Turelio's Hobby Hoard

So, as a warning, this post is mainly text... I've posted a few times about my dnd game. I'm still having fun, and have another two games lined up, plus big plans for the future for it. But I wanted to post briefly on the fact I rapidly lose control of my story in game, and I really like it! My players have been (with good intention) taking control of the games for a while now. I plan the plot less and less, and they fill in the blanks with no issue. They usually come up with some idea I didn't have, and watching it unfold is great. Two games ago, I had them fighting under a lake against some mercenaries who were feeding arcane energy to a giant dragon corpse frozen in ice, which from here will be referred to as "the statue". They had already run the game off the rails early on with a great outcome, and there were some cool character moments as well. Now the fighting had begun, I lowered my guard. The final fight was the outcome of the arcane offering was a sh...

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...

Warning - This will get gruesome... Last night, with more KD:M games looming next weekend, I decided to start my own solo campaign. Gems Light. I wanted to run through the game a few times in the hopes of starting a full blown campaign. I was tired from the heat, but I still wanted to do this. As you might guess from the title, it didn't end well, but nonetheless I'm going to blog about it, and turn it into a learning experience... I hope... For some reason I decided to name the survivors after gemstones, and after trying to recall more than about two name in the heat, decided metals could be used as well. Later I would just name survivors after things like Cordite, which in retrospect probably means I gave up on these survivors quicker than I thought I did.. Anyway, my previous times through this game had all started very positively as I recall, with survivors getting home in one piece, and nothing bad happening. This was different. Quickly surrounding ...

I have a two in one update! I've been really busy the last few weeks which has worn me out and stopped me painting much. On top of that, a lot of hobby time was spent prepping for the next chapter in the DnD game I run for my friends, The Band of Bakers: Currently the Band of Bakers are on the second of a series of trials set to them by several gods, each of which has an association with a member of the party. This weekend they faced the second trial, which usually involves a party member being separated to prove their skills while the others fight, effectively splitting the party for a few rounds. This weekend the party's ranger Varis faced the Trial of Melora, and the Bakers were victorious. Everyone seemed to have a good time, including myself, aside from the party wizard Miri, who wasn't able to make it, and was therefore planeshifted away for the game (With soon-to-be-mysterious results!). My friend Garry managed to nab some photos during the game, and kind...

So after dinner last night, with Critical Role running in the background, I sat down and started to learn one of the biggest Kickstarter games around, and the biggest I have in my games library: Kingdom Death! Hooray! That's right, Kingdom Death: Monster , the game of simulating the ever growing profit-and-loss spreadsheet of a doomed multinational company! Wait... No... Come back! I joke, it's a really cool game. Those are just character sheets. I swear! So, I've glanced through the rules a bit, and watched a 'how to play' video while putting the Butcher together, so I had a brief understanding of the rules. Luckily, the game is designed to play the Prologue event first, after assembling the Prologue sprue (Kingdom Death being the first company I have encountered to arrange a game intro like that, which I appreciate).  But before I did that, I decided to grab the cards I was likely to use out and sleeve them, because I paid too much for this game to dama...

So, in the quickest time I think I have ever done this, I got two games of Journey in today! I can't remember when I got a new game AND got to play it so quickly! Btu first, I feel I need to remind people of what my first introduction to the story this board game is based on is: With that in mind, I was aware that this was not going to be a comedy game where the Monkey King plucked hairs from his head to power attacks, or questioned the sexual preferences of his opponents and team mates. But I was giggling at the memories as I played. To be brief, the game is quite fun! I read the book of the original story years ago, so I was aware that Pigsy and Sandy were not the names of two of the companions, but old habits and so on, I still referred to them as that. But flicking through at least Monkey's cards (I was playing him), I was happy to see a few references to things like The Book Of The Dead, especially in the way that they operated in game. Anyway, we played the fir...

I want to take a few moments to talk about something that rarely happens to me, but happened all the same last Wednesday... I won a game of Malifaux! Seriously, I don't think that has happened all year. I forgot what it was like... Well, technically it was a win by my opponent conceding, but he was basing that choice in maths, which I seem to be ok with. (I mention this rarely happens, right?) We elected to try the Evade the Patrol story encounter from Wyrd Chronicles. I ended up as the defender, having to keep my crew out of site of his Master and Henchmen. He was the attacker, having to stay away from the Guild patrol. As luck would have it, he had two unused Guild Guard, painted (as is the rest of the crew) by AdPaint.  I was a bit annoyed that I was fielding bare plastic, so this will be motivation to get back and finish the crew. Anyway, I was using Lynch as a Ten Thunders master with Hungering Darkness, two Illuminated, two Low River Monks, Mr. Tannen, and two Ten Thunders Ar...