Turelio's Hobby Hoard

I've managed to play a few games over the past few weeks (or at least attempt to play them). I thought I'd do a quick run through of what I played. I played TMNT Shadows From The Past by IDW with some family over the long weekend. There may have been alcohol involved for a few members of the table, it may have been late, so it may have been a bit hard to understand, especially when 3/4 of the table aren't gamers... It was still a good chance for me to learn the rules live. I like the mission system and the way it evolves as you go, and think fans of the game could get a lot of replay out of it. I also really like the dice co-op mechanic, and that the Turtles all behave differently, so you quickly get situations where Mikey hands out movement, and Donatello hands out defence. I'm keen to play it again with a few of my regulars. The Others by CMON got played on Tuesday. Again, this is one I hadn't played live, so I stumbled over the rules a bit as well. I'm prett...

So an hour or two ago, this appeared in my Twitter feed: I have somewhat mixed feelings about this, and I guess for mostly positive reasons. If you had told me a few years ago, let's say two, when I was having a really bad year, that a new Tiffany Aching book was being released, I would have been over the moon. Tiffany Aching is one of my favourite characters not only in the Discworld series, but out of all the books I have read in the past two or so decades. I love the character, I adore how she is used in the series, and I think she was a great addition to the cast of characters, namely the Witches group. It's been great watching her grow through the books, the stories themselves being Pratchett's take on old style fairy tales (the dark ones, where non-human creatures cause mischief), and they remind me a bit of Roald Dahl stories, but with less of the prose I tend to think Dahl has. The Wee Free Men came out when I was in my third year of university, and I remember cutti...

The idea for this came from Andrew when I was talking to him the other day, and I tweaked it a bit, and then went overboard for a few items. So this is the first of three posts – another two are coming for things I want to paint and watch in 2012. Also, because this is my blog, I'm pointing out these are some goals for 2012, but in no way are they actual resolutions. I also reserve the right to change these with little to no notice, claim I never wrote these, and refuse point blank to admit to the existence of this blog if things go bad. So these are twelve things I want to read in 2012. Not all of these are single novels, and not all of them are things I haven't started reading already. But these are 12 things that at the end of 2012 I want to be able to say 'I have read'. The Court of the Air – Stephen Hunt A friend from work lent this to me a while ago, and I'm about 100 pages in. So far, it's a fun sci-fi/fantasy/steampunk story. I'm enjoying it, but am ...

So new years has rolled around, and at the time of this going live, I'm honestly not sure what I will be doing. However, I'm typing this up ahead of time to get a few things ready to post on time. Anyway, I figured that I'd go through some of the bloggy things I've enjoyed this year... Dungeons & Dragons After not playing this since uni, I got invited to play in a campaign earlier in the year (which is still ongoing). I almost forgot how enjoyable this game can be, especially with a good group of people. So far the games have been fantastic, even if the other team got killed off two games in, leaving the 'regulars' team with a sense of dread nearly every game that this is the one we will finally be killed in. The story that has been created for it as well is full of plenty of side details to make a conspiracy theorist like me start to watch out for tiny elements that may come back later. And playing an Elf Ranger with a... not very obvious morale code and wh...

When I was young(er), one of the things that stuck in my head was all the mythology stuff I used to read, and as well as that, the old TV show Monkey. About a year ago, I came across White Tiger, the first Kylie Chan book from the Dark Heavens trilogy in a book store. It looked good, had some interesting points on the back cover, and when I flicked through quickly (something I have to stop doing when book shopping) and saw words like 'sword', 'explode', 'demon', and realised this was a book I may enjoy. But I had no money, so I had to put it back. I bought it somewhere around August though, and quickly went through the entire trilogy. Then I found out that there were two more trilogies planned with the same characters, and I started waiting for book 4 (Earth to Hell) to come out. Then I found out that not only was it being released before Christmas, but there was a signing at Parramatta at Infinitas Bookshop, which is where I found the original book. So I went a...