The Celtic Sigmarines are ready to take on the bad guys in Shadespire. Sullivan, O'Brien and Angharad are fully painted up (the bases took an age) and good-to-go. I haven't actually played Shadespire this year. I want to get some more games in but I've been too busy with other stuff. My kids bought me 'Eldritch Horror' for Christmas. I started playing it on my own, after I'd bored everyone senseless (they refused to save the world again from ancient, Cyclopean horror. Don't they know that we must be ever vigilant!?). Maybe I'm going soft in the head but that fits perfectly with the genre and the game mechanics. You can literally go insane in this Lovecraftian nightmare and have to start again as a different character. On one occasion I actually visited my previous incarnation in her padded cell at the mental asylum whereupon I was gifted with all her possessions.
We also got Settlers of Catan for Christmas which, it turns out, is an excellent game and we'll probably pick up the expansions. I don't know how I missed that one all these years. It's been around for a while.
I was struck by how different it was to Shadespire. You can set up a game of Catan and learn to play in 10 minutes. Even the wife had a game and admitted that it was surprisingly enjoyable. (she refused to play again) Yet it was still cerebral and competitive enough to hold the interest of my kids who like their hard-out strategy and backstabbing.
Shadespire is very fiddly in comparison and it's quite tedious to teach someone the rules. The support mechanic seems to throw everyone off and even I second guessed myself a couple of times and had to refer to the rulebook to confirm. It's also unwieldy to set up with all those roll-offs which always seem to come up as a tie on critical symbols, requiring re-rolls. You can end up having to rearrange everything if someone decides to play length-ways with offset boards on a small table.
But it feels very deep and I like the deck building aspect. The presentation is top notch and those minis... man they are exquisite.
I've been playing more 40k too since the Tyranid codex was released and breathed much needed life into my gribblies. I've still got a ton of projects to finish with them.
I'm getting a bit over saturated now, however. My army model count has crept up to 72 and the last game took over 3 hours. 40k feels more streamlined in 8th edition but it still takes a bloody age to play with a large force and I'm losing the stamina for it in casual games. You have to set aside a whole evening or afternoon.
Fortunately this arrived the other day:
and the urge to revisit the Red Scorpions was strong. Carab Culln in his leviathan dread isn't e.z. mode like Guilliman but he's still a bit of a beast and looks gorgeous. He fits together very well and is quite posable. I didn't have to clean him up very much, there was no warping and I only found one bubble. Even the box is snazzy. I've never actually painted any Forgeworld so this should be a new challenge. The finish on the model is smooth but not like plastic so it will be interesting to see if the paint flows on and dries differently.
I was struck by how different it was to Shadespire. You can set up a game of Catan and learn to play in 10 minutes. Even the wife had a game and admitted that it was surprisingly enjoyable. (she refused to play again) Yet it was still cerebral and competitive enough to hold the interest of my kids who like their hard-out strategy and backstabbing.
Shadespire is very fiddly in comparison and it's quite tedious to teach someone the rules. The support mechanic seems to throw everyone off and even I second guessed myself a couple of times and had to refer to the rulebook to confirm. It's also unwieldy to set up with all those roll-offs which always seem to come up as a tie on critical symbols, requiring re-rolls. You can end up having to rearrange everything if someone decides to play length-ways with offset boards on a small table.
But it feels very deep and I like the deck building aspect. The presentation is top notch and those minis... man they are exquisite.
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| Sullivan |
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| O'Brien |
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| Angharad |
and the urge to revisit the Red Scorpions was strong. Carab Culln in his leviathan dread isn't e.z. mode like Guilliman but he's still a bit of a beast and looks gorgeous. He fits together very well and is quite posable. I didn't have to clean him up very much, there was no warping and I only found one bubble. Even the box is snazzy. I've never actually painted any Forgeworld so this should be a new challenge. The finish on the model is smooth but not like plastic so it will be interesting to see if the paint flows on and dries differently.
I very much like the greens you introduced to the Stormcasts. I never played Shadespire but those miniatures are exquisit indeed!
ReplyDeleteSettelers is an oldie but a good one at that. Great that your kids are gamers as well - a good way to spend time with them.
Yeah, I spend so much time shouting at my kids that its nice to do something fun with them once in a while. Having said that, I often shout at them during games as well.
DeleteI love the bases on the StormCast, but they do take forever to get all the detail. Also really loving the green and white offsetting the gold there.
ReplyDeleteAlso also, it sounds like I really need to pick up Eldritch Horror.
Thanks Westrider. Give Eldritch Horror a try if you like the genre and games that tell stories. Fair warning, its a co-operative, social game really (except when you play alone) and might not appeal to your hardcore strategy side.
DeleteI'm a major Lovecraft fan, and honestly, I prefer co-op, but it's hard to do co-op 40K ;)
DeleteAh, you'll love it then. There are optional rules to tweak the difficulty anyway if it gets too easy. It plays a bit like Pandemic but with more tentacles.
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