Time for a change…

Hey everybody!
It’s Tuesday Game Day here at spalanz.com, and time for a bit of a ramble, I think. Not that my other blogs aren’t a ramble, of course!

For over two years now, I’ve been writing about some of my favourite games every Tuesday, but I thought I might try something a bit different today and just talk about gaming more generally, see how that goes. I’ll keep doing game blogs, of course, but maybe once in a while I’ll do more of these, sort of casual things.

First of all, I wanted to talk a bit about what games I’ve been playing lately. I’ve not actually had a lot of time to play games unfortunately, though have had a couple with some 40k-themed stuff. Notably some more glorious defeats in Space Hulk: Death Angel, which is pretty par for the course with that game, and also Conquest – including my first victory with my Necron deck! I’m a bit behind with the latest war packs, so I’ve been using Anrakyr the Traveller rather than having the new Illuminor Szeras, who I’ve been looking forward to for a while, but managed to get in a victory a short while ago when I played at the local store against a Space Marines deck that was pretty badly put together. But it’s a victory, and I’m not going to deny myself that!

I’ve fallen behind with the expansions, though – I’ve only got the first two packs from the new cycle, while FFG have just announced the fourth is available! Eek! I haven’t really been buying a lot of games lately, however, and have fallen behind with quite a few things, Lord of the Rings also being a case in point. I haven’t gotten to play much of that game lately, so I guess it’s no big deal, but still!

While there doesn’t appear to have been much announced for Conquest – I believe there’s currently a conspiracy theory doing the rounds that FFG and GW are about to part ways – I am impressed with the next cycle announcement for Lord of the Rings: we’re going to Harad! Back when Heirs of Númenor was announced, I was hoping we’d be seeing more from the Southrons, and while it’s taken a while, we’re finally getting there!

In terms of fantasy settings, I think the desert locale is vastly under-used, and so cannot wait to see what’s in store for us here. The mechanics sound really interesting as well – paired traits that buff each other sounds to me very much like the dual-colour deck thing from Magic, of course. The effects of the temperature sound really intriguing, hopefully it’ll be super cool, anyway! Something I found very interesting from the expansion’s announcement was how the article didn’t include any information about the upcoming cycle, which made me speculate at the time that maybe it was moving to a distribution model similar to that Call of Cthulhu adopted before it was finished, of deluxe expansions only. However, we’ve recently also had the first look at the new Haradrim Cycle, which sees us trying to capture Oliphaunts! Oh, my! I’ve been away from this game for too long, but I think this upcoming expansion is going to be exactly the thing I want to get me back into Middle Earth with aplomb!

Something else I haven’t gotten round to yet is the new Eldritch Horror expansion – I’ve been eyeing it up, of course, but my local store had a shipment that came without the character cards, and it seemed to take forever for them to send replacements. I think he’s only recently put it up for sale, but I haven’t really had the money to get it, what with spending on more Warhammer kits! Seeing as how there probably isn’t going to be a new expansion out for Christmas this year, however, I think I might wait and get that one for myself then – it’s hardly the same as a big box thing, but it’s Eldritch Horror, so it’ll do! I haven’t actually played Eldritch Horror for a long time, sadly, so will have to try and change that soon!

Since my two-year anniversary with the Warhammer stuff, I’ve been mainly focused on the building/painting of minis, of course, and I tend to go along with these things lately – particularly given how many kits I have unbuilt and unpainted! I’ve actually been super-busy on that front, as I think last weekend’s hobby progress blog shows. Just been on something of a production line for building and priming models, which is probably going to keep me going through the winter, anyway!

Which leads me to…

The main gaming thing that has been on my mind for the last few weeks has been getting properly into Warhammer 40k, though. I may or may not have mentioned that my local GW store has been running a sort of mini-campaign-type-thing that starts off small and allows you to build up your army over time – it sounded perfect for a beginner like myself, and I actually got myself a list prepared of a Necron Overlord and two troops of Immortals, but due to work commitments have so far missed both events!

I am, however, really keen to get going with this whole thing, so I’m trying to arrange a suitable time with one of the guys from the store to get me in a learning game soon – stay tuned for that!

As I get back into Warhammer, I seem to have lost my momentum with Magic once more, though these games tend to wax and wane for me, so I’m not too bummed at having spent a lot of money on snow-covered lands lately! I’ve kinda been following the spoilers for the second Conspiracy set, though I’m not really planning to get involved in drafting that, primarily because Draft has never actually interested me, though. I still have a bunch of decks built up, including a lot of Standard decks that I’m still somewhat keen to try out, but haven’t managed to play much of the game whatsoever since the Eldritch Moon prerelease last month.

I’m still planning to go to the Kaladesh prerelease next month, however, as that was a really good time!

It saddens me a little when I realise, I have probably the two most expensive gaming hobbies ever: plastic and card crack. But y’know, they’re enjoyable, so I’m not going to complain too loudly!

Anyway, that’s probably it for this blog, I don’t like to ramble on too much of course! I think I might try to change up the feel of these Tuesday blogs in the future, though, as just blandly talking through a game’s components can be, well, pretty bland. Might try and get some kind of game-report type of thing (I did try it once, of course!) or something. We’ll see. Anyway, hopefully if you made it this far, you enjoyed it (don’t be afraid to leave a comment!), and I’ll see you all in the next exciting installment!