Monday, January 16, 2017

What's New With WuhSawBe?

Father vs Daughter game of TANKS!  Chaotic good fun!

Finally, I have a little bit of something to talk about!

I've been in a major gaming drought for the last several months.  I haven't had any miniatures to paint, haven't bought anything tabletop-gamer related, and I haven't played anything either.  It has been extremely demoralizing, hobby wise!

Well, I finally decided to make the 30 minute drive to the game store.  I live less than 2 miles from a game store, but it is pretty bad, only carrying MtG and GW products, and even then, they are often out of stock of the latest hotness, and it seems to be a bit overpriced.... so I drive 30 minutes to the much better game store!  (Where they almost literally have anything a gamer wants).


TANKS and Star Wars!
  Anyway, I have been playing/enjoying Halo once more, so I decided I wanted to see if the store had Halo Ground Command in stock to give me something fun to work on while I sit out this ice-storm that's hitting Kansas over multiple days this weekend.  (Everything will be covered in 1/4 inch thick layer of pure ice).  As a back up plan, I thought about getting the two-player Bolt Action starter, or the TANKS starter.  Once there, they didn't have Halo Ground command, but they did have a restock of Star Wars Destiny!  I decided to pick up one of each starter deck for Destiny, and a handful of packs... along with the TANKS starter box.  (Gotta have at least some models to work on)


Painting up a Panther to add to her force.
My daughter and I played a game of Star Wars Destiny as soon as we got home.  It's definitely an interesting game, enough so that later that night we went back to the game store to pick up a whole booster box!  Initially, I checked out the store that was 2 miles away, but their boxes cost $144, so we ended up driving the 30 minutes once more to go the one I went to earlier where booster boxes were only $108!  Seriously, a difference of $36!  Time will tell if the game sticks with me, as I haven't really found a good CCG that has.  (Honestly, it's usually the meta/playerbase that ruins card games for me.)


My daughter and I also played a game of TANKS.  It is a nice, lite, CHEAP, easy to play game that scratches that Historical Wargaming itch.  My daughter and I both really enjoyed it!  I assembled the models, and let my daughter have the panther that she had her eye on.  I took the 2 Shermans, and built them both with 76mm guns, since I already have 5 regular Shermans from Flames of War.  I may end up doing a write-up and review in the future.


What I thought was gonna be a quick 60pt game...

Aside from playing SWD and TANKS, my daughter and I also played a quick game of Krosmaster Arena, followed by what would turn out to be her best game of X-wing yet!  Poe/BB-8 + Blue Ace vs 4 TIEs, my daughter flying as the Empire as usual.  She really nailed formation flying up until the point where things became a real jumble in the middle late game, and we both started the game off trying to do a pincer move.  She even sprung a nasty unforeseen trap on me, which left Poe heavily damaged with only one hull point left.  The dice were pretty cold though, so after what was probably close to an hour, we ended up calling it...
Clever girl....


Oh, and I also played a few solo games of the Pathfinder ACG, using Darago the Necromancer...


On the video game front, I received Batman: Arkham Asylum and Arkham City on Xbox for Christmas, and played through both of those, which were a lot of fun!  I also preordered Halo Wars 2.  I also got Battlefield 1, but surprisingly, I don't really like it!  The campaign was great, but for me, the multiplayer leaves much to be desired.  It feels like pure chaos, with no real sense of strategy or tactics.  There is always someone laying on their belly to snipe you everywhere you go, and every building seems to have either a sniper in a window or some guy crouched in the corner waiting to easily take you out as soon as you step through the doorway.  In Halo, often times when I die, it was because my opponent had better aim, performed a tricky maneuver using boosts, or just General out played me.  In BF1, I seem to only die to BS, which frustrating, and not fun.  I'm usually sniped out shortly after spawning, by someone completely unseen, and as I mentioned before everyone is camping somewhere in my experience.  I don't think I've had a single experience where I felt like I died to a better player, that I got outplayed at all.  While I'm venting, I'm not a big fan of BF1's radar, not a fan of how the weapon unlock system works, and a lot of maps I've encountered seem to cater to that camping, sniper playstyle.  I'm kind of bummed out, as I had high hopes for it.  Considering how much I was let down by the Star Wars Battlefront gameplay, and now by Battlefield 1's gameplay, I'm debating on never picking up another EA FPS title, as clearly I don't think I like their methods.  It doesn't take long before I start to rage hardcore while playing BF1, but I've found switching over Halo seems to help calm me down and fix my mood!


Finally, TV wise, my wife and I are all caught up on our comic book TV shows.  We finally got around to watching Luke Cage.  I'm looking forward to seeing The Punisher and Iron Fist series one day, especially Iron Fist.  We also started watching "A Series of Misfortunate Events" on Netflix, and we'll see how much we like it, and if it sticks.  I also received a ton of comic book movies for Christmas, so now we are all caught up with watching those.  And of course, I saw Rogue One.... twice!


So, there you have it, my first post of 2017 and my first post in what feels like a really long time.  I'm really hoping I can get out of this hobby/gaming slump, but a lot will depend on my ability to actually get non-solo games in.  That's one of the down sides of being a introvert, as a natural loner, you don't really have a group of gamer friends to play regularly with.  And as an adult, my time is limited.  My advice, when you are younger (high school, college, late twenties) make a solid group of gamer friends, and keep em!  It gets a harder to build those type of relationships when you get older...

Until Next Time,
- WuhSawBe -

2 comments:

  1. It's good to see a gamer get out of a slump, especially when you get out of it with tons of games like this!

    May I suggest Descent Second Edition as a great solo board game, you'd only need to use the app to act as a DM of sorts but it's what I use to shake things up and get my gaming fix at home. It's probably the best dungeon crawler out there and is super accessible for your daughter, especially if she can play X-Wing which is very impressive (I myself continually pilot my tie fighters like an idiot). You could even play against the app together in a campaign! Not to mention all the shiny new miniatures you'd get to paint...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for the suggestion, I have seen Descent played before, but I had always assumed with it being 2+ player that I'd never actually get to play. I'll have to look into the app...

      Delete