promo Daniela Reyes) with plenty of Ancient Ones to battle. Between the core box and Unseen Forces there’s a veritable brick of adventure cards, and the four additional “game modes” that change things up significantly. I’m always one of those people who wants more, but if I’m being completely honest, I think this is a game that I definitely think stands perfectly as a great experience.
Hey everybody, Last year, I set out what I thought was a great idea for some gaming, my 10×10 challenge. Calling back to an idea that was popular 8-9 years ago on boardgamegeek, the idea was to pledge to play ten different games ten times each, to fight against the cult of new games that was pervasive at the time. While I don’t find myself buying new games all that often (instead choosing to infinitely expand a select few!) I thought this challenge would be good to prompt me to play with my current collection some more, and potentially see me play more games than I have been playing recently.
It was great in theory, but it did lead to some almost perverse results, where I would have the time and the inclination to play some games, but would play something “because I’ve only played it twice this year”, rather than playing something that I actually want to play. Sometimes, I’d even lose the inclination to play, because I’d wanted to play some Marvel Champions, but instead had told myself I should try to get A Touch of Evil or Arkham Horror to the table instead. Feeling like I should play a game because it’s on the list, rather than playing something because it’s an awesome game that I’m in the mood for, is definitely something that I want to avoid in the future!
So how am I going to plan out my next year’s gaming, without being too prescriptive?!
Well, to start with, I’m not going as wide as ten games. I had originally thought maybe I’d choose to include expansions in the list, as I know some stuff, particularly Eldritch Horror stuff, has only been played 2-3 times, but I’ve gone off this idea on the whole. I don’t actually know yet how many games I want to set out these plans for, I’m just making this up as I go!!
But let’s start with that perennial favourite, Eldritch Horror. This is a tremendous game, and one that I’m forever surprised at myself for having not played that often. It hit 10 years old back in November, and I bought it when it was new out, so I think I really want to try to get some more games in with that. I would like to aim for playing each expansion at least once, so that’s something like eight games over the course of the coming year. That shouldn’t be too difficult, I think?
I don’t think I need to plan for Arkham Horror LCG, as it seems to be a given that I’ll play a few campaigns over the course of 2024. Something that kinda irked me last year was how I feel as though I rushed through the Path to Carcosa campaign that I played in the summer. Another symptom of the 10×10 challenge was feeling that I have to just get these games played, so I can hit the target. I vastly preferred the Dunwich Legacy campaign that I played after having achieved my target for AH, so I think I might go again with Carcosa, though I’m also leaning more towards The Circle Undone as well. We’ll see.
If I’m definitely going to play more Arkham Horror LCG, you can bet the farm I’ll be playing Marvel Champions some more! I have no specific plans for this, although I was thinking it could be fun to see if I can hit 100 plays with this one. That is only two games per week, and I’ve played three games in a single day before now, so it feels like I could actually do it, you know? Again, we’ll see.
Arkham Horror in board game form is such an amazing experience, it’s a bit puzzling why I don’t play that more often, as well. I suspect it’s the perception that the game will take hours to play. I recently bought the Silver Twilight expansion, so have quite a few different scenarios for the game now. I think, therefore, that I’d like to try and play with each one. I think that might be something like 8 games, as well.
We’re not doing too badly so far, are we?
I’ve had a lot of fun with Elder Sign last year, exploring the expansions for this game in a really measured way. I often think that it’s what the 10×10 challenge is actually meant to be about, really. Rather than playing a game with an expansion once, to tick that box and say you’ve played it, it’s been fun to play with the expansion over and over, and keep exploring it. I played a few games with Gates of Arkham, and a few with Omens of Ice, and I can truthfully say that I’ve got a real clear sense of what those boxes bring to the game. I think I’d like to keep going with this in 2024, and try to continue that dive into these things. I still haven’t tried Omens of the Deep yet, but I think that’s okay, because I’m having a blast with the other stuff.
I think the last game that I want to put on the list is Dune Imperium, which I only got this Christmas, so is very much a newcomer when it comes to these things! I want to try to explore it though, and take my time getting to know how it all works. I’ve only played it once so far, but had so much fun while doing so! Playing a game once is no way of knowing how it all works though, as I found it only really began to click for me around halfway through. I would love to get to the point with this one where I don’t need to have the rulebook open at the side of me, but instead can just set it all up and play it…
With a bit of luck, this will be good enough to keep me entertained, but most of all, to give me some focus for 2024. I don’t want to rob the year of any kind of fun or spontaneity of course, and I’m sure I’ll still be playing Runebound and Lord of the Rings LCG as well, but I don’t want to schedule those in like some kind of work meeting. More than anything else, though, I hope that by doing this, I’ll stop myself from feeling quite so guilty if I play Marvel Champions for the 74th time, rather than wearily getting Arkham Horror out so that I can log my sixth play…
Hey everybody, It’s been quite the busy month for me, both with the blog and in real life. But nobody cares about the latter, so let’s talk about the former! I’ve continued with the theme of being obsessed with now-defunct living card games from Fantasy Flight, and have really launched myself at the project of collecting as much for Legend of the Five Rings as I can. As it stands, I have just over 2/3 of the total amount of product released for that game (I know, because I have a spreadsheet to track that stuff). After telling myself that I would aim to get just the first two cycles, and then maybe some other bits if I can, I have seemingly committed myself to tracking down all of the packs I can find, which has included some US imports for quite a hefty fee. However, I have overall saved roughly £150 on the MSRP on the stuff I do have, principally due to picking up some of the earlier stuff very cheaply.
I think I’m just a couple of packs away from completing the last two cycles, but the middle, Inheritance cycle seems to be proving somewhat elusive. But anyway. I think I have resigned myself to never having a complete collection, due to the fact a couple of the clan packs, plus the Clan Wars deluxe expansion, are simply no longer on sale anywhere. I’ll be keeping an eye out, for sure, but unless something magical happens, I think I’ll be missing those things forever!
L5R is a tremendous and beautiful game, though, so I think overall it will prove to be well worth the investment. I really didn’t want to find myself in the same position as I was with the Star Wars LCG, and having to track some of those final packs down at exorbitant rates, so I think if I can track things down now, only two years after the game has ended, I’ll be in a good place.
Excitingly, I’ve almost convinced my wife to play it as well. I think my enthusiasm for the game is proving to be infectious, though I know she’s not really as big into these things as I am. But hopefully I can wear her down, and she might even come to enjoy the game as well! Here’s hoping. There are plenty of accounts of people online who have been playing with their non-gamer partners though, so I’m cautiously optimistic!
In more general gaming terms, I have managed to play 23 games in total this month, and have now reached ten games of Necromunda for my 10×10 challenge as well! That makes 5 of the 10 games “complete”, and in total I have hit 81% completion for all ten. I do love a good stat! I was also very happy to get round to playing Omens of the Pharaoh, the penultimate expansion for Elder Sign. I’ve had the game in my collection since it was released six years ago, but have never gotten round to playing it before, so that was nice! It’s a great expansion, as well – my review dropped a couple of hours ago, seeing as how it’s Halloween, and all…
All of this is good, though, because it has helped to focus me on playing the games I own, and getting some of my money’s worth, etc. I’ve played more games of Arkham Horror third edition this year than any other, for example, even though I haven’t yet reached my target of ten games with that one. I’ve talked about this at the start of the month, but I have also completely changed up how I have been playing Lord of the Rings LCG, and have been enjoying it so much more than I had been, as I was playing it almost by rote.
One of my big successes this month has been Arkham Horror LCG as well, as I played through the entire Dunwich Legacy campaign over a four-day weekend. It’s been quite exciting, as it has shown me that campaigns don’t grow stale with repetition, something that I had initially feared would be the case. I’ve got more to say on that in an upcoming post, though, so stay tuned…
My love of Warhammer 40,000 had somewhat left me mid-September, and it is only in the last few days that I have begun to fire myself back up with all that. I’ve been reading 40k stories throughout this period, but I had been avoiding the game and any kind of hobby-related activity. Which, of course, had allowed me to get more into the world of the LCGs and whatnot, so it’s not necessarily a bad thing! However, I have now started to paint the Tech Priest Manipulus for my AdMech forces, a very weird model that I was nevertheless inspired to paint up after reading the novel Death of Integrity, which includes some weird Tech Priests and their shenanigans.
I still haven’t really been all that interested in getting a game arranged, but I’m sure I’ll look at something before the year is out! 10th edition has not really left me with the best of mindsets, I have to admit – a lot of people are calling it an improvement on 9th, but I’m not sure I agree. I think 9th needed something, because it was unnecessarily complex with the amount of rules content out there and all, but what I have seen from 10th in the four months since it launched does not fill me with confidence. I mean, the points have changed on average once a month, that doesn’t exactly seem like a great system to me. I really don’t like to be too negative about stuff, but it really hasn’t been as exciting as it used to be, and there’s still a part of me that is thinking I only want to play because I have so much money tied up in the game at this point, so I might as well. It wouldn’t really surprise me if I ended up sitting this one out, though, by and large.
One of the biggest disappointments, I think, is the fact that I started an Aeldari army this edition, without really realising they were somehow the standout best army in the edition. Successive nerfs have done little to actually resolve these issues, however the specific units I have mean that I can’t actually field a decent army that can stand a chance, so that has taken the shine off things. I think I’ve ranted before about how I feel it’s wrong to use tournaments to balance the game, so I won’t go into that here.
Suffice it to say, 10th edition has definitely cooled my enthusiasm for gaming. I will definitely try to keep going with clearing the painting backlog, of course, though it’ll be interesting to see just how well I do with that if I’m not playing the game all that regularly…
I think, all in all, that has been my October! I’ve read a bit, I’ve played a bit more, and have thrown myself into collecting L5R. Oh, and I discovered Paradise by the Dashboard Light the other day, can you believe I’ve made it this long without hearing that song before? Crazy.
Hey everybody, As is appropriate for Halloween, today’s game day will be heading for the slightly spooky side of things, as I celebrate the fact that I have finally gotten round to playing one of the later expansions to Elder Sign! Omens of the Pharaoh came out in 2017, and has pretty much just been on the shelf for all of that time. However, in 2023 I’ve been playing more Elder Sign, specifically more of it with the expansions involved, and have been enjoying the different challenges from Omens of Ice and Gates of Arkham. I’ve been looking forward to getting round to playing these newer boxes, but didn’t want to rush myself and just play them for the sake of being able to say so. In my head, I think I wanted to try and experience more of Ice and Gates before rushing forth into more new things. Anyway, enough preamble, let’s get to it!
Omens of the Pharaoh is an implementation of the digital game, Elder Sign: Omens. In that game, you’re able to go to Egypt and investigate the creepy occult stuff going on, so in a way I was surprised they went with Omens of Ice for the first expansion that moved away from Arkham, but whatever. As we saw with Omens of Ice, the adventure deck is split in two, but the way this works here in truly quite exceptional – it’s not a linear approach from stage one to stage two, but instead the adventures are split between whether you’re in Cairo or Dashur, the former being relatively easier adventures, and the latter being the more difficult things. There is a double-sided “entrance” card that you can spend a move action to flip, and when you’re on the Dashur side you will draw cards from that deck. But you can go back to Cairo, which I don’t think I appreciated on my initial play-through of the game.
There are elder signs in Cairo, but they are predominantly in Dashur, so you do need to stay in the wilds to get the victory. In addition, the Dashur adventures have four Chamber cards that represent exploring hidden tombs. While a lot of the adventure cards have entry effects on their backs, as we have seen on cards in previous expansions, these Chambers actually have tasks on them to get into them, which I think it an interesting way of representing the sort of hidden locks or whatever.
There are several other new things to this expansion, as well. First of all, there is a double-sided scenario sheet, one being The Expedition, the other being The Exhibit. The Expedition side represents what they call the Lightless Pyramid game mode, and you will gain tokens as rewards for completing some adventures, which can be placed on this sheet to gain global effects while the token is there. You don’t remove the token to use the effect, but there are several effects that remove tokens anyway, so they aren’t necessarily permanent buffs!
There are also four Dark Pharaoh adventure cards which are used with the ancient ones in this expansion, and are drawn when a doom token is placed on the relevant space. These adventures are tricky, but can never be claimed as trophies. There are only four of them, so you need to prioritise them before a fifth would be drawn, because if you need to draw another when they’re all out, the doom track will instead fill up and the ancient one will awaken!
Finally, there are relics, items which have the useful ability of refreshing the dice in your pool following a failed roll. You can’t go above the component limits, of course, but if you’ve already removed a green dice from the pool, you can spend a relic to put it back in. Super handy, and definitely a welcome addition to the game as a whole. The alternative game mode, The Exhibit, allows you to add relics and the Dark Pharaoh encounters to other games, so you can use these cards in the regular Miskatonic Museum if you wish. Very useful!
The investigators included in this expansion are mainly the “new” investigators that came to the Arkham Files world with Mansions of Madness, rather than the original Arkham Horror board game. So we have Preston Fairmont, Father Mateo, Agatha Crane, and so on. There are a trio of new ancient ones, including a new Nyarlathotep that includes the Dark Pharaoh icons in his doom track. Interestingly, the expansion stipulates that all of the monsters are included in the game, including the Mask monsters, regardless of whether Nyarlathotep is the ancient one.
I really enjoyed this expansion, not least because it was fun to have something completely new (to me) to play through for Elder Sign! The Egypt theme is a classic for these mythos games, of course, and in many ways it was similar to Under the Pyramids for Eldritch Horror – always nice to have these symmetries of course! I think I may have mentioned this before, but it’s also nice to have recurring mechanics from previous expansions, such as blessed/cursed from Unseen Forces and Skills from Gates of Arkham.
Something that I find quite remarkable about playing these games is how the investigators still feel pretty well-balanced to the base game, as well. A few times now I’ve played using investigators from later expansions, including Roland Banks who appears in the final expansion, but nobody feels particularly overpowered – it’s interesting, when you have someone like Amanda Sharpe in the core set who has the very powerful ability of completing multiple tasks at the same time, how the designers have seemingly never pushed the design into more powerful territory. For example, whenever Agatha Crane loses sanity she gains a clue; Preston Fairmont recovers health or sanity whenever he gains items. It’s thematic to who these people are, but it’s not going to warp the game and make earlier expansions trivial to use these guys. I’ve been quite impressed how the investigators have kept within a fairly decent band of ability and utility across the entire game’s run.
I very much enjoyed this expansion, at any rate, and I’m definitely looking forward to playing it some more in the future. Having played with Omens of Ice quite a few times this year, it has shown me that these expansions that take us out of the museum aren’t just gimmicks that break the base game in some way, but rather they are very enjoyable for what they bring to the game.
Hey everybody, I think I talked about this a bit in my August retrospective blog a few days ago, but I’ve been really enjoying some of the Lovecraft themed games from Fantasy Flight recently, which has really helped with the tally on my 10×10 gaming challenge, as I try to achieve 10 plays with 10 games over the course of the year. Elder Sign has now been achieved, and Eldritch Horror is halfway there already, but after recently playing a game with the third edition of Arkham Horror, I’ve had the interesting idea of playing multiple games with the same investigators. All of the Arkham Files games use the same faces, which is one of the selling points as far as I’m concerned, and in the past I’ve enjoyed the odd game of, say, Eldritch Horror, using the same investigator pairing that I’m using to play through a campaign in the Arkham Horror LCG.
However, I’ve never tried going through all of the games I own with the same investigators.
Having sold off the second edition boardgame stuff, I own four games set in the Arkham universe, so this is still a pretty expansive undertaking – not least because the LCG is a bit more complex as you need to build a deck for the investigator. Of course, with each game having different mechanics, no investigator will play the same across all four systems. But I think it’ll be fun to see how they do, all the same!
Investigator selection is largely dependent on who is available for Arkham Horror third edition, because the board game has the least investigators in comparison to the others. Still, given that I have two expansions for that game, I think I have about 18 investigators to choose from, so have decided to go for the pairing of Roland Banks and Diana Stanley. They’re two of my favourites – Roland, because I have enjoyed playing him so much in the LCG, and Diana, for her many outings in Eldritch Horror. Indeed, I think they were the first investigators I played in each of those games.
My first game was with the big game itself, Arkham Horror third edition. I was playing Echoes of the Deep, the Cthulhu-themed scenario. This was just great – I often pass over the board game when I’m looking for something to play, because it does have a fairly long set-up time, and can take a while to play. But it’s one of those games that, once I’m playing it, I can’t help but love. It’s so immersive, especially if you take the effort to read the flavour text!
For Arkham Horror, Roland is a pretty good fighter, while Diana has more utility for warding doom and maybe spellcasting – her sanity isn’t so high that you would make her primarily about getting spells, of course, but her lore stat is very good. She has a card that lets her deal damage to monsters in a space, at the expense of adding doom to that space, but if she can clear it of monsters first, she can then move in and ward next turn, which is quite useful. Roland has the option of healing stamina and sanity instead of gaining remnants from monster attacks, which is also very useful in the game.
However, Roland went insane pretty early on, so I had to replace him with Tommy Muldoon. I went for theme here, the rookie cop replacing the Fed. I hadn’t actually planned for that, but I think I am going to try, so far as is possible, to keep that going, so if I lose Roland then Tommy will always replace him. Likewise, I’ve decided to replace Diana with Agnes, if I ever find myself in that position, though Diana was actually a really good choice for the board game.
I actually had a good start, and thought I was setting myself up quite well for Diana warding against doom while Roland was off killing monsters. Sadly, though, he was driven insane when a reckoning token was drawn in the mythos phase, meaning for this scenario that investigators lost sanity for each doom on their space. I found myself playing a bit more conservatively with Tommy for a while after that, but it was still a very enjoyable game and I think he’s actually quite a useful investigator. Both Roland and Tommy have a leaning towards attacking monsters of course, and I had chosen for Roland to heal instead of gaining remnants during the game – it was just too little, too late!
In my narrative, then, Tommy somewhat idolises Roland as the Fed, and being a rookie himself, he dreams that one day he might be able to do what Roland does (although losing his mind probably isn’t high on that list). For Diana, I’m thinking that she and Agnes have formed a bond over occult experiences, and so if Diana is ever defeated in future games, I’m thinking Agnes will take the lead in trying to find out what happened to her friend.
Next up, though, was Eldritch Horror. As Roland comes in the Cities in Ruin small box expansion, I decided to play a game going up against Shudde M’ell, the grandmother of the Cthonians. This was a lot of fun, as I got to explore a lot of the board and experience a lot of what the expansion has to offer. Roland made it through in one piece as well, although this time it was Diana who nearly kicked the bucket. I think she had a couple of items where she could trade sanity for clues etc, and when effects were causing massive sanity loss across the board anyway, I found it hard to keep up! There was one particular moment where a mythos card prevented resting, as well, so I couldn’t try to heal up, but in the end it all worked out.
I love Eldritch Horror for so many reasons, not least of which is the glorious amount of expansions for the game. Each one brings something new, and I love it when I can play a game that feels like it’s letting me explore what it has to offer, so I can really dive into the different decks and whatnot.
Eldritch Horror is possibly my current favourite game, at any rate!
Finally, for now, I have played a game with Elder Sign. I really like Elder Sign as well, and this year has seen me playing a lot more of it than usual – the 10×10 challenge has helped here, for sure, but even so, I’m really pleased to have finally gotten back into exploring stuff like Gates of Arkham and Omens of Ice. I still haven’t yet played with either of the later expansions, although Roland here comes from the very last one, Omens of the Deep, so I have at least lifted the lid on that box.
For my game of Elder Sign, I expanded it with Unseen Forces, using all of that box, and we went up against Azathoth. This wasn’t exactly difficult, but nor was it easy. For a long time, I was getting difficult adventure cards, and was worried about committing Diana to them because she wasn’t as tooled-up as Roland. Indeed, she was almost devoured thanks to being reduced to 1 sanity, but had a card to fully restore herself, which was good!
A lot of the early cards, while difficult, had a lot of elder signs as rewards, so I was able to make great headway with sealing Azathoth away at first, but it was a good game because, like I said, it was the right amount of challenge, without being too difficult.
I’ve really enjoyed these guys – and it’s interesting to see how the same investigator is implemented across multiple games. For instance, Roland gains a clue when the clock strikes midnight in Elder Sign, and he can spawn a clue as an action in Eldritch Horror. In Arkham Horror, he can buff his attacks based on the number of clues in his neighbourhood. So it’s not exact, but it’s all the same kind of flavour each time, and I do like that.
Now, the final game for these two will of course be the Arkham Horror LCG. I’m currently approaching the end of the Path to Carcosa campaign, and as one of those investigators I’m playing with is a mystic, like Diana, I think I’ll need to wait until that has finished, and I have access to the full card pool again, before building more decks. I’m also planning to pick up The Scarlet Keys campaign (finally!) soon, and will be trying out that campaign with these two. Roland and Diana are investigators that I have used in previous campaigns for the LCG, of course, and unlike in the board games, playing the LCG is a bit of a task, so I do feel like I’ve already been with these two quite a bit. I did consider maybe just playing the Night of the Zealot, but the more I think about it, the more I want to get the latest campaign so that I can see what I’ve been missing for the year or so since it came out!
Hey everybody, June has been a funny old month, hasn’t it? Here on the blog, I’ve had almost a month given over to Warhammer Age of Sigmar, between both the main game and Warcry. I think this was in part because the games are amazing, with some of the most beautiful and creative miniatures that Games Workshop produces, but also as a reaction to the negativity online surrounding Warhammer 40k 10th edition. Despite my better judgment, a lot of the bad feeling coming out of the AdMech community in particular seemed to affect me more than I thought it would, and I had to just walk away for a bit. It’s interesting, to me, because I’ve never really experienced that before – usually, you see people moaning and whinging online and you can just draw a line across it and forget about it, but it seemed at one point like every group I was in (and I have a lot of armies, remember!) was complaining about the new edition changes, and it soured me towards what otherwise had seemed like a new and exciting time for the game.
I’ve now played 10th edition, of course, and I’m very pleased to say that a lot of the criticism was pretty much unwarranted. Armies play differently in 10th, but I don’t think there’s really anything particularly awful about things as they stand. I do miss some things, but that’s going to be the same with any edition change, I think it’s right to say that we should wait for the codexes to see how the land truly lies, because I do feel like having the full suite of rules available will make things change.
In the meantime, I have embarked upon the mammoth task of trying to make sense of all of the armies I collect in the new edition, so stay tuned for a series of blogs where I will be taking a closer look at all this kind of stuff!
Age of Sigmar has been a big focus though, and I have really enjoyed getting back into looking at the Mortal Realms. I have even managed to play a game this week, as well! A guy nearby posted about learning the game in one of the many facebook groups that I’m in, and I left a half-hearted comment and, before you knew it, I was throwing dice! There seems to be a bit of an Age of Sigmar “scene” near me, which is both exciting and terrifying, to tell the truth. It’s exciting because it’s good to know that I won’t be building and painting models in a vacuum, but terrifying because it seemed like a very close-knit group of people, and I feel like it’s very difficult to get into such cliques. Moreover, everybody there seems to both know the game very well, and be hyper-competitive whereas I am both learning and really not that bothered by optimum builds and most competitive lists, etc. I don’t really like tournaments anymore, but that’s what a lot of people here seem to want.
I should try harder, though, as I don’t want to miss out on stuff, already having a sizeable Ossiarch Bonereapers army, and also now working on my Slaanesh forces. That’s been a lot of fun, as Slaanesh is an army that I have long wanted to have, but have bought and sold twice before. Working on my third attempt at the army has been really good, though, even if I have made the mistake of fully assembling that Exalted Chariot before painting it!
So far, I have been concentrating on getting my Daemonettes painted up. After assembling the whole force the other day, I think it’s quite surprising to me how few models have actually been painted, so I wanted to try and get this lot done, with the hope that they might be a quick win for me. Well, they haven’t been all that quick so far, but I think they’re definitely getting there! My colour scheme calls for a lot of faff with shades, diluting them for the skin so they don’t go too purple, but then stronger on the claws and feet, so there is almost a blend required. Drybrushing the skin then helps to blend things further, but it’s all a bit faffy! I’m currently not sure about the hair, either. I had followed my initial scheme as I had laid it out, but as it has been something like 4 years since I painted the first one, I could have got something wrong. The hair on some of the models looks more bright blue than I’d like, so I might need to revisit that somehow. But otherwise, it’s going well, and working on the Chariot crew at the same time both ensures consistency and will (hopefully) allow for me to finally get that model finished soon, as well!
There was a flurry of Warcry activity on the blog in the first half of the month, a lot of it was scheduled in because life was a bit crazy with birthdays and stuff, but I’m really excited for that game, and I’m looking forward to getting more warbands painted and playing more games as the year wears on. It’s such a good rules set, at least the first edition set that I am still playing through, I love how brutal it can be once the battle is joined! That said, the fact that you don’t deploy your warbands on opposite sides of the table, but instead have groups at a variety of points, does mean that melee combat is quick to get into, so you don’t lose those first few rounds to just simply moving about.
June hasn’t been just about plastic people from Nottingham, though. I had my first game with Star Wars Shatterpoint at the start of the month, and have been enjoying learning that and getting some of the models painted. Being bigger than GW scale, I had expected them to be somewhat easier, but it’s turned out not to be the case! So far, James and I have only managed one game, but I’m hoping we’ll be able to find the time for many more as the year progresses. It has overtaken Necromunda for us in terms of wanting to play games, but I still have a deep love for all things Underhive, and I am keeping my bits crossed we’ll get back to things there soon enough, as well.
I’ve also played a couple of games of Marvel Champions, which has been really nice as they have been games where I have tried to take my time with it all, rather than rushing the villain for the win. My usual style of playing this game has been to throw as much damage as I can against the villain, and react to whatever is happening as best as I can – which can sometimes lead to some very tricky situations! However, it was really quite nice to play it a bit slower, as it feels like you’re really playing the game, rather than just sitting through it happening quickly in front of you. Hopefully that makes sense! It’s just nice to see more cards, to play cards than otherwise I threw away as resources without ever trying them out, and in general, I’ve really enjoyed it! It’s also made me re-evaluate some cards I’ve never given much time to, so I might be deck-building a bit again with some heroes like Captain Marvel, to better effect this sort of long-term strategy.
I’ve also played against Ultron for the first time at the weekend, and while I did unfortunately lose, I really enjoyed that one for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it was a really great game, with Star-Lord and Nebula going up against him; I really like this hero pairing, for some reason – I suppose I still really like the Nebula deck, though, and have been enjoying seeing that come together. At the back of my mind, I had been thinking that I’d like to play against Ultron at least once before my first year in the game is up, and I’m quite pleased to say that has now happened. As is often the case with these types of games, the core set scenarios represent almost the full gamut from the basic, training scenario, to the almost-impossible mega-boss. Ultron is definitely in the latter category, but seeing how his scenario deck plays out was just great, all told.
But we’re at the halfway point of the year now, so let’s check-in with what has been accomplished, and re-calibrate a bit where necessary!
Let’s take a look at the hobby goals, to begin. I had an initial list of six things to accomplish, as follows: 1. Promethium Forge 2. 10 Hellions 3. Adepta Sororitas Exorcist 4. Necrons Canoptek Wraiths 5. Tau Crisis Suits 6. More Zone Mortalis terrain
The Promethium Forge has had a lot of work at the start of the year, and I think there are only railings left to do now. I’ve completed five of the ten Hellions, and the Exorcist tank is fully painted, one of my favourite models to have painted this year. I’ve done the Wraiths and the Crisis Suits, and I have finished painting all of the Zone Mortalis terrain that I had primed up – having run out of grey primer, I need to get some more before I can get more of that done. So all told, I’ve ticked off four and a half of the six, with the other one being almost done as well! Time, in that case, for some recalibration.
You might be thinking I will be coming up with a new list, but in all honesty I don’t think I want to tie myself down like this. What I will be doing, though, is listing the projects that are currently languishing as half-finished, and in need of some TLC. Whether I complete them all or not, who knows, but they’re things I would like to get to before the end of the year, regardless! 1. 10 Darkoath Savagers for Warcry 2. 8 Cypher Lords for Warcry 3. 10 Sisters Novitiates 4. Drukhari Venom 5. 10 Skitarii (5 Rangers, 5 Vanguard)
I’m obviously not saying that I only have five unfinished projects – I have easily 20 times that! – but these are the five that I think I would like to have finished by the end of the year. Adding the Promethium Forge and those other five Hellions, and it’s not too bad a list, really. Of course, this doesn’t mean that there is no chance I’ll start working on something else next week, but I think out of everything I currently have, these are the projects that I want to see finished. Some stuff is so close to being done that it’s a shame I left them where they were, but that can’t be helped I suppose. Once they are all finished, then I think I would like to start work on other things, more Warcry warbands for a start. The more I think about that game, the more I want to just paint the damn terrain, too. It came out in 2019, and the terrain is still just bare plastic, so it’s about time I got myself sorted out on that front!
I want to get myself in a good position for later in the year, because I’m kinda planning to do something as a bit of a painting celebration. I have talked for quite some time now about wanting to have a big project to really get my teeth into, and I have been thinking about it from quite a few angles, but I think it would be really cool to have some kind of army challenge, almost, where I have a box of miniatures that is the core foundation for an army, or a detachment within an army, and I set aside some time to just build and paint, doing nothing else until it’s finished. It’s been a long time since I was able to be quite so single-minded on a project, but I think it could be a lot of fun. It’s not necessarily about starting a new force, but I think having a character or two, a squad of basic troops, a squad of more elite troops, and maybe some kind of centrepiece model would be really fun. So nothing too grand, but more than just a single box of models. My initial thoughts are for something near the start of December, and obviously as I have a real life to attend to as well, it’s not going to be a case of being able to neglect my wife and kids for this, but I think it would be nice to have a month-long stretch where I just focus on that one thing.
You heard it here first!
So that’s where I’m at with the painting, what about my 10×10 gaming challenge?
June hasn’t seen much gaming, as I said, but I’m surprised nonetheless to see that I’ve played 59 games so far from the list. So I’m over halfway, just about! Of all ten games on the list, I still haven’t played Eldritch Horror once, which at first was a bit of a joke, because I was sure I’d get round to it before too long. It is one of my favourite boardgames, after all. But here we are, at the midpoint, and I haven’t yet played a single game. I think I need to get round to playing that one soon! I am really pleased about getting more Elder Sign played though – and this is really the point of the challenge, to play more of the games that I have. I’m not buying games with the same regularity that I used to, of course, but being able to devote time to playing just one game, and its plethora of expansions, is really great. It’s a similar story for Marvel Champions, of course – even though I’ve played it more than the ten times I had set out to do, I’m really pleased that I’m still playing it, going above and beyond. Runebound has been a surprising one, I think, in that it has seen a flurry of plays in June. I suppose it’s partly due to being focused on the fact that I want to play it for the challenge, but whereas some games might feel a bit like, “well I have to play this because I said I would”, I’ve actually really wanted to play Runebound, being in the mood for some classic fantasy board game action! So that that been surprising, but in a good way! There have been a few times where I’ve played it with a kind of narrative in my mind, so one hero is trying to find as many rune artifacts within the market deck as he can; one guy is only going to level up his melee stat line, to the exclusion of all else. It was just great, and it often felt like those great times from 10+ years ago, when I was first playing the game!
I think, then, even if I don’t get all 10 games played 10 times each by December, it has been a really great way to try to get me to play more with what I have. If I do it again next year, I might not pick 10 individual games, but I might look at expansions to games as well, and see if I can commit to playing, for instance, Omens of Ice ten times for Elder Sign, or Under the Pyramids for Eldritch Horror. I have these things, and in the case of some of these expansions, I’ve barely played any games with them. It’s really about time I made an effort to get my money’s worth from them all!
I haven’t talked much about this as a kind of ongoing project, or whatever, but I do want to briefly mention how my 2023 reading has been going. According to Goodreads, I’ve read 20 books so far this year – and all of them are what my wife would term “real books”, no graphic novels in sight! I am particularly excited about the fact I got to re-read the Han Solo trilogy back around April time, as that was something I always used to enjoy back in the day. I am intending to re-read more Bantam-era Star Wars novels, though it’s not like last year’s Prequel Summer. I’ll get to them when I get to them, I guess. I’ve recently started to read the final Witcher novel, which is part of the ongoing reading project with Dave from wordaholicsanonymous – along the way, we’ve lost and gained a few readers, but I think we’re both still standing from the beginning! It’s been a bumpy ride, for sure, but for completion’s sake, I’m looking forward to the end of this one. I’ve recently discovered Audible, as well, and while it makes me feel like I’m cheating to have an audiobook in my list, I suppose I’m spending the time to absorb the story, just through a different set of holes in my head. I’m sure there will be plenty more books making their way to the blog as a result, though!
This has become quite the exhaustive read, now, I’m sure. Congrats if you made it this far! At any rate, let’s see what the second half of the year has got in store for us!
Hey everybody, I am really enjoying Elder Sign again right now, especially since I have embraced the expansions and have left the museum well and truly behind me! Following on from Gates of Arkham in 2015, each subsequent expansion for the game used the “Streets of Arkham” game mode, with double-sided adventure cards that had an entry effect. These expansions also took the opportunity to really embrace new and exciting locations other than the town of Arkham itself, with the first such taking us to the frozen north, on the trail of Ithaqua!
Omens of Ice is a lot more prescribed than previous games, as we have two stages of adventure cards, the second stage being locked behind a pair of special adventures that must be completed first. This links into the heavy reliance on the game working off the clock, when the passage of the days begins to actually mean something here. We’re on an expedition, and each day we spend up in the tundra is marked by increasing snow storms, represented by storm tokens, which are added to adventure cards and make them just that much more difficult, because they can cause you to discard items or allies, lose sanity or stamina, or add doom or advance the clock.
There are new items and spells, and a whole new mythos deck, which is also two-layered, and we have to choose one of those effects to happen, although each one is pretty grim. New investigators such as Lily Chen, Ursula Downes and Silas Marsh are along for the ride, although there are no new Other World cards this time around. However, the game reaches back to previous expansions for the Blessed/Cursed mechanic, as well as the Skills cards. It’s often quite a dangerous prospect, having an expansion rely on other expansions for content, but for super-fans like myself, it’s always great to see how integrated the game is. It also makes me reconsider how I organise all my content for this game, because otherwise it means carting not only the base game and expansion around to play it, but I need to dig into these other boxes to get those components, as well!
Omens of Ice has a really great feel to it, though, and the adventure cards range from stuff that is moderately helpful, to the out-and-out grim and appalling stuff that makes you really think twice before you go into that mess. As adventure cards are now always replaced face down, though, there’s no real way of knowing how bad that adventure is going to be until you go there and flip it; and if a storm counter has caused you to lose that item you were hoping would see you through, then it could be even worse!
However, in my recent play-throughs, I’ve had some incredibly cinematic moments as I’ve been playing, helped a lot by the fact the adventure cards are staged so that you get most of the Elder Signs themselves from stage two. There are some in stage one, of course, and you can always potentially buff a few with Other World encounters, but it’s very difficult to get enough by staying in stage one. There are three Ancient Ones in this expansion, and the rules do say that we should only use those three when playing in this mode, which can be a little limiting at first, but each of them really brings the storm mechanic to the game, as otherwise you might not be seeing many of those tokens.
I’ve only played with this expansion once, previously, back in 2016, and I had the abiding impression that it was difficult – perhaps why I haven’t revisited it in the almost seven years since! I think, if you treat it as a race and try to beat out the day track by advancing as quickly as possible, then it absolutely will be tough because you won’t have the supplies to roll extra dice or whatever. By plodding through most of the stage one deck before moving onwards, though, I was able to build up my presence quite a bit, which in turn made stage two comparatively okay. It wasn’t easy, don’t get me wrong, but my investigators had enough clues and other cards to be fairly confident as we moved into the great white north. Indeed, there are actually a lot of card effects that prevent the clock from advancing, as well, so by taking this measured approach, I was able to stall the clock while I built up my supplies.
It’s a great expansion, and I’ve enjoyed rediscovering it as I’ve been on this most recent play-through of Elder Sign. There are two expansions left, however, and I have not played either of them before, so aside from more throwing of dice, I don’t really know what to expect from them. I’m very much looking forward to seeing what’s in store for me next, anyway!
Hey everybody, May seems to have been a pretty long month, in some respects. It’s been very productive, though, so I’m not complaining or anything, but wow! It seems like an age since I was writing my April retrospective!
I’ve been fairly busy with painting miniatures, which is of course to be expected, although somewhere in the middle of the month I think my attention began to wane a bit, and I was more focused on other games than the miniatures stuff. Surprising really, because I have had two games of 40k in May! I’ve really gotten back into the Tyranids, with both of the games I played being with the bugs, and I must say, it was great. Tyranids have been an army that I have definitely waxed and waned on like no other, but there’s always something that has kept me from just selling them all off. I’ve talked about this ages ago, though, where Tyranids were almost my first 40k army, so I suppose there’s always going to be that side of things going on as well.
I’ve started to get more of my Sisters of Battle painted as well, getting the Exorcist tank finished, and also finally getting the last few minis from the launch box painted up as well. That felt really nice, I have to say, getting them finished more than 3 years after they first came out! In my defence, I have had two children in this timeframe… Sisters have been the biggest focus, I suppose, despite playing games with Tyranids. I’ve still got some work to do on the Novitiates that have been started, of course, but these were very much casualties of my attention shifting more towards boardgames in the middle of the month.
I’m doing pretty well to clear out the backlog, though. Last August, I undertook a bit of a hobby audit to see how much stuff I still had to contend with, so I think I’ll try to do something similar this summer as well, to try to get to grips with what I am working with/towards. While I am actively trying to reduce the backlog, there’s no denying that there have been some additions since I last did that stock-take.
Over the last bank holiday weekend, I’ve cleared out a load of room in the attic, and have consolidated all of my hobby stuff there. This has allowed me to see exactly what I have still do deal with, which in turn has prompted me to get a few bits and pieces onto ebay in an attempt to clear out once more. However, getting everything together has turned my attention to Warcry, which is a great skirmish game that I had taken my eye from during it’s second iteration in the realm of beasts. I have so much stuff that I haven’t yet painted (or even built, actually) that I don’t suppose I need to be supplementing my collection with any of that stuff, but after looking into it all a bit more closely, I have had the imagination fired up! I’m currently working on painting up the Darkoath warband from Red Harvest, anyway, and hopefully will continue to paint up models for the game as the year plods on.
However, like I said, boardgames seem to have taken centre stage for me for a while now, and I’ve surprised myself by playing quite a lot over the course of May! Part of the reason for this is how much Arkham Horror LCG has been played, as I have almost played through two full campaigns this month. Innsmouth in particular was quick, with half of the scenarios being played in a single day. I have well and truly hit my 10 plays for Arkham Horror LCG, at any rate, and have really bumped up my Elder Sign stats, too! I’ve really enjoyed that one, in particular getting to spend more time with the Gates of Arkham expansion, as it has allowed me to experience more of the box in a way that, up to this point, I just haven’t been doing. This is really the point of the 10×10 challenge, I suppose, to play a game more often. While a game like Elder Sign has seen a lot of play in total, the expansions have barely been touched overall – same is true for a lot of other stuff, though I’m thinking in particular about Eldritch Horror as well. I suppose it makes sense, the base game would get the most play because it’s out first, plus you play it more while learning the game, etc. However, Gates of Arkham had only been played twice since it came out in 2015, so this month alone has seen me exceed my all-time record by playing it 3 times, but these numbers are still surprisingly low. I think, if I were to do another 10×10 challenge next year, I would potentially tweak things to include expansions. It’s not just a numbers game, though, as I really enjoy seeing what stuff like Gates of Arkham has to offer. I can remember playing a lot of Eldritch Horror at the tail end of 2022, and while the base game has seen numerous games, the expansions have only hit the table 2 or 3 times, each. It would be good, I think, to try and play with those some more. It has been a bit like discovering these games all over again, and I’m really enjoying myself!
Of the 10×10 challenge, I have crossed the halfway point already, with 54 of the total 100 games being played. Three of the ten chosen games have also had all ten of their iterations played. Of course, it’s not all about trying to play games to bump the numbers up. I’ve still playing a fair bit of Marvel Champions, but I definitely seem to be on a bit of an Arkham Files kick at the minute, with all the Elder Sign and Arkham Horror LCG being played. Surprisingly, though, I haven’t played Eldritch Horror once in 2023, so I think it might be time to right that particular wrong soon enough!
That’s pretty much it, though, I think! A busy month for painting and for gaming, but otherwise quite sedate. I’ve been reading Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain for the most part, which has been pretty dull at times – while I was on leave last week, I’d put it aside in favour of starting on the third Shira Calpurnia book, Blind, along with Dave from wordaholicsanonymous. That book has been great, and I’m hoping to finish soon enough so that I can get some thoughts written up here, before returning to the Swiss sanatorium…
spalanz.com 