Things moved quickly!

A while since the last post and this one is likely to be a short one. Real life decided to stick its obnoxious nose in the way of my hobbying and an Xbox One has proved to be a little distracting when trying to get on with models (but should you get the chance I highly recommend Shadow of Mordor).

The GT was a rush to get finished and to give you an idea of what it meant for me I painted around 20 miniatures to be ready in time, painting chart below. I’ll try to speak about the GT at a later date, it was a little disastrous for me due to health reasons but it’s good to review why you are losing games to improve in the future.

While I’m not sure I would call the push to get everything painted fun, it was certainly awesome to see how much got done under some pressure, perhaps Old Man Mike’s theory was right (talking of which go check me out on Fools Daily with Joel!).

Also somehow this happened – that’s right best resser.

It won’t last for long, for one Ant is a very strong player and deserves to have this next to his name. But it feels like a momentary and great achievement, certainly something I never expected to achieve.

Also next year I am thinking of moving to another faction and completely dropping out of ranked events due to family commitments. As for faction I am thinking Guild of 10 Thunders but Molly, Kirai and Jack Daw are all calling to me. All bets are off when they get the plastic Hamlin box gets a realise date as well.

Final bit of ‘faux news is that it’s Black Friday so get your order in! I picked up a few old metals (old Hamlin to paint, 10T brothers and the Warpig). I avoided pre-orders as I will pick them up in time and have enough to paint right now and went for a few limited editions (Ms Demeanor, even though the new rules are rubbish and alt Perdita).

2 Kick-starters have delivered, Luchador! and Shadow of Brimstone. I've played the former and have read the rules on the later. I hope to provide a little more on each soon.

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!).

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.