Wild West Exodus: The Jesse James Archives Honor Among Outlaws

Great freshman effort

This is the 1st book from the author Craig Gallant. A great effort let down by a few structural issues surrounding the book. Mr Gallant sets a tone of a steam punk west with a vivid and engaging writing pen. His style is easy to read and evocative of the era the book is set in (late 19th century America).

However the book is plagued by 2 major problems. The 1st is the fact that he is writing the 1st book in a new IP setting which has been defined by a miniature war-games. This means that the book has a slow start and spends a lot of time what feels like name checking and introducing characters from this setting with little to no impact on the storyline. Additionally it causes a suspension of all dramatic tensions; you know that none of these characters are in peril at any point, so much so that in the final act the protagonist turns from a cold blooded killer to knocking out all of the foes that he fights for a very lose story read. This sadly makes the plot less engaging and breaks the flow of the book.

Secondly is that like so many works of genre fiction now this is part of a trilogy and really takes its time to do anything. After some brief one sided gun fights in the opening chapters it won’t be until the end of the second act that you’ll get some more action. The lead character, Jessie James, doesn’t find any form of redeemable sympathies until right at the end of the book more relaying on you to buy into the fact that he’s a bad ass because we are telling you (rather than showing you) in the book.

However with these knocks against it Craig Gallant sets up a great ending to the book and if I could have started the next book in the series after finishing I would have. Would I read another book by this author – absolutely, no doubt. Would I read another book set in the Wild West Exodus setting, maybe not.

The State of the Lizard – December 2013 in review

So December has come and gone as did November with a very busy time for me from both work and family perspective. I’ve squeezed in some time for games but not much time for blog writing.

Over the past few weeks I’ve finally got back to playing 40k and had to rapidly assemble some of my Necrons for a day of games up at Warhammer World. This was a great excuse to catch up with some of my mates from around the UK who all came for the weekend and sample the finest chicken the Hooters could provide. I really wanted to have some more painting shots done for the Necrons and I hope to put up a blog post following the painting later this year. However it will never replace Malifaux for me.

Santa delivered a few new games to me and I dusted off a couple to play:

1) King of Tokyo: Halloween – this has always been a popular game with our group (guess which monster I play) but with this expansion it really kicked things up a notch. The two new monsters have a great design behind them and the costumes add an excellent mechanic to the game. I have no reservations in recommending this expansion, a must buy.

2) Defenders of the Realm – playing a lot like Pandemic plus with more complexity and a theme that I really like my wife and I enjoyed our first play through, though we did win. I am looking forward to playing again but the variability of the game feels a little limited, I would like to play again to ensure that we have the rules correct and also to play with more players. My worry with the game is the variation of the game on a second play. There is an expansion and a kickstarter from last year which should address this issue but at this moment neither is available at time of writing.

3) Eldritch Horror – another cooperative game, this time set within the Arkham/Lovecraft mythos. If you have played Arkham horror then straight out of the box you will be familiar with this game. It is different enough to have its own feel but close enough that I wouldn’t feel the need to own both games.  It has a great theme which comes across well and also plenty of variety straight out to the box. It also shares Arkham’s lots of fiddly rules to remember and on-going effects, which was challenging for the first play through. However I am keen to get it back to the table again in the next few months.

4) Marvel Legendary – when I first played this game I wasn’t particularly won over. I loved the theme having always been a Marvel fan but found that the game left me a little cold. Everyone drawing from the same pool of heroes never made me feel like I was Spiderman or Iron Man and adding a completive point scoring element to a cooperative game made the game less enjoyable for me. However with the first two expansions and the legendary app which randomizes your game set up I found the game greatly improved. I’ve started to really get into it and nearly picked it up when I am in the states next week. However to purchase all of this in the UK you are looking at the £100 mark, while a great game I would struggle to recommend this for any but the diehard fans.

5) A Game of Thrones: The Board Game – Decided to break this classic out again, the rules came back quickly and even with a few new players we managed to get through the game in about 2.5 hours. Having read the books now the game nails the feeling of manoeuvring your forces and vying for control of the continent of Westeros. For my money it’s one of the best dudes on a map game that you can play. If you’re looking for a step up from your risk games then defiantly check this one out.

That’s a quick update/review of board games, next time I hope to talk about what 2014 holds in store for me.

Reviews and Kickstarters – November 2013

No specific blog post today rather a collection of quick reviews and some kickstarters of note.

Thor 2 – The Dark World

I really enjoyed the first Thor movie; it was my favourite of the Marvel phase 1 movies. Unsurprisingly my expectations were high going into the movie and I did come away little disappointing. There is nothing wrong with the movie, it hits the correct story notes and has some good comedy and action beats as you would expect from a Marvel movie now.

Where the movie let me down was the motivation of the “main” villains. I believe that in superhero movies it is very important to have a strong villain with good motivations. The Dark Elves felt like a bland force of evil, the diet coke of evil if you will. The main motivation seemed to be that they did not like that the property market of the universe had changed leading some checky Asgardians had moved in down the road and refusing to keep their property in a suitable state.

 Marvel paid Christopher Eccleston to wear heavy prosthetics and in the course of the movie spoke approximately 10 lines of dialogue in English. It felt very hard to feel that these where the bad guys who I should hate with such little information. Its little surprise that Loki stole the show with very little else to focus on in the movie.

The chemistry between Chris Hemsworth (Thor) and Natalie Portman (Jane) while a highlight of the first movie really was lacking in this movie reducing Jane to being a character in need of saving by Thor diminished how smart the first movie was.

Still a good film but not a great film.

Dreadnought by Cherie Priest

Taking place in a steampunk alternative time line of Civil War America a lone woman attempts to travel across the frontier to reach her father. Expect steampunk engines, 19th centuary gentry and a few zombies for good messure.

At a brisk 400 pages the story moved along a brisk pace. The first 150 pages are essentially designed to set up the later plot points. These initial pages did drag for a while and it took me a bit of time to get used to the character p.o.v during action scenes (she’s a nurse rather than a fighter so a lot of her perspective is as an observer and someone that has to clean up the mess after all the fighting).

It helps to have read the first book, Boneshaker, but not essential. You’ll miss a few nods to previous characters and may not fully understand the nature of the “sap” and what happened in Seattle prior to the start of the book. However all this would add is mystery rather than taking away from the plot.

One of the things I enjoyed most about it was having a central female charter throughout the book who came across as realistic. She doesn’t get sucked into a romance with a male character as soon as he came along and also does not suddenly turn into an action heroine without reason. Also the zombies, it seems you can never go wrong with zombies.

Kickstarter

Shadows of Brimstone

This game looks to really hit a sweet spot for me. My main play group is focused around board games and in particular my wife loves co-op games. The theme for me is excellent, as you can probably already tell I do like me a little bit of the wyrd west. Finally Flying Frog Productions are a well-known company to me. There are some lovely stretch goals and other bit to add into the pool of toys as well.

Backing – backing to the hilt!

Battle Systems™ Sci-fi Modular Terrain

I have actually seen this stuff in real life and it looks lovely. However I can’t think of many reasons to use it right now, I’m playing very little 40k and my Dead Zone stuff is already coming with a lot of terrain and has yet to be played. Backing it not would fell like buying it because it would be a good deal rather than because I want it. However if they launch a fantasy set I might well change…

Backing – hand on the hilt

Alien vs Predator The Miniatures Game

So I love the Aliens and Predator licences - both the movies (though obviously not AvP) and the comics. The kickstarter is backed by Cool Mini or Not who have a history of running some really good kickstarts. However the purchase point is very high considering the number of models in the game and it looks like a commercial realise might be available in the future. Not for me at this time.

Backing – staying in the sheath

On honourable mention should also go to Undead Regiment by Dark Hammer Miniatures. I really like the sculpts that have been previously put out by the company but have yet to see them in person. As you can see from the page it’s a Chinese company who are new to the scene. I’ve loved the idea of getting some of these as “conuts as” models for my Malifaux Yan Low crew. I won’t be backing this as I would like to understand if this company has delivered in products before and also due to other financial commitments at this time but I hope they are successful.