Humble Introductions

Greetings and welcome to my blog – thanks for stopping in. . The content of what I will be posting here will be primarily related to table top gaming; i.e. board and miniature games. However I would expect from time to time for it to drift onto topics such as books, movies and video games. The reason for starting the blog is as an exercise to be regularly writing and putting out content. I hope you enjoy!

Friday 10 October 2014

Money in miniatures games

The Malifools had a very interesting discussion this week regarding limited pools which led into a discussion about if a player with more money has a greater chance of winning games against a player with less money, due to owning more models. This got me thinking as it was a great topic and I wanted to share some of my thoughts on the subject. So with absolutely no request for my opinion or thoughts on the matter I'm putting on my size 14's and jumping in, cause hey, that's what the internet if for, 



One of the hosts Mr Ben Sime who I believe has a background in the MtG game strongly felt the player who was able to buy more models would be more successful in the Malifaux game. Now having once played a few CCGs in my time I would agree that normally this is the case.

From a business case there is a natural progression to this, you can see if the most powerful cards are more challenging to obtain then the more booster packs will be sold. It was certainly my experience that those players who could afford more cards had a better chance of being successful. This was known as being “Mr Suitcase”.



However in the Malifaux world the focus of the game seems to be high quality models and rules. The business model which follows that a great looking game with good rules leads to people buying more models/books.

Personally I’m fortunate that I’ve reached a point in my life where if I really want a model then I can go ahead and pick it up without too much worry. It’s fair to say that miniature games are a luxury hobby at this point and the assumption is you that most players have a fair amount of disposable income to be involved in the game most players provided they plan purchases can pick up the models that they need.



Because (with a few notable exceptions) there is a free availability of Wyrd miniatures the cost of the models is less of a factor as opposed to the 2 other key factors which are play group and experience.  Both topics could take a full discussion but in short if you have strong competitive players in your local meta you are likely to develop into a stronger player. Equally if you have a diverse meta where you can play against a range of masters and factions you will be better equipped to deal with these masters when facing them in a competitive environment.

Finally knowing your crew and how to use them (experience) I believe will contribute to a stronger player. Someone who has played 7 games with one master I believe would have a great ablity to defeat someone who has played 7 games with each different master from the same faction. This is because it allows the knowledge of abilities and tactics to become more of a habit rather than constantly needing to remember all of the rules and interactions of the crew that they are using. Allowing them to formulate tactics and strategy while there opponent is still trying to remember the difference between Hard to Wound or Impossible to Wound and which suits he needs to keep in his hand.


Just a bit of my own thoughts, great discussion and if you’ve not checked out the Malifools (which considering you are reading this blog seems unlikely) you really should, they are on a great run of episodes at the moment, event without Spoons. 

Friday 3 October 2014

Been gone a while…

As with a lot of blogs I’m sorry to say that the Wake of Godzilla went silent over the summer months. In short things got very busy for me with a new house and new job so I just didn’t have the time to spend on getting anything out. During the summer I managed to get some tournament games in (Summerfaux and Cow Wars) if I can I would like to put up some notes on these.



Games wise I’ve been playing mostly Malifaux (as always) with a little bit of Deadzone from Mantic which has been fantastic. Board games have almost been all Eldritch Horror whenever I’ve had the time with a little bit of Zombiecide and Firefly the board game. I would recommend all of them if you were looking to pick them up. Doomtown Reloaded has hit the street and I’ve got my 1st game in which was great, can’t wait to get a little more in over time.  Finally I managed to pick up X-Com Enemy Within which is incredible, it really takes what was already a strong games and turns it into an incredible experience. Again, pick this up sooner rather than later, you will not be disappointed.




The GenCon haul included the ‘tach himself Von Schill as well as a lot of models for my upcoming gremlin crew. I now have the Fated Handbook for Through the Breach which I am keen to get into but I am also waiting to try out D&D 5th edition when I have time to get it back to the table.
Malifaux wise I was finding Yan Lo really hard to continue with, for some reason he wasn’t hitting the spot for me, I think in part due to the lack of official arsenal cards was really putting me off. This is out now and there are a few new builds that move away from the traditional Ancestors that I think will be a lot of fun to use in the future.

Also finally discovered Mako’s painting tracker. This thing totally scratches my OCD gaming itch to track things and has made it a really fun pleasure to be building and painting, below is where I am to date. I nearly finished all of my Ressers and then I picked up a few more extras making my % plummet! Curses!





A few cool things around the net for me have been 2 new blogs that I hadn’t seen before:

http://thepaintingmonkey.wordpress.com/  (this blog got me onto the paint tracker and also has a lot of cool Mantic stuff)
http://barneysstable.blogspot.co.uk/ (good tips on game head)
This KS if you’ve ever wanted to be EVIL - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kingdinosaurgames/that-which-sleeps (interesting response from 2 big strategy heads that I showed it to who were not interested as it was on iPad. The strategy renaissance is here and it is on Apple it seems).

Then finally this little jpeg has been enjoyed on twitter so might as well go up here as well (not my work!).