Squig attack!
Got these guys for Christmas last year. Always good to finish a fun project.
Only good things about Warhammer Quest: Cursed City
Sometimes people get a bit too down on Cursed City. It’s a fun game with lots going for it. Sure, GW has been pretty weird about it. Or at least we think they’re being weird because GW has literally NO stated position about the game at all! What’s not to like?
Check out this awesome UR-025
From reddit, painted by bunface123.
How much game is too much game?
It’s such a slippery slope. Young and casual gamers like smaller games with digestible rules, and fun, snappy outcomes. Grizzled veteran lifestyle gamers want complexity, depth, and advanced mechanics. So how much game is too much? For me, the test is: how often do I forget a step? In Mice and Mystics, we always forget to advance the ridiculous clock mechanism. So we don’t even mess with it anymore. It’s a fun game, but we spend so much time floundering with bad rolls we’d be facing continuous penalties. That is if we ever remembered to advance it. There are exceptions though. In Cursed City and Blackstone Fortress we often forget to roll for Inspiration Points. But that’s just like forgetting to draw a treasure card after an event. There’s no mechanic behind it. There’s definitely a point in the rules where I go: uggh, oh boy, this is too much.…
Why are models fun, and what is nostalgia?
Toy soldiers are a very British thing. Britains began in late 1800s, and European tin soldiers date back to the early 1700s! These toys are famous the world over, though sadly out of production now. So it stands to reason that a British company currently leads the world in model soldier production. Games Workshop, consciously or not, is the modern standard bearer of a legacy that goes back hundreds of years. So why are they fun? What is nostalgia anyway, and why to people feel it and/or seek it out? It seems like nostalgia for model wargaming and GW products are talked about so frequently that you’d think GW produced nostalgia themselves. And in some ways, they do. I imagine any entertainment company deals with nostalgia in some form or another. Disney has to maintain and update their parks to bring in and entertain guests. But they can’t change it…
Blackstone fortress terrain
Also check out Cursed City Terrain. One of the keystone differences between Blackstone Fortress and other Warhammer Quest game family is that combat employs cover. To indicate cover, lines are printed on the game tiles. Here’s a video that explains it. The gentleman in the video is non-coincidentally the designer of most of the terrain that I use. I REALLY like using the terrain. Without it, I guarantee I would forget about cover effects every single time. I really need those vertical elements for me to notice them. I haven’t inventoried every single tile so there may be an enormous map that requires more terrain than I have. I’ll deal with that if it comes up. Me – 2023 The tiles have three themes: tessellating geometrics, rocky crystals, and sci-fi elements. I’m not particular about when I use them, and many are tile-specific. There are also some blocking hex elements…
Is your hobby escapism?
Diving into your interests and working on hobbies is a lot of fun, but what is driving you? The lure of imagination land is strong. There’s no boss, no deadlines, no school or homework. The only problems you have are pre-agreed upon. You know it’ll be hard to sneak past the dragon and use your ray-gun to “liberate” that treasure chest. You know the road home will be fought with hazards, brigands, and of course a murky swamp where you get stuck for three weeks and eventually die by vampire frog attacks. You opted-in to all that. You might not necessarily be running away from something in your real life. But for a bit, you don’t have to deal with it. It doesn’t matter about global or national politics, who your family is, or how much treasure is in the chest. It’s like watching a movie and forgetting for a…
The phantom rule that will make Blackstone Fortress a bit easier
As opposed to Cursed City, Blackstone Fortress doesn’t say what to do with your inspiration points between adventures. That omission is intentional. It is meaningful silence. I wish rules in Blackstone Fortress and Cursed City were more positive. Positive in that you can feel them click, that the rules say to do something, not that they don’t say to do or not do something. It’s easier to read the rules and see what they say, rather than look for what they don’t say. I feel like it’s rules writers being clever and conserving their words, but their unexpected novelty is easily overlooked and can dramatically affect gameplay. In Cursed City, you’re rolling a D12 to get Inspiration Points. In Blackstone Fortress, it’s a D20. We get Inspiration Points soooo rarely! How often are you going to roll a three or less on a D20? Not that much. Another example is…
How long have you been “in the hobby”?
How long have you been in the miniatures/painting/gaming hobby? For me, medium-ish, I’d say. Not as long as others, but the time since beginning to now is substantial. It all started when I was a wee lad in 1989 or thereabouts. There was a local hobby shop that carried trains, toys, squirt guns, model car kits, games, miniatures and paints. That is the origin story of my hobby experience. That store was pretty much all I could think about in those young dawning years. Ral Partha, Citadel, Grenadier, Marauder. Rogue Trader, Space Hulk, Advanced HeroQuest, Man O’ War, and many more. This was our mecca. From 5th grade to 9th grade were the gaming years. Not that I was a big gamer. I really wasn’t. I liked the art, painting, and building. Hobbying started to tail off a bit in middle school, then high school rolled around. 1993-1994 and that…
Modern miniatures and the uncanny valley
I’d like to revisit a topic I talked about a couple weeks ago. Modern Games Workshop models. This is a controversial topic because people are passionate about both old and new. It’s really great that people have found things they genuinely enjoy, and I do not meant to diminish anyone’s interest in anything. This is a longer article than I usual write, so if you want to skip right to the uncanny valley section, it starts in section 3. I’ve been trying to psychoanalyze myself as to what drives my personal preference in miniatures. Opinions and biases are 100% subjective. I am in no way saying something is right or wrong. I’m going to be talking about my own personal preference. I’m sure this won’t ingratiate me with anyone. To break it down, I’d say there are 3 factors driving my preference toward older miniatures. All of those are real…